#i've been doing some research and it looks fairly easy

[kanerallels]

I'm like this close to starting a new hobby lads

[monsterkin-culture-is]

Tips for Vampirekins? BECAUSE GENUINELY I JUST FOUND OUT I AM ONE TODAY considering theres been signs for years...

So any advice and tips is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED. 😭

SQUEALS OMG WELCOME TO THE COMMUNITY!! It means so much you came to me for help 💜

I'm not sure if this is your first kintype so I'll add my general kin tips as well as vamp specific stuff.

Ways To Connect With Your Kintype:

Create a Spotify Playlist: Doesn't have to be on-theme, can always just be your fave songs labelled under your kintype - they're both part of your identity! Vampirism is heavily linked to alternative music & subcultures.

Create a Moodboard: This is easy enough to do in Canva or most mobile collaging apps! I recommend using pinterest to find your images. This is one of my favourite ideas because you can make a 3x3 square moodboard & add it as your spotify playlist cover!

Design Your Own Kin Flag: Kin pride flags are very popular on tumblr. There's probably an already existing one for your kintype, but a custom kin flag has a special personal connection & the colours can have relevance to you!

Make a Kinsona: A Kinsona is like a fursona but for your kintype! It's an original character with the species of your kin. If you're into roleplay, that can be a great way to foster a connection. If you're part of the voidpunk community, you can also make a voidsona!

Support or Donate to Animal Sanctuaries: Sort of in the title for this one. This is usually a tip for therians & similar but I think bat sanctuaries would be relevant to vampirekin. Support can just look like following them online! It gives them reach & you get to see cute animals.

Vampirekin Tips:

Raw Meat & Blood Diet: Obviously human blood and raw meat isn't a viable option here! @/forests-creatures created a good list of alternatives: Beef jerky, rare steaks, safe raw salmon & dried fruits. For sweet options, I'd say the red tongue-staining lollipops could work, as well as pink or red chocolate & red popping candy. You can also add red food colouring to existing food. Please research that what you're eating is safe beforehand! Tumblr is not a reliable resource. I took this list from my zombiekin tips - it's proving pretty good for most monsterkins!

Wear Sunglasses & Sunhats or Gloves & Scarves: You're a vampire! You can't be going out in the sun! Incorporating day-to-day human protection against the weather is a good way to stay safe. There are some really cool tinted and bat shaped sunglasses out there if you know where to look.

Make a Necklace of Your Home Soil: In old vampire legends, if a vampire went abroad or travelled long distances they would need to bring some of their home soil with them. Online you can buy fairly afforable vial necklaces! Go to your garden or local park & scoop a little dirt in.

Gear: The obvious gear for vampires is of course fake fangs - these should be a little easier to find now we're into spooky season. However, I've also seen biting fidget/sensory toys (often in the form of charms or necklaces) be recommended!

Spend Time Outside @ Night: It's definitely not safe or recommended to go walking around alone at night, however there are alternatives! You can always sit in your garden or do what I do (as a werewolfkin) and sit near your window to moonbathe. Taking friends or family stargazing is also great fun! There are apps you can get that will locate the constellations around you.

Hopefully a couple of these were helpful!! ❤️

[publishinggoblin]

What Makes Confluence New?

Right now on Backerkit, Confluence: The Living Archive is in its final 11 days of funding. This is a Table Top Role Playing Game unlike any other, but not just for the reasons you might think.

Look, yes, it's a 6 book set with incredible art and layout and an amazing world to explore. This is all true. It's a true living world you get to dive into and experience at the table. That's great, truly!

But the thing that made Confluence different from any other project out there that I've ever heard of, is that in this industry, freelance writing for TTRPGs pays pennies on the word you turn in.

Some people were recently talking about how 10 cents per word is pretty good! You write 5000 words for a project? That's a nice $500. Other indie people were talking about paying 7 cents per word. But what they almost never offer is hourly pay, or pay for work you do outside the writing (including researching the game material you're writing for, or research for what you're writing!)

The Confluence Contract

Confluence has always meant the world to me. Truly. I tried to fund it and make it on my own multiple times in the past. When the Alleyman's Tarot was successful, I immediately wrote the contract with my lawyer for Confluence.

Everyone who worked on the project would make $25/hr for any work they do on the project. We would all feel we had equal pull and power here in that way, as it had to be collaborative.

Everyone would be paid an up-front Retainer of $10,000 if they were going to work part time, or $20,000 if they were going to work 30 or more hours a week. This was to alleviate current financial stress and give them space to explore the game with more freedom.

Everyone who worked on the project would share ownership with things they make. New cool mechanic? It lives in Confluence AND the creator can take it to their own games later. Awesome NPC? In Confluence and can be adapted anywhere else! I didn't want anyone to hold anything back. As far as I know, this has never been done before.

I did all this because, you see, I had an amazing team of people who came together to help bring this to life. People in the US, yes, but in Canada, the UK, Brazil, India, the Philippines. You can learn more and get links to them on the Pub Gob website here!

Do You Expect This to be the New Standard?

No, I don't expect all indie publishers to start doing this for TTRPGs. It's costly and not easy. But I want to stress that this is a unique situation we will likely never see again. And Confluence can only exist into the future with such an amazing team if we can step up support on the crowdfunding project!

This experiential game doesn't want to change the industry, but it changed the process behind the scenes already. If you believe in such a thing, a possibility for people to be paid fairly and have equal say and keep the rights for their works, consider believing in this project with us. Confluence needs your help to reach its funding goal, but it also needs your help to push further so the team can continue working in this amazing space to bring you even more materials in the future!

So check us out on Backerkit today!

[six-costume-refs]

Six Makeup: Masterpost and Links

Hey y'all! Finally finished up a long promised post: all of my makeup suggestions for SIX cosplayers (and/or fans who just want to do some cool makeup looks)!!! I've been actively working on this post for about a year now and compiling makeup for even longer, so I'm happy to finally finish it. I'll get into more details in a moment, but first things first:

I'll include all the links below, but for easy access I made a handy-dandy Pinterest board. It is sorted by costume (sections for each queen + alt costume) and you can clink on any pin to be taken directly to buy it. I would recommend that people look there for a more visual/easy look at the recommendations; I realize pure text can get a bit old!

Some notes: - All of these links are to US sites, with a variety of US and UK sources. Most of these brands ship internationally and/or are available on Amazon as well. - I tried to factor in a large variety of material colors/shades, skin tones, and financial budget. You'll find a mix of US and UK-based brands, mainstream and smaller brands, drugstore versus more upscale, and some brands owned by women of color. - There's a broad range in the companies listed in terms of their ethics, animal testing, politics, etc. I'm including as many companies as possible to give people as many options as possible, but some of these I wouldn't personally financially support. I would strongly suggest that anyone do their own research into the brands listed. - Many of these products may be harsher on skin than your typical products. I'd suggest considering any potential allergens and skin testing any product before use, and using your regular base (foundation, blush, etc) to minimize the number of new products. (If you have sensitive skin or are worried about toxicity, I'd suggest Skin Deep for toxicity information and the FDA site for information on common irritants) - The vast majority of the makeup on this list is products that I know Six actors use. However, just because someone in Six uses it does not mean it's necessary to achieve a great look - there are many great alternatives for just about any product, and what works for a specific actor may not be what works best for you. (I'd also note that the vast majority of queens use some fairly cheap makeup, so you never need to feel like you have to pay more to get "stage accuracy") - Factor in where you're intending to use your products. Six uses some extreme stage makeup and truly crazy lighting; if you use these products with the exact same intensity in just about any other context, it will be way overkill. Convention lighting tends to be harsh so you can usually go a bit heavier there, particularly if you're intending to do any on-stage performances. But for everyday use or a closet cosplay to go see Six or an outdoor meet-up with natural light you will usually want to go much softer. (Photoshoots are a whole other can of worms and really depend on specifics) - Some of this information is taken from a series of Instagram stories Erin Ramirez did. I'm still writing up a post of everything she suggested, but I'll link it here when finished. - And, finally, have fun experimenting and finding what works for you!

Links to recommendation posts and inspiration: Glitters/shimmers Palettes, eyeshadows, and other accents Lipsticks (coming soon) Erin Ramirez's recommendations MAC partnership link Eye look inspiration (my Pinterest board)

[yaoiconnoisseur]

♠ Knight of Spades - Mari ♠

〈 Protector of Innocence 〉

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Ahhh I finally get to post this :D It was an honor to be able to contribute to the amazing project that is Yuri!!! On Cards from the Yuri!!! On The Web Discord server!

You can see the entire project via this masterpost! If you'd like more context for this gigantic YOI AU, head over to this blog post for an explanation of everything.

I'd like to give a massive shoutout to @arom-antix and @lines-on-ice for basically putting this all together and making this amazing idea a reality. I know Arrow credits me as one of the admins of this project, but I really only made a Google Drive and did a little research for the artists on how to format their cards haha

I had a ton of fun coming up with Mari's design as the Knight of Spades. I knew right away that I wanted Mari's design to reflect her Japanese heritage since the suit of Spades is a fully Japanese cast.

I've cut me talking about the art itself and my thought process while working on it so I don't nuke your dash, but if you'd like to read my ramblings feel free to

Making Mari a samurai was an easy choice since, one, that's basically what a knight was in Japan (albeit there was no legal binding between a daimyo and his samurai), and, two, I've always HC'd Mari as a protective older sister in the sense she'd be fairly hands off until someone made the mistake of bullying her little Yuuri.

I wanted her armor to be blue since that was the overarching color scheme for Spades, but choosing what blues to use was.. Difficult. There needed to be enough contrast between the different pieces of her armor to show that the armor is made of multiple parts while keeping the hues and brightness values close enough to still look cohesive. I also wanted to keep the blues relatively low saturated to bring our Mari's blonde highlights.

(As I was coloring her armor I realized half way through that I basically drew a Samurott ginjinka oops (￣▽￣*)ゞ)

I had originally intended for the sarashi (the belt) to be pure white, however when I put all the base colors down I realized the white was too much and pulled your eyes away from Mari's overall form. I knew having the belt be pure blue would make the belt blend in too much with the rest of the armor, so I ended up making the belt mostly blue with white accents as a compromise. I still wish the belt could have been white, but oh well.

As for the katana.. That was originally going to be pure blue, but like the belt problem, I had issues keeping the katana from looking muddied. I ended up trying five different variations of black/dark gray until I settled on what you see above lol. It was really difficult making the hilt of the katana look nice because if I went too dark with the blacks I would lose detail on the hilt, but if I went too light I would lose the contrast with the hilt's blues. As for the saya (scabbard/sheathe) I wanted it to be black, but I ended up matching it to Mari's armor instead because a black saya with a mostly black hilt somehow made the entire katana look flat.

The color palates I used for everything else was just me eyeballing her fleshtone and hair color through various screenshots I ripped directly from the show.

The background gave the the most trouble out of everything though because I'm not particularly great at making interesting, minimalistic backgrounds for my art. The card looked to plain without some sort of variation of color behind Mari, but since her armor was already so complex I needed a background that didn't take away from those complexities and didn't muddy the entire piece. I had originally planned to do a sumi-e type background, however I found that no matter what I did the sumi-e designs took away focus from Mari. Eventually I settled on a default abstract Procreate brush and drew lines until something stuck.

Overall I had a blast making this and also the borders for the rest of the cards! I learned a lot about how to format and prep digital canvases for making a card deck, too lol

[lyssalis-corner]

Some Thoughts on Music, and Women

So, there's a quote floating around the internet from Sandy Toskig, about a particular incident that cause her to wonder how many times she had overlooked Women's Contribution to history. Now, I have some Thoughts about this.

You know what I've gotten really into? Sea shanties. Older folk music. I did a little researching, and learned about what the grand ol' tradition of shanties is for; essentially they're for timing rhythmic jobs, like rowing or adjusting rigging. Now, maybe it's that I'm a musician from a family of fairly musically inclined people, or maybe it's that I'm an ex-ballerina, but do know what I find sea shanties are really good for? Knitting. Sewing. Doing the dishes. Conventionally domestic feminine tasks. And further more, I bet they'd be great for spinning (I don't have the stuff to do this one, so I don't know), weaving, or other tasks that are repetitively rhythmic. But I'm going to focus on the knitting angle, since I have experience with that one.

Knitting is very rhythmic, and if you can find a way to time yourself (with, say, sea shanties for example), I've found it results in far more consistent stitches than just sitting and letting my mind wander. Songs like The Wellerman, or Leave Her Johnny, or (my personal favorite) Jolly Sailor Bold, are all great. They have a sharp steady beat that's easy to follow, catchy tunes that are fun to hum, and lyrics that are easier to remember. They're not complicated musically, either. I've found that there are different patterns that pair well with different songs; The Wellerman is great for knitting Estonian Lace, My Mother Told Me is good for some dishcloth patterns I've been experimenting with, or knitting in the round, Jolly Sailor Bold is also a good one for lace.

Speaking of Jolly Sailor Bold, I've been wondering about this one; it's fundamentally (at least to me) from a woman's perspective. According to Wikipedia, sailors have been singing on boats for at least a couple centuries, but why would a man have written this one? And it seems to me to identify very specific feelings that come from being left behind, when the one you love is off at sea. I propose that perhaps this one is woman originated. Maybe there's even an entire culture killed by the Industrial Revolution or by the Reformation, one of women's songs for knitting and spinning. It's certainly not something I've ever read about (if you've got books or sources on this, let me know, I'd be thrilled to read them!), but it's also something that I have a nearly impossible time believing didn't exist. Maybe many of these songs really have a woman at their origin, or maybe women's music has simply been lost.

Or maybe I just haven't looked in the right places, or hard enough. But it seems to me that there has to have been a culture revolving around these tasks, things done every day, by everyone.

Again, these are just my thoughts and opinions, formulated after some research and some coincidentally gained experience.

[elodieunderglass]

So I need to move and an interesting opportunity has presented itself; a beautifully finished and generously sized houseboat. I've been doing some reading, and know to expect maintenance costs and mooring costs (with council tax if I stay in the same place) but as you lived on a boat once I wanted to ask a specific question for the sake of my pets. How hard is it to keep the boat warm in the winter and cool in the summer? Too warm is less of a problem but one of my cats doesn't tolerate heat well. Too cold is scary because I've got a lot of little eight legged fuzzy friends who won't appreciate that. Also if you have any words of wisdom please don't hesitate to share. I've not committed in anyway yet; I'm just in the stage of researching and considering. But I have to admit being a moveable animal exhibit sounds really appealing; I've been really wanting to do some outreach and scicom with my tarantulas and this seems like a potential opportunity to do so.

A winter's scene in the cabin of my boat, Eve, on the canal in Wiltshire. The stove's going, the firewood's piled high, and there's whiskey and poetry. "It must be cold in the winter" say people who couldn't really be more wrong!

Artist Dru Marland, on the listing of this holiday card

People always ask/assume this, to the point where old boaters aren’t polite about answering any more. However, a well-insulated narrow steel tube with a multifuel stove in it is extremely easy to warm up. They are also very easy to air out, or cool down: you open a window on either side.

Sometimes you might wake up to ice on the inside of the windows, but the trick is to learn how to bank a stove overnight, which is quickly learned and a good life skill to have.

Our boat actually had an Eberspacher, a magnificently rare and antiquated form of central heating for vehicles that ran on diesel and made a tremendous fuss of it. You do not need an Eberspacher, but if your prospective boat has one, it is a very fun way to answer the question. “Doesn’t it get VERY cold in winter?” And you look blank and say reproachfully, “she has central heating…”

As for whether the boat you want has good insulation - try to visit it and see if it feels cold/damp. The listing or the owner should be able to describe the insulation. sprayfoam insulation is best, and if you see that you can be fairly confident.

Windows can get cold, but depending on what you have, there will be different treatments. Round porthole windows are usually fitted with round pillow things that you stick in, blinds can be made with thermal linings, and so on.

In general, the climate of a well-fitted boat is easier to control than a house. but you’re welcome to message me privately with the listing if you have more questions.

[pixsistixs]

It's been a long time since I've posted regularly to Tumblr, and even longer since I've been brave enough to post my fanfiction here. I posted the link a little while ago but I figured I'd post some snippets of my new chapters as I post them. Right now it's fairly far along so I'll try and post a chapter snippet every day until I catch up, then post when I upload a new chapter. :) Hope you enjoy.

Good and Kind Aren't Always the Same Thing

A Hazbin Hotel Fanfiction

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Summary:

Niffty has had her fill of Good Boys, so when she ends up in Hell and meets The Radio Demon she frequently has to remind herself that Good and Kind are not always the same thing.

~~~~

I found myself looking for something of more substance for Niffty as she is my favorite character in the show and couldn't find much so here it is. This will focus heavily on the beginning of her friendship with Alastor and how she becomes who she is. I have no idea where I'm going with this or how long it will be. I'm also fairly new to the Fandom so I may occasionally not get things right but I'm doing my best to do as much research as I can when writing these characters.

~~~~~~~~

TW: This Fic touches on some heavy themes, including DV. It may not always be easy to read and may also be very triggery. I will make sure to post trigger warnings at the beginning of any particularly bad chapters, but consider this a warning for the fic in general.

Chapter 1: The Radio Demon

Rarely is a soul's entrance into Hell a pleasant one. Sinners often meet their ends violently and are still experiencing it when they wake up in their new afterlife. Few embrace the change quickly, only the truly wicked do. Others struggle to cope with their end and their damnation. Many spend their first years in waves of insanity, reliving the trauma over and over again before settling into what would be their eternity. One never knows when or where these new souls will appear. This wasn't Heaven with its pearly gates and Saint Peter to greet them. This was Hell, it was filth and chaos. Most souls were introduced into this realm in a burst of hellfire and screams. It had been that way for Alastor and it had been vivid.

As he'd burst forth into Hell he'd felt the dogs ripping at his flesh, the sharp pain of the bullet through his forehead and the unbelievable agony of burning flesh as his human body morphed and changed into the form he was today. It was… unpleasant to say the least. Once it passed though, if one grounded themselves well, Hell had innumerable possibilities. He'd been fortunate that his arrival had happened in Cannibal Town and that Rosie, his dear sweet friend, had been the one to find him first. He hadn't known her then, but she was the best sort of soul to find a new sinner. Kind, gentle, and the patience of a Saint. She was a special one. Alastor felt a shift in his smile to something a bit more genuine as he pondered over it on his morning walk. He was on his way into a more questionable part of the Pride Circle than the safe haven that was Cannibal Town. He had business to attend to and the thought came to mind as he sidestepped a sinner who was just being birthed into the world. Alastor was not the kind of sinner one would hope to run into on your first day in hell. New souls were an easy meal to him some days and simply a nuisance on others. Fortunately for this fledgling, today was a good day for Alastor and a new soul in his path was simply a reminder of pleasant memories of the past. He hummed to himself some, feeling an added bounce to his step as he listened to the screams fade behind him. What lovely noises screams were, he loved them almost as much as a good Jazz record.

His shadow lingered behind him some, cracking a menacing smile at the new soul, and licking its lips with a grotesquely shaped tongue. He felt flashes of its feelings. Greedy hunger, a lustful want to feel flesh rip apart in its grip.

‘Come now, behave yourself.’ He thought to it, not glancing in its direction, ‘ We just ate, and besides we have bigger game ahead of us my friend.’

The shadow hesitated, looking back at the sinner with want and disappointment. It always had so much more of an appetite than he did, so much more need for violence.

‘I promise, you'll want to leave room for this one.’ He thought cheerfully, rounding a corner and grinning at an imp walking ahead of him. The imp spotted him and immediately crossed the street, eyes wide with terror as it picked up it’s pace considerably to put distance between them. ‘Overlord always is so much more satisfying.’

For the full fic please see the AO3 link. :)

[1-2-butter-my-shoe]

An assorted list of things I've learned in the past few years that seem obvious in retrospect. They helped me, hopefully they can help some other people too:

Looking up helps so much more than you think it does. If all you see is the ground, the world feels small and so do you. I can't really explain it better than that. I cannot express how much my confidence has increased since I started actually looking up and not being afraid to meet peoples' gazes. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Messing up a sleep schedule is easy; fixing one is very very hard. Up until very very recently it had been about 6 years since I had consistently gone to bed before 1am. It recently got so bad that I was regularly going to bed at 5/6am and waking up at 3/4pm. However much being awake late at night felt more natural to me, society does not love night owls.

Whenever you can, wear something you truly like wearing, that you think is cool or that makes you feel good.

Write lists. If you break a task down into simpler steps it often becomes more achieveable immediately.

Familiarity makes things easier, and so does a plan. If you can't have familiarity for whatever reason, do your research. Don't let your fear prevent you doing something you really want to do (other factors notwithstanding).

Most people are not scary. Everyone is human, even your role models. Most people genuinely want to help others. The news tells you people are bad--the news is lying to you. It makes them money to do so.

Treat yourself kindly. The better you look after yourself, the better you will feel. Small steps.

No-one can live in complete isolation. I typically consider myself fairly introverted but I would not be doing as well as I am without the friends I have, and the ability to choose to interact with nice people regularly.

As much as I hate to say it, going outside helps. Ideally find a green space, but anywhere you feel safe works. A change of scenery can be a gamechanger.

Exercise helps too. Whatever's most accessible to you--in my case walking to my local green-space and around it. I get it, starting sucks. Find what works for you (personally I cannot bring myself to even consider the gym).

I think that's everything I can think of atm. I hope this helps someone. The world might seem shit but there's plenty of good too.

[copperbadge]

Shivadhverse: REALLY enjoying your take on Eurovision. 🎼🎤🎸😎 Was it fun to research?

It was a blast to research! Even though I still got a lot of stuff...perhaps not wrong, but not quite right, either, initially.

I have a friend, @hinerdsitscat, who is super into Eurovision and has been for years, and this past year because we were in a chat together she started sharing links and offering insight into the show -- the initial national song releases and national finals, the pre-parties and semifinals, the grand final, all of it. I've always been interested in Eurovision, but especially as an American it's difficult to follow; there's just a lot of disparate information sources out there (although it is a lot easier now, because of the YouTube channel). So for me -- I can get really into certain media if I have access to the information, but I struggle to access the information when it's spread across a lot of sources. Her sharing made it easy for me to engage, and I started thinking about Askazer-Shivadlakia's entry and what that would look like.

So I did do research, but I also had a great resource at my fingertips; I could just run stuff by her and be like "Hey does this work", and sometimes I'd share a snippet and she'd point out something I either hadn't seen or wasn't aware of. Which made it really fun because I wasn't just doing straight-up research, I also had a human to talk to about it. (She is singlehandedly responsible for Davidson the RSBA rep.) 

If you're going to write a story about something that exists in real life and you aren't an expert, I highly recommend having someone who's a subject-matter expert that you can natter with. That's a fun time. :D

I am definitely at some point going to have to source someone who's super into European football for this football story, but at least for now my nerdery is sufficing. (Buck and Caleb actually get to have a fairly significant cameo in the football story, when Buck befriends the protagonist and becomes his erstwhile wingman. Buck reminds Caleb he is always invited to go out anytime Buck is going clubbing, and Caleb very lovingly says that he would rather drown slowly.)

[igordumbra]

I find it kinda hard to write fanfiction about Fallen London to be honest, I know I shouldn't, we all know that if there's something this game doesn't lack, is text. So by all means, it should be fairly easy to write right?

My main problem is that I feel like my character doesn't live in Fallen London, y'know? Now, before I explain, keep in mind it's been a couple years since I started playing, I've never played a ES since i can't actually afford it and by all means this is not a critique to failbetter, just my personal experience that i want to share.

You see, what I meant by that is that, as much as I'm playing FL and reading the texts, I can't actually picture my character living there?

I have always had problems picturing stuff, some of it due to aphantasia but most of it simply because imagining things without a very detailed description is very hard for me, that's why I love Fallen London and books and fanfictions. Normally in fl this isn't a problem, since everything is in text and often quite detailed when in stories.

The problem, at least for me, is when I ain't in no storyline. And that's when what I said above come in, I can't actually picture my character living in the neath on his day to day because we don't see that in game aside from the first few storylines you play (Blind Pianist and Last Constable), where your character goes to the singing mandrake to drink and hear the pianist or to the blind helmsman in the end of the Last Constable.

We don't see these places being used in other stories, or if they are very little, and we don't have exact drescriptors on them. Take the singing mandrake as an example, what does it look like? what kinda drinks do they sell? Do they sell some kind of food? How big is it, does it have two floors or is it just horizontally big? Is it normal for people to play there? What kind of music?

Or maybe it was very described but it's been so long I forgot, no problem I'll check the wiki. Well, the wiki only has enough text from each storylet so that you can understand it's context, try hoping that someone has an echo of this and it actually has descriptions.

Now, it's unreasonable of a task for failbetter to do all this flavour stuff, instead of actual content, and I agree because the players can just imagine if they're actually curious, or maybe they live in London and thus can imagine how some place like this would look, and the city and the people.

Well, I can do neither, which makes even simple things complicated for example, my character lives in the brass embassy sanctum. I don't even know how that works, I've never seen an embassy and didn't even think they bedrooms, but at least it has a description, so it's nice (even if i have to switch homes to get the thing and then echo it)

But how they live there? Do they have neighbours, are they human or devils, what are their opinion on a human living in a sanctum? Where does he go for breakfast? And well, this is all probably expanded on ES, because it makes more sense to do it there which sucks for me.

And because i can't really imagine new things, just work with patterns and precise descriptions, I also like to write in a very grounded way, I will try to do my research before writing even the dumbest things, for example the bedroom. Or maybe i'll try to write something in the correspondence to get an effect, well in this case I'll ask the discord lore channel what do they think about it and if there's a better option, very lovable people there they always indulge in my silly questions.

And well, you can see how trying to "scientifically" write every single thing will only be exponentially more time consuming by the amount of things you want to add, and it makes me get into a state of "not writing because I know I won't have enough time" and just "Not writing because I can't craft something that would make sense to me in universe, due to the lack of information"

But I'll try my best, since I paid to re-read the blind pianist storyline again, to write about it. And hey, at least it isn't Mask of the Rose this time, that was a fucking nightmare.

Tl;Dr: Boy get's overwhelmed when trying to create things in his mind that aren't otherwise told explicitly in the flavour text because he values cringe stuff like logic and accuracy since he often relies on them due to the lack of creative power in the brain

[bellshazes]

my first two jobs ever, in order, were "board game teacher" and "university library assistant," so tho I've never formally studied games (I have been dropping out of college on and off since 2015, and was a freshman in 2012 lmao) I've been casually exposed to games and the people who make and play them in a professional context, as well as having the research skills to help close the gaps. i actually kind of hate playing board games but i loved GM-ing the coop arkham horror and watching my players, which i did for seven years straight.

my current fixation is the result of several years' fucking around on YT watching all kinds of game content, from LPs to specific game dissection to video essayists. jacob geller and folding ideas are kind of gold standards, but this week I've been really enjoying errant signals in particular. Sometimes I'm introduced to concepts this way - ludonarrative dissonance, ergodic literature, the magic circle, etc. that, and getting recommendations from friends or accidentally stumbling into game studies via other research (such as the paper i wrote a few years ago on theater-as-games in prison contexts). most of it though is having thoughts and opinions on things and letting it percolate until i am dangerous enough to find someone who's already explained a concept better than I could, and then running with that. find something that cites its sources, and then chase the ones that seem interesting.

my syllabus post is very much not a reclist, though i do in varying ways recommend everything on that list and it might be of use. here's some stuff I think would be great starting points:

Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals, Salen and Zimmerman. This book is an excellent resource, as it introduces a wide variety of scholars who you can dive into as it is relevant to your interests as well as providing tons of useful frameworks and vocabulary to go hunting. It's an easy read with concise bullet-point summaries after each chapter, and the PDF is hyperlinked for easy navigation. I might have found this via Wikipedia, honestly.

A Play of Bodies: A Phenomenology of Video Game Experience, Keogh. What I'm currently liveblogging - it is firmly a literary/philosophical work, rather than by/for designers, and correspondingly it's a little more difficult without at least passing familiarity with cyborg theory or any brand or offshoot of post-modernism, but still fairly digestible and a great read so far.

My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, Nardi. Found this during my theater-and-games paper, and MMO anthropology is not really my thing, but it's a nice complement to the other books as an explicitly player-theorist perspective. Also provides a more approachable introduction to a variety of theorists and sources. (Open access on JSTOR!)

Draw Your Weapons, Sarah Sentilles. I'm biased because I discovered this book by accidentally attending an author event at my local museum, and the games portion is incidental, but if you can find it I think this analysis of the relationship between depictions of violence and violence itself is worth your time. Memorable re: games for its discussion of Press F To Pay Respects.

here are some videos which I offer as examples of channels you might enjoy diving into, looking for additional jumping-off points:

Playing as Anyone in Watch Dogs Legion, Errant Signal. I really appreciate Errant Signal's thoughtful, personal approach to analysis and especially his highlighting of buried gems in his Blips series as well as his non-self-deprecating reevaluation of some of his older analyses over his decade plus career making videos.

Controllers Control Everything, Game Makers Toolkit. Discovered via the Boss Keys series highlighting the souls games, and although I think his channel is (increasingly) geared toward devs, these are well-constructed, thoughtful videos about many aspects of game design. Even when I don't personally get what makes him enjoy Zelda dungeons in that specific way (I'm an outlier), I appreciate his analysis.

Mega Microvideos 2, Matthewmatosis. Perhaps better known for his extremely long-form essays, I love Matthewmatosis' series of microessays framed like Wario Ware minigames. They are brief but don't pull punches, and the format is uniquely delightful. (See also this microessay mixtape.)

Making Sense of Catherine Full Body, SuperButterBuns. She doesn't do much essay content, I guess, but I she loves Catherine and the Persona series, and this dissection of Catherine Full Body is an absolute treat.

Jon Bois. Okay, mostly not about games, but like - come on. 17776 and Breaking Madden, alongside everything else he's ever done, fit because I feel like they do. If nothing else, I think Pretty Good and his general use of Google Earth as a medium for storytelling have a lot of utility in talking about digital media. He's good for the soul.

The Future of Writing About Games, Jacob Geller. One of the gold standards for a reason - and especially if you're looking for further solid recommendations for other writing/creating about games. This video in particular discusses & links to some really great pieces, but his Big List of Other People's Video Essays is also a great way to spend the next month of your life. (You might notice some crossover between this list and his, only some of which is coincidental.)

if i have any conclusion, it's that my current fixation on digital literalism is me finally finding an outlet/academic match-up with a fascination i developed in 2015 when studying gonzo lit. i think the utility of academia and the long history of scholarship on a given topic, as a non-academic, is to help you express ideas or reinterpret beliefs or experiences you've had to others without having to reinvent the wheel. i always become most energized when i stop worrying about knowing all the bg and chase whatever is useful and affirming or enlightening to me. and you can get pretty far if you think about why you like what you do, and just - enthusiastically also consume non-academic stuff. maybe this is a note more for myself! but thank you for the opportunity to monologue.

[fbwzoo]

Okay so!! Ed first bc I have the biggest plans for him, since he's the newest and still needs more improvements. Unfortunately, his are also a bit longer term plans bc due to cost & logistics.

A brief pause to recommend Reptiles & Research's beardie care sheet as the most up to date info if you're looking!

The main thing is more space, for which I have a shorter term plan that I'm 90% sure we can do by end of year to give him at least little more room. Dubia website, which is where his viv is from, has released a 2x2x2 add-on enclosure that can be connected to a 4x2x2. It's around $200, which is fairly workable price-wise, and I'm pretty sure we should be able to make that work space-wise in the animal room!

But, a potential next step up would be the extension kit that links two 4x2x2 vivs together. We have the same viv for Clover hedgie, so in theory, could give both of those to Ed once we lose Clover. But that's hopefully gonna be a while yet, as she's around 4 years, but still healthy and grumpy and plotting Jack's torture for giving her baths & health checks every couple weeks.

However, I'm not sure we can make 8 feet long fit in the animal room, especially not without blocking off a door or some storage space. The back wall is all shelving, and the other 3 walls each have a door on them. I'm gonna measure in the room this week sometime to see what we have to work with. Frankly, I'm fine with blocking off the hallway door or removing the shelving on the wall in favor of animal enclosures, but I may be outvoted.

The longest term plan I have in mind for his space is getting a 6x2x4 viv from Animal Plastics! The snake, hamster, and tenrec vivs are all AP, and I love how sturdy they are. I've had them for at least 6 years & they've been moved once, and they're still great & easy to take apart & put back together. That would also give a lot more height for climbing room, which would be great. It's around $800 for the viv, plus shipping, so that'll take a while to get the money for though.

In the meantime, other smaller plans.... I want to get him switched to loose substrate, which is better for his joints and will let him dig. I'm looking at likely getting the Jurassic Australian sand substrate for that. I think I may start with a dig box in the next few weeks to see what he thinks! I'm out of money this month, so it has to wait on that anyway.

Once I have my tool & machine area cleaned back up, I'm also wanting to work on making some climber stuff for him, but I'm not in a huge rush on that bc he already has a good set up with his branches and such.

Oh, and I've also started looking at expanding his lighting, but major changes on that will likely wait for his forever viv tbh. I'm a bit intimidated by how complicated advanced lighting set ups are still, and I want to make sure I don't overheat his cage or the room. Though I do want to add another LED bar, at least, preferably a Jungle Dawn. Alas, money (they're over $100).

[anonymusbosch]

way too long ankle thoughts

I have had fairly weak ankles for a pretty long time - I sprained one pretty badly in my senior year of high school and then kept respraining it for... at least a year after? Then I sprained my other ankle in college and made a hobby of respraining it, then I - a couple years(?) later want on one run that I went on often and ended up with acute tendinitis that became long-lasting-mystery-ankle-affliction, which lasted me more or less from 2021 to 2024 in ebbs and flows of "I think it's getting better this time" / "agh one slightly-too-long-hike set me back months again". And it's more or less much better now! Not 100%, but measurably improved (the last "I think it might be better this time!" I was topping out at 6 miles on flat ground, and I did 12 with a little elevation a few weekends ago).

Throughout these, the doctor's appointments were of middling use. I'd say a 30/30/40 mix of "making it better", "making it actively worse", and "mystifying and useless". I tried physical therapy - this did seem to help lead to improvement, but I attribute this largely to (1) having done quite a bit of research before my first visit and arriving with "The doctor said I have X, so I tried all these different exercises and stretches and I'm still getting pain" and (2) a physical therapist can be seen for an hour at a time for several weeks in a row and this makes them more vulnerable to interrogation than the average US MD, who will see you for 15 minutes of a 30-minute appointment a month from now if you're lucky. The physical therapist was also about a 70% useless woo/30% useful mix, but the duration meant that 30% was pretty impactful.

As far as I can tell, the things that worked for me were

Strengthening the ankle with various exercises like calf raises, resistance band thingamabobs, etc. A lot of these felt really easy when I looked up "exercises for ankle strength" - there are ways to modify them to make them more challenging. My understanding is that a healing ligament can't heal tightly and a sprained ankle benefits from having stronger muscles to help hold it more in place.

Balance exercises - not just standing on one foot, but doing one-foot calf raises, using a balance board/bosu ball, doing one-leg squats and such that require balance through the range of motion, etc. Messing around with my sister's slackline. Roller blading. This has to do with the proprioception thing, as far as I know.

Strengthening and stretching the muscles of the foot itself. This - I think - was the breakthrough for my particular situation. With all the staying-off-my-ankle, there were a bunch of foot muscles that help with stabilization that got very weak with disuse.

Strength stuff for hips and knees as well.

(for all the exercises, I really can't give a recommendation. Absolutely not a doctor. What I can say is that I got frustrated early about things being too easy or too hard - but almost anything can be modified to add or subtract difficulty, and I do have a decent mental catalog of the variations that I've done.)

Using hiking poles. What would have been a minor rolled ankle pre-sprain would become a re-sprain - poles helped me head off several re-sprains.

Wearing a lace-up ankle brace (from the pharmacy, like $20, nothing fancy) that helped prevent re-sprains in situations where poles wouldn't cut it or didn't apply.

Actually doing the boring exercises and shit. This was a very difficult thing even with a burning desire to banish ankle problems entirely. I had a lot more success tacking them on to the end of other exercise; dedicating solely ankle time was (is) anathema to my attention span. Small things that helped: Finding things which target some weak areas (balance, ankles, knees, hips) that aren't boring as fuck (stand up paddle board [when available], roller blades, biking, climbing, even regular gym exercises that use balance, etc). Having a buddy for accountability. Taking 20 min to get outside and do things before work. being unemployed for a couple months. leaving resistance bands out in view so I remember they exist. going on hikes and walking on my toes. walking weirdly around town (on heels, on toes, with funky stride). doing the exercises between routes at the climbing gym. standing on one foot while working. etc etc etc.

but yeah, part of what spurred my photography hobby was needing to sit down while other people hiked. might as well appreciate the beauty and look at bugs while you're waitin'

[sunmoonjune]

Ive been meaning to ask for a while but what does Bug’s mask look like to you? (Like is it a complete half mask that covers half the nose and mouth or a mask that goes around them like a phantom mask, does it have depth or is it flat, material, etc ) I’ve always been curious what you envision! ♥️

ok ok ignore how sloppy this is, but this is what I had drawn out for reference a few weeks ago (also just a random reference photo for face shape, it has nothing to do with how bug looks! bug is still sort of supposed to be the reader, so their appearance is still based on you! she just has some specific things about her that are defined, like her scars and such) also I apologize if bug ever becomes too much of an oc! that's why I added that oc!reader tag becuase I'm not quite sure if bug is becoming an oc xD

I drew this super quickly because I needed some kind of reference when I was drawing a cover for the printed version of LTM that I have a hard copy of! The cover that I drew is essentially just what's beneath the mask so I needed a reference to what the mask would cover! (I would love to show you that cover but right now it's a BIG SPOILER, so I will withhold it from you for now (also I am a terrible artist so I should probably find an artist friend or commission someone to make a book cover for me))

so the photo above is approximately how big the mask would be and what it would cover!

it would tie behind her head near her forehead so that it wouldn't obscure her left eye (also totally ignore that I drew the mask on the reference model's left side, cause I totally did not do that LMAO I forgot about mirroring xD I am def not an artist hehe )

It's definitely fairly tight against her face, like form-fitted in a way. It's very simple and definitely scuffed up and scratched and such since it's been used for more than a decade.

I've always imagined it to be dark colored, like black or a very dark brown. It's also probably got a leather base since there's not a ton of material bug had access to in her village :(( the leather part probably is against her skin with a layer of hopefully softer cloth that will be against her face so that it doesn't agitate what's underneath.

I also always imagined it to have a tougher shell as an exterior that's scratched and scuffed up, but it sort of acts as armor in a way. after what happened she wanted another layer of protection between that side of her face and the outside world, so the outer layer of her mask is a little tougher, but I can't necessarily say what kind of material since I'm not too sure what she would have access too (I'll have to do a little more research!

it's pretty tightly pressed to her face, because when her tear duct ruptures, the blood pools at the bottom of the mask as it tries to slip between the crack and out of the material ( kind of gruesome I apologize :( ) she often has to replace that inner layer of cloth when it gets soaked with that blood since she doesn't want anymore infections, but she does it in privacy far away from camp (I haven't yet talked about this in the story itself, but it will be coming soon -- in fifteen perhaps >:DD )

and no, the mask doesn't completely cover what she's concealing. I didn't draw them here ( I hide that layer so you couldn't see it quite yet) but her hair sort of obscures the rest of it so it's not easy to see.

[healthcare-kart]

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