thebluedragoncat

[thebluedragoncat]

wolf face. -> :P

[thebluedragoncat]

Inspirational

@cephalopodvictorious @paleoart @johannesviii

[thebluedragoncat]

*scribbles in notes* not legal contract. Thank you for the reminder! In my effort to be thorough and comprehensive I forget clarity my guy. This is a genuine thank you!

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[thebluedragoncat]

I was gifted a revelation:

WARHAMMER 40,000 AS PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

Do now the question is: which wrestler is which primarch?

Here are my suggestions, with my logic behind each choice:

Horus Lupercal: Triple H. He's literally a genius strategist and evil as hell but also kinda cool.

Leman Russ: Roman Reigns. Big wolf boi energy.

Ferrus Manus: Damian Priest. He seems like the guy to just pummel the shit out of you.

Fulgrim: Shawn Michaels. Horny af.

Vulkan: Mark Henry. Big black guy who's really nice.

Rogal Dorn: Gunther. Smile? What is that? We're here for business.

Roboute Guilliman: Cody Rhodes. The babyface of all babyfaces.

Magnus the Red: Seth Rollins. Have you seen his outfits?

Sanguinius: CM Punk. Literally no one hates him for some reason.

Lion El'Johnson: Randy Orton. Kinda dark and edgy, his good guy/bad guy status is kinda fluctuating.

Perturabo: Drew MacIntyre. Hates everything and everyone. Especially Dorn/Punk.

Mortarion: The Undertaker. The slow, ominous, unending march of doom.

Lorgar: Bray Wyatt. Creepy cult leader guy.

Jaghatai Khan: Rey Mysterio. Fast, kick your ass before you realize your ass is exposed. Cool as hell.

Konrad Curze: Edge. Literally insane.

Angron: Kane. Big angry red thing.

Crovus Corax: John Cena. You can't see him.

Alpharius Omegon: Chad Gable. Charismatic and kinda weird, technically bad guy but also good? Plotting, scheming, etc.

[thebluedragoncat]

"The Wonderful Adventures of Bea Andrews" has updated!

Poll:

Your friend needs help, but you are stuck talking to someone very annoying.

Read "The Wonderful Adventures of Bea Andrews" on Wattpad for free!

[thebluedragoncat]

"The Wonderful Adventures of Bea Andrews" will hopefully update either today (29/8/24) or over the weekend. I will post a poll once I have the book updated

[thebluedragoncat]

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been posting. Been feeling discouraged by the stats recently. Got a bit of the "writer self-deprecating big sads" and I am not sure if my books are decent or if I'm just yelling into the void rn. I struggle with setting my expectations of myself on the ceiling instead of at a normal level, and I am working on learning to lower those expectations. All stories start at zero reads.

[thebluedragoncat]

I am so sorry. "The Wonderful Adventures of Bea Andrews" is still updating! I have had a week of very turbulent weather (severe thunderstorms, hail, mentions of tornadoes, power surges/flickers, usual North America things)

Apology poll:

You have an awkward interaction with someone of the opposite gender, then run into your friend immediately after.

[thebluedragoncat]

if you're cringing at the genre conventions of the genre you are writing in then why the hell are you writing in it. either have something substantial to say about those conventions or shut the hell up! i will not cringe alongside you at superhero powers and spaceship battles and big eldritch worms and bone magic. i came to this story to SEE that shit and I don't appreciate it when an author tries to pretend they're above the very things they're selling themselves on

[thebluedragoncat]

I love seeing people’s picrew art styles because you can just look at them and be like

“You read homestuck and it was a big part of your life for a few years, you’re not into steven universe but you did watch it, and you had an intense black butler phase in middle school and doodled their eyes over and over again in your spiral notebooks”

[thebluedragoncat]

This is really cool y'all should check it out ^^^^

Imma try some fiction now.

Help... (no idea how many words this is)

Chapter 1: Pre-Game

The crowd was deafening in the way only several tens of thousands of people could be, or possibly several dozen very loud cats right next to your ear as you try to enjoy a nice bit of chicken.

They had already been seated for nearly an hour, and the cheerleaders were getting tired. They could only juggle swords and breathe fire and perform complicated acrobatics for so long, and the crowd was already on their second or third round of watery beer, and wanted to see more violence than the fully-armoured cheerleaders could muster (the full armour came about from a strike regarding an attempt to put them in too-revealing uniforms while still performing the dangerous stunts aforementioned, and the cheerleaders, like most people, liked keeping their body parts attached to the rest of them).

It was all deliberate though, the Managers had planned out the opening ceremonies of every game precisely. Keep the crowd entertained and pull in a few more miscellaneous coins from additional merchandise purchases, and only start the game when the fans were in a near-riotous stage, which made the game all the more entertaining and kept them running to the snack stalls in every pause of the game to sate their now-voracious appetites (being angry in a hot stadium did that to one's caloric intake). It also added to the spectacle of when the teams were introduced. As they would be now.

Trumpets blared and drums pounded in the theme music of the visiting team, the Kasbak Freehold Thunder-Hammers as they ran onto the pitch while the cheerleaders made their ways to the side-lines. The Thunder-Hammer fans —Thammers—roared as if on cue (which they were: a small goblin in the front row in team colours lifted a large sign that said "cheere ye, cheere ye") as their blue-and-white bedecked favourites made two rows and faced the mass of blue that were their fans, and began their as-carefully-as-three-dozen-overmuscled-and-not-quite-enough-brained-men-could-choreograph chant. It featured mostly yelling at the tops of their lungs, pounding their chests, and stomping. The fans repeated the chant barely a millisecond behind the team, creating a rather interesting spectacle, similar to how a parent and child practise saying the same words at the same time but the child is a little behind the beat.

The KFTH slammed their fists into the ground, a very suitable finish for a team comprising mostly of orcs, two trolls, and a half-dozen dwarfs, all of whom see punching the ground as very intimidating. Especially when you leave dints in the turf. The Thammer crowd roared its support, and the team trundled their way to the sidelines, where they partook in copious amounts of swearing at each other and fans while drinking enough fluid to drown a very large fish. That was as much part of the spectacle as the chant was, symbolizing to fans their eagerness to play and to win.

The crowd began to murmur in a terrifying cohesion as the trumpets held a quiet but long note like a hose that wasn't turned fully off. It slowly grew with the drums building up an off-kilter rhythm, culminating in three dis-chords that the crowd shouted along to. These three chords of questionable musical composition (any music teacher could talk at length about how the chromatic progression rife with minor sevenths, minor seconds, and tritones made it an instant failure of any music theory exam) repeated with the crowd's participation as the Markoth City Partizans took to the pitch. The Partizans didn't have a chant that the team performed, but the thirty thousand fans had more than made up for it by forcing a melody and lyrics onto the "Three Chords of Doom" that was their official theme music. It went roughly along the lines of:

"Partizans will not die!

We will kill you!

Death to the opponent!

Kill! Kill! Kill!"

(It cannot be said that the fans had more poetic ability than the players, who at least had the excuse of multiple head injuries)

Instead of a war chant, the Partizans assembled in a square formation at centre field and stomp rhythmically, raising their fists alternatively with each stomp.

Once the fans' homemade chant died into more rabid cheering, the team sent to their side of the pitch, and the officials appeared. They had no fanfare, as no one much liked the officials except the Officials Guild, who ensured they at least got paid regularly. Once the officials dispersed to their places on the pitch, the head referee, in this case a slightly pudgy yet athletic man with the name "Onager" stitched onto his linen doublet, stood officially at centre, with a hands-behind-back-and-legs-slightly-apart stance that all head referees were taught in the Official Official's Handbook provided by the Officials' Guild.

Once Onager was in this stance, the captains of both teams came to meet him. The KFTH had Berhard Pavyn, the Partizans had Loeghr Falhalf. Fanfare continued as Onager held up the Official gold coin to determine who would receive the ball first. He carefully made a show of showing it off to the crowd and captains, despite the fact it was merely the size of a cat's paw print, and then hefted it into the air with lethal amounts of backspin.

"Crown!" Falhalf shouted. As the home-team captain he had the right to choose which side he wanted the coin to show upon landing. The coin didn't listen half the time.

"Shield," Onager said with pomp. "The Thunder-Hammers will choose to receive or kick."

No one in the crowd heard a blessed thing, but helpful eagle-eyed fans in the front rows held up homemade signs with crude crowns and shields on them to indicate to the seething masses above them what was occurring.

Pavyn considered his options. "I think we shall kick," he said after a sufficiently pregnant pause. Signs were lifted, crowd cheered and shouted.

"The Thunder-Hammers shall kick the ball!" Onager bellowed officially. Both captains then made their way to their teams and relayed the pertinent information.

On the KFTH side, the coach, a particularly rotund orc named Khaligorn was ferociously scribbling at his large slate with a chalk.

"We gotsta move fast! The Partz are good at runnin, and we have to get to where they goin faster then they do! And when we gets there, we hits them harder then they hits us!" He began pouting to the surrounding players. "Loustin and Harrok will be at the edges, Pavyn near left, Joggban far right. Golshak, Urrig, and Pagh take centre! I want the trolls taking up the rear in case their runners and blitzers break through! The rest of you know your places! Gayns! Kick and run a boar's leg after!"

Bealdric Gayns nodded with careful emotionlessness, then began muttering as soon as he ran into the pitch and out of Khaligorn's hearing.

"Boar's leg! He's lost it! I'm basically playing a blitzer! Yes I can run and block halfway decent, but be a spare blitzer?! Madness I say! This has to be a false play to make me look intimidating and lead their runner into Loustin and Joggban. It's the only way!"

By the end of this short monologue Bealdric was at his position, roughly twenty years behind centre, where Onager officially handed him the official game ball, and stood with his official stance a few feet away, whistle in his lips ready to blow the official start of the game.

Bealdric lined up his kick, gauging the weight of the ball and tried to see where the Partizans had placed their receiver/runner. He also tried to calculate where the boar's leg run would take him, and specifically which of the Partizans' ogre blockers he would be concussed by in the next half-minute.

He steadied himself.

He released the ball gently while taking a soft jump forward, his right leg starting it's pendulous swing.

He connected with the ball.

Onager blew his whistle with all the officially he could push from his lungs.

The ball arced at a perfect 62 degree angle over centre.

The game had begun

[thebluedragoncat]

tips for getting people to like your ocs

*disclaimer: this is based on what’s worked for me, aka an artist that likes to make comics/storyboards. so this advice is directed at people who do that

you can do things like this:

but frankly, I don’t think most people engage with this (at least I personally don’t).

My main piece of advice is: get better at writing.

That might sound harsh, but let me explain what I mean!

What I tend to do is just throw characters into situations with as little handholding as I can. Give enough context that readers can follow along, but don’t feel like they’re being explained to.

what can you learn about the characters through their designs alone? (age, personality, economic status, occupation, etc)

what can you learn about the characters’ relationship though their interactions alone? (are they close? familial? romantic? is there hostility? are they tense/relaxed?)

what are the characters currently doing? what were they doing previously (how long have they been talking)? what are they going to do next? can you convey this without dialogue?

how do they feel about what they are doing? are they content? focused? over/understimulated? would they rather be doing something else?

where are they? does it matter? would establishing a setting in at least one panel clarify the scene? is there anything in the enviroment that could tell some of the story?

what time of day is it? what time of year is it? what is the weather like?

Now, with all this in mind, I'm going to give you another example. I'm going to use completely brand new characters for the sake of the experiment, so you won't have any bias.

Did this get more of an emotional response from you than the first example? Why do you think so? Who are these characters? How do they know each other? What else can you infer about them? What happened? Who is "she"?

Now, you don't have to actually answer all those questions. But think about them! You can tell people a whole lot about your characters without ever showing them a list of their likes and dislikes.

Obviously, comics aren't the only way to get people invested in your original characters! But regardless, easily digestible formats will grab people's attention faster than huge blocks of text, and comics are a lot less work than doing wholeass storyboards.

Now go and share your ocs with the world!!!

[thebluedragoncat]

Can confirm. I am very excited when I do see a comment or vote/like/read/whatever. It makes my day.

you COMMENT on fic? you comment on the story like it's worth something? oh! oh! love for reader! love for reader for One Thousand Years!!!!

[thebluedragoncat]

"Chai" updates tomorrow (Aug. 13th) @ 12:30 MDT.

Teaser poll:

You are baking with a friend.

Read Chai on Wattpad for free:

[thebluedragoncat]

Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

Members of the press generally aren’t allowed to freely circulate at nicer galas/events without a very good reason. When they do, they need to identify themselves before talking with someone.