#If anyone else has tips and tricks for getting started | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chocodile · 3 months ago

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Hiya! I was the advice anon from a few days back! First of thank you so so so so much for taking the time to not just answer but give such thorough advice! I really appreciate it so much, shared it with other friends of mine who have similar anxieties as I do. I really do appreciate it so much. Even if the internet isn’t how it used to be with less algorithms and numbers, I hope that I can still find my own enjoyment. I do have a best friend who I reconnected with 4 years ago and he gave me back that spark I was losing being one of the first people genuinely in love with my work much how I love his!

And yes please! I would love to hear your thoughts on meeting other creators and how to “launch” stories , and create that community! I love hearing the insight and introspection of fellow artists ! Everyone has different experiences that can be learned from and I just love reading what artists have to say about their work or methods ! Don’t worry about length, the more the better (of course please do not stress or worry about it, take all the time you need!)

Thank you again for answering my questions earnestly, made my week!

Hey Anon, sorry this took a while to get to! I've been pretty busy. I'm glad you found the first post helpful!

Regarding audience building and finding other creators... as I mentioned, I have a lot of thoughts. Here's a bunch of slightly disjointed notes on I've put together…

AUDIENCE BUILDING TIPS FROM SOMEONE WHO KINDA DID IT:

TIP 1: FIND OTHERS WITH SIMILAR INTERESTS!

Making OCs and original stories can be kind of isolating compared to, say, fandom. Best we can do is find specific points to bond over.

What is your story about? Does it involve heavy research into a specific topic, like speculative biology or real-world history? Look up tags related to this and see if anyone else is doing characters or stories based around this topic.

Does it share a theme with a popular media property? See if you can sneakily trick some of the fans of that media property into looking at your thing, too. ;) For example, a high-fantasy story might do well to court D&D fans. If you're writing a romance story, try to think of other stories and popular fandom ships that share themes with yours. You can follow artists who draw for that fandom, draw fan art for it, or make an AU of your character in that setting. Or all of the above.

This can even apply to very superficial things. Like, is your main character a woman with red hair and glasses? Did you find another artist whose favorite OC is a woman with red hair and glasses? That's a connection opportunity! And chances are, that artist may have friends or fans who ALSO like red haired women with glasses. Superficial appearance might feel like a silly thing to bond over, but catching someone's eye with your design is often the first step toward them engaging with the character more deeply.

Of course, you shouldn't be doing this as a cynical attention-grab… I absolutely wouldn't recommend courting a fandom for something you don't personally enjoy, and I wouldn't recommend following artists purely in hopes that they follow you back. That's a recipe for feeling miserable and resentful when it inevitably doesn't "pay off" immediately. Building relationships and establishing yourself in spaces takes time, and it needs to be something you enjoy doing or you'll just feel frustrated and give up.

TIP 2: BE THE ONE TO REACH OUT FIRST, BE CONSISTENT, BUT HAVE REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS.

So you've found someone you think is cool! Their story has werewolves in it, and so does yours. You think their main character is pretty cool and would like to know more about them. (And, secretly, you want them to ask you about your characters, too!)

So, get the ball rolling! Go ahead and ask them about their guy! It's scary, but that's often what you gotta do. If, after a few messages, they seem amenable, you can eventually start dropping tidbits about YOUR guy and YOUR story. "Your description of how the transformation sequence feels is very vivid and cool! In MY OWN werewolf story, transformation goes more like this…" or "Your guy who hates his werewolf side wouldn't see eye to eye with my werewolf character, who sees it as a blessing because…"

See if they bite on that. If they don't, maybe they're just not interested. But a lot of creators are interested in that kind of connection!

Some caveats here:

While many artists love that sort of attention, some people can be kinda defensive of their creations and become standoffish and prickly when strangers try to chum it up with them about OC stuff. If someone is like that, leave them be and don't try to force it.

Super popular artists tend to have way more messages than they can keep up with. You're very, very unlikely to develop an equally reciprocal friendship with them as a stranger in a short amount of time, and it's absolutely not anything personal. That's not to say you shouldn't bother interacting with them, just don't feel stung if they don't respond or follow you back. (This kind of overwhelm happens at much lower levels than you might think!) In my own experience, friendliness with a popular artist tends to happen when you're a consistent positive presence over a long period of time (often multiple years, but at least a span of 6+ months). And even then you will not be in their "inner circle" with the friends they've known for a decade, and that's fine!

Artists with smaller followings are way more likely to be receptive to following you back and doing the reciprocal friendship thing.

TIP 3: FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT.

If you do manage to make a connection with someone, or get a friend or two on board with your story, commenting and sending asks and stuff publicly is extremely helpful for audience-building. Not only does it increase your visibility, but it gives shy audience members "permission" to comment themselves, and a template for what kind of comments you find agreeable. A lot of people will think "Oh I want to comment… but what if I say something wrong and they get mad? I'll just say nothing instead." If you demonstrate that you respond in a friendly manner, they'll feel more comfortable. People are herd animals like that.

Also, people love the audience engagement aspect of sending "asks" and seeing responses to comments drawn. It doesn't need to be an "ask", though--one of the first things I did for Amaranthine was draw Hyden reacting to people's tags. You could even invent a question no one actually asked and draw a response, just to show people that you are open to that kind of thing.

In fact, way back before Amaranthine, I proposed a plan to collaborate with my friends to astroturf audience engagement to launch a story by sending each other and ourselves fake anon asks with questions. I ended up not having to do that--Amaranthine's popularity caught me completely by surprise--but if I ever have to cold launch a brand new story, I would probably send myself some fake anon asks to get the ball rolling, hah. Feel free to steal this idea and try it yourself!

TIP 4: SHOW CHARACTER, SHOW LORE, OVERSHARE, AND DO IT OFTEN!

There are tons of characters on the internet. What makes them memorable is sometimes their design, but usually it's their personality and story. If people don't know anything about a character except their name, physical appearance, gender, sexuality, and three character traits, they might think "aw, that's a neat character!" but probably won't think much more than that. They may like the cool art but probably won't say a lot about it beyond #cool art.

But if you draw the same character living out their daily life, interacting with friends and lovers and enemies, hanging out in their messy room, a flashback to them as an angry teenager, a short mini-comic of the incident that got them expelled from necromancer school, all coupled with little lore tidbits that offer a deeper look into their life, world, and inner psychology… that's when they start feeling like a PERSON, not just a cool design. Couple this with the asks and stuff from tip 3 and they become "a person I, the viewer, can reach out to and engage with".

It feels vulnerable to put this stuff out there initially, when you're not getting much feedback. But by having this built-up library of art and info people can read through, new viewers will arrive, think "hey, this character seems cool!" and instead of stopping there, they'll binge on your archives. It's very fulfilling to see a new person find your stuff and then see a strong of "likes" on older pieces as they go through your story/OC tag.

…Also, people have short attention spans, and modern social media means a lot of people won't see and certainly won't remember everything you post. Kwillow and I occasionally joke about "whoa, I can't believe I got a question about a topic I already answered! Don't they remember this 1 single post I made about the topic four years ago?" NO, THEY ABSOLUTELY DO NOT. You need to restate things, repost things, etc because people are probably not paying THAT much attention. You can't just put it out there once, especially the really juicy stuff!

You also gotta stick with stuff even if it feels like it's not working. Put your stuff up on a bunch of different platforms and cast a wide net. You might only get 1 comment on Tumblr, but if you post it to Bluesky, DeviantArt, Instagram, etc, and each of those gets 1 comment, then that's 4 comments. Think of posting on other sites like extra slot machine pulls. Even the ones with bad odds are still worth doing when the cost to pull the lever is basically nothing.

TIP 5: THE BITTER PILL:

Bitter pill to swallow: Modern social media favors things that can be distilled down into hashtags/tropes/aesthetics. Furries, punks, cottagecore, monsterfucker, D&D-esque, enemies to lovers, princess-core, werewolves… the harder something is to reblog with #aesthetic, the harder it is to sell in general. It'll always be harder to sell Bob The Regular Human Guy's story than it would be to sell that same Bob as a furry, or Bob as a shy punk with a shipping-fanfic-trope-friendly crush on a guy at a coffee shop. This doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't try, but it is something to be aware of. Like, if your thing isn't doing social media numbers, odds are high it's not bad, just not hashtaggable enough.

This is one of the reasons I say to try to focus on yourself and a small group of like-minded friends first. You can't count on social media mechanisms to help boost you if you're marching to the beat of your own drum. You can try to use tropes and fandom for your benefit, as described in #1, but even so it's often kind of an uphill battle.

However, if you have a ton of energy and love for your project then the awesome glowing power of your passion will help draw people to you. People like that energy! It may never be huge social media numbers, but do remember that every single person who interacts with your stuff is A WHOLE ENTIRE REAL PERSON, and that's pretty damn cool. 10 notes on something is 10 entire people standing in your living room giving you the thumbs up.

Anyway, hope at least a few of these tips are helpful! The social media landscape for artists is, frankly, very bad right now, and if you are struggling and feeling discouraged you are not alone. But there are still ways to find each other even in this landscape!

#not an art post #anon #ask #artist advice

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yan-lorkai · 11 months ago

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.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ A/N: Life got a little busier recently but I'm going to be updating the next days! This request in specific was made on a comment on ao3:

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Warnings: Yandere content, gn!reader, insecurity mention.

Lilia would be surprisingly proud to find out that his darling is a great cook just like him. And quickly he would want to taste your food and exchange recipes with you. Even better, you could cook together and thus spend more time with each other.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Lilia would love the idea of some friendly competition in the kitchen. The winner can demand the loser to spoonfed them or something. He doesn't care if is the winner or not, he just want to hear your laugh and ironic comments while you throw flour at him. The kitchen, a complete mess as you both are in it.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ While the taste of your dishes are a little too robust, Lilia makes it his personal mission to help you improve your culinary skills. He can be extremely strict and insistent in his methods, and some tricks may be dated by the years, but for better or worse, he teaches you everything he knows. Overall, Lilia is having so much fun, he can finally live these cute moments where you two dance in the kitchen at morning or he can hug you from behind as you prepare something.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Jade would be deeply fascinated and would find great amusement in the fact that you were a bad cook, even more so if you weren't aware of the fact. Though it gets sad pretty quick since you want to feed him and make him cute little lunchbox. Jade may be a little shit but he is still infatuated with you, so he does the sensible thing and discourages you from cooking alone pretending to be concerned about your methods. And you also look like a kicked puppy whenever he or someone dear to you doesn't want to eat what you cook.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Can and will offer your plates to his children or anyone he come into contact. Everyone should love your dishes as much as he do.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Under his supervision, Jade thinks there's no way you can make a serious culinary mistake. Still, you do. And while he observes each and every culinary mistake you make, he doesn't say anything, after all the expressions you make are so precious, so unique, he can't stop staring at you. Despite this, Jade has a tip or two for improving your cooking and other new techniques that he learned as soon as he came to the human world. He sure hopes you learn from your mistakes or he'll have to say to you that you're horrible in this.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Being the silly, sneaky eel he is, Jade would suggest to use your dishes as punishments for whoever had broken their part of the deal. It's funny to see their confused expression before the disgust and gagging start, he almost double with laughter everytime. You can be lethal, he has to be careful around you.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Malleus would be delighted to discover that you cook and would like to taste everything you make - that is, until he discovers that your culinary talent is worse than Lilia's. While he thinks your willingness to share food with him is adorable, Malleus doesn't think he could handle eating more than two spoonfuls of your food without dying prematurely - he tried though, for you look really disappointed and sad. So, he decides to give you simple and easy-to-follow recipe books, often reading to you carefully each step to be followed and preventing you from deviating from the recipe or adding anything else to it.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ No matter what the results are, Malleus would hate it if you shared your food and sweets with anyone other than him. He supposes he can make an exception for his family, although they are strictly prohibited from making any comments that discourage you - not that Lilia has a problem with your cooking. Despite having noble intentions, Malleus would see your culinary inability as an opportunity to exert control over you in a way. He would make sure you depended on him for the best ingredients, the best cookbooks, and, if you wanted, the best teachers to teach you. And even more so, he would make sure that no one liked your dishes, whether they were good or bad, Malleus could even go the extra mile and give you a blessing.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Idia knows a thing or two about cooking, I know, shocking. Still, when you tell him you know how to cook, he's curious to try anything you make. Until he tastes it and forces himself to eat it all, noticing your burnt fingers and the expectation in your eyes. You're so happy that he liked it so much and he doesn't know how to tell you that he feels his entire stomach turning and the bile returning to his throat. From that day on, whenever possible, Idia would ask Ortho to prepare simple and nutritious snacks so that he could serve you whenever you came to visit him. That way, he wouldn't be able to eat what you prepared because he was already full and that way, he wouldn't hurt you.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Still, using the same strategy is very obvious and noticeable, so using his intelligence and technological skills, Idia would create personalized tutorials and devices that would make your life easier in the kitchen under the guise of creating a robot. This teaching method would ensure that he was always involved and could intervene when necessary, as well as monitoring your progress through the installed cameras and sensors.

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dreaminofdixon · 4 months ago

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I mentioned that they met in kind of a…hostile way. :) little bit longer here, but it gets the point across!!

————-

The door opened slowly and I saw the gun before I saw anything else.

I put both hands on my weapon and held it tightly.

When I was learning about guns, my instructor once told me ‘Squeeze the gun as tightly as you can, that’s how you control it. I’ve never seen anyone break a gun, but if you’re the first I will gladly replace it.’

I wasn’t. I’d never broken a gun. Except for that one time I tried to clean my 9mm and wasn’t able to get the slide back on. I felt like an idiot, like I’d broken the friggin gun and it took me weeks to figure out how to free the slide and several additional YouTube videos to learn how to actually put it back on the right way.

Spoiler alert: if there’s a grip safety, you can’t squeeze the grip when putting the slide back on.

I pointed the gun at the man who entered the room. He hadn’t yet seen me.

“Get out,” I said in as menacing a voice as I could manage.

His blue eyes shot in my direction and he swung his large revolver to point at me at the same time. He was wearing a Sheriff’s uniform. How ironic. A man in law enforcement who, very likely, could not be trusted.

“We don’t want any trouble,” he told me.

Liar.

“Are you alone?”

“Get. Out.”

He holstered his gun and held his hands up in surrender.

“We aren’t gonna hurt you.”

Is it possible to feel feral? Because I felt feral. Like I was backed into a corner and like I was going to have to pull some crazy shit to fight my way to freedom. I was ready though, so bring it on.

“Are you alone,” he asked again.

“Last chance,” I told him, taking aim, “get out.”

Two other men came in, one armed with a crossbow and the other with…a red backpack.

What the hell?

I tilted my head to the side and looked at the shorter Asian kid. He looked like he was maybe in his early 20s. The dirty baseball cap really did nothing to make him seem any older than that. And though he appeared to be harmless - appearances are often deceiving.

The other guy looked like a redneck and was pointing his crossbow, with a very sharp metal arrowhead, at me.

Shivers went up and down my spine at the thought of being impaled by the weapon. New fear successfully unlocked.

“Put it down, Daryl,” the first man said.

“Not ‘til she does.”

The deep, raspy voice that came from the redneck spoke to something deep inside me.

“Then I guess we have a problem,” I told him. “Because that isn’t gonna happen. So you might as well turn around and get the hell out of here like I told you to.”

“Daryl.”

The redneck, apparently named Daryl, looked back at the other man before lowering his weapon and narrowing his eyes at me. Like I was the problem. Ha!

“We have a group,” the police man started, “with women and children. If you’re alone, we’d be happy to have you.”

“I’m sure you would.” I leaned down to pick up my bag, throwing it over my shoulder whilst keeping the gun and my eyes trained on him. “Look, let’s just forget this happened.” I used the gun to motion them away from the door before returning the aim to his forehead. “I’ll leave and you guys can…do whatever you’re gonna do.”

“Let ‘er go, Rick.” That gravelly drawl…oof.

Get a hold of yourself, girl.

“Wait…I know you,” the Asian kid said.

“What?”

“Yeah, the 40 West 12th building, right?”

What the hell?

I pointed the gun in his direction and he held up his hands immediately.

“I’ve delivered to you before,” he clarified. “Pizza, mostly, but I also do grocery delivery here and there.” He shrugged his shoulders, “Well, did, anyway.” He looked from one man to the other. “She tips really well, hard to forget that.”

I lowered the gun slowly.

“How long did your building last?”

I couldn’t decide what was going on here. Was this some sort of trick? To be fair, I did usually tip on the high end…but, could he have just guessed? Was I obligated to him since he delivered food to me? Was he obligated to me?

“Um…I think…it’s been a couple of weeks now,” I answered hesitantly.

“You’ve been alone,” the kid asked. He saw the look I gave him and realized his mistake. “Sorry, I’m Glenn. This is Rick and that’s Daryl.” He stepped forward just slightly. “Look, we were alone, too, until we found each other. Now we have a group. Rick’s a sheriff and his partner, Shane, is in the group too. Rick’s wife, Lori, and his kid, Carl. Daryl and his brother. We have a couple of other families with us, too. We’ve got a camp not far outside town…”

“Whoa, stop tellin’ her ‘bout our setup,” Daryl cut him off and lifted his crossbow again, only slightly this time. “We dunno if she can be trusted. Could be on ‘er way back t’ people that could…”

I rolled my eyes at him, “do I look like I have a group waiting for me? Really? What kind of idiot would I be to wander off alone if I had a freaking group?”

His eyes locked on mine, the glare enough to make me want to look away. I wouldn’t, though. I had to stand my ground and make sure he knew I wasn’t gonna be someone who he could walk all over.

“Like I said, you’re more than welcome to come back with us. Our setup isn’t anything special,” he explained, “but we’ve got safety in numbers.”

“Ya sure that’s a good idea?”

Daryl was very clearly not someone who trusted people. Couldn’t blame him, honestly. The sheriff looked over at him and nodded.

“Safety in numbers, like I said.” His attention fell back on me. “It’s getting late. We’re gonna finish clearing this building and then…”

“There’s nothing else here.” I lowered my gun but kept my guard up. “I’ve been through everything. Seems like all the dead are up on the top two floors. The rest of the building has been pretty well cleaned out. I found a couple of first aid kits but there’s not really anything else that’s worth the danger.”

“Any food or…”

“Nothing substantial.” I bit the inside of my cheek, an anxious habit I’d had since I was young. And every single dentist I’d ever been to had made it a point to comment on the fact that the insides of my cheeks were chewed up.

Oh, thanks for pointing that out, I had no idea.

“I mean, I found some typical office snack kinda things. Candy bars. Granola bars. Instant coffee.”

“Well, that saves us some time.” Rick nodded.

“So, do you guys like…have…an actual house or something?”

_________

I’m kinda jumping around a little bit? Should I just share the whole story or keep sharing little snips? I’m not sure. I feel like snips are my favorite little pieces. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Anyway….thanks for checking it out and reading!!

#daryl dixon #daryl dixon smut #norman reedus #daryl dixon twd #norman reedus smut #bigbaldhead #wwwbigbaldhead #daryl dixon fanfiction #the walking dead

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machveil · 9 months ago

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Beautiful, cute, dulzura, A quick question, do you have any advice for drawing? I see your drawings and I just fell in love with them, I just started drawing again but it's difficult...

I don't know, sorry, English is not my first language, using translator jiji 🤎🍁

(note: this post is long, grab a snack lol) ah! no problem, don’t worry about the translator haha (pinterest link - this is my masterboard for human references! I’ll talk about it more below)

I think my best advice for anyone wanting to draw is to break down your piece into shapes! (also, depending on your style, using different line weights)

from my experience, while looking at the whole reference is good, it’s easier to break down individual parts! while some parts can look complicated, a lot of things can be broken down into triangles, squares, and circles (or half circles)

I focus on character art, so I’ll be speaking about that - but it can applied to scenery and objects too. a lot of characters clothes are broken up into colored articles already - in the top reference, Ghost has a red bandanna on his arm! that bandanna helps break up his arm: the top near his shoulder is triangular, the bandanna itself is overall rectangular, and the bottom of his sleeve is a square

of course, depending on how you’re posing the character it can change the angle of what we’re seeing - there’s also an accommodation that your art probably won’t be a 1-to-1 copy with your reference. Ghost’s right arm (bandanna) has a white rolled up sleeve - while the model’s sleeve is square, I prefer to draw rolled sleeves more triangular

I think line weight is also important depending on your style! I prefer thicker lines around the entire character, and defining qualities also get thicker lines

I like thinner lines inside the character to help define dimensional shape and form. I use thicker lines on the inside of the body if there’s a shape/area that’s more in the foreground - example: König’s chest and midsection have thick line art to help differentiate from his left arm (behind his body)

I know a common piece of advice is to use real life references, and I agree… but, I never hear people talk about how to use references in a way that actually helps (“just draw from real life”, or “drawing with a reference is good practice”). I experienced that and wasn’t able to take anything away for years!

within the past year or so I seriously took a look at how using references can help me, so I want to try and talk about that - if I had trouble learning from references I’d wager someone else has

here’s my best example of using a reference because I actually remembered to! I labeled the figure to make it a little easier to follow

(1) my first tip is using a reference to figure out how the body ‘flows’. the human body has a lot of soft, rounded lines when you look at a picture - very few things are legitimately straight and sharp. I used the reference specifically to figure out how men’s pecs are shaped (of course, this is just one reference… because this is my headcanon for König’s body type haha)

(1) looking at references can help you understand how muscles move. in the reference with the woman, you notice how her right arm (down) muscles are layered - the shape portrayed by the reference lets you see how an arm’s muscles might be laid out in that position

(2) my second tip from the König reference is to look at negative space! the highlighted red portion between the arm and midsection is roughly the same negative space as the reference. if you’re using a reference and something feels off with the placement of what you’ve drawn I’d recommend looking at the space your reference takes up

(2) the negative space trick helps me line up where proportions should meet up - the distance between her arms lets me gauge how the rest of her body should be proportioned

(2) while it doesn’t match up 1-to-1 with the reference when layered overtop, it doesn’t have to! the negative space between the arms was enough for the sketch to mimic what the reference looks like. art doesn’t have to be a 1-to-1, but negative space can help you figure out ‘why does that arm look funny?’, “that arm looks funny because, compared to the negative space of your reference, it’s too (far away/close) to the body.”

(3) my last tip is the simplest, so I’ll just be referring to the König figure! when using references I look to gauge the distance between different body parts - it helps me get more realistic proportions. the bit I specifically compared to was the man’s stomach placement compared to his waist. I didn’t copy it 1-to-1 because I like the idea König has more of a tummy, but the reference allowed me to figure out an anatomical placement for where König’s stomach would be compared to his waist

I hope my advice wasn’t terrible haha everyone’s art journey is different, but these are tips I would have liked to know a few years ago (specifically the reference material ones lol). I wanted to focus more on the reference material because when people say ‘just use a reference, it’ll help’ it didn’t do it for me

I personally needed a more in depth explanation on why I would use a reference, what should I be looking at - because just drawing a person doesn’t necessarily help, and how should I be learning from it - I accidentally taught myself negative space before I knew what it was

but uhm… yeah, I hope this wasn’t awful! good luck on everyone’s art journeys, just remember that you’re allowed to take your time and try different things

if you guys have any other questions about my art feel free to jump into my inbox; process wise, inspiration, etc - I’ll answer anything I can<3

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funlovinzara · 19 days ago

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“Please..talk to me..”okarun x you

Synopsis: you and Okarun have been friends for a little bit, you weren’t as social but you also weren’t completely isolated. You hand a small handful of friends but you felt so alone despite acting normal around everyone else. Okarun could tell and feel uneasy around you, as if he felt your pain. He wanted to be there

——————

Authors note: hey guys I’m back after 4 months i think? Life has not been life-ing and I’ve been so tired and stressed lately but now that it’s summer and can finally just breathe. Im also basing this fic off of my own issues so anyone else can relate

contains: angst, comfort(?)

——————

“So your running late, and its not even like you.”

your pov:

My phone alarm rang, i didn’t feel like getting up but thats what everyday usually feels like. I sat up and checked the time, rubbing my eyes from the previous slumber. I was typically an okay student, i had decent grades and i was determined to stay on that path, but recently life has been caving in and i just-

No, shut up, not this morning. My head hurts too much, I’m so tired despite sleeping a full night. I put on my clothes and lazily got ready for the day, not fully making myself presentable but still normal to the human eye. I sighed heavily and put on my shoes to head out. i waited under the bus stop and it started to drizzle, the sky was dark with puffy, full grey clouds. On days like these, i was calm in the scenery around.

The bus came to a hault in front of me and a couple of other students at my stop, i stepped on. Looking around the bus, it was its loud, and full. I sat in a seat by the window luckily and used my headphones/earbuds to listen to music as we pulled up to the school. Unfortunately, i was late. I was panicked and i did speed walk to my class, but i was still late which wasn’t a thing I’ve done often. I walked inside to see a couple eyes on me, but then they looked away. One however stayed..

My friend Okarun, I’ve been friends with him for a little while now but we’ve grown close with each-other during that time. He looks at me concerned but i just have a plain, casual look on my face. I sat next to him, slipping on a persona that was sure to not be noticed by a common scholar.

“Hey, sorry i was late. I woke up a little later.” He looks to the side at me and nods his head. “Right..” the whole class period was boring. I tapped my leg, rested my head on my hand, put my head down, and spun a pencil. Nothing could satisfy the craving that was left inside, slowly eating me inside out until i was a mere spec of dust. I didn’t notice how big the hole was until i realize how deeply i was impacted in my daily life.

I felt myself on the brim of slumber, nipping at the back of my head like it was a brick ready to fall. My head drags itself up over and over again before I’m snapped out of my dreams by the voice of my teacher.

“You’ll have to make sure your project is efficient, and detailed, this is worth the majority of your grade. If its sloppy, it will be rejected”

My face dropped in despair, i didnt hear anything that was said nor did i have a clue what the project was about. I held my head in my hands as i rubbed my temples, feeling like i had died a million times. Assignment after assignment, i barely kept up by a thread.

“Hey..” a soft voice called out to me

I look up from my seat to see Okarun giving me a concerned gaze “A..are you okay?” I quickly nodded my head “yeah, why whats up?” His eyes slightly squinted but swiftly went back to his empathetic face. “I can tell you what the project was about..”

My glare softened at him, i needed it so bad “yeah please..i zoned out for a little.”

He explained to me in detail every part about the project, giving me tips and tricks on how i could throughly satisfy the teacher and get full credit. Even though this project wasn’t partner based, he still insisted on helping me even though he really doesnt have to.

“If you want i could help you a little..” he said while adjusting his glasses that were slightly askew. He was like an angel, he offered so much help to me but why? I don’t understand why he does these things, but I’m always more than welcome to accept them. I feel like a queen being treated sometimes…but a part of me feels like i don’t deserve what he’s doing for me. Even if it’s a small gesture like helping me with a project, in my eyes i need all the help i could get.

“Yeah i’ll need it..” i pulled out my school laptop and began to silently work while he whispered off small tips

—-

Lunch came around, i sat with my few friends but i felt so out of place. We all talked and joked like normal but i felt the pit in my chest grow larger as the inevitable black pool of loneliness was drowning me. I was stuck in a place where i was overstimulated no matter where i was or how relaxed i could get, i was frustrated. I was thrown out of my zoned out state as soon as i saw Okarun take a seat next to me.

My friends acknowledged him and waved before going back to there normal conversations. He wanted to speak to me one on one..

“Hey…listen we need to talk” he stares deeply at me, anxiously before speaking up quietly enough for me to hear and not my friends.

“I’ve just noticed you looked really…different lately. I-I’m sorry if that sounds disrespectful! But it’s just i don’t want to assume. I feel like something is up and you can always talk to me…i don’t want you to hide anything from me. If something is wrong i want to be there to-“

“No I’m okay”

“But you-“

“You don’t have to worry about me, i don’t wan’t you to stress about stuff like that”

He gave me a worried look..that look, i know that look. Don’t give me those eyes..

“Please..talk to me..?”

He held my hand softly, looking into my eyes, his eyes glistening with pure empathy and honesty. His mouth curled into a slight frown as his eyebrows furrowed in a saddening way. I could feel the burning in my eyes, i absolutely did not want it to be this way. My body was now completely engulfed in the endless swamp of shame and isolation. He quickly pulled me away, bringing me to an enclosed part of the school, my friends looking out watching were i was going with him in with unease.

——

He pulled me close, a hug to get me out of my thoughts. He looked at me with a blush on his face, adjusting his glasses once more. “I won’t ever know whats going on if you never tell me. I won’t judge you ever.” My eyes trailed towards his, my face began to swell, i could feel it coming. I immediately shut my eyes to prevent a single molecule of a tear from even escaping.

“Please don’t hide from me..”

i lowered my head, my eyes burnt so bad, i couldn’t hold it for much longer. They escaped, a tear dripped onto the floor as i tried to hold my stoic face and my cold composure. I was so alone, so horribly alone, but there was a bright light in-front of me that was blocked by my hidden anxiety, my shame, my isolation, and my depression. I needed it, my shining star. I held onto Okarun for dear life, i cried like a disgusting pig.

I would never forget that day, how he held me, how he comforted me, i would never forget him and how he stood out to me.

He patted my head, the environment around me closed shut as i felt everything cave in. Will the filthy pool of my guilt be cleaned?

——

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covid-safer-hotties · 8 months ago

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Also preserved in our archive

By Amy Norton

The virus can trick your body into attacking itself.

Brittany Underwood was 37 when she was hit with COVID early in 2021. Her case was mild, and, like the mom she is, she took care of everyone else because of course the rest of her family had it too. It wasn’t until a couple weeks later that she started to feel lousy—wiped out, constantly thirsty, and dealing with weird issues like blurry vision in one eye.

When Underwood brought those symptoms to her doctor, he decided to run some blood tests. “My blood sugar was through the roof,” Underwood tells SELF. It was so high, in fact, she ended up in the hospital that same day, where they handed her a diagnosis that would change her life: type 1 diabetes.

This autoimmune disease is most often diagnosed by the age of 14—it used to be known as juvenile diabetes because it’s the type that most often hits kids, teens, and young adults. Because Underwood was approaching 40, her case was unusual. But her doctors raised a possible explanation: She’d just had COVID, and they suspected the infection might have triggered her diabetes.

Nearly four years later, we have a lot more than suspicions. In fact, the pandemic has been blamed for a spike in type 1 diabetes. New cases in kids and teens jumped up 16% in the first 12 months of the pandemic and 28% in the following year. (Before 2020, the typical increase was 2% to 3% per year.) And it’s not just type 1. Other autoimmune diseases—including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriasis, and lupus—went up too. Exactly why that happens isn’t fully clear, Sonia Sharma, PhD, an associate professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, in La Jolla, California, tells SELF. “But,” she adds, “we do have some clues.”

When your immune system turns on you The idea that COVID could set off a chronic autoimmune disease might seem out there. But, Dr. Sharma says, “it’s not a new concept at all.” Autoimmune diseases are caused by a misguided immune system attack on the body’s own healthy tissue. For that to happen, a perfect storm of conditions has to come together. Genes definitely matter, Dr. Sharma says, since autoimmune diseases tend to run in families, and studies have tied certain genes to higher risks of the conditions. (Underwood says she has a family history of autoimmune diseases.) Your sex assigned at birth matters too: Autoimmune diseases are way more common in women than men, Dr. Sharma notes (though anyone can get them).

But those kinds of risk factors aren’t enough on their own. People have to be exposed to one or more “triggers” that tip the immune system into self-attack mode. And microbes are among those potential sparks, Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, tells SELF.

Studies have linked a slew of infections—including super-common ones like the flu, cytomegalovirus, and Epstein-Barr virus—to various autoimmune diseases. Epstein-Barr, which eventually infects nearly everyone and is usually no big deal, may be the prime example: A recent study found that the infection likely plays a role in most cases of multiple sclerosis (an autoimmune disease that destroys the protective covering around nerve fibers).

There are different theories on exactly how it happens, but Dr. Iwasaki offers a (relatively) basic overview. First, she says, it’s a little known fact that everybody has some number of immune system cells that are “autoreactive,” meaning they’re capable of going rogue against you. Thankfully, they usually don’t. But in certain people, under certain circumstances, an infection might “activate” those autoreactive immune cells.

“Once they’re activated,” Dr. Iwasaki explains, “they can divide and travel to different tissues in the body, and may start to attack your own cells.” All of that, she adds, is more likely to happen when an infection generates lots of inflammation in the body. An ordinary cold probably won’t do that, but COVID might.

How big is the risk? Even though it can seem like we’ve been living with COVID forever, it’s still a very new thing. Because of that, Dr. Sharma says, it’s only recently that studies have been able to turn up strong evidence that the infection does trigger autoimmune diseases.

That includes this 2023 study of close to 4 million Americans. It found that people diagnosed with COVID had higher odds of developing autoimmune diseases over the next six months, versus COVID-free people. On average, they were roughly three times more likely to be diagnosed with conditions like RA, lupus, psoriasis, celiac disease, and type 1 diabetes.

Really important to point out here: Although three times more likely might sound huge, the risk of any one person developing an autoimmune disease after COVID is still low, Sara Martin, MD, medical director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Adult Post-Acute COVID Clinic, in Nashville, tells SELF.

Another 2023 study, published in Clinical Rheumatology, helps put things into context. It found that of 565,000 people with COVID and no history of autoimmune disease, 1% were diagnosed with an autoimmune condition over the next 3 to 15 months. That was 43% higher than the rate among people who didn’t have COVID during the same period. Although that sounds like a lot, it was an increase from roughly 11 to 15 cases per 1,000 people per year. So…not a huge amount, but not something to dismiss either. And if you’re one of the unlucky people who does develop an autoimmune condition, that’s a heavy toll.

“All of a sudden I had this huge life-altering thing,” Underwood says of her diabetes diagnosis. People with type 1 have to take insulin injections every day to stay alive. So Underwood was forced to quickly learn the intricacies of carb counting, adjusting insulin doses, timing meals to avoid dangerous blood sugar drops—and managing them when they did happen. Time and experience, as well as connecting with other people with type 1 diabetes, have taught Underwood a lot. “But I’m still learning, three years later,” she says. “It’s just a constant thing. You can’t take a day off.”

Is there a way to protect yourself? At this point, many of us have had COVID more times than we’d prefer. So does your immune system get used to the virus, and maybe make an autoimmune reaction less likely?

Unfortunately, Dr. Iwasaki says, there’s reason to believe the answer is no. That’s based on what researchers have learned about long COVID, a collection of symptoms like extreme fatigue and brain fog that hits many people post-infection. Prior bouts of COVID do not seem to lower the odds of developing long COVID (and the risk might even go up each time you’re infected). Long COVID, Dr. Iwasaki notes, is different from autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes and RA because the cause isn’t clear and may be due in part to direct damage caused by the virus. But she and other researchers have found that autoimmune reactions to COVID infection may also be behind long COVID symptoms, at least in some people. “I think that’s one clue that reinfection would not lower the risk of autoimmune disease,” Dr. Iwasaki says.

Okay, now for the good news: COVID vaccination might be protective. For one, Dr. Martin says, research shows that vaccination can lower the risk of long COVID, and the more vaccine doses you get, the greater the protection.

There’s also this large study published last year by researchers in China, which found that although COVID was associated with an increase in many autoimmune conditions, those risks were lower among people who’d gotten at least two COVID vaccine doses, versus unvaccinated people.

It’s “absolutely” plausible that vaccination helps, Dr. Sharma says. Vaccination, she explains, primes your immune system to stop the COVID virus “at the front door”—your respiratory tract—so that it can’t hitch a ride around the body, churning up inflammation and, potentially, an autoimmune reaction. And while people can develop autoimmune disease after a mild case of COVID (as Underwood did), research suggests that the odds might be substantially greater if you become severely ill.

“We already recommend vaccination for everyone,” Dr. Martin points out. “It reduces the potential for severe COVID, and we know it also reduces the risk of long COVID.” If you’re worried about autoimmune disease (say, because you have a family history of them), Dr. Martin says that’s one more reason to stay up-to-date on your COVID shots.

#mask up #covid #pandemic #public health #wear a mask #covid 19 #wear a respirator #still coviding #sars cov 2 #coronavirus #Long covid #diabetes #covidー19 #covid conscious #covid is airborne #covid pandemic #covid isn't over #covid19 #covid news

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alxxbee · 8 months ago

Note

Hiii Alex I hope you are having a wonderful day!!😊 I have a question to ask you and you don't need to answer if you don't want to of course!!

I was wondering if you would mind sharing how you became an artist, if that makes sense? Or perhaps how you draw, I think that's more like it! I've been struggling a little bit and since you are extremely talented I thought perhaps you could explain your process when drawing a character (did you learn some anatomy techniques or maybe you learned some tricks and tips from tutorial videos.)?

I guess what I am trying to say is how did you learned to draw characters, if that is a possibility for you to share of course. I don't want to pressure you or seem mean by making you reveal your process when it comes to art.

Thank you very much for reading this ask and I hope that you are doing okay.💗🤗

Thank you!!

I am a self taught artist and i only draw whatever i liked since i was a little kid, so i never really watched any drawing tutorials to “better my art” since i was doing it purely for fun. Whenever i find a cartoon i like i would try to replicate the style of it but also add my own uniqueness to it, how i draw HH characters now was not my art style a year ago! But i only just started replicating styles, I think for the longest time i would draw in a cutesy anime way. I use a bunch of referencing too, that helps a lot! I personally don’t use shapes or bases when i sketch, i kinda just go with the flow if you know what i mean? I make a lot of mistakes sketching so inverting the canvas and using the (liquify) tool to tweak it before i start doing line art helps a lot. (im also just a huge perfectionist 😔)

Of course it takes a while to get the hang of finding your own art style, when things got too hard i would go on pinterest and get inspiration from other artists there! when it comes to posing, rendering..+ I have separate pinterest boards for each thing. aaaand before this gets too long i just wanted to say thank you again! Every artist has their own unique way of their drawing process, my advice is to keep drawing, don’t focus on negatively comparing your work to anyone else’s, that can get really draining very fast. Do whatever helps you the most and one day you’ll look back to your old art and see how far youve come (i just personally think that’s the best part of it all) 💖

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kayuripax · 6 months ago

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A Bloodborne Guide for Newbies - How to Hunt and not get discouraged

Heyo! I'm Kayuri. I am a relatively okay Hunter, and played Bloodborne a few times now, and got it Platinum'd. I am by no means an expert, but I noticed people have gotten Bloodborne this christmas, and we have a large new load of Hunters. And this is why I decided to make a guide for the new flesh among us, so they may stay for the long haul.

THIS GUIDE CONTAINS SPOILERS, ESPECIALLY IN THE BOSS SECTION! BE AWARE OF THAT!

Things I will cover:

Things you can do with and without online

General tips and tricks

Caryll Runes (specifically the Oath runes)

Weapons

Builds?

What does scaling mean?

How and where to farm

Tips for Bosses

This will be under a cut, because things can get long here.

Things you can do with and without online:

Bloodborne has an online mode. It costs money to play online. An unreasonable amount, frankly, so don't worry if you don't have it! But not having it removes some options for you, so let's see what having Online allows you to do and what not having online does to you.

The realities of having Online:

You can summon other people to help you in boss battles. This leaves you open to Invaders. Invaders want to kill you. This starts happening once you reach Blood Level 30. If you want to have reliable summoning, I suggest checking out r/huntersbell here!

You can leave and read messages by and for other people. If they rate your note "Fine", you get a health top-up and a notif.

You can see the spectres of people, that show you how others died. Very useful to avoid your own death.

You gain access to online chalice glyphs, like the infamous Cum Chalice. Yes, that name is unfortunate, but it is THE place to get useful echoes.

The Realities of not having Online:

You won't get invaded when you summon an NPC to help you, but you cannot have the help of actual people. If there is no NPC summon, you will need to figure out the boss yourself. See the tips I have further down.

You will not see messages or specters.

You will not be able to use the Cum chalice. That makes grinding for items substantially harder.

Generally, you can play the game entirely on your own! That is possible, and largely what I did! In some instances, playing offline is a boon, even. Namely in the Nightmare Frontier and the first part of the Nightmare of Mensis. In those two areas, if you are playing Online, you are automatically entered into the Invasion pool, and you cannot return to the Hunter's Dream while this is active. You need to find the Bellringer to kill her before you can return. Consider playing in offline in those areas until you are right before the boss.

General Tips and Tricks

First off, this game is huge. There is a lot to do, a lot to do wrong, and how to do things seems overwhelming at first. Let's see if we can't order that a bit, eh?

First things first, don't be afraid to look things up! I personally endorse the Bloodborne Wiki here. It isn't the Fextralife wiki, but it has a lot of data, extremely detailed pictures, and good breakdowns of the weaknesses your foes will have. It also has extremely good guides for chalice dungeons, and where to find things. There is no shame in looking things up, and anyone who tells you otherwise needs to get a grip.

Second! You will die. You will see this a lot.

It's a meme for a reason. Don't worry about it, death is meaningless and teaches you how to do things. It may get frustrating at times, but if you take death personally, you won't have fun. If you die too much in a single region, there may be cause for you to go and grind a bit somewhere else until you are at the spot you want to be. Maybe you need to get more familiar with your weapon. Maybe you need more echoes. Go and grind a bit somewhere, and get familiar with movesets - both yours and your foes'. You will lose echoes. That happens. It will become less and less of an issue over time. Try not to use all your coldblood dew in one go, it's nicer to have a solid stock of echoes to have for when you are maybe a hundred or a thousand echoes off from the next big level up.

Third up: Before you do anything else, level up your vitality. That's your health. You need to be able to tank at least one or two hits, or you'll go down like a wet sack of flour. Attack power can come later, you need to be able to survive for now. Your first order of business once you get access to Miss Doll is to level up your vitality to at least 20 if not 25. Then you may focus on the attack power. Don't be me and level up one of your attack stats to 25 and stay with your health at starting level until you get to the Bloodstarved Beast. I mean, you can. But it will make things more dangerous. Endurance is useful too, that is what you use to hit and to run. I personally consider vitality a bit more needed though, I did two game runs with barely leveling endurance and only really got to it now in ng+2.

Fourth: Get out of the starter clothes, but feel free to have fun with dressing up. Clothes have stats, yes, but the clothes will not save your life. It is better to dress how you want to than to dress for stats. There are very few instances where those will actually save your life. The few points I can think of are when poison is involved, and when you need to avoid Frenzy. Aside from that, just have fun with it! There is no fashion police unless you are invaded by them. Style goes hard, and fashionborne is a thing.

Fifth: If you are coming in from Dark Souls or Elden Ring, I have to tell you that you need to forget that shields are a thing. They will not save you. There are two of them in the game. One protects against magic and is dlc only. The other one is less than useless and even described as such in the item description

You parry with the power of Gun. The timing is roughly equal to Dark Souls 1 parry times, and it is easier to do it than you think! If you parry shoot someone, you have a chance to go in for a visceral, which will deal a good chunk 'a damage to your enemies. Viscerals primarily scale with Skill, so consider leveling that up a bit. ^^ A Visceral is essentially a riposte. After you shoot an enemy by using L2 or hit them with a charged R2 from the back and it is staggered, if you get close and tap R1, you get a Visceral attack. This works from the front or the back on general mobs, but bosses tend to have specific spots to Visceral.

Sixth: Don't go into the DLC as soon as you can. It is brutal. You will die. It is end-game scaled. I have seen recs that say to do it after you killed Micolash. Others even put it after the Wet Nurse. Generally, don't do this until you are at least at Blood Level 80, better yet 90, and have a well upgraded weapon.

Seventh: You will see NPCs die here. You will not like that. Sometimes the best way is to never engage them, but you will learn their fates the first time. it will happen. It will hurt. If you want to save as many as you can, look it up on the wiki. It's going to be okay in the end. But it will not be fun at all times. If people can be spared, try to do that. There are too few friendly faces in Yharnam already.

Caryll Runes (specifically the Oath Runes)

You will get access to an item called the Rune Iron after defeating the boss of Hemwick Charnel Lane. This allows you to equip Caryll runes of varying effects. Most of them enhance a stat or allow you to carry more items. Experiment a bit with them until you find something you like. I won't dictate which runes to use. No, what I want to talk about are the Oath runes.

If you come in from Dark Souls, you are likely aware of Covenants. These runes work similarly. Depending on whether or not you have the DLC, you have between 4-6 covenant runes. Two of these are in complete opposition, one may result in increased pvp.

I will let this picture make the work for me, and elaborate a bit on best uses after that.

As seen, there are six runes:

The Cainhurst Vilebloods, also called Corruption, obtained by talking to Queen Annalise. If equipped, you will enter pvp when summoned by an Executioner, or if you summon one yourself. The rune will heal you a bit as you are near death, and this mechanic doesn't rely on being online.

The Executioners, also called Radiance, obtained by letting Alfred kill Queen Annalise. This rune does the same for pvp as the vileblood rune. This rune increases the percentage blood vials recover your health by by about 2%.

The Hunter of Hunters, the Hunter rune, obtained by finishing Eileen's questline. It speeds up the stamina recovery rate by 6%, and if you summon, there is a low chance that the one you summon or are summoned by is declared blood mad, making you an adversary. You will need to defeat them.

The League, also known as Impurity. Impurity heightens your hp by 2% during cooperation, and makes it easier to find help during summoning.

Beast's Embrace, a rune that transforms the hunter into a more bestial state, obtained by defeating Laurence the First Vicar in the DLC. This rune doesn't affect pvp, but enhances the moveset of the beast claw weapon.

Milkweed, a rune that transforms the hunter into a Lumenwood, obtained by helping the npc Saint Adeline in the DLC. This rune heightens discovery, making it easier to find items, and enhances the moveset of the kos parasite weapon, a dlc exclusive.

WEAPONS

Aaaah, the Trick Weapon. The cornerstone of a Hunter's arsenal, and something you need to pay attention to!

Your weapon can break. If you see the "weapon at risk" notice, it's time to go into the dream. Your weapon does half damage at that point, and you do not want that. You need every chunk of damage you can get.

Weapons can, as the name trick weapon implies, trick. They have two modes, and these modes differ. Most of the time, not just in the moveset, but also in how they deal damage. This is important, but not to the point your preference for one weapon type will ruin the game for you.

Weapons can broadly be divided into three categories, which can be useful for builds: strength, skill, quality. They will scale with one of these majorly, and you will want to level that stat more. Quality builds rely on both strength and skill just about equally. They are the everyman's weapon. It is the more esoteric ones that rely on Arcane and Bloodtinge.

Don't lock into one weapon from the start, dear hunters. Don't give a rat's arse about some other person's tierlist of weapons and their stats. Just about everything is viable if you build it for yourself. I personally use a saw spear the most, and for my first run, used a Chalice Gylph to get early access to a Burial Blade for large-scale crowd control. These days, I have exchanged that one for multiple other weapons, each of which is good for a different purpose. You don't have weight limits. Carry what makes your soul sing, and use whichever weapon makes you happy.

Blood Gems can make or break a weapon, sometimes do both, and at times do so literally. Some blood gems make your weapons break faster. They hit like nothing else at that point though. Blood Gems can be found all over, but primarily so in Chalice Dungeons, and they extend the ways your weapons can be used. Experiment a bit with them, but pay attention to the shapes they have. Some can only be used in certain slots.

Upgrading your weapons is crucial in this. You need Blood stone for that. It takes 16 items per upgrade material tier. 3 for the first, 5 for the second, and 8 for the third upgrade of the tier. 16 Blood Stone shards to get a weapon to +3, Blood Stone Twin Shards to +6, Blood Stone Chunks to +9, and then the final price are coveted Blood Stone Rocks, which allow the final upgrade to +10. Depending on whether or not you have the DLC, there is a limited number of them you can get per game cycle. They can be farmed, but they are rare. Think carefully about which weapon you want to get to +10.

Weapons come in variants. These Lost and Uncanny variants are found in Chalice dungeons, and they have different blood gem layouts. Use that to get some variety, or to acquire a weapon early. ;)

Builds?

I bet you heard the word Builds before. It carries weight, and it tells you what your character is good at. Now, don't worry. You don't need to make those from scratch. The wiki I linked before has a few build guides. Often, builds decide which weapons you can use best. There is no shame in experimenting a bit, in mixing and matching.

Generally, builds are very useful for pvp. It makes you pvp optimized, and the pvp level rests at around 120. You can of course level higher! In fact, the cap is at 544, so 99 in each stat. The return for stat investment you see diminishes at a certain point, the hard and soft caps. That's okay, it is expected.

I personally tend to run skill builds. Strength builds are just as viable however, as are bloodtinge or arcane builds. They are all damn useful, and they are all fascinating to play. Your starting class can help, but in the long haul, it barely does anything.

First and foremost, have fun with it. Do give a look to this site though if you want a few build ideas.

What does scaling mean?

Weapons scale. That means that they depend stronger on one stat than another. The scaling of a weapon improves as you upgrade it. A weapon with a D scaling in strength is going to rely less on it than a weapon with an A scaling. Scaling determines bonus damage your weapon does, and it's shown by a + symbol next to the raw damage number.

Does higher scaling make a better weapon? Technically. And yet, despite that, someone with a fully upgraded Simon's Bowblade can and will die to someone who is naked and running in with a broken, not upgraded saw cleaver that yells cowabunga. It's the player that makes or breaks a weapon.

How and where to farm?

Farming is essential. You need vials, and you need bullets. And you sure as hell need echoes. You gotta get that off the ground before you can get a Chalice to use the unfortunately named Cum chalice, and if you don't have Online, you can't rely on that. Farming can and will get easier once you got a steady supply of Bold Hunter's Marks too, since they allow you to respawn without losing your echoes, so consider investing in some of those! This site has a few guides, but here is a short list of my favorite places to farm some stuff:

Blood Vials:

These drop from Scourge Beasts and Large Huntsmen a lot. Brick Trolls are practically guaranteed to drop between 2-3 of them. Those are not easy foes at first. If you have opened the shortcut to Gilbert's house, you can farm them somewhat easily from the scourge beasts on the bridge by luring them towards the entrance of the house leading to the Bridge. just clear the people inside first. The scourge beasts don't fit through the door, and if you have the axe or cane, you can safely dispatch them one at a time.

Large huntsmen are vulnerable to being parried when they have their arms raised the highest, but if you have a reasonably fast weapon, you can stunlock them. If you manage to sneak up to them from behind, do a charge attack (long r2) and they immediately become vulnerable to a visceral. Use that window to get 'em!

Brick trolls kind of suck to parry at first, but they drop blood vials rather reliably. They are easy once you get used to their timing, but they are intimidating. Don't be afraid to land potshots, and run away if it gets too dicey.

Bullets:

Your thighs. Don't be afraid to stab yourself via Up on the d-pad to get 5 extra bullets, especially if you have a surplus of vials.

Any mob with a musket will drop bullets. If you feel like chancing murder alley, there is one near a carriage pretending he is asleep. kill him, loot him, to the nearest lantern, rinse and repeat.

Bloodstone Shards:

Those drop from the sewers and the large huntsmen there about as often as blood vials. Be careful and you won't waste for getting your weapon to +3 before you know it.

If you haven't done the sewers, Old Yharnam has a good spot. It makes me feel a bit bad because I like Djura and he says beasts are people, but the area he can't see, near the church and over the bridge has about 4-5 scourge beasts and a lot of beast patients that you can kill relatively easily. they drop a lot of echoes and shards, and you can use those. They drop vials too, and sometimes even beast blood pellets.

Echoes

Broadly said? Everyone and everything. That doesn't help you, I know that. So let's see what I can go with that will help y'all in actual places...

Central Yharnam: The house behind Gilbert's. You need to open the shortcut for it, yes, but it's good farming. You got slow yharnamite hunter mobs, and you can easily get them down, and then there is the bridge right at the top where you can lure the scourge beasts to the entrance of the house. you will be inside and can kill them cheaply. Do not go to Murder Alley, aka the long bend at the start. That is hubris talking. Also consider the bridge at the aqueduct. if you go to the middle and then run back and go somewhat down the ladder, the huntsmen get bowled over, quite literally. Bowling for beasts nets you a fair bit of echoes for little effort.

The Cathedral Ward: There are three church servants and some fat crows in the back area of the chapel. If you kill those, you learn the parry timing of the servants (when they raise their staff), and you get echoes. The servants drop bullets and vials. It's good. Then go to the outer courtyard. two more servants. one to parry, one to let walk by and sneak up on with a backstab visceral. Beware the amygdala in the corner, it's grabby.

Old Yharnam: Don't focus on going through this area the first time without damage. Just try to survive, and if you gotta kill beasts, it happens. DO NOT GO UP ON THE TOWER! That way is Djura. Djura can be befriended if you stop hunting the beasts of Old Yharnam after defeating the boss Darkbeast Paarl. I like sitting with Djura, he's cool. Anyways. If you get through Old Yharnam, you will eventually reach a church where a beast bursts through the doors. Go inside and up the stairs, and you unlock a shortcut all the way back to the start. now you got an area for the easy farming of echoes, about 3-4k per run. you go down the church, and then go at the 3 scourge beasts on the bridge as well as the three beast patients coming in. Then you turn around, sneak up on the screaming beast patient in the fog, and backstab-visceral her. Try not to get poisoned by that scourge beast there. rinse and repeat as needed.

The Forbidden Woods: Why do you want to farm here. This thing has poison. It has snakes. eugh. That said, once you get the shortcut to valtr open, he has a thriving snake habitat next to himself. It's a decent farming spot. I try not to be here, I don't like this place.

Hemwick Charnel Lane: Your best bet to farm here are actually the mobs right in front of the boss room. Once you got the Witches down, you can go back up and take care of the 3 grave women, the executioner, and the dogs there. that gets decent echoes!

Yahar'gul: No. (you can get twin stone shards there. the chance for it is abysmal. don't be me. Do not farm there for 18 hours only to give up without the shards you wanted. You can get twin stone shards elsewhere.)

Cainhurst Castle: You should probably not grind in an area with little guardrails and open roofs, but you do you. If you can deal with potentially being stunlocked by enemies screaming at you, the library is a decent spot.

If you have Online, discard all of these after getting the Pthumeru Chalice. Once you have that, and can use Chalice Glyphs, you will want to enter the Glyph code CUMMMFPK. This will generate a chalice dungeon that will, without fail, drop you nearly 90k echoes for doing nothing but standing in the entrance area for like 5 seconds. I advise using those echoes to buy items rather than to level up, but that choice is yours entirely.

BOSS TIPS

Here we are at last. Took me a good while, but here we are! I will try to do this with some pictures to break up the monotony. Gotta announce them in fashion, after all.

Cleric Beast

This bastard. Utter Tool. screams like the damned. Here's the rough sitch and the damage breakdown:

Hates fire. Is a beast, and thus vulnerable to it. Pack molotovs if you can.

Gets extra damage from serration due to being a beast. The saw cleaver and saw spear are your best friend if you are a fresh player, as is the transformed threaded cane.

Get Father Gascoigne's help if you can and haven't fought him yet. He does decent damage against it, for all that he doesn't heal himself. He will play meatshield quite well! He is found at the fountain near his house, where you can see a brick troll bang away at a door.

When the beast screams, it won't attack. you can use that to whale on it. Don't get too comfy though.

It is surprisingly fast, but turns slowly. If you are behind it, you can slash at its ankles.

It can be parried. isn't easy, but it can be done. Sometimes you get insanely lucky and do it with a throwing knife. Don't focus on the visceral. Slow and steady wins the race.

Father Gascoigne

Congratulations, you met the first mandatory boss. Congratudolences if you are like my dear girlfriend and his voice does it for you. You will get your shit kicked in summarily.

He has two and a half phases. Yes, i mean that as i said it. He has a Human phase, and a beast phase. About one-third in, he will transform his axe. that extends his already ridiculous reach, and it will be announced by a voiceline. You'll know it when you hear it. He can still use his blunderbuss despite the transformed axe. The computer is a cheating bastard, I guess. The beast phase kicks in at a point between half and a third of his health being left. He will hold his head, shriek, and transform into a beast. At that point he drops his weapons and will go for claws.

Gascoigne is a mirror boss to the Hunter. He fights like you. And it is meant to be hard. He is in a crowded arena, and that is not easy to navigate. But just as you can get stuck, so can he. Use that to your advantage to get healing in. Don't get greedy attacking him.

If you found his daughter, you will have a music box. Using that will make him stop attacking for a bit and howl in pain. You get four uses of that total. Three in human form. After the third usage, he will transform into the beast prematurely. His beast form only weakens from it once. He will howl in pain, and you can slash in. If you have trouble using the box, go up the stairs and towards the roof, but do it carefully, since you still want to be able to hit him after it works. This will go for beast and person both.

He is far more mobile as a beast, and can destroy the gravestones. If you are careful with that, you can get yourself some room to maneuver. I do not recommend that, frankly.

His human form doesn't have a particular weakness you can exploit early on, unless you want to stagger him. In taht case, use the kirkhammer. I have it on authority that it makes him stagger like a drunken man. After transforming, he is weak to serration and fire like any other beast. Don't waste molotovs, he is liable to dodge that.

If you need breathing room, up the stairs and down to the roof, and back into the graveyard. he tends to follow you, and that can buy you good time because he needs a bit to get down on the roof.

The Bloodstarved Beast (or as I call it, Old Raghead)

This boss won't win beauty awards. what it will win is your annoyance.

This beast is weak to serration and fire, business as usual.

It does however deal poison damage. It's blood is poisonous, and it is fast and likes to make grabby hands.

You should in fact try to bring in Alfred as a meat shield. It will raise the boss health, but he can distract it well enough.

You need to dress in poison resistant clothes. Gascoigne's garb has superb poison resistance and is good for this.

Pack antidotes. As many as you can. For the worst case scenario, the back of the arena has about 3 more. You will need them.

Keep molotovs handy, and the fire paper cooperating with Alfred gives you. You can find two more at the top of the shortcut church in old yharnam. They coat your weapon in fire for about 60 seconds each, and that is hella valuable.

This thing is quick. If it screams and the skin flaps, haul ass backwards because it is about to let out a cloud of poison

the third phase has not-so-fun gimmick: permanent poison aura. get fast, know when to use your antidotes, and have blood vials handy.

the hunter torch you can find near the shortcut door can make a decent substitute weapon here if you ran out of fire-paper. it won't do much, but it does fire, and that is sometimes just enough. If you have the flamesprayer, that is very neat too.

In theory you can parry this dude. I never managed it. props if you do.

You may get frustrated at dying. That happens, and is a part of it. I can't tell you much aside from the fact that you may wish to dodge forward rather than to the side or backward when it goes in for a swipe, because that allows you to go under it and gives you access to the back. You got this.

Old Hunter Henryk

Henryk is technically not a boss. He sure as fuck still feels like one. He is sitting at a horrendously high blood level for the point you find him at. If you don't want Eileen to die, you have only one true shot at this. So here is my list of tips for this crochety old bastard.

Just like Gascoigne, Henryk is a Hunter. That means he will fight like you. Unlike Gascoigne, Henryk comes with a you-sized hitbox as well. On one hand that means he can't reach you as fast. On the other hand, you can't do it either. You win some, you lose some.

Henryk packs a pistol, unlimited throwing knives, and a saw cleaver. Said saw cleaver has been upgraded so it hits harder.

Henryk is very prone to shooting and parrying you, especially if you go in with r1 attacks only.

You can save yourself some runback if you don't mind having a longer run through the Cathedral Ward. Before opening the gates for Eileen to come in, spawn in at the Tomb of Oedon. The initial runback if you die before engaging Henryk is longer, but if you die against Henryk, you'll respawn right in his face. Consider that worth it, especially if you want to keep Eileen alive.

I would advise you to try and learn to sneak up and visceral attack. If you come in from Oedon Chapel, and you walk slowly, you can drop onto the roof where Viola's corpse is, and can sneak to the back of Henryk, as long as you practically hug the gravestones. If you then charge and r2 him, you get a free visceral to start this battle off with. That can make or break it.

Henryk's health bar remains reduced if you die in the fight.

Eileen will jump in after like a minute. Henryk is highly likely to visceral her. Once eileen joins, shoot henryk. use all your ammunition on this. Shoot him. shoot him and make sure he doesn't visceral her. Take potshots with your main weapon if you can, but once eileen is there, focus on harrying him. bleed yourself for bullets if you have to, use throwing knives, and if you got some from the cathedral ward, poison knives work on him too.

If you die against him, that isn't the end of the world, but it will make things difficult. try to keep Eileen alive, shoot henryk. That and the entrance visceral tends to do the trick as far as i have learned. Maybe use fire paper or bolt paper if you have that, but don't activate that right behind him. do it from a bit away. He can hear the application, and doing that ruins the entrance visceral.

Darkbeast Paarl

Paarl here is a fun boss, as far as I think. It is also prerequisite to befriending Djura. Paarl is also a bit of a hard nut to crack, especially if you lock on to it. The camera is a bit of a bastard.

First off, you need Lightning resistance. I'd personally suggest doing Paarl after you help Eileen take care of Henryk. He is right above Paarl in this, because Henryk does practically work as a boss in his own right. Why do I suggest Paarl after Henryk? Because you can buy his set from the Insight Messengers after you kill him, and it has the highest Lightning resistance in the game. I know I said fashion likely won't save you. In this case, the lightning resistance will however afford you at least one more hit to tank, so wear that. You will be blindingly yellow, but it's better.

Paarl, as a beast, is weak to serration and fire.

You can have summoned NPC help for Paarl. Depending on what you have done so far, you can get either Defector Antal or Confederate Yamamura the Wanderer. Yamamura is available if you freed/killed him in the DLC, and when you wear the Impurity oath rune. Antal is slightly better in this instance, because he has a flamesprayer. You can only summon one of them, they are mutually exclusive.

Don't lock onto Paarl, it moves quickly and it is large. That means chaotic camera movement.

Paarl screams a lot, and those screams tend to herald it doing a lightning explosion. Be aware of that.

if you stand underneath it, that tends to be relatively safe until it starts to explode.

Molotovs and oil urns are your friend, as is fire paper. Use them if you can.

After killing Paarl, use the lamp to go back to the dream. then, open the doors and run towards djura's tower without killing the beasts. You will get the chance to spare the beasts. spare them, and he will stop shooting at you and give you the powder keg badge and a gesture. Friends are rare in yharnam, and the top of his tower is a nice spot to relax for a bit.

Vicar Amelia

Amelia is not as hard as one thinks.

She is a beast. that means serration and fire. you know the drill by now. ;)

You can summon Old Hunter Henriett to help here. She has a kirkhammer and a repeating pistol. She pulls her weight, and does a good job! Summon her if you got insight to spare.

Vicar amelia has large telegraphed swipes and can be dodged into. If you have Henriett, she reliably goes and becomes bait.

If you did well with the Cleric Beast, this all applies to Amelia as well. She is after all a cleric beast as well.

Amelia tries to heal in her later phase, when screaming. She gets a white-ish glow, but you can easily outpace her healing with damage. If you aren't confident in it, throw some Numbing Mists at her.

I... don't have many tips for her, she is, all things considered, a bit of a "repeat what you learned" case of a boss. Not that hard, but also not really introducing new mechanics, y'know?

The Witch(es) of Hemwick aka granny wants your eyes

This boss can be cheesed if you are willing to get rid of all your insight.

If you have insight, they summon Mad Ones. The easy way to circumvent that is to enter the arena, see the boss, bold hunters mark out, and then spend all your insight in the dream. that way, the witches can't summon mad ones, and on their own they are relatively harmless. They go somewhat invisble, but that isn't a big issue when you run close.

Once you kill the first, a second witch shows up, and if you let her, she will revive the first. The second one doesn't really do stuff for the boss health bar for some reason, but you do need to gank them both.

Really, just do yourself the favor and spend the insight, it makes this all so much easier.

Shadows of Yharnam

These proto-nazgul are not all that fun. There are three of them, and they have different weaknesses. We have Candle, Sword, and Mace.

You can summon for this, if you have the Impurity Rune equipped. You can get the Younger Madaras Twin or Henryk. I would personally go for Henryk, as he has higher health and also intelligence. Younger Madaras Twin can and will get lost in the forest. Henryk doesn't.

Your best bet is to focus on one of them at a time. For all that they have three health bars, they share a trigger pool, and when one of them reaches a certain threshold or their combined damage does, they go into phase two and sprout snakes. You will want to have gotten rid of one of the pyromancers at that point, or at least have them close to that.

I would suggest spending some insight to get shaman bone blades. If you did that already, excellent! they are a close quarter item, and if used on enemies, makes them attack other enemies for a bit. That is tide-turning here, so use them. You can have three of them, and they are worth it.

The one with the fireball has the least hp, the sword only one the most.

When they enter phase two, they have a vastly extended reach. try to move in close and be quick, and be liberal with using elemental paper, it's a small bonus. I would personally suggest bolt, but fire does it just as well.

Once two shadows are dead, the third gets the power to summon snakes. they are large. they hurt. Be quick as you can be once the other two are down, because he won't wait that long to summon them.

All in all, divide and conquer is your main strategy. Get Henryk to help you, he is really good here. Good luck.

Rom the Vacuous Spider (photo a stand in because arachnophobes)

Rom is... well, she is a summoner.

Rom is weak to Bolt and fire does a nice chunk of damage too. If you have it, use the Tonitrus. She also takes extra damage from Kinhunter gems.

You can summon for this fight. The options are Henryk, The Younger Madaras Twin, and Mensis Scholar Damian. All of them have their uses, but they are mutually exclusive. You can summon Henryk AND the Madaras twin, or Damian. Henryk is a good damage dealer, but Damian uses the Choir Bell, which means an additional source of healing. You need to decide which you value more in this case.

Rom will not attack you the first time you enter the arena. That gives you some time to prepare. Your first strike will not damage her, it will merely aggro her.

Rom teleports three times. During her curl-up animation, you can still damage her.

Rom will summon a horde of her children to fight you. Their front is hard to damage, because their faces are practically stone. This holds true for Rom too. Going in from the side is your best bet.

After she teleports the first time, Rom will begin to summon meteors. Meteors deal arcane damage and it sucks. When she teleports the second time, she gains access to ice spikes. they also do arcane damage.

Rom is a war of attrition. You should go in from the side, and if you have it, use your flamesprayer buffed with Bone Marrow Ash. that can eat through her health quite well!

I strongly encourage summoning someone to help, that makes the romlings manageable. their health isn't affected by the summon, unlike rom's own.

When you approach Queen Yharnam after the fight, you will transition into the Blood Moon Phase. I strongly suggest you save who you wish to before that, and tie up loose ends. You can teleport back here via the lantern at any time.

Amygdala aka The Surveillance System of Yharnam

This is the Amygdala. It is a Great One proper. Despite that, it isn't all that difficult in this instance. It only gets bad in the Defiled Chalice.

Amygdala is weak to Fire, Bolt and Arcane. It does not get bonus damage for Beast or Kin.

Amygdala has a huge lower area where you can stand practically unmolested. If you hang around behind it, amygdala will eventually jump, and try to land on you. If you take two steps forward and have a weapon like Ludwig's Holy Blade or the Burial blade, and charge the r2 in full, you will nail it right in the head after it lands. That deals a shitton of damage, and is in fact the best way I can tell you to damage it.

Amgydala will summon a laser in a zigzag pattern. Not the most fun attack, but when you get close enough, that isn't a problem anymore.

When you damage it enough, it will throw a tantrum and tear out its arms to use as clubs. The jump-bait will still work though, so keep on using that.

The One Reborn

The One Reborn is very weak to Bolt. It does not get bonus damage for beast or kin.

You can summon for this fight. Options are Defector Antal and if you freed/killed him in the Nightmare and wear the Impurity Rune, you can summon Confederate Yamamura the Wanderer. Both are viable in this fight, and you may go for whoever appeals to you more. They are mutually exclusive. Antal carries a church pick and flamesprayer, Yamamura a piercing rifle and a chikage. He can potentially cause rapid poison damage, antal may be better if you want elemental damage.

Heavy weapons will do well, but blunt damage weapons less so. TOR has decent blunt defense, so the Kirkhammer will not do all that well.

TOR has six bell ringing maidens on the ramparts. You need to kill these first, because they will heal it and support it. Once they are down, feel free to have a go at this disgusting mass of putrid flesh.

Both up close and far away has its hurdles. It can stretch to reach you, and it vomits up acid if you are too close. Focus on dodging and keeping yourself alive. Keep the electricity on your weapon, and things will work out.

This boss is more annoying than bad. You can do it!

The Celestial Emissary

Weak to Bolt and Kin gems. This is a failed great one experiment.

This is a bit of a puzzle boss. At first you merely see a lot of walking Kin, with no specially distinguished boss. It will be the one keeping at the back, so try to ignore the ones rushing for you. Keep taking care of them, but go for the one in the back.

After a while, it will grow huge and grow tentacles from the head. This boss does not deal well with thrust damage either, so consider using a transformed saw spear, the rifle spear, or a stake driver equipped with kinhunter gems.

You can use the arena to your advantage to get the smaller kin into a bottleneck near the entrance of the arena, and pick them off one by one. The do respawn eventually, but all in all, this isn't too difficult of a boss.

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, aka the big unknowable Girl

Ebrietas is a Great One, and is weak to Bolt, Kin, and Fire.

Her reach is long, and your patience needs to be longer.

You can summon Mensis Scholar Damian for this. His use varies a bit and depends on RNG, but he is decent for this. Use him if you feel like it!

Like with rom, your first attack on her will not deal damage. She is non-hostile at first and at the back of the arena. Damian will not walk in until you aggro'd her.

Phase one she crawls towards you slowly, and goes for tentacle lashes and head slams if close enough. Every once in a while she discovers her inner speed demon and rushes towards you. if she spits blood, have a sedative ready, because it will almost always max out your frenzy meter unless you managed your insight and outfit well.

Come phase two, she will begin using what is a scaled up version of A Call Beyond. She also has an aura that will damage you whenever you are in the vicinity of it.

You can in theory be behind her back and between her tails and continuously deal thrust damage, be it with a fully charged r2 stake driver or a holy blade. This runs the risk of you getting locked in a corner and her killing you though, so use that trick with caution.

Ebrietas is a boss I personally struggled with, and that I don't look forward to fighting again. Just... try to wear her down slowly. Don't get greedy.

The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst

Another member of the "not technically a boss"-squad, like Henryk.

Like Henryk, he hits like a truck. Unlike Henryk, you got unlimited attempts with this one. If you killed Henryk, you will face the Bloody Crow. If you didn't help Eileen, you will face her. I don't know how to fight Eileen, because I got very good at killing Henryk.

He uses Quickening, which means he essentially teleports rather than dodges. He is a bitch. He also uses a Chikage, so he can inflict rapid poison on you. You can poison him too, though. It won't be easy, but you can.

He uses a Chikage (Fully upgraded), a Repeating Pistol, an Old Hunter's Bone for Quickening, and a single Blood Vial. when you get him to half health, he will heal himself up. You can stop that with Numbing Mist if you feel like it.

This will be rough. I won't even pretend you won't be in for the long haul here. This Hunter has more HP than some bosses you faced so far, and he has rather good defenses. He seems to be somewhat weak to Bolt.

He is fast and a bastard and good at inflicting viscerals on you. You need to dodge, and if you are good at parrying, be ready to be disappointed. He teleports away.

You just kind of... Need to be careful here and be ready to dodge. If you got a blue elixir, you may be able to come closer to him than otherwise right at the start, and with some luck and skill, you can possibly get a starting visceral off. That isn't a guarantee, but it's worth trying.

Good luck. Remember, you got all night for this. Unlike Henryk, he can't kill Eileen, and you won't stay dead in any way that matters. If needed, throw everything and the kitchen sink at him. Knives of all kinds, oil urns, molotovs, whatever works. Try it all.

Martyr Logarius, the Corpsicle

Martyr Logarius is a fight where you gotta watch the environment. The roof has no guardrails and you WILL fall off if you aren't careful.

The corpsicle is weak to all sorts of physical damage, and has resistance to all sorts of elemental and poison damage. Just hit him.

You can't summon npc help, but if you can, i support using online to get yourself a proper cooperator.

He is fast and agile, and occasionally he flies, but he is also highly predictable in his attacks.

Phase one he will summon skull spheres. if you run past them and at him, he often doesn't get off more than two, and his scythe telegraphs well. You can stagger him. Just in general, dodge towards him and through the attacks, that works wonders.

Once he drives his staff in the ground, go for that to destroy his armor and stagger him.

When he summons phantom swords, you reached phase two. Phase two means this bastard flies like a pastor on wires.

He becomes more aggressive and chases you down, but that only means more parry opportunities. Single shot firearms work better here than the blunderbuss.

when he flies, attack the sword in the ground, that dispels the phantom weapons.

when he tries to cast a spirit wave, go back. you can't interrupt that. otherwise, parry, parry, parry.

Micolash, Host of the Nightmare, aka Soggy Todd Howard

Welcome, dear hunter, to the worst fight in the game. This is a walking simulator combined with a rage simulator.

Micolash may be a fucking twink, but he hits like a truck. Do not be deceived. He has an augur of Ebrietas, and will use it to nigh on instakill you. He also has A Call Beyond. Be really, really careful.

He is relatively susceptible to poison. If you got poison knives, you may cheese him a little. If you hit him with a throwing knife before getting into his range and poison him (should take 2-3 knives), he will start a cycle of "run, disappear, come back at first spot, rinse repeat"". This will go on as long as he is poisoned. It's slow, but it will help.

Remember to take care of his marionettes, they do hit like hell and can also respawn.

After a while he will go into a single room where you can whale on him until he is at half health, after which he will run again. Not exactly fun to deal with. He will summon two marionettes, so take care of them, and stagger him if you get the chance.

Once in second phase, you can absolutely cheese him, should you have Simon's Bowblade. After giving him the run-around in the upper arena area, you can drop into his end room ahead of time, and approach him from behind. If you stand in the entranceway, you can shoot him in the back again and again, and he won't run into the room you are in, or attack you. This man doesn't deserve the honor of a fair fight. Kill him.

Mergo's Wet Nurse

Congratulations! Depending on the Ending you are going for, this is your final boss. This is Mergo's Wet Nurse. She is a Great One proper.

You may find the music a familiar tune. It is the full melody of the one Gascoigne's music box played.

The Wet Nurse is horrendously weak to fire, bolt and rapid poison. If you have dirty blood gems or a chikage, now is the time to use them.

You can make relatively light work of her by staying behind her and using charged r2 attacks. That aside, beware that she likes to twirl.

This is a war of attrition. She will summon fog and doubles after a while, but the doubles go down to a single hit. once this aptly named Nightmare Fog is over, go back to the grindstone of hit and run with charged r2 attacks.

She is NOT all that threatening, all things considered. The biggest issue is visibility.

After defeating her, wait a while to see the Nightmare Slain message. Congrats, you killed your first higher god! If you go back to see Queen Yharnam now, she will bow to you in thanks.

Gehrman, the First Hunter

This is it. This is the second potential final boss, depending on whether or not you consumed the three cords.

Gehrman is another Hunter Boss. He is distinguished by long reach and rapid burst movement, yet also has relatively slow limping speed otherwise. He has about three phases.

Like every human, he is rather allergic to being electrocuted or set on fire. Bolt and Fire are your friends, as are parries and Arcane damage.

At first, his burial blade is transformed. he will dash in to try and reel you in, and he is really good at that. However, he telegraphs, and that allows you to parry and visceral him. Use that.

After a while, he will transform his burial blade and go in for close combat, This is the point he brings out his own gun to shoot and visceral you. Be aware of the distance his gunfire covers, and dodge with it. Try not to be greedy, he is good at interrupting you.

After a while, he will get to phase three. He will rise into the air and absorb energy before releasing an energy blast. This blast reduces your health, but you can attack him somewhat unimpeded while he gathers the energy. This is where things get tricky, because he will now have an aerial projectile attack, switches between weapon modes at will, and has a bit of super armor. He gets more aggressive, and you need to be able to adapt to this.

If you defeat him and are low on resources, but consumed the umbilical cords, Bold Hunters Mark out. Restock. And then go back in, because you have one more boss to kill.

The Moon Presence, Flora of the Moon

Your last Great One. The final Boss proper, should you have found and used the three cords and fought Gehrman.

You will kill her. That is not optional. You have consumed the cords. You felled bigger foes than her. She is merely the last on the menu and she knows it.

Flora is weak to all elementals. Be it bolt or fire or arcane. Poison will do nothing to her. She is the only entity in the game where it will never proc.

You will want to carry the Choir Bell. She can stop you from healing, and the choir bell negates that.

Flora has less health than Gehrman and the Wet Nurse. She is frail but fast, and uses that. She will jump around the field to fell you.

Her head is her weak point. Aim for that if you can.

Do NOT get greedy. leave yourself the stamina to dodge backwards and escape from her swipes to heal up.

Standing behind her tends to be the safest spot, unless she winds up for a spinning whip attack.

When she makes it rain blood, your healing is being blocked. Use the choir bell, because oh man will you need it. When she uses her Doom Gaze attack and a red shockwave runs out, you reach one hp. no fail. if you can't heal then, you are fucked. HAVE THE BELL.

sidesteps are a good way to survive phase one. Flora has a tendency to attack straight forward.

Good luck. She too will fall.

DLC BOSSES

Ludwig the Accursed/Ludwig the Holy Blade

You have the DLC. That means you have a whole new frontier to fight in, to dismantle. This includes this former Church paragon, Ludwig. He has two phases that are drastically different.

His first phase, he is a beast proper. Serration, fire, the works. He howls and shrieks, and moves erratically.

You can summon for this fight. In the Nightmare Church, you can find Henriett. Slightly hidden in a corner near Ludwig's cave, you find Valtr, should you wear Impurity. I suggest Valtr, as he carries the Whirligig Saw. It doesn't matter much if he is Master of the League or the Beast Eater. Either way, he will work better than Henriett. Furthermore, should he survive, you can gain a Vermin.

Ludwig will swipe and jump in phase one. He will move erratically, try to run you over or kick you, and after a while, the second mouth on his shoulder will spew milky arcane vomit that has a long reach. Ludwig is deceptively fast. Try to stay on his sides to immobilize him, and try not to be backed into a corner.

When you reach the halfway phase, he will transition into the Ludwig the Holy Blade phase. He now fights completely differently. Furthermore, the Beast gem bonuses no longer apply, and serration no longer damages him extra. The game no longer sees him as a beast.

Ludwig now fights with the Holy Moonlight Sword. He has long reach but is slower, and it is in fact possible now to duck under them and anticipate which ones he is liable to use.

If he raises his sword straight up, be ready to dodge to the side. He is about to summon a blast of energy right in front of him. If he holds his sword down, dash back as he is about to unleash an aoe blast.

He is no longer susceptible to side damage, but if you break his super armor in front, he will stagger and you can visceral.

If it gets dicey with blood vials, there are five at the back of the arena, behind the railing. Get them if you need to.

Laurence, the first Vicar

You can summon Valtr for this fight as well. If that is useful depends entirely on whether or not if he wants a dunk in the lava or not. First phase is worth it, third not so much.

Laurence is the only beast not susceptible to fire. He is on fire. If you want elemental damage, go for Bolt.

He is a reskinned Cleric Beast that occasionally explodes into fire. The first two phases are essentially the Cleric Beast again. I would suggest wearing the Charred Hunter garb to avoid burning painfully.

He may be largely the Cleric Beast all over, but that fire explosion hurts like hell. it will come and you will need extra vials for that. Be prepared.

Phase three, his legs dissolve into lava and he turns the floor into a hazard as he crawls after you and vomits up more lava. This is where Valtr's pathfinding ai will suffer and he is liable to get himself killed.

Lead elixirs can make it so you won't flinch from the lava, but it doesn't reduce the damage you can get. Use with care.

In phase three, try to keep to his side, and stay away from the back.

The Living Failures

These fine gentlemen are Kin and failed celestial emissiaries.

They are weak to bolt, fire, kinhunter gems, and susceptible to rapid poison.

They share a healthpool. Being able to inflict rapid poison is a fast way to kill them. The available League summon, Yamamura the Wanderer, may inflict this status. He is a valuable ally, both as a meat shield and fighter.

There are four on the field at all times. two melee, two mages. They will come at you even so. Divide and conquer.

My suggested weapon is a decently upgraded whirligig fully equipped with Kinhunter gems. a transformed, charged L1 or R2 is going to tear through the individual failures and make them need to respawn. In that time, you can go for the next one and reduce them relatively well.

You can use a shaman bone blade to make them attack each other. Enjoy with caution.

When they raise their arms, seek shelter under the lumenflower. They are summoning meteors. Take cover, then right after, shred their health some more.

All in all, don't get greedy and you'll be fine.

Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower

It's her. The face of the DLC. The former apprentice of Gehrman.

Maria is another Hunter type boss. And by god by golly does it show.

She changes weapon types at leisure, and transforms her rakuyo freely. She is agile, and can visceral you. The animation for that differs depending on character gender, btw ;)

However, you can visceral HER too. She is rather susceptible to it too. You can parry her, be it with the gun or the augur of ebrietas, and shear through her health until she enters phase two.

Phase two starts with her stabbing herself to coat the rakuyo in blood. she now has about double to triple her old range. Be careful of that. She remains fast, and she practically dances around you. You can still parry her, but be aware that she can reach you from halfway across the arena now and deals blood damage rather than primarily physical.

She uses quickening, which makes her rather good at dodging you. Be aware of that.

Come phase three, she will rise into the air and culminate into a fiery explosion. Cheers. Her blood is now on fire. You will be in pain. Like in phase two, her reach is extended, and it isn't really safe anymore to quickstep through her attacks or rest behind her. There is about a second delay between the blood and the fire.

You will want to move in quick and fast at this point, and may consider using the beast roar to stunlock her in combination with a quick weapon like the blades of mercy.

Good luck.

The Orphan of Kos

This boss is a Superboss.

It is a Great One. Unlike its remaining kin, this boss does not get all that much damage from Bolt, and is weaker to Fire.

This boss has two phases and no NPC summon. I would advise to try and get summon help online if you can. If not, that is fine too. Godspeed tho, you madlad.

The orphan is highly aggressive, but won't start attacking until you are halfway into the arena.

The arena has water. I would encourage to stand in there, because you can't fall off, and it is more even than the beach.

The orphan likes to jump and has more range than you think. You can parry it, but I would honestly focus on surviving more. If it jumps, dash forward so it sails over you. Try to stay on its left side, that way the attacks won't hit you as much.

It can be ranged by throwing globs of its placenta. That will explode and have more side range than you think. Don't dodge into it, sidestep. This will still happen in phase two.

Slow and steady wins the race here. This Great One may be freshly born, but it fights almost like a Hunter and it hurts.

I can honestly only really say that you should use firepaper, keep oil urns on hand, and also some molotovs. Some throwing knives too, in case you run out of bullets and vials.

Once it reaches phase two, it grows and becomes even more aggressive. The weapon can't reach as far anymore, but it jumps like a kid on energy drinks and sugar now, and is more than intent to grind you into paste.

When it screams, be aware that the corpse of Kos is now summoning Lightning. Dodge those waves, they hurt. Don't try to attack the orphan, just stay clear.

Don't get greedy, and take it slow. I can't tell you much more. Godspeed. You can do this.

That is it! Good hunting, and may you stay with us for a long long time!

#bloodborne #long post #guide

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soul-of-the-sanada · 10 months ago

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Obey Me - roadtrips

I was stuck in the car for 9 hours driving from Louisiana to Tennessee and I started thinking about the brothers from Obey Me and roadtrips. So here are a few hcs I came up with during my time hanging out in the passenger seat.

Lucifer- always the driver. Doesn't need the GPS bc he memorized the directions. He's just that good. Unless specifically requested, he's not playing any music. Completely dead silent like a psychopath. MC really has to beg for him to relent and when he does, it's going to be something soft and chill. Doesn't care for road trip games, but will begrudgingly play along if asked by mc. No stopping unless it's on his itinerary or someone Really has to go to the bathroom. His number one road trip need is company, he hates to go alone.

Mammon-loves to drive, but doesn't have to. He likes having energy drinks readily available, especially for long trips. Expects his shotgun to navigate. Likes high energy, bass heavy music,something that really gets him going. Gets too distracted for road trip games. Wants to make a million sidestops. His number one road trip need is music, he can't stand the silence.

Leviathan- 100% passenger princess. Cannot be depended on for navigation. He's usually got his head buried in a handheld game or manga. If he gets to pick the music, it's his weeb shit. He doesn't care about side stops, he's barely paying attention. If he had his way, he'd still be at home, buried alive in his room. His number one road trip need is simply to be left alone until he gets where he's going.

Satan- he doesn't mind driving, but he'd rather shotgun. He's got GPS running nonstop because he doesn't trust anyone else to navigate (unless it's lucifer, but he'd rather it be ANYONE else with him). He would like to listen to classical music while driving, or an audio book if he can. He's too busy following the GPS to stop anywhere. His number one road trip need is no traffic.

Asmo- not even a passenger princess. They're sprawled in the backseat taking up as much room as they can, whether it's the or their stuff spread everywhere. Probably livestreaming the entire time (how many times can we do x before y loses their shit and turns this car around?). Definitely did a 'get ready with me/us' and bugged their brothers to share tips and tricks for road trip travel with the camera. Pop music blaring. Only wants to stop if it's for something trendy or they really need to pee. Their number one road trip need is an audience, whether it be in the car or online

Beel- he's more comfortable driving. Makes him feel useful. Definitely depends on someone to navigate for him. He will let anyone pick the music, I think his prefernce would be nu metal or hard rock, something with growly vocals. He'll stop whenever he feels like someone needs to stretch or they might be feeling even the tiniest bit hungry or thirsty. You don't even have to ask. His number one road trip need is snacks.

Belphie-definitely asleep in the backseat. Absolutely no help with navigation but also isn't the one who's going to ask to stop 1837373 times because... He's asleep. Might wake up if there's a traffic jam, but he's just gonna look around, realize he's definitely not made it to his destination and then he's out again. If he absolutely had to be involved, he's going to complain the entire time. his number one road trip need is an empty backseat to stretch out on as much as possible.

#luna.txt #obey me #om #obey me headcanons #obey me lucifer #om lucifer #obey me mammon #om mammon #obey me leviathan #om leviathan #obey me satan #om satan #obey me asmodeus #om asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #om beelzebub #obey me belphegor #om belphegor

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lurking-latinist · 1 year ago

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How to Suck Less at Summaries

Probably almost anyone who's ever posted a fic to ao3 or a platform with a similar interface has been hit by that moment of panic, breaking in on the euphoria of having finished and polished a fic--"what do I put for the summary?!"

So much so, that "I suck at summaries" in the summary box has become something of a cliche. It's very understandable! You've already put all that work into writing the fic itself, and now you have to write ANOTHER thing with its own set of conventions and expectations? No way!

And I want to start by saying that that's absolutely fine. Fic writing is your hobby, your creative endeavor; you're not obligated to do anything in it that you don't want to. You can leave the summary box completely blank--ao3 will let you--and there's no reason you shouldn't, if that's what you want to do! If you're happy with your summaries, please don't change them. There's no wrong way to do summaries. This is your invitation to ignore the entire rest of this post!

However. My impression is that an awful lot of people aren't happy with their summaries. They would like to have summaries that catch a reader's attention, that fit common patterns, or that give a good representation of the fic; they're just not sure how to accomplish that, or what readers might be expecting. And the good news is that writing various styles of summaries, like other kinds of writing, is a skill you can improve--and that there are some tips and tricks that can help you write the kinds of summaries you may want to write more quickly.

How do I know? Well, on top of having read I don't know how many fics, I've published 200 of my own, with all different kinds of summaries. (In fact, writing this post is my treat to myself to celebrate publishing 200 fics!) So I have a lot of trial and error experience to draw on. I'll be using my own summaries as examples (plus some hypothetical examples), because I don't want to be nitpicking anyone else's!

I'm going to throw in a cut now because this is gonna get long.

What do you want to accomplish with your summary?

That's the first question you might want to ask yourself. And the answer really is up to you! The name "summary" suggests it's supposed to be a sort of short version of your story. That's one option. But summaries are often used to accomplish various other things, too: some of my favorite summaries don't really tell you anything about the plot of the fic, but instead give you a glimpse of the writer's style or lure you in with a question. It can also fill organizational purposes like commemorating the reason the fic was written (although author notes can also be effective for things like this).

Most fundamentally, I tend to think of the summary box as a place to manage your readers' expectations. I want them to have some sense of what the fic they're about to read might be like, and I want to present that in a way that highlights why it might be appealing to them. Of course, what I write won't be appealing to every reader--and an effective summary, plus accurate tags and ratings of course, allows a reader who won't enjoy what I have to offer to quickly keep scrolling and find something that fits their tastes better. But the way I think of them, summaries are really mainly for readers who will enjoy my fic if they decide to open it. A summary for a fic is like a pretty package for a gift: the gift is great in itself, and the nice gift-wrap makes it more eye-catching and more fun to open!

Sidebar: This "managing expectations" thing is, I think, the reason why authors sometimes add notes in the summary like "I'm sorry if this sucks" or "this is my first fic, it's probably terrible." I completely understand where this comes from--you don't want to make your readers expect some kind of genius literature and then only have something to give them that you yourself are still insecure about! But I really do think they're generally counterproductive. On the one hand, that kind of negative self-talk will tend to undermine your own confidence and make you more insecure about your writing, not less; on the other hand, they can subconsciously prime your readers to notice weaknesses and issues that they might otherwise not even have paid attention to! That doesn't mean you have to pretend you think your writing is perfect; very few of us do think what we post on fic archives is perfect. There's nothing wrong, even, with a note like "this is my first fic" or "this one is a bit experimental, I'm not sure how I feel about it" or "this wasn't written in my first language" or even "this is an old fic and I don't think it represents my best work anymore", although I tend to put that kind of commentary on craft in the author's notes rather than the summary, but that's just me; there's no rule. As an example, when I recently published my first fic in the Hornblower fandom, which has a historical setting I wasn't previously very familiar with, I thanked my beta for helping me avoid "historical howlers" and added "any remaining are my own responsibility." That made me feel better about potential mistakes in research by showing that I was aware I might have made some. I put this in an author's note at the end of the story. But, for the sake of you as a writer as well as me as a reader, I'm asking you--please don't start out our reader/writer relationship by telling me it's terrible! Give yourself a chance to shine. Even if there's a lot you're insecure about in your fic, there's something you love--maybe it's the premise, the ship, even one particular line--that makes you want to share it with the world. Use the summary to highlight that. As your reader, that's what I want to know about!

Anyway, now that you've decided what you want your summary to accomplish, there are a couple of very easy ways to fill the summary box that you might want to consider--if they make sense for your fic.

Just quote the prompt

When I write prompt-fic, often very short, I frequently just quote the prompt itself as the summary. An example would be my 3 Sentence Ficathon fic archived on ao3. Since the challenge in this event is to write a complete fic in only three sentences, a summary wouldn't be much shorter than the fic itself! So I just do summaries like

For reeby10's prompt: "Doctor Who, Clara/Twelve, unforgettable."

(Gaps)

This can work outside of prompt memes, too. If you're doing a monthly challenge, for instance, something like

Flufftember day 21, 'breakfast in bed'

might tell your readers all they need to know to be interested in your story and know what to expect.

Set the context

For some fic, the most important thing you want your readers to know going in is something about the fic's context. For instance, with drabbles I sometimes use the summary as a place to sneak in information about setting/what's supposed to be happening that I didn't have room for in the drabble itself. For Susan's Twist, a 100-word drabble, I set the scene in the summary:

Susan is grooving to the latest chart-topper of 1963. But for some reason, the song makes her grandfather uncomfortable.

which meant I didn't have to use any of my 100 words explaining "Susan was listening to the radio, when..." Since Susan's Twist was inspired by someone else's Tumblr post, I could also just have referenced that post in the summary. But in this case, I chose to phrase the premise in my own words in the summary, and cite the Tumblr post in the author's notes (I also tagged the OP when I shared the fic on Tumblr).

Flower Children is an example of a drabble with a not particularly effective summary where I could have used this strategy quite effectively. The summary is just

Neither of them wants to fight.

which is all right, but which doesn't do much to set up the (admittedly cracky) Eighth Doctor/Dalek Oswin pairing that motivates the fic. But then, I've always felt like I didn't have quite as much of an idea as I'd like about what the context for this fic is supposed to be. Maybe I'll write more about them sometime.

Setting the context can also be useful for summaries of AUs. Very often, what draws people into AUs is the AU concept itself.

For instance, the premise of my story te quaerens, Ariadna is that the events of the audio Zagreus go differently and the Doctor remains possessed by/transformed into Zagreus. So that's what I said in the summary:

The Doctor is still Zagreus, but he and Charley find ways to keep going.

In this case, the summary is accomplishing more than one thing; it explains the concept, but it also indicates a bit of the story's tone--it's fairly optimistic given its premise, and it's more about how their relationship evolves than any particular plotty event.

With setting change AUs--especially in familiar AU settings, like a coffeeshop, high school, or fantasy monarchy--often what readers will most want to know is what roles the characters are filling; in other words, how the translation from canon to AU has been made. For instance, my story Warmth is already tagged as a coffeeshop AU with the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, and Adric, so the summary indicates that it's told from the perspective of Tegan as a new employee:

Unexpectedly stranded in London and looking for work, Tegan finds a place where she just might fit in.

If she had been a longtime employee or a customer, that would have changed the story's dynamics, and I would have wanted the summary to reflect that instead. I could have also added that the Doctor is the shop's manager and Nyssa and Adric are the existing employees, but I decided to let the story itself reveal that in this case.

With someone's planted a bath bomb in the matrix, which is a retail AU inspired by an incorrect quotes tumblr post, I just stuck the whole tumblr post in the summary box:

Romana: When you work at lush and a customer comes in and bites the soap because they think it’s cheese… this happens way more frequently than you think. Leela: If you stopped literally presenting soap as deli food this wouldn't happen. Narvin: Who goes into a bath store and thinks something covered in glitter is cheese? Brax: Who goes to the store and just takes a bite from the cheese? ~incorrectgallifreyquotes.tumblr.com

I might do that a bit differently now--maybe more the way I handled Susan's Twist--maybe something like this in the summary:

An uptight employee and a too-suave customer are making Romana's job managing a bath store way too stressful. Thank goodness--probably--that her best friend works for mall security.

And then I'd have put the tumblr post that inspired it in author's notes.

Thing is, though, that reflects my taste and what I think is effective now, but it doesn't mean I did it wrong the first time. People read and enjoyed the story, and it was fine!

Also I just showed this post to Moki and she said she thinks the first one's more intriguing. So that just goes to show, it's really a matter of taste.

This strategy is also useful for missing scenes and things like that. Something as simple as

While waiting for Z to return from the rendezvous, X and Y have a conversation.

can draw in readers very effectively, especially if X and Y's conversation was kind of obviously a gap in the story that they might already be curious about.

Use a quote

A surprisingly effective and straightforward way to create a summary is just to use a quote from the fic. I've seen tons of great summaries like this that hook me in immediately. I struggle with using it myself, because I want the line I quote to be powerful/impactful/intriguing and give some sense of what the plot is like and make sense out of context, and I don't often seem to be able to find lines like that in my own work. But I did for The Moon by Night:

It could not have been more than a day that we clung to the hull of that station full of troopers.

Since this is a space AU for a historical fiction novel, this line gives some sense of how the events of the story have been translated into space, and also shows the voice I'm writing in (I tried to follow the style of the original, which is first-person, which is unusual for me). If you can find a line like that in your work, it can be a great summary. You can even just put the first couple of lines of the fic, especially if you've already worked to make them an effective hook!

You can also use a quote from another source. Was there a line or moment from canon that inspired the fic? A poem or song that fits its mood? You can use the summary as a sort of epigraph. (I often use author's notes for this as well.) If your readers vibe with the quote that inspired the story, they're likely to vibe with the story as well.

I did something like this with Absent thee from felicity awhile. The title is a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and all I put in the summary box was another quote from a couple of lines later:

…to tell my story.

This is so short and contextless, though, that I'm not sure how effective it was. It maybe only works if you recognize the specific Hamlet scene that it's taken from and have thought about that scene in the context of a specific episode of Hornblower. (I promise that, if you do, it's heartbreakingly ironic!) This could have been a good opportunity for me to do a double summary (see below), especially since the story is epistolary and I could've established its context. Although I did kind of like revealing who was reading the letter and when slowly over the course of the story.

Okay, but I do want to explain the plot

Right, so we've established that effective summaries don't have to be in that "back of the book blurb" format. But sometimes you want them to be. Sometimes the thing you're most excited about is the story's plot or events, and you want to communicate that to the reader. But you already wrote the story in order to communicate the plot to the reader; how do you condense it into a sentence or two? Here are some tips that may help.

Are you using familiar tropes? If so, just mentioning them will likely tell your reader not only what the plot is, but that (if they like that trope) they're likely to enjoy it. For instance:

A and B are trapped in a snow cave/ice planet/walk-in freezer and must huddle for warmth.

That particular one will also explain a bit about the setting, if you want.

Relationship status/development is also something that many readers want to know, whether it's a romantic or a gen relationship (e.g. characters becoming friends or realizing they see each other as family). For instance, if A and B admit their romantic feelings for the first time in that huddling for warmth story, you might add:

They get a lot closer than either of them expects...

I rather like ellipses at the end of a summary; I think they imply, sort of, "read the fic to find out the rest." I sometimes use them to soften a summary that feels a bit abrupt. I feel like this might be just me, though? So if you don't like ellipses, nothing wrong with ending that same summary with a period.

If you have a fic where the entire content is some emotional development between characters, the entire summary can easily be that too!

I don't really write smut so I don't have good advice for summarizing it, but I get the feeling this might be a relevant strategy for it?

What changes in the story? This could be a change in characters' attitudes towards each other, in the information they have, in their physical situation, or anything else. A story doesn't have to be about one single major change, but there's almost always at least one. (Or a change fails to happen, but in an interesting way: "five times Lois Lane didn't realize Clark was Superman" would be a perfectly intriguing summary!)

What demands are made of the characters? Many stories involve a character overcoming some kind of challenge or meeting some kind of test. A summary can indicate what that challenge is--and you don't have to indicate whether or how the characters meet it! This can contribute to a feeling of suspense, so that the reader feels they need to read the story to find out how the characters react. For instance, I summarized my story Journey as:

The Doctor and Ace need to stop a dimensional leakage to put a life-sucking entity back where it belongs. But to do so, they'll each need to protect the other in their own way.

What are their own ways? Do they succeed? The reader can probably guess that they do--but how? Their attention is caught, and they'll have to read to find out!

Some notes on format and style

Summary style is as personal as the rest of your writing style, so this is only intended as a mention of a couple of trends I've noticed.

Sometimes summaries are 'in-universe'--i.e. they describe the characters and what they do, without reference to the existence of the fic itself as a textual entity--and sometimes, like the "five times" example I gave above, they refer to the fic's format, characteristics, relationship to canon, etc. in direct terms. (For instance, the example I gave for a missing scene was 'in-universe,' but I could just as well have said "While waiting for Z to return during Episode 3..."). Either of these approaches are fine, although I personally tend to incline more towards the in-universe style unless I have a particular reason to use the other, such as in Differences of Opinion, which took a lot of metatextual explaining:

When I read enough easily-crossed-over stories, such as for instance the Age of Sail books that I have been reading lately and also spaceship stories inspired thereby, what inevitably happens is I end up with a nebulous meta crossover setting where they can all hang out outside of their respective canons. Here's one conversation from that setting.

I keep wondering if something more terse might have been more effective, and I could have put all that in the author's notes. But I really think that for anyone who would enjoy this fic, the metatextual complication is a big part of the appeal. So I put it in the summary.

It's pretty standard to write in-universe-style summaries in the present tense, even if the fic is in the past tense. "The characters do this and that," not "the characters did this and that." You don't have to, but it's what your reader is most likely to be expecting.

It seems to be quite common to have a double summary: one that maybe reflects the style and tone of the fic, and another, more matter-of-fact one that explains the plot. They're frequently joined by "or." I don't typically use it--maybe because I rarely have the problem of having too much summary--but if you do, this could be a great solution.

Spellcheck and proofread your summary extra. Whatever strategies you normally use to make sure the words in your story are the words you actually meant to write, it's a good idea to turn those strategies on the summary with special intensity. After all, this is your first impression on your reader, so you probably want to look as polished as possible!

These are just a few things I've noticed that I tend to think about when staring at that blinking cursor in the summary box. I hope they may help you, too, to feel like you have something to say in that moment!

#writing #fic writing #writing advice #writing tips #ao3 tips

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