#really need to get used to just doing the posts on markdown

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

"the church on ruby road" thoughts + reactions

(tumblr is broken so i cant delete this space without breaking the post :))

"you saw a ladder in the sky and you thought, yeah, ill give that a go, babes" rose tyler CALL OUT

"what's the problem with hanging on? it's all the friction and the weight and the burns. so i got rid of that" and that's why u are still Fucked Up doc. this is NOT how u do rehab!!!

"learn the lenguage" eyes emoji "coincidence is what makes the baby tasty" EYES EMOJI

"it sitches you in. it weaves you into the day. you become all complicated and knotted and vivid"

"it's like a tapestry, it's gorgeous" self congratulating ur own writing, russel? sldkfjsdlkfj

"like the best, like wow" 13 and ‘fam’ walked so 15 could run

"a screwdriver needs screws" (so whenever the screwdriver works it, it works by resonating articulations and undoing binding agents, but it cannot do “untangling”)

VENTILAITON SHAFTS!!!! (my "this new era is the cartoon era" meta is born)

"amazing!" "no it's not" nothing changes lol

this feels *so* wilderness years (positive)

the MASTER knot you say....………………………...

"i've got no one" aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

"it's not magic, it's a lenguage, like a different form of physics" he’s coping about the “little” salt mistake still...

damn 15/ruby chemistry is so good….. can't wait for it all to go up in flames. And tragedy. Flaming tragedy.

"but only one of them stayed" mirror...? QUICK someone count how many companions have there been and if it's 33?????

im having sm emotions wtf

honestly ppl thinking rtd would retcon this were so hilariously off-base lol as if there's anything more of a catnip-plot for a soap opera writer than a “figure out parental origins” plotline

follow the crack... the crack in time and space...

it bothered me that in the special they used so much contemporary colorful theatrical lighting, that didnt fit the "grounded" doctordonna era at al, but it works much better here in that we're properly in the color ncuti era

"dont say that" aggggggggggggg

(ppl forgeting about ruby feels kinda clara coded / foreshadowing?)

"then why are you crying?" im going feral

"i will fix this" rtd voice: he will make it worse

oohh, the hubris in this ep was the arrogance of the doctor saying "they are NOT time travellers" sdklfj

baby catching... xena coded

blue / gold motif my beloved!!!

its a wonderful life~

"everything i do just makes it happen" -> "maybe im the bad luck"

"where are you goin now?" nbd just ruby going to buy some bread at the same store as yaz

CONCLUSIONS!

this was so wholesome t.t i really enjoyed that!! it has some lore implications and long-run stuff but mostly i’m really glad to finally get some new stories/a new vibe. I really enjoyed the glimpse we got of ruby’s family world and also love that both mine and 15’s reactions was “i’ve only had ruby for half an hour but if something happened to her i’d murder everyone here and then myself probably”. her wardrobe is beyond iconic.

besides the “biggest family in the world” parallel, the bb photos in the fridge give me like… TTC’s o"ther lost incarnations are their siblings vibe". Or, every "other time lord is technically the doctor’s children" vibe.

aesthetically, i really enjoyed this one. Specially The Big Scene (13-era blue/gold motif my beloved). This is one i see myself rewatching in the future just for the feel-good feel of it. the goblin number was fun! a clever parody of how much of pop uses “baby” and sweets-related metaphors for the sake of romance and here it becomes all for the sake of cannibalism lol (big brown eyes, caramelise~). 15/ruby being *so in* tune is cute+fun (and slightly sus). promising start to the new era.

[cardboardhyperfix-games]

what program(s) do you use for designing ttrpg systems, and why? I use obsidian and the simplicity of markdown is both a blessing and a curse

I use notebooks for ideas! Lots and lots of notes. I kind of just have pages where I am just free thinking, putting down what comes to mind and thinking about questions and answered to that. Then, when I need to focus, I'll turn to a page where the point is to start zeroing in on something. After that stage, I start writing it up in Word. I've not gotten into fancy formatting yet, any word does everything I could need right now.

Maybe one day I will start working with more professional layout programs. I would like to get better at those, but I really have no experience with them at all.

I have a few posts on here showing some of my notebooks. I hope to start adding more of those soon.

[funwalker]

I made a blog!!!

Check out my bloooooooog

(Sorry, there's not much there right now...)

I realized that while I was on cohost, the format and the posting culture (css nerd stuff) kind of encouraged me to put more time and effort into making posts in a way that I hadn't in a long time. I hadn't realized how much I missed having control over the minutiae of content I posted. So even though I resolved to crosspost some of the stuff I liked to tumblr, it's missing some of the personality that I put into it, I think, and having a blog where I can do some of those shenanigans if I want to will be fun.

Also, for your viewing pleasure, you may subscribe to the RSS feeds (there's one for each category in addition to the aggregate feed, so if you only want to hear about art or only games, you can do that as well).

Also also, if you own your own webspace, and are thinking about adding a blog, I wrote a little bit about the plugin i used under the cut. ↓↓↓

I was sifting through the blogging plugins available through my hosting service and settled on HTMLy, firstly because it's pretty lightweight--it only takes up 8mb of server space which is crazy small (compare to Wordpress' 68mb). It has a tag system, categories, and a built in search (not just a google search that crawls through your blog), and aside from how long it took me to hack the themes apart into something resembling the rest of my site, it was really easy to setup. I really like it.

I only added it to my blog, but I'm honestly kind of considering rebuilding the rest of my site using HTMLy as well.

Similar to cohost, you can use markdown and html in your posts. There's a built-in image uploader so you don't have to deal with any image hosting shenanigans. I added a bunch of special elements to my blog's css that i'd defined in the style sheet for my regular website (and even some common ones I used in my chosts), so I can insert them for a cohesive feel.

It also supports multiple users--with its own login page separate from your cpanel or however you usually access your site--which is a feature I'll never use, but I think it's really neat. :)

Aaaanyways, I need to overhaul the rest of my site since I haven't updated it meaningfully in uh... six years... but hopefully, I'll get around to making it more of a reflection of my current interests... this year... maybe....

Also, maaaaaaaan, i really wanna get back into doing little code doodles in Processing. I used to have a lot of fun with them. Maybe I'll port some of my old ones to the latest version so I can put them on the web...

[psycheterminal]

Ask response:

"If you answer this ask (you don't have to), can you block my name? I'd rather be anonymous, but I wanted to ask if you know of any good places to host media like Discord? Or just place where you can leave and label the stuff? Because I have discord servers that contain my own story ideas and pictures to go alongside it, and while I can store it all on a USB, I'd rather have it all in one place where I can access. Sorry, I know I'm not really phrasing this well, but do you know of anywhere you can store ideas, text, pictures, links, etc, that are simple and easy to use? Like I can load it up, log in, or whatever place a picture I have for a certain story full HD, and it stays there forever until I delete it never looses its quality or the text I place can be edited and added to"

My apologies for the inconvenience of not having anon asks on, I got hazed by some people back in the Homestuck days and once was enough. Some people are cruel cowards and I won't subject myself to such harassment again.

There's several. I recommend using multiple sources:

Google Drive. Basic space is free, but it's Google. Storage is at least cheap, if you need more. I won't link this.

Dropbox. The OG online storage backup. Cheap.

OwnCloud. It's simple to get up and running. There's a cool markdown text app called qownnotes that can hook into this, too!

Github and its competitors. You can make a repository with all your stuff and folders, mark it private.

Use a wiki service. There's a few FOSS wiki solutions! DON'T USE FANDOM!!

Neocities. If you pay 5$ a month, you're doing a good deed and you can make your own funky website, too.

Archive Of Our Own, aka Ao3 for your text. You can set it to only you can see it! If you have hosting space, you can actually fork the software for it! It's an archive! It's what it's for! It has an original work section!

BACK UP YOUR STUFF LOCALLY! Big local storage has gotten way, way more affordable. You can get a 2 tera solid state external drive for under 120 dollars, a spinny disk external drive for under 70$. If you don't want to use Amazon, check out Best Buy or a local computer shop for options.

You're most likely gonna use money. I know money's really, really tight for a lot of people and the situation just plain sucks. I can't do much but offer options for people to ponder.

My recommendation is to back up your stuff to a physical location, and to rent online storage space with multiple vendors. If you don't mind using google for now, use both GDrive and Dropbox for simplicity. If you don't mind doing more and learning some things, use Dropbox with OwnCloud, and post your text to Ao3.

I do NOT recommend Imgur for photo backup.

I do NOT recommend Apple services unless you already have an iPhone/Mac device.

[aimfor-theheart]

ahhhh sorry cielo, i don't usually share obsidian files for editing/commenting so i'm not sure, but i found this plugin (link leads to a forum post) that looks like it'd work for that purpose?? i can definitely test it out first and report back! obsidian absolutely takes some tinkering to get used to, but it's really customizable! i'll include the plugins i use if that helps at all! everything is saved in markdown which makes it easy for me to post to tumblr in web (um. not in the tumblr app tho. some coding issue).

but i also just remembered that notion might be another one to consider — it's pretty user friendly, has mobile and web, uhh i think plans now are free if you're using it just for yourself (student discount is a "plus plan" that lets you have teams? full disclosure i also haven't attempted that). i used to use notion for planning but never really got into it for writing for some reason, and then they started pushing their AI and i switched to obsidian

i am sorry 😔 i know when i started looking for something other than the google ecosystem it took me a while to figure out what i wanted/needed, and then it took me a bit longer to get used to obsidian, but i hope your search goes a lot easier!

hello friend!!

pls do not apologize!! i really appreciate you taking the time to answer so thoughtfully 😭💗

i was defs messing around with plugins!! i got a comment one that should be more helpful? and ill defs check out the other plugin you mentioned—it looks promising!! defs something more toward what i’m looking for!!

defs can tell obsidian is pretty customizable! which is really cool! seems like a sandbox and you just gotta figure out how to tell it to do what you’d like!

thank you for sharing your plugins!! i’ll have to get those ones as well!!

and i do use notion actually but not for long form writing! i use it for storyboarding + plot info + character building, etc.! i have a very beautiful notion set up for a long-form high fantasy original story of mine! i am very proud of it!

again, pls don’t apologize!! i am defs going through this journey right now and i will figure it out! i am starting to get the hang of obsidian too! some more tinkering will help!

thank you again for the recommendation and for your insight!! it’s greatly appreciated!!! 💗💗

hope you’re doing well!!

[vhasterra-the-garden-of-twilight]

Dicecloud V1 Guide, pt. 1

credit: 💉on pinterest

Hello to my wonderful players! This post is to serve as my go-to link when I have to run games and my players aren't familiar with Dicecloud.

Disclaimer: Everything I say is of my opinion and personal preference. I do not claim that one is objectively better over the other. If I do, assume that I mean it in a joking manner.

If you still decide to use D&DB after this, that's fine too! I just can't help if something goes terribly wrong.

🌼˗ˏˋ "Why not D&D Beyond?"

Because DC is free, supremely customizable with unlimited character slots and easy to implement homebrew. The catch is that its all manual (aside from the stat math) and at worst you would have to add a list of things in one by one.

Additionally, those who are experienced with Markdown / HTML can use their knowledge to automate some math or functions.

I think its a good thing to have new players learn to create a character from the scratch. D&DB gives you a handful of choices with short descriptions that can be skimmed over, the player won't really understand what the feature is or why they made that choice.

To give you an idea on what DC is like, here are some of my characters ranging from low levels (1-5) to level 30 (it was a heavily homebrewed campaign):

Momo, Level 3 Gestalt Character, Barbarian (Giants)/Druid (Wildfire)

Rowena Lillith Burnette Grey, Level 30 Gestalt Character, Blood Hunter (Mutant)/Ranger (Monster Slayer)

Whiff, Level 6 Character, Rogue (Arcane Trickster)

Lanie Colette Jacquét, Level 6 Character, Ranger (Fey Wanderer)/Warlock (Archfey)

🌼˗ˏˋ "What about sources?" / "How can I find X?"

5e Wikidot. Everything is literally right there for ✨F R E E✨ no subscription or content sharing needed.

🌼˗ˏˋ "How can I roll dice during games?"

I use Owlbear Rodeo and its dice rolling extensions. It just doesn't connect your sheet to the VTT like Beyond20.

I. Signing In to Dicecloud

If you don't already have an account, go ahead and make one (link below)

https://v1.dicecloud.com/

We will be using version 1 (V1) Dicecloud. Its the one I'm familar with and it's the easily customizable one. Version 2 massively overhauls the OGs systems, so I don't know how to use it (plus, no unli slots). If you decide to use V2, that's fine too!

II. Creating a New Character

Great! Now open up the sidebar (☰ on the top left if you're on mobile), click on "Characters", then the big red plus button (bottom right)

It will give you 3 options, select "New Character"

(Check picture below) You'll be greeted to this screen, at the very least fill in the character's name and race. But they will all be changeable later if you decide to change your mind.

One you click "Add" you will be greeted to your character's "Stats" page (keep in mind that I'll call them "Tabs" or "Pages")

From here, I'm assuming you already have a character in mind. If you don't, I have a separate post--a quick guide. Feel free to check it out then come back here.

III. Setting your Base Ability Scores

I have all the pictures below in order. On your character sheet, head to the "Features" page, you will then see the "Base Ability Scores" feature.

Click on that and you will be shown your ability scores, they are 10 by default. To edit them, click on the pencil on the top right of the pop up window.

The pencil puts you in, what I like to call, "editing mode." Earlier you were just in "viewing mode."

Anyways, you will see pencils on the right side. Each of them allows you to edit their corresponding ability score.

Clicking on then brings you here (look below) where you can change the value. Remember, this is your base ability score, that means before you receive any bonuses.

After editing each score, you should end up with something like this. Just hit the check mark (✔) at the top right corner or click outside the pop up window.

Once you've done that for every ability, you should end up with something like this:

This post is getting pretty long, so I'll continue this in another post. I'll update and leave links as I go.

[cheshire-castle-library]

hey! this is chance & here’s this week’s prompt. what websites or resources do you use while you write or develop a character/story? what do you think of them and would you recommend them?

Hello!! Been fighting a war of spoons this week, so sorry for the delay with this!

Honestly it would be magical if I had 1 single source I could rely on for writer's research, but Google is generally my starting point. After that here are the places I trust the information of:

Masterclass - there are a surprising number of articles and mini interviews for free written or influenced by the professional writers in the platform. One day I'll pay for the full service if only to hear Mr. Gaiman tell me his perspective on storytelling; but the free articles are really concise and informative for structure

Save the Cat Writes a Novel (its a book but there are references all over the internet to it as well) - definitely don't feel chained to what the method lays out!! But the nuances about what should happen in certain types of beats are a great push when you get stuck!!! But it's a really rigid beat sheet that probably won't 100% adhere to what you need it to be.

Behind the Name - actually discusses meanings and origins of cultural names!! This is a great way to get started or to help carve put a character who is a little too murky to write yet.

The Phrontistry - difficult to navigate on a time crunch since its not made for writers, but ctrl-f a key word helps. This place has lists and lists of DEAD WORDS!! Use it to name shit! Use it learn victorian and old english slang. Use it because you just like words. (By the way, a Phrontistry is "a place meant for thinking", so a Zen garden is a phrontistry!!)

My Uni Library Website - this is a privilege I know, but if you can get access to academic sources on arts and cultures it really changes the way you can respectfully draw inspiration from other cultures!!

4TheWords - this is the ADHD buster! Its down at the time I wrote this, but it's a website that gamifies writing so its not just a timer like in writing sprints, every word you type goes to "defeating a monster". You so quests like any mmo and I've legitimate written over 50k in under 30 days because brain goes into panic "it doesn't have to be good" mode and I can get stuff done! Its not totally free, but the micropurchases are actually micro snd you can earn time as well as buy it. They have to make ends meet so i can't be mad

Writer.bighugelabs.com - ive used this online typewriter for like 5+ years. Lifetime membership is 99$ and it goes to the one guy who made it keeping it running. It's got an offline mode and document history so just as long as you are careful and you preload the tab, you don't need data on your netbook/chromebook/ipad to write. It's no markdown, just words on page, it makes typewriter noises, and it looks like a dos command prompt. If you pay for it, you can customize colours, and ive used it for everything from timed exams to emails to novel chapters.

Obsidian.md - free program you can get as an app or on desktop that lets you make basically your own wiki. I've posted about it for my studies, but you can just make your own wiki about your novel, or choose to write directly into it. It supports markdown and latex-like formulae so I've literally written reports in it.

Also like,,,, don't be afraid to use the blogs of other writers! They have experience you could use. But I try to avoid posts that are "7 tips to write x y z" or "never do p q r when writing" because they just get in my head and are generally highly opinionated and are not objectively correct.

I do use, reblog, and strongly support resource and psa type posts though!! Some beautiful human has been making "ways to write [emotion]" posts on tumblr and that person I would like to kiss. They are useful information-based and example-based posts that are just like "and here are some oprions" instead of giving people who are already prone to second guessing themselves (writers) more things to fear cause them "should i even try, what if im cringe and everyone roasts my work" anxiety. ((If people are gonna roast your work, they will nitpick it apart regardless of whether you reinvented My Immortal or wrote the spiritual successor to This Is How You Lose The Time War, so like,,, please just write @me and everyone else who needs to hear that.))

I also advise at least skimming posts about demographics you are not in, especially the ones about how they want to be represented and how it's appropriate to include that in your narrative structure. If you are not in that demographic, you - by definition - cannot fully understand what it's like to be the people who are. Therefore you should to do some quality research and maybe be willing to ask questions of people to make sure you don't fall into stereotypes/virtue signaling/etc.

Finally, *inhales*: WIKIPEDIA!

Yes anyone can edit it, but you know who does??? Coffee riddled neurodivergent individuals with a passion for that one obscure thing you were shocked to find on Wikipedia.

Use the information as a primer, and then to to the sources and try to track down more specific and more "reliable" information. But Wikipedia is usually enough if you are like designing creatures and stuff like that. I don't need amphibious biology research to design an axolotl-like alien sentient lifeform.

That being said, I'm not going to stay limited to wikipedia when i go to learn about xolotl and the culture that named axolotls in order to make sure i don't just steal one animal and a naming convention but also pay some respect and homage to the spirit of the animal and related irl folklore. But finding relatable and first hand cultural sources is very case by case.

[menciemeer]

okay I was scrolling through your blog (a normal amount? too much? I'm sorry if this is weird I don't know if dragging up old posts in acceptable on this site!) and saw one where you said you use vim and I am curious about that! I tried it a while ago and was like... okay I can see how this might be faster once you get REALLY good at it, and it would definitely be useful to have the ability to export easily in multiple formats because I have realized suddenly that it seems like AO3's downloads frequently mess up the formatting? (Or maybe just fail to fix messed-up formatting that the browser smooths over?) Sooo yeah do you use it to write or just for code or what? is it worth it to become a Vim Person?

HELLO this is actually one of the things I most love to talk about because vim is my Favorite Piece Of Software. I love it well beyond a normal amount. That being said it's ummm not for everyone and not for everything. I'm putting this under a readmore because this is too long to inflict on poor unsuspecting souls who are just here for Hannibal content.

Section 1: The ways in which vim is useful

Vim is most useful when the stuff you're working on is more structured and what you're doing is more rote. So something like code (which, yes, is what I learned it for) is very formally structured, and something like html is sort of vague scaffolding around text, which is pretty much a blobby mush where really nothing means very much of anything. (The number of times I ct. only to get pulled up short by an honorific is very high, and I am grouchy.)

Part of the thing that makes structure good is that vim is more useful (relative to a traditional editor) when you can precisely define the action you want to take. Getting better at vim is really about improving your vim-vocabulary so that you are more able to make precise statements about what it is that you want vim to do. I use a "normal" markdown editor for drafting, because what I want to do is "write the next bit" which is not a very vim-interesting action and obviously not very precise. I do use vim for editing, though, because often the things I want to do are, like: "replace this word with some other word" (cw), "delete the end of this paragraph" (D), "rewrite this bit of dialogue" (ci"), "remove this whole paragraph" (dd)--you get the idea.

Also, the place that vim goes from "ok, this seems pretty good" to "this is invaluable" is really when you want to repeat stuff. Something like "the compiler is giving me 25+ pedantic warnings because the file I'm working on was written prior to the introduction of the C++ override keyword" or "I'm rewriting an API so I need to fix the function name in these dozen callsites, remove the first argument, and swap the places of args 2 & 4." These examples are programming-related because I haven't found a use for macros in writing yet. (I live in hope.)

Section 2: If you want to learn vim, here are my tips

I don't really want to tutorialize because there are a lot of those out there already. I do wish to dispense some general philosophical wisdom. (!!!!!)

First of all, keep in mind that the bar is very low. Normal editors are not really that productive. Fancy WYSIWYG editors (which I hate, equal and opposite to my vim-love) are negatively productive for me, because I will get distracted and/or distressed by all the available buttons, formatting options, and whether I accidentally italicized any of the spaces. You don't need to be maximally productive in vim to make use of it, and you don't really need to know that much to match the capabilities of a normal plaintext editor.

If you want to learn vim, I would pick a small set of keys to understand first. Like, i and I (capital-i) to enter insert mode, <Esc> to get back to normal mode. bwhjkl as basic movement options. u and <ctrl>r for undo/redo. If you must, y and d for copy/cut, p and P for paste. (System clipboard--I'm sorry--accessed with "+, so "+y or "+p for example.) That is probably well over enough.

After you get a handle on the basics, the fun part of vim is figuring out where your inefficiencies are and learning how to improve them. Realizing that you're pushing more buttons than you want to be pushing, figuring out how to describe the thing you want to do in a google search, and then finding out that vim has a key to do that. gg G } { c % $ ^ zz . ; and so on, and so on. The world is your oyster &c. (The sheer delight I felt when, more than half a decade after starting to use vim, I found the aforementioned ci"? Indescribable.)

Section 3: In which I address the actual ask

Ok ok okokok sorry. I've written all of this to tell you that I don't actually know what the weird formatting stuff you're talking about is. I read pretty much all long fic on an ereader after downloading as epub and I haven't noticed anything bizarre with the formatting? When I do want to go in and poke around in an epub I usually just use calibre's built-in editor.

In terms of exporting your own plaintext/markdown writing to multiple formats, I use pandoc. I've been very happy with it, but it isn't anything that couldn't be done by hand (and also doesn't require you to start from Vim In Particular). I would love to talk about pandoc but aaaggggh this is already way too long (sorry).

I do have strong feelings about writing in plaintext (glorious! small! no weird formatting distractions! what you see is what's in the actual file you're really writing it there's no secrets) versus WYSIWYG (too many buttons! what do they do! am i using it wrong if i don't push them! why is the filesize so big! what are your secrets, renamed .zip file!) but vim isn't the only choice if you want to go the plaintext route only the best one no, look, I spent the whole of section 1 talking about this, I am not allowed to go backwards. Honestly, though, if you're interested I'd say go for it! Vim is fun to learn and very clever! Knowing vim feels a little like knowing a weird, hyper-specialized little language.

[mentalisttraceur-software]

Tables as Lists of Lists

A post about lightweight plaintext markup

I am always annoyed when a "plain text" markup language's idea of tables is closer to hand-typed ASCII art than to a list-of-lists.

The biggest examples, such as Markdown and Org Mode, fall in this category. Their tables look something like this:

| foo | bar | | -‍-‍- | -‍-‍- | | 42 | 1 |

Unless the table is profoundly trivial, that's going to require too much time or specialized table editing code to write and update. Unless the table content is fairly small, the plain text won't look reasonably legible in different display widths either, and would require specialized table-wrapping logic instead of just basic line wrapping.

The only lightweight plain text markup languages I've seen get this right are:

reStructuredText, and

Lisps with macros or functions for markup.

In those, tables can look like lists-of-lists, with some clear indicator that it's meant to be a table. In reStructuredText, you even have the choice of ASCII art tables just like in the other markups, for tables small enough to helps readability and be worth it, but when you're dealing with larger table content, you can switch to just writing this:

.. list-table:: * * foo * bar * * 1 * 2

Note that none of this syntax is table-specific - it's just a list where each entry is just another list, all indented just like any other block of text covered by a directive. Basically, if you already wrote a reStructuredText parser that covers the basics, this way of specifying tables is by far easier and simpler to implement than any other way of specifying a table, since you'd just be reusing the same common syntax, data structures, and parser logic.

reStructuredText's list-table won't let you do fancy edge cases like merged cells, but we can trivially imagine an extension for that, which should be fairly easy to implement if you ever need it, and would still be self-descriptive in plain text: a directive like `.. list-table-merge:: previous-row`, or `.. merge:: previous-column` which we write into the list entries for the cells we want to merge. If that's something you need, I imagine it would be an easy sell to propose it upstream.

Personally, I recommend this approach to tables for any markup language aiming to be lightweight and workable as plain text. I also really like that it reminds us of the fact that "table" is one arbitrary choice of presentation, just like "monospace text with this specific syntax coloring theme" is one arbitrary choice of presentation for text which is semantically marked up as code. What we really have is information which has structure which lends itself well to tabular presentation - and `.. list-table::` is just as good of a way to say that as `.. code::` is for code blocks.

[jessepinwheel]

okay, so this one broke containment (thanks, everyone). let's talk about the results! if you do not want to read this very long post, press J on your keyboard.

Google Docs - cloud-based, easy sharing/collaboration features, usable on computer and phone By and large the most popular option because of low barrier to access (most people have a gmail), the fact that it's free, has autosave, good sharing/collaborative writing features, and the ability to use it on pretty much any computer, tablet, or phone including chromebooks. I personally do not use Google Docs for writing purposes because it chugs when it comes to longer documents, and can't be used if your internet connection is spotty.

Microsoft Word/LibreOffice/OpenOffice/other office suites - application-based, rich text editing, lots of document and formatting features Microsoft Word is kind of the prime example of a word processor. It's very good for documents that need to be printed onto paper, and has a lot of good formatting options. Since it's an actual desktop app, it runs well even when there's hundreds of pages, and of course you can use it offline since it's saving things locally, or you can also save things to the Office 365 cloud services to access from multiple devices (I have never used these, so I don't know how well they work). I think these days there's also a Microsoft Word web app so you're able to use it in browser instead of having to download the application. A lot of people have access to Word for free through their school or job.

If you do not have access to Microsoft Word for free, or just hate Microsoft on principle, there are several open-source free alternatives such as LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice. I'm pretty sure these don't come with any cloud-based storage or backups, but there are ways to get around that (I'll get there later).

Notepad/Other Plaintext Editor - simple text, no formatting, lightweight, no distractions I did a very large amount of writing in Notepad some years back--I did my posting on forums, so I would type the HTML tags straight into the .txt file to copy directly to the forum page. Obviously you will not be doing any formatting for print, or putting in any pictures or tables or anything like that, but when you want to just get your story into words on the page, that can be a plus. Because .txt is so lightweight, you're never going to get any lag and the text files themselves are tiny and easy to share. Nobody (hopefully) is doing their final editing in a plaintext editor, but I didn't ask about editing, I asked about writing.

Some write-ins for plaintext editors: Vim, Emacs, Wordgrinder, Atom, Notepad++ (all free)

Scrivener - rich text, project binder style, many organizational tools for keeping documents straight or rearranging parts Scrivener is my long story (and audio drama script) writing application of choice. I was honestly kind of surprised that this many people used Scrivener--I was debating putting it on this poll at all.

In any case, it has a lot of really good features, primarily that it's a binder-style project writing application which lets you have all your different sections in different files, then compile them all together in whatever order you choose. You can keep all your notes and references within the same project file, and you can tag sections to keep track of what happens in what part, or what needs to be revised. It lets you do split-screen, so you can e.g., see your outline on one side and what you're writing on the other. It also lets you do version control for each document. It lets you export in many different formats (I personally write in Markdown and export as HTML for posting into AO3). You can also set daily word goals and things like that. Also has an iOS app but that's a separate purchase and I have no idea if it's any good.

It is not free--it is a one-time purchase. There are discounts for nanowrimo or if you have a .edu email. I have personally found it very worth the price, but you can judge that for yourself--it has a 30 day free trial, which is for 30 days of actual writing use, not 30 days from download. If the price tag is still too steep, try one of the write-in options in the next section.

Markdown Editors - easy export to HTML, simple layout, access to some formatting features I'm honestly very surprised that Markdown editors are so low. Markdown is basically plaintext+. It gives you the simplicity of plaintext but with the added bonus of things like italics, bold, underlines, hyperlinks, quotes, and some other things too, depending on the application. Since they're basically just .txt files but can be exported to other formats, they're just as lightweight as plaintext. Markdown editors generally let you export directly to HTML format, which you can then open in a plaintext editor and copy-paste directly into whatever website you post on.

I use Deepdwn (one time purchase) as my Markdown editor of choice for my shorter stories and for notes. Many Markdown applications are available for phone/tablet.

Notable write-in options: MarkText (free), Typora ($15), Obsidian (free)

Directly into the website you are going to post to - web accessible, rich text formatting, hubris I'm not going to say this is a good idea, because this one runs a decently high risk of having something close out/refresh without you wanting it to, and then losing some hundreds of words of progress. But for things like blog posts (like this one) or essays or other kinds of shorter writing, I will certainly write directly in Tumblr or Wordpress or whatever it is.

Writing directly into the website gives you the advantage of being able to access it from different devices, whether laptop or tablet or phone, and also gives you direct access to the formatting tools that you'll be using for that website, so you don't have to have weird copy-paste issues. Some people have reported doing their writing in Wattpad or Dreamwidth and then copying that over to the actual website where they're posting it, presumably because it's accessible from multiple devices and has built-in HTML tools. If you hate Google Docs and don't mind keeping your writing web-only, then using the drafts function is not a terrible solution. (Of course, some websites will purge drafts after a certain number of days. So watch out!)

Discord/other chat client - multiple device accessible, simple interface, collaboration Okay, I know this sounds insane, but hear me out. Some people do their writing in Discord (I have done some), and it helps reduce the pressure to get everything right and going back to make edits. It's also accessible from any device where Discord can be used, including phones, and many people already have Discord on their phone. I mostly use Discord when I want to do some writing someplace where using a laptop is really not feasible (e.g., the train or in a car), and then when I get home I can just copy-paste what I wrote in Discord into my main document.

Discord also lets you have different channels to organize what you write into different threads. And if you have friends who are interested in your writing, you can write directly with them and get live reactions, which is fun. People also do roleplay-type writing in Discord for what should be fairly obvious reasons. Of course, to publish, you'll have to copy stuff from Discord into an actual document, which can be tedious if you're not keeping up with it as you go, but it's surprisingly usable as a first draft. Downside, of course, is that you need internet for it to work.

A physical notebook/on physical paper - you know what paper is I don't need to tell you what a physical notebook is, but shoutouts to the people who said they did most of their writing in an Alphasmart or on a typewriter.

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Notable Write-Ins Okay, so those are the options I came up with, what are the options y'all came up with? Keep in mind that I have not used any of the below options and that my mentioning them here is not an endorsement, just that other people who have commented on this post use them.

Notes App I did actually consider putting this into the poll and I probably should have--I really underestimated how many people did their writing completely on their phones. So to all of you, sorry for not putting this as an option.

Pages Apparently this is like the Apple equivalent of Microsoft Word. I wouldn't know--I don't use Apple.

Wordpad A rich text editor which is kind of like a light version of Microsoft Word. Comes pre-installed with Windows.

Email Some people do their writing in their email. Sure. It's accessible via any web browser and a lot of them have apps you can use on your phone.

Obsidian I know I briefly mentioned this one in the Markdown section, but I think it's prominent enough that it deserves another mention. It's free, and technically a note-taking software instead of a word processor, but it's a Markdown editor with a lot of features and also has a free mobile app. There are a lot of plugins available if you want more features. Native syncing between apps is available for a subscription fee.

Miro/Trello/Notion Technically not writing apps, but project management/planning apps. Lets you use multiple pages to organize things. Free to use web-based apps.

Evernote Also technically not a writing app, but a free (with paid tiers) note-taking app with syncing capabilities. The free tier lets you sync between two devices.

OneNote Kind of like Evernote but Microsoft. Comes with Windows.

Zoho Writer Probably the most equivalent alternative to Google Docs, with collaborative features, online sync, and a mobile app. I have no idea how well it works.

CryptPad Also a Google Docs alternative, but this time it's open source. Accounts do not use an email. There are collaboration/sharing tools. Everything's encrypted to the extent where if you lose your username or password there's no way to recover or reset it, so make sure that doesn't happen.

yWriter A free word processor with similar binder format as Scrivener and automatic version control though less overall features.

Bibisco A novel-writing software with a lot of tools for story development and planning that also lets you write in scenes and chapters. Has a free version (which is sufficient to do plenty of writing and planning) and a premium version for a one-time purchase.

Campfire Write A writing software with a lot of different modules to help do worldbuilding and story planning. Has a mobile app. Free to try (has a word limit), then subscription service for unlimited access to the relevant features, or you can buy lifetime access.

PageFour A free (no longer updated) word processor also with pages/sections and outlining tools for novel writers.

Writemonkey A free, clean Markdown editor with a whole lot of features including bookmarks, writing statistics, typewriter mode, and document navigation. Extremely lightweight and can be used portable if you want to carry it and your writing files on a flash drive.

4thewords A gamified writing website where you write to fight monsters to encourage you to write more consistently. Free to try, then 4 dollars a month subscription (or less).

750 Words An online writing app that encourages you to write 3 pages (750 words) each day. Has progress tracking and some other features. Costs $5/month subscription after a 30 day trial.

Writer, the Internet Typewriter A web-based no-distraction typewriter app that also lets you work offline and export to multiple file types. Honestly reminds me a lot of Draft, which is what I used for a while before I transitioned to Scrivener and Deepdwn. (Draft recently shut down, unfortunately.)

CalmlyWriter A distraction-free no-frills word processor. Can be used in web app (no sync) or with a downloaded desktop app. Technically a paid app in the same way that WinRAR is a paid app--you can pay for it if you want or just not.

PureWriter A simple no-frills Markdown editor. Has a desktop and Android version.

FocusWriter A plaintext, basic RTF and ODT editor. Designed to be distraction-free, also supports custom themes and daily writing tracking/word count goals. Can be used portable, if you want to put both your writing program and your writing files on a flash drive.

Bear A Markdown editor with a desktop and mobile app. You can purchase a $1.49/month or $14.99/year subscription to use native syncing capabilities between all your devices.

Dabble A novel-writing application that can be used in web or as desktop app or on mobile, with syncing capabilities and many other features. Not a free app, requires a subscription fee or a (pretty expensive) lifetime purchase.

obviously there are many other applications, just peruse through the notes if you want more.

---

What writing app should I use? Well, I can't really answer that for you. There's a lot of them available out there, and I just listed a bunch of options. Your needs as a writer will be different from other people's. For what it's worth, here's my take:

I need to be able to work on my project from multiple computers. Get Dropbox. Or some other syncing utility. But Dropbox is the one that I've used for the last 12+ years and it's never let me down. It's a syncing utility, not just cloud storage, so the files are still physically saved on your hard drive and you can use them all offline. That way, even if Dropbox explodes, you won't lose your files, and if your hard drive explodes, you can download them again from Dropbox. The free plan gives you 2GB storage (a huge amount if you're using it primarily for text files) and 3 devices. You can also download your files on any device via the website. Using a solid writing program that fits your needs (e.g., Scrivener) and a good syncing utility (e.g., Dropbox) will get you a lot farther than some web application that's kind of mediocre at both.

Dropbox also has a mobile app. I haven't really figured out how to use it so I can work on my files from my phone (I don't really use Dropbox on mobile, or do much writing on mobile), but it does have the ability to directly edit text files, so it's possible to do writing that way if you really want to.

You can get 500mb additional storage space by using a referral link (this will also give the referrer 500mb extra storage). You can use mine if you want to: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/AADItjJTrvtT5SiAXfQy6yq104a3SMJtm5A

I need to be able to work on my project from multiple computers including ones that I don't own (e.g., school, library). You'll want a web app. Google Docs is the most popular one, obviously, but you can also try some alternatives listed above like CryptPad or Zoho. Writer is also a web-based app--I have not personally used it but its features seem similar to Draft (now defunct) which I previously used and quite liked. Things like Notion, Miro, and Trello are also web apps that seem pretty popular, even if they're not actually writing software. Microsoft has its own web-based suite, so that could possibly be an option. Dropbox appears to have a web-based writing app you can use, but I honestly don't know anything about it or if it's like. good.

Alternately, you can use a portable writing app like FocusWriter or WriteMonkey on a flash drive along with all your writing files and just plug that in wherever you want to do writing, just remember to back up your files every so often so you don't lose your flash drive and also all your work.

Alternately alternately, you can think outside the box more. Using emails or blog posts/drafts will net you access on any web-enabled device. Discord can also be used on any computer if you don't mind compiling and cleaning it up afterwards.

In any of these cases you should probably back up your work every so often on your local hard drive because you never really know when things can go down.

I want to write on my phone and have it sync up on desktop. The most straightforward option for this will be Google Docs, but I personally find the app really clunky and I don't like writing in Google Docs in general.

A decent number of note-taking apps like Evernote have syncing capability between a desktop and a tablet or mobile device. Some of them have subscription fees.

Many web apps have been designed to be user-friendly even in a mobile browser. Some of the solutions in the above section will also work for this section.

Some sync utilities can be used between mobile and desktop, so you would be able to edit Markdown files (or rich text, though that's less likely) on your computer and on your phone. If this sounds like a solution for you, you'll need to do your own research. I hear you can use Dropbox for this, but I don't know enough to say.

The way I do things, which is hardly the most efficient, is that I'll write directly in Discord, then copy stuff from Discord into the relevant document when I get home. If I don't have internet access, I use a Markdown editor on my phone to write a new document, then upload that .md file to my private Discord so I can copy it into the actual document.

I want to share my stories with my friends/beta readers/other people in general. If you just want to share files, most cloud storage services like Box, Google Drive, whatever Microsoft's is, and yes, Dropbox, have the ability to share files and sometimes to comment on them. You can also directly share files via Discord or email or post your writing on a private blog.

If you want actual collaborative features, Google Docs is again probably the most straightforward way to do it, but CryptPad does also offer collaborative features (Zoho does too, but it looks like actual collaboration requires all participants to have an account). If both you and your collaborator have a Dropbox account you can have shared folders where anyone can edit any of the contents of the folder (I used to use these for animation collaborations).

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Personally, I use Scrivener for my long stories that need notes and planning documents and outlines (and also my audio drama, since it has some helpful scriptwriting features), or Deepdwn for my shorter more straightforward stories. Dropbox syncs my files between my desktop and my laptop so I can write from either one, and I can work on my documents offline (I just have to make sure I close out of the program before I work on it on the other computer to avoid sync conflicts). For sharing, I use Google Drive or just send files through Discord. I don't really do collaborative writing so I don't really have any personal advice about that.

I like to reflect on the results of my polls when they close, so hopefully this summary and discussion has been helpful. I'm sure I missed plenty of stuff, but you can look through the notes if you want more suggestions, or reblog with your own input. My notes are already being destroyed by this post, it's not like it can really get worse.

writer survey question time:

inspired by seeing screencaps where the software is offering (terrible) style advice because I haven't used a software that has a grammar checker for my stories in like a decade

if you use multiple applications, pick the one you use most often.

[sunriseverse]

🌵, 🎓, 📝 and 📱 for the ask meme!

🌵- What did you start with first for your WIP? Worldbuilding, character, or plot?

i’ll go with sunrise for this, and it was mostly aesthetics to start with! i wanted to do a pacrim au, but somehow that crossed over with my budding interest in the ming dynasty (which actually predates watching chssn or reading tre series! i’m just a history freak), and before i knew it, i was writing reams of worldbuilding and fic (mostly worldbuilding. i have so much worldbuilding. i do so much research and each research tangent leads to MORE worldbuilding and MORE questions which leads to MORE research which—you get the idea). now it’s been almost a year and a halos and i’m STILL adding more things

🎓- Did you have formal training in creative writing? How do you feel about that?

sort of? i had to take creative writing classes (composition and analysis) for my associate’s, but by then i’d already been writing fanfic for 10+ years and had already figured out everything they were teaching us on my own through sheer fucking persistence and trial and error, so i didn’t get much out of it. i would say that i think creative writing classes are something i think everyone should have to take at some point, even if they don’t pursue it beyond the basics, because i think it’s really useful to have a solid groundwork if you’re wanting to spend a lot of time doing it as a hobby………but i also think that in many ways, Official Writing Classes can stifle creativity by giving you TOO much framework and omitting the “so you can break them” part of “you need to know the rules so you can break them”. (that said, i think uni level cw courses are MUCH less likely to promote rigidity to the degree that i’m getting the vibes my younger siblings’ grade school classes do, as they’re in public school at the moment while i was homeschooled due to circumstance for the most part.)

📝- What writing software do you use? Does it work for you?

i USED to use gdocs which was passable because there was synching and i could write in bed on my phone. however as of a month or so ago i’ve switched to ellipsus after hearing good things and i’m NEVER going back—it’s entirely free (at the moment, though i would be willing to make a one time payment eventually if it came to it), has all the functionality of gdocs (though no app, but using it in mobile firefox is no problem), uses markdown so you don’t have to fiddle to format things on mobile, allows you to export as various formats including html (for, say, ao3 posting), is very responsive to user feedback and problems, and, per my friend luci, is a german company and therefore puts her mind at ease re: privacy (a big draw for me was their hard anti-ai stance; i have no interest in my writing and projects getting scraped for llm training, and am working to transfer my (unfortunately massive amount of) gdocs files over there). i’m not sponsored but i fucking wish i were that’s the amount i like it (only drawbacks i’ve run into so far are that you cannot currently highlight text, and to add comments you need to create a draft version of the original, but these aren’t much of an issue for me honestly).

📱- Are you planning on publishing? How and where? Are you trying to monetize your writing?

i THEORETICALLY want to publish my original fiction (currently one short story that’s part of a larger verse that i doubt will see the light of day, one novel first draft i need to go back and tinker with based on feedback, and two very very nascent wips that i’m alternating between) but i am not sure it’ll ever happen because my projects are like………scifi poly triad relationship (short story), scifi/historical time travelling crossdressing semi casefic lesbian novel (first draft), scifi chosen one but gone wrong (wip o), and tang wuxia sword lesbians transmigration novel (also poly triad endgame)(wip b), and i don’t think any of those are super marketable except MAYBE wip o if i don’t wind up turning it into something weird as well (highly likely)(unless i guess if i SOMEHOW land a tor imprint for one of those which i think is VERY unlikely but that’s the only tradpub press i can think of with the right audience, and i don’t know enough about indie presses to even BEGIN to think about how to approach them). so, probably no monetisation in the near future, i’ll just keep puttering about in my wip drafts and my writing blog.

[guzsdaily]

[Actually] Automating my life [daily]

Day 18 - Nov 23rd, 12.023

Another late post, another update on the workflow setup.

Today I worked on the daily files template/workflow, and compared to all, it is the simplest. Like I said in the previous update, the task organization is made on the weekly notes, and on the daily notes I just have to list them.

The "highlight" or what makes the daily notes more different is the routine tracker, which I already had in the previous workflow also, but now I tweaked some things: now the routines are all the same in all days (before I had one for work and free days); things like gym, reading and tasks which I don't do every day previously where part of the routine checklist, will be now just recurring tasks; the routine heatmap now is on every daily note, so I always see my progress on my routine, this is something which I didn't see very often because it was on a different note.

Another thing which is different on the daily notes is the Events section, for things like meetings, dates, and everything you would put on your calendar; and the Notes section, to be able to add info about a day if needed, like if something happened that day that stopped me to do my routine.

Yes, the progress bar for some reason doesn't update every time, this is probably because of the combination of Obisdian Columns and Dataview which apparently screws up the rendering and or processing of the scripts. But it works in the end, and the progress bar is more of a decoration than something totally useful.

I also updated a little the weekly note, so now it has the progress bar and also lists all the events and notes of the week. Something which is really an improvement in these new templates is the more use of horizontal space, yes, it isn't something that plain markdown can make, and I'm using Obisdian Columns to render them, but it lets me see a lot more information on the screen on one go without scrolling than before, and I have a wide monitor, so why not take advantage of it y'know?

And the template's code is this, it is a lot bigger because of the amount of info it needs to retrieve from the other periodic notes. And yes, the routine is called routines.work, even if I don't want to have more than one routine, it's better to have already the functionality of multiple, so I don't have to glue things together in the future (and you should expect this when I am a software developer and have anxiety, the most something is adaptable, the better).

If you ever used Obsidian, with Periodic Notes and Templater, you probably stumbled upon creating a note in a day which isn't today, and when this happens, Periodic Note gets the date right, but Templater's JavaScript not. This is kinda obvious why, the template script is run when the file created and retrieves the date of the creation and not from the template's itself, so this "trick" just lets you use time manipulation in your template based on the actual template's date.

And that's it! I probably will take advantage that the week is ending to refactor the Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly notes' codes and logic, so it's easier to change in the future like the Weekly and Daily are, and probably recreate all my projects notes so the template and data is correct for the periodic notes. Hopefully next week I can actually start working and making use of the workflow.

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Today's artists & creative things

Song: Aleph - by. Gesaffelstein This is probably the most different song I recommended based on style. I found it out of nowhere, just listening songs on random/radio of another song, and the beat of this and "mysterious vibe" got me by surprise. My mind on the first moment already started to imagine a video, something like a trailer for some obscure facility/series, following the beat and just giving a sense of uneasiness. So because of the inspiration it gave me, I recommend it, maybe you also imagine some sort of video or something to create to go along with the music.

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Copyright (c) 2023-present Gustavo "Guz" L. de Mello <contact.guz013@gmail.com>

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License

[hannibal-against-guro]

Hi I forgot I even had this blog. Past me was hilarious. Present me is even more hilarious. To state the obvious, this blog is 100% satire except for specific posts tagged or stated to be otherwise, and I'm actually 29. I'm going to try to keep things All Ages, but I have a tendency towards, hmm, sensorily detailed adjectives.*

(*What's a sensorily detailed adjective? Things like ||"resembles the previously mentioned nasally inserted erotic eel, eaten in the manner of Vietnamese live-octopus sushi"|| regarding the aftermath of a nosebleed, which is near-verbatim from Discord at a slightly less ungodly hour of earlier tonight. OK seriously I tried real hard with these spoiler tags and then the markdown | tags don't work and switching editors keeps breaking my formatting i am NOT creating a visual display mini-theme class inside my post it's 4 am I am DEAD thank god it's saturday.)

I will be posting in "discourse" tags, but I won't be participating in combative discourse, unless it's really, really funny. That shit's not healthy. Just stop doing it. It's like eating less cholesterol but for your mental health. Fiction =/= reality, the two have a complex interrelationship that typically goes beyond direct influence, adulthood starts at 16-18 in most developmental and legal contexts and "your frontal lobe matures at 25" is a) not exactly true and b) is referring to a different adult developmental stage entirely, binaries (in the non-mathematical-theory sense) are all lies (for every heaven and hell, there is a purgatory or a limbo, and if you don't understand this reference, you need to read Dante/get da hell out of here!), I didn't write My Immortal, it was a fucking dove and a god damned peace symbol, and you can't physically or mentally shift realities to go to Hogwarts and beat up woobified Draco.

Peace and love, have fun on Planet Earth, none of us is getting out of here alive.

~Fex

[objectscountries]

while we’re dunking on the tumblr UI, i’d like to rant a little about how the new editor’s markdown option is incredibly baffling with the way it handles images

for reference, here’s the image i’m using:

if i try to do , then look at the preview (which is just the rich text editor in a separate tab) and look back to the editor, it erases everything from the editor but keeps the rendered post in the preview. the only way i can get images to work w/ markdown is by adding them using the preview, but then it hits me with this:

here’s what confuses me:

the empty html comment <!-- -- >. i delete it, switch to the preview, switch back to the editor, and it reappears

the div and figure tags serve no visible purpose other than the figure tag giving credit for gifs, the preview works perfectly fine without them. i tried deleting them using pngs, jpgs & gifs, and they all rendered correctly

why is it a .pnj and not a .png? i tried to do both  &  and it ends up like this:

the link to the image is used twice, the height of the image twice, and the width of the image five times (though if the image is big enough, the width numbers will be different which i theorize is to account for appearing on the feed or smth)

though this may be because of the s500x750 in the url which i don’t really get. is it for thumbnails or something????

and i haven’t even brought up how tumblr’s markdown doesn’t even support things like inline code. not even <code></code> will work, let alone whole code blocks. but at least code blocks still work on the legacy markdown editor so there’s that

i was pretty goddamn hyped to see that tumblr supported markdown, as evidenced here (i am markdown’s silliest soldier). it seems like they still have a bit of work to do, though. i sent an email to the maintainer of Markdown Guide requesting for tumblr’s features to be added to the website’s Tools section, so soon we should be able to see what exactly tumblr’s markdown needs to work on

tumblr added markdown to the new editor nearly a year ago (august 5, 2022) so i kinda feel like it being underdeveloped should be expected. with all that said, i’m gonna stick with the legacy markdown editor

If tumblr is getting rid of reblog chains and other tumblr specific stuff then how will people make funny conversational posts that get reposted to Twitter and get hundreds of thousands of likes?

Staff, you do realize that the weird uniqueness of tumblr is what draws outsiders to it in the first place, right? When I came here from Twitter a couple of months ago do you know how long it took me to get adjusted? One day. One day was all it took to figure out tags and reblog chains and whatever and appreciate it more than all of the other sites I use.

Nobody wants tumblr to be Twitter. Not even people who have literally only ever used Twitter.

[keyboardandquill]

On creating a wiki for your worldbuilding

Do you have a lot of lore to keep track of? Whether you're an author, a Game Master, or simply someone who really really likes worldbuilding, this post is for you.

Here's a quick overview of what I'll be talking about:

Platforms people use to create personal wikis

Formats and organization systems you may find useful when creating your own wiki

A brief look at the actual content you might put in your wiki (I'm planning a more in-depth post on that later with more images and demos)

And because this is gonna be a long'un, I'm putting a read-more here! I'll also make downloadable epub and PDF versions of this post available for free on my Ko-Fi at some point in the future.

(I'm also planning to reblog with a list of links later on, but I want this initial post shows up in search)

Also now that you're here, I'm going to say this isn't, like, super comprehensive or anything. I'm just talking about stuff I know a little about or have experience with. Please feel free to reblog with additions and/or corrections as needed!

What is a wiki?

According to Wikipedia, "a wiki is a hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser."

In this case, you'll likely be the sole person making updates to your wiki. The web browser part is optional these days as well, as you'll soon see.

Platforms for creating wikis

Websites for creating worldbuilding wikis

WorldAnvil

This one is actually designed for people who want to create big worldbuilding wikis.

Pros: Worldbuilding prompts! Those are great. It's got a pretty comprehensive set of article types too.

Cons: Kind of expensive to upgrade for features like making your wiki private, and it does NOT work well with adblock turned on, so if you don't want to pay for a membership you'll get inundated with ads. I'm not a huge fan of the interface in general and a lot of it isn't intuitive, but I like what they're doing so I support them anyway.

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Tiddlywiki/Tiddlyhost.com.

In addition to having a cat as its icon and also a silly name, each 'article' you create with this is called a 'tiddler' which makes me think of Chuck Tingle. I haven't used it much myself yet, but I did make an account and it seems pretty neat.

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Miraheze

A community-hosted wiki platform that runs on MediaWiki (which is what Wikipedia runs off of).

Pros: It's not Fandom.com.

Cons: You have to request a wiki and can't just make it yourself, as far as I can tell. I haven't actually looked into this one as much.

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Neocities

An option for if you want to go super oldschool and create a website using only basic html and hyperlinks (without the handy shortcuts of bbcode or Markdown). Monthly cost is $5 usd if you want to have more space and your own domain.

Pros: 100% control over your content.

Cons: Doesn't support PHP databases for wiki software, and can be fairly labour-intensive to update if you break a link or something.

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Fandom.com

Unfortunately, this one is the top result you'll get when you look up how to make your own wiki. I'm only including it here to tell you to stay as far away from it as possible!!

Its staff are known to ban wiki creators from their own wikis and a bunch of other nonsense that I'm not getting into here.

Programs and apps/web apps for creating worldbuilding wikis

Obsidian.md

My personal favourite. I'm planning to make a whole post about how I use it in the near future as part of this article series.

It's a markdown-based application that you can get on just about any platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, etc) which is great. Obsidian is really easy to pick up and use and also has great themes and community plugins!

Best thing is, it's FREE and you only have to pay if you use their publishing service, which... I don't, so.

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Notion

I've heard this one is pretty good too. Idk if it costs anything. It's another "second brain" style app (might be markdown also?) and I think it might do more than Obsidian, but I haven't checked it out much myself.

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Microsoft Word/Google Docs etc.

...Or just about any word processor that lets you create internal hyperlinks. Word may work best due to the collapsible headings so it doesn't get too unwieldy, but *shrug* whatever floats your boat.

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Excel/Google Sheets etc.

Or, again, any spreadsheet creator that lets you create internal hyperlinks.

I'd recommend having some basic spreadsheet knowledge before doing this. It could get complicated. Before I started using Obsidian, I was using Sheets to keep track of my glossary, notes about characters, and plot ideas.

Types of formatting & organization systems

There are as many organization systems as there are people who want to organize their stuff. Everybody needs something a little different! I find the ones that work best for me are systems that have a lot of customization options.

Here are a couple I know of.

Johnny Decimal

This system is absurdly simple in its concept and yet so versatile. From their website (it's just johnnydecimal dot com but I'll link it in a reblog later):

Take everything you need to organise and sort it in to, at most, ten large buckets.

Make sure the buckets are unambiguously different.

Put a label on each bucket.

Their website has a better explanation than I can give in this post, but I'll sum up the appeal of this system as quoted from their site: "There's only one place anything can ever be."

Usefully, part of this method is creating a directory for the rest of the system.

So if you're like me and tend to shove things wherever only to lose track of it later, this is a great system—especially when used in conjunction with the Zettelkasten Method (see below).

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Zettelkasten Method

Originally devised as an extensive paper-based knowledge management system, Zettelkasten is meant to easily add new entries to a knowledge base while giving each one a unique ID for easy 'linking.'

The creator of this method said 'it is not important where you place the note, as long as you can link to it.'

As with the Johnny Decimal system, I can't explain it super succinctly (nor can the website, if I'm being honest), so I'll include a link in a future reblog for a video that gave me an excellent run-down of the basics.

Setting up your own system

An organization system is only useful if you can actually, y'know, use it.

It can be fun to set up a super-detailed organization system with predetermined categories for everything, but is it easy for you to use? How will you navigate it?

Making decisions

There will be a lot of decisions to make as you set up your system. The only set-in-stone rule I follow is... don't set anything in stone. It's okay if you decide something that doesn't work later on.

Figuring out your categories

My advice: go fairly broad. You can always sub-categorize. I'm going to go over my own wikis for Athenaeum and Rocket Boosters in detail in a later post, but here are the starting top-level categories I'd recommend for worldbuilders:

A meta category for notes about your database, templates, and any relevant research you've done.

Characters, including main characters, minor characters, and important figures

Worldbuilding

In the last category, which is the main reason for the existence of my wiki, I might have:

Culture

History

Locations

Organizations

Lore (if relevant)

Technology

Transportation

I'll go over the nuances of these 'main' subcategories in that future post I mentioned. In other words, the stuff that actually goes in those categories!

Determining the importance and relevance of worldbuilding elements

You'll need to figure out whether a topic is complex enough to deserve its own entry, or if it should be a sub-heading under another entry. It's okay if you decide on both! I have short subheadings under some entries that amount to "see [link to main entry on that topic]."

I've also decided to expand subheadings into their own topics, and I've removed topics as their own entry and shoved them under subheadings. I do this a lot, in fact! So it's okay if you don't know.

Templates

Will you be creating several of one type of entry?

Individual character profiles

Towns and cities

Factions

(to name a few)

It might be handy to figure out the basic types of information you'll need about each of those things and create a template for them.

A character template might have spaces for the basics, such as name, role, age, and so on.

Some characters will have a lot more information, and some might have even less than what your template dictates! And that's fine.

A word of warning about using system-creation as procrastination

Creating a wiki can be a daunting task. You might decide it's not for you, and that's okay. But you might also decide to go headlong into the process and work on every minute detail, and that is also okay, but.

But.

Beware of using your wiki as an excuse to procrastinate your actual writing/session preparation. Yes, use it to keep track of all the lore you've injected into your manuscript/campaign/whatever, just make sure it stays in its place as a companion to your main project rather than becoming your main project.

How formal should your entries be?

Honestly this one's entirely up to you. I have a mix. Some entries are written like Wikipedia entries with a thorough explanation of the topic with proper punctuation and formatting, while others are simply bullet-point lists of thoughts and ideas that I can return to at a later date.

What methods do you use to keep track of your lore and worldbuilding? Let me know in a reblog or comment!

And please make sure to check the notes. I'll be reblogging with links, and then reblogging that reblog to make sure they're, y'know, actually visible in the notes.

[mattdemers]

My safari through current social media alternatives

So I figured that after a week of Twitter doomposting by other people, I'd weigh in with my thoughts on the vibes/applications of social media sites that people have migrated to. This isn't meant to be a scientific tier list, just thoughts.

Tumblr

I haven't been here in years. Things are largely the same, but there's been some UI improvements, and I've liked things like the new posting UI (still needs some work. Would prefer Markdown, but I get how zoomers aren't going to put up with that).

Aesthetically, it feels like the transition from being 18 to 22. Like, the company voice is a bit more older/sassier/"leaning into what people told it that its strengths were" and I don't know if that's good or bad. I feel that it's a bit limiting but I think Tumblr needs all the help it can get.

I've also noticed a lot more gamification, encouragement, "things that you are doing correctly that we are going to enforce" from Tumblr itself, which is probably positive.

Probably will be fine in the short term.

Cohost (Link to me)

"Tumblr, with a shit colour scheme."

I'm having trouble with Cohost mostly because I've done the least amount of exploration for new people to follow or hashtag discovery. I really like the post editor (it's Markdown, see above) but I can understand how that's going to hurt it.

It reminds me of a university/college internal website for students, aesthetically. I don't want to say "who is this for?" but there's a larger deficit when it comes to its identity as a site. Tumblr is clear what it wants to be, and who it wants to house, and Cohost was sold to me "for creators" but I have less idea how/why/beyond that.

Clicking into a tag for "league of legends" (which I guess might be a good comparison across platforms) the last post in that tag was 3 days ago.

Yeah, I'm kinda thinking Cohost is gonna be dead, or a zombie like Vero Social in a year.

Mstndn.social (Link to me)

It's hard to talk about Mastodon due to the nature of federation, so I can only zoom out and talk about "the normie experience" that I'm seeing.

I think people are using Masto as a bit of a panacea; they see a familiar Twitter-ish interface, but are lost with the tech-speak of federation and what it might mean. I've seen ambitious people start their own instances and think it's "building a new Twitter" in terms of scale expectations, but it's not. You're essentially building your own pillow fort.

The thing is, I think some people might be... hoping otherwise? Like, the stuff that's interesting me most about Masto is the Lord of the Flies scenarios happening in certain circles, where they're finding out:

How much work actually goes into moderation, and how unsexy it is

What happens when people you don't know/can't vet are joining your instance

What happens when people have a visible person they can point their grievances to

To be honest I'm not optimistic about Mastodon but I think it serves a purpose in educating people about what was convenient about Twitter. They'll go crawling back, and maybe a few people will embrace the "local" group they've now joined.

Some normies literally have never had the experience of joining a small forum and learning to love that community; this isn't that. It's more like Reddit, where one account enables you to post everywhere, but you might find a "home" subreddit.

I've been using Pinafore as a better UI for Masto and I've been enjoying it.

Other thoughts

I joined The Hive about two seconds ago, but I'm moreso just reserving a username in case it blows up. A two-person team and being on the market for multiple years before this kind of makes me wary, mostly because I think they're hungry to accept any kind of winning milestone, and that means they're going to listen to anyone if it makes them think they can keep the momentum.

Tech users largely don't know what they want, and it's going to waste the resources of a dev team in order to try to get everyone satisfied. If they're doing crowdfunding, I'm kinda also pessimistic, because man that's setting up for some "I paid for X!" complaints.

What's funny/cool is I've gotten "mattd" on all these platforms, not "mattdemers." Kinda nice to shift a little bit because I'm very insecure about saying my last name verbally and having people be able to find me. Oh well.

It's the URL of my new Substack too, where I'll be posting more things like this, if you want more. It isn't launched yet, and is under construction, but it's there if you want to move early.