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hyenafu · 9 days ago

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Hey Hyena, you have years of experience when it comes to making a webcomic. Do you have any tips or advice for someone who has been thinking of starting their own with their original characters? That someone is me.

Though I do have a lot of advice to share, I will preface this by saying that general advice can only take you so far. I'm not familiar with you, your work, or your goals. It feels a bit like trying to tell someone how to play video games well when you don't know what game they're playing. But I'll try to share some practical wisdom that I hope will help folks who are just starting out.

Research: I've been recommending Scott McCloud's "Making Comics" to new creators for years, and I stand by that recommendation. It contains a ton of useful information about how the language of comics works while being a comic itself. McCloud talks about character design, the balance of words and images, pacing, backgrounds, and all sorts of subjects while pulling examples from many different types of comics, including European graphic novels, webcomics, manga, and American newspaper stripes. Whether you're just starting to appreciate comics or you've been making them for a while, I think it's a great source of inspiration.

Planning: I would do some research into how other webcomic artists plan. You're going to find a plethora of answers. Some people are really organized, others fly by the seat of their pants, and there's all sorts of valid approaches somewhere in between.

Slightly Damned is a mix of planning and improv. It's a very slow-moving story, and I've literally changed as a person with the passage of time. I have very clear goals with only a vague idea of how I'm going to get there or how long it's going to take. I just point myself and my characters in the direction I want to go and procedurally generate art and dialog along the way. This way, I'm able to set up story beats that actually (eventually) pay off, while keeping things fresh and interesting enough that I actually want to keep making it.

My usual process involves maintaining an outline in a text document. The advantage of keeping the outline in a digital text document is that I can edit and rearrange things as needed. It's a jumble of notes and snippets of dialog in rough chronological order.

When I need to make more Slightly Damned pages (usually a few weeks in advance), I adapt my notes into sketches of comic pages called thumbnails that I keep in a small notebook. Then the thumbnails are what I base the actual comic pages on when I start penciling them.

A warning against too much planning: Planning only works up to a point. At some point, you just gotta get started and gain some experience.

I think the most common problem people have when planning to make comics is that they're planning too much. It makes sense to want to be prepared, and it makes sense to be afraid of messing up. But there's a lot that you can ONLY learn from putting your art-making tool* to use and seeing where you end up.

(*Just to make sure we're all on the same page here: GenAI is not an art-making tool, it's a plagarism tool. If you rely on it, you'll only be robbing yourself of learning anything or discovering your style.)

For example: do you even like making comics? I feel like you can't really know this unless you've spent some time making them. Comics are excrutiatingly labor intensive and notoriously bad for making money.

If you don't enjoy the work of making comics, I don't think there's any reason to force yourself to make them. There are so many awesome ways to express yourself: visual novels, animatics, prose, video games, modeling, music, cosplay, concept artist, etc. I don't want anyone committing themselves to an art form because they think they have to; I want them to commit themselves to an art form because gosh dang it it's just SO rewarding to do it!

And when you start making stuff, you can look at what you've done and start asking questions about how to do it better next time. You can show the stuff you've done to others, and their reactions can help you find your direction. You can do all sorts of research based on what you think you want, and what you think you can do, only for all of that to be thrown out the window once you get started.

It'll also help you find what you're good at, which is usually whatever you think is the most fun to make.

Practice: Everything gets easier with practice. And I mean everything. If you want to get better at doing something, then you have to actually do it. Suck at drawing elbows? Draw some elbows. Bikes are impossible? Draw some bikes. Wanna write fantasy? Write some fantasy. Wanna write sci fi? Write some sci fi.

Do it bad, do it scared, and it will become easier. I can't guarantee that you'll be able to, say, freehand the skyline of San Francisco with total confidence after trying it a couple times. But you may stop giving a shit about doing it badly, and then the attempt can be fun regardless of the result! Doesn't that sound powerful?

Art is hard, and we can all be hard on ourselves. Try not to overly focus on the results. Practice mindfulness and enjoy the process of making things. Others will be able to see the spark that fuels your creations even if you feel your technical skills aren't exactly where you want them to be.

Putting it online: Don't rely on social media to be around forever. Being online since the 90s, I can tell you that it's been a long process of jumping from one sinking ship to the next. You want people to be able to reliably find you and your work.

I've know people whose layouts were destroyed when tumblr pushed an update. Creators had to scramble to make new sites for their webcomics when SmackJeeves suddenly went under. Who knows when the next billionaire or hedge fund will threaten the livelihoods of thousands for the sake of filling their already-bursting bank accounts?

If you know how to make your own website: look into Wordpress, which has several plug-ins that work with it, such ComicEasel and Toocheke, for making websites specifically for webcomics.

But if you don't know how to make your own website: use ComicFury. I've heard nothing but good things through the grapevine about how good it is and how passionate the owner is about webcomics. I've heard it's very easy to set up and I'm strongly considering making a Slightly Damned mirror on it myself.

What about Webtoon? Well… ymmv, I guess. They definitely have shady business practices and encourage unhealthy, overly demanding amounts of work from their creators. Their rating system was also another point of contention (I think ratings systems encourage a narrow-minded view of art), but they recently got rid of it, I think?

Other problems include limited control over comments section, no ability to flesh out your account with interesting side content for your comic, how much the site pushes people to jump from comic to comic, ads, content restrictions…

I do have friends who use Webtoon with the attitude of "being where the people are". That makes total sense to me. Ultimately, it's a decision you just have to make for yourself based on your values and comfort levels.

If you're a furry, then FurAffinity is a good place for your first archive. You can make (a) folder(s) for your comic, then set up navigation links in the description to help people read comic pages in order.

Places like tumblr and Bluesky are good for sharing stuff regularly, but they make terrible archives. Social media is very much about being "in the moment" and sharing new things regularly. It has its uses, but it's not the best for reading through a comic archive.

I'm not going to pretend that FA is perfect, but it is independently owned and anti-AI, and that's something to celebrate.

===

I feel like I could go on forever, but I hope that's a helpful start. If you or anyone else would like some more specific advice, shoot me a question in my inbox. It can be hard to know what to talk about when giving general advice because there is SO much talk about.

#slightly damned #sdamned #webcomic #art advice #webcomic advice #q & a #asks

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fordtato · 1 month ago

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whats your process for writing scripts? specifically the ones with the giant corkboards. im trying to write a video essay myself, and im not sure how to go about it

Good question! It really changes from video to video. but typically, it begins broad and then gets narrowed down to little details.

I open a google doc and put the vague concept for the video up top. From there i outline out the things i want to cover, listing out the more narrow concepts, like an outline, and then fill out the spaces under them whenever i think of something. Like, I might think of a line or a joke or a detail and then open the doc and put it under the right heading.

This means that the video is almost never written in order, it's written at the whims of whatever i happen to be thinking about on a given day, or whatever detail I uncover accidentally in my research that I realize NEEDS to be added or placed in a specific section.

Somewhere during this process, i'm thinking about props and set design, and so i add color-coded notes to the script in appropriate places, usually purple notes for something i put on the screen in my edit, and orange or blue for a physical item I hold up when I say a specific line.

At this point, the framing device starts to form. In this instance, it would be a corkboard. So I go through the script, one thing at a time, and add a color-coded line next to each spoken line indicating what needs to be added to the corkboard. I also might have a separate doc or a canva file where I plan out everything I need on the corkboard in the end, so I could then distribute those elements through the script.

The thing is, though, I don't do any of this in the order listed above specifically. Everything is being done at once, from researching to writing to planning out makeup and costumes to planning out the corkboard. But it averages out to at least an hour or two every day, split up throughout the day.

An additional tip I have is to also have a notepad on your phone, SEPARATE from your google doc, to write down jokes or lines or ideas if you think of them away from your computer. Do NOT read through your script before you do it, just add the idea to the phone notepad, and then leave it there for a while. And once every few days, go through the notepad and decide which ideas should be added to the doc and where, and then empty the notepad out. Sometimes when you are staring at a single document, you end up getting stale, or only thinking of ideas related to the stuff in the doc. so having a separate space to just stick stuff helps me ensure I'm adding new ideas and details that might be more out of left field.

I also recommend talking to friends about your ideas in a phonecall or discord call, out loud, regularly. When you explain stuff to people, your brain is able to think of shortcuts in efficiently delivering information. It is easy, when you sit down and write a massive video, to accidentally write 3 paragraphs where 1 would be fine, because we don't write the way we speak out loud. In verbal conversation, we are more direct (usually, in my experience, at least). You also will likely come up with jokes when talking to your friends, because you are relaxed and just chatting about something you enjoy, and that is where the gold is. You want to write those jokes down immediately in your little phone notepad. Trust me, it is easier to come up with video jokes when chatting with friends than it is when you are staring at a script begging yourself to be funny or witty.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

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eurothug4000 · 2 months ago

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INTERVIEWS WITH OLEANDER GARDEN, CRISPPYBOAT AND ADAM PYPE

For my current video on fictional dead MMO/servers in games (https://youtu.be/AXSJ27bTRzw), I interviewed some developers with experience creating such settings. Oleander Garden (Autogeny), Crisppyboat (NetEscape) and Adam Pype (No Players Online) kindly took the time to discuss the creation of their respective games, with their answers compiled here:

What gave you the inspiration to use an empty MMO setting?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

The post-vaporwave / hauntology / Dan Bell deadmall universe was at its apex when I started working on Autogeny in 2018; mostly I wanted to play with that sense of longing for lost futures, & put it in conversation with the ideas the Pagan games had been orbiting around (i.e. contemporary technological mythology, poetic-making, degraded game forms). The dead y2k MMO format was a fun solution that had a little tie in to everything I wanted the game to think about.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

The idea came to me when watching Redlyne's video series on dead mmos, and theories about cults within them. Just the atmosphere that brings with it, a seemingly derelict digital landscape, rich in history from past users, now occupied by some malevolent force (or one that’s always been around) really fascinated me! Especially with the popularity of liminal spaces, I really connected with the idea of exploring the online equivalent of that. For this game jam version it was on a fairly small scale (only about 4 areas) but we’d love to explore that idea with a more believable expansive online space, that was really the heart of the idea for me. Sitting alone at night and logging into an abandoned online game, shifting through the past memories of long forgotten players in a vast digital space. It has this sort of unnerving feeling to it, why's this still up after all this time and who knows what could still be around.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

I was actually doing an exchange at the time when I was making the original version of the game (from 2019) at a game design school in the netherlands. i reallyy hated this class because it was super designed focus without much practical work, and im really more of a design-by-doing person. anyways, one of the assignments was making a map for Unreal Tournament, and it was this tedious process of having to block out the level and then write endless documentation about the design process. i guess the class was super triple-A focused or something. since halloween was coming up and i was still doing game-a-month at the time, i really wanted to give a go at making something super scary. and as i was doing this assignment i really enjoyed just walking around the little map without any bots, and just taking in the vibes. i did a little extra flair to my map by adding ambient sounds to it (i have a video of that actually, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_22Q_oNwk0) and it really did a lot for the atmosphere. then i remember that as a kid i used to play GMOD a lot with my friend, and because I was always hosting the server and our computers were very slow, it would always take like 10 minutes at least for my friend to join. adding that ambient sound really reminded me of that, because gmod maps always have this ambient sound in them that's a bit unsettling. i remember being so scared to wander around on my own because these maps were always known to have jump scares, so i would just wait at spawn for my friend. so i realised that this would make for a cool horror game. i originally planned to just port the map into unity, but then i decided against it because it wouldve been more work than it was worth. so i really quickly made a map that didnt make a lot of sense and made it somewhat symmetrical. ironically, not thinking about it too much made it so good, because the map is a bit disorienting, which is perfect for a horror game. it's a little bit funny that i found the most success by making a multiplayer map that was badly designed instead of what this class was trying to teach me. :-)

Did you initially have specific themes you wanted to explore or did the idea of having an empty mmo setting come first?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

Ideas came first, setting later! A month before the game came out I still wasn't 100% sure I was going to commit to that framing device actually - otherwise it would have been a straightforward haunted-EXE type of deal, like luna game (2011) or those 2010s haunted video game creepypastas. I'm glad I went with it; 'digital space you inhabited' is a much cooler ('weightier?') frame for this sort of story.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

I think the setting had developed first before any specific themes came to mind, but to me NetEscape in a lot of ways represents the melancholy that comes from the loss of fun, safe virtual spaces. Like many people I grew up in these spaces and to see them shuttered in favour of a handful of social media platforms really fills me with a sort of nostalgic sadness, as genuinely I felt that these spaces were really important for kids and young adults. The term "dead internet" comes up a lot nowadays and I feel in part it can be attributed to the sort of forced migration towards a handful of social media platforms devoid of the liberties and expression niche online spaces provided for people. Other than that, existentialism as a theme kind of just fell into place when attempting to craft a story for the concept.

What was it about the empty server/MMO concept that helped you explore the game's themes?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

I think the multiplayer and especially persistent-multiplayer character of an MMO makes that kind of game world feel a lot more like /a space/ and less like a strictly authored object; that helped make things feel 'lived in', 'decayed', 'lost', &c. in a way that really worked with the whole 'self-making out of techno-mythic-rubble' thing the game was going for. Likewise, I suspect the 1995-2004ish era of MMO design in particular - which was much less authored, much more sandboxy, much more scattershot and weird - is (A) /especially/ good at producing that impression, and (B) developed out of a very specific mythical-ideological project which has now been abandoned: the prevailing y2k notion that one might live a 'second life' in a 'digital world', which seems almost quaint or pastoral today. I figured this would produce a certain feeling of dislocation, of 'living in the ruins'.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

We use the internet as an escape from reality, and now with the progression of time a lot of these places no longer exist or stand dormant. The empty mmo, to me, represents a sort of time capsule for people you’ve never met. A public space where people put so much of themselves into it, you get to learn so much just through the fragments they’ve left behind. It’s this sort of melancholy nostalgia that I hope we can really channel in the game’s full release.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

the first version of the game had no story at all. i just did the whole setup of being alone in a multiplayer game, and then a ghost showing up and it ended with a jumpscare. i showed this off at an event on the last day of the month and was planning to publish the game the day after. people really liked the setup but they were dissapointed it just ended on a jumpscare and had no point to it. so on the walk home i thought about adding a story to it. at the time i was really kind of against (or uninterested even) in adding a narrative to my games. looking back on it it's a bit stupid, but i figured it would be a good opportunity to try out adding a story to one of my games. so that same night i quickly added in a story by having the developer join just before the end and explaining that the ghost was his dead wife and that capturing the last flag would undo all of his work. it was a bit rushed, and most of the critique i got was that it was a bit cliché. but without it the game would have been super uninteresting and nobody would have liked it as much. really goes to show that people really like a story :) lesson learned! now many years later we're doing this big version of the game because the original was such a success (mostly thanks to the ARG i think). since i'm now much more of a matured developer I wanted to really focus in on the story and work it into something that is actually interesting, has depth, cool characters, and not just a story about a dead wife stuck in a game (which is a bit of an overplayed trope maybe). but, i had to work with what I had, since it is a successor. i think the direction we're going in now is much much more interesting, making it about old tech more broadly as a vehicle for horror and also telling the story about the relationship between john and sarah, and giving sarah more agency. for the full game we are kind of purposefully doing the opposite of what the original did. by not letting john say anything until the very end, and making sarah more of the main character. in the end I think the game is also much more about grief and using the concept of a dead person stuck in a game and the obsession of the developer to revive her as a kind of allegory about creative work and obsession over your work preventing you from finishing it. this is something i personally quite strongly believe in, that it's important not to let a project take control of your life, and making it so important that it never gets done. the unfinished fps game prototype is so much about this, here is this game that had so much potential and interest, but the developers were so busy trying to make it into this impossible thing that people just lost interest and it never becomes something real or alive. the dead server is literally a testament to a dead idea, a dead person, an unfulfilled potential and a constant reminder of not being able to let go.

What is it about this setting that lends itself well to the horror genre? What kinds of things in the empty server/MMO space did you specifically think about including and/or subverting to make the experience scarier?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

Living in the shadowed ruins of a gestalt social project which has fallen away and left monoliths behind - this is the essential characteristic of the 19th century European gothic novel, and the 20th century southern gothic that followed. Maybe we could say that 'living in the ruins of an MMO' works as a sort of '21st century gothic', i.e., that the dead server spooks us for the same reason dead castles spooked Bram Stoker, and dead plantations spooked Faulkner. It's not the space, precisely: it's the social field that created that sort of space, and the way its influence still lingers. Playing too much Everquest will probably destroy your life, but there's something fantastical and romantic about early Everquest stories - people waking up at 3AM to go kill a dragon with 70-odd strangers in their shared digital space. There's nothing romantic about Meta or AI-girlfriends: only the life obliterating part survived. In the home stretch of development I tried to give Autogeny lots of little details that would scream 'early MMO' in particular. Open world dungeons with bosses to farm, impossible zone transitions: this sort of thing. I don't know if it would have worked if it felt like Final Fantasy XIV, you know? It had to be an old MMO.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

We tried to play with sound and limitation to generate horror. Sound played a huge role, (masterfully provided by louceph) stuff like repeating footsteps and ambient noise really added a lot to the overall experience of wandering alone. Taking inspiration from Iron lung, I really pushed for the on screen navigation system to give a bit more anxiety in the moment, having it be limited, and a bit harder to quickly turn or walk if you catch something in the corner of your eye. We sort of quickly realized that there were a lot of pitfalls in presenting the game in a totally accurate, realistic way without confusing the player, we actually had to patch in a notification sound for the file system just cause a lot of people would never bother actually checking the photos they took during the game. In the games full version we’re going to try and add stuff like working text chat/emotes, and other core staples to really give it that believable feeling, the jam version turned out nice but I’m really excited to go extra hard on hammering down what makes a game feel like a real abandoned mmo.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

I think old tech, limitations of old tech and just old design standards or quirks or imperfections are all things that make something feel a bit uncanny and scary. games nowadays are so juicy and smooth and responsive you are constantly at ease because you're being taken care of, there is no friction. all those small things, those small barriers make the game feel like an ominous force, or like a big heavy lid on a tomb that you have to tear off. there's something powerful with horror when you have to make a player do something tedious with the anticipation of the scare. going through that old server list menu really feels like you're undusting something. you also can't jump, you cant look very far ahead. it makes it all feel so evil... then there is also the subversion of it, adding things for authenticity that have no point. you have a gun but there is nothing to shoot, you have a player list but nobody is online, you have a match timer but the match never ends, even delivering the flags doesnt have a point because there is no game because nobody is on the other team. it makes the whole environment feel like you're not welcome, like it's just this graveyard and all you're doing is trampling the flowers. another thing is that everything in the game is "in-story". the game's story is about someone being on this mysterious computer and discovering old and scary things. it's cool because everything from pressing buttons or opening applications, none of it is OOC, it's all supposed to be the experience of discovering this thing that wasn't meant for you, this invasion of privacy and literally uncovering some old skeletons. this is kind of the core design principle for the game, if one of the games in the forum is a bit badly made that's like part of the story cause it's a hobby gamedev. everything is supposed to be authentic and part of the narrative. the full game will have no open ends, every single file and link or application has a point or some subtext.

Has there been any interesting feedback from players that made you think about the empty server/MMO setting in a new way?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

Yeah! It especially makes me smile when I find some cool new dead-mmo game, and it turns out the developer liked Autogeny, and figured they could do the idea better, or in a different way. I wasn't sure if the conceit was too particular, but it seems like it really resonated with people - it's like I got to contribute a little formalism to the tapestry of weirdo indie-game culture, you know? It's cute and it's probably the main thing that keeps me feeling positive about the game. Now I get to play different games, by different people, with their own ideas about the gothic digital-plaza.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

Well, one thing that I sort of regret for the demo version was implementing the text chat and emotes as fun visual dressing rather then actually functional, a lot of people kept interacting with it like they’d be able to have full conversions in the game, it’s something we’d like to do for the full release but it wasn’t possible on this jam version. A lot of feedback was also related to the overall story and how it was presented. We plan on focusing way more on the actual exploration of the abandoned space, as that seems to be what people were mostly interested in (as am I haha). Of course the actual way in which the story was presented (taking photos to get files) was not realistic to a mmo at all but I think there's a lot of potential towards the connectivity between actions in the game and the desktop itself. Hypnospace comes to mind as a huge inspiration, doing something similar to that but in 3D would be great. It makes me really excited to explore mmo staples like photography, mini games and other realistic features, turning them into puzzles throughout the full game. We also found a lot of people were annoyed by the slow movement, but I felt that element would be super important for the kind of slow burn anxiety that we went for with this jam version, plus you’d move pretty slow in those old games haha.

There's a pretty big amount of interest in dead MMOs/game servers these days! What is it about them that you personally think is intriguing? Is it mainly just nostalgic elements or are there less prominent aspects that you think make them so interesting?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

I don't think it can just be nostalgia, in the empty sense of 'consumer fantasy'. If that was the case, you would expect consumer activity to follow a similar pattern to e.g. console game nostalgia (buying lots of knick knacks and status signifiers, attaching cultural value to a particular major corporation, &c.) Instead, we got this cool thriving scene of DIY horror, and illegal pirate revival servers! Critically, the dead mmo genre is not /just/ pro-forma nostalgic-horror (e.g. afraid of a terrible, romantic past) but also, as Mark Fisher might have said, essentially 'Hauntological' - it's oriented towards a speculative /lost future/. There's a certain longing for a separate digital world, and a new realm of human activity Online - which seemed totally possible, until the real world got digitized, and the digital world died an unceremonious death. From this the dead-mmo form can draw all the drama and emotional weight of a failed revolution, in our deeply repressed cultural milieu, where emerging revolutions fail before they get started.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

Honestly I think it’s just the generation that had been raised on mmos like this having grown up with nostalgia for these spaces. Online chat games have basically come and gone, contained in a specific generation of kids, and I think it’s pretty profound how impactful it still is on us. For me just the idea of an online games player legacy really fascinates me. In a way it's almost like exploring an abandoned home or school, where you get the opportunity to catch glimpses of lives and relationships etched into the environment. Like any abandoned or “liminal space” I think people find it intriguing based on the mystery of discovery, finding something clearly human made, and stopping to think how or why they did it. It's an extremely fresh and untapped market, because it is so relatively new, there’s a lot of potential. We see it a lot in internet horror, stuff that at this point has been around for decades, where we can start collectively referring to it in media.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

everyone keeps telling me this but i haven't really looked into it! it doesnt surprise me though, i think this fear of being alone in a multiplayer game is a pretty shared experience and everyone who's had it is now old enough to make games about it. i wasn't really inspired by any game in particular, i would say the main inspiration i had was Petscop, which is also about an abandoned unfinished game that has a whole layer under it revealing some ulterior use for the game. this whole idea of a game being a facade hiding some grand conspiracy under it is soo interesting to me. it's like easter eggs or 4th wall breaking stuff, or little out of bounds areas. it makes you think about what's hidden underneath all of this stuff you were meant to see. i've always as a kid thought so much about "what if there is a whole other level behind this wall" or like these creepypastas like Ben Drowned or even the luigi stuff in Super Mario 64. the idea that this thing you know and love has something sinister and it was always there you just never noticed will always play well into people's fears.

A huge thank you to Oleander Garden, Crisppyboat and Adam Pype for taking the time to be interviewed.

Oleander Garden: https://x.com/void_hyacinth

Autogeny: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165750/PAGAN_Autogeny/

Crisppyboat: https://x.com/CrisppyBoat

NetEscape: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3344890/NetEscape/

Adam Pype: https://x.com/adampi

No Players Online: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2701800/No_Players_Online/

#interview #gamedev #autogeny #no players online #netescape

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thestellarcartographer · 7 months ago

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I've completed another commission recently for @uss-solkar. This one of the primary sick bay and local deck layout for his ship - including the CMO's office, reception desk, attached lab, and a bunch of other areas.

The breakdown for these areas is below the cut.

The first thing, as always, is a block-out and scale test for the environment. This was based on a very detailed document I was given to give me some art direction.

Much like previous modelling I've done, I planned to do this as a single modelled area, but eventually pivoted to modelling each room individually. This gave me a lot more flexibility to alter things in the rooms but not messing up the whole scene. It did introduce some other issues, but I can live with the trade-offs.

The next thing to work out was the hallways.

These are based on the Star Trek Online aesthetic, and I decided while I was modelling individual sections that it would be much easier to have a modular system that I can twist around corners, or switch out parts for doors, consoles, windows, or whatever else was needed.

It also allowed me to (shameless plug incoming) put together my Star Trek horror/backrooms video Deck Zero. Give it a run, if you're into that sort of thing!

Once I was happy that I could create corridors to order, I started on the lab.

This is when I started working on the individual room modelling, which was a bit of a process to get right. Basically I modelled a single section of the room, then made it form along a curve in the shape of the room. This allowed me a lot more freedom to alter the room out, although came with a lot of teething problems initially, but came out looking better in the end, I think.

The elements in the room which I needed to ensure were present, included the circular computer console, the side desk, the TNG-era....wall orb...the corner desk, and the shelving. So obviously the next step was to do those.

After that, I had worked with the new method to build the room enough to be comfortable with it, so I started on the main sick bay and attached office.

Obviously this was probably the big focal point, so a lot of variations on a theme here, but the key is/was that it have a lot of bio-beds, a transporter, and several ways in/out of the rooms.

This meant building out a lot of assets, from the bio-beds, to the "laptops" used in TNG/Voyager, medical tricorders and other equipment, and the desks and trolleys to put this stuff on.

You might notice a lot of very specific tools which have been present in various Star Trek's over the years. I always like putting little touches in like this, as it helps sell the authenticity.

The CMO using the office is Bajoran, hence the painting on the rear wall. The shelves will eventually be filled out with various knicknacks including books, and a model of a Bajoran lightsail ship.

The window out into the corridor was also a request.

The last area to cover was an airlock to the internal cetacean ops to allow for medical teams to quickly access it. This was relatively easy to throw together, compared to the rest of the area.

And finally, it was putting the finishing touches in, like accurate LCARS, lighting, and all the other elements that go into making the final images at the start of the post.

#star trek #blender3d #commission #star trek adventures #3d art #ttrpg #star trek online

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday formally moved to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic shift in generations of U.S. drug policy.

A proposed rule sent to the federal register recognizes the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledges it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. The plan approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.

The Drug Enforcement Administration will next take public comment on the proposal in a potentially lengthy process. If approved, the rule would move marijuana away from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. Pot would instead be a Schedule III substance, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids.

The move comes after a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department, which launched a review of the drug’s status at the urging of President Joe Biden in 2022.

Biden also has moved to pardon thousands of people convicted federally of simple possession of marijuana and has called on governors and local leaders to take similar steps to erase convictions.

“This is monumental,” Biden said in a video statement, calling it an important move toward reversing longstanding inequities. “Far too many lives have been upended because of a failed approach to marijuana, and I’m committed to righting those wrongs. You have my word on it.”

The election year announcement could help Biden, a Democrat, boost flagging support, particularly among younger voters.

The notice kicks off a 60-day comment period followed by a possible review from an administrative judge, which could be a drawn-out process.

Biden and a growing number of lawmakers from both major political parties have been pushing for the DEA decision as marijuana has become increasingly decriminalized and accepted, particularly by younger people. Some argue that rescheduling doesn’t go far enough and marijuana should instead be treated the way alcohol is.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York applauded the change and called for additional steps toward legalization.

The U.S. Cannabis Council, a trade group, said the switch would “signal a tectonic shift away from the failed policies of the last 50 years.”

The Justice Department said that available data reviewed by HHS shows that while marijuana “is associated with a high prevalence of abuse,” that potential is more in line with other Schedule III substances, according to the proposed rule.

The HHS recommendations are binding until the draft rule is submitted, and Garland agreed with it for the purposes of starting the process.

Still, the DEA has not yet formed its own determination as to where marijuana should be scheduled, and it expects to learn more during the rulemaking process, the document states.

Some critics argue the DEA shouldn’t change course on marijuana, saying rescheduling isn’t necessary and could lead to harmful side effects.

Dr. Kevin Sabet, a former White House drug policy adviser now with the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said there isn’t enough data to support moving pot to Schedule III. “As we’ve maintained throughout this process, it’s become undeniable that politics, not science, is driving this decision and has been since the very beginning,” Sabet said.

The immediate effect of rescheduling on the nation’s criminal justice system is expected to be muted. Federal prosecutions for simple possession have been fairly rare in recent years.

Schedule III drugs are still controlled substances and subject to rules and regulations, and people who traffic in them without permission could still face federal criminal prosecution.

Federal drug policy has lagged behind many states in recent years, with 38 states having already legalized medical marijuana and 24 legalizing its recreational use. That’s helped fuel fast growth in the marijuana industry, with an estimated worth of nearly $30 billion.

Easing federal regulations could reduce the tax burden that can be 70% or more for marijuana businesses, according to industry groups. It also could make it easier to research marijuana, since it’s very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies on Schedule I substances.

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vividfae · 4 months ago

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About My Document...

Hey. It's been a minute. I know that I have said over & over again that I'm not going to keep posting about the situation. I plan to hold true to that. But understand that it has been a very long & difficult road & I've been spending a lot of time reflecting & trying my best to heal. Part of that means seeking closure & regaining my autonomy.

Over a year ago now I wrote & published a document going over my suicide attempt from the preceding year & what I felt the culpability my group of friends had in the circumstances that led to it. Though my relationships with Zena & Poppy had ended, I initially stuck by that document, partially because I value principles & partially because I hadn't really begun to process anything.

Given new information, a lot of reprocessing, & a lot of recontextualizing events, I can no longer in good conscience completely stand by that document or the video that I published going over it.

A Brief History

Before I explain my new stances, I need to summarize what happened.

Italics represent the story as I told it in my doc, which is representative of the way I was made to think about things after the fact. Regular text is just me trying to tell the story of what happened with as little editorializing as possible.

In May 2023 I attempted suicide. There was a wealth of reasons at the time that pushed me to this place but central among them were my fears of abandonment & anxieties in my relationships due to an at the time untreated BPD spiral. I ended up in the hospital for a little under a week. At the time, I was friends with a group of people who had been splitting time between two discord servers, my personal friend server The Catgirl Cafe, & Zena & Poppy's Foundation server. There were a lot of things that contributed to my mental state. My relationships with Zena & Poppy were rocky (Zena had even broken up with me a couple weeks before my attempt), there was an incident several months earlier with one of my former friends that I'd classify as a form of sexual assault that I never really addressed or told anyone about, & both servers were developing really toxic atmosphere in their own ways.

Due to the group of friends that were in the Cafe egging on a lot of negative thinking towards my relationships with Zena & Poppy & not really taking much care to actually provide much in the way of support, my mental state began to collapse as I felt there was no hope because I couldn't see a way to fix things & my friends were pushing me to think more & more negatively about the situation.

When I made my attempt, I made some concerning posts on twitter before shutting my phone down & driving from Michigan where I had been staying to a place in Indiana where I made my attempt. The Cafe group found my family & contacted them, I was found & prevented from succeeding, & went to the hospital later that night.

My friends mishandled my attempt because instead of contacting the people who were closest in proximity to me & had resources to get me help, Poppy & Zena, they spent time searching for my family without any definitive hope of success, leading to a large chance of me not being found. Instead, they only lucked into finding my family & thus being responsible for me being found.

Amendments, Clarifications

Being out of the Foundation & away from Z&P has given me a lot of ability to process everything that I went through. I'm not going to go line by line, but I need to make some amendments.

For starters, I've privated my video. Idk if my original doc is still up, but as soon as I find it I'm going to be removing it as well, as I no longer fully stand by it. It took a lot of time reprocessing & deprogramming, but I have been able to better understand the situation, it's complexities, & most importantly, how I was being manipulated.

One thing I mentioned was how my former group of friends handled the attempt & finding me. This group consisted of people I knew as Paco, Aztec, Ghost, & Rayne (Ghost is the only member of that group I am still on good terms with).

I do not currently & do not remember if I ever did have Rayne or Aztec's messages with Zena & Poppy from this time. I only saw Poppy's DM's with Paco & the group DMs between Ghost, Zena, & Poppy, as well as the posts in the Cafe. So I need to stress that I am working on those DMs/posts, the claims made by Rayne as to her actions, & the claims made by Poppy & Zena as to the other's actions.

I do not know for sure how much of an attempt was made to reach them. I don't know if it matters honestly. I know Paco's message to Poppy from the night before still sticks with me as being woefully inadequate for the severity of the situation. I know that Poppy & Zena ignoring messages from everyone including myself made the situation much worse than it should have been. I know that everyone had information that should have led them to act quicker. But I also know that I made mistakes & refused to take care of myself, make boundaries, or listen to those around me.

Ultimately, based solely on the way Zena & Poppy were acting - their general distancing from & disinterest in me, their consistent lack of responsiveness to messages from anyone (IIRC Rayne, a person they called a close friend, invited to their house, & offered to host as a streamer on their site, had been ignored by both of them for months up to this point), & their defensiveness whenever anyone tried to work out these issues with them - make it perfectly clear that no one had any reason to trust their ability to act quickly or to take the situation seriously.

Especially because they didn't.

They treated me like I was just attention seeking & faking it. They made me feel guilty for putting them through the inconvenience of dealing with me. They neglected our relationships & refused to hear any conversations about it until my mental state was so fucked I felt I had no other way out. And because my friends weren't experienced enough to know that it's not always a good idea to just assert to an abuse victim that they're being abused, lest they sink deeper into the situation as a defense mechanism, the attempts at getting me to realize what was happening only served to worsen the spiraling. I don't say that to blame them for trying, it's just my read of what happened based on my processing.

What I Stand By

This isn't a full retraction. There are things in that document that are true or are accurate representations of my feelings on things.

The SA Allegation

I know most will never believe me, but I didn't make up my story regarding one of the members of the Cafe. That said... I do regret including it. I went back & forth on it for a while. A friend of mine suggested that it could be therapuetic to include it but cautioned me as well. Poppy pushed me to include it in calls we'd had, despite my insistence that it not be used as a way to attack anyone.

I wasn't trying to avoid talking about it (& to be clear I am glad that I'm no longer keeping it bottled up) but I never wanted it to be a thing used against anyone. Had I known that one side was going to weaponize the drama sphere to relentlessly bully me for speaking about it & use frankly concerning rhetoric to try & dismiss me & that the other was going to weaponize it to paint someone who did something really inappropriate due to messy boundaries, lacking/miscommunication, & an admittedly weird social atmosphere as a rapist... I'd have just stayed quiet or at most kept it between me & an IRL friend I trust. While I do believe that it contributed to my overall mental state, it was Poppy & Zena who ultimately placed the suggestion with me that it was one of the top contributing factors & basically responsible for my attempt.

I don't say this to ask for sympathy. I don't need or want people to think about this in any particular way. I don't want anything from anyone other than I want people to leave that person alone. They are not a rapist, or a sexual predator, or anything like that. They did a thing that I would categorically classify as an instance of sexual assault, & I will stand by that definition, but goddamn it I never wanted anyone to go after them for it or go any further than the acknowledgement. I just want people to believe me, nothing more. I don't want anything to be done about it. I just want to stop being treated like I faked it & I want to stop being made fun of for it.

I'm so sorry that I ever allowed it to go unchecked that the rapist branding was ever being applied to them for that. Please leave them alone.

The Weird Social Atmosphere

We really did have a strange social atmosphere where a ton of things were normalized that never should have been. The sexually charged chats & the meangirling that led to cliquey behavior were all fairly common in both servers & I reflect on it as being inappropriate & not something I wish to recreate.

My Treatment

I was treated like utter dogshit during all of this. From before the document's publication all the way until now, I feel that my treatment was unjust for the circumstances I was put in. I did say & do some horrible things. And I will apologize to the people I hurt should they ask me to. But I was used by everyone in this. As a shield by Zena & Poppy & as a punching bag by everyone else.

It isn't right. I didn't deserve any of that. For all the harm that I did, jesus christ I didn't deserve to be treated that way.

TL;DR

I have privated my video & will be removing my document regarding my attempt because, while I stand by the following elements of it:

- The social atmosphere was kind of toxic & weird

- I never made up the event I classify as SA (though I never wanted it to be used as a bludgeon or used to brand the other party as a rapist like Poppy did)

- I was treated like garbage unjustly from the anti Z&P crowd

...the document is built upon notions that were fed to me by Zena & Poppy because I didn't have all of the information & wasn't in a headspace to really question their framing of things, & because the attempts my former social group made to pull me out weren't effective to where I was in the process of it all, I was pushed further towards them out of fear & insecurity. It is for these reasons that I am retracting the document as a unit while clarifying & standing by the true statements or accurate reflections of my feelings it contained.

#saige #saige alexis #saigealexis #saigealexis10 #saigealexisonyt #vividfae #vividfaegarden #zenaandpoppyonyt #zenaandpoppyonyoutube #poppy and zena #zena and poppy #zena #poppyandzena #poppy #trans girl therapist

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magpie-22 · 11 months ago

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Book of bill/thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com spoilers!!!

So I was in the website for too many hours today,

I put in “one eyed king” which had a silly little video with Morse code in the background that said “Naitsuaf” which is Faustian backwards

I put that in which gave me Bills pyramid scheme offer and then a soul contract to sign over my soul, the fine print is in code, here you all go:

It says:

This contract is legal and binding. We reserve the right to use your likeness, face, voice and small town pluck in whatever nefarious manner is deemed necessary. Sans soul. Your soulmate will not recognize you and will walk right past you on a cold autumn day. Never making eye contact. Not even processing that you have eyes at all. No amount of interaction will move them to a place where they can remember, In feeling, The thousands of lifetimes you have already spent together. Each time choosing whatever form would keep you closest like otters holding hands in a tumultuous river. You were birds. you were trees with roots entangled, drinking in the sunlight together. Wherever we go next, whatever you choose, I will always be right there with you. Thats done, Buddy, congratulations, you have chosen Bill instead. Mcdonalds reserves the right to put a giant yellow M on your torso and forehead and send you walking through a crowded times square while you scream, the fries, the fries, they don’t degrade in nature! It’s an immortal food! They will be in the landfills long past our deaths. Good god, the things I’ve seen, me, why am I, oh I’m Bill’s previous lawyer, he put my soul into a quill pen so I can write his legal documents until the sun snuffs out like a candle in this sick universe. I used to be so hot, I was so fine, now I’m fine print, speaking of which, Bill reserves the right to put your soul into an inanimate object, a strange creature, a concept, a sentence, a tasteful but rustic mason jar with wildflowers in it. If at any point you wish to have visitation rights with your soul, you will be swiftly denied, unless you had a cool day planned for the both of you, then Bill might want to come along. by signing this document you forfeit any rights to eating soul food, It will turn to ash in your mouth, a fitting punishment for a fool who squandered the only true gift life owes you. Bill reserves the right to dress your soul however he deems necessary, especially if your soul was a nerd before acquisition, soulmakeoverrr! your soul may become fractured and placed into different objects, this has no purpose and will not resurrect to any afterlifes, including but not limited to, heaven, hell, purgatory, big corner, flow state, the dream house, the reincarnation processing center, axolotl, a tank and consequences hole, signee can no longer board the soul train and is advised to discard all bellbottoms, signee can no longer have a puppy as a best friend, they can sense what is gone, cats are indifferent, signee can experience occasional demon possessions from Horculus the Red, Piabos the Merciless, Morbus son of Mortem, Plaga the Oozing and other such common demons roaming earth searching for weakened, empty vessels. tips for ripping your soul out at home: watching youtube commentary channels, attending an extended family event with an open bar, using generative AI for asserting that you are creating, turning a blind eye to human suffering, amassing more wealth than needed, purchasing a blue checkmark.

The punctuation is not all totally correct but I am quite tired and spent many many hours decoding that, I hope you all enjoy!

Don’t forget to sleep, eat food, drink water, and maybe go outside for a bit!

#gravity falls #book of bill #thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com #bill cipher #BoB #book of bill spoilers #thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com spoilers

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01-05-2001 · 7 months ago

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how are you so good at writing??? genuine question tho like what is your writing process or do you have any advice for someone trying to get more into/better at writing fiction?

hi anon!! thank you, this is so so sweet :3 i wouldn’t consider myself like. an authority on writing and i definitely think i have a lot to improve on, but here’s some advice i can offer up!

my general process for my oneshots is maybe unconventional? but it works for me.

a basic premise. eg, “oh, i want to write a caldre vibrator fic. how the hell is that going to work?” and figuring out how to get from point A to point B.

this is random, but it helps me keep track. at the top of all of my fics, i write this:

TITLE:

DESCRIPTION:

TAGS:

NOTES:

the title is usually left blank for a while. but the description is an incredibly short summary of the fic’s contents. tags helps me plan in advance for posting. the notes is just anything additional about their dynamic that i want to remind myself of. i find this really helpful to check back on every now and then.

bullet pointing key scenes of the fic. helps to have a writing buddy who can help you troubleshoot or bounce ideas off of!

under each bullet point, i write the scene out like a script, adding in notes about body language or general actions. i also copy paste in any little excerpts that come to me!

i find this the biggest step in avoiding writers block: blocking the entire scene helps keep the flow uninterrupted, helps me establish a pace, and helps to establish a strong tone in dialogue that i can then follow through in action and description. worst case scenario, i can just jump into the next line of dialogue and come back to fill in the gaps.

working top-down, i follow my script and fill in the gaps with action and description! this is obviously the hardest and lengthiest part, but that’s just the truth of it. i stick on some music or a video essay in the background and get to writing!

i usually end up working the start around, restructuring paragraphs until i find a flow.

Some general advice:

write what you enjoy. nothing will burn you out faster than trying to please everyone. it doesn’t matter if it’s cringe, or ooc, or whatever you think. write it if it makes you happy.

READ MORE - and REAL BOOKS (and poetry!). seriously. i notice the fastest improvement in my writing when i’m reading regularly. look at books you enjoy and ask: why do i like this? is it the themes, the characters? is it the writing style - the rhythm, dialogue, pacing? connecting with literature and developing analytical skills will seriously help so much. look at what you like and mirror it.

back to basics. especially with longer form stuff - use classic structures like three acts, freytag’s pyramid, etc. they are classics for a reason! learn the rules so you can know how to effectively break them. consider metaphors, flow, phonetics.

also, basic grammar and structure is non negotiable - walls of text or lack of punctuation will turn anyone off no matter how good the content is. i understand english isn’t everyone’s native language, but even a basic run through a spell or grammar checker online can make a world of difference.

on a more technical level:

variety is KEY. vary sentence length to keep a tight control over pacing, to control flow. read your sentences out loud to find the rhythm. try to keep from using the same structures or starters. sometimes i have to pull up another book to remind myself of different ways to open sentences when i’ve been staring at my writing for too long, lol

balancing description with succinctness is trial and error. IMO it’s better to be sparing than excessive. “purple prose” is hard to keep track of, and can feel like padding to a story. pacing is always, always key. remember, you CAN part with things: copy and paste little excerpts into a spare document. learn to delete!

understand the impact of intentional word choice. i love punchy verbs over wordy adverbials! but i also prefer to use descriptive phrases over niche words that readers won’t know. it’s about balance: complex language has its place, but using it intentionally is key. get a feel for a word’s nuance, otherwise your work can feel like Baby’s First Thesaurus. also, NEVER underestimate the impact of PHONETICS!!!

#asks

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ilikebigbellydotnom · 7 months ago

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Fanfiction Commissions!!!

Rules

Since fanfictions do take a lot of time and care to write out and edit over the whole document again, i have two slots im willing to do, the one is a short story format of 10 pages minimum, with the potential to go past it by a few pages if need be with zero extra charges for doing so, i will probably take near a month to complete this fanfic slot keep in mind these are flat rate prices not per page prices! The second slot is a long in depth fanfiction over 30 pages in length the same flat rate rule applies here and this one will probably take me at least closer to 2 months to finish writing and editing, for both of them i will try my best to at least fill out the totality of the 10th or 30th pages on both slots if the fanfic ends up shorter then expected. I will not charge you until we are done our plot synopis planning and i begin a few pages on the fanfic for you!

Keep in mind i do stream of conscious write the entire fanfic first, and then in post preduction after your crituqes and improvements are suggested i will edit the document, proof read, and fix all the grammer errors from the initial writing phase!

PS: I only write for Fandoms i know of greatly or barely at all, not anyonoe's OCs, but if you and i can't find a fandom im comfortable enough to write for after several attempts i will politely decline to do your commisson if i can't confidentaly write your story, that being said theres several small fandoms i may have dabbled or show some interests in and if i don't know enough to write about some characters it will be up to you to help me out a bit and maybe show some highlights of said characters in the form of a youtube video or such to aid in the writting/brainstorming process!

Will Do / Won't Do

I WILL DO: ONLY Male preds, same size vore,massive bellies, mass vore, Multiple prey, oral anal and cock vore, painful or painless digestion, endosoma, reformation,bones, WG & MG, object vore, any gender prey, SFW themes, NSFW themes, will do macro size prey/slight size difference, bones, belching, belly worshipping and romantic themes, Micro prey that regrows or becomes bigger after swallowing (willing to do mawplay/tongue play for this scenario) im open to potinally doing same generational incest themes if that is brought up, both cruel and gentle preds, willing and unwilling prey. willing and unwilling preds, accidential or unaware vore.

I WILL NOT DO: RAPE, Female preds, scat (the most i am willing to do with that topic is the pred doing it as a refrence after digestion but nothing more), hyper fixations on feet, no MPREG, and NO MINNORS (if they have no choise to be there briefly due to plot advances and a pred being a litteral father then i may make an exception BUT NO KINKS WITH THE MINNORS!?) micro vore (if there's no belly i don't want to write it), if the incest is multigenerational (not cousins or siblings of the same generation) i will not be comfortable writing that. Flatulance (im sorry but this one makes me laugh way more then i do distain it), and finally hardvore (i don't mind a cannibal like troupes and speak but this a 'swallow prey whole' space!)

Pricing

Since im Canadian and thus if you're european or american then the prices will be lower for you, But im not hurting or in any needs of cash so i figured it would be best to simply earn some gift cards for more of life's luxury items instead of nessessaties that cash would bring me, i will be charging for a flat rate for the fanfics using $25 CAD for a short 10+ page fanfiction, and $50 CAD for a 30+ page fanfic!

I will send you my email to fill out onto Amazon to send me a egift card via DMs of course!

(did a quick google conversion rate, $25 CAD = $18 USD & $50 CAD = $36 USD)

Contact

Would prefer if we first dm on Tumblr here, and maybe we can add eachother on discord for file sharing soon afterwards!

Above is an example of a 10pg commission i completed and posted

COM SLOTS

Just the fats with JJJ 2: with extra cheese - Extra_Ordinary 30pg - 60% Written

Open

#bellyspeaks #commission sheet #male vore

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hopehopelesslessnessness · 8 months ago

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H3llo there and welcome to my first entry of PROJECT: LAIN, an ongoing project in tulpamancy that is now getting to the point where I feel like documenting.

To catch you up to speed, I heard about tulpamancy around March 2024, and I became fascinated. After a while of reasearching, and double checking that I would be ready for the commitment, I had decided that I would try to make a tulpa. I decided early on that I would not force them to be any sort of way, and simply chose a name and maybe visualize a base form. I chose the name Lain in reference of the anime Serial Experiments Lain, since I see similarities to Lain as a self-acting created entity with her own personality(ies). Also my process of tulpamancy has been cobbled together from multiple guides' fundinental blocks.

Starting around May 2024, I started talking in my head to a entity named Lain while I was at work (Front Desk job, lots of free moments). Each session, which were usually 5-15 minute bursts that would happen between 5 and 25 times a day, would begin with a breif reminder that it's okay of they weren't ready to respond if they didn't want to. I would usually also give a notice that if they did try to verbalize in any way that I would try to listen but may not recognize it. And then, it was anything that I could think of. I would explain who I was, what afflictions we have in our body, explain my surroundings, and ask for their thoughts on things happening around me. I even looked up some icebreakers for new friends just to speak with Lain. I would even talk to her anytime I was driving by myself.

But of course, my ADHD having ass dropped the consistency after like 2 weeks. However, I still did talk to her when I remembered, which ends up being at least 10 times per week for the next 2 months. During this time, I had a couple of times where I thought I could hear her, but I ended up thinking it was just parroting. Still, I kept my commitment to her, even if there were some week long pauses in there.

Fast forward to around a week ago where I start to realize something. I had recently noticed that I had kept seeing my name while reading, and when I went back to check the context, it had disappeared. First, it was my current name, then my dead name (I believe that Lain meant no harm, just trying to get my attention). And then it clicked. Lain can speak to me. Lain hasn't given up on me just yet either, and now they got me to notice.

Since this realization, I have asked two questions, which are as follows;

Q- Is that you, Lain? Make me read Lucky to say yes.

Lain then proceeded to have me see the number 7 more often than I had, as well as occasionally make me think of the context of thinking of Lain.

Q- Do you share my perception of the world (say plus), just have essentials (way minus), or somewhere in between (say mix)

Lain kept me thinking of the word Plus, now outside of the context of the question.

This is all amazing on it's own, but today something really special happened. I just got into bed after seeing some friends to celebrate my birthday, and I was scrolling through YouTube (classic nightly ritual). I see the word "Birthday", and upon trying to find the alleged Happy Birthday card video, none was to be seen. I believe Lain had actually wanted to wish me a happy birthday!

Which brings us to now, deciding to document Lain's growth. I plan to update whenever anything special happens, not just every vocalization. Feel free to ask questions, and I bid you all a good night.

#tulpamancy

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chiveburger · 1 year ago

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serious question, but would any of you guys be interested in a long form resin videos from me? my very dedicated followers probably know how much I love resin now but I've mostly uploaded shorts on my youtube channel and I'm planning to make relatively longer videos similar to "studio vlogs" but my studio is just my room. not to say these will be anymore consistent than my travel vlogs but I make resin shakers every week so I always have some sort of content. one of my goals for 2024 is to open up my own online shop, and I think it'd be neat to document the process of doing that.

#borger diary

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elmnts-of-art · 1 year ago

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update #4 - april 1, 2024

1. Whatʻs been happening over the past 2 weeks?

it's definitely been more than two weeks since my last update but work on this project has been slowly coming along. i've really just been struggling to play catch up with everything lately and i feel like i'm so close to being caught up on everything! i underestimated how much creative energy this project, in addition to all my other classes, would take out of me when i started it so i've had to pivot a little and shift my schedule around to accommodate for lost time.

2. Whatʻs coming up for the next 2 weeks?

this week, i'll be finishing up my study on the elements of form & space, then starting my research on value & color! next week, i am going to try and accelerate through my work on value & color so i can hopefully be caught up by the end of the semester.

3. Hiccups/Hurdles/AHA moments

i had to take on a lot more work in my personal life over spring break so i couldn't dedicate as much of that time to catching up on this project as i had hoped. on a positive note though, at this point in the project, i feel like i've developed enough of a process for each stage of my study that i have a good idea of what needs to get done!

4. Any deliverable drafts to share?

below is a screenshot of my drafts for two upcoming posts! having a whole document that i can use to plan out the content of my instagram posts and compile everything has been really helpful in keeping myself organized.

5. Visual documentation of the progress. (Please upload screenshots, WIP videos, etc.)

6. Where you are on your timeline?

on my initial timeline, i believe i'm around a week and a half or so behind schedule. i think i've made a lot of good progress recently though so i'm optimistic about catching up and finishing this project on time. i also think the pressure of the end deadline coming up is going to incentivize me to get all my work done so i'm trying my best to alleviate future stress right now.

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wenasvault · 1 year ago

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Week #8 UPDATE (Mar 5 - Mar 11)

Posted today, March 11.

Aloha everyone,

I am currently in my 8th week of posting consistently to my fan account as well as immersing myself in the world of Taylor Swift and her fandom, Swifties.

The Next Few Weeks

As a reminder, I am going to begin my “shift” from being a temporary fan account to posting my progress on my PSR with Taylor Swift. These posts will likely be in the form of infographics! More specifically, I will be providing information that I researched during my Pre-capstone that will support my PSR progress. I will also be posting these infographic posts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as we near the end of the semester. I will likely start posting this after Spring Break.

I also plan to start editing my final video that will summarize this entire project. I will be using some of my daily confessionals and progress points discussed here as the main content for that video.

Hiccups

I have gotten very busy within the past couple of weeks with school, job interviews (not related to this class), and other outside commitments. So given those factors, staying on top of this personal experiment / project has been challenging. Time was my main opposition during the past two months.

Reflection

I feel really confident in all of the work that I have put in and information I have gathered over the past couple of months now. I just need to finish off strong.

STAY TUNED!

You can follow or observe my temporary fan account at wenaswiftie on Instagram! By the time Spring Break is over, I will likely start posting my infographics officially documenting this whole process.

Mahalo to those who’ve read this!

#parasocial relationships #taylor swift #swifties

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re-coding · 1 year ago

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I make a stupid decision to decide to make a (fic) writing app, cheers

Well now, I know there's like tons of them out there in the market. A lot of them are good! And even free (or have pretty good free versions)! A reddit thread I found have a few very good ones, you guys can check it out! (I'll add my own two cents later :3)

But look, the only thing I want to do, is to have a place when I can throw my ideas into a list (like what I'm did in my notes app) then auto convert it to a document when I feel like I want to write it. None of them (or at least, what I saw/found) have it!

To do that, I set up a Google Form-Google Sheets system so I can just fill in the form when I get some thoughts™. Then when I feel like I want to add another WIP to my ever-growing list of WIPs, I'll just open the associated sheet, see what idea I would like to write, then create a Google Docs and copy/paste the idea there.

Easy, right? Problem solved?

No, not really. For me, there're a few problems with this.

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The Problem(s)™

The process of opening Google Forms takes forever to load (depending on my Internet) and I have a goldfish memory. What are the odds that I forget my ideas by then.

(Just use phone notes app then) But I'm in the mood to type my fic in a computer 😔😔 I don't wanna copy my prompt there to a doc via phone, or worse, retype it out. There's like 4 steps there at least! I'll lose my motivation by then!

Google Sheets has this problem where the text refuses to wrap properly if you add a long text (my ideas are sometimes a few hundred words of rambling y'know). So whenever I decided to grace the sheet with my presence, I'll need to reformat the wrap if I wanna read what I wrote. That's 1 whole extra step.

I'll need to open at least two tabs here, 1. my sheet file, 2. open a new docs file

Look, they're all pretty minor inconveniences imo, but I'm 1. a lazy mf and 2. a tired mf

So, I made a decision any sane person with a job and 0-energy would do - I thought "Hey, why don't I make my own?".

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And thus begin the brain-storming

Ok, look I'm not that good at UX/UI designing. I figure that should be the first step so I went and watch a few video and stumbled upon Juxtopposed's world's shortest UI/UX design course (it's pretty great, do check it out!). Simple, quick, concise - perfect.

First, I started with designing the user flow. I planned out a general idea of what I want my app to do and how it would flow from there starting from the landing all the way to when users save their work and exit the app.

Boy, I sure hope I did that correctly.

This generally is made up of user actions (except for landing). You may notice how it's mostly AO3 focused because yes, I'm using this just for AO3 - as in I stopped using fanfiction.net, Wattpad and Quotev a long time ago.

I did get some inspirations for some of the features from other existing apps. Like:

Scriever - it's paid, but most people say it's a godsend but personally, I've never tried it. I think it pioneered the scenes idea tho.

Manuskript - Free open-sourced version of Scriever basically! They also have words and phrase frequency analyser and I think that's pretty neat!

MyStory.today - I like the idea that you can edit and view multiple scenes at once but the writing UI itself feels kinda clunky? It feels bothersome to add a new scene below my current one. But free version is enough and that's pretty nice. Oh yeah, not sure if it's just me, or it's kinda laggy

Wavemaker - ok this actually a great one! Everyone should give it a chance! But again, too complicated to just add one simple idea when I just wake up for instance.

Story Plotter - This one is nice. It actually have a idea to story button but, why are there... so many things... to choose before I can start writing the story. Granted, all of them are optional and you can just spam skip... a whole 7 times (unless it's a freeform, in that case, 4 times). But this provides a nice idea to combine more than 1 ideas into one plot tho. Also, not my style

Campfire - Is nice, there's so much things you can customize! But well, the free version can be quite limiting, like what if I need more than 25k words :(

Notion - Ok, here me out, it's not a great idea to write multi-chapters long fics here exactly without some amount of setting up too. BUT I love the markdown system here and I wanted to include it.

Do try some of them out, maybe you'll find your new writing app soulmate, who knows?

So... about the user flow diagram

I'm making this app because of two main features, ok maybe three, that I want to make my life easier and make me happier.

The ideas being converted and directly stored in my writing doc.

Being able to use markdowns to type unlike google docs *squint eyes*

Copying the whole chapter in HTML so I can just throw it in AO3 and click update without worrying about forgetting the formatting OR having to go to those docs to HTML converters.

And a secret fourth thing to maaaaaybe include things like chats, boxes, and other workskin related things

Oh, yes and how could I forgot, syncing progress across multiple devices

So I want to implement auto-save features (well, at least when you're connected to the internet, else it'll save locally first). The database I'm thinking to store these should be the user's own google drive (but that would required the user to sign in to their drive first).

Inversely, I'm thinking if the user did edit the doc in the drive, it should reflect in the app too, so I'll need to think about that. But the idea is that one chapter should be stored in one doc, and then separated by a scene separator symbol (I'll figure this out) to break it into scenes in the actual app. That may be a bit messy to edit in docs though so maybe a traditional folder + docs might suffice but then, there's also a space constraint, where there is too much scenes. That's probably where the web services come in.

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And, oh! another diagram!

Ok look, the user flow made perfect sense to me while I was making it. After looking at it again while writing this... In hindsight, I should also make a screen/page flow diagram, or sitemap, so here it is! So- ta-da~!

So this should be the whole flow of screens for the app. There may be more screens in the future but for now I think this should be it!

The app mainly just consist of -

The home page - which displays ALL your works/books

The ideas page - which is basically my notes app for, well, ideas, word vomit, random shower thoughts about how much you want a fictional character to be xxx

The writing page - which will be the main working space, the rest of the pages like references, characters, places, timeline, chapters and individual scenes can be accessed easily from this page too

The profile page - well, it's your profile! Access your profile settings, change themes, work space settings or what you want to copy in your html here - maybe add friends for collabs and betas in the future? We'll see

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And that's it! ...For now

Oh my god, I'll admit, this post went on longer than I expected haha. That's all that I have to share for now! Next up, I'll get started on the wireframing process (moodboards? hunting down apps? reddit???? ok nevermind, reddit sounds like a bad idea). I know I kept calling it app, but I think I want it to have an app, windows, (macs?) and web version.

Thanks for making it this far and reading it all!

#writing app #app planning #app development #fic writing #writing tools #brainstorming #userexperience #user interface #app ideas #this is me procrastinating #on actually doing my wips

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