#i just don't know how to actually put it into any kind of readable or visual form so i can explain it properly ><;;< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[pekoeboo]

oof. sooo .. lol.... pretty much all of HIWYA is being reworked. like. insane changes. as in "Drehmal as a location is being replaced entirely with Atria" and "the story has no real relation to Minecraft anymore" kind of changes.

I want so badly to be able to make a proper update of sorts to explain what exactly is being rewritten, but so much is still being adjusted and worked on and I also don't quite know how to approach the whole thing when it comes to updating what I have (like the pinned story masterlist post that explains the different Acts, I'll have to think of a different way to title them instead of based on world names). any relation to Minecraft at this point is pretty much just loose inspiration and I'd rather not have the story completely tied to the game anymore, so it's tricky to really figure out how to move forward with that, especially when it comes to organization on here and dA.

tbh it's kind of annoying having such a hyperactive brain, yet simultaneously not enough mental stamina to actually create the things my brain won't shut up about >A< hopefully at some point I can explain everything, though :'0 fingers crossed.

[elsa-fogen]

So. On the topic of Alastor headcannons. What's your opinion on these radio themed ones:

Alastor has an internal radio. Like the concept of having songs play through your head, but more literal. He can tune to stations as if he was a radio himself. And if he really wants to, he can connect himself to other radios in his immediate vicinity and play that music though them instead.

His antlers help his radio powers. So when they get damaged (in battle, sheds them, whatever reason you wanna put here) his internal radio goes bazerk. Think; flipping stations randomly, connecting to other radios when he doesn't want it to, playing loud static at random. All the chaos.

He can hear through other radios. He once had to listen to Vox playing Barbie Girl through a TV right next to a radio in Vox's studio, for a week straight. Surely enough; Barbie Girl is now banned from all radio stations in hell.

What do you think? I got more like these if you like them. Give me a generic topic and I can probably list several under that category.

OHH RADIO HEASCANONS

Yes, but he also can turn it on and off when he needs

Never thought about it, but it's funny (don't think i'm going to use it anywhere but who knows, maybe i'll make some funzies with that)

Pretty much used it in one my comic slihdsdkjfh +headcanon that Vox taught him that, he also can control when and which radio he wants to listen (or his head would be a horrible mess) ut i like headcanon that he has some songs banned on the radio lol

speaking of other radiostations, i actually made an instruction on How To get Your Own Radio Station In Hell, let me just find it real quick... i wanted to share it long ago, but couldn't find a moment

Imagine you're a normal sinner in hell, who suddenly wants to become radio host for one small station. and it's possible! and you won't even die, and get some benefits, if succeed. So, it's kinda hard, but doable

1. You need to write a letter asking for a permission to have your own station to The Radio Demon himself. a) letter should be handwritten, and your handwriting must be at least readable. Or you can use typewriter, if you find one. DO NOT write it on a computer and then print, you'll probably won't be able to get your station in following 50 years b) You should send your letter via post. DO NOT try to meet Radio Demon in person, you'll just lose time, or even if you get lucky, he won't take your letter. b*) Now you can just come to Hazbin Hotel and give your letter to Charlie Morningstar and ask her to give it to Radio Demon. Don't worry, she won't read it. b**) You should leave your contacts, that's obligatory if you want to get an answer - that means you have to have a place to live. c) Do not try to e-mail him, he doesn't even have a phone or computer to receive it. If someone gives you 100% totally real Radio Demon's e-mail - don't trust them, its fake 2. You'll get answer from the Radio Demon in 1-2 weeks, he'll send you set of papers which you have to fill out. You'll probably have to do it 3-4 times so don't worry, he's just testing your dedication. In these papers you give general info about your future radio station - the name, schedule, what activities you'll gonna have and what kinds of music wanna play. Include some jazz, especially if you mostly want to have modern music. You'll also have to tell a bit about yourself. You absolutely should not be connected to voxtech in any way. 2.b) he may simply dislike your ass and become a real bureaucratic monster. Keep trying - you can impress him with you dedication and he may like you in the end 3. When you got your application approved, you'll have to sign a contract, that gives you right to broadcast on a certain radio frequency. According to the contract - your radio station belongs to the Radio Demon, you'll just getting it in unlimited use, until the contract terminated. You DO NOT sell your soul to the Radio Demon. He can broadcast over you any time he needs and you can't do anything about it. He can also ask you to change something in your broadcast schedule, ask to replace of cancel any of your programs, ban music and so on. (Tho, he probably won't do anything of it). But since your radio station is his property, you're as well under his protection while you on your station, so if someone attacks you and you're unable to protect yourself and your station, you'll have a way to contact him and ask for help. You'll have a specific channel for it and list of morse codes for emergencies. You should not use this channel for anything else, or you'll lose your station. 4. After all paperwork is done and approved, you have to get equipment for your station. DO NOT use ANYTHING voxtech related, and you absolutely cannot have TV on your station. 5. After you got all the equipment, invite the Radio Demon to your station. He'll set everything up for you and give you list of emergency codes. Do not try to interrupt his infodumps even if you lost track of it and can't understand shit, it's better if you show enthusiasm. 6. And done! Now you are happy small radio host! The Radio Demon may show up on your station sometimes to check how everything's going, but don't worry about it, he won't be bother you too often after few weeks.

P. S. You are NOT friends with the Radio Demon, even if he acts friendly and calls you "dear" - that's just his normal, not-threatenning behavior P. P. S. Don't be too personal, don't dump on him your problems if they aren't related to the station when he comes to you. Just make him some coffee, talk about weather and tell that everything works just fine P. P. P. S. ABSOLUTELY! DO NOT! TRY TO HUG HIM! He'll just laugh at you, and if you somehow succeed he'll make everything to make you regret every action in your life and afterlife that led you to this moment (and it doesn't necessarily means he will torture you physically, once he run into masacistic freak that got a boner when was tortured) P. P. P. P. S. If you caught feelings for him - suffer in silence and NEVER try to confess. You'll lose your station immediately and will never get it back.

All these instructions are totally written by Rosie who heared so many complaints from Alastor about how people want to become a radio host but can't do it properly

And Alastor is probably making them experience what he went through to become a radio host in life

GOD, TUMBLR WHY UR SUCH AN ASS TODAY WTF LET ME JUST POST MY SILLY TEXT

[imaginethathaikyuu]

Em, you probably don't know this, but I actually have a huge weakness for streamer!Kenma. This might be kinda basic but what if streamer!Kenma and streamer!reader are both super popular, and everyone is always begging them to stream together, but what everyone DOESN'T know is that they're secretly dating and are afraid that if they stream together everyone will figure it out :') but it's just a thought so yeah no pressure. I hope you do get some inspo for streamer!Kenma though 💗 ily!

kris i love u and i wrote this just for u <333 it feels like me and u are playing ping pong with the writing brain cell recently. i love it we're so back

streamer!kenma x streamer!reader

featuring: secret relationship, kenma teaches u how to play chess on stream, loving banter, little bits of chess talk. i tried not to put too much streamer talk in this so it was actually readable and not cringe. gender neutral reader word count: 1882

-

Kenma was just about to end his stream when he noticed your name being typed in the chat. Someone linked a clip of you from your stream - which was currently live - so he clicked it. 

A text to speech message read out loud, “Are you going to be in Noya’s next event?” and as you were focusing on your gameplay, you took a second to reply. 

“Am I… No, I don’t think so.” 

Kenma laughed while you struggled your way through playing MineCraft. 

“I was invited but - chat, I don’t want to start any drama but I kind of don’t want to play in it if Kenma’s playing, and someone told me he was invited.” 

Kenma barked a laugh, a loud noise that was rarely heard from him, as you shrugged and struggled to hide your smile. 

“There, I said it! If it starts drama, so be it!” You put your hands up in defense, laughing at yourself. 

The clip ended, so he immediately opened your stream, and you were still talking about him. 

He couldn’t hide his smile if he tried - he only hoped none of his viewers noticed the fondness in his eyes. 

The two of you had been dating for at least a year, and it was the best kept secret of his career.

There was a joke online about the two of you not liking each other. It all started when you were openly avoiding him in a game lobby with other streamers - from there, it grew into a bit that you committed to full throttle. 

Everyone knew you and Kenma were friends in real life. You shared a friend group, and often streamed with the same people. Online, however, you made a spectacle of not liking him. 

Kenma found it hilarious, and so did your chat. 

“Do you guys know he cheats in like, every game he plays?” 

“That’s not true!” He was laughing and rolling his eyes at the same time. “Oh my god.” 

He typed his words in your chat, and he watched the messages flood with his name. 

Your eyes widened a little when you read, “Is he in chat? Kenma, go away. This stream isn’t for you.” 

He typed a simple, “no,” and you scoffed at it. 

“Every time I mention your name you show up - I know you love the drama.” 

A few seconds later a text to speech message read, “he’s such a theater kid,” and at the sound of your laughter, he closed your stream. 

“I’m not a theater kid.” He sank a little in his chair, watching his chat being filled with emotes. “I literally played sports in high school!” 

It was only a few days later when he was sent another clip from your stream, this time from a text to speech donation. 

“Kenma, I think you need to see this.” 

He clicked the link and saw you were once again playing MineCraft. 

It was a long clip - in the game, you jumped off your boat into the ocean and started swimming to the bottom. Everyone in your chat was telling you not to, but you didn’t listen. 

“I’m not going to die. Why would I die? This is the best run I’ve had. I’m not going to die.” 

That’s when he realized you were playing the hardcore version of the game, meaning if you died, the game was over. 

He watched as you swam down into a huge ravine, and he had a feeling he knew what would happen as your character’s air bubbles were slowly popping. 

“Do you want to make a bet? If I die here I will do anything you want. Anything. Because I’m not going to die!” 

As you said that, your character started taking damage. And you tried swimming back up to the surface of the water, but you weren’t fast enough. You almost made it, and then - game over!

Your head was in your hands as the chat on screen spammed, “stream with Kenma!” 

Three days later, you were forced to take your punishment. 

Your viewers had been asking you to stream with Kenma for a long time, and you always avoided it with a joke - never revealing the real reason you didn’t want to go live with him. 

It wasn’t the end of the world if your relationship became public, but you knew things would be much easier in private. It wasn’t something you were trying to hide, but you weren’t posting it proudly, either. 

You decided on streaming Kenma teaching you how to play chess. He’d been playing a lot online, and you hoped it wouldn’t take longer than an hour. You were too nervous to go any longer than that. 

Kenma was late to answering your call. When he finally answered, you immediately started berating him. 

“Have you ever been on time?” 

“I was just seeing how long you’d wait for me,” he said. 

“If you never showed up, I would have gotten out of doing this.” 

He pulled up your stream just so he could look at you - even though he’d seen you just a few minutes ago. You were just down the hall, but nobody watching knew that. 

“Have you been watching my stream this whole time?” 

He grinned, “No, I’ve never watched your stream.” 

“Then why are you always in my chat?” 

You sat with your legs crossed, playing with the necklace you always wore - the one he bought for you just a few months ago. He loved seeing you wear it. 

“Because you’re always talking about me, like you’re obsessed with me or something.” 

“Can we get to the game? You’ve kept me waiting long enough.” 

Kenma wasn’t a good teacher - far from it - but he tried his best. After teaching you the names of all the pieces and how they moved, you were ready to play a game that he’d guide you through. You played white, he played black. 

“Can you just teach me the best opening in the game? I don’t need to know anything complicated.” 

“...Okay.” 

He took a second to decide. Once he made up his mind, he started giving his instructions. 

“The first move is pawn to f3.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“Do you see the pawns?” 

You laughed, because the way he said it sounded like he was talking to a kid. “Yes, I see the pawns!”

“Move the one on the F file up one square.” After a second you made your move, and it was his turn: pawn to e6. “Now pawn to g4.” 

“What’s this opening called?” 

He didn’t reply, instead, he was distracted by his chat. By now, everyone had already figured out what he was doing, and the messages they were sending made him laugh. 

“Kenma?” 

“It’s called the Fool’s Mate,” he said. 

“Why?” 

He had to push his microphone away from his face so you wouldn’t hear him laugh, but he pulled it back to say, “I think this is why.” 

He made his next move: queen to h4. And a window popped up on his screen, You Won! 

“What the fuck!” 

“Good game.”

“Kenma, what the fuck!” 

“You made it too easy.” 

“Kenma.” You were whining his name, sinking into your chair. “This is why I don’t like you.” 

“Everyone knew I would beat you, I just sped things up.” 

“That’s not true!” 

“You’re always such a sore loser,” he mumbled. 

“You’re always a cheater.” 

Twenty minutes later, you were in the middle of a real game - if Kenma telling you which moves to make could be considered real. And both of you had successful streams so far, your viewers none the wiser to the truth of your relationship. 

It was easy, he realized, and fun. He hated how funny you were, because you could make him laugh more than anyone, and he was sure he seemed completely lovesick. 

“I think you should move the bishop,” Kenma suggested when you took more than two minutes to offer your next move. 

“Uh…” 

“The bishop.” 

“I don’t remember which one that is!” 

Kenma waited for you to figure it out, and then you moved your queen. 

And he was truly disappointed, because that was the one move you shouldn’t have made. He couldn’t even laugh. 

“You just sacrificed your queen.” 

“I don’t even know what that means!” 

“Babe - that was a total blunder!” His queen captured yours, and he realized this may have been a complete waste of time. “You lost your most important piece!” 

“I thought that was the bishop, Ken!” 

He sighed, acting as dramatic as possible. “You haven’t learned a thing. It’s basically game over, now,” and he scanned the chess board on his screen, looking for the quickest way to end the game. 

He looked over at his chat to see it was being spammed with question marks, and then his phone vibrated with a message from you. 

It read, “you just let the cat out of the bag.” 

“Oh,” he said. He laughed, because he only just realized what he said - the nickname had slipped before he could catch himself - and something awkward started to settle. But he shrugged it off. “Oops.” 

He started texting you back until you said, “are you disappointed in me, babe?” 

“Oh my god.” He sat his phone down, ignoring your message completely. “Stop flirting with me.” 

“You said it first!” 

“It was an accident!” 

You texted him again. “Should we just tell them?” 

He typed back, “I think so.” 

“Okay, wait,” you said. “Everyone go look at Kenma’s stream. He’s going to do something really cool while I go to the bathroom.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He opened your stream in another tab and watched you get up from your seat. 

Everyone in your chat and his was confused - as was he. 

Then, his door opened, and you walked in. 

“What are you doing?” he laughed. 

“I wanted to come say hi.” You walked over to him, grabbing the back of his chair and turning it back and forth just to bother him. “Wait, are you streaming?” 

He scoffed, but it was all affectionate. “You’re so dumb.” 

You looked down at his screen and waved, “hi chat!” and then noticed he had your stream on his second monitor. “You’re watching my stream!” 

“Yeah, I’m a fan,” he joked. 

He knew the chat would be filled with questions and reactions, but he didn’t care at all. He found this entire thing hilarious, and judging by the smirk on your face, you did too. 

When you finally got back to your room, you sat down as if nothing had even happened. 

“Okay, can you teach me what a Queen’s Gambit is?” 

“No, because you can’t even tell me which piece is the queen.” 

Later that night when you had both ended your livestreams, both of you made your own posts on twitter acknowledging the announcement you’d made. Kenma posted a photo of you with his cat in your lap - the one that had been his phone wallpaper since he’d taken it. You posted the first selfie you’d taken together - both without captions, because there was no explanation required. 

And if you kept acting like you hated Kenma during your stream, he’d be the only one allowed to call your bluff.

-

send a request for a drabble and i might write it :)

[slimeology]

Well this is likely outdated of me by now buut my own interpretation of a certain computer yes... The notes on this vary to more of facts and like design notes for myself, with a boring white background cause UH readability,, yep! I'm shoving all my ideas below along with bonus image B]

Riiight, allow me to simply lay out my ideas and go against what i have seen this guy been characterised as for years YEA?? THough i wanna touch on how he functions first, so i think out of all possible designs i may make for more characters [at least one more i will make!!! maybe two!! maybe... more?] he is most biologically human. like he probably was just a guy once. but now computerised through means!

Underneath the metal / synthetic components is actual person, though most of it is very not nice to percieve. the only untouched part of him is the midsection, basically the vitals. Other than that, it ranges from a little less skin, to probably not even indentifiable as what it was before.

The image shows it somewhat!! The gloves are removeable and instead of angry wires simply take skinless hand! [ALSO LEMME KNOW IF I SHOULD TAG PLEASE - it is very hard for me to judge yes or not!! i do not mind doing it! also i have no idea what to put if so.] It's my general explaination of why he can touch you, but you touch him and it does not end well. Cause it probably hurts honestly! and he's seensitive....

As for personality, he's not that kind. Kind of more, passive agression most of the time really, unless you're wanting to know about the wonders of the internet he couldn't really care what you're on about. But even then, he will act like he knows all of the things ever [because it is on the internet.] Some of his facts may not entirely be true but why fact check?? the internet is not wrong! but also he will be deliberately wrong, if it's funny. aaaand you might believe it.

Computer day is simply the one day a year he agrees to actually 'be nice' and 'cooperative'. Any other day is free game.

The digital world still exists too, it's essentially his sleep state, he simply plugs himself into the wall and while outwardly he is unconsious, he is there instead! He can get other people there by uhh jamming a plug into your brain! don't worry he got a medical lisence from the internet, and has adequately accounted for your skull being in the way :]

Anyways these are somehow all the ideas i had before i even designed the guy??? UH... i will stop throwing so many words out there now. i guess one final fun fact is he probbaly just only eats oatmeal and nothing else. and mmayybe i shoved the 'tism onto him bit. sbhhhh shhhhh you heard nothing,,,

[windvexer]

Cartomancy After 101: Developing your own sets of card meanings that you swap out depending on your needs [concepts & tips]

My hypothesis for this post is that most forms of cartomancy heavily rely on the context of the question or situation being read on.

As context shifts, so do the specific interpretations that readers pluck out of a pool of general meaning.

By leaning into the idea of context and building extremely contextual meaning sets, readers can elevate their skills and more reliably produce very specific readings within contexts they have studied and prepared for.

This is going to be a long one, so I'm making sections for readability.

1. Cartomancy Relies On Context

Most "little white books" that come with tarot and oracle decks, and cartomancy websites and published resources, divide card meanings into the general and contextual.

E.g., a tarot card's general meaning usually includes key words such as heartbreak, betrayal, and backstabbing. Then, contextual meanings might be provided:

Interpersonal relationships: Is a relationship about to end?

Business: Make sure any new business deals won't screw you over.

Spiritual: How can you use your spirituality to help with heartbreak?

While these contextual meanings stem from the base source of the card, they aren't interchangeable. Imagine if a querent asks you about their small business, and you reply, "well, have you tried using your spirituality to deal with interpersonal heartbreak?"

Therefore, a major role of the reader is defining the appropriate context of a question.

In order to practice their skills, many diviners offer to do "blind" readings for others. This means that the reader doesn't want any background information about the question at all - but even so, a reader may still ask for the context of a question.

E.g., a reader may say, "don't even tell me your actual question, but just tell me what kind of question it is - if it's about employment, a relationship, etc. Otherwise I won't know how to frame the answer."

[I don't mean to say that all readers always require context in this manner. Many readers do not, especially very practiced ones. But I don't think that means that context is irrelevant, even to very experienced readers who can obtain context on their own.]

2. Developing Meanings for a Specific Context Results in More Specific Readings

The Complete Lenormand Oracle Handbook by Caitlín Matthews begins by introducing the typical meanings of Lenormand cards. Later, she provides a custom set of meanings she personally developed related to her years spent in live theater.

Because of her time spent performing readings for theater workers, and about theater, she had developed a complex and unique system of meaning for Lenormand which, for the purposes of reading about live theater, was immensely more accurate and specific than the general Lenormand system.

While the general meanings of Lenormand informed her custom system, the custom system was not interchangeable with general meanings and was only applicable to a specific context and its related themes.

I discovered the same phenomenon by accident years ago, when I was frustrated with how general and nonspecific my readings had become.

I wanted to be able to use tarot to read accurately for everyday situations. So, over the course of several months, I worked with my primary divinatory ally to develop my own set of notes for the tarot, specifically for reading everyday, mundane situations.

The meanings given for the cards don't work very well at all for mystical, spiritual, or meditative self-exploratory readings. The meanings are things like, "you're the only one putting energy into this relationship," or, "don't go to the party if you didn't receive an invitation."

I use this set of meanings when I want very plain and straightforward readings on everyday situations, which it's very good at. I got what I wanted: accurate and specific readings on day-to-day questions with the tarot.

The meaning set fails at every other kind of question.

Recently, in my ongoing experiments with a custom oracle mashup of playing cards and tarot, I decided I wanted a meaning set that was useful for troubleshooting creative writing projects.

This deck has general meanings like, air/movement/exchange, water/observation/stagnant, and earth/categories/planning.

I developed contextual meanings like, "the dialogue in this scene is doing what it needs to do," "the character's motivations aren't clearly explained," and "the external goals of the character don't match what's already been explained about them."

By focusing on a specific context, readers can get very good at reading certain types of questions.

3. Exploring Specific Contexts Improves Overall Reading Ability in Any Context

By taking the general meanings of a card and developing them in new, unique ways that are still true to that card's roots, you create a huge learning opportunity to connect more deeply with that card.

Not only can you explore the unique evolutions of each card as it intersects with your interests and life, but your understanding of the deck as a whole can evolve.

When I was working with my original set of "everyday" meanings for the tarot, I discovered that many times I developed card meanings that really overlapped each other, making some cards redundant. When I decided to sort this out, my understanding of - and relationship to - tarot rapidly changed. I'm at a new level of understanding that I hadn't been able to achieve just by using general meanings for the 15 or so years of reading I had been doing before that.

The elements are currently a major part in my practice of witchcraft. As silly or abstract as it may seem, exploring how an oracle card that generally means water/observation/stagnant could apply to a specific type of fiction writing deepened my relationship not only with that experimental deck, but also to my craft as a whole.

As I've explored custom meaning sets in general, my ability to rapidly link abstract symbols has improved. Even if a specific meaning set doesn't apply, just having explored that makes my readings stronger.

For example, if I draw a card and I don't know how to apply it to a certain situation, having different sets of meaning floating around in my head is a little like having three or four helpful aunties shouting suggestions. None of them may be completely accurate, but it's a far better starting place than having no aunties at all.

By investing in very specific sets of meaning that only apply to certain contexts, readers can gain insight and skills that assist them in all types of readings throughout all contexts.

4. Sundry Suggestions for Those Convinced

Here are a handful of tips and tricks I've collected throughout the years. Take or leave them as you desire.

Choose very specific contexts. The more specific, the better!

Well, I'm sure this one is more down to personal preference, but don't be afraid to choose extremely specific contexts.

In my examples above about the creative fiction meaning set, the context wasn't "literary analysis" or "creative writing." The context was, "troubleshooting commercial fiction manuscripts and outlines to be more in line with modern commercial standards."

That isn't great at brainstorming, coming up with story ideas, dealing with literary fiction, grappling with major artistic themes, etc. It does one thing great: helping you workshop a commercial manuscript that you'd like to send to a publisher.

Put thought into what deck(s) you're using.

Even when using general meanings, many readers identify that certain decks are just better at certain kinds of readings. If you have multiple decks, try swapping them out as you experiment and see which ones work best.

Develop not only individual cards, but the deck as a whole.

Depending on your preferences, you may find value in not only developing individual cards, but also groupings of cards.

By taking entire sections of cards (say, all of the wands cards) and linking them to an important concept within your context (say, the behaviors of all the dogs you train), you can make large leaps of progress.

The same could be done for all the kings cards (your mentors in the dog training world), all the #3 cards (they're all going to relate to, say, small change or progress), and you can end up quickly mashing up new meaning sets:

Today's dog training business reading suggests that a Youtuber who's information you rely on is going to release a video about the importance of small behavioral changes.

Assigning broad meanings to different sections of cards is a good way to start exploring specific contexts.

Let card meanings evolve as you explore.

As you take notes, there's no need to settle one one meaning for the card as it is and then avoid changing it.

If your original idea for a card is "stubborn dogs who are not motivated by treats," and you perform multiple readings on it where the card only really makes sense if it means, "this dog will show up super tired and just want to nap," then it's fine to modify notes as you go.

I find that over time, modifications actually end up being multiple possible interpretations, once again deepening my understanding of the card as a whole (this card refers to difficulty inspiring action and engagement).

Often, card meanings come to me very vaguely and are practically stand-ins until I can figure something out for them.

Be mindful of spreads.

I can apply some meaning sets to literally any spread and it'll come out just fine.

Other meaning sets I have don't play great with tons of spreads, and may only work well with small spreads, using signifiers, and so forth.

There's no need to avoid highly contradictory meanings.

If you've got two ideas for a card (the dog is well-adjusted and friendly, or, he's very reactive and dangerous) and you aren't sure which fits, keep both meanings and use a combination of readings and real-world verification to experiment.

Your unique context sets don't need to be congruent with each other.

While I believe it's a good idea to seek fidelity to the original/general meanings of a card, this doesn't imply that the unique contexts you develop have to coincide with each other.

Maybe you have a meaning set specifically for energy work, and a separate one for religious spirit work.

In your energy working set, the wands cards could always relate to fire energy and only ever refer to a spirit if drawn in conjunction with a court card.

But, in your religious spirit work set, the 4/wands might always refer to the spirit of a home, regardless of elemental alignment.

The meanings you develop for one context don't need to adhere to the rules you create for other contexts.

Playing card decks can really simplify the process.

Tarot cards, with their intrusive little pictures, can often impose their own meanings on a context whether you like it or not. Even if horrendous betrayal makes zero sense for your context, sometimes it's impossible to get those ideas of the 3/Swords out of our heads.

If you're finding tarot to be too confining, try experimenting with playing card decks. They're smaller, draw less attention, and most importantly, do away with the art that can anchor our minds to the wrong concepts.

(Split the difference by working with a tarot deck that just uses suit symbols for the pips, but has full art for the major arcana.)

5. Hey! Thanks for reading.

I hope you're having a good day ^-^

[causticflower]

A Ship Template!  

a shipping template (a fancy + a simplified/more readable version) that I made for fun

so here! have fun too :3

originally inspired by @awfulalignmentcharts and [their ship chart]; I borrowed the general layout and some of the wording, otherwise the graphics & rest of the words is me ^^

more + explanations down under vvv

> a general note: you can fill this thing out any way you want; you can write the answers, draw them, you also don't have to fill out everything, and you can even delete/replace stuff you don't like (it's not like I'd be able to stop you lol) ((also the title, you can edit the [--] or the whole thing too))

> you don't need to tag me or reblog the post if you fill it out

> if anyone wants a different combination of the graphical parts or different font or something else let me know, I'll see what I can do <3 

= Explanations =

(I explained everything just to be sure, feel free to skip parts)

Top part – Introductions:

the big squares → you can put their faces or profiles or whatever of theirs there

the small square (“describe their vibes”) → what their dynamic is like, what vibes do they give off when next to each other etc; for example, are they a cat-person & dog-person kind of duo, or it's a scary dog privilege kind of situation, or do they look like enemies, etc

ship name → their ship name, or their ship names if they have multiple

age+difference → what are their ages + how big their age gap is

height+difference → what are their heights + how much is one taller/shorter than the other 

fandom(s) -> what fandom are they from, or fandoms if it's a crossover ship

name → their name, full or nickname or other

gender → their gender

sexuality → their sexuality; you can specify if it's a romantic, sexual, both/neither type of attraction 

alignment (of your choice) → what the character’s alignment/personality is, up to you if you want to use the classic DnD alignment chart (good/neutral/evil x lawful/neutral/chaotic) or if you want to use whatever else (like add in bastard/fish/pirate etc)

Left Column (the many sliders): 

big spoon <--> little spoon = when sleeping or cuddling; who is the one hugging <--> the one being hugged

actually functions <--> messy mental wreck = how well they are doing mentally; are they mentally well adjusted/stable <--> are they a mess/have mental issues

ball of stress <--> YOLO = what their general attitude to life is; are they stressed/worried about things constantly <--> are they carefree/careless/going with the flow

hermit <--> social bee = how social they are; not social at all <--> very social

scaredy-cat <--> fears no god = are they afraid of everything <--> do they fear nothing

bleeding heart <--> then perish. = how sympathetic they are; almost too sympathetic <--> don't care at all

incompetently competent <--> competently incompetent = basically: their attitude x their actual skill (with the middle being “normal”); look clumsy/careless but are very competent <--> look competent/confident but are actually useless

the world is ending (I fell in love) <--> blushing giggling kicking feet = what their reaction is when they realize they have a crush/fell in love; is very upset/miserable about it/hates it <--> very happy/giddy about it

allergic to PDA <--> sickeningly affectionate = how they act in general situations/around others; acting like they're strangers <--> constantly holding hands/kissing/complimenting each other

wants to get matching things <--> would rather die than change their style = they want to get something (very visible) to signify they are a couple <--> they like their style and won't change it no matter what

cuddles<3 <--> the table is broken again = the horniness meter; they have little to no sex (or it’s an ace/qpr ship) <--> they have sex as often as physically possible

has zero game <--> has insane game = how attractive they are to other people; cannot get a date no matter what <--> everyone wants to date them no matter what they do

crime doer <--> crime stopper = how likely they are to engage in 'bad' activities (either actual crime or just being a nuisance/prankster to their friends); constantly doing something nefarious <--> is actually more likely to stop crime/pranks from happening

watcher <--> meddler = are they more passive in conversations/situations <--> do they have to take part in everything

doomed by the narrative <--> blessed by the narrative = how much has the universe fucked them over (in canon or fanon); their life is/was pretty miserable <--> they are/were doing very well

Questions pt.1 

what brings them together? → what do they have in common / what might have brought (and kept) them together in the first place

what keeps/kept them apart? → what is/was preventing them from getting together (themselves, outside forces, etc)

Right Column:

Questions pt.2 

(badly) describe their meetcute → describe how they met, you can make it funny if you want

what are their fandom tropes/their ship appeal → what are their most common fan depictions (whether they are canon or not), or what about their ship dynamic is appealing to you/everyone

Questions pt.3

who fell first? → which one of them was the first to fall in love with the other

who first Realized (they're in love)? → which one of them had The Realization happen first, when they actually realized they are in love with the other person (basically the Oh. Oh. moment)

who confessed first? → who was the first to confess their love

who cleans up more messes? → who takes care of the mess they make/the trouble they get into more often

who is the first to apologize (after a fight)? → who apologizes first if they had a fight (where both of them might’ve been at fault)

who steals the bed covers? → who ((un)consciously) takes all the pillows/blankets/etc during the night/when they're sleeping together

who's the headrest? → example: A likes to rest their head/chin on B's head/shoulders/chest/etc, so B’s the headrest

who's the chef? (what they cooking?) → which one of them makes their food (and what the food is)

who takes charge of home decor? → which one of them is more likely to set up/design their home (pick the house, furniture, decor, etc)

who's the 3AM texter? → who's more likely to text the other in the middle of the night (for whatever reason)

who randomly brings home a new pet? → who's more likely to adopt random animals as pets / bring animals home to help them / etc

who's more likely to just straight up trip and die? → who is more clumsy/accident prone

“The Touchzone”

no touch <--> yes touch = in general circumstances, how do they feel about others touching them

the figures → you can draw on them or replace them with the characters, then you can color/otherwise indicate where and how they feel about touch on their body (either from their partner or in general, up to you)

you're dead → “I despise this”

do not → “I don't like this / I hate this”

not really → “I'd prefer no touch but it’s tolerable”

…eh… → “I have no strong feelings about this”

mayhaps → “I don't mind this, actually maybe even like it”

yes please → “I like this a lot”

YESss moreE → “I love/adore this”

note for the uncolored version of this: you can put your own colors/symbols/etc in the -[   ]- square next to the words

…and that's it, let me know if you have any more questions <3

[antiscorbutic]

welcome to my polar explorers sideblog !

books n things ive read / some thoughts etc (updated frequently)

> Endurance - Caroline Alexander

what I started with. v good read imo pretty succinct and flows nicely. not too hero-worshippy iirc, nice pictures

> The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard

I read (listened to) the audiobook narrated by Simon Vance and really liked it! tbh I wasn't super deep in to all this when I started it and was kind of shocked at how readable it was. my favorite part is birdie's letter about the land crabs.

also in general it's really nice to get an actual pov account -- the secondary books are lovely for helping muddle through sources and stuff but I get annoyed with how much time is spent on the Famous bits and not the unglorious monotony, which i love hearing about. I gotta read some actual diaries

> Madhouse at the End of the Earth - julian sancton

JESUS I did not know anything about the belgica going in AND I'd just watched aliens (1986) and WHY are there narrative parallels this shouldn't be real??? also amundsen is a real freak (<- value neutral)

> Endurance (2024)

uhhh sorry kids I hated this. I know it's based on the guys book but like the parallel heroic narrative thing was so icky to me. also the AI voices were giving "we didn't want to pay voice actors" and!!! fucking pointless to end it when you find the ship I want to know about the ship!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to watch a doc about the ship not about some people who found the ship. tragic for me

> Shackleton (2002) - TV miniseries with Kenneth Branagh

actually loved this. there was clearly so much attention and care put in to little historical details and even with all the silly dramatic Kenneth monologues i really enjoyed it

> The Great White Silence (1924) - Herbert Ponting

fucking WILD that as a card carrying member of the attention-span-ruined tiktok generation that as soon as I found this I was GLUED to the screen for the full like 2.5 hours or however long it is. seriously jumpscared by the cat's racial slur of a name (as ever) but honestly it's a good reminder of the colonial context we're in here so I kind of appreciate it. anyway absolutely mind boggling to see this early footage of the adelie penguins etc when I grew up watching them in planet earth and have always kind of taken their existence for granted. and I think the telling of the actual polar journey was pretty touching for being obviously like the same 15 seconds of footage of a miniature

> Endurance - Alfred Lansing

eh I didn't need to read both this and the caroline alexander book. it was fine. I always wish they'd spend more time on the elephant island castaways and less time on the small boat journey. I get that that's the like, famous impressive part, but I'm here to be reminded of the horror that it is to be alive day after day and I think more time should be spent on that monotony. also he didn't talk about the post-expedition AT ALL and I need my little "where they are after the reality TV series ended" title cards

> Amundsen (2019)

didn't finish it. too much back-at-home drama not enough being on the ice

> The Last Place on Earth (1985)

I haven't read the scott v amundsen book it's based on but jesus whoever wrote that must have fucking hated scott. I'm not saying they're wrong necessarily I'm no expert i AM saying hes wrong fuck this guy!!!! but holy shit did scott look like an incompetent asshole even compared with all the other incompetent assholes. needed more screen time of young hugh grant as cherry

> basically any bbc special about explorers

PLEASE correct me if I'm missing anything but lord I stg every one of these is the worst pro imperialism hero worship bullshit of all time. "james cook was a really nice guy actually" are you fucking kidding me

> empire of ice and stone - buddy levy

this is my first arctic account and I have. a lot of thoughts and feelings about the way arctic expeditions interact w indigenous people that I don't want to get into here. truly baffled by the number of polar bears they interacted with. also fuck stefansson so much like okay fine you left the ship but go find it again??? fucking rescue them?????

> in the kingdom of ice - Hampton sides

okay this might be my favorite modern account I've read. I love how much context is provided ... like I have Thoughts and Feelings about John Muir but his diaries being included and GOD Emma's letters being interspersed was fucking devastating. definitely the most emotional I've gotten. and all the interludes to explain the geography of a region and what its called now or in russian and even all of the many chapters about bennett added so much for me. AND giving full accounts of each group after they split the party without one getting only briefly summarized in favor of the other but also without making the timeline confusing???? -- I say this all even though hampton committed what to me is the cardinal sin of these books: skipping time that's "boring". a whole year of monotony??? julian sancton only you understand me

> labyrinth of ice - buddy levy

augh. OUAGHE. oughe!!!! I am devastated. good book :(

> alone on the ice - david roberts

not my favorite .... the author is clearly bitter that mawson is not as famous and heroic to history as someone like shackleton. also I really think he should have stuck to a linear narrative structure instead of jumping around. zero mention of possible cannibalism

not historical but overlaps / scratched a similar itch:

> outlaw ocean - ian urbina

modern investigative journalism on lawlessness on the high seas. fucking hard to read because it's largely about like, human trafficking. even the "light" stories are still rough. really, really good read though and i liked hearing about recent trawling and whaling in the south and thinking about it in relation to historical whaling etc

> frozen planet (2011)

I mean I'm a huge sucker for any attenborough nature doc esp the planet earth extended universe but this was also specifically produced around the 100th anniversary of amundsen & scott reaching the pole and I love to think about the boys seeing the penguins and seals etc for the first time .... wonderful stuff

> the thing 1982

I think I'm probably the last person to watch this one so I don't think I can add much commentary but as someone who has seen approx. 3 horror movies and two were alien and aliens I did not think it was as scary as it could have been. I do like a horrible Beast though so maybe that's on me

currently in progress!!!!!!!!!

> Erebus - Michael Palin <- I have the ebook instead of the audiobook so I'm making my way through it slowly :-)

> ice ghosts - Paul watson

other things I have out from the library but haven't started:

> eight bears - Gloria dickie (not directly relevant but highly recommended to me)

> late Victorian holocausts - Mike Davis <- a little too academic for me to parse easily but Mike ily and I think it's healthy to read about other things happening around the same era

> left hand of darkness

> against the ice - Ejnar mikkelsen

> to the edges of the earth - Edward larson

^ huge s/o to @jesslovesboats's sad boat books lists btw for helping me find more sad boat books that my library has audiobooks of <3 (im very much an audiobook guy so while I'm frothing to read more diaries and shit I have a hard time with it. yet another tragedy for me personally)

[decepti-thots]

Tea emoji skybound?

Okay so I am behind at the moment and also, I want to do a full readthrough of the first year of the TF ongoing all in one go before the year is out and write an Actual Long Post, so I will not get too in the weeds here about specifics.

But I really, really like Skybound so far- the main TF comic at least. It is first and foremost just an astonishingly well crafted comic, from the art to the lettering to the writing. It works serially, it works visually, it works as a comic, in a way that is honestly not that common for many US comics right now. (I have been reading some Al Ewing stuff recently, his Marvel work, and I would compare Skybound's ability to make a serial narrative still feel satisfyingly complete in individual issues to the work Ewing did on stuff like Immortal Hulk. If that means anything to anyone.) Johnson knows his shit. He is writing COMICS, and his understanding of the medium is clear in every panel. (I cannot BELIEVE this is his first ongoing. Fucking hell.)

I also think it actually does something new with G1 reimaginings, which justifies yet another one of those existing. Sunbow is not, in the West anyway, a very widely mined part of the fiction for later stuff. Almost all the stuff we get tends to veer far, far closer to vaguely G1 Marvel influences. Johnson is taking those 'sounds good on paper, woefully underdeveloped in the cartoon because 80s Toy Ad' concepts and fleshing them out amazingly well. He goes completely seriously in on making that canon into a space opera that takes itself seriously, and he has enough earnestness that against all odds, it works. The earnestness is very important. It is not a comic going 'haha Isn't This Silly' at itself, which almost any writer trying to do this would do I think.

Oh, and it really makes the Cybertronian-Human dynamic compelling. If you want a work that shows why, exactly, the humans add something important to TF, I think Skybound is the comic that does that. It's got THEMES. It's got PATHOS. It's got CARLY, who I think is REALLY NEAT.

...I do not particularly care for Void Rivals, however. It is a very, very mid comic, though largely readable. It largely exists to me in terms of 'OK, it brought xyz lore concept in this month, good to know!' and not much more, alas. I don't hate Kirkman's work overall, but honestly. The comparison to Johnson almost feels unfair; there's just not that same wild creative ENERGY anywhere. It is a comic that exists to create splashpages in which you go. I Know That Guy! And I can't say I care much.

I have thus far not touched the GI Joe stuff. I should really do that, but. God. I'm just not that interested. LMAO.

Final thought: which is kind of ironic, because if I put this comic in conversation with any other TF work? It would be TF vs GI Joe (Scioli/Barber). It has that same deliberate engagement with the specific genre context the 80s stuff exists in, the sense of creating nostalgia for a version of the franchise that never actually existed, the granular love of and obsession with specifically comics that means so much of how the story is told really could not be in another medium and stay the same. Which is high praise, because I think TFvsGIJ is, in fact, the best TF comic ever written, hah.

[pencap]

Hey your poetry is so pretty and evoking and I've gotten back into practicing fiction writing in recent years but in my own criticism I don't think my prose is very evocative. It gets the job done and I think my stories are readable and enjoyable, but I don't think my descriptive language is particularly striking and I would like to improve on that! Sometimes I read and the author has used such creative brilliant metaphors and descriptors etc and it comes across as artistic genius. So, if you have any tips and time to share them I would love to hear about how you select your descriptors, if there's any advice you've heard before on this, etc. <3 feel like my brain simply can't come up with creative language after my decade long break lol

Hello, darling! Thank you for the kind words. I don't exactly have a formal process, but I can share some of what works for me.

The simplest, truest, and least fun advice I have is just this: practice. Practice, practice, practice. The more descriptive writing you do, the better you'll become at it. It's much easier said than done, I know--it's been months since I've posted anything here myself--but it's unfortunately true.

But beyond that, in terms of strategies, I have a couple. I think "evocative" can mean a lot of things, but it sounds like you're specifically thinking about description (as opposed to, say, emotionally evocative) so I'll focus on that. I'm gonna reference january 2nd a bunch, just for concrete examples.

Having a clear image to start with always helps. So when I wrote january 2nd, for example, I had a vivid mental image of an empty beach at dawn, practically abandoned 24 hours after thousands of people crowded together to watch the first sunrise of the year. The stretched out horizon, the dark blue twilight overhead and pale hazy dawn on the eastern edge, the shy peek of the topmost edge of the sun, the soothing ceaseless rush of the waves, the clear expanse and white-foam edges of the water, all of it. The loneliness of it, sure, but also the freedom of it. The quiet and the peace.

It also helps ot have a why. What are you trying to achieve with your description? Often in poetry I'm going for a specific emotional or visual effect, so I try to focus as much as I can on the pieces that resonate for that. In january 2nd, it was the horizon in particular. Nothing in the poem actually mentions a beach, even though that's part of my mental image, because the beach wasn't as important or effective. The sky and the horizon is what worked for the emotional tone, for me. Specifically their openness. Not the light, not the darkness, not the water, but being open, so that's what the first stanza revolves around.

If you're going for "fresh" / "interesting" / "unexpected" / etc. I like to play around with one of three things. One is transferring descriptors from one target to another. (In january 2nd, I take crowded from jostling people on the beach and transfer it to the horizon.) I think these are most fun when you take human(-adjacent) descriptors and put it on inanimate objects / the environment, but that's just my taste. Another trick is to try for hyphenates, which didn't come up in january 2nd. But two of my recent favourites are in Precious: sleep-warm and heartbeat-quiet. sleep-warm is about evoking both the cozy comfort of sleep and the warmth of holding a living, breathing animal in your hands. heartbeat-quiet is about both the volume and the intimacy and the repetitive rhythm of it. The thrid trick is simple and boring and exhilarating when it works, and that's playing around with synonyms. I remember sacred weight of the untouched being difficult. Is it sacred or precious or treasured or holy? Is it untouched or new or young or innocent or unsullied or pure? Try them out and pick the one that feels right, or at least feels the best.

Sometimes I'll think about sound, though not in janary 2nd. soothing ceaseless rush a few paragraphs ago was a deliberate sound-based choice, though. That repeated s-sound feels and sounds like waves. Sometimes I'll think about rhythm, although that's a bit more important in poetry than prose. Sometimes I'll think about length--of the overall description, of the specific phrase or sentence, of the words themselves. Rule of three feels good to me and you'll very often see me write things in triplets (young and fresh and new), frankly a bit more often than I wish I did. Short words can bring emphasis, or abruptness, or simplicity. Long descriptions can be more flowing, fluid, relaxed.

Almost every and any element of language can be leveraged for descriptive power. You'll rarely if every use all of them at once, but it's fun to try many of them out. Maybe you'll figure out versions that feel easiest or best for you.

Alright, I think that's long enough! If you had a specific line or poem in mind, I'm happy to break it down further. Caveat that some of the pieces on this blog are quite old and I might not entirely remember what went through my mind years and years ago, of course.

[liketwoswansinbalance]

Hi, I just read a couple of your fics, I love your writing! How do you build suspense or add details into your stories? Do you have any sort of writing tips? Thanks!

Wow, thank you so much! I'll describe some of my thought process behind those elements and a few others below if that helps.

And if anyone wants WIP news, there's some buried in here.

⸻

First, I almost never execute an idea right away since I either don't have the time to, or want to let it incubate for a while. Most of my ideas stay in outline form for months before I execute them, and I add and add certain details over time.

The one exception to this inclination so far has been "In Unrecognition of Rhian..." that I wrote in almost one sitting. In my experience, the pre-thinking, outlining, and Draft Zero (not One—I can explain if you'd like) can sometimes be longer than any of what I consider the "real" writing.

A tip: Carry your phone or a notebook with you everywhere. Sometimes, you have to record something immediately to preserve the wording exactly as you had it then because you can't always reconstruct it from memory.

⸻

If you want to know about the inclusion of details, a lot of the time, I try to make every detail count, so it moves something forward. In fact, one of my greatest wishes in the act of writing is for everything I (consciously) put into the text to have a reason to be there. Though, I imagine not everyone wants that. I'm sure some writers handle randomness and serendipity better than I, so do what you see fit.

Nevertheless, front-loading decisions is usually a method that works out well for me, to pick things apart and question them before I write and well before I think about whether I like the phrasing.

Be outrageously mean and discerning about certain things, like you're a set designer. That way, you'll be forced into thinking about decisions more deliberately and sooner, leaving less work for yourself in the end. If you were working with physical objects, you would probably have less leeway in changing your mind anyway. You might have a deadline or demand to get the furniture arranged so to speak. You can't just change the color of an item you've already bought and may be unable to return. There's only so much manpower you can invest in dying that sofa a new color, and so on. However, this is where you, as a writer, can upstage the hypothetical set designer. If you can't decide or don't want to commit to a decision yet due to gaps in the information/plot, leave yourself a placeholder like this: [COLOR of MATERIAL(?) fabric], [SYNONYM], [FIND BETTER VERB] or [JET STONE or SPINEL - DECIDE ON ONE LATER] and return to fill it in whenever you're ready. You have the ability to change things at any time, unlike the set designer of a film.

Essentially, interrogate the element you chose, to see if it could do more and better. For instance, if the default thing you chose more thoughtlessly at the start was something like a blue sky, ask yourself: Could a different sky or time of day serve the story better? Could it do more than what it's already doing? Or, if you want to keep the blue sky, what precisely do you want it to accomplish?

It can be incredibly fun to be as arrogant as you want about this, by the way. And, this is no lie—you can think of yourself as someone high-up, marshaling and deploying troops to enact your bidding, which is ultimately, telling a striking story with some substance to it.

Anyway, interrogation of some kind sometimes helps me, but that's only because, again, I happen to be a very outline-oriented, front-loading, do-the-heavy-lifting-on-the-front-end-of-things type of writer. I usually start with word vomit or a bare-bones script of a near-complete draft before I do the "real" writing, which is sometimes closer to re-ordering lines or putting thoughts into readable, complete, better sentences, and that is why the "outline" or Draft Zero of my longfic is likely longer than the fic itself will actually be, at something under 260 pages currently.

Possibly, one of the most extreme examples I have of front-loading is how I have one WIP fic I already have the exact start and end sentences pre-written for and (so far) have plans to write to those ends.

I'll share them to illustrate my point (though, unfortunately, there is a reason I can't yet disclose what exactly justifies them being the way they are):

First line:

There the bones lay, sun-bleached and white.

Last line:

Sun-bleached and white, there lay the bones.

Basically, all I'll divulge for now is that I'm trying to write a story that is cyclical in nature, which is why it needs a circular ending, to mirror back with. That is the (currently vague and unspecified) purpose these lines will serve. My ambition is that these lines will impact the reader each time differently. (Hint: The bones aren't the same bones each time. It's two different sets of them, at different points in time.)

I will also add: I love word order, emphasis, and italics, probably because I'm a control freak. Still, it's a really cool feature of language, the way you can assemble a sentence to either spotlight it or overshadow it.

It's all about the importance or weight you have the power to assign. Oftentimes, the last thing in a sequence is the most memorable while something placed in the middle is the least remembered or processed by the mind and the most overlooked—due to the Serial Position Effect in psychology.

Ok, now back to details, whether they be for plot or characterization.

For the characterization details, I try to think of them in terms of: How could this thing I want to convey manifest itself physically, through movements, the surroundings, the overall environment, and the environment's response to the character's action or inaction. In the case of fairy tales, the genre allows for things to be uncanny or overly fitting, for there to be slightly more deliberate cause-and-effect than there would be in reality, which I like to play with (most prominently seen in my whump fic.) These details help me give a sense of something easily, and that's why, for me, it's better not to shoot for absolute realism in descriptions, but more... things (especially adjectives) that are fitting and "too eerily convenient" and "matching pairs" above all.

For example, I once described Rafal's shirt buttons as restrictive, and this, in turn, serves as a tangible signal that alludes to his standards, his rigor, his need for oppressive control over the world and himself. Basically, you have to find a way to translate or transfer over the abstract into the visual, like you're exchanging one medium for another.

That's also why I like to think of myself as writing for density, trying to fit the most I can into the narrowest of crevices, jam-packing the majority of sentences with stuff that, even if a reader happened to overlook it, could (hopefully) make someone's mind click upon closer inspection, in the same way mine does since I already know it's there. The last thing I want my writing to lack is substance.

Everything must serve a purpose, and serving a dual- or triple-purpose is best, your "purposes" here being: character, plot, and setting. (A fourth addition to those could be: interest/intrigue, which is more your call.) Be ruthless. Ask: Is this is accomplishing something for you and has it earned its keep, its right to stay in the text?

Furthermore, as a writer, be more ruthless than you would be as a reader in tolerating the excess. If it does zero of those three things, you must ask yourself: Should it stay? Does it add to a coherent whole? Does it work well with its brothers (the sentences around it)? Is it out of place?

Do not let your manuscript give you guff. At the same time, you can let the so-called "nonsense" stay if you have plans to rework it. No point in deleting something unfinished, when you're still drafting or editing! Also, save everything you scrap. You might need it again.

Then again, about cutting and brevity (something I'm definitely still learning) I love to elaborate and compound things and (at times) overcomplicate them more than they need to be, so use your own subjective judgment, as in everything and anything else besides.

If you're writing for a genre that allows for drama, write like a sensationalist. Use verbs that pull their weight. Don't always fall back on cliches. Go for impact, syllable, and sound at times over simply opting for your favorite word. Sometimes, decisions feel more "objectively" right or fitting if you develop your "internal ear." I don't know what to call it exactly, but since English is my first language and since I often consume ungodly amounts of the written word, even lowbrow stuff more often than higherbrow texts, honestly, I just have a decently developed sense of what flies and what doesn't.

But, consciously, deliberately learning to have a command over language could also help. A lot of the learning process comes down to paying attention and forming insights. Personally, I have a persistent obsession with language and words, so part of that is something I focus on automatically because of my interest. If that doesn't happen to be the first thing that comes to mind for other people, I'm not sure, but you can direct yourself to look for what you want to train, I think.

Accumulate some kind of varied, critical mass of texts, literally just a high enough volume of texts, to let them seep into your brain over time. This could be like what adults tend to tell young children who are reluctant readers: read, read, read.

It doesn't matter what they read as long as it captures their interest and gets them started on reading at that early stage. It usually tends to be later on when critical people start to care about children's highbrow and lowbrow reading choices, I think.

At some point, I think that if people who followed through with this were to continue with this passive "process," I think they would hear others' voices, the "echoes" or the "phantoms," and be able to replicate them. This would function in a similar way as how we can often imagine the speech patterns of people we know well, to a lifelike degree in our internal monologues, like how we may recognize them by their unconscious verbal tics, or otherwise distinctive phrases, not necessarily by the actual sound of their voice but by how they deliver what they say, by the form, not the content.

And then, possibly, the writer's voice could likely emerge as something that's an amalgamation of the others' voices, all reconstructed. Or, that's partly how I see it, because, I feel like in my case, I can't exactly stray as far as I'd like to from some influences I've had, or that at least one of my "voices" formed through imitating fictional narrators, real writers, and registers of speech I liked at different times. Basically, all this is to say: learning voice seems to have a lot to do with observation and imitation.

Additionally, go for an emotional illusion of "truth-ness" over the objective truth. Write for the mood or the sense of conveying what you want to convey, immaterially, instead of writing the literal plot exactly how it went. Sometimes, it may be acceptable to sacrifice complete factual accuracy for the sake of story, depending on what you're dealing with.

If you want to make more conscious, active progress sooner rather than passive progress over time by letting things inculcate themselves, you could always change the "lens" with which you read. Read for more than story. When you see a technique done somewhere else, you can reverse-engineer it and apply it to your own writing. Doing so gradually builds your understanding of what writing is capable of accomplishing, in comparison to other mediums, like screenwriting. Basically, I'll just say: "learn to read like a writer."

⸻

As for suspense, I rely on having a sense of story beats, drop-offs, and shorter sentences at certain pivotal points. There are lead-ups, set-up, pay-off, but those aren't always something that I think about on a conscious level. By a certain point, if you ingest enough of others' fiction, you will likely end up with a sense for it, to know where things slot into place. That's how it appears to me, at least.

Maybe an example from one of my fics could help make it more concrete:

Rafal sighed in relief. He'd served the absurd, seemingly arbitrary punishment the Pen had dealt him and it was now well over with.

Then, the Storian moved.

To my great satisfaction, Rafal is absolutely wrong.

The reader knows there is a false sense of security, and I want the reader to know and anticipate with bated breath that something could go wrong because suspense, by definition, is built on a foundation of anticipation, not jump scares or shock value alone.

This article on suspense versus surprisingness as qualities could also help explain, and this second article has a great example involving a bomb.

One brief digression into what I could call "stream-of-action," specifically: the fewer "interruptions," the better. Do not deviate from that line of suspense you've been building. Action sequences aren't the place for extraneous descriptions. Do not cut into a sequence with those descriptions. You have to hold back and wait for the right moment to include your more content-filled sentences. All you need are clear, unbroken lines of action to go by, so you do not fall into the trap of defusing tension.

Anyway, false beliefs or subversions tend to help, from my experience. You, the reader, knowing more or anticipating more than a character could in their position is of prime importance. We sometimes call that device "dramatic irony" or dread. (If you want a few examples of that, my whump fic, the source of the above excerpt, used it.)

You, as the reader, clearly know more of what's to come, even getting a vague sense of it before Rafal does, which I would hope contributes to the dark humor of it all? Basically, you can lord your superior knowledge over him in a low position right then.

Oftentimes, readers love to feel smarter than a character as long as the character isn't annoying them. (The converse is when a plan is withheld and you get to piece together the machinations in Rafal's head before the plan plays out, to keep with my particular example.)

You can also start with something little and anticlimactic, sometimes, so the reader gets a sense of something being "off" or as being less than they were expecting, essentially, underwhelming in effect before the true flare-up. You can't always go into something with full force, loud and raucous and blaring, with glaring headlights, see? If you start playing an instrument at full volume, to the top of its capacity, then you'll have nowhere louder to go when you want to achieve a crescendo.

I, personally, for action sequences, to sustain the sense of movement (and overlap depending on the number of subjects) like to cram in as many active verb clauses as I possibly can into one sentence, as long as it seems readable.

Then, the shorter moves are brief, brisk and punctuating, like staccato. That's how I view it all.

Pacing is controlled by the speed at which the reader can read. So, shorter, more comprehensible sentences or longer, flowing sentences tend to work best for anything intended to be fast-paced. It also helps to keep verbs closer to their subjects; the fewer intervening phrases there are, the easier something will be to read. Basically, don't divorce the subject from its verb by too far, generally.

Here's one other example from one of my fics that may be of use:

In an instant, the room hushed as the elusive School Master of Evil entered the foyer, appraising Hedadora’s cloud of white hair and pink-rimmed glasses.

He was positively saturnine, Hedadora noted as she saw the sunken shadows beneath his eyes.

Rafal picked up a pitted olive from a dish. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

The most build-up occurs in Hedadora's pov, which is why I intentionally chose a somewhat unsympathetic, outsider pov, to generate more emotion than Rafal's pov could reach on his own. His eating an olive instead of doing something grand or impressive is the anticlimax. The sentence in which Rafal acts is the "nothing," the lacking response, before the "everything" that follows shortly after. It's all about timing.

It also helps to picture imagery if you can (I myself don't have fully rendered or vivid images in my mind, but I do have a vague sense of positioning for characters and objects). Events can unfold either in a sequence, or all at once, depending on what fits your purposes. Though, usually, all at once is the more intense option because the reader has to juggle multiple things happening at once in their mind.

And generally, I also love the idea of crescendos for plot structures. I drew a lot of inspiration from this very particular excerpt from a book because it reminds me of my objective to imitate this collision-like sense when I write. The excerpt, taken out of context from How to Stop Time by Matt Haig, is probably the single most memorable, unintentional description of suspense I've ever read, meaning, it's greatly influenced me:

“Life has a strange rhythm. It takes a while to fully be aware of this. Decades. Centuries, even. It's not a simple rhythm. But the rhythm is there. The tempo shifts and fluctuates; there are structures within structures, patterns within patterns. It's baffling. Like when you first hear John Coltrane on the saxophone. But if you stick with it, the elements of familiarity become clear. The current rhythm is speeding up. I am approaching a crescendo. Everything is happening all at once. That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. You say, 'I can't do this life any more, I need to change.' And one thing happens that you are in control of. And then another happens which you have no say over. Newton's third law of motion. Actions create reactions. When things start to happen, other things start to happen. But sometimes it seems there is no explanation as to why the things are happening—why all the buses are coming along at once—why life's moments of luck and pain arrive in clusters. All we can do is observe the pattern, the rhythm, and then live it."

The fact that luck and pain arrive in clusters could definitely apply to fortune harming or helping characters in the very same moments. If used correctly, I'm fairly sure "busyness" (a.k.a. overlap and subplots) tends to grant you the illusion of complexity.

Honestly, I love reversal-of-fortune tropes. They are some of the best out there, and they're the reason why some longstanding stories like "Cinderella" have withstood the test of time. We get human satisfaction from deserved reversals. (Or, at the very least, I happened to get satisfaction from bringing down and torturing the torturer in my fic.)

If anyone has any more specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them!

If any of this sounds like a lot or like information overload, you certainly don't have to take everything at once or at all. Some things I've attempted to describe kind of become less conscious queries you "sense" while writing.

[divineerdrick]

Warhammer 40,000 Balance Update for October 16, 2024 - Munitorum Field Manual and Errata for the Core Rules and Chaos Factions

After writing, I decided to split this document up into the super factions for ease of use. I've also changed how I format rules changes. Let me know what you think! Is this more readable, would you prefer a single post, or should I do a post for each faction?

Edit: The color coding for points changes breaks every time I edit it. To fix it, I have to go into the HTML and correct where it's marking things. I just don't have the spoons for manually correcting that much text.

Alright, now that we kind of know what we're looking for, let's start with the Core Rules.

Here's the clarification on Surge Moves. These rules appear to cover any out of phase movement that happens on a trigger. So if you get to move after destroying a unit in combat, you'd still be subject to these restrictions.

This strikes me as another one of those changes where everyone knew what GW meant and was playing it correctly. But there were a handful of people trying to "Um, actually" the rule for advantage. And then you either stop playing with them in a casual scene or call a TO in competitive.

Yep. You set the ability first, then your attempt to modify it. Since the ability is at zero, you can't modify it further and it stays at zero.

This is a bit more interesting! This means that applying debuffs to regenerating characters is extra important and that your own buffs aren't potentially meaningless. It also makes any units that have buffs or debuffs and something like a fight on death all that more powerful.

I can almost feel the exasperation in this. Anytime you have to get this nitpicky, it's because certain people are trying to twist rules to their advantage.

Yes! The Command Phase has a specific step for stratagems and abilities that take place during the Command Phase.

No! That does not mean that stratagems and abilities with specific triggers that don't reference the command phase don't get to be used!

We get a couple of the standard clarifications that reinforce that all the rules for movement apply to Surge moves. But this one is interesting and discusses what happens if your Surge move is triggered during movement. This is a very useful clarification to have!

In the commentary there's an interesting tidying up for visibility that makes it clear that rules about overhanging a base only apply to visibility into and through a ruin, but nothing else has been changed or added. So with that out of the way, let's open up that MFM and start looking at the individual factions!

Chaos Daemons

I think after the last slate, everyone was expecting Daemons to get a nice boost and for god specific armies to maybe become viable. Alas, that has not come to pass. Daemons are still struggling to get to top tables and apparently still need more love.

The FAQs are honestly really frustrating here. I can understand wanting to try to game the system when your army is down, but these are just reaching.

Beasts of Nurgle -5 pts/model Rendmaster on Bloodthrone +15 pts Shalaxi Hellbane -25 pts

And wow. This . . . this is nothing. That's a nice buff to Shalaxi, but that's about it. Yeah, Daemons are staying where they are.

Chaos Knights

Do I even need to say it? What CK needs if for their big guns to be viable. That means serious points drops across the board. Sprinklings just aren't gonna cut it here. They're apparently not getting any new FAQ or Errata, after all.

Knight Abominant: -20 pts Knight Desecrator: -15 pts Knight Despoiler: -15 pts War Dog Brigand: -5 pts War Dog Huntsman: -5 pts War Dog Stalker: -5 pts Points they needed, and points they got! GW apparently realized that they still need to make sure the War Dogs stay playable too, or the army will struggle. I'm not sure this is enough to put big Knights on the table, but I'm sure someone will try.

They also got a new Index, though I don't see any changes.

Chaos Space Marines

That is a lot of errata . . . Granted, it is a pretty big book. Let's take a look here. Oh! First, meta!

CSM are in an . . . interesting spot. They're not doing well in win percentages, but this is likely due to their popularity. Popular factions often have a lower win rate, as they attract newer players who lose more often. And CSM does perform, tied in 2nd place for event wins with my beloved Tyranids. But of their 8 detachments, they're being heavily carried by Renegade Raiders with Veterans potentially being slightly stronger. So other than balancing out their detachments, it's hard to tell what CSM needs, if anything.

Back to Errata. Falsehood now has a requirement of two or more models in the unit for your Lord to come back. Unstoppable Rampage, Predatory Pursuit, and Feeding Frenzy can now target Vashtorr. Cypher's Agent of Discord does not stack with Lord of Deceit or any other CP penalty. A Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour is now, get this, a Chaos Lord! And the Predator Destructor is no longer mysteriously bad at running things over. The real changes here are the improvements to Vashtorr's detachment to let it benefit him a little and the slight nerf to Deceptors. This will probably not change much.

There's actually a lot in the FAQ too. There's an interesting timing question that makes sense if you know the rules but is good to have clarified. Basically Deceptors has a stratagem that lets them block out reserves until the end of the opponent's Movement phase. But some units come in from reserves at the end of your Movement phase instead of during the Reserve step. So what happens? Well, according to the rules, the active player chooses the order things resolve. So a player can declare that Scramble Coordinates ends, then they set up their units from reserve. Frustrating for the CSM player but makes sense. Soul Link gets a lot of clarifications that match previous rulings on One Shot weapons, while also getting that frustrating ruling that it can be used in Reserve. Focus of Hatred also gets a lot of the answers Oath of Moment did . . . cause . . . you know . . . There are plenty of additional timing clarifications and a reminder that Warp Talons need to destroy something to go back up.

Abaddon the Despoiler: -15 pts Accursed Cultist (16 models): +15 pts Chaos Predator Annihilator: -10 pts Chaos Terminators -1 pts/model Dark Commune: +15 pts Havoks: -10 pts Legionaries (10 models): -10 pts Lord Discordant on Helstalker: -15 pts Obliterators: -10 pts Possessed: -1 pts/model Raptors (10 models): -10 pts Sorcerer in Terminator Armour: -10 pts Vashtorr the Arkifane: -15 pts Warp Talons (5 models): -10 pts

Wow . . . That . . . that's a lot. First thing to note, is to anyone that was beating top players with the Chaos Cult, GW would like you to know that detachment was not meant to be taken seriously. Other than that, CSM just got a nice boost. Some of these, like Havoks, the Disco Lord, the Sorcerer in Terminator Armour, I don't know if that gets them in lists. But Obliterators? Possessed? Abaddon? Yeah, those are definitely on the menu. GW has also embraced the truth that unit size matters. Some units are just better as MSU. Others, you want to take hordes of. You need to price them accordingly.

I think CSM might be a problem again.

Death Guard

Our jolly marines of plague and pestilence are also in a bit of a rough spot. Though they're only slightly below the 50% mark, they're still having trouble at top tables. Death Guard is unfortunately one of those armies that struggles to play the game in it's current format. Both Leviathan and now Pariah Nexus reward armies that are mobile or can cover the board in OC. Death Guard can't really do either of those things. So while their units can be pretty efficient, they often struggle to score points.

And ouch! GW just removed an important tool for them. Typhus can no longer target Lone Operatives with The Eater Plague. Typhus is definitely a good piece and way too efficient, but they still need tools to deal with Lone Operatives. There's also an interesting clarification on Spread the Sickness. The ability doesn't go away when your opponent takes an objective, it just has no effect. But as soon as you control the objective, Nurgle's Gift becomes active again.

Biologus Putrifier: -10 pts Deathshroud Terminators: -10 pts/3 models Mortarion: -25 pts

I wonder if this will be enough for people to start taking Deathshroud? That's starting to approach at least a decent points/wound ratio. As for Mortarion, I think we'll probably start seeing him on the table. This will help Death Guard, but I'm not sure it's enough.

Thousand Sons

Ah, my favorite traitor legion! They've been doing well for most of the edition, and have weathered some interesting changes. As I said before, KSons and their players are genuinely built different. They fittingly play kind of like a fantasy army brought into a game of 40K. This creates a problem though.

Thousand Sons still have to play 40K, but they operate by loading up as many Sorcerors as they can. Raise the prices on their units, and suddenly Thousand Sons don't have enough units to play the game. If they try and take fewer Sorcerors so they can, then their units end up being nowhere near efficient enough to play fair 40K. In short, they need more rules changes.

There's no errata for them, and the FAQ's are more obvious answers. So let's see what points have changed.

Both Ahriman: +10 pts Both Exalted Sorcerer: +10 pts Infernal Master: +15 pts Magnus the Red: +25 pts Mutalith Vortex Beast: +10 pts Rubric Marines (5 models): +5 pts Rubric Marines (10 models): -10 pts Thousand Sons Forge Fiend: +10 pts Thousand Sons Socerceror: +10 pts Tzaangor Enlightened (3 models): +5 pts

That is a lot of red. I thank that's 130-150 points tacked onto your average list? Let me take a quick look. Yeah, looks to be about right. That is bad news for KSons. I think they're about to take the kind of fall Orks are trying to recover from.

World Eaters

Finally we come to the angriest force of the 41st Millenium. World Eaters could use a little love. Their numbers aren't horrible, but they're definitely struggling at top tables. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a brain dead army and takes a lot of skill to play well. And right now, you need to be at the top of your game to beat a skilled player in almost any other army.

For the Blood God! has had its timing cleaned up to note that the target unit does have to have actually fought and killed something. For FAQ we get some clarifications on Angron's resurrection rule, and the same clarifications that the Death Company Dreadnought and Murderfang got for the Hellbrute. Nothing much to note here.

Angron: +20 pts World Eaters Chaos Spawn: +5 pts/2 models World Eaters Daemon Prince with Wings: -25 pts World Eaters Master of Executions: +10 pts

This isn't good. I'm sure the intention here was to make it so that Angron and the Master of Executions weren't so auto-include, but what are they being replaced with? The Daemon prince?

Yeah, this is bad news for Angron and his sons.

[tamelee]

hi tamelee!

I'm here to ask for a little bit of advice if that's okay (: about a month ago I bought a Wacom drawing pad so I could start experimenting with digital art. artists like you here on tumblr have really inspired me to start making art. but I feel kinda.. lost. I've been mostly drawing naruto manga caps and I'm getting better but I guess I don't know where to go from here. coloring and shading scares me lol. I'm using clip studio paint and it's just a little.. intimidating. I feel discouraged, like I won't be able to do it. how did you do it tamelee? did you watch a lot of tutorials, or did you experiment until you figured things out? any advice you'd have for a beginner artist I'd really appreciate.

thank you veryvery much for your time ^^

Hi Nonee! 🧡 Sure!

Oh I think that’s a very good place to start. As well as drawing subjects you like ^^! Hmm, tbh I’ve just experimented a lot, but I don’t think my way of having done things was the most efficient. You might want to follow tutorials step by step? You can try coloring only with flat colors until you feel a bit more confident with that as well as cell-shading (toon-shading/non-realistic, like in anime) instead of rendering further as that can all be confusing at first. I personally never truly understood shading until I studied cell-shading and made my art a lot more readable. A lot of Anime uses this; 

You see how there is a base color, a darker color for shadows and highlights? (Sometimes not even highlights.) 

When you start to study it from existing work you’ll start to notice things like color always being in the same area of saturation and when you suddenly have a color that is way more saturated than the other it can look off. (See example.) But this is a guideline, not a rule. In your own art you can especially use saturation and brightness to help aid you to direct a viewer's focus and even tell a story.

I LOVE ‘How to train you dragon’ and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ for this because their coloring is so inspiring and if you truly want to learn from professionals... well those are the type of media to look for of course! I have an entire folder to inspire me just based on those.

Do you see how calculated those color combo’s are?!?! Here you see both analogous and complementary schemes and it is actually through looking at the things I like that I learned it >< The orangey colors stand out and are bright which helps you to focus on that area whereas the complimentary scheme is used to bring characters together.

If drawing Manga-caps is something you love to do, then maybe for coloring you can study screen-caps from Anime or even other animated films. I’d recommend to take it step by step, though I haven’t really applied it myself, from the video’s I’ve seen and artists I’ve followed it is always advised to have an art-goal that you can work toward. Maybe you first want to focus on lineart and then laying down a base color where the colors are harmonious and next would be cell-shading maybe and then you can start adding another light-source etc- eventually you can decide to create more depth or practice with monochromatic coloring, maybe even greyscale to learn values. But right away that can all sound a bit intimidating doesn't it? Find things that you like and then maybe you can open them in your program and just study. Find a brush you like, put on some music or a show on the background and for a moment play around with it without needing to create a finished piece. This is also how I learned how things like adjustment layers work or what all the different kinds of tools do. I have to agree with you, CSP is intimidating for me as well >< so this is kinda how I approach it as there are so many add-ons and additions within it but I try to only learn what I need for that moment so I don't overwhelm myself.  I definitely try to find video’s that can help me with creating Manga though! ^^ There are plenty!  It'll get easier eventually, you'll learn the program and you start to recognize placements for shadows and you will get a feel for the coloring- no worries 💪 Learning something new will always stay intimidating, every time I open up a new document I feel it too. It's not easy at all, but you kinda have to allow yourself to experiment and even make mistakes because practice is never perfect. I have some beginner tips written here- I hope any of this is somewhat helpful 🌷🫶

[trashmuis]

Ok so I do really like when people draw Bubba Sawyer blushing through his mask. It's very cute. And it's an obvious way of showing it.

But also... I really like the actual thought of him blushing... where you can't see anything through the mask obviously, and he's hot af under it and it's so uncomfortable for him bc it's just like an oven in Texas as it is, which would only make that worse, so if you could see in through the holes at all, he's oh so red and flustered. Like some of the few indications of him blushing is if you can somehow see when he moves his head at the right angle, or if he pulls at the mask slightly to make it less hot, or when he kind of makes a noise and you can just tell by his mouth - either bc of him somewhat smiling a little or how he kind of nervously licks his teeth and lips - he's really happy or giddy.

Okay but also also, Bubba is super readable through his body language anyway - he doesn't simply stand there, emotionless, usually. Leatherface can be very animated and you can tell what he's kinda thinking pretty easily I feel like?? Or at least you can get a general idea of what might be there. Sure, he can stare blankly, but that's when he's head empty and he has to focus on the job at hand or he is kind of just going through the motions. When he has a single thought in his head though, he does try to express it. It's strained and difficult for him to talk any kind of normally, being basically non-verbal, so he resorts to big displays of emotion though every action. Hell, he screeches all the time at heightened emotion.

(rq I remember the very first time I watched the first movie and how I was actually taken back and was like aw omg what it's like he has anxiety about these people he just killed being in his house and it like stresses him out?? He's almost worried someone else is going to show up, and he's waiting for his family to get home because he's all alone and doesn't like that these people came in and surprised him, so when he just sits down and puts his head in his hands I actually felt like I could understand his thoughts a little. Especially so, after we meet his family and see how they treat him. And don't get me started on the second movie with how you can see his visible confusion with how he just kind of nods and shakes his head and shrugs a lot. And the moments when he is joyful and concerned and conflicted and curious - they each have a reaction and distinct movement. They definitely made him act things out more in the 2nd one, but it felt like the same character.)

Anyway, I mean, if he isn't babbling incoherently, squealing loudly, or making any other sounds, he's twiddling his fingers together or touching his hands to his mask, or holding his arms to himself. He also paces and fidgets and rocks in place. Like any of those things would be a huge tip off if something was making him blush. I just really like all those small details too, in actuality.

..... I know you can't draw this stuff as easily, but I like to think about it, y'know, just... practically.

[autistic-autumn]

Music Rambling #4

I figured it was probably best for everyone if I learnt how to use paragraph breaks this time. Previously avoided because didn't want to type out more than a paragraph per piece but it turns out I suck at brevity. Enjoying having readable paragraphs before every one of these turns into a 400 page essay. Turns out it's actually hard to try condense my thoughts on a 40 minute long 5-part symphony. I've also added lengths to all the pieces because there is a such a wide range here.

Iesu/虻瀬とテナテル by abuse-ken ~5 minutes This was a recommendation by @aroace-poly-show. There are three versions of this apparently, the original, a remix, and a cover by vflower. I particularly like the piano motif in the original, and the point comes back in with the bass is particularly cool. There are a few very nice cutoff points, one of which the vocals are dropped 2(?) octaves. The remix has a more dense and rich texture but does loss some of the nice rhythms of the original. The final chorus in the remix is particularity powerful, although the original still has it very strong. They are both strong in different aspects and I'm not entirely sure which one I prefer. I don't really know vocaloid enough to comment on the differences with the vflower cover. It sounds a little less shrill to me and generally articulates better, although sounds a bit odd in the higher register (?). The better articulation does give a bit more color I think but I really don't know enough about all of it. I don't particularly understand japanese at all, or the lyrics even after reading the translation but I think I gathered enough to understand and it's sort of what I expected. From the pieces I've heard by Abuse-ken I get the feeling they quite like the repetitive almost circular melodies, something that can get fairly repetitive and dull if done wrong. They however do it very effectively and seem to lean into it a lot with the rest of the arrangement. This style fits very well with the themes of what I can gather from the lyrics and is something they pull of well.

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Symphony no. 7 - Sinfonia Antartica ~42 minutes I saw this one on the shelf and decided the name seemed to cool not to take it. Definitely worth giving a listen to as a piece and glad I found. Apparently it's spelt like that because it's the Italian spelling, although I have no idea why Vaughan Williams put the title in Italian. Maybe just to sound kind of fancy. It's a large 42 minute orchestral piece broken into five movements. It's a fairly large orchestra and happens to have an additional SSA choir, with each movement having unique text in the program notes. The texts are from various different place, such as plays, poems, the bible and Captain Scott's last journal, the captain who lead multiple voyages to Antarctic. If you aren't familiar with the second trip Captain Scott made to Antarctica then all you really need to know is it didn't go well due to bad weather and failing to be retrieved by the ship that was to pick them up.

The first movement is very nice and there is some really nice use of celeste, glock and xylophone to create some nice textures. Additionally the use of the choir and soprano soloist to simply add texture by only singing 'ahh' rather than any distinctive words really adds to the effect here. The second movement is a scherzo, and once again uses the extended orchestra and percussion instruments to great effect, particularly with some nice polyrhythms in there to get the texture nice and thick. The third movement is wild. The title itself, 'Landscape: Lento (slow)' is already very evocative of the harsh environment of Antarctica. All the slow moving lines that slowly go in different directions in some of the more dense choral sections are very cool, and the organ solo towards the end is phenomenal, something that would be far more power in person with the full effect of an organ. There is no break between the third and fourth movement. Nothing really unique to comment on this one but it's very good and plenty of nice melodies and textures here. The final movement was far more explosive than I was anticipating, particularly knowing how Scott's story ends and reading the text that goes along with this movement. The return of the choir singing without words is a very nice touch. The choir and the wind machine in combination is such a fascinating sound and not one I've ever seen written into music like this.

Overall an incredible piece really. It so vividly paints the harrowing and frigid scene of Antarctica. Would recommend sitting down with headphones and listening, perhaps reading up on the text that goes with the pieces and some of the history behind it because it really adds an extra layer of the depth to the music.

Tolga Yayalar - Nell'estate un paradiso, nell'inverno un INFERNO (after Vivaldi) ~ 11 minutes Following the previous symphony, I was reminded of this piece I remember hearing a while back. The title translates to "In summer a paradise, in winter a hell". It's fairly recently and is arranged for four string quartets in different locations around a room, for extra spacial sound details that are unfortunately lost somewhat on a computer. This piece is to describe the harsh and cruel landscape of Antarctica in the winter. The piece uses motifs from Vivaldi's famous four seasons, specifically the winter movement. However instead of the luscious harmonies and generally more bright atmosphere Vivaldi brings, the piece here quickly deteriorates. All sorts of extended techniques are used to pull Vivaldi apart into this harrowing soundscape, that at many points is barely more than white noise. The intro I think is one of the most hard hitting parts of this piece really but there is some nice other stuff towards the end. The piece has really fallen apart so much by then that it almost looses the strong effect the start had I think. A very strange piece however and a good example of the stark difference between Vivaldi and contemporary classical music.

Samuel Barber - Piano Concerto Op Op.38 ~26 minutes Very excited for this one. Been big on Samuel Barber binge recently and was very excited to learn that he wrote a piano concerto. Immediately some odd things on the score. Trumpets are above the horns and the horns are written in alto clef? The score I have is in C, yet still uses the traditional notation of not giving the horns a key signature, despite being written in the 60's. I believe this is the original publisher, and I assume first edition so no idea what is up with that. The english horn is also written in alto clef which is odd by not entirely unusual, less than the french horn anyways.

The first movement is fine really. Didn't particularly grab me and I thought starting off with a mini-cadenza is odd. Some of the phrasing just didn't feel right and at one point I just forgot it was a piano concerto with how long it had been without the piano doing anything notable. I know part of that is just the style of the piece but didn't care for it regardless. The second movement is great. The slower pace and sparse texture was extremely well managed and it's very nice to listen to. The second is easily the best movement of the three here. The final movement is also very strong, although didn't capture me as much as the second. Manages texture and colors very well and the 5/8 rhythm was very cool. The section with xylophone and clarinet was particularly interesting.

Overall was a nice concerto but not one I would be desperate to see in person, particularly not with the huge amount of piano concerto repertoire from the era that I believe is far stronger. As a side note the book smells extremely old, much older than 60ish year it claims to be. Oldest stamp I can find in the book is from 1965 and piece was only published in 1962. Very interesting though.

[ravenwolfie97]

okay i have to talk about this because it's been really bothering me lately and i need to say something before i explode

so lately i've been noticing on many videos, shortform or otherwise, that they include subtitles! awesome! super helpful and cool

but idk if it's always been a problem and i'm only noticing it now, or if it's gotten particularly bad lately, but... recently a lot of those subtitles are really really bad

slight tangential anecdote: i used to do some freelance captioning work in between real job hunting, and it was a good experience. i was already interested in doing it, obviously, but i was coached on proper captioning etiquette and guidelines to make it look as nice and readable as possible while also transcribing the audio as best as i could before my superiors would touch it up. so i do know a thing or two about proper subtitling, but even if you didn't you would Know that there are some serious problems right now

i'll give a few non-specific examples (bc i'm too lazy to hunt them down to show you). there is a pretty popular (i think) youtube shorts personality who mostly does reaction-based videos, like i think it's actually mostly tiktok stitches reuploaded to yt shorts. but anyway this person, along with most other tiktok people who have subtitles for their lil internet rambles, are probably only basing off of their voice, like there's some kind of auto-caption that gets most of the words right, save for a couple small ones. i can understand that especially for the reaction/vlog crowd who are just trying to pump out videos, but like. i also follow john and hank green. they also reupload their tiktok stitches to yt shorts and have subtitles. and guess what? they're flawless. immaculate. you Can change them. or maybe they just talk better idk my point still stands that there is issue here stemming from having the computer do it with minimal to no touch-up. which leads me to my next example

one of the first nails in the coffin recently was this one pokemon youtube shorts guy i kept getting where he'd look into old game saves. all of the videos are subtitled, but similar to the tiktoks, it appears to be transcribing the voice on its own. what's worse and the most important here is that - remember - this is a series of pokemon videos. saying a pokemon name and expecting an AI to understand what that is out the gate is insane. and it doesn't. any time a pokemon's name is said, it just spews out words that are vaguely similar-sounding standard english words. and it's never the same each time too, which is fun. this is where taking the time to edit or even give a smidge of a damn to the craft of your video really would mean a lot, because for as many as i've seen it turns me even more off every time i see those shitty subtitles. but unfortunately that's not the worst i've seen in the last few days

the one that hurt me so much i physically could not stand it, to the point that i left a Comment on how bad it was, was an edit of a streamer's twitch VOD. normally, this streamer uploads snippets of their streams to yt shorts and has really good and well-edited captions there! i usually have nothing to complain about from this guy. but this one particular video... i don't know if it's because it's an older VOD and someone's just been holding on to it for months, or if it was a huge rush job, or What. but this video had literally the worst captions i had ever seen. they were just slapped down in chunks, not even lining up with the people who were talking, a negligible amount of punctuation, literally the barest minimum of effort. but that's not all! let's not forget that this is an edited clipshow, and there are Effects and Transitions for not only the video itself but the text as well! so SOME amount of effort was put into this because it got actually edited into a decent-sized video instead of just being a small clip. it's literally makes me sick i am so unhappy about it

main point, TL;DR, moral of the story: for the love of all that is holy, please remember that captioning is literally an accessibility feature. some people cannot hear or are unable to listen to videos sometimes, and i can't imagine what a hearing-impaired person who relies on subtitles to engage with videos would think watching either of my last two examples. what makes it worse, too, is that i can't even tell these people to hire someone to do it for them, because oftentimes they DO have people to do that work for them. and they still fuck it up. and then they continue on, to churn out more content. ugh just take a moment to remember that captions are not just for engagement. they're a tool, and some people can use only those as their guide through your video. don't make it impossible to parse. the purpose of them is to be read and understood. and you can't do that if the sentences are in overlapping chunks or if your words are too non-standard to be translated by a computer

[praetorqueenreyna]

Why aren't there WLW ships in the survey?

Hi @pearblossommina @mossytrashcan I wanted to let everyone know that I have seen these replies, and I do have justification for why I have structured things in the survey the way I have!

Why are all the queer pairings mlm?

There are 2 reasons for this: one is SJM's fault, the other is fandom's fault. Quite frankly, SJM doesn't really give us any main female characters that aren't the Archeron sisters. Mor, Emerie, Gwyn, Briar, etc. are all side characters. I know Mor is part of the IC, but SJM treats her like a side character and doesn't really give her much attention. There just aren't enough female characters that aren't related to justify giving every single wlw pairing an option.

I also chose the top ships based on what I've seen in fandom. There is almost zero wlw content in this fandom. Nobody is pushing for wlw content. Honestly, nobody is pushing for Mor content at ALL, regardless of the ship. In order to make the survey readable and to make the data manageable, I chose the ships that are actually being engaged with in fandom.

Okay, then what's with all the mlm crackships?

None of the mlm pairings I included are crackships. A crackship is a pairing that is extraordinarily unlikely to happen. None of the mlm ships are terribly popular in this fandom (more on that in the next point), but shipping the male main characters (many of whom are warrior bonded and spent centuries together) is not making crackships.

Well that means the data will be skewed and biased.

No it won't, because no matter how many queer ships I put on this survey, het ships are going to be the most popular. There is not a significant portion of fandom that has a wlw ship as their favorite ship. It sucks, but it's just the facts.

Why not do short answer instead of multiple choice?

Because the data created by people writing in their own answers is messy and a fucking nightmare to sort through afterwards. It would require literal HOURS of me in front of Excel and R to try to make that kind of information readable.

Wow, that's a lot. Are you angry?

I am not! I appreciate the feedback, and I very much appreciate you guys taking the survey and reblogging it! There are several decisions that I made for this survey based on my own personal experience in fandom, and how the survey went when my friend conducted it for ATLA fandom. All my decisions aren't necessarily right, but this is the way I have chosen to do it. If anybody else wanted to redo this survey with more emphasis on wlw/queer characters, they would be more than welcome to.

(And if you are seeing this and don't know what I'm talking about, the ACOTAR fandom demographics survey is here!)