#Literally I was copying lines of code out of examples and pasting them in and getting compiler errors.

[screambirdscreaming]

Why is Visual Basic not compatible with Visual Basic for Applications!!! And why did none of the documentation mention this!!!!

[standardquip]

4 years of running BentoVid & RICE (an extremely long & meandering retrospective about survey data) This is an entry that's part history about the fanvid server I run that hosts a [now] feedback event [then contest] called RICE, and part data analysis from 4 years of pre-RICE survey data and one post-RICE survey from a particularly "problematic" year of the event. Read the entry as it was intended on dreamwidth by clicking the link above, or expand the cut tag and hope the html I pasted into tumblr displays correctly. [edit: it doesn't, but it's readable if you don't care about line breaks.]

Preface

Or, the time I accidentally influenced an entire industry through a survey question (click to read more) In 2015, I created a website called fursuitreview.com (FSR). Fursuits (one of a kind whole body animal costumes) are expensive and it was hard to keep track of makers that didn't have huge followings. I didn't want to run a review page, but only two existed prior to mine. One had died completely several years before, and the other one updated so infrequently it was almost useless (it, too, eventually died after FSR took off). The other two pages were a victim of putting too much work on themselves. The first had several questions reviewers had to answer and assign points. The moderators would average all the points for each review and give the overall review a score out of ten. This ensured consistency in the scores across all reviews. It was an amazing system but it would simply take too long to do myself (plus I'm terrible at math). Both sites were not actually sites - they were user accounts on furaffinity.net (and sometimes tumblr or livejournal) - which required write-ins to copy a big block of text and hope they got the format right (they rarely did, which meant moderators would have to correct it). FSR started out on furaffinity, but very quickly moved to a wordpress website. I thought very carefully on how I would keep manhours and costs down. I decided to not have any user accounts at all, nor would I bother with a numbered rating system (I instead went with a "positive / neutral / negative" system because that's really what everything boils down to anyway). I devised the least amount of questions I could in order to pry the information I wanted out of fursuit buyers when they wrote in. This resulted in two sections: wear satisfaction, and visual satisfaction. Each section had several sample questions to help guide the writer. "Wear satisfaction" was like, do you like how it fits you? how is the ventilation? how is the vision? Visual satisfaction was questions about looks.

Example screenshot of the FSR "wear Satisfaction" questions from 2020+

When people submitted a review, I would read over them all and make sure everything was copacetic before publishing it. Back then (before 2020), I was a one-man operation so I read literally every single review coming in. I noticed that some writers would mention lining in some of the fursuit parts. Most parts are unlined - it's just faux fur and the backing of that will be up against a wearer's skin. Lining is unnecessary and can ultimately make the costume much hotter - but it does make everything look really nice and marginally more comfortable to wear. After a few of these, I added "Does the item have lining?" to the list of sample questions.

Does the item have lining?

Surely nothing bad could happen from such an innocuous question!! (upside down smiley face goes here)

I must take a break here to mention that I had no experience doing literally anything that FSR required to run. I had bought 3-4 fursuits and thought it would be nice to keep track of my opinions of them. Everything else, from coding a website to writing survey questions, I had taught myself. I had some very very basic wordpress experience from a personal roleplaying character wiki wordpress site for myself, but that was it. FSR was a learn by doing experience. And boy, was it an experience. Writing, reading, reviewing, editing, customer service... FSR had me dealing with it all, and I'm surprised it gained as much traction as it did throughout that process.

So, needless to say, I had no idea what "survey bias" was.

Weeks, possibly months, later, I was browsing twitter keeping up with FSR social stuff, when I came across a tweet from a rather well-known maker (I believe it was either beetlecat or beastcub) asking other fursuit makers why customers were suddenly asking for their fursuits to be lined. I wish I had a link to this tweet, but I no longer have a twitter account. (If you happen to find it, do link it in the comments!) It didn't hit me at first. I watched the thread and the responses roll in. As other makers replied, the sense of dread was very slowly overtaking me. Could FSR really have that much influence? Could just a single little sentence really cause so much strife? Yes, it did, and yes... It did. Once I connected the dots, I edited the sample questions. No longer is it simply "Does the item have lining?" Now it is: "If it is lined, what material was used? Does it absorb sweat appropriately? Does it make cleaning easier?" But I went through a few iterations before I got to that wording. I believe my first edit was something like "(Note: most fursuits aren't lined)", but that didn't properly imply that you shouldn't be asking your maker for lining. After this lining snafu, I had to go through all of my questions and determine what I was accidentally influencing, how that could change what customers ask of their makers, and if I really needed that information in the review to begin with. I also, finally, learned about survey bias, and took some time to read up a little more on how to craft survey questions. And, of course, I had to come to grips with the fact that, yes, FSR was big. And it had influence. My little side project was a staple of the community and people counted on it to make very expensive purchases. Maker reputations and business operations began to live or die by the reviews we pulled in. FSR got to be too big and too much stress for me, so I ended up giving full ownership of the site to someone else in 2022 or 2023 (it was a long transition and I'm not sure when the public announcement was made). However, as of today (31 March 2024), fursuitreview.com is still fundamentally unchanged from how I was running it - including the review form. Nowadays, I have nothing to do with the site. I couldn't deal with the stress and responsibility once it grew to be a community cornerstone. Unfortunately, history may be repeating itself with the project I replaced FSR with...

A brief history of BentoVid (and RICE)

I have been editing anime music videos (AMVs) since 2001. I took a hiatus from the community from 2009ish to 2018. Despite that, I still managed to make at least one video every year. In 2018, I tried to get back into the community and realized it had almost completely changed. Discord was a thing now, and it seemed most of the activity was on there. I joined a few servers, but long story short they all weren't great. In a fit of frustration and annoyance, I did the classic move of going "Screw this, I'll do it myself!"

Bender (from Futurama): Fine! I'll start my own chatroom with blackjack and hookers! I glossed over it, but this is exactly how FursuitReview.com also started.

BentoVid (called AMV Sashimi back then) was created in September 2020. Back then, I did have high hopes. I did "plan" (finger quotes) on becoming a large community, but it was like how anyone plans on winning the lottery, you know? You don't actually expect it to happen. I thought that realistically I'd get maybe 30 members and it'd be just a chill hangout spot. But in 2021, we reached the fabled 100 members. Then 200. We broke 400 this year. And outside the very first year, I didn't actively promote. BentoVid has grown purely from word of mouth since 2021. On the other side of Discord was an annual AMV contest related to a particular anime convention. I first joined it in 2019. It was... okay... But not great. 2020 went even worse. The contest was going through a transition period and had a coordinator that, to put it mildly, was not well-liked. The concept behind the contest (which had been running for several years - I think 2005? Possibly even earlier) was great though. It was a contest focused on peer review. All the editors that submitted to the contest were the judges and voted on the winner. It was a blind contest, so nobody knew who made what, but only people who submitted to the contest could view and vote on the videos. The feedback was cruel. People did not hold back. Still, it was helpful, and I excelled my skills a lot by participating. The contest's discord server, however, went unmoderated and the coordinator made some very bizarre decisions. Another "Screw it, I'll do it myself" event occurred. RICE - Rewards imagined by a community of editors - was born by taking that other contest and implementing all the feedback participants had been complaining about for years. February 2021 was the first RICE. I had never run a contest before. Just like FSR (from the preface story), this was a trial by fire. I made at least one huge mistake every year the contest ran. But ultimately people liked RICE, and word of mouth about it (and the server) grew ever faster because of it. I had taken efforts to specifically NOT advertise RICE outside the BentoVid discord server, but that didn't stop it from growing.

4 years of RICE survey data

Partly due to my inexperience and partly due to my history with FSR, I put out RICE feedback surveys at every opportunity. I am actually not that into data. I don't analyze this stuff and I have no particular interest in collecting data at every turn for random things. I just find feedback surveys somewhat convenient and useful for my purposes. Sorry to people who are into that! XD

Pre-RICE survey data from 2021 - 2024

I have a small survey when people submit videos to RICE. It has (mostly) the same questions every year. Vivafringe helped me go through the data, and here are the results. (links to a google sheet) 2021 - 2023, the optional survey was on the same page as video submission questions. In 2024, I finally realized google form sections existed and I put it on a totally different page. I went from a 100% response rate to 58%. What a huge difference! But still inspiring to see so many people went out of their way to answer regardless. Here's my personal takeaways: US vs Non-US I personally thought there were more international editors participating, but it seems to hover around 20%. Do people keep their videos a secret? It looks like most of the survey respondents actually do attempt to keep their videos secret from everyone. However, almost as many people admit at least one person they know who will also be in RICE knows what their video is. I honestly thought it'd be the other way around, with more people sharing betas before RICE, so this is actually pretty cool to see. Thoughts on blind judging This question was multiple choice with only one answer allowed, so they had to choose which meant most to them. Most people seem to appreciate blind judging, but don't go out of their way to keep themselves blind during the event. (~70% combined) A large minority of people admit that guessing who made what during the event is part of the fun for them. (~25%) One possible answer was that blind judging is never truly blind - interesting to note only one person ever selected this and it was in 2023. Main reason for entering RICE? Another multiple choice answer where they had to select the "main" reason. Most people join RICE because they like the BentoVid community. However, almost as many people join because they like peer review. I'm flattered! lol But, in all seriousness, I really expected those results would be flipped, with peer review outranking BentoVid. Categories A multiple checkbox question for which categories your submitted vid belongs to, according to the editor. I mostly only care about theme, coordinator's choice, and live-action. Theme has submissions starting at 18% in 2021 and gradually going up to 29% in 2024. 2023 is an outlier with 39%. Coordinator's choice is very low. 1 - 3 videos. This is mixed news for me. On one hand, I think it's great people don't feel the need to pander to me (or maybe they don't know how). On the other hand... Please pander to me! XD Live-action is something I would like to see more of... The discord server started out as an AMV server and its audience is still mostly AMV editors. But I really want BentoVid (and RICE, by extension) to be about all fanvids and vidding (Hence the name change from AMV Sashimi to BentoVid). Long story short, live-action vids are obviously a very small minority that get submitted (5 - 9 videos each year), but they fluctuate between years. If you like live-action fanvids and want to join an active discord server... Please join us! lol How did you learn about RICE? This question was a small text field people could write whatever they wanted in. No surprise people learned about it from inside BentoVid. Next highest was word of mouth-related answers like "discord," "another discord server" or "friends". A little interesting was when AWA or POE were specifically mentioned (two popular AMV contests), but this was only twice for each.

Post-RICE survey data

2021 and 2022 had a feedback survey, but it was just one text block that asked for comments. Very few people ever filled this out and it was not very actionable feedback. 2023 was the first post-RICE feedback survey with actual guided questions, and it's because 2023 was... quite the year.

Understatement.

What happened during 2023 RICE?

Remember the contest I mentioned that RICE was based on? While RICE was thriving, that contest was floundering. The other contest, which for the rest of this blog I will call "HOST," happens in September - October, while RICE happens in February - March. 2022 HOST was another transition year for them. The old coordinator ("Elder") took over the contest after so many complaints about the coordinator that succeeded them ("Junior"). As far as I know, everyone was happy with Junior's leaving, but unfortunately it wasn't pretty. We weren't kind to Junior. Bridges were burned. Elder had some great ideas on how to bring HOST back up to its former glory days. But, procrastination got the better of them, so the contest started out very poorly. Then, during the contest, they had an extremely public and embarrassing meltdown. A number of people withdrew from the contest because of it. A totally different person ("Kidd") had to take over mid-event. The discord server went through an emergency restructure so Elder didn't have any special permissions anymore. Kidd was an absolute gem and managed to run the rest of the contest on their own very smoothly (Kidd continued through 2024 and deserves accolades). But the already negative reputation of HOST definitely turned into a dumpster fire after that. It was no surprise that RICE got touted as a good alternative. I was expecting more RICE entries than the previous year but. Boy. I was just not prepared. 2023 RICE saw 56 editors and 76 videos. The prior year was only 32 editors and 45 videos. RICE does not scale well. Moreover, I was experiencing horrible health issues at the time and really should have delayed or cancelled RICE due to them. Consequently, some people did not have a good experience with RICE. I thought the entire year was ruined. I made a pretty involved post-RICE survey due to it. This survey was mostly questions with text boxes where people wrote exactly what they were feeling. This made the answers a lot more personal and detailed. I will not be sharing the raw 2023 survey data. The complaints were about:

Too many videos for too short a time period

Some people were rude in the discord when discussing categories

Some people attacked one of the people giving critique in a voice call

I tried to enforce [very badly worded] content restrictions very late into the submission window. This had editors unnecessarily scrambling to re-edit things and ultimately ended up with multiple versions of videos in the contest [which should not have happened and that is entirely on me]

To me, the responses of the 2023 survey looked pretty dire. I immediately made changes to RICE following them. While RICE had started out as an improved version of HOST, I also had wanted the goal to be rewards for BentoVid server regulars. That's why I really didn't want to advertise it outside the server. I also never pinged \@Everyone or made a special role to get updates about it. The intent was if you were around the server, you'd know it was coming, and that was that. I wanted the good peer review and critique so we could all improve. I also wanted to see amazing videos. But what I DIDN'T want - and was (surprisingly!) NEVER concerned with - was lots of randos who didn't care about BentoVid. I explicitly never posted about RICE on a-m-v.org (despite people asking me to), and I never mentioned RICE outside my own server until after 2022 HOST. And even then it was really only in DM or if someone else had brought it up first. I still try to not advertise RICE, but I'm not as tight-lipped as I used to be. Still, it's primarily in DM. But anyway, I'm rambling now - the point is that RICE grew outside of the BentoVid bubble. People were joining RICE who did not care about BentoVid as a whole and I had to figure out how to handle that. My previous RICE messaging of "feedback event but also contest!" was fine for BentoVid regulars. We mostly knew what we liked and understood eachother because we hung out all the time. But for people new to RICE and/or the server, they had no idea and came in with false expectations. My two main takeaways from the 2023 Post-RICE survey were: 1. Because of my health issues and the mass increase of participants, the Discord server went (essentially) completely unmoderated during RICE. Because RICE (and BentoVid) is usually closely moderated, many conversations/debates went on a lot longer than they should have (because no moderators stepped in), which caused a lot of stress for participants. 2. The messaging of RICE was conflicting and led people to false expectations. People were essentially expecting HOST but "run better." "HOST but run better" is an over-generalization of how RICE works. It's actually quite different from HOST, but without the context of being a BentoVid regular, one wouldn't have that information. The first would be solved simply by me being present. Myself and most my staff could not be present during 2023 (honestly I'm surprised RICE ran as well as it did without us. Speaks a lot to our community!). To deal with the second point, I decided to focus on clearing up and changing RICE's messaging. Clearing the messaging had a few purposes:

More clearly differentiate RICE from HOST

Discourage non-regulars from joining without being super exclusionary about it

Discourage overtly competitive people from joining RICE

Encourage feedback-orientated participants

Focus more on accessibility (as RICE already applied VPR to all entries, it made sense to extend accessibility in other ways)

I took the survey responses very seriously, and as such, rushed to make announcements of what the changes would be. I ended up announcing them the same month RICE ended - March. Proof here (that is a discord link). You can read the initial announcement there in the BentoVid server, but I ended up changing things even more, so here's the summary of what the changes ended up being:

Very strict content restrictions (slightly relaxed later)

Focus on feedback event FIRST (took out all mentions of "contest" and "best" on the website, replacing them with "event" and "most-liked" )

No cash prizes at all (previously it was a $175 pool)

More emphasis on what exactly the server culture is like and what you can expect (basically: RICE is stressful, it's full of server regulars, prepare yourself if you're new)

Permanent categories got permanent names (previously everything was able to be voted on and changed)

All winners only get one award (previously there were multiple designs and names made for each award)

We added CWs as well as VPRs into the RICE expectations

Everything possible was outlined on the website. I literally wrote out the schedule and everything that you could expect to happen, how it all worked, etc.

The fallout from 2023 RICE continued throughout the entire year. It seemed negative feelings regarding it rolled out into other issues BentoVid was having (behind the scenes, especially in the staff channels) and overall I was really not feeling great about RICE. I was seriously considering 2024 RICE being the last one I ever ran.

2023 Post-RICE survey analysis

During 2024 RICE prep (which started in October 2023), I went through the 2023 feedback again. I asked some vague questions to random people about how they felt about 2023 RICE, and their answers (most of which were not negative at all) really had me questioning my perception of the entire thing. I gave the 2023 post-RICE survey data to a friend of mine who used to analyze that kind of thing for a living (Vivafringe). I went through the answers and redacted personal information, summarizing answers if necessary, before giving it to him. As part of the analysis, I asked him a bunch of questions and he looked over all the data to answer those questions. Again, I will not share the actual data here (even anonymized), but I will share the analysis he provided. Full disclosure: Viva did participate in 2023 RICE.

Analysis of Negative Experiences

Did more people have a negative or positive time in 2023?

to answer this I didn't do any fancy analysis. I read the responses and just did a vibe check of "negative" (pretty clearly had a bad time), "neutral" (had some things they didn't like, but gave other positive feedback or just in general didn't seem like they gave a shit one way or the other), "positive" ("vars you're the best" type comments) I think "neutral" people, if you actually asked them, would say they had a positive time, but it's hard to say for sure anyway I rated 7/25 negative, 7/25 neutral, 11/25 positive notably a lot of people didn't respond to this survey and the non respondants were likely positive/neutral. So I don't think you should read those numbers and assume 28% of people had a negative experience the overwhelming complaint from basically everyone was too many videos for the time they had - 5/6 people with "negative" feedback were returnees - 2/6 of the people who wanted "competitive" contest had negative opinions. No real signal there I think

I said the complaints about the VCs were really bad though?

I count 4 people that complained about the vcs my takeaway from reading this is basically: - moderate the vcs from now on, advertise them as critique/nice/whatever (you already are doing this but just saying I agree) - if you get 76 vids again, give more time to watch stuff I don't know how you solve chat getting tense, that was another common complaint

Category drama? Context: some people were very vocal about RICE needing fixed categories like typical AMV contests

I read the category stuff and broadly classified them as wanting "fixed" cats, "unfixed" cats, or "neutral" as you might expect most people didn't give a strong opinion on it, 10/25 were neutral 5 people wanted fixed, 6 people explicitly wanted to keep things as it was now (unfixed) if you read "neutral" as support for the status quo, which I do, I think the way you're doing it is fine. especially because a lot of the fixed cat people (3/6) had negative experiences and won't be here this year

I expected a smaller turnout for 2024 RICE. All I was really hoping for were more editors than in 2022 (which only had 32). Editors in 2023: 56 Editors in 2024: 43 (+3 more if we count DQs) A 17 - 23% loss, depending on how you count this. My thoughts: 1. That's not that bad, to be honest 2. If we treat 2023 as an outlier, 2024 is an acceptable and expected amount of growth from 2022. 3. One of the main complaints in 2023 was that there were too many videos, so 2024 numbers are more desirable in this context.

Other data collected from 2023 RICE

While I was mostly concerned about the negative experiences, I thankfully had the foresight to ask some other questions about RICE that gave us some valuable data.

Kollab vs frame.io = kollab wins by landslide

Direction for rice: contest vs feedback = 15/22 say feedback

Will you make an account on a website to do rice stuff? 12/25 say no

basically everyone answered the "what does rice do differently" question with "the feedback is a lot better". So a way to make rice better is to streamline process for providing feedback.

How long people spend on RICE vids:

10/21 (of the people that responded) started working on their rice vid 1 month or longer in advance

the competitive people ("A contest where the best of the best wins") seem kind of in the middle, time wise. 3/6 spent less than 1 month, 2/6 spent 2 months exactly, 1 didn't respond.

there were 8 newcomers, but basically same conclusion. 4/8 started more than a month in advance. 3/8 took a few weeks

Google docs & PSVs RICE offers a google doc with video information instead of trying to put it all in a filename. We also offered detailed VPRs and CWs, and, in some cases, alternate versions of videos that are more friendly for photosensitive users (called PSVs).

3/25 people said they used the VPRs.

18/25 people used the infosheet

4/25 used the CWs

3/25 used PSVs

What about 2024 Post-RICE survey data?

I collected that. This blog entry is already the size of a novel so I'll put it in another entry, I guess. Stay tuned! (Don't hold your breath though) I will exit this entry with the following results from that survey: If you participated in 2023 RICE, what would you say your overall experience was? 15/18 answered overall positive 2/18 said they did not participate in 2023 1/18 said neutral 0/18 said overall negative If you participated last year (2023), would you say your experience THIS year (2024) was: 9/17 answered overall better than last year 7/17 said about the same as last year 1/17 said did not participate last year 0/17 said overall worse than last year Your overall 2024 RICE experience was: 17/18 answered positive 1/18 said neutral 0/18 said negative 0/18 said boring 2024 RICE had 43 editors and 62 videos.

[nanowrimo]

When Should You Worldbuild for Your Novel?

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. World Anvil, a 2020 NaNo sponsor, is a writing software that helps you develop and organize your characters, plot and world setting. Today, World Anvil Director Janet Forbes shares some tips for worldbuilding at all stages of your novel:

As a writing and worldbuilding expert, and the director of the award-winning worldbuilding and novel writing software World Anvil, I get asked this question a lot: at which stage during the novel writing process should you be worldbuilding? Should you be worldbuilding as you plot, as you draft, or as you edit? And—I see you out there, you glorious pantsers—what if you don’t plot? When should you be worldbuilding?

A quick disclaimer & explanation:

EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT! (Isn’t it beautiful?) This post is full of suggestions. If in doubt, try things out! But not everything will work for everyone. Experiment with these ideas, and develop a novel writing process that works for you!

Some of the best worldbuilding articles are only a few sentences—just long enough to document your ideas! You’ll probably expand them a bit through the drafting process as you discover or decide more details. But don’t feel you have to write the entire “Silmarillion” for your world! Longer articles often just mean more to read through when you’re in a hurry.

When to worldbuild as a Plotter?

Are you a plotter? Prefer to take a run at a first draft with a solid plan? Then here are some of the best places to work worldbuilding into your novel writing method!

Worldbuild the big stuff during the plotting phase

As a plotter, a lot of the big worldbuilding ideas probably come as you plot your novel. You’ll need characters who live in settlements, and were probably educated in organizations. They may or may not adhere to certain traditions or religions. You might add magic systems,  supernatural powers, and/or futuristic technology (which you’ll need to know the limitations of!). Writing down your ideas NOW means that you have them safe, and won’t lose them!

Worldbuilding your organizations, like Nations, Religions, Jedis, Police Forces and Universities, will help give them more impact, and make your world feel more dynamic and real!

Image Credit: Davina, made on World Anvil.

If your novel is an event novel—aliens invade, the Earth quakes, or a zombie virus is let loose—then write a bit about the nature of the threat. If you’re creating a character novel, make sure you have some notes on your main character’s background, mentors, relationships, education and skills. 

Worldbuilding these elements of your plot—even in just a few notes—before you start the first draft will really help you down the line! You can plan all of these out using the worldbuilding templates in World Anvil. They give you the freedom to create WHATEVER you want, help you connect everything together, and make everything searchable when you need it!

Worldbuilding during Draft 1—character experience and juicy details!

So, if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably find that something magical happens during your first draft. You start to consider your world through your character’s eyes! This means adding a lot of details to your worldbuilding—both SHOWING rather than TELLING, and sensory detail.

For example, you won’t tell your readers that an organization is evil. Instead, you can show a poor man in the stocks because he couldn’t afford his tithe or tax. Add that punishment to the  worldbuilding article about the evil organization, so you can remember it for later (or for book 2!).

Also, as your characters interact with places and people, they’ll feel, smell and hear (and maybe taste) details which heighten the experience. This makes your writing more evocative, and invites readers to feel they’re living in your novel, too! 

Add these details—you can even copy-paste relevant paragraphs as quotes—into your worldbuilding articles. Some Plotters prefer to do this scene by scene as they write their first draft. Others (like me!) prefer to do this as a separate stage, once the first draft is done. Read through the first draft, and add quotations or details into your worldbuilding articles. Future-you will thank you!

A fantastic example of a quick character profile! Hotlinks (shown here in red) help you link everything together in your world, so you can find things easily! 

Image Credit: ShyRedFox, created on World Anvil

Worldbuilding as a Panster!

If you’d rather fly by the seat of your pants than plot out each step of your novel, then congratulations—you’re a Panster! You probably love the exciting feeling of discovering your story as you write your first draft. So here are some ways you can work worldbuilding into your novel writing process!

Characters are worldbuilding too!

Most pantsers I know love to craft characters, even if they don’t know what will happen to them over the course of the story! And characters are full to the brim with worldbuilding opportunities! 

For example, the places your characters were born, went to school, travelled—they are all important locations to worldbuild in a few sentences. Which country is your character from? Do they fit in and, if not, which traditions or view points do they chafe against? These are all excellent places to start your worldbuilding, even before NaNoWriMo has started. You’ll still be pantsing—just Pantsing with Purpose! 

And remember, none of these ideas are set in stone - you can always change them later. It’s just a jumping off point, to give you inspiration. 

Characters are worldbuilding too! Writing out a detailed character profile is a great way to discover more about your main character. World Anvil provides prompts to help you flesh out your characters even more.

Image Credit: Dhelian, created on World Anvil

Plan worldbuilding using the “Jot, Bin, Pants” method!

The Jot, Bin, Pants method (originally developed by Cassandra Lee Yieng) is a way to plan without plotting! Once you have those scenes, scan through them quickly. You’ll already spot elements you can write short worldbuilding articles about! If a scene takes place in a ship, a smart townhouse, or an abandoned castle, write a few sentences about that space. What material is it built from? What feelings does it conjure up? 

Now you have a few notes on that location, you’ll be able to recapture the feeling much more quickly during crunch time, and get your words written!

Keep worldbuilding notes during Draft 1

Another helpful moment to make notes is at the end of each writing session during Draft 1. Try spending 5 minutes documenting the people, places and things you came up with. World Anvil’s tree layout can give you a lot of inspiration when you’re glancing over your setting to decide what should happen next! So if you mention a creature, a character, a location or a technology, scribble down a few notes about your ideas. You never know - it might save your character’s life!

With World Anvil’s novel writing software, you can easily reference your worldbuilding and update your series bible either AS you write, or after each writing session! 

The worldbuilding review phase 

Regardless of Plotterism or Pantitude, you should eventually have Draft 1 of a book! Granted, it probably needs some tweaks right now. But there’s a story there, characters, ideas, and an ending. Congratulations!

Now is a great time to take stock of your worldbuilding. As you read through your novel, build up your world bible or series bible. Make sure you have articles for each major character, for the places and things you’ve introduced - just a few sentences is fine. But as you edit and flesh out your novel, these will be great references to have, and it’ll speed up the next phase no end!

Worldbuilding and Structural Edits

During structural edits, i.e. re-editing the actual story and big ideas of your book, you’ll find that keeping an updated version of your series bible is really useful! You can do this as you edit (which is what I prefer) or at the end of each draft. 

By the time you’re at line edits, you’ll be done with your worldbuilding… and ready to get on with your novel’s sequel! And I can promise you - you’ll be thanking past-you for keeping such good worldbuilding notes in your Series Bible! 

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[takadanobaba]

Prizoom Ticket Buying Walkthrough

Have you ever wanted to experience what a cheering screening is like regardless of location, even overseas? How about soundboard hell?

Well you’re in luck because there’s literally nothing stopping you because prizooms are a thing and they aren’t region locked at all!!! And I love them!!!!

I love them so much that I made a whole post just to make the ticket buying process even more easy!!!! 

If you’re interested in attending a prizoom, please participate and show your support for kinpri!!!

So to preface, “prizooms” are online King of Prism cheering screenings using Zoom and featuring a soundboard powered by Ainotte. Tickets are sold through RakutenTicket.

My first prizoom was Jin’s! 💙  I posted an impressions post here, in case if you wanted a detailed summary of what a prizoom is like! I also posted about Rei’s prizoom and will be using screenshots from buying tickets for that during this!

~

You’ll need a Rakuten Ticket account before trying to make your purchase, so if you haven’t, go to this link (the Rakuten member registration page) and make an account.

(Actually forgot most of the details for making an account when typing this but I do remember it being decently easy so.... if I’m missing anything it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out ^^;)

First part is pretty straightforward, they even have an official English translation of the registration page so you don’t have to put it through google translate! Also it doesn’t matter what language you set during registration, your account will work for buying prizoom tickets even if you don’t use the Japanese page.

For the address, I just looked up “Japanese postal codes” and put in the first result that showed up and picked the prefecture it came from (Tokyo) just to be safe. Pretty sure you can just put whatever you want though. Forgot what info I used (and can’t figure out how to see my account info to check?) but pretty sure I didn’t type in legit info and it went through anyways.

For the phone number, you can use your actual full phone number, including the country code!

(I forgot if they need to verify your phone number, but I’d suggest to use your real phone number just in case)

After that, confirm your information and create your Rakuten Ticket account!

So first you would go to whatever prizoom you’re interested in’s information page (usually found promoted on the kinpri twitter account) and then click the blue link, which will take you to its Rakuten Ticket page!

Then if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the different tickets available for purchase! The first and most expensive option is for every showing in the event, the ones below it are specific showings.

Also!!! If you want to skip a showing, you’ll have to go through the purchasing process for each single ticket you want to buy. There isn’t a cart function as far as I’m aware, so I had to pay the service fee twice. It’s kind of a pain but I guess that just gives more incentive for people who just want to do 2+ showings to just go all the way.

(Looking back on it, I regret only doing 2 out of 3 and not just buying an all-inclusive ticket for Jin’s showing since I would’ve loved it...)

I want to attend the screening of SSS part 4, so I’ll click the red button for the 3rd option!

Next screen is where you choose which room you want to participate in!  The red option is the cheering room, and the blue is for the chat+soundboard only room. I’ve heard that the cheering rooms are more fun (and a closer experience to an actual cheering screening), but I started out with chat-only rooms and personally REALLY REALLY REALLY enjoyed them! Both rooms use the soundboard, so if you’re interested in cheering through that (seeing as most people using this walkthrough would proooobably not have much experience cheering or be confident enough in Japanese to turn on their mic), it’s okay to attend either room!

I’ll be going to the chat-only room again! So I’ll click that, and then click the dropdown and set it to the only other option so that I can buy one ticket.

After that, a confirmation screen pops up. The orange button on the left is to cancel/go back, and the one on the right is to confirm.

The next section asks how you would like to pay, you’ll probably want to (and most likely can only) pay with a credit/debit card, so just select the first option before scrolling down until you get a bunch of blanks to fill out like below.

Now here’s the fun part! Putting in some really obviously made up information!

The first line asks for your last name, and the line below that asks for your first name. Don’t bother trying to type in your name in English letters/romaji, the system will only allow Japanese letters. As long as it’s in Japanese, you can put any name you want! 

In the section below the first 2 boxes, it asks you to rewrite your name in katakana specifically. If you have trouble with differentiating hiragana/katakana/kanji, you can always just paste something into a katakana converter or go wild with google translate till something works. Though it’d be good for you to learn at least a little bit of Japanese since it makes the whole screening experience more enjoyable.

I just set my name as 高田馬場 (Takadanobaba) ジョージ (Joji) because why not. For the second set of name boxes I put タカダノ��バ (Takadanobaba in katakana) ジョージ (Joji again, almost every kinpri character’s first name is already written in katakana). If you don’t want to bother with putting in different info then you can just paste that in haha.

For the address, make sure you put in a Japanese zip code! Non-japanese codes won’t work. You can select any prefecture you want, but for the example I put その他 / ”Somewhere else”. For the next few boxes you can type in literally anything you want, it doesn’t matter. It’s just an online event so the only place they send you anything is to your email! (They should just remove the whole address section since it gets tedious to fill out and isn’t used for anything haha...) Your address doesn’t need to be consistent with the info you used to make your account! 

ALSO!!!! If you’re running the page through google translate or something and get stuck, make sure you revert it back to its original before filling in your information and hitting the orange button! If you don’t then it keeps switching your birth month to the default 1/January and you won’t be able to move onto the next page. Your birthday needs to match up with the info you used to make your Rakuten account with!

When you’re done, click the orange confirmation button to go to the next page!

Next page just asks if you want to use your RakutenTicket points to discount your purchase. You can only use them if you have at least 50 points.

After that, put in your payment information! You don’t need a Japanese credit/debit card and can use the information for any card you want......... as long as it’s valid for you to use! Don’t steal someone’s card info or put in fake information for this. This is a transaction with actual money involved here. ^^;

Putting in the numbers on your card is also straightforward, the most confusing part would probably just be the name. Make sure you type the cardholder name in ALL CAPS otherwise it won’t work.

Should be obvious but I only used “TAKADANOBABA JOJI” for example purposes, if you’re copying my info, don’t actually put that unless if your name is actually Takadanobaba Joji and your credit card really says that. I changed it to my legal information after taking this screenshot so my purchase would go through. Use the actual name on your card!

After you put in your payment info and it’s verified, review your purchase, scroll down, and check the box at the end if you want to go through with your order.

The box before that asks if you want to receive email notifications for when events relating to King of Prism and online events have their tickets up for sale.

When your tickets are bought, you’ll get an order code like this! (You don’t really need it, this isn’t used in your prizoom ticket)

To see your ticket information, you can either check your email or go to the RakutenTicket home page and log into your account to view your purchase history.

When you click whatever ticket you want to see information for, scroll down until you find your “入室用ID” / “Entry ID” information.

From here, you’ll see your ticket info, alongside a link to the event’s bonus zoom backgrounds right above it!

You will also get an email with your ticket information!

Your ticket info will consist of numbers separated into three sections by slashes like this! The sections in order would be:

1) The Zoom meeting ID code (882 8702 1252)

2) The password to be let into the Zoom meeting (964689)

3) What you need to set your display name to before entering (6703)

(The numbers won’t be the same, also this is from Jin’s first showing so it’s long over and this information is useless outside of providing an example.)

Only one device is allowed per ticket, so don’t try to distribute the same ticket to multiple people to get out of paying for yourself or anything like that!

(Assuming you don’t need this guide to tell you how to download Zoom or find the option to join a meeting)

Put in the first number into the first box and the third number into the second box. Then you’ll get a popup asking for a passcode, so the second number.

Then it’ll show you when the event is scheduled for in your timezone! This is helpful for if you haven’t already and want to set an alarm for when it starts but don’t want to fumble through time converters. Though it would be good to double check just in case if the popup is off.

On the day of the event and a bit earlier from the first showing, you’ll get an email with a link for the prizoom soundboard! 

The soundboard is the same for all of the event’s showings and both rooms, so please only participate when appropriate so you don’t ruin the experience in showings you’re not attending if you choose to listen in on them!

I’ve annotated the buttons for accessibility  💖 

The gender/voice options can be switched in the top right corner (it’s set to the female option by default). The volume can be controlled with the sliding bar (the default is 5 which is honestly wayyy too low of a number considering how loud it is)

And with that, you’re all set! Once you’ve done all of the above, all you have to do is just wait for the event to start and then experience the prizoom sparkle!  💖

Shortly after the event ends, you get an email asking for feedback like this!

Just click the link and you can also put in any information and comments you want... whether you decide to let the staff know that there’s international interest in kinpri is up to you ^^

If you find that you enjoy prizooms, or just want to help make sure that there’s an opportunity to experience cheering screenings regardless of location, it would be helpful to comment that they should keep holding them in the future!  💖

If there’s any other questions, I’d be happy to answer!

[shattered-catalyst]

OCD Subtypes for the RPC

Part 1 is here

Well well well, we are back for Part 2 of the Roleplayer’s Guide to OCD.

Fellow Ocd Folks, I see you in those tags and I'm going to do my best to ensure those obsessions are represented here- BUT understand that physically it is not going to be possible to list every single one because I am one person.  Regardless its incredibly brave of you all to rb and add things in the tags, I know its hard to talk about this shit and I see you. I see you.

Resultantly I typed this out and posted it in formatting to assist with accessibility in mind; if you cannot read it still ( I tried Im sorry!) i recommend the copy and paste method or getting the chrome extension bee-line reader.

 There will be grammatical and spelling mistakes. Im sure spacing is odd some places, but you have to understand doing this is extremely anxiety provoking for me so Im just getting it done when I can.

Remember to use your critical thinking; not everyone has the same symptoms/compulsions/triggers and all that.

OCD is fluid. Its like liquid mercury. One day its a handful of subtypes another day its another different serving.

If you are in general squicked about certain topics even by mention read ahead with your own judgement. Remember us folks that have OCD have many disturbing and distressing experiences so if you are writing a character who has OCD and you can’t read about it just don’t give them that obsessive thought/ compulsion. Make sure writing is still a safe and enjoyable hobby for yourself first and foremost.

But ethically and morally I cannot and will not leave out the more disturbing bits. You have the ability to scroll by, I and many others do not get the chance to escape triggering content that our own mind creates.

So read ahead with your best judgement or at least skip around the squicky parts and educate yourself on what OCD is so people quite using it as a Obsessive Christmas/Corgi/Cat Disorder thing. Alright? Cool beans.

Okay so you made it passed post 1 and got under the read more. Give yourself a gold star for diving into this monster of a document.

Below is a crash course it is not meant to replace actual psychoeducation, personal research, or google. Honestly most of us do our research extensively but because OCD is treated so horribly by social media, media, and society in general.

I wasn’t sure where to throw these together because the education tools to learn fully about OCD are very specialized and thus very restricted. I found that many people DO have these experiences with OCD though so I will represent them throughout. I’ll also sprinkle some of my own experiences so you can get a good reference of a person who has the disorder and not just a randomly generated person.

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So OCD is made up of Obsessions, Trigger, Intrusive thought, Misinterpretation/feared consequence,Somatic and Psychological Anxiety, and Compulsions/Rituals.

Your character may not be able to list all of these. In fact if they aren't in ERP therapy they may not be able to puzzle these things out. But YOU as the writer should know them. Your character won’t be walking around talking to just ANYONE that they have OCD. Remember a huge aspect of OCD is it’s Shame.  The disorder makes us feel intense shame regarding our intrusive thoughts, as a result OCD goes undiagnosed for years especially if it has pediatric onset.

  We won’t tell anyone what we are experiencing or why we are doing x y or z. We act like nothing is wrong because to emotionally react is to admit to yourself- and therefore the world- that you have had this intrusive thought and are therefore by virtue a horrible person.[For further information I would suggest also researching PANDAS].

It may be noticeable if your character has an intrusive thought. They may wince or grimace or roll their eyes certainly, but they won’t open up to Joe at the cafe about how their brain is constantly torturing them. I apparently have a very noticeable eye twitch.

 Depending on the nature of the intrusive thought it will get more or less of a reaction out of me. Its usually dependent on how distressing the intrusive thought is and/or if its a new one.

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You see OCD doesn’t sit still. It never looks the same. You’ll have your long haul intrusive thoughts that are with you for years but then you’ll have weird ass ones that just appear and demand their voice be heard yelling about cars hitting people or squirrels getting eaten.

Some people have similar ones! So while everyone is different there will always be someone out there with an intrusive thought similar to yours.

 For instance; I bonded emotionally with a lady on reddit because we both have intrusive thoughts during storms that animals and the homeless are dying. We were both horribly relieved to find another person and also distressed that every snow or rain storm brings horrible images and whispers to your mind that while you are warm and snug in bed someone is freezing to death. And its all your fault.

Some days are better than others. As with all mental illnesses it isn’t CONSTANT ALARM BELLS. Some days it will be all alarms and other days it will be like a gentle whisper on the breeze. You can almost not notice it. Almost.

Obsessive thoughts run the gauntlet from ‘i will/could have/may/may accidentally harm etc’ something that you hold of value. This is any obsessive thought that you have: you think about repeatedly and not by choice, it is very anxiety provoking, it is unwanted, and unwelcome.

 Mine run the scale from ‘squirrel will be murdered’ to ‘being responsible for harm’.

Compulsions or ‘rituals’ are any behavior done to alleviate the anxiety from the intrusive thought and trigger object. In short, compulsions and rituals are not fun. they are absolutely not logical, and we know they are not logical but we are forced to do them. Thats why its a disorder. 

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To emphasize from post 1: magical thinking and the faulty link between thoughts and actions are hallmarks of OCD.  Magical thinking can be anything from contamination to if I turn around three times or stare really hard at something the bad thing wont happen. Sounds weird and is weird and we know it is thats why its a disorder and not a delusion.

The faulty belief that thought=action is the biggest hurdle it is incredibly difficult to grasp, at least for me maybe some of you that have done further ERP can attest, that the mere concept of a thought not being the same as an action is completely and totally mind blowing.

Free will? Yeah thats terrifying. IDK about anyone else but free will is absolutely terrifying; what do you mean i could do anything i wanted?

Thats how you face OCD(WITH A TRAINED THERAPIST). You give in to ambiguity and the unknown. Its breaking that link between thought and action. Its incredibly difficult and draining. A five minute exposure leaves me in shatters for a week and two five minute ones had me ripping my nails past the nail beds with anxiety.

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Just a reminder: Do not have your character expose themself or expose folks with OCD to a trigger to “ help us get over with”. That is literally forcing someone with a mental illness into a break down and is not helpful. In fact its worse because a person knows about this intrusive thought and they tried to make it real. More shame and some trauma. 

If you have OCD, more likely than not a family member or significant other has tried this with the purest of intentions. But it never works like that. Theres a reason that therapists get special training for this. If people want a post on ERP I can make one at some point. 

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Actually let’s drag me with the squirrel thing as the example- fellow OCD Folks get out a pen and paper and try breaking down one of yours;

Obsession:Squirrel will be murdered

Trigger: seeing a squirrel

 Intrusive thought: Graphic images of a squirrel being murdered by a hawk/ impaling depending on the day

Misinterpretation/feared consequence: Squirrel will be killed and its all my fault

Somatic and Psychological Anxiety:intense anxiety, palms sweating, heart racing,

Compulsions/Rituals: Must stare at the squirrel to prevent bad things from happening, 

Now imagine if that is every time you see a fucking squirrel. You have somehow become completely and totally transfixed on a squirrel and nothing is going to pull your attention away or the squirrel dies- which your mind is giving you lovely images of btw.

Cute right?

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Below are the subtypes with general information/example thoughts/ and how some of these have impacted me socially because apparently some people dont understand that mental illnesses impact their social lives?? yall...

Social: This can range from ‘ i am constantly thinking i did something wrong so i have to ask for reassurance that we are still friends’ to completely unrealistic worries. Maybe its an intrusive thought that ‘ your voice is annoying them’ . There’s reassurance seeking, internal and external checking.

 It makes friendships extremely difficult and exhausting. You’re not trying to get to know someone with an annoying frat boy egging on anxiety in your brain. This can also manifest as having strict rules for yourself and ethical codes. 

My therapist likes to say she could give us (folks with OCD) a pile of hundred dollar bills and come back and they’d all be returned. Because OCD makes you so strict and morally confined. Which ISNT fun. Like I dont get pleasure over having to memorize the entire Code of Conduct!

Social Media: Its the bane of human existence some days and a lifeline the next. But what if everytime your follower count was an odd/even number it sent you into a panic attack. What if you spent all your time with intrusive thoughts that somehow someone misinterpreted a post or that someone is going to be harmed by a post you made about tapirs. 

You may be forced to block people to get your number down or keep pornbots on your blog to keep your number what you like (see there is a use for them! We sacrifice those before actual users!) You may be refreshing your page every second because ‘what if you miss a message’. It's going to look a lot like ‘check check check check reassure yourself double check your posts check check check reassure check check FALSE MEMORY check your post etc’

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Clothing/Body Image: When its not Body Dysmorphia it can be OCD. Sometimes this looks like I obsess about a body part and therefore I choose my clothes/hairstyles to hide those.  Some personal examples: as a kid I was sure that mind readers exist ( THIS IS AN OCD THING TOO I was so relieved to find that out) and that if i didnt wear  a particular hat they would see all these horrible thoughts and it would be revealed what an awful person I was. So I wore the same dumb ass bucket hat for a year (or more I cannot remember but it was a long ass time).

I was once so fixated on being given a compliment on my eye color that I wore sunglasses (even at night) to a summer camp. And if any of those teen girls in that cabin that stood up and mocked me in a crowded lunch hall by singing ‘i wear my sunglasses at night’ you all owe me 40$.

Even younger still I had intrusive thoughts. Like say, if anyone noticed I was female that i would be kidnapped so I chopped my hair very short. I altered my appearance to be very androgynous and even switched to walking more masculine. Because omg if your hips move someones going to kill you thats just how it works. ( It doesnt help I later figured out I was a lesbian)

Your wardrobe may be impacted by OCD and yes so can your body image.

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Also yes the fear of mind readers is also a thing; i always thought I was somehow faking OCD because yes that is also a…..

Faking: Do you value telling the truth? Do you detest lying ? Boy Howdy do I have some news for you. OCD is going to try and convince you that YOU LIED. Whether it was on a chastity pledge to get a free sandwich or in a conversation you just HAD. This links a lot with false memory OCD.

Another aspect is OCD makes us doubt we have OCD and tries to convince us we have any other diagnosis under the sun and we are obviously faking our OCD.

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Sexual Orientation OCD; It is as it is called. Sexual Orientation OCD is what happens when your brain goes ‘hold on what if you’re not this orientation what if you are THAT’. It doesn’t matter where on the LGBT umbrella you fall you will have OCD trying to convince you otherwise. From compulsive staring at members of the same/opposite gender to compulsively reassuring or checking with yourself to ensure that ‘ no no you are in fact THIS orientation.’ 

This can range in behavior from binge watching porn, staring compulsively to check that there is OR is NOT attraction,self checking past experiences and memories, analyzing your clothing and your lifestyle in painful and intricate methods.

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False Memory OCD; False memory OCD is basically your brain sitting you in a noir interrogation room, handcuffing you to a chair grilling you. It demands that you did *insert bad thing here*. This can range from anything from something Harm based to pretty much *anything* from other OCD subtypes. Which is quite delightful really.

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Sensorimotor OCD; Sensorimotor OCD is obsessive body responses. These can be ‘ I have to cough really hard and really feel it right in my chest and if I can’t get it right I have to cough until I do’. This can be counting your heartbeats. Trying to check yourself that you in fact have a heart and checking and reassuring that it is still beating. It can be hyper-awareness of swallowing or even swallowing repeatedly. It is anything with selective attention; ie its an automated process but your OCD is forcing you to be aware of it.

Your OCD makes you aware of the sensation of, say, breathing, and then it convinces you that if you stop paying attention to it you will stop breathing. So now you’re horribly aware and focused solely on breathing and breathing alone. It keeps me up most nights with the pounding anxiety fueled by the pressure of ‘if you stop focusing on breathing you will stop breathing completely’ or waiting to feel that last heartbeat in your chest. 

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Existential OCD; You ever feel existential ? Existential OCD is like having a very aggressive existential crisis that turns you into NEEDING answers IMMEDIATELY. This can look anything from hours panic scrolling the net to panic inducing anxiety because you don't know what happens after death. The thoughts are like foghorns on a misty sea.

This sounds basic and the only example i can give is as a teeny tiny 7 year old I had a panic attack in bed screaming that ‘ what if im a dinosaur and im asleep and i wake up and my whole family is GONE’.

To be fair I did like dinosaurs a lot.

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Harm OCD; This is pretty self explanatory but I will give more details. Harm OCD is OCD demanding that you will/could/can/may have/might harmed yourself/others/any living creature and that you alone are responsible. 

This means anything from getting anxious driving over crosswalks because ‘what if you dont see one and hit someone and its all your fault and you hit someone go back and make sure you havent hit anyone’ to ‘im holding a knife so im going to accidentally stab someone’ to ‘ i didnt see my cat this morning and now im at work and think she must be dead and i am responsible for her demise.’

 It can be as simple as ‘if i use a pencil i will stab myself in the eye’ or as complex as ‘ i may accidentally say a slur’/ ‘ i am going to say this horrible thing out loud if i cannot control myself.’ It can also be images of terror or racist/sexist/ableist jokes in your mind that repeat like a broken record.

(Please note from section 1 that this is extremely anxiety provoking and not something you would do. OCD preys on what we respect the most.)

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pOCD; Tumblr listen the fuck up because I am tired of seeing people get called shit on this website for having this mental illness. People who experience pOCD are not pedophiles, they do not get any pleasure or benefit. The thoughts and images are meant to induce harm to the person experiencing them. Children are normally the trigger for this and the resulting images can be very graphic. Again you aren’t attracted to children- thoughts of them getting harmed hurt you so your OCD makes you see them.

Know this so you can advocate for folks with pOCD in real life. Remember we are here. We are suffering and we are terrified of your children.

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Poisoning others/or in your food; Life isn’t medieval anymore but sometimes OCD demands we have a food taster or that we obsessively worry that we may kill someone with our cooking. Personally I struggle with colorblindness so I am constantly fretful over cooking any sort of meat so it’s difficult for me to cook it.

 However this also comes as; obsessive horrible thoughts of your cooking kill someone or that you have somehow/accidentally poisoned someone’s food (even if you haven’t touched it or been within a foot of it ) or that someone has poisoned YOUR food even if no one has touched it except you. You’re going to be picking apart your food or unable to eat out at all.

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Emotional Contamination: It’s similar to magical thinking and this terrifying prospect of mind readers. Emotional contamination can manifest as anything from intense worry over somehow gaining someone else’s negative personality traits.

 Or that somehow by interacting with any role of someone horrible will make YOU somehow also responsible for the horribleness.  There is usually a person or a type of person that is a trigger, but it can also be location based.

 This is one subtype where magical thinking and superstition are apparent.  

For instance; as a teen if a male was in my space or had physical contact;like shaking hands,giving a high five, being in my room etc. I would have to go around and physically touch all the objects that I perceive they may have also touched as a way to cancel out their presence. 

This includes wiping off myself to negate even the touch of family members. It really hurts peoples feelings, my father was especially hurt by this.

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Physical Contamination: This goes beyond physical dirt and grime. Most of us dont have spotless homes because if you’re having a fist fight with your brain everyday cleaning falls by the wayside just like it would for anyone else. Physical contamination holds 2 things: physical contamination obsessions AND compulsive cleaning behaviors/rituals. We believe that a small amount of a contaminate can cover large surfaces.

 Oh, and did I mention its not JUST dirt/germs/viruses. The list is expansive but heres a mixed bag of what they can be: sticky substances,dead animals,glitter (FUCKING GLITTER),negative words or language,colors, numbers, surfaces in general, food, people, and activities.  There is also a hyper responsibility to protect yourself and others from ‘contamination’.

Strangely there is a magical separation between the contaminated world and the ‘clean’ one. Spaces designated as clean would be a bedroom/bathroom/workspace where you are most active. That space is where the compulsions and intrusive thoughts occur. Its not I MUST CLEAN EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. Otherwise I would be working cleaning houses because why the hell not amiright?

A real world example from a colleague would be a young man with physical contamination OCD is struck with such intrusive thoughts about cleaning that they refuse to allow anyone in their room or any animals in their home. But they are not able to even flush the toilet, take out the trash, wash dishes, or do garbage because of their intrusive thoughts.

The most famous would be compulsive hand washing but I feel it is important to also note OTHER aspects of physical contamination because everyone sees the hand scrubbing stereotype. 

Other compulsions include intricate rituals, not touching the floor (i played X-treme the floor is lava during college. I couldnt let my feet touch the floor because it was ‘dirty’),excessive showering (2-8+ hour showers guys, 8 hour showers. Thats what we’re talking about.)

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Relationship OCD: This comes as no surprise that yes you will have intrusive thoughts that you are somehow harming/ will harm/ may accidentally harm your significant other. Whether that be by physical or emotional means. It can look like ‘ I may have lied to her about how much I love her’, ‘ i may not actually love her and I may be leading her on’, and ‘ I must be corrupting her’. These can extend to certain physical activities with false memory OCD as a cherry on top. A great finishing garnish to leave you feeling absolutely dismayed and unable to trust your own perception.

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Scrupulosity: Religion! Whatever that may be! Its a thing with OCD.  With Scrupulosity obsessive thoughts run all over the board from; you committed a sin and forgot about it you monster to having to pray continuously/ a certain time/ until its right. What is right?Ask OCD that’s the only person who knows. 

We are fairly certain my grandfather had OCD because he went to church for every single Catholic Mass. Every single day. Every. Single. Day.  That’s not a healthy amount of attendance(I'm calling you out posthumously because I care Robert!). This can also look like: praying a certain amount of times. Praying until you do it ‘right’. Confessing every single potential sin. Cataloguing and dwelling over ‘sinful’ things. 

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Symmetry or Just Right OCD: Symmetry OCD is the runner up for ‘most likely recognized on tv shows’ award.

Symmetry OCD convinces you that if *insert thing here* isnt symmetrical or ‘just right’ (a magical position or number of objects that makes 0 logical sense) that something bad will happen.

This can range from the known; rearranging things. But it also looks like buying more objects until you reach the right amount and even throwing out objects if theres ‘too many’.

It can range from ‘the walls are percievably not straight so now i avoid that room at all costs otherwise i will be trapped traveling the edges of the wall with my eyes otherwise it will fall in and murder us ALL.’ to ‘ this historical bust is one inch off to the left and now all i see is visions of it breaking against the ground.’

So that is what I have time for. 9 pages on subtypes and basic information. If you find yourself wanting me information all of this is easily accessible online. So go, be free and dont ever compare people to Monk again. Write Batman and Scott Summers with OCD. Give us ACTUAL representation and not throw away joke lines. We are here. Our suffering isnt funny. We deserve representation too.

[withteeths]

Maybe Steamrolling Games is Bad Actually

Videogames are unique in that they are inextricably tied to corporatism and have been since birth (this is an oversimplification but roll with it). This means that to an extent most companies even since the ’80s have never really cared about proper preservation or easy access to their titles. Nintendo carts were originally manufactured to have their battery die in 3 years so you would have to buy a new one (this failed, but it’s why you still see a lot of dead carts floating around). I think there's a nostalgia issue within the gaming fandom regarding "oh x was great back then" but a lot of the time, games manufacturers have been historically shitty and anti-consumer and it’s just that they now have the tools to execute it much more effectively. Regarding obtrusive DRM, that’s an issue PC games have had since their zenith, where if you lost your original copy of a manual or a small plastic key you could never play a game again because the codes were individualized for each copy and support would refuse to give you a new one. Even back in the arcades, there were particularly batshit examples like the CPS board, which I shit you not was built to explode a battery pack filled with corrosive acid if it detected you were attempting to repair or modify it. There’s a lot to say about the current state of games but what I would likely illustrate is that 2/3 major consoles are racing to decide who will be obsolete first. Games consoles are reaching a point where they are trying to emulate PCs with more restrictions and DRM. We're already seeing interest in steam spike again and it’s likely that eventually, we will see almost a crash for consoles where no one can justify the price for games they can play on a PC rig. The only solution I see there would be a merger between the two consoles which feels inevitable. 

That being said as interest in the PC space increases again so does attempts at entering the bubble. We have Epic, Origin, Microsoft, Indiegala, Itchio, and Steam all vying for attention, requiring accounts, and offering exclusives to justify the use of their storefront over others. Some people think this is a good thing because it's breaking up Steam's monopoly but it literally is not, if you ever really wanna hear me rant ask me about Leftist obsession with itch being some sort of ethical steam, which it is provably not. In the end, the real sort of saviour figures that work to preserve games are random ass people on the internet. I know people who automatically assume that at the end of the day, companies care about games preservation too, and they usually have a three-pronged argument that cites a) Steam’s ability to allow the redownloading of delisted games, b) retro companies periodically rereleasing titles for modern consoles in compilations, and c) companies doing limited reruns of a game that fans request. All three of these examples are basically an incredibly effective use of diversionary tactics, but most of the time when someone cites these I just assume it’s a misunderstanding and not outright malicious intent because a lot of the time companies will attempt to actively implant these ideas to build brand loyalty.

My main dissertation is usually that Steam is incredibly selective with what titles you can redownload, and most importantly, corporate benevolence is more-so a band-aid on a gaping wound! There’s no contingency for when Steam might migrate to a new service, go belly up, or become obsolete when a new OS is created. That means thousands, tens of thousands of dollars worth of games are just gone, permanently, along with fan mods, DLC, and content. It’s a terrifying thought that not many people bring up when discussing the problems with game storefronts that focus so much on providing a cloud and have DRM attached to every purchase. In a way, Steam preceded the trend of not allowing consumers to actually own the things they purchased, and they’ve avoided criticism by strategic use of silence and creating the illusion of a company being made by the consumers they’re attempting to serve. At the end of the day, Steam is a business, and if you ever lose access to your Steam account, or they decide to up and leave one day, you will not be able to play almost all of those games, even if you have them installed on a hard drive, because if you’re online, they connect with a server to ensure your steam account has the ability to play them. When it comes to other arguments like the limited rereleases or use of compilations to preserve arcade titles, I usually just beg people to look at community-driven options that have existed for years. The Scott Pilgrim game is a big source of contention, but I would point out that for years now, it was playable, for free, with all the DLC, on PCs. Preservationists didn’t wait for the gods of Universal and O’Malley to rerelease it for 30 bucks or save up to snatch the fucking ridiculous 200$ limited edition with shitty paper cut-outs, they straight up just did the work to make the game free and available. RCPS3 has (with a contemporary build) been able to run the game pretty flawlessly for years now, in fact, it was how I played through a majority of the game in high school on my shitty brick of a laptop. If you look further out than this one example then it gets even better, MAME and other emulation backends have been able to play obscure, unfinished, and homebrew titles with 100% accuracy, on almost any setup, for free, for decades! I found out about many of these options back in 2015 or so, certainly late to the curve, but I never really questioned as to why emulation, games preservation, and some key titles being available on PC remained some sort of arcane, unknown knowledge to most people interested in games. In the end, the answer was a highly effective propaganda campaign that combined with strategic use of DMCA takedowns has resulted in the concept of communal games-preservation and emulation becoming some sort of debate, where people will wholeheartedly side with corporations in some sort of quest for preserving things the “ethical and correct way,” which is code for preservation on the condition that it remains profitable for the IP owners.

 I think the best way to illustrate this would be with the community built around the preservation of an infamous PS4 title, PT. The story of its inevitable delisting from the storefront and the messy breakup between Kojima and Konami is well known, so I won’t regurgitate it, look it up at your own leisure. What is significant here is corporate reactions to attempts at preserving the game, which can basically be boiled down to Konami acting with borderline rabid fervour to prevent redownload, redistribution, or recreation of a seven-year-old demo, released for free download. Mentions of solutions to redownload the game have been taken down, fan-made recreations for PC, and archival servers that store a copy of the game for future preservation or emulation. Usually when this is brought up a debate occurs citing that technically speaking, Konami has a right to do this whenever they want, for whatever piece of media they believe infringes on their copyright. On one hand, yes this argument is factually correct considering the current state of copyright and ownership of media, but on the other hand, what compels someone to step into the ring for a multi-million dollar company with the primary argument being “well actually, people SHOULDN’T be able to play this specific video game until it benefits the shareholders”? In my opinion, it’s some sort of corporatized symbiosis where players believe that, if you cull the bad actors and play by the rules of the company, you may be able to eventually play the game a couple of years down the line. Sure, this has happened in the past with a few isolated cases, but it can’t be stressed enough that this is a genuinely dangerous and reductive position for people to take regarding games preservation.

 I have two colleagues, Mariken and Fotocopiadora, who released a short interactive title called Videopulp (playable here: https://fotocopiadora.itch.io/videopulp). It’s a dramatic reimagining of a real historical event, wherein a promotional event was held in 1994 at Lelystad to destroy bootleg carts by a figure in a Mario costume. This perhaps best encapsulates something I am pleading with younger generations to understand, as an archivist, art historian, and creator: corporations are not your friends, and they never will be. With the rise of online circles of leftism, this concept is starting to gain traction but is starting to be polluted with concepts of fandom and tribalism. This has lead to arguments that while *most* corporations are bad how could you say that about Nintendo? Or Valve? Mario is so innocent and characters like Wheatley are beloved by all! I feel some people don’t realize that they can enjoy a select title or character without enlisting in a corporate faction in the battle for “best company” or “best videogame”. It leads to a parasocial kinship with a nonexistent figure that was hand-crafted to ensure consumer loyalty to a certain brand. It’s depressing, terrifying, and should stand as a disquieting example of how the grip of capitalism on works of art has permanently distorted how we think and engage with media today. So, what’s the solution? As always I can never really provide something concrete that’ll act as a cure-all, only things that people in games need to work towards. Bring up conversations about games preservation, create archives for your own work, support archivists and boost their work whenever a new discovery is created, and try to promote optimism and solidarity in your hobbyist communities. I’ve noticed a lot of futility being intertwined with the future of AAA gaming, use of online storefronts, and the inability to own pieces of media anymore, and I feel this should be pushed back against, even in a minute way. Open-source programmes still exist that allow you to hold on to what you have purchased, offline and ad-free options exist for games launchers, e-readers, and media players. The future isn’t bright, but it is not a place without hope, and as long as people continue to enter communities with passion and ingenuity, I think we have a chance at stopping the events at Lelystad, 1994 from happening again. 

[comparatist]

Bengal Renaissance:

The idea of renaissance caters the concept of a glorious past, a history of deterioration in the intermediate period and a journey towards the restoration of the lost glory through various means of societal foundations and fields. The word ‘renaissance’ holds the literal meaning of rebirth or reawakening. The line of thought started gaining popularity in Bengal prominently in 19th century, though the distribution was unequal. The literatures of that time entertained the idea thoroughly though the absence of equality in the distribution created a target audience who resembled nothing more than an echo chamber. The concept of renaissance or reawakening was mostly pushed by the upper class, upper caste men of the society, often writers. India never had its own history to be precise. The model was launched by the British writers. They had divided their own in the column of ‘ancient,’ ‘middle,’ ‘modern,’ and tried to use the own template which writing the history of India. Hence the idea of ‘middle age as the dark era’ was subjective. To the east Asia, this time was a reminder of golden hours while in the European context, this time was a throwback to the chaotic hours, when the British started to decide the history of India, it used its usual font of depicting the Muslim countries as the invaders and the Muslim population as the ‘others.’ It was these writers, these gatekeepers of cultural virtues, who made their work easier, for the texts these writers wrote, propagated the idea of the ‘foreign savior.’ Since the Europeans were on the losing side of the wars which is evident from their depiction of their description of the era, the wars took place in, they adopted the path of willful amnesia. Willful amnesia or a self-initiated effort to internalize the idea of forgetting, as a defense mechanism made them to label the ages of religious wars as ‘dark’ and writing their history accordingly. When the same procedure was used on the Indian history, the idea was taken up by the writers with immense socio-economic privilege, to write about the restoration of the glorious past of the country, that is the ‘Hindu’ era, before it was invaded by the Muslims and tried to build up a cultural resistance that way. This created the ‘otherization’ on a prominent level and the race who held the roots of this system of segregation, i,e the Europeans, acted out their process of colonization as the foreign saviors. As the process got initiated without any major violent face-off and as they posing as mere traders went successful, in no time they were able to establish themselves as a trustworthy assistant in thwarting the rule of the ‘Muslim invaders.’

‘Anandamath’ penned down by Bankimchandra Chattyopadhyay displays the characteristics of a 19th century novel, as discussed before. The influence of Sanskrit in Bankim’s life isn’t unknown. From learning the Sanskritic tradition and remaining in the contact of the scholars of Bhatpara to reviewing Sanskritic publications in ‘Bangadarshan’ and referring Sanskritic notions in his writings including ‘Anandamath’ are examples of how he valued the traditional ways of life and how strong was his urge to restore the ‘lost Hindu glory.’ ‘Anandamath’ becomes the perfect reflection of that. The novel keeps the famine background during Mir Jafar’s rule which was a cunning motive by the novelist to portray a situation of anarchy during the Muslim rule, thereby suggesting that a foreigner can only loot from the land and can never do any good for the countrymen and are only here to destroy the cultural heritage. “Mir Jafar took opium and slept, the British took in the money and issued receipts, and Bengal wept and went to ruin.” With clarity, the sentence exempts the British from the guilt of torturing the common folks in collecting revenues and places the entire responsibility of the well being of the Bengalis on the Muslim ruler to support the claim of ‘foreign saviors’ in a very subtle way. The support for the British Raj in India is expressed more clearly in the novel when the character known as ‘sage’ is having a conversation with Satyananda of Santan Dal’ regarding the outward and inward knowledge of Hinduism and says, “we must bring in the outward knowledge from another country. The English are very knowledgeable in the outward knowledge, and they’re very good at instructing people. Therefore we’ll make them king.” So the whole concept of making Bengal a Hindu state from the clutches of a Muslim ruler through the hands of ‘foreign saviors’ becomes evident in the narration. The ‘Santan Dal’ present in the novel carries out the Hindutwa agenda by attacking Muslim households, burning villages with Muslim population, attracting people by their Hindu identity and always expressed their agenda being the freeing of motherland, restoring her lost glory from the ‘foreign’ hands but the subjects of alienation were not the British but the Muslims. It becomes clear from Bhabananda’s comment, “the English are not our enemies. But why are you here to help the Muslims?” He even adds later, “Victory to the English! We wish you well!” Thus the legitimization of the colonization gets propagated through a fictious adaptation of the Sanyasi Rebellion but not against the white-skinned foreigners. The Sepoy Mutiny against the British, therefore never had any support from these upper caste, upper class Hindu men.

As mentioned before, the ideas of this so called new awakening weren’t distributed in the equal basis. The literatures concerned with the rebirth of the Bengali Hindu culture were targeted towards the upper middle class, middle class audience by the writers who had huge amount of social capital as their backup. The targeted audience had the leisure to indulge into the cultural activities due to their class position. The middle class Bengali young rebels were so influenced by ‘Anandamath’ that there was a rumor of them getting radicalized enough to keep revolvers in their bags along with the copy of this book. The novel though starts with the accounts of people suffering from the high taxes, famine, epidemic, hunger, are starving to pay the taxes, selling the family members and Bhabananda telling Mahendra that a king who doesn’t look after his subjects shouldn’t have any right to ask taxes, after the Santan Dal have taken charge of a village Satyananda advises them to collect taxes, but this time, for the cause of buying weapons to face the royal army and make the motherland free by establishing the Hindu rule and restoring the ‘lost glory.’ The economic deterioration is presented to evoke purgatory responses from the readership from their positions of privilege. The novel though is subtle on its caste angle but not enough to be considered nil. The memberships of Santan Dal happen after the interested ones reveal their caste. Even the child of Mahendra and Kalyani doesn’t get spared of this question. Though Satyananda says that every Santan should think of the other as equal as all are ‘The Children’ of the Mother, the protagonists are all from the privileged section of the society. Hence, the class of the targeted audience who only get concerned with the society when the ‘culture’ gets attacked as the other aspects of life were in abundance for them, what is better than a Hindu revivalist novel where the writer can make up an attack on culture and manipulate it for his own needs?

Preaching for colonization in the garb of Hindutwa propaganda isn’t an easy task but Bankim managed it quite well. The idea of the ‘Mother’ figure and her Hindu sons fighting the Muslim ‘foreigners’ yet welcoming the ones with white skin can only be done if the former idea propagates the concept of Sanskritization and the latter gets managed with a vague concept of outward and inward projections of the Eternal code and the outward expression being lost and can be revived by the help of the British people. The concept of willful amnesia and the notions of pre-conceived theory sit here well. The former directs the author into preaching that the antagonist in his writings has nothing good to do and is here to ruin things during his reign. The latter helps in the plot, and tells the writer to think that the ‘foreign savior’ can be used to revive the lost culture as they have ‘advanced’ ideas about things and can be used to undo the effects of the ruins made by the antagonist. Self contradiction is also a feature of the novels of 19th century. Hence, when Satyananda laments that he couldn’t establish the Hindu rule and the British will now rule by saying, “Oh Mother, I’ve not been able to set you free. Once more you’ll fall into the hands of unworthy foreigners,” the sage, a personification of the said feature advises him that ‘this’ foreigner’s help is needed to serve the bigger goal.

The novel, ‘Anandamath’ serves its purpose well. It mocks the strength of the sepoys by comparing it to those of the British ones, to glorify the foreigners the author has chosen to aid. The fight takes place among the Santans and the British too but the latter don’t bear the grudge as the author felt they would be needed to serve the politics of the revival of lost cultural glory. Though it fails to establish the Hindu rule, the win against British soldiers do serve as a trailer to project the might of the Hindus before the Muslim rule and a small hint that one day this community will ‘take back’ the country from the Englishmen and establish its own rule.

[readevalprint]

Ichiran@home 2021: the ultimate guide

Recently I’ve been contacted by several people who wanted to use my Japanese text segmenter Ichiran in their own projects. This is not surprising since it’s vastly superior to Mecab and similar software, and is occassionally updated with new vocabulary unlike many other segmenters. Ichiran powers ichi.moe which is a very cool webapp that helped literally dozens of people learn Japanese.

A big obstacle towards the adoption of Ichiran is the fact that it’s written in Common Lisp and people who want to use it are often unfamiliar with this language. To fix this issue, I’m now providing a way to build Ichiran as a command line utility, which could then be called as a subprocess by scripts in other languages.

This is a master post how to get Ichiran installed and how to use it for people who don’t know any Common Lisp at all. I’m providing instructions for Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows, I haven’t tested whether it works on other operating systems but it probably should.

PostgreSQL

Ichiran uses a PostgreSQL database as a source for its vocabulary and other things. On Linux install postgresql using your preferred package manager. On Windows use the official installer. You should remember the password for the postgres user, or create a new user if you know how to do it.

Download the latest release of Ichiran database. On the release page there are commands needed to restore the dump. On Windows they don't really work, instead try to create database and restore the dump using pgAdmin (which is usually installed together with Postgres). Right-click on PostgreSQL/Databases/postgres and select "Query tool...". Paste the following into Query editor and hit the Execute button.

CREATE DATABASE [database_name] WITH TEMPLATE = template0 OWNER = postgres ENCODING = 'UTF8' LC_COLLATE = 'Japanese_Japan.932' LC_CTYPE = 'Japanese_Japan.932' TABLESPACE = pg_default CONNECTION LIMIT = -1;

Then refresh the Databases folder and you should see your new database. Right-click on it then select "Restore", then choose the file that you downloaded (it wants ".backup" extension by default so choose "Format: All files" if you can't find the file).

You might get a bunch of errors when restoring the dump saying that "user ichiran doesn't exist". Just ignore them.

SBCL

Ichiran uses SBCL to run its Common Lisp code. You can download Windows binaries for SBCL 2.0.0 from the official site, and on Linux you can use the package manager, or also use binaries from the official site although they might be incompatible with your operating system.

However you really want the latest version 2.1.0, especially on Windows for uh... reasons. There's a workaround for Windows 10 though, so if you don't mind turning on that option, you can stick with SBCL 2.0.0 really.

After installing some version of SBCL (SBCL requires SBCL to compile itself), download the source code of the latest version and let's get to business.

On Linux it should be easy, just run

sh make.sh --fancy sudo sh install.sh

in the source directory.

On Windows it's somewhat harder. Install MSYS2, then run "MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit".

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain make # for paths in MSYS2 replace drive prefix C:/ by /c/ and so on cd [path_to_sbcl_source] export PATH="$PATH:[directory_where_sbcl.exe_is_currently]" # check that you can run sbcl from command line now # type (sb-ext:quit) to quit sbcl sh make.sh --fancy unset SBCL_HOME INSTALL_ROOT=/c/sbcl sh install.sh

Then edit Windows environment variables so that PATH contains c:\sbcl\bin and SBCL_HOME is c:\sbcl\lib\sbcl (replace c:\sbcl here and in INSTALL_ROOT with another directory if applicable). Check that you can run a normal Windows shell (cmd) and run sbcl from it.

Quicklisp

Quicklisp is a library manager for Common Lisp. You'll need it to install the dependencies of Ichiran. Download quicklisp.lisp from the official site and run the following command:

sbcl --load /path/to/quicklisp.lisp

In SBCL shell execute the following commands:

(quicklisp-quickstart:install) (ql:add-to-init-file) (sb-ext:quit)

This will ensure quicklisp is loaded every time SBCL starts.

Ichiran

Find the directory ~/quicklisp/local-projects (%USERPROFILE%\quicklisp\local-projects on Windows) and git clone Ichiran source code into it. It is possible to place it into an arbitrary directory, but that requires configuring ASDF, while ~/quicklisp/local-projects/ should work out of the box, as should ~/common-lisp/ but I'm not sure about Windows equivalent for this one.

Ichiran wouldn't load without settings.lisp file which you might notice is absent from the repository. Instead, there's a settings.lisp.template file. Copy settings.lisp.template to settings.lisp and edit the following values in settings.lisp:

*connection* this is the main database connection. It is a list of at least 4 elements: database name, database user (usually "postgres"), database password and database host ("localhost"). It can be followed by options like :port 5434 if the database is running on a non-standard port.

*connections* is an optional parameter, if you want to switch between several databases. You can probably ignore it.

*jmdict-data* this should be a path to these files from JMdict project. They contain descriptions of parts of speech etc.

ignore all the other parameters, they're only needed for creating the database from scratch

Run sbcl. You should now be able to load Ichiran with

(ql:quickload :ichiran)

On the first run, run the following command. It should also be run after downloading a new database dump and updating Ichiran code, as it fixes various issues with the original JMdict data.

(ichiran/mnt:add-errata)

Run the test suite with

(ichiran/test:run-all-tests)

If not all tests pass, you did something wrong! If none of the tests pass, check that you configured the database connection correctly. If all tests pass, you have a working installation of Ichiran. Congratulations!

Some commands that can be used in Ichiran:

(ichiran:romanize "一覧は最高だぞ" :with-info t) this is basically a text-only equivalent of ichi.moe, everyone's favorite webapp based on Ichiran.

(ichiran/dict:simple-segment "一覧は最高だぞ") returns a list of WORD-INFO objects which contain a lot of interesting data which is available through "accessor functions". For example (mapcar 'ichiran/dict:word-info-text (ichiran/dict:simple-segment "一覧は最高だぞ") will return a list of separate words in a sentence.

(ichiran/dict:dict-segment "一覧は最高だぞ" :limit 5) like simple-segment but returns top 5 segmentations.

(ichiran/dict:word-info-from-text "一覧") gets a WORD-INFO object for a specific word.

ichiran/dict:word-info-str converts a WORD-INFO object to a human-readable string.

ichiran/dict:word-info-gloss-json converts a WORD-INFO object into a "json" "object" containing dictionary information about a word, which is not really JSON but an equivalent Lisp representation of it. But, it can be converted into a real JSON string with jsown:to-json function. Putting it all together, the following code will convert the word 一覧 into a JSON string:

(jsown:to-json (ichiran/dict:word-info-json (ichiran/dict:word-info-from-text "一覧")))

Now, if you're not familiar with Common Lisp all this stuff might seem confusing. Which is where ichiran-cli comes in, a brand new Command Line Interface to Ichiran.

ichiran-cli

ichiran-cli is just a simple command-line application that can be called by scripts just like mecab and its ilk. The main difference is that it must be built by the user, who has already did the previous steps of the Ichiran installation process. It needs to access the postgres database and the connection settings from settings.lisp are currently "baked in" during the build. It also contains a cache of some database references, so modifying the database (i.e. updating to a newer database dump) without also rebuilding ichiran-cli is highly inadvisable.

The build process is very easy. Just run sbcl and execute the following commands:

(ql:quickload :ichiran/cli) (ichiran/cli:build)

sbcl should exit at this point, and you'll have a new ichiran-cli (ichiran-cli.exe on Windows) executable in ichiran source directory. If sbcl didn't exit, try deleting the old ichiran-cli and do it again, it seems that on Linux sbcl sometimes can't overwrite this file for some reason.

Use -h option to show how to use this tool. There will be more options in the future but at the time of this post, it prints out the following:

>ichiran-cli -h Command line interface for Ichiran Usage: ichiran-cli [-h|--help] [-e|--eval] [-i|--with-info] [-f|--full] [input] Available options: -h, --help print this help text -e, --eval evaluate arbitrary expression and print the result -i, --with-info print dictionary info -f, --full full split info (as JSON) By default calls ichiran:romanize, other options change this behavior

Here's the example usage of these switches

ichiran-cli "一覧は最高だぞ" just prints out the romanization

ichiran-cli -i "一覧は最高だぞ" - equivalent of ichiran:romanize :with-info t above

ichiran-cli -f "一覧は最高だぞ" - outputs the full result of segmentation as JSON. This is the one you'll probably want to use in scripts etc.

ichiran-cli -e "(+ 1 2 3)" - execute arbitrary Common Lisp code... yup that's right. Since this is a new feature, I don't know yet which commands people really want, so this option can be used to execute any command such as those listed in the previous section.

By the way, as I mentioned before, on Windows SBCL prior to 2.1.0 doesn't parse non-ascii command line arguments correctly. Which is why I had to include a section about building a newer version of SBCL. However if you use Windows 10, there's a workaround that avoids having to build SBCL 2.1.0. Open "Language Settings", find a link to "Administrative language settings", click on "Change system locale...", and turn on "Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support". Then reboot your computer. Voila, everything will work now. At least in regards to SBCL. I can't guarantee that other command line apps which use locales will work after that.

That's it for now, hope you enjoy playing around with Ichiran in this new year. よろしくおねがいします！

[hamyheikki]

Day 2 “Letters”

I am so behind with the challenge, and for that I apologize! Not feeling the greatest as of late, but making these is proving to be a bit helpful.

The order has been issued: All personnel currently situated in the Shatterdome must be ready to depart in two week’s time. The war was over, nation wanted their land back, and even though there had been suggestions about using the base as a research site going forward, the idea had been shut down by the government. And so, in the windy morning few days after the battle, the halls of Humanity’s Last Stance are filled with soldiers, pilots and mechanics, all running past and over each other in their hurry to try and gather their belongings before the deadline. Corridors, narrow to begin with, are piled up with suitcases, metal-sealed chests and pieces of furniture. It was getting difficult to move around

And yet, not everybody is part of the hassle. Sitting on one of the containment boxes, Mako merely watches as her comrades rush around. She had knew this was coming from the moment they hit the shores after the final mission, it only being a matter of time. Over the last days, she has already put away all her personal items of importance, tossing away everything she couldn’t see herself needing in the near future, and therefore having nothing left to tend to. It was calming, in a way, to merely sit and let the scene play out before her without taking part of it. She had been in the focus of so many eyes lately, it was a relief to simply... be.

But as many things in life, it was not meant to last. A sudden movement to her left catches her attention, and when she turns to look, she notices a young soldier standing a few feet away. He has a clipboard in his hand, and a nervous smile on his face.

“Uhh... Ms. Mako Mori?”

“Yes.” Out of habit, she jumps up from her seat, coming to stand face to face with the man. “And you are?”

“A... A private Lewis, ma’am! From 6. division!” He makes a hasty salute, one which Mako waves off immediately. The younger members of the Shatterdome teams had taken it upon themselves to start to salute the personal who were intimately connected to the shutting of the Breach, and while she appreciated the gesture, it had, from the start, made her uncomfortable.

She could see the tension leaving the man’s body as she offers a small, relaxed smile. “At ease. Was there something you needed from me?” The clipboard isn’t in her direct line of sight, so she can’t quite make out what is being written on it. From a quick glance, it looks like a schedule. 

Lewis’ next words confirmed her suspicions. “Yeah! Hansen - Uhh, the Marshal asked me to pass a request on for you.” He glances down at the papers, scanning for a moment. Eventually he finds what he’s looking for. “He asked if you could go and help out with the dismantling of the K-science wing? Apparently they are running late with the departure preparations.”

A small smirk climbs on her lips before Lewis makes it to the end of the sentence. Of course, she has been keeping an eye out for two men still lurking in the lowest floors of the Shatterdome. To her, it had been obvious from the very start that doctors Gottlieb and Geiszler would be the last people to leave the base, and in case of Geiszler in particular, it might require someone literally carrying the man out of the door. She doesn’t judge though. The Dome has been a home for them just as long as it has been one for her, and the idea of it suddenly being shut down doesn’t sit well with some of its residents. Especially those who had been there for years.

But it had to be done. And the faster, the better.

“Understood. I’ll see what I can do,” she says, picking up her satchel from the ground. “You can tell Marshal that it’ll be sorted out.” 

With that, she spins around and starts to walk to the maintenance elevator.

------

“You know bloody well how long it took for me to program that! Unlike your mindless poking, my work cannot simply be rammed into an under-powered fridge for transport!”

“It’s a disk, Hermann! An ancient fucking disk, which nobody has used since the invention of a thumb-drive! Can’t you just, I dunno, copy it all on a device that hasn’t been memed by the whole population of Earth since 2005?”

“Copy... ! Do you have any idea how delicate that information is, one can’t just copy and paste it on multiple -”

 “Doctors?”

It was quite unsettling how in sync the two men move nowadays. As both of them fall silent and turn to look at her standing by the door, she can clearly see the effect left behind their shared Drift. They are very close to each other, few inches apart and yet seemingly still not close enough. Out of the two, Mako had always felt Dr. Gottlieb to be the more reserved one by far, but now, he is just as, if not more animated as Dr. Geiszler. She had walked in and ended up in the middle of a bickering battle, but after witnessing the two go head to head for ages now, she had noticed the difference in the atmosphere. Biting, sharp-witted, yes. But completely in sync.

Geiszler’s bright smile, however, hasn’t changed in the slightest. “Mako!” Hastily moving towards her, his grin grows ever wider. “Didn’t know you were coming! Sorry about that,” he points over his shoulder to his partner, who merely rolls his eyes, “we’re kinda in the middle of something.”

“So it’d seem” Mako answers and once-over around the room. It does looks as though they have been putting away some larger pieces of machinery Mako remembers being here in the past, but all of their personal items, as well as a great deal of papers, formulas and kaiju samples are still very much present in the lab. “You were... cleaning?”

“We were, until someone decided to throw a fit over a floppy disk.”

Gottlieb jumps in just then, posture rigid: “It was not a floppy disk, Newton! It is a memory disk, containing a large -”

“ - large part of the original Jager code! I know, you keep repeating that!” Geiszler’s eye-roll is nearly identical to the one Gottlieb had displayed just a second ago.

“Then I cannot fathom why you insist on my concerns being unfounded -”

“Because you think that your precious disk cannot handle a short flight back to UK! It’s not made of glass, Hermann!”

“Oh, so it is perfectly acceptable for you to worry about those slime-balls you stacked in the container, but not for me to be concerned about of my life’s work?”

Before Geiszler can bark out a new reply, Mako raises her own voice. “Gentlemen, please. There is supposed to be cleaning going on, yes?” She makes a meaningful circle in place, gesturing to the room. “And the man upstairs is beginning to turn impatient.”

The shared widening of the two pairs of eyes is comical in its own right. Geiszler is the first one to recover.

“So... Hansen is not too pleased, huh?”

Mako shakes her head. “No. I was sent ahead, as a peace negotiator I suspect.” The comment brings Geiszler’s grin back, and Mako answers in kind. She has always liked the short scientist, and his passion for what he does has had a great impact on Mako while growing up in the Shatterdome. Being surrounded mostly by military personnel, it had been a relief to have a man like Newton around. And she has an utmost respect towards Dr. Gottlieb as well. In every way, he is a steady presence to balance Geiszler’s enthusiasm. When she thinks back to her time in the Shatterdome, and the silent guidance by example she has received from both men, helping them clean up a lab doesn’t sound too imposing of a task.

She is ripped out of her thoughts by Gottlieb’s dry cough, the man appearing to take in the state of the room too. “We’d better get started. If you are willing to lend us a hand, that is.” It isn’t a question, more of a statement of a fact, and Mako is more than happy to roll with it. She nods, and sets her bag down on a counter.

“That’s what I am here for.”

-----

It takes them a good part of the hour just to bulldoze a path from the two workbenches to the main door. Despite most of the specimen tank being carried out a few days prior, there are still one or two remaining, and Geiszler is forced to ring for a couple of rangers to come and pick them up. Once the space is more open, they start to go through the piles of miscellaneous items littered all over the counters, chairs and floor. Mostly old coffee mugs and discarded blueprints, with a bit of kaiju fluids added to the mix. All and all, it is rather mundane work, up to the point where Gottlieb suddenly halts his screening of the document cabinet and speak out.

“Newton, where did you put that cardboard box we got with the copy paper?”

From across the room, Mako lifts her gaze just in time to see Geiszler do the same, a frown on his face. “I recycled it like two months ago, dude! It was taking up space.”

Gottlieb huffs and gestures to the mountain of files currently sitting at his feet. “We need something to transfer these with.”

“Well just stuff them into one of the briefcases!”

“They need to be kept in order!” Sighing heavily, Gottlieb catches Mako’s eyes. “Miss Mori, if you’d be so kind as to take this over for me? There might be some boxes left over in the upper floor office.” And with that, he turns on his heels, cane firmly in hand, and marches out. Mako, following the requests, moves to the half-empty cabinet and stares back at the door once it has been slammed shut. She notices the way Geiszler tenses up as the sound of it.

It’s not really her place to meddle, but she cannot help herself.

“Everything alright?”

Her question makes Geiszler jump, and he nearly drop the mug he’d been holding. A slight blush creeps on his face, and he lets out an unconvincing burst of laugh. “Yeah, yeah everything’s fine!” Carefully, he sets the mug down, eyes dragging to the closed door. “Hermann has just been a bit on edge lately, it’ll pass.” The smile doesn’t quite reach past his lips. “No need to take it personally! He’s gonna blow off some steam as he walks back.” He turns away to go back to the cleaning, but not before Mako sees the brief curtain of uncertainty flash on his face.

It is gone by the time Geiszler walk to her with a plastic container filled with mementos and what appears to be sketches of various mathematical formulas. The man sways slightly under the weight of it. “You seen a marker around here?” She passes one to him, and silently watches him scribble his co-worker’s name over the lid. The box is left next to her alongside of the rest of Gottlieb’s belongings after Geiszler rushes back to his side of the lab.

Out of it, an errand paper slips onto the floor.

At first she thinks it to be another piece of failed blueprint, or a note. But upon closer inspection, it turns out to be a multiple pages long, stapled together from the upper corner. It also looks far more worn-out, like the reader has been handling it over and over again. The messy writing is hard to decipher to begin with, but the fading ink makes it almost unreadable. 

“Dear Hermann

Sorry I haven’t been writing much! Things have been kinda kicking off, and this one might end up being a short one too. 

Before I forget: So sad to hear about your grandma passing away. I wish I could have been there for you, can’t imagine your dad was much of a comforter. I thought about calling, but then figured you might want some time for yourself, y’know? Hopefully that was the right way to go, I really wanted to try and do what’d be the best for you -”

Despite the writer’s disclaimer that the letter would not be a lengthy one, it went on for pages. The close and warm tone of the writing didn’t change even when the conversation slipped to the academic topics near the middle. Clearly a personal correspondence more so than a work-related, and yet Mako couldn’t find the sender’s name anywhere. One would assume that there had been one in the envelope, but after a long moment of searching, she comes up empty-handed. 

Then her eyes land on the container.

Hermann’s junk #1. 

Written with a messy, almost unreadable handwriting.

... Oh.

A call from behind her snaps her back to attention. She turns to see Geiszler wrestling with one of the writing desks. And losing, from the looks of it.

 “Mako! You mind helping me out with this? It weighs like a sin and I’m not sure if I can get it through the door by myself,” he asks, already out of breath. “I swear, taking things out from the drawers is supposed to make it lighter!”

“Uh... Of course! Just a minute!” With a quick work, she folds the letter again. After a moment of consideration, she picks up the rest of the similarly opened letters found in the box, and ties them together with a loose rubber band. The formal documents, the ones she is supposed to be going over, are moved to a neat stack on the counter, waiting for the moving box.

The pile of letters, however, is gently set right next to Dr. Gottlieb’s briefcase.

For safekeeping.

[nerdydork]

How to Make a Good OC

@elizadrawingsblog pm me asking how you make a perfect bio and hairstyle (I knew this would be a long message so I decided to answer it here. I mean maybe one more person could benefit out of it). I will tell you something, I cannot make a perfect bio nor hairstyle. But I can tell you what I do make a decent bio.

Let’s start off with easiest question for me.. Hairstyle!

For hairstyle, hairstyle is base on fashion. So I try to make it with the character’s looks (outfit, body shape, eyes, face structure etc), Species (mortal, mythical creature etc), and age.  

*Some hairstyles means certain things so I would also look into before deciding on a hairstyle and even culture as well. Like if they come from a different country, I look up what would be a common hairstyle there.

Keeping those things in mind I do use google to see certain age hairstyle would commonly be. If it’s a mythical creature I google looks to get an idea of what hairstyle would be common to use.

Once I use google, I try to figure out a hairstyle that would go great with the outfit and if the hairstyle has meaning.

Usually it makes me a couple of tries to figure out one I really like. (Ava I went through 5 different hairstyles before choosing her princess hairstyle.

Now for the hardest part… Bio. I will admit to it again. I cannot make the perfect bio. I still edit and flesh out characters for years. So far it’s taking me over 5 years for one character.  So here’s my lil’ tips and secrets for the bio.

For me it all depends on original or fanbase ocs. Since to me that’s two different categories. Original is based on your own world, your own creation. Fanbase oc is based on a pre-existing universe that’s already developed for the viewer/reader.  I will answer for both (since there’s just a slight difference.)

Fanbase:

RESEARCH!!!!! I cannot stress this enough for those who asked me for help with their fanbase ocs (Ducktales or another). This is extremely helpful for how your ocs will fit into the fandom, reactions to characters, etc. I mean research whatever you need to, about the universe, the characters in it (if you wish them to befriends, enemies, or related).

Try not to break canon. This one is just something I’m more so picky about. I try to keep it canon as possible. Wanting the oc to fit in as best as it could be. (Example, with Elena De Spell Chen, Elena was an egg before Magica was sent into the dime..she became a still born. With magic reviving her, the magic was the cause of her hatching years later, thus why she’s not a 15+ year old oc)

Figure out what species would blend in nicely for the fandom. I’m not aiming at Ducktales but literally any fandom. I see angel or demon or mermaid ocs in some other fandoms like attack on titan or hetalia or something. It doesn’t fit in. So go with what would be commonly in the universe or what the story told you so far is in that world.

Outfits that can fits into the fandom. Again not aiming at Ducktales but some fandoms have a certain outfit code like Attack on Titan. Like if there’s a certain time period the characters wear, make sure it fits into that fandom.

Names, not saying for for Ducktales, but some fandoms choose certain names depending where it take place time periods, and country. So choose carefully and look into where the name comes from before deciding on one.

When  wanting to place a ship or relationship, think of it logically. Really stop and think and reflect on it. Think ‘how will it work’ ‘what common grounds do they have’ ‘what could keep the relationship together’ etc you have to look on both side canon and your own oc. This will take a long time. Look up some youtube videos that talk about relationship (psych to go is one I suggest or even looking at relationships around you). Figure out  their first meeting how they react etc. Please, don’t do the love at first sight or even they have everything in common. Like no, stop right there. That doesn’t usually happen in real life that’s not a common thing. Make it sounds like it could be realistic I mean this isn’t a fairytale please don’t make it sound like one..((There’s a lot I could add on to here but for now I will hold it off, if anyone wants me to go into detail about just ask.)) 

 Original

Research if you choose the species to be other than human. A lot of cultures depict certain species differently. So look it up and if you like you can give you own little twist to it.

Try not make a copy and paste type of a story. Example making something the same as harry potter. Try your best at making something new..so don’t rush it. Take your time and explore the world you’re creating.

Both

Names This is just a personal one for me cause I love names with meanings, symbolism, puns etc. When giving a character a name, give some thought into it. Names have meaning and it could play a part into personalities, and could help describe the oc. Also the name could help with symbolism and can play a part into the story if the name can be symbol.

Try to not make it too Mary Sue  A lot people tend to go overboard or don’t think it through with the plot, setting etc. So don’t make your oc amazing at everything, overly powerful, no faults saying ‘they are clumsy’. Think of it as how most people are. We have a lot of flaws we are not perfect. So make your oc the same and people will related to them better *What I do is base the oc off of a friend of family

Careful on the backstory Make sure  it makes sense with universe you made or canon universe. You don’t need it to overly sad, dramatic, or perfect. I’m not saying never to do that but it could lead into a Mary Sue trait. Just think it through.  

Take your time and EDIT EDIT EDIT! I cannot stress this one enough. You may think I’m sound annoying but trust me on this editing is so important. An amazing oc isn’t created in one shot. It made through days weeks, months or even years before getting a good oc that you will love and put your heart into. Trust me, I have an oc that I’ve been working on for 5 years to get her to something I feel proud of and love.

Make an oc that you feel like will connect to people  From what I learn (through story telling class and my own personal experience) that people have a connection to characters they related to in a sense. No this doesn’t mean you got to make the oc boring. It just mean that the oc needs a common ground that viewer/reader will related making them feel proud when the oc accomplish their journey or even related to the villain intentions etc

MOST IMPORTANT!!!!

Have fun! Ocs are meant to have fun. It a way to express and enjoy and pouring your heart into these lovely creations. So take your time, put some love and have fun creating your lovely oc. There’s probably more but these are the key basics I use. But here you go. What I kinda do when make a bio. If anyone wanna ask questions or more info on a certain topic along these lines just go ahead and ask. I could go into more detail or even add in anything you guys do to make a good oc c:

[marvelousbirthdays]

Happy Birthday, unsuredanae

August 17-Daisy Johnson/Tony Stark, something cracky maybe with “Now power down, sass robot.”, for @unsuredanae

Written by @kathryn-claire-oconnor

“Coulson,” Daisy heard May say through their comms. “We have a problem. Look who just showed up.” 

In the middle of the chaos that came with fighting robot aliens, Daisy had almost missed the two jets that had landed at the edge of the battle zone. Now, she gave the passengers a second glance as they disembarked.

What were they doing here? Sure, the help would be nice, but it would also make life a lot more complicated for Coulson as soon as this fight was over.

Daisy had a feeling she should’ve probably been a little more excited to meet the Avengers, but the truth of the matter was that, after the past years with Coulson’s team, she didn’t get genuinely excited about much. For example, a few years ago, had she encountered a race of highly-technological alien beings that vaguely resembled the Borg from Star Trek, she would’ve been fascinated with trying to figure out how they worked, and how their technology could be adapted for human use.

Now, given her powers and status as a fighter in these sorts of conflicts, she mostly just wanted them to stop shooting at people.

She grabbed the wrist of one of the aliens and felt a streak of amusement at the confusion that flooded it’s vaguely-humanoid face as she sent her vibrations through it and shook it apart.

One more down; too many more to go for her liking.

________________________________________________________________________________

Eventually the fight did end, and when her team was invited to do so, Daisy joined the herd of weary superheroes as they climbed aboard Stark Industry flyers with the Avengers logo emblazoned across the top. Iron Man himself moved to the helm of the ship Daisy had boarded, his suit folding in on itself with the push of a button as he went.

He, like most of the Avengers, looked angry, his jaw a tense line as he sat and began to prepare the jet for takeoff.

Taking stock of who was aboard this jet – Sam Wilson, FitzSimmons, Mack, and Yoyo – and realizing who that left on the other – Coulson, May, Captain America, Hawkeye, Thor, Dr. Banner, and the Black Widow – Daisy felt both grateful and guilty for being where she was. It felt vaguely like leaving Coulson swimming with sharks, but she reminded herself that he could take care of himself, and that he had May with him. He would be fine.

Still, even the jet she was on was filled with a tense silence that no one broke even as they landed at Avengers Tower. She caught sight of Coulson as he came off the jet he had been in, looking multiple versions of tired, but there was a relief in his eyes that made Daisy relax regardless.

Everything really was going to be fine on that front, she realized then, rolling her shoulders to try and relieve some of the tension in them brought on by the eventful day.

“Did you hear me?” Stark asked, peering at her as he came up alongside her.

He gestured to the others, who were now well ahead of them. “Everybody needs to get checked out by our docs before they’re free to go, if they want to go, that is.”

Daisy nodded, starting to move in the same direction the others had gone as she introduced herself, “I’m Daisy; I’m called Quake.”

Stark turned to head back to one of his jets, but shot her a smile and a half-hearted wave over his shoulder, saying cheekily, “You know who I am.”

“Hey,” Daisy called after him with a slight frown. “What happened to getting checked out before you’re free to go?”

“I fund this place, I do what I want,” he turned, walking backwards now as he talked to her, still smiling teasingly. “And right now, I want to go back and get a look at those robots before my cleanup crew gets to them.”

Daisy didn’t blame him, but she shook her head nonetheless as they parted ways. How stereotypically Tony Stark was that?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clearly, some things had been sorted out between most of the Avengers and Coulson on the flight here, but by the time Dr. Cho had given her a thorough once-over Daisy was ready to be around a few less people in air that was a little less tense. Maria Hill had come through the medical wing, giving Coulson and his team access cards and telling them that they could explore whatever rooms the cards opened, so Daisy slipped into the elevator, saying uncertainly, “Hey… JARVIS?”

“Yes, Ms. Johnson?” the ceiling asked,

“Cool,” Daisy murmured to herself with a grin before asking at a normal volume, “Do you know if my access card can get me into Stark’s tech lab? I’d really like to see that, I bet.”

“Indeed,” the AI replied.

Daisy reached automatically for the railing in the elevator when it started downward without her pressing a button for any particular level. “Is this you taking me to the tech lab?” she asked, hoping the thing wasn’t going rogue. She’d hacked Stark’s systems a couple times before, but she didn’t want to have to do battle with his favorite invention of all time.

“Of course, Ms. Johnson. Is that not what you requested?”

“It is, yes,” she replied, relaxing a little as she marveled internally at just how autonomous JARVIS seemed to be. Now she was really impressed. She felt it was only polite to say “thanks” as she stepped off of the elevator where JARVIS directed her to.

She was promptly met with a wall of frosted glass only a few feet from the elevator, stretching the entire length of this floor. If she was Stark, she would’ve wanted to keep prying eyes away from her work, too. Directly in front of her and imbedded in the wall was a place to swipe her card, so she did, and she was glad when a panel of glass slid open to allow her access. Her anticipation at seeing what lay beyond the glass was short-lived, though, being quickly replaced by concern.

She heard shouting – Tony Stark, demanding, “Now power down, sass robot!”

Moving quickly in the direction his voice had come from, she turned a corner in the maze of rooms that comprised the labs of many of SI’s employees, only to see Tony Stark flying in the air via the legs – and only the legs – of an Iron Man suit that he wore. He was chasing one of the things that they had fought earlier around the room. In midair. While the thing beeped and whirred in the strange Morse code-like language it had used to communicate with the other bots. Fun.

Daisy was half-tempted to quake the alien back to the ground, if not until it stopped moving entirely, but she didn’t know if her vibrations would damage any of the other tech in the room, so she looked quickly around for some other way to help Stark. An open laptop near the middle of the room had just finished running a diagnostic, and when she took a closer look, her suspicions were confirmed that it was of the robot that currently had Stark flying around in literal circles.

She opened up a search bar in the code and located the coding for its motor functions, copy-and-pasting, then saving, the chunk of code into a different program for later studying before she removed the coding from the robot’s programming. It fell from the air with a loud crash onto – oh, no – one of Stark’s cars that lined the edges of the room.

Tony Stark turned slowly to face her, while he was still lowering slowly to the ground. He landed with a solid thunk as his leg armor hit the ground, little more than irritation flashing across his face as he pointed out, “I could’ve done without the damage to personal property, thanks.”

“Sorry,” Daisy said with a shrug. “But I got it to stop chasing you. There was an unknown threat from space going haywire, and I stopped it. I thought that was the superhero thing to do, right?”

“I was chasing it. For the record.” Stark corrected her as he stepped closer to her.

“And don’t pretend like you can’t afford to buy yourself a new car,” she added with a small smirk, daring to even tease him a little.

A smile of amusement, or at least something like it, quirked at the edges of his mouth as he watched her for what might have been a beat too long. “You want to make it up to me?”

“Excuse me?” Daisy asked, because surely he – Tony Stark, millionaire, playboy, philanthropist, Avenger, Iron Man – was not taking this where it sounded like he was.

“I know, I know, inappropriate timing, and I’m too old for you, and there’s still the whole Coulson thing that I have to go address, but you’re clearly tech-savvy and superpowered, and, honestly, very good-looking, and I’m intrigued. So, once I’m done talking to Coulson, and things have calmed down for the evening, would you allow me to take you out to dinner, Ms. Johnson? Even just as friends, if you’d rather, because, like I said, I’m intrigued.”

It was Daisy’s turn to watch him for a little longer than was completely acceptable as she took a second to mull over his offer. He was a handsome man, she’d always thought so, in the way that people admired celebrities, and also obviously smart and wealthy, and he was being far sweeter than his public persona would’ve led her to expect, and… and maybe she was “intrigued” by him, too. She smiled at him, then, replying, “Sure. Dinner sounds great. Maybe you can tell me what you’ve discovered about those guys?” She gestured to the robot sprawled haphazardly over the hood of his car.

He winced as he looked at the robot and his misshapen car, but agreed, “That sounds perfect.”

[todorokiscute]

How to make responsive themes

A very basic tutorial

This tutorial was requested by an anonymous person. I hope I got to explain well!

difficulty: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ You really need to know your way with html and css, plus, you’ll have to style all the other stuff (text decorations, links, dates, audio, asks..) on your own.

I’ll explain only how to wrap correctly the tumblr’s blocks and the very basic structure of a responsive theme. I’ll not explain how to, for example, how to put dates, captions, tags, pagination, and other custom stuff, okay :)

✩⁺˚ Basic Base Code ✩⁺˚

I did a base code so I make this tutorial following the code, to avoid issues. First thing is to understand what we have in the code. We have our blocks and variables and I wrapped the inner content of the {block:Posts} with a .post{ } div. To make a sucessful responsive layout, you must work with CONTAINERS. That’s why I wrapped the outer content together with the block:posts with a .posts{ } div.

I did the same thing with the sidebar. I have boxes with my content with a .box{ } div. And an outer div wrapper with a .sidebar{ } div. Wrapping everything, both sidebar and posts wrapper (with all the sub wrappers inside), I used .content { } because we need a container for the whole page. That’s the basic to make a responsive layout.

Important: So if you don’t want to use this base, and want only to integrate the wrapper divs on your codes instead. Just look for {block:posts} {/block:posts} and wrap everything inside with a div (mine is .post). Then wrap the outside (including the block:posts) with another div (mine is .posts).

This an example of a simple markup with wrappers:

<div class="posts"><!-- the outer wrapper --> {block:Posts} <div class="post"><!-- the inner/content wrapper--> Posts content, blocks and variables goes here! </div><!-- wrapper content end --> {/block:Posts} </div><!-- wrapper end -->

Now, it’s the CSS part (<style></style>).

In the base code there is already a {CustomCSS} line with a comment. That’s the variable for us to be able to make the customizations in the advanced options section. I like to use this instead of copying the source code and using other editor. This way, you can apply the css and see the changes live. We also have a universal selector with a box-sizing border-box, a nice trick that make our paddings look nice and not shit.

First thing you need to do is apply a flexible css to the content. That’s basically the most important action to make while creating a responsive layout. In the Add Custom CSS section, paste the following code:

.content{   width:80%;   margin:1em auto;   max-width:800px; }

What we did? width:80% is to make sure our content will always have a width of 80% no matter what screen size your blog is being viewed. use the chrome inspector tool (ctrl+shift+i) to resize the screen and see that the content will never touch the window sides and it will always be centered.There are things like images and pre codes overwriting the window, but that’s other css styles you’ll need to search to fix.

The text itself is already responsive! We also used margin auto to center the content. And the 1em value is relative to the top and bottom, giving the content some air to breathe. We also give a max-width of 800px for the content to look nice in desktop version. Without shrink everything and look more solid on computer’s screen.

Moving on.. now is the part to pay a lot of attention: The posts and sidebar. First thing, add these lines to the css part:

.posts{   width:70%; float:right; } .post{   background:#f5f5f5;   padding:1em;   max-width:500px;   margin-bottom:5em; }

Like I said before, we need containers to make a responsive layout. .posts { } is our posts container and .post { } is our post-box div. Since .posts is a child of .content{ } if you give it a width of 70%, it will be relative to the parent (content) and not the window. This is good to make all the posts floating to one side. That’s why we apply the float here, instead of the post boxes itself, to avoid a mess in the code.

In the .post{ } section, is where you’ll apply some css to your posts. Using max-width will make it more solid on desktop, same as the content, and margin-bottom is to make the posts boxes have a space between them.

Now it’s the sidebar’s time. Add this:

.sidebar{   position:fixed;   width:20%;   top:50%;   transform:translateY(-50%); } .box{   background:#f1f2;   padding:1em;   margin-bottom:3em;  max-width:200px;   }

It’s the same method as the .posts and .post. .sidebar is the wrapper and .box is the sidebar box. The only change I made is that I gave the sidebar wrapper a fixed position and used a little trick to center it. Like the post box, I added a max-width to make it solid. This is the responsive layout so far:

Noticed that we didn’t added any complicated css stuff until now, we’re only working with percentages and max-widths. that’s the most basic rule I’ve learned when started to try responsive layout.

The only step we need to finish this basic responsive layout, is  to apply css to certain screen sizes. Because we don’t want the content all smushed in a mobile device. We want our content displayed as blocks one on top of each other. For that, we’ll use @media queries.

We need a breakpoint to literally break our theme when the device’s screen size changes. For this simple layout we’ll use a breakpoint of 670px. If you want to make sure how to find this value, save your theme until now, go to the blog, inspect it with chrome and use the responsive tool to resize the screen and see where the content is start to look funny.

Then, we’ll use this code:

/* responsive */ @media(max-width:670px){

}

This means: when the device of the person who is viewing your theme, is 670px wide or less, a certain bit of css will change the content’s appearance. Every code should be inside the media query’s brackets!

To make our current layout responsive for mobile, all we need to do is unset some things and apply width of 100%. Let’s start with our sidebar, since our content does not need edition, unless you want it bigger on mobile, then you must add a new .content{ } inside the @media query and added a width of 90%, for example.

Now, to edit the sidebar on mobile, inside the @media query, add:

.sidebar{    position:static;    width:100%;    transform: none;    margin:3em auto;

} .box{    max-width:none;    width:100%; }

what we’ve changed? Since our sidebar was fixed positioned, we unset that using position:static, the default position of everything html. Instead of a width of 20% we now use 100% to make sure the sidebar will fill all the content, its parent. We also, unset the transform css we used to center the sidebar, and added a margin top and bottom of 3em to have some room between the top of the window and posts.

Since we don’t need the solid layout anymore, we unset the max-width of the box and added a 100% width just for consistence purpose.

The best way to see what you’ll need to unset when breaking your theme into a mobile version, is just to look what codes you used on the desktop ver and try to change on mobile. widths, positions, etc.

Now, it’s the posts time. We also have a max-width, a float and a width applied on our desktop version. All we need to do is unset that:

.posts{    float:none;    width:100%;

} .post{    max-width:none;    width:100%; }

We made sure our post wrapper are not floating to the left anymore and unset the max-width of our post boxes. We’ve also added a 100% width to both wrapper and box div.

Now our theme is fully responsive!!!!!!!!!!! The only thing I need to talk about is:

apply font-size of 1em and a line-height o f 1.8  to the body so the font will be nice in every screen size. If you think that the font is too big for desktop, you can apply the font to .8em, for example, and 1em in the media query.

body{ font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.8; }

apply a max and width of 100% to images and players:

.post img{   max-width:100%;   height:auto;   display:block; } .tmblr-full {   margin:0;   max-width:100%; } .tumblr_audio_player{  width:100%; }

To avoid the pre code (if you have on your posts) to overwrite the post box, use this css:

pre{   white-space:pre-line; }

As a good person I am :^) , I’m going to drop the code for the captions here:

/* captions by todorokiscute, please don’t repost. */ .reblog-info, .answerer{   display:flex;   align-items:center;   margin: .4em 0; } .reblog-info img, .answerer img{   width:30px;   margin-right:.5em; }

Let me know if there are others tutorials you want me to write. I hope I was clear in this explaination and that you have picked the responsive idea. have fun with responsive layout, it’s addictive.

Some tutorials on how to style the tumblr’s blocks posts I already have:

tumblr responsive videos

asks/answers posts like chat bubbles

sticky sidebar on scroll and responsive

make photosets and photos looking like tumblr’s in the dashboard

npf posts simple fix

Style Horizontal Line

Post Link’s style like Tumblr’s dashboard

How to make a fixed contained theme  responsive

Make the ‘p’ (paragraphs) look nice

Style ‘keep reading’ link

I made a second (very simple though) tutorial on how to make a responsive theme using display grid. Check it out.

[dokidokiliteraturegirls]

 Hello everyone! Yui here, with today’s special feature, DDLitG Behind the Scenes: What’s the deal with Ako?

In this special update we’ll talk about her character in general, design, her place in the story, and more! So get comfortable in your seat, get yourself some good snacks, and let’s delve into the background of DDLitG’s 1st-ish original character~

Who is Ako?

Ako, formerly known as “female student”, was originally one of the many NPCs used by the game’s engine to fill its world with nondescript background characters, so as to make it feel less empty. However, Sayori took a special interest in her, and decided to befriend her, following the steps of a young MC who befriended Sayori in a similar situation and ended up saving her life. This would in turn allow Ako to grow as a character beyond her 1 line of coding and get her own sprites, as well as being able to interact with the world. She would later go on to fall in love with Sayori and shenanigans ensue.

Ako was created with the purpose of telling the story of the Friendship arc.

Designing Ako.

Let me make one thing clear: I’m not a character designer. I don’t know jack about it besides the very basics. But I did try to make someone who looked mildly original and, most importantly, different from the other girls.

Originally, she was going to be the image of a shy, fragile girl who Sayori befriended out of pity, more than anything. Based on this initial idea, I made this beta Ako design on one of my copybooks when I should’ve been working:

As you can see, her very first sprite was the one where she’s shyly looking away to avoid eye contact (and to seem annoying, but more on that later). I was happy with the pose but not with her face, as it looked super unoriginal. She resembled Ochako Uraraka from My Hero Academia a bit too much, so I tried to change her hair to make her stand out more. Here is her second iteration:

This time, I felt like I cranked it up too much to the other side. Now she stood out TOO much. Her hair felt like it came more from a protagonist than someone who’s supposed to be a background character. I adopted a new philosophy after seeing this result: she had to look as bland as possible. She had to be the kind of character you see all the time in the background of an anime - those simple, unassuming designs you’d never look twice at because you’re too focused on the protagonists with candy-coloured hair. In DDLitG’s canon she’s a filler NPC brought to the forefront, and her design had to reflect that more than my desire to make her look “cool”.

With this in mind, we come to Ako v0.3

As you can see, this is much closer to her current design. But this was still a sketch (even the drawing above is very much unfinished). As you can see, I got closer to her 0.1 version with the hair, but changed the eyes to make them look more unique, giving her that more neutral, “nothing” expression. Having finally found some ground I was comfortable with, I redefined her design a little further, gave her some more details around the hair and clothes, adjusted the proportions of her body (because apparently I draw heads huge), and made her finalized design.

I was happy.

What’s with this sassy... monochrome child?

If there’s one constant to be found in the pictures above, is that she was always meant to be black and white. There are plenty of reasons, which I’ll list because, honestly, there are a lot.

1. I didn’t want to look her like the rest of the cast at fucking all. She is an OC introduced in a story with already established characters made by a much more talented writer. She’s an outsider, someone who doesn’t belong with this cast of colorful characters, and I wanted readers to be able to tell that at first glance. No, she’s not like the other girls. They don’t belong in the same place. She is not a member of the original DDLC cast, and it shows.

2. I know I can’t draw as well as Satchely, so trying to copy DDLC’s art style would just end up looking awkward and wrong. I had no choice but to do my own thing. And if I’m doing my own thing, why not take it all the way? I already gave myself artistic freedom, I might as well go crazy with it~

3. I just adore characters in a fictional universe that look different from the rest of the cast or have some strange design choice for literally no reason. Like Krillin from Dragonball, with his eyes that make him look like he belongs in an entirely different manga...

...or even Jotaro Kujo, whose hat merges with his hair because why not!

I live for dumb crap like that.

4. A huuuuuge inspiration for me while writing (besides my own uninteresting life) is music. Many times I listen to a specific track or imagine situations with specific background music to make them seem more real, and be able to better portray the feelings of a scene when writing [For example, I listened to My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade a lot while writing Monika’s Death].

Ako’s creation was no exception. Her appearance was partially based on the cover for not only one of my favorite Vocaloid albums of all time, but one of my favorite albums period: Wowaka’s glorious Unhappy Refrain.

I’ve been writing stuff based on this album alone for years because it’s just so damn striking to me. The picture of the faceless schoolgirl falling into the unseen abyss, the background uninterested characters that imply they are used to seeing fellow girls suffer, the distorted world they live in, the album’s way to explore teenage depression, the freaking name of the album, EVERYTHING! IT’S SUCH A GOOD EXPLORATION OF THE DIFFICULT LIFE TEENS FACE THAT OFTEN GOES UNNOTICED!! AAAAAAHHHH IT’S SO GOOD.

5. Ako was also based on a previous design I made for another character meant for an original visual novel I was writing and I’m probably never going to finish, who was also going to be monochromatic to reference this album (in that context it made more sense though cuz every character was a musical reference).

This character, in turn, was based on Monoko from Yume Nikki, which is more obvious because of her crying eye and extra arm.

So basically at this point it would’ve been weird if I hadn’t made her monochromatic.

Naming Ako

This was one of the most difficult parts, ngl.

As I mentioned, Ako was originally going to be a fragile, shy girl. Based on this, her original name during the design face was Moromi, which is one more letter than “Moroi”, which Google translate promises me means “Brittle” or “Fragile” in Japanese.

However, after the philosophy change that happened during her conceptual stage, “Fragility” was no longer at the core of her character, as it was now “Nothingness/Blandness”. Because of this, I changed her name to “Ako”.

Many people have submitted their interpretations of the name, ranging from its meaning “To teach/to learn”, and “To yearn for”, which all fit better than the original tbh.

The intended meaning is for “Ako” to be read as “A-Ko”, which is a way by which Japenese media often refers to filler characters, as it translates to “Girl A”.

Examples of this can be seen in Super Danganronpa 2, where a character in a videogame is called “A-Ko” to hide their identity...

...and in a movie called “Project A-ko”, which was a parody of the anime tropes from the time, so they gave the protagonist the most generic name ever. The antagonist and side character, by the way, are called “B-Ko” and “C-Ko” respectively. This movie is fucking awesome.

This name also made sense in the context of the story, because we already had a character named “Student A”, so this goes to show that the game just gave Ako the default name it had stored for female NPCs.

Blinded Ako, or How I Learned to Convey Emotion Through Ahegao

When I came up with Ako, she was meant to have most of her character revolving around her infatuation with Sayori. She was, after all, written in the story with the purpose of falling in love with her, and nothing else. Her character, personality, likes/dislikes, and hobbies came afterwards. As the story progressed, however, I decided that she should have a personality separate from just being in love with another character. So to separate the actions she committed under the influence of her passion, I did a little design change in the middle of the arc: Blinded Ako.

In this version, Ako has been literally blinded by love and stops being rational. This is represented by the hearts covering her eyes, and clouding her judgement. This was done not only with the purpose of representing she was past her breaking point, but also to differentiate the Ako that makes mistakes with the Ako that was introduced in the beginning of the arc. Almost so as to make them two different characters, so when she is reintroduced as a regular character after Friendship, readers could think “oh, she’s not going to do dumb stuff again, she’s not blinded by love anymore.”

Many people compared the above panel with “ahegao”, a trope in hentai manga where a character does a silly face to represent them breaking from enjoying themselves so much. This was done partially on purpose. The main idea was to represent Ako being blinded by her infatuation for Sayori, not to equate her sate of being with anything sexual. It DID end up looking more hentai-esque than I expected though, as, well, Ako is in black and white, and the heart eyes are also a trope in ahegao. And she’s sweating. And she’s saying that she’s about to break....

.....

....well at least I drove my point home.

Ako’s musical influences

Above I mentioned how music was a big part of my inspiration, and how I listened to Welcome to the Black Parade while writing Monika’s Death, so the question in no one’s mind is: what music did Yui use as inspiration for Ako’s character and the arc? 🤔

Well, hypothetical reader, the answer is that since Ako was meant to be bland and flavour-free, her original depiction is not based on a song or anything. Her desperation towards Sayori and Blinded Ako, though, are based on TRONICBOX’s 80′s style remix of Ariana Grande’s Into You. And yes, this 80′s remix in specific. Not the original song. I highly encourage you to give it a listen and pay attention to the lyrics if you want an insight into how Ako was feeling during her breaking point.

Also, as a side note, no one has asked me this, but I imagine Ako’s voice to sound like the vocals of Panty and Stocking’s ending, Fallen Angel. It’s a truly beautiful song, and once again, I highly encourage you to give it a listen and pay attention tot he lyrics if you want an insight in Ako’s current feelings towards Sayori.

Ako’s reception

This is more something personal than an explanation of the character, but it’s something I want to share nonetheless.

Remember when I said Ako was meant to be annoying? Yeah... xD

When I decided to add a new character I did so under the idea that everyone was going to hate her, because it’s a purposefully boring OC made by some insane person with the sole purpose of being added to an already interesting and loved cast of characters just to fuck everything up.

The first scene I ever wrote for Ako was the part where Monika asked if she had hurt Sayori, and she said “Not intentionally...” while looking away, which is why her first sprite ever was in that position. She was meant to make people feel frustrated over this girl just looking away from her problems and avoiding responsibility, while also telling Monika to her face that she had done something bad to Sayori. Readers were expected to hate her. That’s why in the beginning she says she doesn’t like literature, to assure you that she’s not joining the literature club. That’s why there’s a scene where she gets punched in the face. That’s why she looks so extremely out of place.

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DISLIKE HER!! omg I’m still surprised at how warm the reception was, you guys are just too nice for me~ ❤️

Because of the unexpected reception I had to change some parts of the arc, which were originally going to be much crueler towards her [I even questioned adding the punch at all, but it was an important part of Monika’s development so I felt it]. I also established her as a recurring character in spite of her dislike of literature, and did my best to make her less hate-able than she was originally going to be, even cutting some planned lines of dialogue that made her pretty irredeemable. Looking back, I am glad I did those changes, we ended up with a well-liked and pretty nice girl because of it~

Final thoughts

The introduction of Ako and writing Friendship in general was a very intense experience for me. It was very difficult to balance Ako as being both relevant to the story and moving the plot forward, but not make her the sole focus of everything and have her obscure everyone else, because OCs in established pieces of media tend to do that.

This arc also got a LOT of mixed reviews, some people liking it, some hating everything I did. This made me really question what I was doing and at many points even regret I was writing Friendship at all. At a certain point I lost almost 50 followers in a single update.

I also had trouble writing some parts because they were too sad. And that’s not my style! I like writing happy people being good friends, damn it, not everyone crying and hating each other.

But when all is said and done, I’m happy I wrote both Friendship and Ako into the story. I’ve received many wonderful, supportive messages telling me how much readers enjoyed it. Even some people saying they had been in a similar situation to the one depicted in the story, and were glad to see a story that showed a positive outcome.

Will I write more OCs into DDLitG?

Meh, who knows. I love writing more original stuff and expanding the world of DDLitG, but I also feel like if I introduce yet another OC, people will crucify me and hate me for flooding the story with too much stuff that’s irrelevant to the DDLC they’re used to. That being said, writing this blog is my first, and very possibly last chance to expose my stories to such a large audience. And seeing people like what you do not only because you’re riding the coattails of a recognizable brand, but because they like what you do with it, makes me pretty darn happy. Being completely honest, I’d like to add another character. But just one. And only if it’s something that will push both the story and the girls’ character arcs forward. Not just adding OCs for the sake of it.

Thanks for sticking until the end of this BTS, and I hope you found it an enjoyable read, or at the very least I made you a little bit less bored~ ❤️

Next time, in DDLitG Behind the scenes: What’s the deal with The Perfect Yuri?

[convell4]

Qrows Ruby’s Father

Okay, First off, SPOILERS AHEAD FROM THE END OF RWBY SEASON 6, Second, I would prefer this to be a conversation and not an argument, so during this (probably long) post I am going to be stating theories, evidence etc but I am also going to posting the evidence against them, so its fair. At the end of the day this is all just theory making. I will state that I support this theory, although I have no problem with anyone who doesn’t. You believe whatever you want to believe, I’m not going to fight you over it. Finally, this post is going to basically be an essay as I am going to try put everything together that I’ve seen, their counter arguments and a bunch of images.

Point A

So for point A I’m going to state that throughout the series when it comes to the younger characters, they very much seem to follow the looks and traits of their parents, especially when it comes to what clothes they wear, what colours those clothes are generally their fighting style has at least some hints of their parents.

The Schnee Family

One of the best examples is the Schnee Family. As you can see in the picture the entire family has white hair (although I believe that WorstFatherTM dyed his), the same skin tone and in general they all wear smart, formal clothing that is coloured white. The entire family has also seemed to inherit blue eyes. Personality wise, Weiss began out as very formal, closed of from emotion and rather stuck up, which she likely comes from being in a very upper class, rich family. When it comes to fighting styles, we don’t have any information on whether either of Weiss’s parents were huntresses or had a fighting style etc, however Weisses family owning one of the biggest dust companies definitely contributes to her use of dust. It is also likely that Weiss chose her weapon and a lot of her elegant fighting style techniques from her older sister Winter, who she seems to have looked up to when growing up.

The Belladonna Family:

Next is the Belladonna Family. The entire family has black hair, blake has also inherited Kali’s ears and seemingly her long hair with bangs that cover her forehead. While from Ghira she has more seemed to inherit a sense of dress code when it comes to clothes that reveal a bit of skin. The family also have the same cat like, yellow eyes.Blake also follows the same color scheme as her family, With the White, Black and purple clothing. Personality wise, Blake has seemed to inherit the trait of wanting to fight for justice and rights for her race, just like her parents. She also has a strong sense of brotherhood when it comes to the White fang.One thing I however cannot connect are fighting styles, as Blake seems to be more of a rogue/finesse type of Fighter where as Ghira is definitely a head on brawler, Kali doesn’t really have a fighting style, she just hits people over the head with trays. 

The Ren Family:

Ren and his family. When it comes to inherited traits, from season 1-3 Ren has a similar short hair style to is mother, An, he has also inherited her pink eyes, however he has also inherited his dads, Li, black hair. From season 4-6 he has also grown his hair out longer and is now at least a similar length to what his fathers hair was. Rens personality definitely seems to have at least a bit of each of his parents, most of the time he is calm,collected and thoughful. Ren follows the colour scheme of his parents where it comes to the colour of his clothing, with the greens, blacks and gold-ish outlines. Ren has not seemed to pick up a fighting style from either of his parents, from what we know it seems like only Rens father was a fighter. However Ren didn’t inherit using a bow like his father. Personally I would put this down to that her didn’t have his father to teach him how to use the bow and he also didn’t like to look back on his past due to how terrible it was, so he likely learned his fighting style from scratch. The Xiao Long Family:

Like everyone else, Yang has inherited a lot from her parents. Yang has blonde hair just like her father but it seems to be a darker compared to Tai’s. This is likely due to Ravens hair being Black and making it a darker shade, her hair is also very similar to Ravens in both its length and style. Yang has inherited Ravens deep red eyes, but only when she becomes angry, usually her eyes are purple, which is a colour mix between Tai’s blue eyes and Ravens red. Personality wise Yang seems to follow more in Ravens footsteps, fighting more aggressively, using her anger as a funnel in fights. She has also seemed to inherit Ravens lighter skin tone and complexion. Yangs clothing colour scheme is very close to Tai’s with brown, orange and pale colours. She has also copied his red Bandanna like material wrapped around his arm, however choosing to wrap it around her leg instead. Her fighting style is definitely inherited from Tai, as we have seen them both sparing and training together, this is likely due to the fact that Tai was the only one around when Yang was younger, as Raven wasn’t present.

The Rose Family:

In the picture above we can see A LOT of Ruby in Summer. The short hair style, Silver eyes, Light skin. However from this image it does seem like Summers hair is a straight red colour, Where as if we look at Ruby, her hair seems to go from a Black to a dark red towards the tips of her hair.  Ruby even dresses the same with the cape and high cut clothing, The inside of Summers cape being a very similar red as to Ruby’s entire cape, outfit and weapon. Ruby even seems to inherit Summers petal effect, However we don’t see anything from Tai, there are no prominent inherent body features like skin tone, hair or eye colour (granted that the silver eyes are story driven and likely a more inheritable feature) Ruby also doesn’t seem to follow a colour scheme similar to Tai, nor wear similar clothing. However, if we look at Qrow..

Qrow has Black hair just like his sister with hints of grey throughout it. He also has bangs in front of his forehead just like Summer and Ruby. Qrows dark hair could explain how dark Ruby’s hair is. Qrows skin tone is also similar to that of Ruby’s, or it is at least a lot lighter than Tai’s. Clothing colours are similar with dark colour, especially black and red, The cape is also a feature of Qrow however Ruby’s cape is very must tailored to be like Summers compared to Qrows. When it comes to Ruby’s personality, ruby has been seen to be quite stubborn at times, but thats only when it comes to doing whats right. Its kind of thought that out of the four members of team STRQ, Summer was likely the Kindest, most bright person in the group, likely followed by Tai, this could go a lot towards Ruby personality as Ruby is always one who seems to be holding out hope and never giving up. Ruby’s fighting style is exactly like Qrows because he is the one who trained her, just like Tai trained Yang. This is likely due to not only Ruby wanting to be like her uncle by having the same fighting style and weapon, but also because Tai would of likely been busy training Yang in his fighting style at the time. This could also be down to Ruby being physically strong enough to be a brawler like Tai and Yang. Point A Summary: Every Character Inherits something from each of their parents, however Ruby only seems to inherit something from Summer and not Tai. Where as if you match Summer and Qrow together it makes a pretty good case on how Ruby looks and acts. Points A Counter Argument: As far as I have seen for a counter argument on this point, people point that Ruby’s fighting style has only come from her looking up to her uncle and following his steps, which does make sense. However so far I have not seen an explanation as to why she doesn’t seemingly have any of Tai’s inheritable body traits (feel free to tell me if there is one)

Point B

Point B is a quick and short one that has a really quick counter argument. Qrows song, Bad Luck Charm. Bad Luck Charm is about Qrows semblance of bad luck and how it effects the people he’s close too. The song in general talks about everyone near him, however there is one line, “ You don't want the burden of my name” that can be more turned towards someone a lot closer to qrow compared to anyone else, likely a family member. Taking on and using someones name, specifically their last name is most likely due to either marrying said person, or being their child. This continues on with the theory of Qrow being Ruby’s dad with the idea that qrow is terrified of his semblance and maybe even superstitious of it, Possibly believing that by even inheriting his last name, Ruby could be cursed with bad luck, let alone even being in Ruby’s life as a father figure.

Point B Summary:

Some Lines in Bad Luck charm could be giving hints towards such things

Point B Counter Argument:

Jeff Williams, the creator of the RWBY Soundtrack has stated that none of the songs are Canon material and they are just made by him from scratch

Point C

Point C is a continuation from point B, Qrows semblance. Qrows semblance is literal bad luck, not just to himself but everyone around him. And he no control over it. However he is close to is going to experience it. This has most prominently come up so far in his fight with Tyrian, but theres definitely other moments of it being shown. Because his semblance is uncontrollable, having anyone close leads to them having bad things happen around to them, this loops over to my previous point that if Qrow was around Ruby as a father when she was a lot younger, this could of caused a lot of bad situations. One theory that I’ve seen a lot is that Qrow may feel he himself is responsible for Summers death (leading him to become an alcoholic) and you could believe in this whether you ship Qrow & Summer or whether you don’t, the theory doesn’t rely on them being together. However, if we go with the idea that Qrow is Ruby’s father, being close to someone with such a semblance you believed led to the death of not only your loved one, but the mother of your child, would be no easy task. It would be an a lot better cause to keep your distance from the daughter, to try spare her from not only the semblance, but the truth at what Qrow believes the cause of Summers Death

Point C Summary:

Qrows Semblance makes qrow not want to be near anyone, but even more specifically Ruby due to the possibility he believe his semblance had a hand in Summers Death

Point C Counter Argument:

Qrow could still feel responsible for Summers death even if Qrow was not in a relationship with Summer. This goes the same with him trying to stay away from Ruby as much so that he doesn’t effect her life.

Point D

Point D is about the 3 photo’s we see of Team STRQ, but mainly about Qrows photo in particular.

Tai’s home photo:

As you can see, Tai’s home photo of the team is in pretty much pristine condition and is framed, there’s no markings on the photo and it doesn’t seem to have suffered any type of damage. Where as Qrows: 

Has definitely seen a lot more use. For starters the colours on the picture have began to fade, likely meaning its been out in the open air a lot or at lead has been looked at a lot. The material the picture is on is also bent meaning its likely always carried in a pocket or something similar, which makes sense as Qrow is not the type of person to settle in one singular spot. Next is the ring over Summer, this is likely to be either a glass or bottle ring from where they have been places on top of the image. Specifically the bottle or glass would be covering Summers face, which could suggest that Qrow doesn’t want to look at Summer or maybe even can’t bear to see her (this goes back to him feeling responsible) Next are the droplets on the page, I believe these can be seen as one or two things, tears or drink stains. If drink stains, it could mean that Qrow has been looking over the photo while he’s drunk, or even looking at it may have started causing him to drink even more. If they are tear stains then it could be seen as a sign of mourning, grief or regret, and Qrow covering up Summers face becomes even more meaningful. Point D Summary: Qrow carries around a damaged picture of team STRQ which shows a lot of connotations that he has dealt with some emotions over the picture Point D Counter Argument: Qrow could just be sad about the collapse of his team, or solely over Summers death.

Point E

For point E I want to Solely talk about Qrow and his line of work. Qrow is likely considered a master huntsmen. Due to the clan he was born in he has been trained almost all his life to not only fight Grimm, but also other people as well. He is highly trained and likely a major threat to almost anyone he faces, he is also affiliated with Ozpin and has been working with him for years. As he does work with Ozpin, this essentially puts him on Salems kill list as one way or another he is a threat to her plans. We also know that Salem will do pretty much anything to make her plans successful, so if qrow was found to have a daughter, who also happened to have Silver eyes, its likely that Ruby would of been targeted by Salem a lot sooner, most definitely when she was younger. This would of destroyed the possibility of a silver eyes warrior getting in Salems way and hurting qrow in the process Point E Summary: Qrow would of stayed away from due to his line of work so he wouldn’t put her in danger Point E Counter Argument: The Same can be said whether Qrow is Ruby’s father or not

Point F

For this point I want to talk about the timeline between Yang and Ruby’s birth. From what we can tell from the timeline we’ve been given, their births goes in an order similar to this: Tai and Raven are together - Yang is born - Raven leaves - Tai goes through grief and evidently gets with Summer - Ruby is Born - Summer dies  According to their ages, Ruby is between a year and a half to two years younger than Yang, I believe, according to their birthdays, they are 1 year and 8 months apart. Now this is where my knowledge gets a bit Hazy so please forgive me, but I believe it takes 9-12 months to fully conceive a baby. Which means that within 8 months, maybe even less, Tai moves on from someone who he loves and had a child with, to someone else and then also has another child. Personally that seems very out of character for someone lie Tai but then that also could possibly come down to the stages of Grief. The 8 months also drops considerably when you consider that Raven most definitely wouldn’t of left home directly after giving birth to Yang. If you consider that it can take up to or over 2 months for someone to recover their full strength after giving birth, Raven may have not left for 3-4 months, which means Tai would of have to gotten with Summer with 4-6 months, which in my mind is rather ridiculous.  Point F Summary: Tai would of had to move on very quickly and thats a very shitty thing to do Point F Counter Point: I can’t think of one for this tbh, let me know if you can

Point G

Qrows Closeness to Ruby, For point G I would like to talk about how close Qrow is to Ruby, this is kinda a hit or miss point as it depends on each individuals persons opinion. However, I believe I and a lot of people who think of Qrow being Ruby’s dad, think that Qrow is a lot closer to Ruby then he is with Yang. Which could seem odd since Qrow is physically blood related to Yang. Of course Blood doesn’t mean everything, however from what the show actually gives us, Qrow and Yang don’t even have that many direct conversations and when they talk with each other someone else is usually present (Qrow, Yang and Ruby playing video games comes to mind) Where as Qrow and Ruby have definitely had several personal and more alone conversations comparatively. This shows that Qrow is definitely a lot more in contact with Ruby over Yang

Point G Summary:

Qrow is a lot closer with Ruby than comparatively to someone who is blood related, like Yang

Point G Counter Argument:

This could be due to Yang being older, Qrow may feel he needs to support Ruby more than Yang due to her being Younger, Yang also has a close relationship with her father Tai, meaning she likely doesn’t need to converse with Qrow in such ways often.

Point H 

I wanna leave point H up to @anthurak with their amazing post on what happened during Season 6 and what Qrow and Ruby’s relationship is like in comparison to other parents https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/anthurak/182407206555

My Counters to what people say against this Theory:

This is just going to be a bunch of stuff I’ve seen written against the theory that I’d also like to discuss.

“Monty, Miles & Kerry have all debunked this theory” - True, that does mean its not likely to be cannon, however there has been cases in the past where creators will say something will not happen and it eventually does. But, whether it happens or not. Its still no reason to fight over it, just let people be, ship what they want and theorize what they want.

“Why would they add this? it seems unnecessary to the plot” - Personally I don’t think any kind of character development is unnecessary and anything that changes the character in some form is welcome. But just as an example if it was revealed that Qrow was Ruby’s father, we could have several things like these:

It could lead qrow and ruby to have more heart felt conversation, including a deep conversation about Summer

It would take the weight of the secret of both Tai's and Qrows conscience it could lead qrow to taking more adult responsibility and further his journey of not going back to the booze.

It could make Ruby and Yangs relation even stronger because it says "we'll still be sisters even if we're not related"

It would bring conflict along with resolution. Conflict: Ruby finds out, it makes her question a lot of things and look for answers Resolution: She ends up confronting Qrow about it, learns more about his and summers relationship, why the hid it etc. It could also continue on with Ruby telling Tai that she know sand they go from there, or even telling Yang and they have a conversation about how it doesn't change anything about them being sisters

There’s a lot of possibilities that could lead to great character development and could make characters a lot more conscious of their choices.

But yeh, thats about all I got so far. If you read the entire thing then I very much appreciate it. I felt the sudden urge to write this after getting my first ever Tumblr hate mail, so thank you random anon! If anyone wants to have Conversation about any of this with me, whether you believe the theory or not then I am more than willing, as long as it doesn’t turn into a rage contest.

[quicklyseverebird]

@aridara​ Thanks! :) Finally the last post on my to-do list.  Got the time to go through this, because I wanted to see if you were being honest with your copy and paste, first off.  (credit where credit is due, you were pretty much on, only minor mistakes, but you didn’t delete parts like I feared you would, so thank you for your honesty)  Your common MO, as observed in your blog and in past interactions, is to dump so many words into a post that people just get tired of it all rather than pick through it, even if what you are posting is not only wrong, but much of it disproves the very points you claimed they did.  People just don’t have the time you apparently do to go through it all read, write and check them.  Effective admittedly.  It’s the stygian stables method, in reverse.  Of course that requires a similar outpouring on my part. I will admit, reading back through this, that I did get over-emotional, and that probably didn’t help my cause, but you didn’t prove your case here.  You simply took us off into the weeds. Bottom line response, and don’t worry, this is my last post on this, so chalk it up to a win for yourself or whatever, doesn’t matter. Bottom line, and I don’t think all your words disproved this: On the scale of liberalism and authoritarianism, your position is closer to the latter than mine.  The idea that “only authoritarians were against vaccines so anyone who is against them is authoritarian” is ludicrous and disproven by history and your own admission.  Forced vaccinations are, themselves, a form of A.  Literally.  Now you can make an argument that its still good, but that’s not the issue.  Some laws are needed of course, because I’m not an anarchist, and society does require restraint.  It’s not an all or nothing system.  Nuance, remember?  But forced mandates take away from free will and the choice of the individual.  The fact that one A society chose not to do this doesn’t make all the others not-A, it simply becomes an example of one that didn’t do this particular thing that other A governments do.  The Prussian empire didn’t gas jews, but it doesn’t make them any less A because they didn’t do that particular act. Again, the fact is, you claim that only authoritarian governments (nazis) were against vaccine mandates.  I would point out that only authoritarian governments DID mandatory vaccine mandates.  Not all, but the ones that did enact them, were.  If only because doing so is itself proof of that. Did some anti-A groups not have a problem with vaccine mandates?  Sure.  That doesn’t prove anything.  At the time they had much BIGGER concerns to deal with, and they also were born into a society that had accepted such things as the norm, blinding them to it.  It literally proves nothing.  When your house is on fire, you don’t really have time to concern yourself with another spark fizzing up out of it. Again, and you can’t get away from this.  I say, leave me alone, smaller government, smaller government involvement in my life. You say, more government involvement in my life, less freedom of choice of the individual for the sake of the “common good” (paraphrasing, re:your arguements about the vaccine and builder analogy) I want less government control, you want more.  And you have the hutzpah to say that I am the authoritarian?  That my position is like the Nazi’s?  Your political position is quite literally closer to them than mine is on the political spectrum.  But then, because I disagree with you on this issue, that’s all you need to claim the opposite?  Hilarious. re: the builder analogy.  Was it perfect?  No.  I tried repeatedly to add nuance to my response, but you continue to once again simplify and make it a black and white issue.  I maintain that the government needs to be less all up in our business, that free market control can and will straighten most of this out much more effectively and efficiently.  The building code law bureaucracy has become insane by this point.  I’ll walk it back a little (again nuance) and say that they shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever the heck they want, I’m not insane, but they should be allowed more freedom, and should be punished and held accountable if things are done wrong.  Tell me how that’s any worse than what we have now?  

You say that you know that not ALL laws are made with your best interest at heart, yet you continue to want more and more of them, as if the assumed good will outweigh the bad, if you just add ENOUGH of them!  Kind of like the words in your posts.

I want the freedom to control what is done to my body.  You want to take that away.  I say you can do whatever you want, get the vaccine if you want, I won’t stop you!  Protect yourself however you like! I’ll stay out of your business if you stay out of mine. But somehow giving you the same rights as I want myself makes me a fascist (which is what you implied repeatedly)?  Your argument doesn’t even make sense logically or scientifically.  And we’ve seen that played out in real time.  The most controlling states continue to have the highest rates of infection.  Those more freedom-inclined, have less.  Real life is proving me right.  Fun fact, the vaccine doesn’t keep you from catching Covid or from passing it on, so your point is dead on arrival.  We literally were told this from the start.  This isn’t the polio vaccine or the smallpox vaccine.  It barely even fits the definition of a vaccine.  It only makes your symptoms less.  That’s all it has ever promised, and then only if you keep up with your “boosters” every few months...with no end in sight....  

My parents both got the vaccine, then both got Covid anyways.  Dad is on oxygen right now.  Perhaps the vaccine kept him from dying?  Maybe?  Sister got the vaccine, and now is suffering from MIS as a side effect of the vaccine.  Think rheumatoid arthritis in her 20′s, and the doctor’s don’t know how to treat it.  Friend’s sister started having seizures within hours of her vaccine and is literally waiting to die at this point.  Those are risks and benefits.  You have the right to choose your risk for yourself and family, not the government.  We know that side effects will kill 117 children under 18 years old that get the vaccine for every life they save, because kids simply don’t die from Covid, yet some governments are forcing this anyways?  I’m more likely to die driving home from work than from Covid.  Yet for my father, who is immune compromised, it actually made sense for him to get the vaccine, though the same issue kept it from being as effective.  (only 50% of immunocompromised people develop the antibodies, with every additional dose increasing this by 50%)  I don’t WANT to get Covid, and if I do, I will quarantine to avoid trying to transmit it to anyone else of course, as a decent human being.  And that should be my choice.  Anyone who says otherwise is an authoritarian jackboot who can, to quote you, F&%* off. Bottom line again.  I’m for freedom, you are for control.  I’m for less government regulation, you are for more.  You are far more authoritarian than I am.  And you simultaneously decry that while agreeing with it at the same time.  You are the one trying to make my choices for me.  So who is the bad guy?

[gloriousgwendolinechristie]

Press: The end of Game of Thrones: An exclusive report on the epic final season

EW – OCTOBER 2017: THE TABLE READ

When Kit Harington entered the conference room, he had no idea what to expect.

The final season’s scripts had been emailed just a couple of days earlier, sending the Game of Thrones cast into a reading frenzy. Like millions of fans around the world, the actors had been waiting nearly a decade to learn their characters’ fates. The entire six-episode season arrived at once, protected by layers of password security.

Sophie Turner flew through her copies in record time, quickly messaging the producers her reaction. “It was completely overwhelming,” says the actress, who plays Sansa Stark. “Afterwards I felt numb, and I had to take a walk for hours.” Others, like Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), first had to hurry home to get some privacy. “I turned to my best mate and was like, ‘Oh my God! I gotta go! I gotta go!’” she recalls. “And I completely flipped out.” She then settled in for a reading session with a cup of tea. “Genuinely the effect it had on me was profound,” Clarke adds. “That sounds insanely pretentious, but I’m an actor, so I’m allowed one pretentious adjective per season.” Peter Dinklage, meanwhile, broke his years-long habit of checking immediately to see if Tyrion Lannister survives. “This was the first time ever that I didn’t skip to the end,” he says.

Even showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were uncharacteristically anxious, wondering how the actors would react to the climactic twists. “We knew exactly when our script coordinator sent them out, we knew what minute they sent them, and then you’re just waiting for the emails,” Benioff said.

The cast then journeyed to Belfast to gather in a production office for the formal read-through. By then, everybody knew the tale that was about to unfold, with two notable exceptions: Davos Seaworth actor Liam Cunningham (“The f—ing scripts wouldn’t open, the double extra security!” he grouses) and Harington, who outright refused to read anything in advance.

“I walked in saying, ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,’” Harington says. “What’s the point of reading it to myself in my own head when I can listen to people do it and find out with my friends?” So, yes: Jon Snow, quite literally, knew nothing.

Benioff and Weiss opened the proceedings by asking the cast to refrain from doing anything during filming or afterward that might reveal even the tiniest spoiler (“Don’t even take a photo of your boots on the ground of the set,” one actor recalls being told). And then, seated around a long table scattered with a few prop skulls, the cast read aloud the final season of Game of Thrones.

At one point, Harington wept.

Later, he cried a second time.

SEPTEMBER 2012: IT’S IMPOSSIBLE

After the table read, the Game of Thrones cast spent 10 months filming just six episodes of television. But the season actually took far longer to pull off. GoT’s final chapters have been in the works for years. To better understand what’s ahead, let’s first go back to EW’s season 3 set visit and this never-before-revealed conversation with Benioff and Weiss…

The production camper was like many others on the set — barren, cramped, cold, utilitarian, with dirt on the floors from muddy boots tramping in and out all day. The showrunners sat on the same side of a tiny dinette booth while the wind coming off the Northern Ireland bay howled outside. They were already thinking about their final season, and it worried them.

During its second season, the fantasy drama averaged 10.3 million viewers across all platforms. That was enough to ensure they were eventually going to finish the series, yet that inevitability was also the problem. Because when they first pitched Thrones to HBO, they hadn’t exactly been honest. And now they were working every day toward a finale that was impossible to make.

“The lie we told is the show is contained and it’s about the characters,” Benioff said, which was at best half true. The epic fantasy was very much about its ensemble cast, but it’s also the least “contained” series ever made. “The worlds get so big, the battles get so massive.”

Author George R.R. Martin, whose series of novels forms the basis for Thrones, had revealed to the duo the broad strokes of how his Song of Ice and Fire saga secretly ends, including a description of an epic final battle that’s been teased from the show’s very first scene. But this climactic confrontation was miles out of reach for a series that cost about $5 million per episode. “We have a very generous budget from HBO, but we know what’s coming down the line and, ultimately, it’s not generous enough,” Benioff said.

So the producers had an idea: The final season could be six hours long and released as three movies in theaters — just like Martin’s best-known influence, The Lord of the Rings. It’s not that the duo wanted to make movies per se, but it seemed like the only way to get the time and money needed to pull off their finale. “It’s what we’re working towards in a perfect world,” Weiss said. “We end up with an epic fantasy story but with the level of familiarity and investment in the characters that are normally impossible in a two-hour movie.”

The flaw in this plan was that HBO is about serving its subscribers, not taking gambles at the box office. Behind the scenes, the network brass gently shot down the movie idea. But executives assured Benioff and Weiss that they would eventually have everything they needed to make a final season that was “a summer tentpole-size spectacle.”

Years later, the producers would strike a deal with the network to spend two years on a shortened season 8 that would cost more than $15 million an episode. You could say HBO made good on that promise from 2012, and the showrunners will happily give the network full credit. “They put their money where their mouths are — literally stuffed their mouth full of million-dollar bills, which don’t exist anymore,” Weiss quips.

But it’s probably more accurate to say that since season 3, Benioff and Weiss willed their ambitious final season into reality the hard way: by growing Game of Thrones into the biggest show in the world, a hugely profitable pop culture and merchandising sensation with more than 30 million viewers an episode and a record number of Emmys. Only with that kind of leverage do your towering ambitions begin to look like reasonable requests.

In fact, the GoT team was so successful that the biggest sticking point in the agreement was persuading HBO to halt the series. “We want to stop where we — the people working on it, and the people watching it — both wish it went a little bit longer,” Benioff says. “There’s the old adage of ‘Always leave them wanting more,’ but also things start to fall apart when you stop wanting to be there. You don’t want to f— it up.”

That concern — a constant desire to conclude the show on the strongest possible note — is something we heard over and over from the cast and crew when we visited the GoT set for the last time.

  MARCH 2018: THE FINAL SEASON

Arriving at the studio gate, I’m halted by a guard and asked to scan my badge, a security upgrade from past years. Then I’m asked for my phone, and the guard covers its cameras with stickers — that’s new too. Along with an HBO escort, I walk inside an enormous hangar that’s so large it’s where the RMS Titanic was painted.

What’s being filmed here is episode 6, the series finale. Like Harington going into the table read, I don’t know anything about the final season’s storyline. I look around at a meticulously constructed set that I’ve never seen on the show before. Several actors are performing, and I’m stunned: There are characters in the finale that I did not expect. I gradually begin to piece together what has happened in Westeros over the previous five episodes and try not to look like I’m freaking out.

There is absolutely nothing more that can be said about that scene at this time.

A word about spoilers: The cast is used to keeping story secrets, yet they’ve never sounded so anxious about it. “There are moments where you don’t trust yourself to have this in your brain,” says Joe Dempsie, who plays Gendry. “You’re in possession of something millions of people want to know. It’s such a bizarre feeling. And between now and when it comes out, I’m gonna be drunk at some point.”

So far, at least, the team has done a far better job than in previous years at keeping the story under wraps, even while drunk. Theories abound online, but they are guesses. A purported script leaked to Reddit, but here’s a way to spot a fake — real Game of Thrones scripts don’t say “Game of Thrones” on them. “Drone killer” guns were used to guard against any peeping robots attempting to fly over the set. Production documents stating which actors were required to be where and when used code names (Clarke, for example, was “Eldiss”). “It gets highly confusing when you need to remember who is who,” Turner says.

Benioff and Weiss’ next gig is writing a new Star Wars film, and they received some final-season secrecy tips from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson and producer Kathleen Kennedy. “They’ve given us a lot of hints about how to lock things down, things we never would have thought of or didn’t know were possible,” Weiss says.

At some point HBO will release a proper final-season trailer revealing more. Until then, here’s some basic setup we can tell you: Season 8 opens at Winterfell with an episode that contains plenty of callbacks to the show’s pilot. Instead of King Robert’s procession arriving, it’s Daenerys and her army. What follows is a thrilling and tense intermingling of characters — some of whom have never previously met, many who have messy histories — as they all prepare to face the inevitable invasion of the Army of the Dead.

“It’s about all of these disparate characters coming together to face a common enemy, dealing with their own past, and defining the person they want to be in the face of certain death,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman says. “It’s an incredibly emotional, haunting, bittersweet final season, and I think it honors very much what George set out to do — which is flipping this kind of story on its head.”

How these fan favorites get along drives much of the drama this season (okay, here’s one specific tease from the premiere — Sansa isn’t thrilled that Jon bent the knee to his fancy new Targaryen girlfriend, at least not at first).

The drama builds to a confrontation with the Army of the Dead that’s expected to be the most sustained action sequence ever made for television or film. One episode — the same that Benioff and Weiss were concerned about pulling off so many years ago — is wall-to-wall action, courtesy of “Battle of the Bastards” director Miguel Sapochnik.

Last April a crew member revealed that Game of Thrones had wrapped 55 night shoots while filming a battle. Media outlets around the world ran stories saying the final season’s battle took twice as long as the 25-day shoot for season 6’s climactic Battle of the Bastards. This wildly understated what really happened. The 55 nights were only for the battle’s outdoor scenes at the Winterfell set. Filming then moved into the studio, where Sapochnik continued shooting the same battle for weeks after that.

“It’s brutal,” Dinklage says. “It makes the Battle of the Bastards look like a theme park.”

The battle doesn’t have just one focus, either, but rather intercuts between multiple characters involved in their own survival storylines that each feels like its own genre. “Having the largest battle doesn’t sound very exciting — it actually sounds pretty boring,” Benioff says. “Part of our challenge, and really, Miguel’s challenge, is how to keep that compelling… we’ve been building toward this since the very beginning, it’s the living against the dead, and you can’t do that in a 12-minute sequence.”

To help pull it off, the production hugely expanded its set for the Stark ancestral home of Winterfell, adding a towering castle exterior, a larger courtyard, and more interconnected rooms and ramparts. Strolling around the new Winterfell is like wandering a sprawling, immersive medieval resort compared with its previous Days Inn-like scale. The ground is covered with snow and blood. The air is thick with smoke from the fire pits. You can turn any direction and only see more Winterfell. It’s easy to feel like you’ve somehow wandered into Westeros.

The Winterfell expansion is just a small example of how every element of the production was heightened this year in an effort to “not f— it up.” Scenes that normally might take a day to film now took several. “[Camera] checks take longer, costumes are a bit better, hair and makeup a bit sharper — every choice, every conversation, every attitude has this air of ‘This is it,’” Clarke says. “Everything feels more intense. I had a scene with someone and I turned to him and said, ‘Oh my God, I’m not going to do this ever again,’ and that brings tears to my eyes.”

Lena Headey, who plays Cersei Lannister, agrees: “There was a great sense of grief. It’s a huge sense of loss, like we’ll never have anything like this again.”

More tears, like during the table read.

You know, Harington will actually reveal why he cried that second time.

“The second time was the very end,” Harington says. He’s referring to when the cast reached the last page of episode 6, and what the showrunners wrote there at the bottom.

“Every season, you read at the end of the last script ‘End of Season 1,’ or ‘End of Season 2,’” Harington says. “This read ‘End of Game of Thrones.’”



Press: The end of Game of Thrones: An exclusive report on the epic final season was originally published on Glorious Gwendoline | Gwendoline Christie Fansite