#found this old clip in my Google photos

[kissmetwicekissmedeadly]

MO'S FANFIC BEAUTYFYING MASTERCLASS!👩‍🏫

So it seems like you guys like how I do my banners and layouts on @xxsycamore ! I wanted to share a few tips about making similar ones, along with some of my observations on their importance! Be warned, some of the screenshots I'll use to illustrate my point will be of my smut fics! This post is intended for the ikemen series community. While the tips could be found useful for other fandoms as well, it's important to note that it's only this fandom that I've taken into account and because of that my observations could be unreliable if you chose to follow my advice outside of the fandom!

The importance

First of all, a good layout is a subjective term. Second, a "good" layout is not guaranteed to boost your fic's popularity. Not all of us are able to put the time and effort into fancy banners and dividers, but the good news is, you don't really need them! You should always strive to do only as much as you can without straining yourself. Here you can see a minimal effort fic layout vs one that took 30~ minutes to put together, both posted around the same time, both having a similar reception when it comes to notes! Keep in mind that a layout is just one of the many factors to take into account for your fic's popularity status, and you shouldn't obsess with it either way.

2. The minimum: Banner + Title

Not everyone checks out every single post on their dash while they scroll! I follow around 1100 people and while not all of them are active, it's easy to miss a post that could as well have been the best thing I'd see that day. Your brain recognizes what a typical fanfiction post looks like - a rectangular picture with a title above/underneath, followed by text. As long as you scroll past a post with a similar construction and you're interested, you might want to scroll back and check it out.

3. Banners

The information that you get from a banner is typically about the character(s) featured in the fic. Using the example above, you'll see that a simple cropped picture of the character gets the job done! (an in-game sprite at that, not a fancy card photo)

If you decide to use a card, you can browse google for a good one of your character(s). I try to select a card that depicts something similar to what's happening in my fic, either the action or the "vibes" (daytime or nighttime, outside or indoors, canon or modern, etc.), but sometimes it's better to choose the one that will look good instead of the one that's more fitting.

Finding cards of good quality is also challenging, and I'd advise you to avoid blurry/low-quality banners even if those would be best fitting.

Stick to the rectangular horizontal format if possible. I like square banners sometimes, but it's better when you can see the whole layout at once!

4. Editing the banners & photo coloring

If you decide you want to go out all, you'll need a photo editing app or a program. I use one called Snow which is mainly for selfies but gets the job done. It has many filters to choose from, but inputting text there could be a hassle sometimes. Another one I use is Pixlr. Yeah, I couldn't let it go ever since the days it was just a website...it's been about 10 years but I still rely on it (now as an app) for some stuff, like cropping down images with very big height to width ratio (like thin strips for dividers). In very rare instances I use my (paid) art program, Clip Studio Paint. I know that many people use Canva for their banners but I can't get used to it, I guess it's not my thing, haha. That's why you should see what works for you. I prefer a certain amount of limitation, like having filters to choose from, simply because I don't want to think too much about it and to be able to spend too much time on it (I'm a perfectionist)...

Maybe you just want to give your picture some nice coloring, nothing too much, just a slight change of tone that it's noticeable but not in a screaming way. There are still some things to avoid, mainly old-looking filters. I'm talking about the ones that were mainstream on Instagram during the last decade, the pinkish sepia one for instance. Ones that have too high exposure value and make the bright parts practically glow are not a good look either, same for the too dark ones. Making the character unrecognizable is also not good, and some filters can do that, especially in the case where they have fair hair and the filter makes it appear as another color. Again, those examples are bad only in my own opinion and could look good in certain circumstances or if it's a desired look!

Here's the collage for the banner used for my fic Nine Nights (MDNI) before the filter (first picture), a variation I did but scrapped (second pic) and the one I went with in the end (third pic). While the bottom pic is in contrast with what I said about making characters unrecognizable, here I rely on the fact that it's enough that it's obvious this will feature all of the Crown members just by looking at the bunch of them. I liked how the colors pop up, almost as if each one gets assigned a theme color (interestingly I didn't pick the cards for that purpose), and it's just a pretty coloring in my opinion as a whole. I achieved this by tweaking the RGB values from the "Curves" tool in Snow.

Another cool thing to do with your banner is adding transparent elements in it, like how I did with this one (see it from the link below, it's not depicted here on the pics). The thing is, this could be very energy-consuming, you'll need an app/program that can do that as not all of them work with transparent images, and in the end, it could be just barely noticeable. But it can be fun from time to time.

5. Titles

A title is the other main element of your fic's layout and it should stand out. If you hate coming up with titles (understandable...) you can just put a "(character) x reader fluff", for instance. If you look at the example in point 1, I simply used the character's name in place of a title! It doesn't have to be a stressful aspect of putting your fic out there. As a side note, you can try centering your title simply by putting some spaces at the front, but leaving it aligned to the right could be a stylistic choice.

6. Colored text

This one is very optional but good if you want to fancy it up. Tumblr already gives you a bunch of colors to pick from and you can make use of them if they fit the style of your fic, but they're very limited. Luckily we can use just any color we want. (This only works on the fonts tumblr supports! The ones you can choose from when you highlight a text) Unfortunately, the way to do this will make you work with the HTML editor which you can access at the top right corner of your post editing screen (from desktop, click the settings, scroll down to Post editor) and things might seem pretty scary if this is your first time looking there. It's not too hard! You need to use a site that takes your desired piece of text, lets you select colors, and then gives you a code that once pasted in the HTML editor will make it colored when switching back to the Rich text editor. Here's the one I use because it also allows me to blend colors. At the bottom right of the page, I put the text in the first box, select the colors, and upon clicking Run it gives me the code in the bottom box. I use colored text for my title, and sometimes for my information tags.

7. Information tags

This is how I refer to the part of your layout dedicated to showing the pairings, genre, content warnings and wordcount of your fic. This is all optional even to add in the first place. I personally don't bother too much with beautifying that part, but a good tip is using some kind of symbol to separate these pieces of information if they're all in the same paragraph (I use big dots), or to place in front of them if they're in different rows (like bullet points). This gives a lot of creative freedom for text art, you should explore it if that's your thing!

8. Fonts & font size

You can experiment with Tumblr's fonts, or you can look for more fonts online - here's a handy site. It's good to find one that is legible enough. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞. Again, be warned, those fonts that are outside of tumblr's post editor cannot be colored (as far as I'm aware of)

You can spell your title in all caps if you deem that's a good look for your fic.

Play around with bolds and italics instead of making everything a different font.

The "Biggest" font option here on the editor is not the best one to use as it's simply too big. Big title fonts should be avoided if your title doesn't fit in a single row.

Having different font sizes for different things in your layout can be eye-catching! Besides the obvious upscaling of the title, you can also upscale your information tags. Using small text is also nice and prevents your post from getting too long, but this should only be done for the part of the fic that is not the fic itself. Small text could be harsh on the eyes if it's in big quantities.

9. Dividers

Dividers are another crucial part of a fancy layout! They divide different parts of your layout, like the information tags and the fic's body. There are tons of styles to choose from. Some people like to use dividers that spell out something, like a "minors DNI" warning, a "support your creatives" reminder, the name of the character featured in the fic... You can make your own set of dividers for repeated use. I like to use very thin lines which I color differently according to the fic's theme colors. I also find dividers online, mostly here on tumblr, as there are tons of them if you look them up. It's important to use dividers which are marked free to use, or to otherwise credit their creators.

10. Additional tips

Use gifs. Everything that moves is eye-catching. But don't go overboard with it - one or two moving objects on your layout is plenty. They shouldn't be put too close to the fic's body too, as people might find it distracting. Avoid flashing and glitching gifs, or if you use those and you deem it necessary, tag the post with an epilepsy warning. You can make your banners into gifs by putting a moving filter on them, making it into a video, and turning the video into a gif (the site I use for this is called ezgif and it has plenty of other options for working with gifs and videos), and you can also make or find gif dividers.

Banner themes are nice, but they don't always look good. I'm talking about making a series of banners (like for a bunch of fics made for the same creative challenge) look the same, with the same coloring and filters. I used to make all my banners purple to follow my blog's tumblr theme but I realized not everyone looks good in purple...

Try adding a synopsis for your fic! I know, this is worse than coming up with a title, but we love flipping the book over to look at the synopsis before jumping into it. Keep it very short and try beautifying it with symbols or fancy quotation marks.

Use the "intended" font from the tumblr post editor to make your information tags or synopsis stand out and shrink the overall length of the post!

Put the body of your fic under a "read more" (the last option when you hit a new row in the post editor). This is very important, especially if you're writing smut - you wouldn't want to make people scroll through all of that if they're not in the mood for it. Putting your whole fic on the dash doesn't make it more likely for people to stop and read it, or at least that's just how I see it.

Use emojis! Emojis stand out!

Take inspiration from other people. Get out of your bubble and look at how other fandoms do it, but obviously don't steal.

11. Final thoughts

Making this post felt weird to me! I was motivated by my mutuals complimenting my layouts but also because some of them said "they can't do that" and I wanted to show them it's easy. I also wanted to show them it's not that important and that they shouldn't stress over it at all! At the end of the day it's your fic that matters, not how pretty you can make it work. But instead of simplifying it, I ended up with this massive post of 11 parts, and now it looks scarily big. It's not, okay! I went too much into detail at times, and I want to stress once again that it's all optional anyway. I, personally, don't follow all of this advice. I don't go through the 10 steps of constructing my layout every time I'm about to post a fic. I typically post my fics just before going to bed, and 99% of the time I need it to happen ASAP because it's that late in the night. It's a way to beat my perfectionism, really, and I find it to work for me. I also already have these steps tested and memorized so it all happens quickly and mechanically for me. Making the layout is extremely fun for me and this is my sole driving force for putting in the effort. At the same time, I remind myself not to go overboard because it's stupid to focus on it more than on the fic itself. I love ao3 because everything looks equal on there, but I also love tumblr because I can unleash my creativity in one additional way.

In the process of making this post, I started to wonder if it seems like I'm making this out to be way more important and difficult than it really is, and I want to assure you that this is not my intention at all!

My only hope is that this proves to be helpful for whoever feels like they can use some of the information above. If it leads to just 1 additional note to those criminally underrated fics I see, then I'd be beyond happy!

Have fun posting your fics :)

[gayleatherstories]

Selfbondage gone wrong

I couldn't believe it. I had flown a little too close to the horny sun and tightened the belt encircling my wrists just a tad too tight and now I couldn't get out. There was no way I was letting one of my friends see me like this. I was going to have to text my landlord..

Let me set the scene. I was 29 years old and I had finally reached a point financially where I could live alone, no parents, no flatmates. That level of privacy finally gave me the freedom to explore my kinks. Those kinks being leather, bondage and anal play. I had asked my ex-girlfriend how she felt about pegging. To say her reaction wasn't positive was an understatement. Anyway I'd saved up some money and bought myself a pair of black leather jeans with a two way zipper that ran from front to back, a nicely shaped plug, a leather muzzle head harness, a thick stainless steel cockring and a black mesh thong to give it all a certain level of sluttiness.

Combining all these attributes one evening I found myself googling how to bind wrists together with a belt. Flashforward a couple minutes later and now we're back to where this story started.

I clumsily I texted my landlord, a likeable man in his mid forties who so far had only ever been helpful. My text basically told him in vague terms that I needed his help with something. He texted back that it might take a bit but he'd get there as soon as possible.

45 minutes of unsuccessful struggling later I heard a knock on the door and someone entering my apartment.

He asked me where I was and I made a muffled sound hopefully pointing him to my bedroom.

The minute he steps inside my bedroom he starts laughing. But when I thought I was finally getting released from my self-made bounds. Steve, my landlord, takes out his phone and starts taking pictures. After I make an inquisitive noise he tells me it's been too long since he'd fucked a boy in bondage and before I realise he's touching my leather clad legs.

Through my gag I try to tell him that I'm not gay but when he forcibly turns me on my stomach and notices that there's a zipper running between my ass cheeks I realise how this looks. Especially when he zips it open and sees a plug nestled in my hole.

He takes his time fucking me with my own plug which in turn gets me hard as rock. He slaps my ass hard telling me to get on my knees and present my hole to him. Feeling like I have no other option I obey. Since I was already lubed and stretched from my plug it doesn't take him a lot of effort to start fucking me. I tried to resist at first but he knew what he was doing and before long I was pushing back on every thrust. He kept calling me a good boy and occasionally slapping my ass while he was fucking me.

He fucked me for a while before I could feel his dick pulsing and coating my insides.

Stupidly I thought that that was it but then I heard Steve make a few calls telling whoever was on the other end that he'd found a cum dump slut that loved anal. I started loudly objecting until he showed me the video he had taken. Apparently he'd put his phone on my dresser and it clearly showed me getting my ass bred and liking it. He told me that if I didn't do as I was told selected clips and photos would be posted online with all my personal info attached.

Six more loads were deposited in or on me that night. All of it recorded and photographed. When the last guy left I passed out from exhaustion.

When I woke up the next day I realised a couple things. My wrist were not stuck together anymore, my ass was plugged effectively trapping last night's cum deposits inside me and my muzzle was locked on.

On shaky legs I walked to my living room where I found my landlord sitting on the couch. He had changed his clothes and was currently decked out in a tight shiny black leather uniform.

[thegoldheartlocketandkey-blog]

911 Spoilers Season 3: You’ve been warned. 😅 Buddie Rewatch

Episode 8-9

Episode 8: Malfunction

Ice Rink Disaster:  Eddie calmly searching, while buck is like a baby dear, unable to stay up on ice. Eddie and Buck on finding finger duty. They find all the fingers. Buck finds 3, and Eddie found 1.

 We learn about Bobby’s ice-skating past. The entire 118 finding this new information amusing. Eddie judging Bobby and stating he thought he was more into hockey. Bobby taking the comment and throwing it back. Bobby walks away as everyone is left visibly confused. Chim has my favorite facial reaction. Hen a close second.

Eddie and Buck are standing near each other with the same confused look. The height difference is prominent. Buck suggesting the google photos later, Eddie just nodding his head in agreement.

Buck almost slips on the ice again, but catches himself. Eddie rolls his eyes at Buck’s clumsiness.

Eddie is in the middle of another fight. He’s fighting against someone arguably twice his size. He’s focused, not holding back, letting out all his anger. He is getting paid for the fight, wants more of these fights. Passively mentions Lena gave him the advise that he needed an outlet. The promotor reminding him he’s not invisible, rules apply to him too.

 Buck is pulling something out of his jeep when Eddie pulls in with a brand-new pick-up truck. Buck walks towards Eddie to ask if the truck is a rental. Eddie admits to impulse buying because his last truck the AC went out. Buck is the one to point out it was an impulse buy. Eddie tries to use Chris as an excuse.

Buck has a light banter about Eddie needing more shifts in the future to make payments.  Eddie changing the subject to ask what Buck is carrying. They playfully run into the fire house.

Scene cuts to Bobby’s morning brief. Buck and Eddie are standing so close together. Practically shoulder to shoulder, with smirks on their faces.  Buck bites his lip and Eddie moves out of the way, loudly singing to catch everyone’s attention as he pulls out a life-size cut out of young Bobby as an ice skater.

Buck being extra silly admits he’s the one that got the photo from his old partner. Eddie standing there all proud, makes fun of Bobby’s hair. Hen appears late from dropping Denny off at school, at this moment you can see how proud Eddie is with his hands on his hips and his head bopping up and down and Buck looking towards his direction and back at Hen. They really love their little prank.

Athena cooks dinner for the 118. Eddie and Buck sit next to each other as they eat. Bobby stops Buck from adding salt to Athena's salt. Eddie practically begging Athena cook more for them. Buck trying to stay neutral and says he likes both Athena's and Bobby's food equally.

Self Driving Car; Eddie and Buck are working together to move debris and move the victims.

Maddie, Chimney, and Buck are hanging out at Buck's place. They are talking about how weird Hen is being. Buck points out that he thinks Eddie is also being weird. Maddie points out how quickly information spreads in the 118. Chimney asking Buck for further clarification on why he think Eddie is being weird. Maddie turning towards them with an annoyed look.

If I wanted to be real delusional I would say Maddie turned around at the mention of Eddies name because she has been a Buddie shipper from day one. That is not what happened, but the way the clip is edited, it is so easy to pretend.

Eddie is fighting again. He's throwing elaborate punches and kicks. Really doing damage on his opponent. He kicks the guy in the face. The man has a seizure and isn't breathing. Eddie calls 911 and everyone attempts to flee the scene. Eddie leaves his opponent sat up and airways clear giving him the best chances when help arrives.

Lena's station is the one to respond to the call. She is the one to make the connection that someone helped the victim and gave him the best odds. She knew almost instantly that Eddie was involved.

She finds Eddie and confronts him about if he was the one that saved the man or the one that almost killed him. Eddie admits too being both. Eddie looks tired, upset, and annoyed at the entire situation.

She hands Eddie her firefighter jacket, Eddie confused by this, she explains its’s to give him a cover, to keep him out of jail, so that she doesn’t have to bail him out.

Lena is now interrogating Eddie outside. Asking him if how long he’s been fighting. Eddie says he’s been fighting a lot because it pays good money. Lena sees thru that bullshit and knows that the thing that was suppose to be an outlet, has become a very unsafe obsession. Eddie does not want to listen to Lena’s concerns. He’s very dismissive.

Eddie walks into the fire house, Bobby calls him up for a meeting. He sees Lena walking down the stairs and is pissed off at her because he thinks she snitched.

Lena puts him in his place and establishes they are not friends, because Eddie is too one sided.

Eddie and Bobby have a one on one, discussing how this fighting thing is about wanting control. Bobby discloses that Lena came over to defend Eddie, Eddie feels guilty for fighting with her. The conversation leads to how Shannon asked for a divorce and Eddie is still angry with her. He is trying to fight off the tears, but ends up crying in front of Bobby.

Piss Robot: Buck is the one to connect that the robot must have freaked out because the victim peed on it. Eddie judging the victim for peeing on the robot.

So, looking closely at the scene, it seems like Eddie wasn’t there for most of the filming. There is a random stand by that is obviously suppose to be Eddie in a few shots. A lot of the shots Eddie is he is completely by himself. This is the explanation as to why we do not see a lot of Buck and Eddie team work like we would normally have. I will say if it wasn’t for this rewatch I would have never noticed this discrepancy.

Hen’s Ambulance accident; This scene is so hard to watch. Hen makes me feel every emotion of despair, guilt, and sadness she is feeling.

Buck and Eddie are standing near each other restocking the engine, when they hear Chimney on the radio announce they just got into an accident.

I don't know how I didn't notice this before but Eddie is also not really in this scene either, they have another stand by and a lot of solo shots. So there really isn’t much to break down outside of the fact that everyone in the 118, is sympathetic towards what Hen is processing and going thru. Hen on the ground being held by Athena, really broke me.

Episode 9: Fall out

Episode 9: Fall out

Meteorite: Buck and Eddie walk in the building together. Buck is the one to find the meteorite and wants to grab it, but is chastised by Bobby and Chim.

Buck knowing about the one other time a person has ever been hit with a meteorite and letting the victim know she’s special. The victim is confused as to why Buck knows this information. Eddie being the one to explain that Buck has become a little obsessed with natural disasters ever since the tsunami. Buck chuckling after Eddie’s explanation.

We meet the departments therapist Frank, who has sessions with Hen, Maddie, and Eddie.

 Eddie discussing how in moments he should be happy and should be proud, he doesn’t necessarily feel those emotions. Frank telling him there is no right way to process trauma.

Eddie making it a point to say that he does not want to be in therapy, He would much rather be at home with Chris, but that he is there because he doesn’t want Chris to turn out like him. Eddie was at the verge of tears when talking about how Chris felt the need to hide his pain, to make Eddie feel good. Eddie never wants Chris to feel like he has to do that ever again.

Eddie vocalizing how he almost killed a man.

Buck is asking Bobby when they should expect to hear some news on Hen’s investigation.

Eddie mentioning running into Hen on his way to Franks. That she seemed okay, but was sad.

Buck asking Eddie how therapy with Frank is going and how he himself hasn’t seen Frank in a while.

Eddie not looking a Buck as he says the therapy is going well, but that they aren’t really clicking. Chim offering Rosemary, the therapist he saw after the stabbing. Buck chiming in to ask if that is the therapist he slept with. Bobby quick to say no, that therapist was fired.

Eddie judging Buck for sleeping with his therapist. Buck trying to be nonchalant about the situations, saying he was going thru a phase, turning the conversation back on Eddie and asking him wasn’t he just going thru a phase. Eddie becoming uncomfortable and shifting in his seat.

So in this moment, I don’t blame Eddie or Chimney for making jokes and judging Buck for sleeping with the therapist.  They obviously do not know the full extent of what happened, and would likely have reacted differently if they had known. Bobby is the only one in that room to fully understand what happened and how that situation was wrong. Buck himself has not even processed that moment other than he was Buck the player and addicted to sex. He never even thinks to blame the therapist.

Really wish the writers approached this differently, but I was happy to hear she was fired.

Eddie talks about the drama in his household when his sisters were applying to college. Buck not remembering what he wrote for his college paper. Chim making fun of him and implying Maddie wrote it for him.

Maddie telling Josh, how he doesn’t want to experience Buck singing Eye of the Tiger while doing one arm pushups. I on the other hand would love to see this.

Buck telling Maddie she is a bad ass for preforming a finger thoracostomy. He tries to comfort and reassure Maddie.

Eddie and Christopher are at Buck’s place. They seem to have just finished dinner and are cleaning about while talking about what happened to Maddie. Eddie is lowkey a little dressed up with a button up shirt.

Buck takes the lesson Maddie learned about not being able to help someone who does want to be helped and applies it to what is happened with Eddie. Eddie catching on quickly to what buck is suggesting and tells him to not go there. The entire tone of this scene starts to shift.

Buck is apologizing for not being there for not being there for Chris or Eddie. How he was so selfish for focusing on the lawsuit. Eddie is quick to tell him that they’ve moved passed that. Buck telling him that he hasn’t. How he should have been there. Buck is moving closer towards Eddie. Eddie stays pressed against the counter watching Buck as he speaks.

Eddie and Buck having a light banter about how Buck could have talked some sense into Eddie and stopped him from buying a new truck and Eddie correcting Buck by telling  him he would have suggested a more expensive truck.

Eddie telling Buck that he doesn’t have to beat himself up over the past. Buck in a semi flirty tone says “Why because you would rather do it.” Eddie sightly confused by his comment. Buck states that he knows Eddie is not being honest at the moment. That if therapy wasn’t for Eddie, but the ring was. That Eddie must have wanted to punch Buck.

Eddie stating, he wouldn’t punch Buck because he’s on blood thinners. Buck laughing and getting closer to Eddie and stating “Want to go for the title?” The scene cuts to Buck and Eddie playing a video game with Chris in the middle.

The writers where evil for this scene. This scene should have ended with Buck and Eddie making out. They obviously wanted to. I’m going to say that the only reason they didn’t kiss is because Chris was in the other room.  There is no heterosexual explanation for this scene. It was gay!

Radioactive Truck: Eddie and buck checking on the driver. They are trying get him unpinned. The driver becoming conscious and telling the about the Cobalt 60. Bobby sending Eddie and Buck out of the tunnel.

Buck and Eddie are outside of the tunnel wondering where the nitrogen is. Buck wanting to go back in but receiving orders from Bobby to stay out. Buck being the first one with the nitrogen hose and Eddie right behind him running in to fight the flames.

Eddie approaching Buck and Chimney to say the coast is clear and the fall out will be minimal, Chim pointing out that maybe not for all of them. They all look towards Bobby as he’s being decontaminated.

Hen narrating about pain and how things don’t work out how you plan. Eddie looking at a photo of Chris and Shannon.

The 118 giving Hen a big hug for her welcome back. Eddie and Buck being the most vocal in this hug, They hug again before the alarms go off.

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

So I looked at clips of “Quiet on Set” on Twitter, and oh my god, I wanted to cry when I watched the Drake Bell parts. Seeing a dad break down in tears broke my heart.

Then I went from sad to angry when I saw people spreading misinformation about Drake being a convicted pedophile even though that is very obviously not true. He pleaded guilty to child endangerment all because he texted a 15 year old girl that was obsessed with him and LIED about her age and lied about Drake sending her explicit photos and telling her that she was “hot” when she was 12. Keep in mind that he reached out to her when she was feeling bad on his Instagram, and then she started STALKING his wife’s Facebook pages and trying to blackmail her and harassed her and saved pictures of them.

The investigators did not see any pictures or any text messages of Drake saying some terrible stuff to a 12 year old. The minute he recognized that the girl lying about her age was actually 15, he blocked her, and she didn’t like that. Drake pleaded guilty to child endangerment because he legit felt horrible for texting a 15 year old on Instagram and the possibility of putting her in danger.

If he was on the sex offender registry, he would not be on “Quiet on Set.” If he was a convicted pedophile, then why did he release a music video recently before “Quiet on Set” was released? Why would he still have his Instagram or literally any social media if he was a convicted pedophile? Why are his songs still up on the iTunes Store? Why is he still with his wife and son? Why would his wife still stand by him and let him near their son if he was a convicted pedophile?

Like, c’mon, people, Google is literally free. And you can find the trial where Drake pleaded guilty to child endangerment.

But hey, you can believe anything on the internet, and spread misinformation on the internet and you won’t look like a fool (sarcasm).

The people spreading that misinformation are basically showing the damage that was done because of someone lying about their age and lying about being groomed by someone. Worst part is that Drake Bell himself IS a victim of grooming and rape at the age of 15.

Imagine being Drake Bell right now, being a victim of grooming and sexual assault as a child star, then decades later, you get lumped into the same category as the predator that has hurt you, over and over again, and now you have the reputation of being a creep who groomed a 12 year old all because of an obsessed fan who lied about their age and stalked him and his wife.

I can tell you right now that if the genders were reversed with an obsessed boy stalking a woman, the boy will look guilty and creepy for stalking said woman. But nope, the girl is completely innocent despite stalking someone’s wife because they’re obsessed with this man, lied about their age, and lied about something very heinous just because the man refused to leave his wife (a legal adult) for a 15 year old. Very innocent (more sarcasm).

Sources: https://www.nbcchicago.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/drake-bell-addresses-reckless-and-irresponsible-texts-to-minor/2615606/

https://youtu.be/ez7oFH8wbjI?si=gfflK5jvb5Rpsacm

This link is not a source related to Drake Bell, but this Redditor in this discussion where I found credible sources was legitimately confused as to why Drake pleaded guilty to child endangerment: https://www.reddit.com/r/AfterTheLoop/comments/1aw8pwc/drake_bell_and_his_pedophilia_charges_remaining/

.

[saleintothe90s]

500. The 1984 Olympics Sports Illustrated Preview Issue (July 18, 1984) part 2

(part 1)

Aw, not Mary Decker. I briefly brought her up in a favorite commercial post when I brought up the Randy Newman/Nike "I love LA" commercial that aired during the Olympics. Um, she did not have a good Olympics.

Rhythmic Gymnastics made their debut at the 1984 Olympics. Here is a clip of winner Lori Fung with the ribbon. It always ticks me off when men say that this sport should be removed from the Olympics because they simply don't understand it. Looks like the ladies back then didn't do the towel toss in anger thingy they do today though

Ok, so this shows how uncultured I was a kid. Dorina the Italian fencer was on the cover of the handbook that was inside the magazine. I knew there was something called "foil fencing" as a kid, and I thought this was it: Dorina was making marks against a foil wall and they judged that.

So this is amazing, the previous owner wrote who medaled on every.single.event. At first I imagined the original owner watching every single event on tv, but then I realized they probably just got the results in the newspaper the following day.

aw, a long lost relative of Yusuf Dikec!

The population of Iliamma was 108 at the last Census in 2020. Google Street View has not visited Iliamma.

Woaaah you guys, Holiday Inn had Zoom back in 1984!

Ok, I don't remember what I did last week, but I remember this Culligan ad! I don't know what math problem my superfan was attempting in the corner.

Ok, this is it. This is the ~*thing*~. Lil ten year old me saw this ad and wanted these phones immediately. Mom and I went to the thrift stores on the regular back then and I was always in search of these phones. According to a post on reddit, the actual phone was $175, and the sculptures were over $100 each. [archive] On eBay, I see a lot of the actual phone with the 1984 logo on the plate, but only the discus statue on eBay right now. /edit/ I found the torch runners! Their torch broke!

(eBay seller thriftyshopper96)

Woah, this description of Kristiina Lillak's (a Finnish javelin thrower) Finnish massage is almost seggsual.

She had an amazing head of 80s hair.

Ok, when I see 1984 Olympics tapes on eBay or on Matt McCarthy's TikTok eight out of ten times its on a TDK tape! My copies I have in my chest of drawers are TDKs.

This photo always disturbed me. (Willie DeWit, Canadian boxer who won a silver medal)

Rod Stewart and Canada Dry Ginger Ale, it goes together like wood and soup.

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[daydreamycrustacean]

i just found this old scorpy clip from the frogger streams saved on my google photos.....

i think its because i wanted to make an animatic out of wayne´s anguished screams.

[toucansfull]

My friend Carrot and I once did a “trivia hunt” contest - looking for the weirdest, most obscure fun facts about the server and members as possible.

So these aren’t necessarily backstory facts, but here’s tons of Hermit fun facts I know. I can provide sources for like 99% of these if I try.

Below the cut because there is a LOT.

There’s an official Hermitcraft theme song

Jono, who makes music for some hermits (including about ALL of Grian’s timelapse music) is Ren’s brother

“Xisuma” is Music with an x instead of a c and an a at the end (Music -> Musix -> Amusix -> Xisuma)

X is ripped

X has dyspraxia

X and Joe are the only hermits to have part of season 1 and never gone inactive - they’ve never Not been hermits, ever.

We all know X counts his episodes by total instead of by season but he actually skipped Episode 404 because of Error 404 Webpage not found

Etho had a block made in his honour in an April Fool’s update called the Etho Slab

There’s a solid chance Etho has never paid for Minecraft ever (he seemingly has no cam account and got MC before it cost money)

Scar was a really good swimmer when he was younger and was notably good at the butterfly

Doc is the current oldest hermit (45)

All Team STAR skins were references to Team Fortess 2 characters

Scar’s cat, Jellie, was named Jellie after she tried to maul hospital jello

Ren was born in the same city as J.R.R. Tolkien

Cub is from Chicago and “Cubfan” is a reference to the Cubs baseball team.

Grian has a biology degree

Scar’s skin and Youtube profile picture is Indiana Jones. His PFP was made by ZloyXP, the Hermit Recap writer.

Scar’s an artist and not only owns multiple art books that he consults for ideas, not only draws all his builds beforehand, but is a really skilled oil painter.

Bdubs is also an artist and is stellar. 

Scar’s “default” build is a tree.

Scar’s IGN is GoodTIMEWithScar instead of GoodTIMESWithScar because of the 9-character limit in Minecraft gamertags. He says this is because his channel is multiple games = multiple good times but Minecraft is one game so it’s only one good time. His cam account - despite being only 8 characters where he could’ve had the s is “BadTimeWithScar” and was called “RocketRodRyan” until 2017 (Ryan being Scar’s real name).

Similarly, Grian’s cam account, TwoMuchGrian, was originally “The_Grifter”. This can be seen in earlier seasons.

Scar’s Mayoral skin was the mayor from the Power Puff Girls. Scar does not know what the power puff girls is.

Grian has anxiety & panic attacks and mentions it sometimes on his instagram.

also grians cat pearl looks like a MUPPET

Grian once handwrote, signed, stamped, and wax-sealed a letter to deliver to Iskall’s real life house to invite him to join the Architechs.

There’s a fan term called The Grian Effect where hermits get spikes in their subcounts after collaborating with Grian.

There’s a several year old clip out there of Grian calling Jimmy a gorgeous and handsome man. Legend says he never complimented Jimmy ever again

In Last Life, Scar would be an evil little swindling scallywag and then edit those scenes out of his own videos. You’d only know the screwed up things he was doing if you watched other peoples’ videos. This is my favorite fact.

As mentioned, Xisuma started YouTube because he was inspired by Etho. He also looked up to Doc.

Season 8 was canonically a simulation.

Mumbo holds shift with his thumb (tbf I also do)

Impulse plays with an inverted mouse

Cleo was a teacher

Mumbo’s got a dog named Kubo. The Daily Mail newspaper used a photo of Kubo, among other dogs from Google, in an article talking about brushing dogs.. without his permission.

Ren is left-handed (my friend Carrot says that Mumbo, Jevin, and Imp are all left-handed as well, and Keralis “plays left-handed but I don’t know if he actually is”. I can’t confirm this.)

Bdubs dyed his hair blue once.

“BdoubleO” is a play on his last name (Booko). He worked as a contractor at Booko Brothers Inc. before doing YouTube full time.

Mumbo is allergic to oranges

Mumbo’s real name is Oliver “Oli” BROTHERHOOD. What a last name. In my mind the real reason he didn’t come back in time for the crossover is because having two Olis would be too confusing. He had a build called the Olicopter once as well. Similarly, Grian’s last name is Batchelor. This is ironic, because Grian is married.

Mumbo and Doc are tied for tallest hermits, both 6′5. Grian is tied for shortest with Cleo, both 5′6. Also, allegedly Scar is 6′0 standing??

James Charles is a fan of Mumbo. Pewdiepie once plugged Mumbo for Mayor and it got spammed hard and became like a genuine problem for a bit. 

iirc Scar lives in fucking WASHINGTON

At the same time that Scar had to take a short hiatus because of his health, Jellie became sick and almost died. They recovered at the same time, because they are the real soulmates

All weird hats and items (like Scar’s ears, hardhat, and top hat, or Zedaph’s trophies) in Hermitcraft are actually carved pumpkins.

Scar HATES snakes.

He has two older brothers and we see at least one in an IRL Minecon video.

Famous Birthdays thinks Scar is 40. Nobody knows his real age, but he laughed at this.

Grian’s original name was “Gria”. It was taken on Minecraft, so he added an N. Apparently he still uses Gria when Grian is taken (according to Carrot). 

Also, Grian never actually used the name Xelqua. Nobody’s ever called him Xelqua. It was a placeholder name when he made his YouTube account.

Grian’s name on YouTube got changed to “Sun” for like a day and then changed back. Nobody knows why. Grian does mean sun in some languages, to be fair.

Grian’s cat Maui was a contestant in the Minecraft Cat Poll that Jellie won.

Grian’s favorite color is brown (source: Carrot. Carrot did say that he added on that he doesn’t like picking a favorite because someone will get peeved)

Scar’s is orange, Xisuma’s is “blorange” (blue and orange). Zedaph’s is red, Etho’s is green. Impulse’s is purple. Doc’s is green. Beef’s is blue.

People originally started drawing Zedaph more prominently with sheep features because people kept confusing blonde haired Zed with blonde haired Grian when G first joined.

Tango likes to play hockey and taught his wife how to play as well.

Tango and his wife have been married for 18 years. They met on an online dating website made in 2000 called Eharmony.

Joe had a DND series on YouTube, as well as one about writing Hermitcraft fanfiction. The TSD in his YouTube handle is a reference to an old DND group he was in, Team Snow Day.

Xisuma made VanillaTweaks (which is the modpack the server uses, including features like Silenced nametags, miniblocks, player and mob heads, singleplayer sleep, etc). It’s actually avaliable to the public and you can customize it with features both included in and not included in HC.

Cleo used to write Final Fantasy fanfiction.

Scar’s first ~500 videos were recorded on a Macbook.

Joe’s favorite book is Hitchhiker’s Guide. Also, he owns two pillows with his face on them.

Etho and Cub have the same birthday. So do Grian and Fwhip.

If Bdubs could have any superpower, he’d want Mind Control.

On Mindcrack, Bdubs had the nickname Boo (b double o)

False was Sheriff of hermitcraft once and then got jailed for corruption.

Apparently Etho has the nickname “Ladders” because he always had them on him and preferred them to stairs.

Ren has a degree in journalism and BA in English Literature and can knit.

Bdubs’ red headband in some skins is the HEX code b00100. this is a reference to himself.

Grian did his honeymoon before he and his wife actually got married (iirc because Covid)

After an MCC, Grian bought a lordship title in the UK. He is offically Lord Grian Dreamslayer, after he killed Dream in the tournament.

Tango used to play clarinet. Also, Zedaph almost got arrested by 6 armed police officers and a helicopter while recording a video with a prop gun.

Joe has a degree in US History

Doc killed Dinnerbone in UHC and then Dinnerbone took his arm to nerf him and there was a bug fix mentioned in a snapshot that said “Remove ‘docm77’ mob as it is not working as intended”. This is the origin of Doc’s cyborg arm.

Pungence (a former hermit and Bdubs’ brother) originally went by “AssyrianAssassin”. His Minecraft skin matches Bdubs’ original.

Speaking of, Bdubs’ face was not always :D. It used to be :|, then Etho wished for him to get bigger eyes and a bigger smile. The world has never been the same.

Impulse used to have an eyebrow piercing

Hypno named Hermitcraft

Cub ran into Etho in real life at random once, in a store in Canada. He only recognized that it was Etho by his voice.

The Minecraft part of the Stanley Parable was inspired by Hermitcraft.

Tango technically joined Hermitcraft in Season 2.. because Mumbo couldn’t figure out his iron farm design and asked for him to be whitelisted just to help him. He was blacklisted right after.

Etho used to work in a family owned greenhouse business.

Season 1 had to be reset two separate times.

At some point (as in, YEARS AGO) Grian said his favorite pokemon was Dewgong.

Before HC, Scar, Cub, Wels, Ren, Iskall, Python, and Stress were on a server called Kingdomcraft.

etho likes mini wheats

Doc has degrees in electrical engineering, social science, and political science. He also has a PhD in dementia research.

ok so since it's just occurred to me that the fandom is constantly growing and changing and learning, there's some bits of hermit backstory that I know that others might not. hermitfacts coming up:

the server was built as an equal mix of builders and redstoners (and then Joe Hills was added as a WILDCARD to shake things up)

season two only happened because Joe Hills ran a coup

tango is the father of the iron farm, before 1.14 made iron farms easy, your best bet was to ask tango. tango also modded villagers before the villager update

etho invented the etho hopper clock, revolutionised the minecraft let's play, and inspired a lot of the server to play/film

impulse is the guy behind the item sorter, and he is a master of villager manipulation, with his villager breeder being in massive use

bdubs' brother, pungence, joined hermitcraft before he did and played for season one

iskall is behind the vault hunters mod and it's really cool and you should check it out

the way cub built concorp inspired Mojang to update the way villagers work

doc is friends with the Mojang game Devs (even if they took his arm)

Hypno runs the hermitcraft website, even when he's not active on the server

Welsknight came in to defend the others in a rap battle when he was away from the server

Stress runs a fitness channel alongside her Minecraft channel and being a parent

Joe hills used to have a webcomic and do drawing streams - he saw twitch be born, and will likely see twitch die

Scar got his start in call of duty

Joe Hills thought hermitcraft was a scam when he was invited

add your own!

[thiefnessman]

eeby deeby origins

Update: now with image descriptions courtesy of @better-image-descriptions ! TLDR at the end

So basically i was going to make a post explaining eeby deeby, but then I was doing Meme Research and discovered that my previous claim that the elevator eeby deeby meme and the “your dick cold” eeby deeby meme are unrelated is actually false!

So, if you look up eeby deeby you will be taken to this Know Your Meme page, which may confuse you more, and seems completely unrelated. basically the eeby deeby meme documented here was someone editing a comic panel to make a joke about robot penises? the “eeby deeby” here is supposed to be like, robot noises or something.

[Image description: An edited comic panel of a man and a robot. The man says, “Your dick cold.” The robot, from behind him says, “Eeby deeby”. /End ID]

EDIT: it turns out this is a comic of Buck Rogers, which had a TV show in the 70s. The robot here, Twiki, apparently makes an “eeby deeby” noise a lot (usually written out as “bidibidi”). I found a clip of this on youtube here. (thank you to @accumulus​ for this information!)

update 2/13: I think i found the original panel (put link to post here):

[image description: the same comic panel as before, but with the original dialogue. The man says “Good! Hang on tight! Here we go!”. The robot says “Where? To certain doom?”. /end ID]

The current eeby deeby meme originated from this image of a weird elevator display:

[Image description: A picture of an elevator screen saying “Eeby deeby” with an arrow pointing upward. There’s text above the image saying “Where the fuck is this thing taking me”. /End ID]

So i was like “ok these things are unrelated it’s just that they happen to contain the same nonsense phrase”.

But then I tried to find the original post of the elevator image, so I googled “where the fuck is this thing taking me” and got this tweet from 2018:

[ID: The same photo as the second, but the elevator screen says, “uwu” with an arrow pointing upward. /End ID]

This appears to have been its own meme, but I haven’t heard of it before today. Seeing as these photos are identical except for the text display, the eeby deeby image is an edit of the UwU elevator joke. Edit 2/18: There is more to the UwU elevator meme than I have here, and this photo is probably an edit as well, but this post has honestly gotten long enough already so I’m not including much about it, even though I probably should. This post has gotten to the point that several old versions are the more circulated ones (a lot of people are reblogging it without the info about Twiki) so I guess it doesn’t matter.

So I reverse image searched the eeby deeby elevator image: (sidenote: look at what happened when i did:)

[ID: A google reverse image search of the Eeby deeby elevator photo. There is text saying, “Possible related search: grunge photography aesthetic”. /End ID]

And I got some weird results but I found an important result from imgur! Note: as of when I am making this post (Feb 6 2021), the eeby deeby meme only showed up on tumblr like 5 days ago.

[ID: An Imgur post from MetaPathos from 10 days ago showing the Eeby deeby elevator photo.  /End ID]

“MetaPathos... that sounds familiar...”:

[ID: A Know Your Meme article saying, “The earliest known post of the edited comic strip appeared on October 19th, 2019 in an Imgur comment by MetaPathos (shown below). However, this may not be” before cutting off. /End ID]

MetaPathos is, as far as we know, the original poster of the “your dick cold” edit.

Edit 2/18: So, I checked the Know Your Meme page and its comments again, and I saw this comment:

[ID: a screenshot of a comment on a Know Your Meme article. The comment is by user Derpy Vaz, posted on February 13, 2021. The comment reads “user onewallpaperaweek on imgur created the elevator EEBY DEEBY. it was posted on twitter and went viral”. the word twitter is a hyperlink to the twitter post. /end ID]

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know how Imgur works (as in how to properly navigate it and what the site’s culture is, I just know how one would use it to post images on a petsim forum), so I have not been able to find the original eeby deeby elevator post. I did, however, find this post, but it is not by onewallpaperaweek. It’s also newer than one MetaPathos posted, so it’s definitely not the original. I also found these two posts by MetaPathos about the spread of Eeby Deeby, so I suggest checking them out. x x.

Ok that’s cool and all but what the fuck is the eeby deeby meme on tumblr?

Good question! I don’t really know how to find out where the jokes about eeby deeby started because tumblr’s search function sucks eggs, but a reblog of what appears to be the first time eeby deeby elevator was posted on tumblr (Feb 1 2021) that combines “you are going to brazil” with eeby deeby was posted on Feb 2 2021:

[ID: A tumblr post by @the-jade-palace. Attached is an image of a person on fire falling through a fiery tube. There’s text over it saying, “You are going to eeby deeby”.  /End ID] EDIT: In an earlier version of this post, I said that this was related to the superhell meme, but upon Further Research it’s most likely more closely related to “You Are Going To Brazil”. Shoutout to @can-you-maybe-chill’s tags for making me realize this wasn’t in fact the case. Update: @the-jade-palace​ has since confirmed that this was not a superhell joke, but in fact a “You Are Going To Brazil” joke. 

I, and many others, mistook this for a reference to the superhell joke because I had not actually seen the episode or full scene, and had seen this gif posted multiple times in reference to the superhell thing. It is not, in fact, a clip from Supernatural, but a clip from the movie Spawn, which... I don’t know much about but I found the clip of this scene in this youtube video (put link here) and the movie looks rather strange. Seeing as the superhell joke is very popular (because it’s funny) and many people thought this gif was from that scene (I have a lot of people in the tags saying “wait it’s not from supernatural” in response to my first update to this post in which I clarified this), I think this may have contributed to the spread of eeby deeby and the establishment of “eeby deeby” as some sort of place.

There is also this post, which I recall as being the first time I saw eeby deeby outside of the original elevator post:

[ID: A tumblr post by @angryrivaini saying, “imagine getting jumped by a bunch of elevators and you hear one say “take his ass to eeby deeby”. /End ID]

SO TL;DR: eeby deeby originated as a meme about robot dick but then an edited UwU elevator meme made its way onto tumblr and we all lost our minds over A Funny Phrase.

[knightotoc]

I found all the Asimovs on audiobook originally, but I've been slowly collecting the physical books at thrift stores. I prefer the weird old covers to the plain modern ones you can get at B&N, and these old versions often have interesting ads for more books at the end or funny dedications at the front. I half-love and half-hate how mismatched they are, but the excitement of finding a new one outweighs my other feelings.

Prelude: a cracked-binding October 1991 Bantam reissue, with a cheesy cover by Will Cormier of an Edward-Norton-looking Hari Seldon checking into a fabulous pink Trantorian hotel. There is an ad in the middle for a collector's edition of the original Foundation novel with the awesome Michael Whelan cover + a copy of the new and "exclusive" short story Cal (I've read it, it rules, though it's a bit of a clip show). In the back, there is an ad for the upcoming novel Forward the Foundation (the best one but not part of my collection yet), TWO author bios and an adorable author photo. Asimov would die shortly after, in April 1992 :(

Foundation: a 1985 reprint by British publisher Panther Books, with a stunning wraparound cover by Tim White of the Foundation's lonely settlement on Terminus. There is an order form in the back for dozens of classic sci-fi books by multiple authors, with prices marked in pounds. I wonder how this European book crossed the pond to end up at a used book store in California? I'm glad it did, or I never would have heard of Tim White.

Second Foundation: a 1987 12th printing by Del Rey, with the iconic Michael Whelan cover of Arkady Darrel my beloved standing among the ruins of Trantor. This is my favorite cover of them all🥰 There is a long-ish and funny intro by Asimov about this series' complicated publication history, and an ad in the back for the original Foundation trilogy + the first spinoff, Foundation's Edge.

Foundation's Edge: a first-edition 1982 hardback by Doubleday. It is missing the dust jacket, which isn't a huge loss since, according to Google images, it's not that interesting. It does have a funny dedication.

Robots of Dawn: a "Book Club Edition" 1983 hardback by Doubleday. It still has the dust jacket, designed by Kiyoshi Kanai; the cover isn't that special but the jacket does have another great author photo inside. There is also some water damage on the last pages (probably from some Giskard x Daneel fan's tears).

Complete Robot: a "Book Club Edition" 1982 hardback by Doubleday. The wraparound robot-arm dust jacket by Kiyoshi Kanai is simple but cool as hell, and features a great big author photo that fills the whole back cover☺️ There is also a lovely "Last Word" that makes me tear up a bit.

Stars, Like Dust: a 1983 hardback "Book Club Edition" reprint by Doubleday. The dust jacket features nice wraparound art by Joe Bergeron. In the afterword, Asimov apologizes for the outdated science of his fictional lifeless world's atmospheric composition, since the book was first published in 1950. He doesn't apologize here for the stupid US Constitution subplot that his editor forced him to add, though I know from other sources that he really hated that thing.

Gods Themselves: a cracked-binding paperback by Fawcett Crest, with no date given besides the 1972 copyright. The cover art is absolutely fantastic and bananas; I think it depicts the 3 gender roles of the aliens' marriage, and the 2 worlds colliding. The book doesn't credit the artist, but ISFDB online identifies him as Charles Moll. Thanks Charles Moll👏👏👏

[mxtangent]

Ben Shapiro Writing an Email - an Epic Tale

"Okay, it's one simple email, you can do it Ben, your wife is a doctor." Ben said as he bagan to type in his Thinkpad X270 laptop.

To whom it may offend,

"Ah no!" Exclaimed Ben, "it's reads as way too desperate..." Ben attempted to mash the backspace button to erase his numerous mistakes, but accidentally backed out of the Gmail website all the way back to a YouTube video named "Ben Shapiro DISINTEGRATES snowflake until they're REDUCED TO MERE ATOMS with his PARTICAL EXALERATOR POWERD RAYGUN." He briefly paused to wonder how many pages back he went, trying to decipher when in the last 18 hours he saw the video before him, as he spent all of them seeing clips of himself to gather up the confidence to write an email.

After 4 more hours of procrastinating on YouTube, Ben finally got back to writing the email

Dear liberals,

If I'm wrong about something, then why does my doctor say my brain is so big? Attached is factual proof from a doctor, (not my wife, which is also a doctor) and as you would agree that facts and logic don't care about your feelings, you will no longer be able to deny that I am extremely intelligent.

Sincerely,

Ben Shapiro, MD('s husband)

He began looking through the files of his old laptop, it taking hours to load each folder, the computer seemingly begging for mercy as each it loads more and more folder filled to the brim with clips of the times Ben was victorious in debates with young collage students. Finally, he found what he was looking for in a folder filled with different photos of Andrew Niel with badly scribbled edits mocking him.

"I should really get to organizing my files by the dwey decimal system sometime soon..." He paused for a second "But not now. Now is the time to destroy those peaky snowflakes once and for all."

Ben dragged a scanned PDF of a diagnosis for a cancerous brain tumor he got a few days back from a medical professional into Internet Explorer, and after the browser opened the PDF instead of attaching it, and Ben going back and rewriting the email, (not aware of the draft folder) he finally wrote the recipient: liberals@gmail.com.

Shapiro hit the send button with great enthusiasm, not before CCing his doctor wife who is a doctor so she could be proud of him for finally sending an email. But he immediately got a response. The email bounced. He didn't understand, the liberals must have a shared email address, otherwise how would they plan their agenda on a Google Docs? He was devistated, crying on the floor in a fetal position. He tried to get back up, but couldn't. Ben started to feel weird, like the world was made of jelly. He couldn't move. His vision going black.

The next day, Fox News held a segment about the recent passing of renouned internet celebraty Ben Shapiro, who died after an intercontinental ballistic tweet sent by the liberal snowflakes has inflicted him with cancel culture. (aka terminal brain cancer)

It is said (by Alex Jones) that the whole nation wept that day. But some whisper of a dark street corner where cheers could be heard. In that street corner, a local folk legend claims, lays the remains of a bus.

[doublerainebow]

Artist Resources (Part 1?)

This is basically just going to be a bunch of resources I have found to be useful. I can’t say that I’ve used all of them, but I’m sure they’re all worth checking out.

I’m also gonna try to put a detailed description for most of the links so you have a better idea of what you’re getting. I apologize in advance if some of them are redundant lol

(I put “Part 1″ if in the case I make another one)

~Links to Tutorials, Tips, Resources, etc~

Another Resource List -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Apparently, the post isn’t mobile-friendly, so it’s suggested to view this on Tumblr browser. Has a bunch of other links. I’ve checked out a few of them (mainly the copyright stuff lol), and it seems that some of the links may be a bit outdated. Still, it doesn’t hurt to check out the links.

Arms and Legs -- Leads to another Tumblr post. A handy tutorial on elbow and knee placement.

Art & Game Dev -- This leads to my personal playlist of a bunch of YouTube videos. Has a bunch of tutorials and interesting videos that I’ve collected over the course of a few years lol.

Blamblot -- A website that contains resources and tutorials on comic lettering. This is primarily in reference to western comics, but it doesn’t help to take a looksie.

Commission Calculator -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Helps artists to stop selling themselves short.

Comparing Heights (hikaku-sitatter) -- A height comparer for centimeters.

Comparing Heights -- A height comparer for feet and inches.

Mouth Shapes and Lip-Syncing -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Useful for... drawing mouth shapes.

Reference Angle -- Useful for when you’re trying to map out a face from an odd angle.

Soft Proofing for Printing -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Helps when you’re trying to make prints of your artwork.

Textures -- A website full of different and mostly free textures. While this website is made for 3D texturing, it can also be useful for 2D drawings. Signing up gives you 15 free credits everyday, and you can use those credits to download some textures for free.

The Models Resource -- A website of models ripped from a wide array of games.

The Spriters Resource -- A website of sprites ripped from a wide array of games.

The Textures Resource -- A websites of textures ripped from a wide array of games. 

~Links to Stock Images~

Please check out whatever policies they may have for their images before using them!

(not sure if any of them are active anymore as I followed some of these accounts a long time ago when I used to be more active on Deviant Art lol)

adorkastock (formerly senshistock)

anatoref -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Has a bunch of hand photo references

charligal-stock

HumanAnatomy4Artist -- Does contain nudity

null-entity

PhelanDavion

RobynRose

~Links to Other Artists~

Akihito Yoshitomi -- Yoshitomi is a mangaka who has tutorials on manga making. He also has an insightful series in which he drafts and draws a 30-page manga in 18 days. Remember that every artist works differently and his process may be different from another’s.

Drawfee -- Drawfee is an improv drawing show of four artists: Nathan Yaffe, Jacob Andrews, Julia Lepetit, and Karina Farek. While they don’t have tutorials in a sense, their videos explain the different processes they go through as they draw. They also occasionally provide tips, tricks, and resources in their videos. They do have another channel and a Twitch channel where they host drawing classes in addition to other fun shenanigans.

EtheringtonBrothers -- Has a bunch of useful and eye-catching tutorials called “How to Think When You Draw”.

Mark Crilley -- Mark is a comic artist, specializing in manga, who has a bunch of tutorials about anatomy, perspective, comic making, and other things.

Miyuli -- Miyuli is an artist who posts tutorials on their Twitter. Their tutorials range from anatomy to clothing to other things. They even have a few books of art tips. Currently (as of the time of posting this), their 2018 version is free for download, so I highly recommend you download that. Some tips may be outdated, but they should still be helpful.

Whyt Manga (Twitter/YouTube) -- Odunze is a comic artist, specializing in manga, that has a bunch of tutorials on manga making and drawing characters of color.

~Links to Free Programs~

Blender -- A free 3D program if you’re into 3D modeling and such. I also personally haven’t used Blender (I use Maya lol), but I know it’s a respectable program.

Krita -- A free painting program if you can’t afford Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. I personally haven’t used Krita, but I have recommended it to a few friends and they have positive reviews about it.

Paint Tool SAI -- Okay, this one isn’t free, but it’s a significantly cheaper painting program where you don’t have to pay a subscription. It’s 5,500JPY (~50 USD). I’m not sure how well it still works on modern computers (the last update was 2016), but I still use it here and there because I love the pen tool feature it has, and it still works like a charm for me.

~General Tips From Raine~

Raine admits that she’s guilty of not following her own advice, but Raine hopes that the tips that she does know will be beneficial to someone who will follow them. She’s also going to keep all her tips under the cut so as to not make this post a huge wall of text (even though it technically already is lol)

Also, if you have some resources, tutorials, tips yourself, please feel free to send them to me and maybe I’ll make a part 2 to this post!

ALWAYS LOOK FOR REFERENCE. This should really go without saying. You can’t draw from life if you refuse to observe life itself.

If you can’t find the exact thing you need, MAKE YOUR OWN REFERENCE. Time and time again, I can’t find something exactly that I need. So instead, what I do is that I take pictures of my own reference. Sometimes I even grab a friend and take pictures of them doing whatever it is I need.

Have a mirror handy when you’re drawing. Sometimes what you need is actually right there in front of you.

Having trouble drawing something? Do some studies. Take the time to understand what it is you’re drawing. I can’t remember the exact story, but I heard that the people who were working on Tarzan were having a hard time drawing his hands. So, what they did was spend a few hours looking at hands to try and understand how they work.

IT’S OKAY TO STUDY THE ART OF OTHER ARTISTS. Just as we look to the old masters as a reference, it’s definitely okay to look at modern-day artists for reference. Just don’t go copying exactly everything that they do, or worse, trace what they do. Just don’t do it... at all.

Not every line needs to be realized. The viewer of your work will automatically connect the dots.

DO NOT TRASH YOUR OLD DRAWINGS. Please, never ever do this. Your old drawings have value to them, even if they look terrible to you. Old drawings may hold ideas for things you could do for the future. They also serve as a way to see how far you’ve come as an artist.

GETTING BETTER AT DRAWING TAKES TIME AND EFFORT. You’re not gonna get better overnight. It’ll take months, or even years, to feel like you’re a competent artist, and even then, you’ll still have room for improvement.

DON’T LOOK DOWN ON YOURSELF IF YOU’RE TAKING A LONG TIME TO GET BETTER. It’ll be better for your mental health in the long run.

Alternatively, DON'T LOOK DOWN ON OTHER ARTISTS EITHER, ESPECIALLY TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER. You know the struggles it took for you to get where you are, so don’t go putting down other people when you’ve been in their shoes once.

KEEP DRAWING. If you’re not making an effort to get better, then you’re not going to be better. I get that it’s hard to find the inspiration to draw (I’m very guilty of this), but just keep trying. It doesn’t have to be big or spectacular. You don’t even have to post it if you’re the type who likes to post their art stuff.

Try to find references from real-life. It’ll help you better understand form, lighting, shadows, etc., especially if you’re going for a more realistic kind of art style. Otherwise, finding reference from things like cartoons, anime, comics, etc. are just as good.

Try new things. Try new art mediums. Try a different art style. Switch up the way you do things. Maybe you’ll hate it, maybe you’ll like it. Who knows if you don’t try.

Watch time-lapses (or speed draws/speed paints) of other artists!

Pinterest and Google are your friends if you need tutorials or references or whatever.

If you’re offering commissions, DO NOT WORK UNDER YOUR LOCAL MINIMUM WAGE. You are literally devaluing the work you actually put into a piece.

I like to think I’m an aficionado of Photoshop, so feel free to ask me questions on how to achieve something! I’ve used Photoshop for about 11 years now and know my way around the program. On another note, I do recommend setting custom keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop because the default shortcuts are terrible (in my opinion), and because having custom shortcuts increases the speed of your workflow.

Because I’ve been seeing this a lot lately in Twitter, you’re never too old to start in art. Art is just one of those things that anyone can pick up at any age because the only thing you really need to get good in art is time, diligence, and patience.

Try not to post hi-res images of your artwork to prevent art stealers from selling your artwork in high resolution.

Always, always, always add your signature and watermark on your artwork. I like to add my signatures and watermarks in places that’ll be hard to erase or crop out. I’ve also seen people add their signatures and watermarks in creative ways (ex. on a character’s shirt). You need to protect your work in an era where people will just blatantly steal it and make profit off your work.

Tag List

@reality-is-often-disappointing

[docheros]

the box

Jameson found an old box on his wardrobe, what could be inside? // JJ centric, comments appreciated!!

word counting: 370

A/N: this was from egotober but i gave up on it so.... as you can see it was from the prompt “box”! ao3 link on reblog :D

≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡

It was a sunny afternoon and Jameson was alone in the house, with nothing to do, and that bored him. Like, bored a lot. Seeing some birds fly out the window, he was reminded of his wardrobe, which needed urgent organization. If he wasn't doing anything, he could use that time for something useful, right? With that thought, he got up from the couch and headed to his room.

As soon as someone opened the door to the room, the wardrobe was the first thing they saw; giant, omnipotent, all made of wood, one of those really old styles; if everyone tried to move it from the place, it was able to continue standing there. JJ liked it that way.

He opened the door on the left, where the hangers were, and began to rummage through it. Several jackets received him, and Jackson separated them: he threw on the floor what would go to the trash, threw on the bed what he would donate, left the ones he would like to keep. In the end, it didn't change much. Before he closed it and moved to the side of the drawers, he noticed a black box at the bottom.

Curious, he picked it up and opened the lid; it had several small notebooks, some resembling albums. He sat down in his chair, putting the box on his lap and opening one of them. And suddenly, it was as if he had taken a trip into the past: lots of pictures of himself, newspaper clippings he appeared in, pictures of places he had passed alone or with his friends; small photos, large photos, flat photos and long photos, all in black and white. JJ took one of the notebooks, and on its front page it said "February 24, 1930…", detailing his day as well as all the other pages present.

Jameson was impressed, stunned, and scared! How did he have a box of albums and diaries if he never had a camera and was always illiterate? How had newspaper clippings and tickets to movies he had appeared in, if being an actor was just a childhood dream?

And how… did he have a full life if he had died at 17?

≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡ ≡≡≡≡≡

i’m sorry any errors, english is my second language and i use google translator for my fanfics

the “created/changed pasts for the egos” thing was inspired by the thing @florenceisfalling did on their lore, which i just see a post about it and went “neat” 💀

free to imagine what happened and why this box is here because i don’t have answers lmao

tagging @glass-trash-bab and @intothebutterflyburrow and @the-pastel-kitsune and @theprinceofflies :]

[ka-writes]

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Notes: I had already started on the second chapter before I posted the first one, so don’t expect updates every day... I also had to do a lot of googling for this chapter.

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Chapter 1 in case you missed it:

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Inspired by:

Humans are Space Velociraptors

By:FreshRoses_InMyGarden_NeedTheRain

Some kids come from storks, others come from crashed spaceships

By: mmmajora

Home Again, Home Again

By: teeth_eater

All works can be found on Ao3

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Warnings: Cussing, needles, character conflicts, intentional poisoning, poisoning, Jaws reference

——————

“Humans are [and text here]”

Chapter 2: What is this, an interview?

Tommy was now restrained to a chair six feet away from the weird scientist alien. He had a dark brown lab coat with a fuzzy yellow sweater underneath, matched with black pants and black leather boots. His gold rimmed Harry Potter glasses slipped down his nose bridge a bit before he pushed it up and shuffled through papers. He wore a red beanie with a big whiff of his curly chocolate hair. His skin was a weird translucent grayish color with blue speckles decorating it. He had deep brown eyes with an odd electric blue circle outlining the pupil.

His tongue licked his finger as he turned the page. This was a habit that most of the weird teachers and counselors did. It always annoyed Tommy. This time fear was also mixed into that annoyance. His saliva was tinted blue and he had sharp teeth which immediately reminded him of a shark.

“You have shark teeth.” Tommy stated absentmindedly. Clearly, this caught the scientist alien off guard.

“I have what?” The alien asked, confused.

“Shark teeth.. ya know like the weird fish creatures that eat people.” Tommy started rambling causing the shark-alien to become even more confused and slightly alarmed. “I mean I think they eat people. That’s what the shark movie showed… what was its name, Jaws I think? I dunno, my foster mom freaked out in the middle of it and we went home. That lady was weird.. She made us wear itchy clothes and take weird photos before she sent me back to the group home.”

“What?..” The shark-alien asked. Tommy jumped a bit. He forgot he was rambling to a stranger. Alien stranger at that.

“Doesn’t matter.. What's the first question bitch-boy?” Tommy liked the way the alien jumped at the randomly timed insults.

“Er- right.. First off, what’s your name?” The shark-alien asked after collecting himself.

“Tommy Innit. Yours bitch-boy?” Tommy replied.

“Wilbur Soot. Stop calling me bitch-boy!” Wilbur huffed.

“Next question, bitch-boy!” Tommy emphasized the name, getting an even angrier expression in return. Wilbur’s weird blue circle flashed red for a second which caught Tommy off guard.

Wilbur took a shaky breath before asking the next question. “How old are you?”

“Old enough! I am a big man!” Tommy stated. Yet another thing that pissed him off.

“Age?” Wilbur asked, clearly irritated.

“18.” Wilbur raised a brow, “14.” Tommy huffed. His age should only be his business not some alien-bitch who didn’t even have his file.

“If you keep lying, I may have to get the truth serum from the back.” Wilbur half-heartedly threatened. Tommy, the big man that he is, did not get scared at that statement, only slightly unsettled which clearly showed on his face.

“Now, do you have a family?” Tommy tensed at the question. It was a touchy question and was not one that was asked often especially with his reputation.

“I am a big man. I don’t need a family to be great.” Tommy stated, happy with the answer. The alien-bitch shifted awkwardly.

“Right… What is your diet?”

“Umm.. I dunno, whatever I can find. I am allergic to nuts though..” Wilbur nodded in understanding and wrote things down in his notepad.

“What plants are poisonous to you?” Wilbur asked without looking up from his notes.

“Ermm, poison Ivy, poison oak… uh I think parts of rhubarb, and most wild berries. I am not sure other than that.” Wilbur nodded while adding bits to his notes.

“What was the place you lived like?” This time Wilbur glanced up to look at Tommy. This was again another touchy subject… How many times would this alien bitch get into the sad background?

“Shitty.” Tommy snapped. That was the only response the bitch was gonna get.

“Right.. Do you have music on Earth?”

Tommy scoffed, “Of course we have music, dumbass!”

“Can you tell me about the animals there?” Wilbur asked, almost hopeful.. which was weird. What was he hoping for?

“Erm I guess..” Tommy mumbled, trying to figure out where to start, “There’s a bunch of animals. Mainly on land. My favorite would be the cow.”

“What’s that?” Curiosity stained Wilbur’s face. This got Tommy excited; he was practically beaming as he started talking.

“Well they are these big ruminants that make milk and have horns. There are a bunch of types too like the highland cow, which obviously is the most poggers one. They are a Scottish breed with really long hair. I met one once, on a field trip his name was Henry.” Tommy rambled on for the next two and a half hours, jumping from topic to topic and explaining anything that wasn’t personal. He usually ended those paths with short insults.

——————

Wilbur hated to stop the kids' detailed story, but two and a half celestial hours had already passed, and Dream would be coming to check soon. Luckily, he had a couple new poisons that could pass off as a research development. He had even managed to send the distressed signal and no doubt Phil would already be there with the SBI craft ready to fly at any given moment.

“Alright Tommy.” His voice dropped to a serious tone causing the kid to stop his story of how he got poisoned by mushrooms on a camping trip. “You’re gonna have to trust me just for a bit. I am going to get you off the ship at the next stop but in the meantime I need you to tell me how allergic you’re to nuts.” The kid immediately tensed at the question.

“I am mainly allergic to tree nuts.. almonds being the worst. After a few minutes I can’t breathe properly and I usually pass out. The doctor said if I don’t get it treated within 15 minutes, death is most likely.” He took a moment to go through the information. The kid most likely has an anaphylaxis reaction to tree nuts. Meaning either he would have to know the exact time of landing and exactly where Phil was or he needed another poison that was less severe.

“Alright, here is what we’re gonna do. I have a chemical mixture that is similar to that of rattlesnake venom. I also have a chemical substance that numbs any pain you may feel. Side effects would include being very very tired and delirious over the next few days. Along with being knocked out for a good ten hours. To put it simply I am gonna fake poison you, in order to get you off the ship. It’s your choice if you’re willing to do it.” Wilbur paused to study the kid still restrained in front of him. It was odd how relaxed the kid seemed to be in a situation like this. He had no urge as far as Wilbur was aware, to fight against anything that happened. His complaints only being those that touched on personal matters. It was unsettling to say the least, and intrigued Wilbur. He really wanted to unravel the life the kid had lived before this and how he was actually dealing with the situation.

There was a long pause before the kid spoke, “I wouldn’t mind getting away from the weird smiley bitch.. plus you seem nice and to know what you’re doing so sure. Poison me bitch.” He said the last sentence with an enthusiasm Wilbur wasn’t expecting. He took a moment to rethink his plan, which was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Dream says you better have advanced in your stupid testing. Otherwise he’s gonna kick you off the ship at the next stop.” Stated the rather rude blazeling, Sapnap. The blazeling never liked Wilbur and made a point to argue against any advancements at meals. That led to Dream installing a new system of emails and Wilbur eating meals alone.

“Yea yea, it’s going!” He yelled through the metal door.

“Better be.” The blazeling snapped before making a non quiet track back to his quarters.

“Stupid blazeling.” Wilbur grumbled as he sorted through vials and picked up new needles and measured out the substances. “We are going to start with the anesthetic then move onto the poison.” He softly addressed Tommy.

Wilbur swiftly disinfected Tommy’s shoulder and gave the needle. He then gave the second needle. Immediately Tommy slumped over. Wilbur swiftly took off Tommy’s restraints and moved him on to the patient bed in the back corner of the room. After the transfer was done he clipped the body restraints around Tommy and waited for the alert signaling landing.

After about five minutes the light next to the door turned blue. He moved over to his seat and clipped on the safety belts. The light turned green and the ship shook momentarily before a thud could be felt. Quickly as Wilbur could, he emptied the needles into the waste bin and waited for his soon-to-be-ex-boss to arrive.

Dream stepped through the door and glanced around the room before heading to Wilbur for his report.

“Report.” The dreamon commanded.

“The subject's body would have gone through a painfully slow death and have multiple organ failures if I did not intervene. The chemical mixes used created a conflict in the patient’s body which resulted in the patient falling into exhaustion as they recovered.” He responded in a monotone tone. Dream looked over Tommy. He flinched back in disgust as Tommy grunted in his sleep.

“Is that all?” The dreamon questioned.

“No.” Wilbur swallowed down his panic, “This is the last testing I will be doing with this crew.” The dreamon scoffed.

“I am assuming you’re getting off at this planet?” Dream spit. Wilbur knew he absolutely hated when people left his crew as he saw it as a direct violation of his loyalty.

“Yes.” The phantom stated, keeping his even tone apparent. With that Dream stormed out cursing in Siestian. Somewhere in the mess of words he told Wilbur to get his things.

Without hesitation he grabbed his bag from his quarters, which was held in a small room that branches off the lab. He half sprinted down the short hallway and straight to the bed Tommy was on. He swiftly unrestrained the human and sat him up. He slipped on boots and gloves then tied a cloak around the kid. He pulled the hood up and carried him off of the closest exit. There were faint yells from Dream down the hallway and reassurances from the only two beings that put up with him. And with that Wilbur was off to find the only craft he had ever called home. The SBI ship.

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Chapter 2- End

Words~ 1774

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End Notes: ‘‘twas to lazy to reread... sorry for minor mistakes. Also suggestions are always appreciated!! Please reblog...

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Chapter 3:

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Wilbur:

[lindstromm]

Simplified Bookbinding:  Font and Text Ornaments

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

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

2. Create the text block.

3. Create the case.

4. Attach the case to the text block.

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

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

Formatting tips and pics under the cut.

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

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

Page Setup in Word

1. Open a new document.

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

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

The Intro Pages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Story Text Pages

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

1. Open a new Word document.

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

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

4. Insert page numbers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you done with chapter headings? Moving on!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Printing

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

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

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

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

[jcisthebestfightme]

BJYX Food Blog

Ahhhhhh I love food so much!!!! hahahaha So I decided to record down all the times food show how much they love each other. This is mostly just for me. Since this is a “food blog”, instead of “evidence” which you can find elsewhere in other people’s analysis posts, I will instead include yummy photos of food. Will continue to update this list. 

Disclaimer: All fanfiction. 

1) Pancake - I talked about this in detail here. In summary, dd is bragging about how “homey” he is that he can make pancake. The recipe uses butter, something only people that bake in China will have. Gg likes to bake cookies (even sugar-free one, haha gg is more detail-orientated and health conscious than me) and bread. Apparently gg also loves cheese and dd mentioned that his pancake has cheese.

2) Love on the Rocks or Love’s Water - This supper famous drink in China’s Starbucks is actually black currant juice + raspberry juice + black tea. You can make it easily at home (it’s not available in U.S. Starbucks). Because of BJYX, you can order it as “Love’s Water” directly at Starbucks in Chinese (Yes, Starbucks knows about them.) Why is it call Love’s Water? It’s red, the color of love while also sweet and sour. Also, it’s actually gg’s favorite drink at Starbucks. You can often seen him drinking it during the filming of the Untamed. What about dd? It’s been mention by gg that dd only drinks water. However, during Untamed filming, dd can also be seen drinking Love’s Water from Starbucks. Does love change a person’s preference in drinks?

3) Green tea - We’ve all seen the BTS where they share green tea from the same bottle, twice. However, what’s even more interesting is that dd kept the preference of drinking green tea even after filming. Fans have caught dd drinking green tea during ttxs taping and there are pictures of bottle of green tea in his van. He’s also mention liking green tea with dls on ttxs.

4) Hot pot

a. Soup - Gg used to say because he’s from Chongqing, he likes spicy hotpot. However, after 2018, he mentioned that he now like twin-sided pot (half spicy, half not). Is he sharing a pot with someone who doesn’t eat spicy food that much? In clips from early 2018, we see dd not being able to handle spicy food. However, in 2020, we see him ordering a completely spicy soup base (him being the only one out of the 4 people to do so). What changed for both of them?

b. Sauce - In Chongqing where gg is from, you eat hotpot with a spicy oil sauce. Gg used to say that was what he preferred. However, in an interview, he picked sesame sauce over the spicy oil sauce. He also mentions that he loves the sauce with sweet garlic. If you go back to old video of dd, he has always love sesame sauce with garlic. He also mentioned in ttysj earlier this year that he loves hot pot with sesame sauce with sweet garlic. However, in j5, we see him eating his hot pot with spicy oil sauce. What happened? Are they trying to become each other?

Edit - dd was asked recently why he changed from his sesame sauce to spicy oil sauce and he said “I learned it from a friend I met from filming.” And he said it’s because it makes the hot pot less spicy, and most important, the flavor suits him.

c. Dried yamakurage - Ngl, I’ve never heard of this vegetable before today. Many people from different parts of China was in the same boat. Google search told me that it’s a vegetable they like to add in hot pot in Chongqing. Dd mentioned in ttxs that he likes this vegetable. In j5, you can also find this vegetable on the table.

d. “Treasure in the palm” - What is that? Ya, I had no idea either until dd ordered it for his hotpot. (Many other Chinese audience on WB also has never heard of it.) Apparently it’s the ligament in the middle of a chicken’s claw. I did some Google research and it seems like it’s mostly eaten bbq style or stir fry. So I searched “掌中宝” + hotpot and got the result that it’s eaten in hotpot in....drumroll....Chongqing! (Yes, where gg is from.) So ya......

e. Cow stomach - Another thing dd ordered. This time, this is something dd has always like to eat and has said it since 2017. However, it’s gg that mentioned in an interview that he also like to eat this for his hot pot now. Previously, when asked what his favorite hot pot meat is, he said “beef.” Maybe he just suddenly change his mood?

I just found these amazing videos from this Youtube Channel about Szechuan (around the area gg is from) hotpot so check them out for more information.

5) Zongzi - Where gg is from (southern China), we’re use to eating savory Zongzi with meat, peanuts, eggs, etc inside. But where dd is from (northern China), they think zongzi should be sweet with red bean, etc.. During an interview when ask to pick between sweet vs savory zongzi, gg immediately picked savory. However, dd wavered and then picked savory at the end. 

6) Eggplant - Gg said that he eats anything except eggplant because he once threw up when he was younger eating eggplant and it left a trauma on him. Unfortunately for him, the prepared food during CQL had a lot of eggplant because it was in season where they were filming. The actor of LXC during a livestream also mentioned that gg doesn’t like to eat eggplant. Then he followed up by saying that dd loves to eat eggplant. But if you watch ttxs, none of the host ever mentions dd likes eggplant (they constantly mention that he loves cilantro, durian, snail rice noodles, etc.). Also in an episode when there was eggplant, dd didn’t actively try to eat some. So maybe during their filming time, someone doesn’t like to eat eggplant and gave theirs to another person, causing LXC’s confusion?

From my own opinion, I think gg is the type of person that values food a lot. You can see him craving certain food and be very picky about the type of food he likes to eat. He also knows how to cook well so his standard for good food is high. I think dd is the type of person that likes food but isn’t super picky of the type of food he eats, as long as it’s good, he’s happy. So he’s more likely to just enjoy the same food that gg likes because that will make both of them happy. I don’t think either of them purposefully change their food preference for each other but more that your food habit changes naturally when you spend a lot time with another person. 

7. Cough Drop

When watching Street Dancing, there was a clip of all the team leaders sitting down watching and dd pulled out a “candy.” The leader next to him asked him if he was eating candy and he pulled out a pack and shared it with others. He even reached over to make sure he shared his candy with everyone. It was such a cute moment and looked like elementary school children sharing snacks. It’s cute and that’s it, right?

Nope, bxg have to live up to the title of “Detective Conan/Sherlock Holmes”. People start digging through old pictures and found one where they saw the same brand “candy”, which was actually cough drops in gg’s back from several years back. The version dd was eating was a “peach flavor version” meant for children. What was interesting is that he ate the peach version himself but shared a different version with others. This was confirm by the company that made the cough drops. (CPN) It’s possible that he’s savoring the peach ones for himself because gg gave them to him specially.

So gg and dd have the same cough drop. That’s it, right? Nope, more Detective Conan popped out and found several videos of fan-meeting in Thailand when gg was eating a cough drop and dd was coughing. Then gg asked some assistant for the cough drop, yes the same exact brand, and then handed them to dd. You can also see dd have something in this mouth before he went on stage. This tells us that gg has definitely given dd this cough drop before.

But are we sure that the supply of cough drop dd has is from gg? Probably, because of what happen in XGDS. During XGDS, dd was eating a cough drop. Normally, other friends, like the people in street dancing will see that and say, “oh you’re eating a candy?” But when gg saw, he asked “does your throat hurt?” This means that gg knew that dd was eating a cough drop immediately. How would he know that? Unless he’s the one who gave it to him. (This story has more logic and evidence than papers I’ve read in Cell/Nature/Science.)

Fun fact - some fan bought it and said it taste terrible LOL It taste too sweet on the outside and taste like medicine on the inside (which it is technically herbal medicine.) So don’t recommend trying it.