#its still some work but its much more manageable and doable

[forestryfae]

i have tidied 90% of the corner, i have mopped thefloor in the places it mattered, i put garbage in bag, i cleaned my footrest and put yarn in it, i hung up my aliens, i cleaned the drawers and i showered, and i hung up laundry and folded some of what was dry

also sorted my shell collection its so pretty :3

still gotta do the dishes, wipe dust off of some comics, unpack a bag of stuff and clean that stuff, dry the drawers and hope the water doesnt damage them a lot, find a place for the books i undusted in the corner, actually mop and clean the corner so its not dusty as shit anymore, and ideally make dinner and have leftovers for tomorrow

for further context the drawers have that open plywood stuff on the bottom. idk what to call it but its not waterproof and shouldnt get wet or it could expand and thats not bueno. itll probably be fine worst case scenario it looks bad on the bottom or something idk itll dry and it wont really affect it much functionally im p sure but like once theyre dry i get to put stuff in drawers. in so excited ive really wanted to have functional drawers to put stuff in. idk but functional and practical household items make me so fucking happy. im thriving.

[thosewickedlovelies]

A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character

Hey hi hello it’s your local museum worker here, offering you some insight and tips to writing museum-related fics! This is primarily organized as a list of different jobs you could have in a museum and what their duties entail. This post might also be useful to you if you’re considering working in museums and want to know What Goes On In There. Let’s go!

For simplicity/fic-writing purposes, I would divide museums into 2 very rough groups: large national or city museums that Have Money (think the Smithsonian or British Museums, or the Chicago Field Museum or the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds); and smaller local museums. These could be local industry and culture/history-of-our town museums, historic houses, or  really niche subject museums run by One Person With A Passion.

Big national museums have a fuckton of staff and money (museums can never have enough money. But these places are very well-off compared to somewhere small that might always be hustling and writing grant applications). If you work here you’re likely to have a specific role in a particular department, and you probably won’t do much outside this role (ex., if you work in collections management, you probably won’t also design exhibits)

The smaller the museum, the more varied your workload will be/the more likely you are to be doing a little bit of everything. You’re probably organizing collections storage, manning the front desk, and desperately running fundraising efforts, all at once. 

To this end, smaller museums are more likely to be closed one or two days a week- you’ll be there, probably cleaning displays or managing storage, but visitors won’t be.

A lot of (most?) universities also have museums, so a college town setting is also doable. But the same big vs small museum disparity is still possible! At Penn State University, for example, the Palmer Art Museum is its own (recently redone iirc) building in the center of campus with a lovely plaza out front, while the Matson Museum of Anthropology is uhhhhh a couple classrooms in the Anthropology Department (which they’re currently rebuilding tbf, so we’ll see what they’ve done with it in 2025).

Types of Jobs

Curator

The one museum job that everyone can name. Nominally the person in charge. Probably laments that their job is way more admin than fun hands-on stuff now.

Actually this is the role I have the least knowledge of, but I think that’s partially because this job might vary the most from place to place? Structural organization can vary a lot between institutions, but I think the higher up you get in any field, the more your job tends to consist of meetings/overseeing, designating, and ~liaising~

A list of things a curator might do:

Planning or approving events and fundraisers, schmoozing with donors and members at said events, approving or designing a schedule of exhibits, publish outreach/advertising or research materials, oversee hiring, approve new object acquisitions (or de-acquisitions), generally make sure that the museum is working within the scope of its mission and if necessary, change or refine their mission

The curator might not necessarily control a museum’s funds; in this case they’ll liaise with the people who do, likely a Board of Executives or Board of Trustees. Once they get the money from these people, though, they could potentially redistribute it as they see fit.

 If you work in a fuckoff museum like the BM, you could also be the curator of a specific department, arranged by overarching subject, geographic area, time period, or even object type (eg Curator of Archaeobotany, Curator of Korean Collections, curator of coins from the medieval period). These categories can be more or less specific depending on what kind of holdings your museum has. I think these types of curators would still be able to do interesting things, as they aren’t the ones who Oversee The Whole Place.

You can also be an assistant or associate curator, like being an assistant manager.

Education/Engagement

These are the people who design fun extra activities (esp for kids) in the galleries or relevant events/workshops/lectures the public can attend. They might be called Engagement/Education Officer or Events Manager or anything similar

Again, the bigger the museum you work at, the more specific your role is likely to be. You might focus on web content/outreach and social media, manage the ‘friends/members of the museum’ program, or engage with shareholders, etc

Or you might do things like develop content and events to engage adult audiences. Workshops or lectures connected to new exhibits, after-hours visits. These people are also probably the ones with an eye on accessibility- you’ve probably seen advertisements for museums’ early or late hours for older visitors, or ‘quiet hours’ for people who might be overstimulated by normal museum hubbub, or tactile workshops designed for visually impaired folks.

I think most places would try to have someone specific for kids activities at the very least. They’ll be designing little activities or dress-up stations for the galleries, kiddie mascots or scavenger hunt trail kind of things, as well as, potentially, activities for any digital elements in the museum. They probably also coordinate school visits and act as a tour guide for classes, and will lead the kids in specific workshops or lessons in classrooms attached to the museum.

As a note on technology- some people would probably say that integrating digital elements into exhibits is the ~next big thing~, that museums have to get with the times in this regard, but opinions vary. Big science and technology museums are the most likely to have the most digital and techy elements in their exhibits, so if this is your setting, your character could also be a generic “tech person”. I would go so far as to say the smaller/more local the museum, the less technology you’re likely to have, but smaller museums are able to get grants, some of them potentially for specifically this type of thing, so it’s totally possibly that they have a few tablets with integrated activities, or some other Digital/Screen Thing.

Engagement Officers are probably the most likely people to be drafted for out-of-hours events, so that’s a potentially fun thing for your character to do. Some museums, particularly bigger ones, have event spaces attached that anybody can rent out, for weddings, galas, markets, etc, so they might also take care of these bookings as well.

Exhibit Design

This role has a lot of nebulous terms: exhibit coordinator, design constructor, exhibit programmer- but these are the people who design the exhibits. They’ll come up with a theme or narrative, a design scheme, choose the objects, write the text. They’ll probably come up with some marketing material as well, that matches the design scheme, or they’ll liaise with the marketing people who will.

These people might not be as familiar with the collections as the collections management folk (below), depending on how strictly divided your roles are, so they’ll likely consult with the collections people on choosing objects for a particular exhibit or theme (they say that good exhibit design builds an exhibit from the objects up, but I digress).

These people will also direct and participate in the install and deinstall (the actual terms) of exhibits- putting the objects on the right plinths/stands and arranging everything just so in the cases. Genuinely there’s a lot of psychology behind exhibit design- colors, lighting, the way you might design an exhibit to be navigated vs the path people will actually take through the gallery, people’s sight lines and where their eyes go first, how the display of any given object affects people’s perception of the importance of that object. Fascinating stuff, many books on the subject. 

There are also a lot of accessibility concerns to be considered here- how bright is the gallery, how large is your display text, at what height is the central eyeline of your cases?

Museums often loan objects to and from each other’s collections, so if you’re building an exhibit and you’d really like to include X type of object but your museum doesn’t have any, you can borrow some from another museum (this isn’t necessarily a guarantee- museums are allowed to say no to these requests, but I think manners would dictate that they should have a good reason)

Museums sometimes tour whole exhibitions as well- the objects, the text placards, maybe even the stands for super special or fragile items- and exhibit coordinator people are the ones who would handle those arrangements.

Potentially good opportunities for angst stories here- wow things come to life at your museum, you fall in love with a statue but oh no it’s only at your museum for three months

Collections Care

People who work in Collections Management have the most direct contact with the museum objects themselves. You probably work here if you prefer objects to people. When a museum gets new material, these are the people involved. They might not always initiate acquisitions, and the final approval is probably down to the relevant curator, but 98% of the time they’d be consulted (I hope).

A mind-boggling statistic is that most museums only have like 10% of their collections on display at any given time. Yeah. Forreal lol. But collections folk will know where the other 90% is and what’s in it (particularly the longer they’ve been there). 

There’s usually a head Collections Manager. Other workers might be a Collection Assistant/Associate, Collections Officer (we like calling people Officers for some reason), Registrar, or some variant of these depending on the specific flavor of your duties. 

Main job duties can be divided amongst documentation and database work, organization and storage of objects, and lite conservation. Just how much/how technical the conservation work depends on your own training, but also on the size/funding of your museum. The more money, the more likely your museum is to have its own lab with people specifically trained as conservators. More on them later. 

Here’s what happens when a museum gets new stuff!:

Ideally, it goes to a ‘quarantine zone’ first. This is a separate space or room where the objects can relax for a few weeks to a few months (ultimate best practice is actually a year, but, you know. that’s a long time) to ensure that they’re not harboring anything icky (bugs, mold, etc) that will infect the rest of the collections. It’s ideally super-sealed and climate-controlled, but the primary feature should be that it’s away from the main collections store.

Collections folk do the paperwork. They’ll give each individual object a unique number (following their preexisting system that will allow it to be identified distinct from all the other objects in the collection). They’ll create a ‘collections record’ for the object- documentation containing any and all information about the object. This includes the accession paperwork (everything that says ‘we legally own this now’); provenance info (all previous owners and everywhere else the object has been in its life); measurements and description (in painful detail); and conservation history and concerns (ie ‘there’s a crack in the side so pick up with care’, ‘this was repaired in the 70s so that glue is gonna fall apart any day now’).

(I'll say as a fic writer that this would be an great time to wax poetic over a beautiful statue or painting; you can’t write “This golden crown deserved to be worn by a great king, or maybe by that broody Roman general in the painting in Gallery B” in the collections paperwork, but you can think it.)

For fiction’s sake, your collections records could be either paper or digital, but in an ideal world a museum would have both setups, for security’s sake. So you’d fill out some long forms and/or input all the information to the digital collections management system (‘the CMS’, or referred to by your specific software’s name, as there are many out there). The CMS is not a static archive, but rather a living register that’s updated every time an object is interacted with. The object records also include where an object is at any given time (‘normally in Case E in the Fancypants Gallery, currently in Conservation Lab A for repairs’).

Once the objects are done in quarantine, they’ll go to storage. If they’re being displayed immediately, they’ll probably go to some interim storage space/shelf with other objects for the same exhibit and in that case only get a temporary setting. Every object will get labeled with their object number (directly on them, with a special pen that’s safe for this. Or if it’s really tiny, like a coin or jewelry, then their own tiny box will get the label). Small or fragile items, or items grouped together, will go in their own boxes (made of acid- and lignin-free cardboard or polyethylene plastic, like Rubbermaid totes; lined with polyethylene foam and then acid-free tissue paper). Stable ceramic vessels might sit directly on lined shelving, particularly if they’re very large or heavy, like many stone objects.

Listen, every type of object has a particular way(s) of storing that’s best for them, you’re gonna have to look that up yourself or consult someone if you need that level of detail

Ideally, before being stored away, objects are also photographed. This could be part of the Collection Officer’s duty, and/or your museum could have a photographer on staff. (say it with me:) This is more likely if your museum is really huge and/or has a backlog of unphotographed collections and has hired someone specifically, even if temporarily, to improve its collections documentation.

I would say a collections person, or anyone with a museum studies degree, should have some minimum amount of conservation knowledge that includes basic storage standards for different object materials, how to spot potential preservation problems (like if your bronze axe head is actively oxidizing or if that green spot looks the same as it always has since starting and pausing decaying), and maybe how to give objects a basic clean or deal with certain types of problems. But the nitty-gritty science is more the realm of Conservators, someone with a degree that ends in -Sci or who’s done some other certification course.

The general collections store should always be dark, slightly too cool for prolonged human comfort, and labeled to high heaven. Objects will most likely be grouped by material- ceramics/pottery, metals, precious metals and stones (jewelry or beads), stone, glass, wood, bone/ivory/other organic material like feathers or teeth or anything that can be decorative, textiles, paintings. A museum often has some paper material/documents, usually part of or related to a group of objects they acquired, but generally paper and photographic material is the realm of archives and archivists. Yet again, the bigger/more well-funded the museum, the more likely it to have a separate archive department, so your character could also work as an archivist in a museum.

Another thing the collections care folk probably do is ship objects. Remember how I said that  museums loan objects and exhibitions to each other? The stuff’s gotta travel somehow! If things are being shipped internationally, they’ll go in big wooden crates, with specifically dimensioned partitions inside. Then it will be lined with our favorite foam and tissue paper, cut so the objects sit snugly inside. I haven’t personally worked anywhere with a possibility of local shipments, so I can’t say where the threshold might be as to when a museum would just pay an employee to drive the objects over vs ship them with a shipping company. But the preparations would be similar, minus the big wooden crate but with extra-careful packing (and paperwork and insurance etc)

Conservation

Conservators are the people who work in labs with fancy equipment. Not every museum will have a formal conservator or a lab of any kind; sometimes the collections care person fills this role, or if something urgently needs care beyond the abilities of the museum’s equipment, they might send it away to a lab elsewhere, the same way you can send your old VHS home videos to a professional archive to be digitized.

If an object is actively deteriorating in a way that could harm itself or other objects (as opposed to like, at risk of fading bc the lighting is wrong, which is a straightforward fix related to the environment), that’s when a conservator would intervene.

Some methods/machinery by which you can analyze objects:

Ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light - Different materials absorb and react to light differently, which you can use to identify them. Useful for seeing things like the different layers of paintings

Stereo-microscopy (microscopes, of varying strengths)

At magnifications of x5-x100 you can see things like tool marks from an object’s manufacture, traces from wear, deposits, and coatings

At x50-x500, with a thin sliver of a sample, you can see (and hopefully identify) fibers, layers, particles, metallographic structures 

You can get information from objects without taking samples, but samples are usually worth the information. 

energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) - EDXRF allows you to identify the elemental composition of the surface layer of an object. So it might tell you what a tool is made of, and also the composition of the objects it was used on, if they left traces

scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - an SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to produce a magnified, high-resolution image of the surface of an object

X-radiography, both film and digital - X-rayy are beneficial for objects that might be covered by dirt or corrosion and can show you details of an object’s construction or hidden structural weaknesses

I’m not a conservator, so if you want more hard science-based info, ask one of them lol

Listen to me. If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this:

 Once an object is in a museum, it is never seeing natural daylight again. Sunlight is the ultimate enemy of every object’s lifespan. If you need to see an object in the sun or moon light for ~magical spell reasons~, you will straight up be stealing that object to smuggle it outside.

Okay. That being said, you do hear (and could probably google) stories about museum employees stealing things from their museums on purpose to prove a point about security or insurance to their higher-ups, so like. Depending on your type of museum, it might not be impossible to steal from lmao. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)

Possibly the most useful advice for you to keep in mind when writing your conservator or collections care characters would be that touching objects hurts them. It might not hurt them now, it might not even hurt them in ten years, but every time you handle an object, there’s a risk that you’ll damage it. Not on purpose, obviously, but to err is human. The simplest, most effective advice my conservation professor ever gave us was “don’t handle an object if you don’t have to.” That means don’t move an object without a plan and a place to put it, first examination should always be visual, not tactile, etc. Unfortunately, that means that your character cannot walk around lovingly handling and caressing their favorite objects (unless this is a Night at the Museum situation where the objects are caressing them back, ykwim)

Museum Technician

These people probably have a lot of different names, but basically, technicians are the background muscle of the museum. They do the technical construction of bigger pieces of exhibition material, up to and including the exhibition cases themselves. 

So they wouldn’t deal with the small mount that the object rests on, but they might build the big plinth that the mount sits on. They’ll help move things around the building, particularly big heavy things, hang big framed works, assist with exhibit installs, and generally do most things which might involve power tools/equipment or heavy lifting

I worked in a big museum that hired a third party company to supply their technicians; I interviewed at another place that hired their own. If you’re a small museum, you might just have a freelance person that comes in once or twice a week to help move things.

Other

Other miscellaneous roles one could have in a museum: researcher (for exhibits and/or collections), gift shop or cafe worker, security guard, room attendant, translator, archaeologist, consultant

Honestly, TL;DR? Just have your character be a consultant of some kind. “Oh no, I don’t work here, I’m Y’s friend. They called me in to provide some expertise on X subject that they’re doing an exhibit on.” This could work for literally any subject- history/archaeology/anthropology, art, transportation, science and technology, anything you might find pictures of in an archive, idk. This could get you into an office or meeting room of some kind in the ‘employee only’ space of the museum, or potentially all the way into the collections store if you’re giving them information they were missing about some objects. Otherwise you’d probably (hopefully) need a key or some other kind of security clearance to get into the collections store.

Whew, that was a ride, huh? I hope this guide was useful to someone! I’m always open to answering questions if you think I forgot something or if anyone wants more details <3

[snapeaddict]

(June) Snapetober Day 31 - Costume

Listen. This might be 8 months late, but at least it's there. I have nothing else to say for my defence.

When his body exploded in pain again, he held down to the one thing that could keep him sane, or so he thought – patterns. It was interesting, really. Albus would certainly have much to say about this. He would say, pensively, ‘Ah, yes. A great flaw of his. Once proven effective, Tom holds on to strict modes of action, and one failure rules out even the most effective strategy’. He would then add something about mental plasticity, perhaps something about the boy Tom had been, as if to reassure himself that he had always been the adult.

In any case, it was true: the Dark Lord was a man of habit, especially when it came to torture. It would take one some time to realise that, of course. It would take many sessions and a rather thorough interest in dark spells to pinpoint each cycle, each pattern. It would take a little more time, then, to place within these patterns the fits of anger, themselves only but a regular variation. But it was doable.

Severus knew them all by heart. The surprise always lay in the intensity and duration of the torture sessions, not in the spells and methods employed. He secretly prided himself on the knowledge that he would have been a much more imaginative torturer had he wished to be; it was naturally not the kind of thing he liked to admit to himself on a good day, but it certainly made encounters such as this one more bearable.

And so he thought of this as his body convulsed; a broken stream of thought, of course, repeatedly interrupted then pursued after fits of spasms, vomiting, and blackouts. By this point he could also track, more or less, retrospectively, how many had occurred, if left alone for a few hours of respite that was. So he counted: one, two, three crucios; head under water; a broken nail, or finger; one choking spell, fire in his veins, a blinding spell, and invasion of his mind.

It was a good idea. Disorientation was the enemy of even the most skilled occlumens. And sudden sensations of cold, or direct burns on the skin, they all made focus within oneself, rather than outside, terribly hard to maintain: it worked, to an extent. Severus had long lost any sense of his surroundings. He maintained the barriers in his mind intact; he ignored the agony of his body, with growing difficulty. He counted the spells.

And repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Darkness again.

It was fine; it was. He knew it was coming. Natural body reflex; exhaustion. He could never evaluate how much time had passed when he awoke, though. That he should work on.

-

‘Severus – Severus. Dear boy, can you hear me?’

He came to, slowly. He heard himself moan pitifully, he tried to exhale to manage the pain, but his nose was stuffed with dry blood. It must have been a while, he thought confusedly. Since it had dried. And where…?

‘Severus.’

The well-known voice reached his ears, then his brain, and he turned his swollen face in its direction, keeping his eyes shut for just another moment as a wave of relief overcame him.

‘Albus…’

He felt a hand stroke his hair. He relaxed, instinctively.

‘I have called Poppy. Do not try to move just now.’

‘Albus…’ Severus repeated a bit louder, as if to convince himself he was not hallucinating. He opened his eyes: the headmaster, who was kneeling just beside him, gave him a joyless but comforting smile. Silver beard, starry robes and blue eyes shone in the moonlight. Still it was dark… the floor was cold. A sigh of relief escaped him when a warming spell slowly reached his freezing bones.

‘I have been so worried, Severus. I waited for you… 5 days, and still no sign of you - no, don’t tire yourself, you will tell me everything later. If you are here, I know all is well.’

Severus started coughing. Gently, softly, in a fatherly way, Albus helped him in a half-sitting position.

The younger man rested his head against the headmaster’s chest, exhausted by the effort.

‘If you are here, I know all is well… isn’t it?’

Severus closed his eyes again. He tried to focus, he fought off the urge to fall asleep in the warm embrace.

‘Headmaster… yes… my cover… it is intact.’

‘He knows nothing?’

‘He knows… what he must know.’

‘You are relaxing, Severus. It is good.’

His breathing slowed, like that of a sleeping man.

‘You are safe… Poppy is coming. Get comfortable. Sleep…’

How good it felt to let go, to be unbothered by what was happening inside, and outside… To no longer be so cold… He was to have tea with Minerva, at 4 pm. What day was it? She would reschedule, surely… Holidays too, soon… Albus sounded satisfied… Hogwarts... Hogwarts, finally…

He smiled slightly, through the pain and spasms. He felt Albus’ arms tighten their grip around him, and fell into a half-sleep.

‘Severus, dear boy.’

But those arms...

‘Dear, dear boy.’

Too tight…

‘You have become too comfortable… too attached.’

Suffocating.

‘You feel safe in his arms, Severus. Tell me... has the spy traded allegiance for safety?’

His eyes snapped open. They met with blue ones which, at first, he thought he recognised. Then he noticed the reddish hue, the pupils, too yellow, too long, too narrow… the smile, predatory.

The spell that had been warming him, started to burn him.

And he had not seen it coming, no; he had not expected the pain, the perversion, had not placed them within the anticipated cycle of cruelty. He had gotten too comfortable.

He was taken by surprise, and a broken-hearted cry escaped his lips.

[thehiddenbaroness]

Entry 12: Best Face Forward

2/11/25

I sat myself down last weekend to look again at what I’ve been putting off the past month: really narrowing down and ranking my cover illustrator top picks, but moreover trying – yet again – to figure out what I actually want. The crux, of course, as always is balancing what appeals to me versus what works, because while this is mine and I want to love its cover, it is, whether we like it or not, the most important marketing tool in the toolbox and by that token, likely to be the most significant monetary investment outside of audiobook production. 

I started sketching out ideas months ago, both literally and figuratively. I knew I wanted an illustrated cover, for example, rather than something that utilized stock imagery; but also that I wanted to avoid both the stereotypical fantasy ‘scene’ or character portrait and, contrastingly, the ornate flowery designs sans characters or even objects. I knew that I liked rich colors and chiaroscuro, double-exposure styles, and creative uses of negative space. I knew I didn’t want anything too feminine. I knew that ideally, there should be a strong cohesion between the covers in the series, so I needed an idea with elements that could be adapted over the course of at least two other books.

However. I also knew that regardless of my personal tastes, the cover needs to have certain cues that the target audience will recognize and be drawn to, and that I was still beholden to certain graphic design rules regarding composition, legibility, etc., and that some of my ideas would be too ‘niche’ or better-suited to a special edition. Money was/is also a factor. 

Trying to balance these known quantities, even after trips to physical bookstores and extensive market research in my genre, meant that I became a bit paralyzed. I had several sketched compositions that I liked, but I didn’t feel that balance. It constantly felt like the solution was just hovering in my periphery, and that I lacked the artistic skill to bring it all into full focus.

By the end of the weekend I managed to, at least, pull twelve artists from my rather long list I’ve been keeping: ones I thought not only were potentially feasible in terms of cost and accessibility, but whose style and typical subject matter was similar to what I’m looking for. I then ranked them according to preference but also suitability and (again) feasibility, with five at the top being relatively ‘interchangeable’. Just looking through all of their art and getting excited again about the possibilities made it easier to pick up my sketchpad and stare real hard at the options I had so far, and add some new ones. I tried to detach myself from my preconceived composition ideas, instead favoring holding onto elements and trying to envision how these artists might depict them. It helped.

It wasn’t until the early hours of Monday morning, lying in bed staring at the ceiling, that something finally clicked. Some of y’all probably saw the excited post. Though I can’t reveal much yet, I think I’m finally onto it – something that I really like, but that will also work. And if all else fails, I can do something different later -- little in this process is permanent.

Sketched out all three covers the following morning, and then created a proper reference file: reference images, yes, but also a design brief, areas I was more flexible on, and other information that an artist may want to know (regardless of who that artist ends up being). Yesterday morning I also went ahead and sent an initial query email to my top pick to try to get a ballpark figure! If for some reason that isn’t doable, I’ll work my way down my list.

The formal cover aside, it was also nice to hear back from a cover designer friend. She should be sending me some stuff by way of a portfolio soon; my thinking is that perhaps I can enlist her help with either the reader magnet eBook cover and/or the banner for at least the newsletter, so that I can try to hit my website ‘go live’ goal of the beginning of next month. I still have a lot of anxieties about my personal finances that are an uncomfortable echo of past feelings, but I’m going to do my best to stay positive. I am, after all, still facing and walking forward.

+++++ Baroness' Self-Publication Journal Masterpost I'm journaling what I uncover as I do more research for self-publication of my novel! I'll be using the tag "#sp journal". All of this will eventually wind up as part of a larger, more detailed guide for which I'm making notes.

[yandere-sins]

Good Afternoon! If seen your spiels and tales for a while now and may I just say I adore it all, you’re quite talented in your work and you should be proud of yourself! I aspire to write as well and I’m wondering if you have some tips for the long run?

Hey!

Here are my latest posts with links to the ones where I actually went a bit more into details about what I recommend doing.

For the blog

For writing

Honestly, not much has changed, at least for me. It would be interesting to find out whether the tagging rules truly are still the same from the past but from recent experience I can tell you that posting regularly is the key to building a following. But at the same time I know now, more than ever, it's just not doable under normal life circumstances unless you find a rhythm to write and use the queue to schedule your posts.

If you want to write yandere stories specifically, personally, for me it's very important to be balanced. Like a super strong yandere is always cool, but it's cooler if they are so delusional that they will end up hurting their darling with their strength. Or a manipulative yandere is fun and tricky, but if it turns out they are deadly afraid of being left alone and are a bit pathetic about it, that's yummy! Also, depending on the darling, the yan's personality might change as well. I guess what I want to say, balance out the parts of the story to keep it more "realistic" and less Mary-Sue-Behavior. Not always possible or necessary because an OP yan has its benefits in certain situations, but it makes for a good story if there are some flaws in everything.

Also use the tropes. As harsh as it is, no idea of yours will ever be completely original. But I love retellings of ideas! And so do others! I don't care how many more times I read the same "chased by a monster only to be pinned down to the dirty ground" I will literally inhale these stories!!!! I love them!!! And you will put new words and new spins to it, so it will never feel dull!! So yeah, absolutely nothing wrong to lean into tropes and cliches. It might even be very beneficial for bringing your writing closer to people.

For warnings, I'd say, depending on if you do requests or your own work, always warn everything you find problematic in your own works before the story starts and add warnings if someone asks for them. For request, do the same if you derail from the original request too much to not warn (like, have sexual acts/gore/etc. suddenly even though it wasn't specifically requested). I'm not a fan of warning if the request is very clearly what the story will be, but do as you are comfortable. It's your blog. In the end, no one can tell you what to do, but of course don't be mean about it.

Doing requests is fine, but doing your own ideas is also fine. Of course, starting out with only your original ideas can be hard if you don't have a community built already, but you can always mix fanworks with OG writing. I know it's tempting to say "others do it too and they manage to just write their own things" or "I don't want to write for fandoms" but it will be very hard if you do. It's just the truth, tumblr isn't for original content in writing, it has always been for fandoms and blogging and art. It got better over the years but it still is.

Following up with this is: don't compare yourself to other writers/artists on here please, honestly, if you keep finding yourself discouraged by how much more likes and interactions they get, you should unfollow them. It's harsh. I love the stories and the writers of some blogs here, but I had to prioritize myself. Sometimes I sneak back to check out what I missed, but it will still get whiplash and compare myself.

In the same notion: If someone is mean or an idiot in your asks just block them and move on. Drama can entice people to interact with you, but it's not the kind of interactions you want constantly. And it honestly ruins you vibes if your blog becomes dramacentral. It's okay to speak out sometimes and make it clear that you don't want certain kinds of interactions, but feeding the trolls will only end in more and more and soon you feel bad and your followers feel bad, while the trolls are thriving. 9/10 cases it's just not worth it. Block and if it was a crossed boundary, let your people know afterwards unrelated to an ask.

And most importantly: pease just have fun. Put your ideas out there for the sole reason that no one will ever put them into your words the way you would. Of course it's impossible to ignore likes and interactions because it really does fuel the motivation. But I wish you two that you can create because it makes you happy. The rest will follow.

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

This looks SO much more spicy and useable than Gambits. How this works: if at the end of round 3 you are behind or equal in primary points, you can pick one of these in secret - but your regular primary scoring will be capped at 20 if you do. At the end of the game you reveal the card and if you did what it says you get 20 extra primary points.

Putting your warlord on the enemy homefield for Command Insertion? Totally doable if your army involves repeated Deep Strikes, Transports, or has an especially unkillable sort ot character.

War of Attrition meanwhile is hillarious because it forces people to build more balanced lists by sheer virtue of existing. You can still take a "good stuff only" list with minimum battleline troops, but if your enemy just deletes that one or two units, and manages to shove a single half-dead fodder unit close enough so they can place a single foot into your zone, you just gave up 20 points.

Shatter Cohesion meanwhile is your good old "Objectives? Ugh, too much thinking involved. Let's just murder them", which some armies will definetly favor. Especially since there is an alternative condition involving battleshock and units below half-strenght. Battleshock-Centred detachments suddenly have a unique way of closing out the game.

Unbroken Wall looks weird at first: why would you give up your primary scoring when your plan is sitting on at least 3 markers by the end of the game? It makes more sense from a perspective of armies that really don't want to go out into the midfield T1-T3. T'au and Astra Militarum will probably really like this when going up against melee armies.

This will completly turn the game on its head and I am all for it.

[jamiesnovels]

Writing with ADHD

I was diagnosed with ADHD just over two months ago. It was only then that I realized just how debilitating it was to my creative endeavor.

For context, I have been writing – or perhaps I should say, trying to write – for about twenty years now. The relative brevity of school projects, coupled with the multitasking nature of upper-level courses, made school writing assignments doable. Still, I remember many a day in college spent vomiting words on paper as quickly as I could, skimming and re-skimming and re-re-skimming the same section of the book I was supposed to have read days or even weeks ago to find whatever I could to BS my way to some sort of poignant point. This was not most assignments, to be clear, but it was more than a few.

I will emphasize, I did well in school, from the year my writing spark came to me all the way through college. My psychologist suggested my focus on subjects that interested me, as well as the multitasking aspect of study, was a coping mechanism. At any rate, while focused on school, my free time was rarely spent on my passion.

Not for lack of trying: Every year, I’d have one or two different story ideas in my head, and I’d feverishly scribble through a composition notebook (College Rule, of course) with my No. 2 pencil (Dixon Ticonderoga, always), or since college, my Pilot G-2 black-ink pen (0.38 font, or 0.5 if I absolutely had to). (You may infer from my parentheticals that I had a thing about space optimization, maximizing words-per-page, but I digress.)

Those ideas never got far. Every time, I would slow to a stop after one or two weeks at most. Dismayed by my grammar, overwhelmed by the plot rolling around in my head, or just embarrassed that someone might read what I wrote and judge me harshly for it. The plot in my head stayed in my head. Ideas stayed ideas.

And as I got older, I slowed down. College was part of it: nearly all my free time was spent on homework or the one or two clubs I enjoyed. And then when work came along, the mental effort and sheer stress left me exhausted by the end of the day.

My First Breakthrough

In November 2021, I decided to join NaNoWriMo. (Referencing that organization leaves a foul taste in my mouth today, following its many scandals that leave it disgraced. But I digress.)

I joined because I was tired of being tired all the time. I was tired of having all these ideas in my head and never getting them down on paper. I was tired of always feeling like a failure. I had to prove to myself that I could do it.

And I did. In three weeks and change, I had a vomit draft of a story I had ideated over the past couple years, the first in a five-book series. It was a grand achievement for me. Just writing every day for a whole month was huge, but to turn around and see that I had produced so much in so little time was eye-opening.

I realized, from this experience, that I can do it. I can produce, even with ADHD, even with a day job that sapped all my energy, even with everything else going on in this world.

Then I started revising. At first, the momentum continued. I managed to do a lot to clean up the very concept of the story by early 2022. I changed settings, improved pacing, honed in on my central message, and made my protagonist more relatable. But that was the easy part.

As I began drilling down the scope of my revisions, my drive rapidly faded. The more I had to think about my novel, the less energy I had to expend on it. More and more, I would try to tackle something, get overwhelmed after a couple days, then drop the whole project for months – even over a year at one point!

I simply did not have the mental energy to expend on it. It was demoralizing, especially after such an early success.

My Second Breakthrough

A few months ago, I started seeing a therapist. After some sessions, they recommended I find someone to investigate whether I had ADHD, and with a little luck, I landed a psychologist with the proper credentials. Then I was diagnosed.

I started my ADHD treatment the day after I turned 28. It was like night and day.

That day, I told myself I was going to plunge back into my novel, just to see how I could do. I did more work on that novel in a single day than I think I’ve done in the time between then and February 2022.

And every single day since I began my treatment, I’ve continued working. Comparing my novel today to the one two months ago… they’re pretty much nothing alike. Today, I can only say that I am extraordinarily happy with where my book is.

But I’m going to say something that might surprise you: the secret to my turnaround was not medication. While I did in fact start medication, I still found myself overwhelmed at the prospect of tackling my draft. Until I began working on another tactic recommended for ADHD folks like myself: goal-setting.

Goal-setting

Setting attainable sub-goals for my story progress gave me that extra little bit of motivation I needed to wake up each morning and get right back to work. I personally found success with the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Okay, in my first draft of this blog post, I got a little carried away and started writing in detail each step of S.M.A.R.T. This post is long enough already, and there are tons of guides on the internet going into better detail than I did.

What I really want to give you is an understanding that, to write with ADHD, I needed to set concrete, small, achievable goals – with a deadline. Because what drives me, and what I believe drives many ADHD folks, is that sense of accomplishment when a goal is achieved. That dopamine rush when we can say “I did X” or “I accomplished Y.”

To give ourselves a healthy dose of dopamine, to keep ourselves going, we need to start small. Have an idea in your head? Try to come up with at least a couple small goals to be completed before you even start your vomit draft. Have the theme written down by the end of today, define the characters and their arcs by the end of the week, sketch out the beats by next Tuesday. Those are just examples, but hopefully you get the idea.

If your only goal is “I wanna write a book,” you’re going to be working for weeks or months or years toward that goal. That dopamine rush is so far away, you can’t expect to keep your motivation up for all that time. And if you try to rush it, you will fail: you don’t have time to complete and polish a whole book in a month. No, you need to start small. Small doses of dopamine every few days will give you much more drive to keep going.

The reason my progress sloughed off in early 2022 was because I didn’t have any small, attainable goals on the horizon. I just wanted to “finish the draft.” It was too much for anyone to stick with, let alone someone with ADHD. And even after I got medication, the idea of tackling the massive draft was still overwhelming. Until I gave myself a small goal to start with.

Conclusion

I hope you found this interesting, maybe even a little bit helpful. If you can relate to anything I’ve touched on here, feel free to leave a comment – I’d love to hear your story. While you’re at it, consider following; I’m trying to navigate a world very new to me with this social media presence, so the support would be extremely helpful. Finally, if you know anyone else who may relate to any of these words I’ve written, consider sharing my post with them.

Thank you so very much for reading!

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-12-09

Continually looking up "what day is christmas" and then forgetting almost immediately. This is not a bit I keep forgetting whether it's the 23rd the 24th or the 25th.

Listening: Bandcamp Friday! Posted about that here:

Watching: Not much.

Reading: A mix of 3D printing stuff and, still, work research, mostly about network configuration, because I'm trying to run a stupid complicated mlag vlan setup with trunked ports on the host side which is especially hard because this is basically my first time touching managed network hardware. Everything I know about vlans until like two weeks ago is theoretical.

3D printing stuff involves both some materials science and some interesting basic introductory stuff on hybrid fluid dynamics and solids simulations that because I want to try and do some structural simulations, it looks like there's some plugins for OpenFOAM that render this doable, just.

Making: New printer! Some test prints to get that up and running. Aborted a skull print because it seems like the printbed this came with is much less sticky than I'm used to, figuring out how to use that correctly.

Trying to fix the dead Ender 3 SE, which appears to have kerploded its power supply dramatically, link to that saga here

Some quilting with my partner, we are good at very different parts of sewing, they do knitting and crochet and worked shop tailor work for a while but are pretty weak at hand sewing, I do a lot of hand sewing and embroidery but I only barely know how to knit and crochet scares me.

Playing: A lot of Cyberpunk 2077, which I picked up in the steam sale as my one Big Game.

I have a lot of thoughts. This has very good writing for a Video Game RPG, especially one with such limited dialogue. I think being fictional helps its world feel much more real than say, GTA V, which is good at simulating a lot of things but I think struggles with the final hurdle, despite being in many ways much deeper than Cyberpunk.

Playing on Hard, which I think is a nice balance of letting your actions actually deal damage and feeling as deadly as Cyberpunk games are meant to feel.

Tools and Equipment: Compact powered screwdrivers are a real godsend, I have that Xiaomi multibit set and it's really worth the price of admission when you're working on something that is just full of screws.

[scribblestatic]

*kinda exhausted*

Anyway, more Forsaken shenanigans. This one's relying more heavily on summary.

Pink Tear Equipment:

Horn of the Slaughtered Second Chances Tarot

---

Narinder returned, bruised more than he would ever admit, but well enough. He still has the tarot card, another thing that should not have traveled back to his cult with him. He also has another pink tear with which he can acquire another presumably useless trinket.

And, as Maon requested, he brought back one of the flowers blooming on the strange, lumbering beasts. He managed to pick up one entire flower, part of its strangely twisting stem included. The elder fox gazed at the flower in the bottle before taking it and bowing in supplication and gratitude.

Narinder listened carefully to the fox's thoughts. Nothing untoward came forth from his mind. And yet, he still couldn't help but feel some sort of unsettlement about him. Perhaps he would never fully trust him for the simple fact that he'd married that imperfect vessel of his, who clearly hesitated to give him back his own power.

Regardless, after a little maintenance at the cult, he would proceed to Leshy and finish the job.

Leshy's sin was lesser than his older siblings'. To have been blind to the planning had been foolish, but otherwise, to have not seen was the least of Narinder's grudges. Allowing his soul to finally rest instead of continuing to suffer would hurt his pride a bit, but he could do it if it meant he could grow his cult stronger.

He had already slayed Leshy's subordinates, so now he just needed to slay Leshy and that witness of his. Though...since he'd had a tad of trouble with Valefar, perhaps it would be prudent for him to strengthen up further. With a smaller number of followers now, it was more difficult to rely on the power of devotion as much as before.

However, he wasn't sure with whom he could do such a thing.

Aym and Baal were dedicated to him since they were kittens, growing in Limbo with him, becoming his most dedicated disciples, much beyond that of a mere follower. They sparred as they did during their imprisonment, so they would likely prove preferable training partners.

...Still, to show them any weakness of his own disgusted him to his core. He would refrain from debasing himself to such a degree.

With Aym and Baal being the main protectors of the cult, there were only one or two other options: Marigol and Navi.

Marigol, a bubbly blonde spaniel, was one of the few followers who returned from missionary work with the intent to gather more people under his wing and survive. Her face and body were marred with claw scars that failed to regrow fur, or failed to grow it back properly.

Even so, she could still go out and gather certain resources and return somewhat injured. But she would return, albeit with little memory of the process of her quest, hence why she could not warn him of the changes to the Lands of the Old Faith.

Navi, her cousin, was a snake. He never really left the cult, but he strengthened himself by requesting Baal to train him. His muscle was corded and strong, and more importantly, his venom was quite effective. Though, he opted to his venom to help create medicines rather than to attack, but he would do so if necessary.

If Aym and Baal were occupied with enemies, the cult could rely on Marigol and Navi to help protect the others.

...But, with his continued thought, they were also unsuited.

If he would not show his disciples his weakness, why would he show followers who were even less close to him? What, so they could learn how to betray him? So they could learn the places he needed to improve and take advantage of it? So they could whisper about his shortcomings and sow unrest in his already shrinking cult?

No. Not at all.

It was at times like this he somewhat wished he hadn't sacrificed Ratau to the Teeth in the Darkness. Demanding an oath of silence from a former, failed vessel would likely have been doable. And, as much of a failure as Ratau had been, he'd had some fighting prowess.

...As did the Lamb.

Would they have done it? If they were present for his current predicament, would they be willing to spar with him?

When they fought at first, they had been artless and crude, unused to holding or using weapons. They hadn't made it through their first crusade successfully, dying before they could even meet Amdusias. By the time they slayed Haborym, though, they had adapted to their position, adopting a fighting style akin to a dance.

It had been a bit fascinating, he would admit, to watch the Lamb spin, twirl, then cock the blunderbuss and shoot; to use the weight of their hammer to complete acrobatic feats; to swipe with their sword or dagger in quick succession, leaving long cuts or weeping stabs in their wake. Indeed, the Lamb had been quite useful, dispatching each one of his siblings to free him in an act none of his previous vessels could complete.

If only they hadn't grown so comfortable with his power. Perhaps he could've even made a disciple out of the Lamb.

But there was no use in pondering would could not be. He would simply have to work with what he had.

----

Narinder's method of practice...well. Since he couldn't rely on anyone but himself, he decided to instead wander through Darkwood and kill whatever he managed to come across. He hadn't announced the intent of his crusade in the first place, so even if he returned without having slain Leshy, his followers wouldn't have expected it of him.

Though, as he traveled through the darkness, he began encountering spider webs. Although an annoyance, Narinder tried to remember where he'd seen such webs before.

Ah... Helob. The one who sold followers.

A grin spread on his face, and he carried on forward, looking for the tall spider. He'd seen him through the crown, and he knew of the beasts' hunger for little outsiders. He surely must have caught one, and in such a case, then that would be the start to solving his problem. Though, if Helob wasn't willing to part with his catch...

Perhaps he could motivate him somehow. He'd think of that once he was sure he had, indeed, encountered him.

As he wandered, following the webs, he saw a glowing light in the distance. He moved forward cautiously, taking out his scythe just in case Helob had gone hungry and thought a god would make a good meal. He came closer and closer to it...

Then stopped as he felt a string of web against his ankle. He looked down and saw it, nearly invisible, pressing against his leg. Had he not had enhanced senses, he likely wouldn't have noticed. He backed his ankle away, the string clinging to his fur briefly before letting go, wobbling back in place.

"This one is wise."

Although Narinder kept still, his right ear twitched and his heart pumped slightly harder from the startle. Few could sneak up on him, but someone had managed to. And the voice...he didn't recall Helob sounding so young.

"This one has sense."

A twitch. A voice to the left, different from the one on the right.

Two?

As he raised his lantern, he saw little black feet hanging in the air right above him. His muscles tensed sharply, then he looked up.

Two pairs of four eyes gazed back at him, two little purple spiders sitting on swings made of spider silk, their fangs peeking out from their smiles. They wore slightly different children's bonnet caps, the little bows tied under their chins, their pedipalps tucked against their lower cheeks.

The limbs coming from under their ponchos were thin, six of them ending in little hands and two of them ending in little feet, and little abdomens stuck out behind them, much like Shamura's. There were not as amorphous as Helob had appeared despite the fuzzy fur on their bodies and peeking out from the caps they wore.

They were not like the villagers that lived on their island or the ones beyond.

He felt power from them, much like he felt when facing Clauneck or Kuudai, though less so.

"Look, my sibling. A crown upon his head," sang the left one.

"Look, my sibling. A scythe is in his hand," sang the other.

"The God of Death has finally come to greet us," they sang together.

"I come not to greet you," Narinder replied, a scowl seeping into his expression.

Both of the spiders bent forward, their swings moving as their two pairs of eyes squinted playfully at him.

"You seek not our morsels?"

"You need not their devotion?"

"If not to find us, why do you wander? If not to find us, why don't you slay him?"

Narinder scoffed, already knowing who 'him' was. Yet more beings to try to convince him to let his siblings out of the torment he purposefully put them in. He'd take more offense if he hadn't already decided that he could bear to free Leshy if it meant he could get more followers for his cult.

"My business is mine alone. If you presume to know what I come for, should we not get to it?"

The two looked at each other before sighing.

"No fun, he is."

"No humor, he has."

They tugged on the strings of their swings, suddenly pulling up and into the darkness above. He heard leaves and vines brush and shift, but instead of coming down, when he looked down, the two were walking past from behind him. His tail flared reflexively, though he managed to keep his ears up and casual as they stepped over the almost clear web wire he'd nearly stumbled into.

"Come, come, we have one to offer."

"Come, come, if you can pay the price."

After a pause, he grumbled under his breath. They were thriving in this darkness, weren't they? Creepy little bastards.

Still, he followed after them, also stepping over the wire. He also passed by the light he'd seen, which was a simple lantern sitting on a tree stump instead of a camp like he'd been wondering. Ah...a trap for wanderers, then.

It didn't take them long to get to the right destination, which was a little clearing deep in the trees and vines. They had several torches set up with empty cages and a campfire littered with bones.

Near the middle of their little camp, they had a wanderer—a tawny-furred hedgehog—caught in a thick web, their eyes closed but trembling. It seemed like they'd succumbed to paralysis but were still alive.

The two spiders turned to him before curtsying.

"This one is Ara," said the one on the left.

"This one is Ana," said the one on the right.

"We can sell this morsel to you if you pay the price."

Helob would charge, at most, 50 gold for one follower in peak condition. Having been back in his former position for many decades now, he had a substantial amount saved up. It also helped that he didn't really need to purchase anything since trade circumstances had somewhat dried up.

Without his siblings present, there had been no one to protect the trade routes or the docking ports. Imports from the lands beyond the borders became more scarce before drying up almost entirely. Though inconvenient, it would've been more inconvenient to have to suffer in Limbo or deal with the existence of his siblings.

Imagine his surprise when, after the Lamb had killed the witnesses and had the crown taking back from them, the trade routes began closing up again. Narinder hadn't bothered to investigate why, though. He had been comfortable.

And he would be comfortable again soon.

"How much do you ask?"

They both smiled, holding out one of their hands.

"10,000 gold coins, please."

"...Excuse me?"

Although their eyes had closed with the smile, the top two eyes on their faces opened as they slightly tilted their heads.

"10,000 gold coins, please."

Narinder's hands clenched on his scythe, a scowl marring his face.

"And what makes you think such an offer is reasonable? Do you mock me?"

"Mock you? Oh no."

"Our rates are quite fair!"

"The economy is in shambles."

"So few wanderers, so few sacrifices..."

"Desperation brought desire."

"Desire brought demand."

"So we supply."

"And they buy."

He almost yelled at them in frustration, but they continued, interrupting his incoming tirade.

"It's hard to hunt the wanderers now."

"Cultists all over struggle to meet their needs."

"But we are satisfied with our hunt."

"We are not in need of gold or food."

"But we are not a charity, right?"

"Oh no, what we do comes at a cost."

"Low supply, high demand."

"Is that not the art of trade?"

"Low supply, high demand."

"You know this well, too."

Both children stopped dancing around him, holding hands as their gleeful expressions dropped.

"For you took something of value at much too high a cost."

They all stood in silence , the little spiders staring at him without blinking. However, when he blinked, suddenly, their expressions were just as playful as before, as though he'd imagined the last bit of what they said.

"We can't lower the price, no sir, God of Death."

"Valuable things need not be wasted."

"10,000 gold for a life you need."

"10,000 gold, and you'll be on your way."

"What say you, black cat? O God of Death?" they both sang, tilting their heads with their questioning tones.

...Narinder had 10,000 gold in his storehouse, yes. And he could very well use the crown to take the coins he needed to purchase the hedgehog and bring them back with him.

However, he couldn't see their traits. He didn't know what was good about the hedgehog, or what they could bring to the cult, if anything at all. 50 gold was inconsequential. Perhaps even 500.

10,000 would simply not do.

"Find another buyer, or lower the cost," he replied.

The twins smiled.

"Find another buyer we can! We shall!"

"Or perhaps we've confirmed another meal?"

They giggled quietly, covering their mouths as they grinned at him.

No negotiation, then? Fine.

Narinder huffed, then turned away, leaving the hedgehog follower behind as he slunk back into the darkness.

The children looked at each other, then they shrugged, starting to turn around. However, they heard a noise in the brush and turned back.

...Narinder returned, eyes scrunched in open distaste.

He still dropped the bag of 10,000 coins at the children's feet.

"The hedgehog, then."

[radiation]

How is RPGmaker compared to Unity? Would you recommend it?

I think its difficult to compare RPGMaker to a lot of other game engines. Unity is pretty open ended in what you can make but you gotta know programming, whereas RPGMaker is kinda hard coded to make a very specific type of game very easily and without programming knowledge — the game in question being extremely generic retro JRPGs. If you wanna make something that extends beyond that you are gonna have to mess around a lot with plugins which alter and augment the preexisting structure the engine has in place.

The crazy thing is, RPGMaker (at least MV) is lacking MANY features that it by all means should have. My game doesn’t have a lot of mechanics and was designed around scope in a lot of ways, yet I am legitimately using 70 or so plugins that other people made to make it feel good. Some of those plugins’ functions include -Adding name plates over the characters’ text boxes -Making it so sprites don’t flash in and out when switching -Allowing for ANY kind of complexity in character animations -Giving you any sort of camera control -Hiding combat related UI in the menus. All of this being shit the engine SHOULD support by all means but for whatever reason it just doesn’t

I think if you’re someone who knows a lot about programming, the engine is probably gonna feel kinda bad and itd probably just be easier and less frustrating to build a lot of functionality from the ground up in an engine like Unity, GameMaker, or Godot. If you lack some experience and feel pretty confident that your game can reasonably fit within what the engine is capable of then RPGMaker is probably a good choice. And personally despite the lack of features being frustrating at times, I find myself having a lot of fun with the goofy wraparound method of problem solving you have to use and have found myself making some really cool creative decisions by working within the engine’s limits

It definitely helps a lot to know programming fundamentals either way (I’m not great but I have some experience with Java and C# and I feel like it’s been very helpful with managing project structure) so that’s something I’d recommend looking into either way if you’re not too acquainted

And I’ve mentioned it but again. Since RPGMaker is so limited you definitely DEFINITELY want to plan your project very heavily around scope especially if you don’t have much confidence that you can really delve into JavaScript programming. For example I wouldn’t recommend planning for complex UI - you will fuckin hate yourself for that. And if you’re adding combat you’re gonna wanna be super realistic about it. What I did to plan around scope was play ~10 different RPGMaker games sorta like what I wanted like to be before I started getting too many concrete ideas about what my game would look like so I could get a pretty solid idea of what was doable and mold my plans around that

Also I wanna point out - most tedious, large scope thing about my game is by far the character animations. Once I figured out just how itd work it wasn’t too bad but is still a bit annoying - but know I worked in a very very wraparound way that is way way way more involved than most — or hell, ANY RPGMaker games I’ve seen. It’s doable, can be really worth it if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, and is something I’d be happy to explain if anyone was interested. BUT i feel the need to make it clear that complex animation is very much not at all a baseline functionality of the engine since it might be easy to assume otherwise with how much it’s used in my own game

Apologies if that was long but I love talking about this stuff, and if anyone is interested I am always happy to talk about and answer any questions about my process especially with RPGMaker in mind :D

[0ystercatcher]

other america related comments. i actually kind of. think the car based city design isnt terrible. at least the area i was in was...very honestly perfectly walkable with the exceptions of some large intersections that were a little scary but, i mean, they had actually functioning stop lights which is more than what i can say for my nearest large intersection. also drivers respected us when we were walking around which was very weird and alien to me unironically and i managed to have only one kinda scary almost incident in the two weeks i was there which. again. i had several scary close almost incidents almost immediately after my arrival in lima so theyre 929192128 miles ahead of us already. yes not having a car there sucks bc even tho we had assorted stores in very short walking distance it would be... inconvenient to do a lot of things with no car (but this is the case anywhere that has roads) and somewhat...sparse? (though, much much safer and better organized and more comfortable) public transport. we didnt spend a lot of time in seattle itself so idk how stuff works in the "big city" (lol, considering theres only 2 cities in the us that even come close to mine in sprawl and population in the us and seattle isnt one of them) but it still seemed to be much more dominated by cars than anything else. still. i didnt hate it. even with rising car prices i think cars remain much more affordable in the states compared to here where they cost almost the same (tho president xi has been working hard to liberate us from this) and our wages arent in usd and they are much much lower on average so its kind of. whatever. yall can cope.

anyways my point is this shit is not nearly as bad as americans make it sound online bc they genuinely do have solid alternatives even if they are obviously less convenient than a car. like...seattle is very small and has similar density to lima. not so much for tacoma which at least from observation and a quick search is more sprawl-ey and low density + theres a freeway running literally down the middle of it which is fucking annoying but still i think...doable. not too bad. ive seen much much worse.

tldr i think the car based design was fine with a couple abslutely crazy exceptions (who builds two little roundabouts on bridges to exit/return to the freeway?????). at least theres some design involved in these things. the freeway / highway /whateverway is way less scary than i expected (my via expresa yellow line + panamericana sur trips have scarred me for life sorry) and the very few interactions i had with public transport were excellent despite the bus being mega early and missing it once. they still have like, a functioning app and shit so you at least Know what happened. can you believe that!

[trashbins-stuff]

bin can handle it!! (except for the one time it cant) (ttc fan fanfic)

heads up: this work have angst, attempted murder, attempted suicide, actual suicide, and blood please dont read if it triggers you <3 also this is a 5+1 things (>v0) also i know bin should have die immediately but can u rlly blame a guy for wanting to romanticize his death? THIS IS HOW I COPE WITH MY DEATH U CANT TELL SOMEONE HOW TO GRIEF ESPICALLY WHEN THEY'RE GRIEFING THEMSELVES WAAAAAAA

"i can handle it!!"

"its doable!!"

"fuck it we balllll"

--

1.

Bin wipes the tear off his face, his dad had already stop banging on the door forever ago, probably off watching sport or something, Bin couldn't stop crying, whenever he thought he had calm down, another wave of sadness wash over him and he's wet again.

His mom sit across the mattress, Bin didn't want to talk to her, she'll say its his fault.

And maybe it was.

His dad isn't entirely at fault here. He's trying his best, Bin did too, but he guess it wasn't enough, his dad wouldn't chase him up here if it did, threatening to kill him and all that.

Even when his mom bought a bunch of books on parenting, he's the only one who even reads them, he didn't even plan on having kids, he was just bored.

But that's okay, so what if his dad tried to kill him and his mom was rarely ever there? that's okay!! Bin can handle a bit of loneliness, he have friends!! And his cousin sometime too!! Bin can manage this.

He stand up and unlock the door, repeating "I'm sorry, ba" like a mantra in his head.

2.

The four of them have been sticking together like glue in the entirety of elementary school.

Bin, Puffball Keychain, Baggy and Fluffy Carpet, that is.

They made craft together, they played the same game, Bin and Carpet raves over Melanie Martinez, hanging out in the school cafeteria afterschool, making up their own version of stories and songs they find in textbooks, the usual.

Bin thought it'll stay that way when they go to middle school.

It didn't.

For Carpet, they went to a different school, didn't have a choice.

For Puffball Keychain, too much had happen, didn't want to remember.

For Baggy, it's complicated, didn't know who we are.

That night, Bin cried and wept.

"Your personality is annoying, if you won't change, no one would want to be friend with you"

"I agree with her, sorry"

All those god damn EIGHT YEARS meant NOTHING to them, Pk have been there since 1st grade, sure, she abandon fem once in 2nd grade to hang out with Carpet and Baggy but that's seven years ago.

And Baggy were the nicest one, the kind one, and even she get tired of Bin, fey miss going to her house, they would play together with her cousin.

Now they barely look at each other.

And Bin was lonely.

But that's alright, Bin can still make new friends!! It's not the end of the world!! Fey can always start a new!! Bin can get through this.

And Bin met a new friend, Bin play more of the therapist role then best friends usually but that was fine, if it keep this friendship afloat, fey will do anything.

3.

Bin cried in class, she couldn't handle the bullying, the teasing, the isolation, she was EIGHT for frog's sake!! Would it kill them to be nice to her? She couldn't stop crying, through her wet glances, she can see her bullies staring back at her, and then one them spoke.

"Crocodile tears"

Bin feel something broke, she isn't sure what but she realized.

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there and if she want to survive, she's gonna need some mask and a tough persona. Bin can get use to this.

After years of kids leaving and joining the class, Bin found herself enjoy talking to a few kids, they still treat her differently but as long as they tolerate her, it was enough.

4.

Bin feel ugly, a bit on physical but mostly mentally, it didn't like when people commented on it's efforts.

"Your hair look like a bird nest, when was the last time you brush it?" they'll touch its hair without its consent and try to brush it, its hurts like its scalp is going to be ripped out in any minutes.

"Your a female, why are your hand writing worse than all the boys?" it was trying its best, it put so much time writing and making it look legible, and this is the thanks it get? Tch, figures.

"..bla bla bla..."

It didn't want to change, it didn't like how they look at it, there's always something that separate it form other people, that wall have been there since forever. No one needed it, no one wanted it.

It didn't want itself either.

It never asked to be here, it never looked forward to it's existent. But Bin fix this.

Over years it thinks, Bin start to love parts of itself that it had previously hate, Bin start to feel a bit better. But what is it even-?

5.

Bin couldn't tell, if the kid died from bashing their head or the stab wound. Either way they're laying on the kitchen floor, looking at the lights above, not from heaven-they just have a long lightbulb in their kitchen.

They roll their head back to look at their other self, Bin immediately look away, after staring for a second or two, their gaze went back to the lights.

Bin walk to the chair and turn on the tv.

Leaving the kid to bleed out and die.

Leaving Bin to bleed out and die.

A year later, a soaking wet Bin was walking to it's bedroom, it was it's cousin birthday today, but its not time to eat yet. It walk in and its eye turn left.

Bin found the same kid with the fan's string tied around their neck.

They couldn't even get a proper rope.

Bin couldn't even get a proper rope.

"We gotta stop meeting like this"

"..."

The kid stood up and walk away, leaving Bin alone in it's bedroom

--

1.

With a thud, Bin fall down on the cold hard floor in Galaxy Journal's lab.

He wasn't the best person, he had done a lot of wrongs, he had done a lot of rights too, maybe he'll end up in purgatory, or are we all clotted in the same afterlife? like Journal said, or will he be reincarnated? or maybe there's nothing after death at all.

He doesn't know, and that scare him a little.

A part of her still hopes, a part of her still hope that maybe, just maybe, Journal would burst through that door any second now and fix her up. Or if it's too late, she still hopes that someone-anyone! would kick down that dammed door and hold her, hold her tight.

Her death would have looked cuter in someone's arm.

She want to be held, one last time.

The door didn't even budge.

So (So)

Instead (Instead)

It's (It's)

Gonna (Gonna)

Die (Die)

As (As)

Lonely (Lonely)

As (As)

It (It)

Felt (Felt)

Last (Right)

Night (Now)

But at least Journal's lab have a very nice ceiling.

And the maggots will surely enjoy my rotten flesh.

Classic Bin, always so silly, but i fear your positivity will not save you this time.

Bin took it's last breath in the dark lab, alone.

Becoming as cold as the blood-covered floor below it.

The cassette tape sits on the table, it contain words contradicting what Bin have said the night before.

And the lab fell silent once more.

Bin might have ended it all right then and there.

But the Earth will keep on spinning.

And tomorrow will be a brand new day.

"Remember Me".

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

A/N: Haiiii this is the end, i hope u enjoy it!! htis is my first fic so plz go easy on me,,,<3 thanks for reading :3

Also all the things that happen to bin may or may not actually happen irl hehe-

words count: 1,244

[casspurrjoybell-33]

Wreckless - Friday Afternoon

*Warning Adult Content*

Finnegan

What a week.

What a busy, frustrating, exhilarating week.

Sunday was great.

We had breakfast at a bakery on the boardwalk and got delicious coffee to sip while we walked.

Eventually though we had to come home and that's when it all went downhill.

That's not true, Sunday evening was fine.

Work is when it got crazy.

I don't know I did on Monday because I accomplished nothing even though I spent the entire day running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Tuesday was booked solid with meetings and a few interviews.

Wednesday I spent the morning finalizing a bid and spent the afternoon in DC.

I got stuck in the worst traffic I've ever seen on way home due to an accident and didn't get home until almost nine.

I don't want to talk about yesterday because Megan wasn't here and that turned almost impossible day into a complete shit show.

It's almost one o'clock on Friday and I haven't eaten lunch yet but I have no time because Emmett and I are looking at two houses this afternoon and we have to meet the realtor at the first house at three.

I have five hours of work to do before then and a twenty minute drive.

What I'm about to ask him to do will make his day much harder but it's the only way I can see myself making it.

Finnegan Walker: Emmett, any chance you can pick me up and bring me something to eat? Need to work and eat on the way to the house.

Emmett Locke: You're lucky you're cute. Of course. I'll be in the parking lot at 2:35.

Finnegan Walker: Thank you.

That makes everything a little more doable and I manage to only be seven minutes late getting downstairs.

"Thank you Emmett, glad you have the day off."

"It's no problem, darling."

I try to do three things at once on the way to the house because I want to see the neighborhood, I have to eat something before I pass out, and I still have an email to finish.

When we pull up I look at Emmett.

He puts the car in park and looks at me.

"I hate it."

He laughs.

"It's a bit more, uh, rough than the picture looked but maybe the inside is great. We're here, let's give it a shot."

The house needs to be shot.

This is why I didn't want to look at anything too cheap but the picture of the kitchen had me convinced to try it.

The realtor is already there and opens the door as we walk up the crumbling sidewalk.

We walk through and yes, the kitchen is nice although on closer inspection the finishes are cheap and what I thought was a nice backsplash is actually just some sort of wallpaper or something.

I thank her for her time and politely tell her that she would waste a lot less of her time if she put more accurate pictures online.

"I can't believe you said that," Emmett says, chuckling, as he buckles his seat belt.

"Well it's true. This is why we need our own realtor. She would have checked this place out for us and known it's... well not what we wanted."

"But that takes all the fun out of it, Finnegan. Besides, I love seeing other people's houses, I have this weird fascination with how other people live and I love architecture." 

That's news to me.

There's still a lot about him that I don't know.

"Besides, the next house should be great to balance out this one."

The second house is adorable.

It's also next door, literally next door, to a drug store that's open 24/7 hours a day.

Not three hundred feet away is a fast food place and just down from that is the hospital.

An ambulance flies by before we even get out of the car.

"Emmett, you need to be more specific. The house looks cute. The neighborhood... no."

"Next time we'll use google street view. The realtor's here, we have to go in."

"We do not, that's what phones are for."

His sign is on the front lawn and I call the number, politely telling him that no one wants to live next to a drug store and their asking price is ridiculous.

Location, location, location.

Well today was a bust.

I rushed around and left work for nothing.

"I should go back to work."

"No you shouldn't. I have no doubt that you're going to work tomorrow so take the evening off, Finnegan. Quincy and Rhys invited us to their place for dinner. I told them we'd have to see with the house viewings but"

"Let's go."

It's rude to interrupt but YES.

"Please?"

I need to change first... I'm still in my suit.

"Hold on."

He's amused.

"Let me text him real quick."

Soon we're off, heading towards our house.

His cell-phone chirps on the way and he lets me grab it.

"He says they'd love to have us and they're both already home," I read.

"Let him know our eta, so he can plan dinner."

"I'll take care of that while you change. No way you're wearing a monkey suit to play with Rhys."

He's so thoughful.

"Thanks Emmett."

Half an hour later we're on the road.

We've been asked to bring a six-pack and some chips and they're now nestled in the trunk.

"We're gonna see Rhys."

He looks over at me quickly and smiles.

"Yes we are. It should be a fun night."

[itsbenedict]

Alright, so- two months into the year, how much of my ten-item list is done?

Finish the first case of Justice/Arcana and revise the draft

Finish the SakuraPetalFantasy walkthrough portion of Datasouls (not with the whole combat toy situation, just the rest of it)

Do 24 TFJ recaps, two per month

Work through all the exercises in Genki 1 and 2, and catch up on WK reviews.

Date someone. I feel like I look decent and have a lot of desirable qualities that would make this not too hard to accomplish, but I have to put effort into looking or it’s never going to happen on its own. (I am unfortunately of the gender that doesn’t typically get asked out and has to take the initiative.) It’s gonna be tricky since I’m a weird person with weird life priorities and finding someone who’d actually be happy partnering up with that long-term is a tall order.

Actually get that standing desk walk-while-working workflow set up and establish an exercise routine that I keep to for more than half the year

Release a functional version of that Fire Emblem content authoring tool

Replace grody old kitchen sink that has weird white stuff growing out from inside the handle

Finish the games I’m still playing through from this post

Find some new source of income reliable enough to pay the bills without making me work more than 20 hours a week. (I’m a programmer, this is hypothetically doable.) Freelancing/contract work maybe?

One at a time...

I've done a few updates to Justice/Arcana, and have pretty much all the art assets I'll need done. There's a bit of a writing roadblock at the moment but I just need to take some time and work it out.

I did a handful of enemy icons for Datasouls but otherwise didn't work on it

Did four recaps, staying on course

No Japanese practice yet

No dating yet. From what I hear, there are no good dating sites anymore and it's all just swipe-right hookup apps, which are no use to me. I've written a date-me doc but I still need to have some nice pictures taken for it.

I ordered a new under-desk elliptical that you can actually stand on, and it just arrived, but I haven't set it up yet. I've been exercising regularly, though!

Made a bunch of progress on Medallion Works, such that the map editor is now bare-minimum functional.

No sink amelioration yet

Played most of those games- still need to get through The Sekimeiya, though. That one is long and dense.

Contract work for the company I quit has been manageable, but isn't quite paying the bills on its own- I made $3600 in February, which- setting aside probably half of that for taxes and other bullshit expenses- covers mortgage payments and utilities but not food and other purchases. And I'll be doing less and less work for them over time, as they get their environment stood up and running smoothly. That's still going to have to be replaced by real employment of some sort sometime this year, but not a concern just yet.

Overall, January and February were a bit more scattershot than I'd like- January was a whole lot of travel and finishing up stuff at work, and February still had a bit of work getting in the way. Plus I didn't really focus on any one thing, so nothing's fully checked off yet.

March... I think I need to focus on getting J/A's first case done, since it's in the home stretch. That and a couple recaps, and probably dealing with the sink situation if I can.

[gascon-en-exil]

In your opionion is there things that Engage did better than 3 Houses or things they did worse than 3 Houses ? if that is the case, which one and why ?

Those are two different questions, and ones that people have been bandying about online for months now. I thought for about five minutes about turning this into a video prompt, but there's already plenty exactly like this on YouTube - plus I'm currently working on way too much as it is.

What FE16 does better than FE17:

In general, character work - I say in general because there are characters I like in Engage and characters I very much don't in Houses, but the more substantive supports and other side interactions in the latter help the cast stand out more. They're also broken up more, so it's easier to focus on the groups you enjoy.

Non-Avatar queerness - So much lovely subtext, so many paired endings. I've done multiple videos centering around them, even. I said in a video a few months back that I dislike how so many of Engage's non-Avatar supports end with bland affirmations of friendship, which in combination with the lack of endings really kills the potential of pairings like Fogado/Bunet and Timerra/Merrin. Dimidue though? When their A support pivots around the word "friend" you just know that it's a euphemism, and that they'll be calling each other that mid-coitus that evening. Throw in around a dozen other pairings who've gotten big based on subtext and you've got a bunch to choose from.

Cozy life sim elements - The Somniel may be more streamlined and its loading screens slightly less agonizing, but the monastery better nails the feel of a persistent hub area - even if its coziness kind of undercuts the tone of the game's second half. This isn't something I'm really into, but I know a lot of fans get into stuff like gardening and fishing and tea time, and the calendar system and (weird) time progression does make Houses feel more like a life sim in contrast to the Somniel and its randomized character loadouts. Also, Engage has way more to grind for if you want to see everything, which is annoying. This is in contrast to...

100% Completion - It may be something only I care about, but Houses goes above and beyond any other mainline FE if you're a completionist. Of course there's the support logs and event gallery and such (features Engage doesn't even manage correctly), but there's also the in-game journal which provides a ludicrous but still doable 100% target in the form of watching a whole bunch of bars fill up very slowly over dozens of playthroughs. This requires so many spreadsheets to keep organized - love it!

What FE17 does better than FE16:

Story originality - Yes, really. Houses's story is three variations on the series standard plot, plus one other option - side with the conqueror -that Fates came up with first. Engage is the least politically-interested game in the series, and it barely even teases at a mundane war between nations before it's back to fighting zombies and collecting rings. Original doesn't necessarily mean good, but at least Engage knows exactly what kind of story it's trying to tell and what it can feasibly expect to do.

Tangible, linear worldbuilding - Engage isn't as ambitious, but it's more successful thanks to more traditional FE worldbuilding tools like talking to NPCs around the world as opposed to gathering them all in hub. The single story also helps keeps everything orderly and easy to understand, rather than going for an unreliable narrator + mystery box approach across multiple routes and half-assing the execution.

The Avatar - No contest here. Alear is an actual character with an identifiable arc, and while it's not the most compelling thing in the world it's leagues ahead of anything Byleth can claim. Byleth is a blank vessel for the player (and also Sothis for a while, lending them some facsimile of a character in the form of her reactions) with a ludicrously contrived backstory to justify why they are the way they are; Alear has fears and development and a backstory that's coherent even if it relies on a fair amount of cliché. Also, even in localization Alear as a god complex fantasy is undeniable, whereas Houses bends over backwards to act like a main source of its appeal isn't teacher-student sex. Speaking of -

Avatar queerness - Again, no contest - not that I especially care. Byleth's same-sex S rank options are limited, while Alear can give their not!engagement ring to every character regardless of gender, a huge step up in open-ended self-insert romance that gets mostly overlooked because they can also give the ring to preteens.

Understanding of FE's camp appeal - The above only underlines how much better Engage can be when it comes to the campy and the tasteless. From the ridiculous outfits to the Emblem stuff being compared to Saturday morning cartoons or Power Rangers or such to Zephia/Zelestia to the AU dragon incest wank nonsense, Engage wears its silliness on its sleeve. Houses doesn't totally lack that element, with stuff like the Proper Conduct Tournament and Manuela's...everything, basically, but like the teacher-student fetish it's hidden beneath this veneer of respectability that begins to grate after a while. Most of that is probably just overcorrection for the poor response to that sort of content in Fates, but it obviously didn't stick...not even for Fódlan content in Heroes. Look at the new duo Cathmir, and tell me these characters still aren't being sold on sex appeal aimed primarily at straight men.

Handling of characters of color - Not something I discuss often, but it has to be said. Solm is as developed of any of the other main four nations of Elyos, with just about as much of a role in the story and a presence in gameplay (i.e. you spend around half a dozen chapters there). There are still some oddities, like how the royals and NPCs are all dark-skinned but the retainer characters aren't, but compared to the various periphery nations of Fódlan it's a real standout and actually feels like a part of the world. Sreng is a plot device in Hopes, and even less than that in Houses. Duscur, Brigid, and Dagda basically only exist in relation to Dedue, Petra, and Shamir respectively. Even Almyra, from which we get two playable characters including one of the lords, barely appears at all, and most of Claude's Almyran heritage is left out of his writing because he spends the whole game disguising his identity.

Standard gameplay - I play on Normal and freely abuse time rewinding so my opinion here isn't going to be held in any regard, but go check out anywhere Engage is being discussed online and you'll see tons of tier lists and comparisons of builds and chapters and Emblems and whatever else. You know, the things that people ordinarily talk about when it comes to FE, and not -

Less enabling of toxic fandom elements - The inbuilt faction drama in a faux-serious war story, the continued growth of the anti phenomenon first seen when Fates was current, and a years-long global pandemic fostered endless division and conflict that persists to this day. It somehow even continues a year after the release of Hopes, now in the form of bashing Engage because it didn't sell as much (while still talking about its gameplay way more than I could ever bother, go figure) and IS is being more conservative with its Heroes appearances. There's still pointless nonsense to argue about here - like the aforementioned incest wank - but there's far less of it in a linear story that doesn't encourage players to latch as hard onto their favorites.

Non-100% replay value - Related to the gameplay, if you're not going for all the supports/bonds/achievements there's much more variety you can pull out of repeat playthroughs of Engage via the standard ways to mix up your runs in FE: using different characters, allocating resources differently, limiting yourself in certain ways etc. Houses's gameplay is so freeform and has such clear best options that for replays you're relying on the story...and there's exactly four stories. Worse, White Clouds is almost the same regardless of house, and there's a bunch of crossover content among the Part II routes as well, even Crimson Flower, which leads to it all feeling quite repetitive even if the narratives technically go to different places.

Nostalgic throwbacks - Not only the Emblems, but also the many legacy paralogues. These were a fun element of Awakening and Fates's DLC, and it's nice to see them brought back here with a bunch of callbacks for fans of those older games. Houses has...its batch of DLC classes all coming from Awakening, and the Archanean regalia appearing as random drops. Oh, and probably the least notable playable version of Anna ever.

Absurdly cute mascot factor - Could have talked about this under the camp factor, but some players get really into how adorable Sommie is. It's a fount of memes and goofy videos if nothing else. Is IS taking notes from Pokémon?

And yet I still prefer FE16 overall, because it better caters to my specific interests (gay stuff that doesn't involve Avatars, spreadsheets). The years of fandom toxicity are unfortunate, but I've grown accustomed to laughing at it when it amuses me and ignoring it when it doesn't.

[omamervt]

You ever think about how some chores you had as a kid were just... made up? If they had a practical purpose, the way you were expected to do them ruined that purpose entirely?

Like. My mom & I used to constantly argue about Making the Bed. I still have a terrible relationship with the process of Making the Bed because the way my mom expected me to do it was incompatible with how I sleep. This argument lasted well into adulthood and didn't stop until I held my first college degree and job at the same time. To her, Making the Bed means tucking the sheets under the mattress. Yes, even the top one. Whenever she forced me to do it this way, she was always confused how it was possible that, in one night, I managed to knock all my sheets, including the fitted sheet, loose. And the answer is that in order to actually get under them, I had to untuck one corner, and to actually get comfortable, I had to untuck the rest so I could tuck them under my feet. If I do not do this, my feet get cold, even in socks, and I'm too uncomfortable to fall asleep.

Or The Shelf.

Behind my mom's home office desk, there is a series of glass shelves upon which she put a bunch of glass objects for display. This display gets incredibly dusty, but to clean it is an all-day process, because we need to move the desk out of the way, get out a ladder, and carefully move things off the display to clean it. Then we need to individually hand-wash all the objects on display, but not with soap & water because that might damage the paint. It's an incredibly old, incredibly heavy desk, by the way. The suggestion that perhaps the whole setup was ill-advised is never taken with any grace at all.

There was an argument about how I never changed the batteries in a clock that didn't belong to me, annoyed me when it was ticking, and was hard to reach because of its placement, but no I wasn't allowed to take it DOWN because then there'd be this UGLY HOOK visible from a space that literally only I use and I could not have possibly cared less. Also I couldn't take the hook out? we'd have to fill the hole and paint over it, and since it was difficult to reach, that'd be too much work!

Not to mention all the unused table surfaces we couldn't leave things on because it looked bad, the towels we had to save for hypothetical guests that nobody ever invited over, all these things that weren't allowed to serve a practical purpose and yet required So Much Maintenance.

This kinda turned into a vent post but like. Idk, there's a lot of guilt and hangups around housework and I'd bet if you stepped back and thought about it for a few minutes, you'd recognize the obvious: Things haven't fallen apart just because I put this off. What does that mean? Is it necessary? If yes, does the "Run the Dishwasher Twice" method of doing chores apply here? Can you cut out unnecessary steps? Does it HAVE to be done in the way that you can't bring yourself to do, or is there an easier, less pretty way that nonetheless works? If it's not necessary, then fuck it. Take down that clock and leave the ugly hook. Or do what I did and find a cheap Darth Vader canvas in a clearance aisle somewhere, if there's someone to complain about The Hook. Don't tuck in your sheets if it'll make more work for you tomorrow morning. Tear down That Fucking Shelf and put those display pieces somewhere you can reach them without losing your whole afternoon. Or move your desk, whatever makes The Chore doable. And for fuck's sake, throw shit on the flat surfaces made for the express purpose of throwing shit on. Don't deny your furniture and towels their purpose.