#you probably have access to a button maker and just don't know it

[veddabredda]

help I can't stop making Intrepid Heroes button badges designs

[wastelesscrafts]

Just wanted to say thank you for working so hard on this blog and making it as accessible as possible. I've felt really guilty about about the talk of clothing consumption, especially since I'm not confident in my sewing skills to make my own clothes for the most part, so seeing solutions to promote longevity and reuse for things you already at all different skill levels really inspired me! Thank you for not being judgmental and instead super helpful with this blog

Fashion, guilt, anger, and love

Thank you for your kind message! It's important to me that this blog is accessible regardless of skill level, so I'm glad to hear you feel that way.

I was originally planning on keeping this reply short, but I then realised there were a few more things I wanted to say about the topics you touched on, so I apologise for the wall of text.

Guilt:

You mentioned feeling guilty.

You can't choose what emotions you feel or what thoughts pop into your mind when those emotions crop up. That's a fact. What you can do is choose how to act on them.

A lot of us feel overwhelmed when hearing about the effects of the clothing industry on both our planet and the workers who make our clothes. Guilt is a common feeling to go along with this. After all, we wear those clothes! Doesn't that make us the cause of all this suffering? We have to take action!

Sounds familiar, right?

The thing is: guilt can be a tricky starting point for action. It's easy to get burned out if your motivation is feeling guilty over the system you live in. I would suggest focusing on two other emotions that this overwhelm often evokes, instead: anger and love.

Anger:

It's not your fault you're stuck in a broken system. You couldn't have done better in the past if you didn't know what was going on. You didn't personally invent this system, either. You're probably stuck in a situation right now where you know the impact of the goods you consume, but you can't just quit (and there's plenty of valid reasons why that might be so).

Doesn't that piss you off?

We often portray anger as a negative emotion: it can have dire consequences when it's aimed at the wrong people. But as any fellow Discworld fan will know, anger can also be a power for good.

Don't get angry at yourself for the stuff you bought in the past. Don't chastise that one friend who threw away a shirt because they didn't know how to sew on a button. Get angry at the industry!

Does fast fashion deserve to decide what clothes you get to wear, or what sizes are socially acceptable for your body to be? Is it okay for them to normalise selling shoddy clothes that were made in unethical circumstances and only last a few washes? I don't think so.

Let that anger motivate you to regain agency over your wardrobe. The industry doesn't get to decide what you wear, you do! Ignore the trends they try to push. Learn how to make, mend, and customise your own clothes. Buy second-hand, trade clothes with friends, start give-away groups and repair cafés,...

They also don't get to set norms like "single-use fashion is fine" or "abusing textile workers is a normal way to make clothes". Tweet at unethical companies, mail them, write articles about them, spread the word about their practices, support initiatives like the Pay Up movement, contact local policy makers,...

Use your anger in constructive ways to work against the injustices that made you feel angry in the first place. Punch up, never down.

Love:

You know what emotion lies at the source of all that anger and guilt? Not to sound like a stereotype, but it's love. You love your fellow humans, your planet, and the clothes you wear.

This system we live in is not normal. Humans are social creatures, even if we don't always feel like it. Our brains thrive on kindness, on making others happy, and on taking care of each other. We can't stand the knowledge that someone else is suffering: the drive to help others is literally a survival mechanism for our species.

The type of society many of us live in is pushing us in the opposite direction, so we have to push back and be kind to others and to ourselves. Being aware of this is an important part of fighting climate change, too.

I highly recommend the book "Humankind" by Rutger Bregman if you'd like to dive deeper into this topic (or his lectures on YouTube).

All in moderation:

Did this reply make you want to take action? Good!

Does this mean I want you to give it your all? No! Remember what I said about kindness? That goes for you, too.

Guilt can sometimes push us beyond our limits which will burn us out eventually. Be kind to yourself, stick to your boundaries, and take baby steps. Figure out what you can and can't do, be realistic, and make habits stick before you start a new one.

Would it be cool to become zero waste overnight? Sure, but it's not very realistic. But you know what else is a great first step? Helping that one hypothetical friend to fix the button that fell of their shirt so they don't have to go out and buy a new one.

To quote one of my favourite fashion podcasts: strive for progress, not perfection.

[fishoutofcamelot]

how did you manage to use the typewriter font in your Merlin As Visual Novels gifsets?? i've tried and failed so many times, it's driving me crazy, tumblr WILL NOT cooperate with me 😭 pls help

Ah lol sorry, I didn't actually make those gifsets. In fact I don't even make gifsets at all! (although I've been considering doing so)

And I do know what post/s you're talking about, but unfortunately I wasn't able to find them. If anyone else can find the gifsets being referred to here, then feel free to rb with some links so the actual OP can get proper credit!

That being said, I do know a thing or two about computers and this sort of thing in general so I can do my best to share what I know!

If this is a matter of changing the text of your Tumblr post to be more typewriter-y, then that's a pretty easy fix. If you're on PC then you gotta highlight the text, click on the text editor drop-down tab, and select "Chat". If you're on a mobile device, then this text editor tab should already be pre-loaded onto the posting interface and all you have to do is click around a few times until the text changes accordingly. That...isn't the most descriptive way of putting it. Idk if you've noticed but I'm not very good with words.

In regards to fonts in general (not just Tumblr-specific), there are a few typewriter-esque fonts that exist. My usual go-to is Courier, because not only does it have the typewriter vibe but if I'm not mistaken I believe it's also monospaced (which is useful for reasons I won't rant about here). There's also Source Code Pro, but that's only on Google Docs.

And if you don't have access to either of these fonts on your PC, then what you're gonna wanna do is go to a font library online and download one from there. I personally trust Google Fonts best, and as far as I know all the ones there are free.

Now if you're familiar with downloading fonts or are generally pretty tech-savvy, you can skip this next bit. When you download a font, it's likely going to come in the form of a .zip folder. Inside this folder is a series of files, most of which are labeled with a file extension reading '.ttf', which stands for 'true type font'. Once you've opened the .ttf file, you'll be presented with an install button. By clicking that, you're installing that font type. And that's how you can get a typewriter font - or any new/custom font - onto your computer.

In regards to the getting your text to move and animate as though it's being typed out in real time (often called a typewriter animation)...well, I usually just use pre-set text animations. A lot of video editors have text animations available, and the easiest way to go about it is probably to just use one of those. I'm afraid I can't be any help beyond that, since I'm not really much of an animator.

But of course, everything I just talked about might be completely different in the context of gifs. And my gif-making experience begins and ends with a few hours spent goofing off on Photoshop (yes, you can make gifs with Photoshop).

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful, and hopefully we can get you in touch with the proper gif-maker who actually made the content you're referring to!

Thanks for the ask <3

[dungeonmalcontent]

Fight Club 5th Edition

Fight Club 5 is probably the most useful tool a DM could ask for. Tall claim. Let me shed some light.

When I first started DMing I was utterly lost.

Heck, when I first start playing D&D I was utterly lost. I couldn't afford the books, I had one set of dice (that I had purchased for MTG purposes), and a few friends with wildly different ideas about what they were okay with in a game. (A few didn't actually know that D&D was an actual game and not just a genre if games you played in a certain way.)

Since my beginnings in tabletop gaming I have gone through a few phases of resource material. I found PDF's of the official content, I went through a DanD wiki phase, orcpub, dnd beyond (which is still pretty useful and I lke), I found this site (which I still use occasionally) because it had such wonderful lists of things, and there were a few app here or there that kind of worked (just not how I wanted), and then I figured out how to use Fight Club 5.

I found first on my own and had no idea how to use it, uninstalled it, and forgot all about it. Then while I was watching Critical Role season 1 (at the demand of a player) I heard Matt Mercer mention it, and if it works for Mercer it's worth looking at. Or at least, that was my reasoning at the time. Matt's a dedicated DM and I liked how he did things, but what actually caught my attention was something he mentioned while talking about the app. I don't know exactly how he phrased it, but it was something like "it's a great app, or well, once you add all of your stuff to it, which can be really annoying." So I tried it, read some tutorials, and tried to put some stuff on it.

Putting stuff on it changed everything.

It might have been that I just knew more about what I was doing, or that my needs had changed, but being able to add extra compendium information was a huge boon. I could finally see the stats for things I'd wanted an exact readout on, I had access to a legitimate DM screen (if you didn't know, there's really valuable resources on those), and most importantly I could add customized information and fix things as I needed.

I'm no barking dog, however, I won't just hype the app that I use almost daily as a reference to build and plan my sessions. I'm gonna do a quick tutorial on how to try it for yourself. (Also I plan on sharing some fun files for the app, so it helps if I can just link to here).

Step one: Download the app.

Basic. Go to your app store and download the thing. The developer is Lion's Den, the icon is a red icosohydron, and it takes roughly 63 MB of space (last I checked, but that might just be mine).

Step two: Futz with it.

I stand behind the value of futzing with stuff. I have fixed so many things on accident just by taking them apart and putting them back together again. But I'm just going to focus all that futzing energy. There are three big points you should skim apart from each other.

1. The character sheet maker.

If you've tried out DnD Beyond's character maker you can probably figure this out. This feature of the app pulls put options from your compendium and let's you add them via checkbox and fill in the blank fields. Not that complicated, but it can be confusing.

Also, without paying for the app, you van only have one character built at a time for this feature. Sad, but fair. However, you can export these character files and loaf them back on later if you need to. That feature is also great for showing your DM your stats if they have the app too.

2. The DM screen.

A pretty basic list of the rules. You can add information here, but it isn't that useful. It's a solid page so it can get a little tedious to scroll through.

3. The compendium

This is where the magic happens.

All the resources you need to see, the building blocks of everything else on the app. It's all here and you can bookmark anything you want you find easily (which is amazing when you load up your app).

Step three: Load it up, customize it.

There's a bunch of options for add-on files. Or, well, there are a lot of files you could add. There's really only one vendor at the moment. This guy.

And all you really need to add are the "core" files. Those core files contain every major release up to... well now (for now). That means Xanathar's Guide, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Volo's Guide, and more.

Just download a core.xml file (there are a few of them to choose from, some with more niche content than others), and import that bad boy.

One of the best parts of all this, is that you literally can't screw up your app too much. There is a "reset content" button that puts it back to the way you downloaded it. It can be dangerous if you have a lot of customized content, but you can export those particular files too.