#they are just similar characters in different fonts

[localcoffeeshop]

i canr srop doodling and i have nothing to do but stew in my mind palace so heres a dump of various adventure time drawings across like 5 or 6 different canvases

[billtergiest]

the skeleton lesbians and moon lesbians are on a double date

[front-facing-pokemon]

[soniclion92]

"Dear diary, my teen-angst bullshit has a body count."

[nagitosstolenhand]

i dont know quite how to describe it but. cinematic parallels.

[crookedkingdom]

"x ship is just like kanej except if they actually touched each other and they communicated with each other and kaz actually smiled!" ok so. not kanej then

[whumpy-wyrms]

hey guys

[castielmacleod]

''Same person different font'' thing regarding Mary and Dean's characters irk me so much lmao...

RIGHT omg like. On one hand we have a person who is authentically compassionate, is capable of acting outside of her own self-interest more often than not, doesn’t take out her emotions on the people around her, and owns her mistakes and shortcomings. On the other hand we have a person who is none of those things, and is furthermore a violent control freak who categorically abuses those closest to him. These are fundamental differences in the way these two characters interact with the world and others, which is far more significant in a comparison than any surface-level similarities. Liking cars and jerky does not a “same person different fonts” make.

Like lol I mean… I won’t be wholly disingenuous, I’m not going to pretend Mary and Dean have no commonalities whatsoever, because they do. In my take I’d say they both have something of a lying habit that they view not as necessarily harmful but as protecting others, as well as a tendency toward self-destructive behaviour and definitely some kind of saviour complex(?). But those similarities are still not nearly enough, in my opinion, to overshadow the fact that these two characters are otherwise, as outlined above, pretty much morally and socially disparate people. Which is to say, very much not the “literal same”.

It also just feels so reductive and honestly lazy to just write Mary off as just Dean: the Prequel or whatever and leave it at that. People do much the same with Claire (Dean 2: Simba’s Pride) and even with Max Banes (Dean the 3rd), and honestly it’s kind of. Dismal. That these characters can’t just stand on their own for a significant portion of the fandom and have to be reduced to “Dean mirrors” to warrant any thought, and are then only really thought about through that lens. Like I’m sorry that is NOT the deep character analysis you think it is 😭

[greenhillguy]

just saved a url for jet 😈

[raisethe-velvet]

playing psychedelica of the black butterfly, can’t unhear subaru in karasuba’s voice

[amaraudermind]

GREAT

Listen I have rambled...a few times in the past about how thematically Steph should've been in We Are Robin. Which is still soso true. But like, there's so much of that which is directly informed by the parallels between Duke and Steph and their individual journeys as characters.

They are both looking for something when they first hit the vigilante scene!! For Steph it's that justice that she feels isn't there, for someone to finally stop her dad for real! For Duke it's...also about justice, and finding his parents who he knows are out there if someone would just be looking!

The way they end up actually becoming heroes is almost opposite of each other, as well? Because Steph seeks it out on her own, becomes the Spoiler as direct pushback to her dad's villainy and also as a way to give herself her own power and a way to save herself. Instead of waiting for a hero to show up, she became the hero she needed. Whereas Duke was also not waiting for a hero to show up, but he didn't have plans on becoming one, either. He was trying to survive, solving his own problems instead of patiently waiting for someone else to solve them. From his point of view, he kind of stumbled upon the hero thing on accident. From a narrative point of view, the vigilante business sought him out, and he decided it was worth trying.

They both have trouble trusting the respective heroes they interact with initially(Steph with Batman and Robin; Duke with Nest and the other Robins). For Steph, she doesn't trust them as much as they don't trust her. And even as she begins to trust them, there's resentment for them not trusting her back. For Duke he's the one who is initially mistrustful of the others, and they in turn are more guarded around him. Which isn't to say that everyone else trusts each other completely and openly, but more that Duke stirred things up when he showed up openly questioning everything.

There is, of course, the obvious parallel of early resentment of Batman for not being there when they needed him to be. Which is either directly or indirectly what leads them both to becoming vigilantes.

Both of them are very much outsiders to all of it in the beginning. For Steph it's because she was treated like she didn't belong and always had to strive to prove herself. For Duke it was because he felt out of his league and wasn't sure if this was even where he needed to be.

And this comparison would not be complete without mentioning their relationships with Damian.

I say this because it's an important aspect to me that neither of them met him and had intentions of mentoring him. Or changing him. Or even having a relationship with him. He was an annoying brat that both of them seemed just as happy to ignore and not interact with. But they were in situations where they were interacting with him. For Steph, she realized he was just a kid. A lonely kid who'd missed out on childhood. For Duke, he realized Damian was a kid. A damn smart kid who knew what he was talking about and was too self righteous and self sacrificing for his own good.

And they both decided he was a kid worth caring about.

There was no obligation. No reason that they had to be around him and gradually begin to care about him.

In just a few interactions, they both met Damian, and both decided he was worth getting to know, even though he could get on their nerves like no one else.

I can't remember that happening this way with anyone else which is why it has to make my rambles about Steph and Duke because it just. Snfjchdbdbd. there's so much about who they are as characters wrapped up in their relationships with all the other bats yes but it's most obvious here. To me.

Does anyone want to talk about the parallels between Duke and Steph or--

[anthonysfingerlessgloves]

sooooo i saw beetlejuice beetlejuice in theatres earlier and i actually really liked it, but like... did anyone else notice that tim burton just sort of copied tyler galpin and pasted him in the form of jeremy? similar personality, similar role in the story (love interest who is then revealed to be a murderer; the only difference being that tyler is a sympathetic character and jeremy is not), very similar voice, similar style of dressing. even jeremy’s MANNERISMS were just like tyler’s. hunter and arthur also look a lot alike (nose, lips, hair type, smile, etc etc), especially their side profiles. not only all of that but jeremy and astrid’s kiss was shot the same way as wednesday and tyler’s. they’re literally the same character in a slightly different font 😭

[who-is-page]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Inky Paws #3

Inky Paws is a nonhuman anthology zine for original fiction writings by nonhumans and alterhumans about nonhumanity, alterhumanity, and similar, related themes. This zine is primarily literature focused, but will also be open to more illustrative methods of story-telling such as comics. The zine’s focus is on fictional pieces that are centered around nonhumanity, alterhumanity, therianthropy, and similar (see Submission Guidelines section for more details).

You are welcome to submit:

Short stories

Microfiction

Satire

Poetry

Song lyrics

Experimental fiction (fake newspapers, fake recipes, fake blogs, fake posters, etc.)

Mixed media

Comics

And more! If you're unsure, just ask! Seriously, please just ask. I promise I would 10000% love to hear about your idea even if you're unsure about submitting it, there is no such thing as a bad idea and I cannot stress this enough.

How to participate:

You can submit your pieces in this Google Form!

OR

Email invisibleotherkin(@)gmail(.)com with your submission, and please title the email "Inky Paws Zine #3 Submission". With your submission, please include:

The piece's title or name,

A name or pen name to attribute the piece to,

Any content warnings that you feel are necessary for the piece,

Any social media handle or personal website you’d like to be published alongside your name with the piece (optional), and

Any relevant author notes or author biographical information (optional).

Anonymous pieces are also welcome.

Once submissions have been collected and the deadline has passed, these submissions will be put into the zine and it will be posted online as a free PDF. Submissions are due by April 30th, 2024.

Please see the Submission Guidelines, and Submission FAQ, below cut.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Each individual may contribute up to 3 accepted submissions to be published in Inky Paws; individuals within systems may each submit 3 pieces, that is to say 3 pieces per systemmate/headmate/preferred term.

Comics and similar multi-part pieces count as one submission altogether: if you submit a single story that has been divided into two sub-stories for dramatic emphasis, or if you submit 10 pages of a single-story comic, or if you submit a written piece of fiction and an accompanying image that you drew or otherwise created to go along with it, that would still only count as one piece.

Submissions must fit the thematic criteria of:

Being explicitly about or based on nonhumans, otherkin, therianthropes, fictionkin, alterhumans, or similar groups, or;

Having strong themes or describing experiences strongly reminiscent of or related to nonhumans, otherkin, therianthropes, fictionkin, alterhumans, or similar such as (but not limited to):

Characters experiencing nonhumanity or alterhumanity as being a part of themselves/their identity,

Characters experiencing anything similar to a shift (including physical shifting),

Characters struggling with (emotionally, socially, or otherwise) being both human and nonhuman or alterhuman in some way,

Characters having a past-life as something nonhuman or alterhuman that strongly still impacts their current life, or

Characters desiring to be nonhuman or have nonhuman attributes.

TL;DR - Your submissions have to relate to or be about alterhumans or nonhumans in some way, shape, or form.

Written submissions must not exceed 7500 words, and must also use a reader-friendly font with a text size of or exceeding 16 pt.

For stories that use multiple different fonts, such as pieces meant to imitate newspapers and similar, every effort will be made to preserve the general "feel" of your piece but fonts may not be transferred over 1:1 due to potential conflicts with font copyright, readability, and overarching zine style.

Multi-part image submissions must not exceed 10 pages in length, and must also use a reader-friendly font with a text size of or exceeding 16 pt if they include text. Images larger than 8.5 x 11in. will be scaled down to an appropriate size; please take that into account when creating and submitting your images. It is also recommended that images be vertical or square in their orientation.

Written submissions should be submitted as a .docx file. Images and mixed media pieces should be submitted as either .jpg or .png files.

All submitted pieces should be your own work. Individuals caught plagiarizing or using AI within their submissions will be barred from participating in Inky Paws, including in any potential future volumes.

SUBMISSION FAQ:

Q: Where will this zine be hosted? A: The zine will be hosted for free download on Itch.io, where issues 1 and 2 of the zine are already hosted.

Q: What is the cap on submissions? A: At this time, we are not looking to accept more than roughly 25 submissions at most, in order to keep numbers and expectations manageable.

Q: Can I update my application after submitting? A: Yes, so long as the updates are submitted before the submission deadline!

Q: What is your policy on content moderation and content warnings? A: If you feel your piece needs content warnings, please include them in the submission, as we are hoping to include relevant content warnings and maturity ratings alongside all pieces. We are at this time accepting pieces of all tones and ratings.

With that said, It should be noted that any items submitted with soapboxing intent and anti-nonhuman, anti-alterhuman, anti-fictionkin, or similar leans are largely not welcome, as this is a zine geared towards all aforementioned groups and then some.

Q: Can I submit an in-progress draft or sketch? Can I claim a spot in the zine before sending in my submission? A: We are not currently accepting WIP pieces for submission at this time, though feel free to send us your WIP if you have questions related to its future submission. We also cannot reserve or guarantee a spot in the zine pre-submission, regardless of any existing drafts or WIPs.

Q: Can I submit a piece of fanfiction? A: While we've now accepted pieces of fanfiction in the past, we tend to prefer to leave them out for legal reasons. If you submit a piece of obvious fanfiction, please know that it may be significantly more likely to be rejected from the zine and that, if the piece is accepted, the piece may be removed without warning from the zine later on if DMCA or legal issues arise. We strongly advise that individuals who wish to write something inspired by fiction make it non-obvious to the outside reader where the inspiration is being taken from.

Q: Can I submit something I've created in the past? A: You can submit something you've created in the past, but please try to avoid submitting anything that you've published previously and is currently publicly accessible. For example, if the story you want to submit has already been featured in a different anthology, please don't submit it to Inky Paws! We want to encourage people to create new pieces, or to put the spotlight on pieces that haven't previously had the opportunity to be published.

Q: Do I have to write something based on the provided prompts? A: Nope! The prompts are there by popular request to help give people a jumping off point for creating, but are not required to be incorporated into your piece and will not have any effect on if your submission gets accepted or not.

Q: What is the projected timeline for this project? A: Submissions will close by April 30th of 2024. The publish date of the zine depends on submission amount and size of submissions; in an ideal world, we hope to have the zine published by December, before year's end.

Q: Can I rescind my submission? A: As long as you request to rescind your submission before the submission deadline, yes. After the deadline passes and the formatting and work towards publishing begins, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to remove your work from the zine due to time constraints and potential formatting issues. Please take this into account before submitting.

Q: Will there be any physical copies of this zine? A: Due to cost restraints and a lack of printing experience on the part of the zine organizers, we have no physical copies of this zine planned for print. You are, however, welcome to download and print copies of the zine for personal use.

Q: Who are the organizers of this zine? Where can I reach out to ask further questions? A: Who-is-Page and Noel Sol of the Sol System are organizing this zine. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, or concerns to invisibleotherkin(@)gmail(.)com, or you can always message us on Tumblr at Who-is-Page.

[writers-potion]

so ive seen quite a few different character profile templates but i was wondering if you knew of anything similar to those to help us organize the key relationships in our writing?

Organizing Character Relationships

Create a Character Relationship Chart

There are two main methods I use. For a story with a relatively smaller cast, I draw a kind of mindmap or family tree type diagram with my main character in the middle. All the other characters will be a web of relationships surrounding the main character:

made with Excalidraw

Vary the size of the character profile according to importance

Color-code the relationship type (family, friend, acquaintance)

Use different types of lines to denote different kind of relationships

Make use of icons (like a star) to mark people who belong to the same organization/school, etc.

You can use a group of people as one entity

Make it intuitive!

For stories where the cast list is long, or where all the side characters basically know each other (such as in a classroom setting where pretty much everyone knows everyone), I use a table format:

The table is two-way. Below the gray area is what the column character thinks about the row character, and above the table denotes what the column character thinks about the corresponding row character.

Color code important relationships

Use different types of font for love, hate, mutual rivalry, etc.

You can choose to insert intuitive icons instead of text!

Mapping out Character Development

The last step is to bring in the element of time between the characters, because their relationship is going to change/evolve over time.

You can just make a different bullet point for different stages of their relationship.

You can make two of the character relationship chart: one for the beginning and one for the end.

Or, you can denote to using relationship tropes, i.e. friends-to-enemies, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, etc.

Hope this helps :)

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy October Patreon update is live!

This one comes with an all new updated character sheet too!

You can get this update right now by subscribing to our patreon, but itchio beta fans may have to wait a few more weeks or a month. The itchio beta won’t be updating until I finish the complete monster overhaul which could take a while.

Here's the changelog

Copy-editing Progress: Thoroughly copy-edited up to p. 247.

CHAPTER 1

Additions to the What is Eureka For section

Changed comforting factors and exacerbating factors for Composure rolls to be +/-2 instead of +/-1 so they make a real difference.

New snoop

Changed the font of the section headings in the Ticking Clock section. Let us know what you think of these headings compared to the other headings, because we are considering changing all the headings to be like this.  

Better clarified some stuff about how Ticks work when an adventure starts at some random time of day.

CHAPTER 2

Gave a proper name to the Wealth modifier attached to certain homes and vehicles, it is now called the Property Modifier(PM).

Lowered the price of firearm ammunition by 1WP

Lowered the price of desktop computers by 1WP

Lowered the price of cameras by 1WP

Combined various hand tools into one entry on the item lists and moved them to Misc.

Made hotels something that is prepaid in WP similar to food budget. 

Made Large Apartment less expensive and Tiny Apartment more expensive

Moved Baseball Bat and Axe out of Weapons and into Misc. 

Changed how Food Budget works.

Removed Net Skill Limit mechanic entirely

Edit to the duration of the bonuses for Femme Fatale

Changed Ninja Trait to a +2 bonus instead of +1

CHAPTER 3

Changed the name of Chapter 3 to “Dangerous Situations.” We are planning to put all the combat and other dangerous stuff into one chapter called “Dangerous Situations” and merge combat, chases, etc. into one thing rather than splitting it up and having it in a bunch of different chapters.

Made it so that the Speed mechanic works with Theater of the Mind as well, and removed that other awkward mechanic with rolling Athletics for how many turns it takes for a character to cross a large distance. 

Complete restructure of the way the mechanics for movement and action are explained, as well as defining things as both Movements and Actions. 

Created a Chapter 2.5. In the future when we are ready to shift the chapter numbers, Chapter 2.5 will become the new Chapter 3 and the current Chapter 3 will become Chapter 4. Chapter 2.5 currently houses the statistics of weapons and other combat items. The plan is that a first-time reader will read the weapon statistics in Chapter 2.5 before they read the combat rules in Chapter 3, which will inform the way they understand Chapter 3. 

Changed damage value and special attributes of pepper spray. 

Made brass knuckles do 1 penetrative damage. 

Made stun guns do 2 superficial damage.

Made it so that bulletproof vests do protect against 1-damage weapons. 

Moved and rearranged like everything from chapters 3-6. 

Close range bonus for guns is now +2 instead of +1

Simplified Stopping Power rules (the actual way it works has not changed, we just rewrote it so that it gives the same mechanics in like a tenth of the word count)

Separated open-faced helmets and full-face helmets, and made it so that wearing a helmet along with body armor gives a -1 penalty to incoming attack rolls. 

“Single Load” is now called “Internal Magazines”

Shotguns at extremely close range now have similar stopping power to a rifle, but at 5-10 yards they still have their double stopping power. 

Changed how Rate of Fire works for guns. Just making it a number instead of distinct actions. 

Made it so that Quick Cycling affects basically all guns except automatics, meaning characters with high Firearms skill can now fire semi-automatic pistols at 3 bullets per Action.

Streamlined Stabilization. It is no-longer a roll and instead a penalty that worsens the more bullets are being fired at once. 

Made Bipods give +2 Contextual bonus instead of +1 to single stationary targets.

Changed Reactions and made them more broadly applicable and usable as a rule.

CHAPTER 7

Added “Psychological Warfare” mechanic. 

CHAPTER 8

Clarified that gorgon blood does not heal gorgons.

Changed the way that monsters interact with Composure and their Tiers of Fear during the act of preying on other people. Instead of just ignoring it or having a bonus (i somehow left both of those conflicting rules in and no one told me), a relevant Composure roll is still made when a monster eats someone, but they do not lose Composure points from it even in the event of Partial Success or Failure. This keeps the narrative benefit of a Composure roll to show the monster’s emotional state, but without making hunting numerically pointless.

Finished the complete fairytale witch overhaul. 

Made the Close Combat bonus for superhuman strength be just +1 for the vast majority of instances. The only exception is wolfman forms. They get a higher Close Combat bonus because their transformations actually make them bigger and taller and this helps a lot in Close Combat.

Reduced Athletics bonus of Incredible Strength trait to +2. 

Merged the Alt. Witch with Mage, and made Mage a Misc. supernatural category instead of its own separate thing. This is going to be a really messy transition for chapter 8 so please bear with us. I am making a brief run though the chapter to clean up the biggest discrepancies this change creates, but I probably won’t get them all until the editor and I have time to actually go through and copy-edit it. 

“Mage” is now its own trait, and what were previously called “mage traits” are now called “mage powers”. Mages now have between 1 and 6 mage powers as part of their mage trait, with worse composure rolls the more powers they have. 

When they engage in their True Nature, monsters now have a chance to recoup some or all of the Composure they lost as a result of using their powers to hunt prey. 

[kiragecko]

Angkorian Khmer is one of the languages I study. It's beautiful - a Cambodian interpretation of a South Indian language and script. There are thousands of inscriptions that still exist, and a lot of research done. It also is currently impossible to write on a computer.

You can write in Modern Khmer. You can write in several older scripts. (~sorta~ The characters exist, but there aren't really fonts or keyboards.) But, writing in any form of Angkorian Khmer is impossible.

I can make keyboard layouts pretty fast, these days. Fonts are a lot harder, but I've had a bit of success. The problem is that there is no perfect block of unicode to attach these things to, and a WHOLE BUNCH of equally imperfect ones. All in different ways.

Do I want to be able to write 'ṛ'* after a consonant, and numbers over 9? Can't just make an alternate font for modern Khmer.

Do I want to be able to make proper consonant clusters? Can't use Devanagari, which has the widest variety of special Sanskrit characters. Or Brahmi, the ancestor to most of these scripts, which actually has support for the numbers I need.

Do I want to be able to write 'au' after a consonant, and numbers over 9? Can't use Kawi (Old Javanese), a closely related script from the same period, that works in very similar ways.

-

Which unsatisfactory option should I choose? Or should I wait another decade, hoping academia will finally do it for me?

Annoying!

-

* or 'ḷ', 'ṝ' and 'ḹ', but the only reason I'd need to write ANY of those is if I was making a hypothetical period grammar, and including Indian characters that don't actually get used, and in some cases even the INDIAN grammarians were just adding to make pretty grids. Which I WANT to do, but understand is not actually a necessity.