#40 drafts in my thing but its cool

[sanctus-ingenium]

I’m really inspired by your world building and the creatures you use. I’m trying to kickstart my own world using Celtic, Norse and Scottish myths (it also involves werewolves because they’re cool)

But I’m stumped and a bit overwhelmed. How’d you start your project and what were huge sources of inspiration for you as you worked on The Black Horse?

hi there!!! this will probably get wordy i have a lot of thoughts on this but here's how i built up my inver setting

i had the characters first, and the werewolf establishment was basically the first thing invented about the world. I wrote a decent amount about the characters in the pre-1st draft slush pile just getting a handle on their voices, their history together, etc. the first slush draft was in painstaking chronological order telling of their lives from birth to like age 40 - it wasn't pretty to read but it meant I knew what big moments formed their worldview, their relationships with others, things like that. and then i got to pick and choose which ones would feature in the actual 1st draft, and which i would leave unsaid, in flashback form, or only in the form of vague allusions. the plot and world events changed significantly as i wrote the actual 1st draft so this ended up only being useful for backstory stuff and not book plots, but it was still good to have.

There was an important moment of a character being kidnapped into a faery realm, which is what started me off thinking about fairies in general. they weren't originally a part of this world - it was an undefined space before just for the characters to exist in, because i was (and still am) more interested in the characters than the worldbuilding. but i still like for there to be SOMETHING there in the background, and it gives a lot of opportunities to inform characterisation, so i started to make my setting. I picked the Púca as a pivotal being & major inspiration source to include because of its relatively large presence in the fringes of my childhood in stories told by my older relatives and i like the unusual aspects about it as well, how it has been both heroic and malevolent in different stories. you have to remember i grew up in this culture too, i knew a lot already, and that's what got me thinking of alternate Earth history - as in, the setting of Inver as alternate history, not wholly original fantasy set in a fantasy land.

So then I had to think about the implications of that, and here is where I think a lot of authors adapting extant mythology fall short. A world where faeries/mythological monsters/gods based in real cultures exist and people interact with them is indistinguishable from our own. We already live in a world where people interact with faeries in their own way; I've heard many older relatives recount stories of being trapped in their fields by faeries, how you can only escape by taking off your jumper and putting it back on inside out. There was no question as to whether they believed this was a concrete, meaningful interaction with a supernatural being. We have a motorway that was diverted while it was being built because the builders didn't want to risk cutting down a hawthorn tree. There is a deep stigma against harming hawthorns. Now, tell me how things would be any different if faeries were real irl? ftr I do not believe in the supernatural whatsoever, not even a little bit, but it is impossible to deny that I live in a world deeply shaped by it - I need only look out the window at the stands of whitethorn around my house to know that. because the main expression of that supernatural element is in how the people of that culture react.

you cannot, you cannot pick and choose only the monsters from a legend and leave behind the people who made & propagated that legend. you're only taking a single thread from a rich tapestry. I'm not arguing that other cultures should be untouchable, far from it, I'm just saying that to truly appreciate it, you need context for everything you adapt. you gotta know what you're writing about

in that sense, the people are more important to building Inver than the faeries. a citizen of Inver not immediately affected by the main plotline would likely never see or interact with magic in their lifetime, but their society is still shaped by it. so is mine (though that's more on the catholic church than anything else)

So now that I'd had that realisation, I decided to dump a lot of the traditional fantasy tropes I'd been working with. Think basic fantasy setting stuff, pop culture "The Fae" tropes, even the terminology of 'Fae' at all - that is not something I've ever heard the older generation in my life call them. It's just 'fairies' to them (although I did shift the spelling to match the Yeats poem because I could not handle writing characters making accusations of being A Fairy and have it not come across as a unintentionally homophobic accusation lmao). I did some research; mostly on JSTOR, using my institutional access, because my own university is mostly science and didn't have a big library of anthropological texts. I read An Táin Bó Culainge which is honestly one of the greatest stories of all time PLEASE READ IT if you are at all interested in Irish myth. It is a fantastic story and extremely comedic as well (a canon mmmf foursome lol). In terms of academic sources specific to the Púca, I have a drive folder of pdfs I will share with anyone if they ask.

I decided I was not going to include anything from what people actually think of as pre-christian Irish mythology - no fianna [rangers notwithstanding], no Ulster cycle, no Tuatha Dé, no Irish gods. All the things I include are post-colonial aside from the notion of the Otherworld in general. This decision wasn't necessarily accurate to what might have happened in this alternate history (given that christianity still has no real foothold in Inver) but it is a colonised society after all. It's why I got slightly steamed once when someone filed my Púca art into their irish deities/irish polytheism tag (I have my own issues with iripols/gaelpols for the same reason I dislike people taking myths out cultural context and in this case contemporary cultural context), because the Púca is in fact a postcolonial being - it comes from the UK, and likely the mainland as well

One of the last things I did before starting on my 2nd draft, which is what turned into Said the Black Horse, was decide to always capitalise the word 'Púca'. Because what really clicked from doing my research and remembering what I'd heard as a child was that the Púca is a specific character. Not a species, not a class of monster. A character, one guy. And you'll find this everywhere - the obvious example is the Minotaur being one specific guy, the son of Minos, not just 'a minotaur'. One very funny consequence of speciesifying mythological characters is dnd ppl saying their character is A Firbolg (fir bolg is plural!!). Fantasy bestiary books like Dragonology or Spiderwick Chronicles have done some amount of damage to how people relate to myths and legendary creatures, and I am not immune as someone who loves speculative biology, but in Inver I decided to cut all of that out.

Next once I got that out of the way I had to think about tone, atmosphere, and intended results. I didn't achieve my holy grail of a very atmospheric, undefined, and uncertain story that provides no answers, due to limitations in my own abilities, but I tried. I have given less than 1 second of thought to how magic or faery biology in Inver works because that is not conducive to the atmosphere of a fairytale. Many of these source myths and legends are really about the fear of the unknown. They are rationalisations to explain away something unknown, some mystery of life, and you cannot explain the unexplainable and expect it to carry the same punch as the original myths that you are drawn to adapt. That's also why I try to never actually give facts about fairies, but instead I talk about what people think of them. The word 'considered' does some insanely heavy lifting in that linked post lmao. Is any of what I wrote true with regards to the Red King?? It is for the people who believe it.

I'm saying all of this because these are all points I had to think about before writing that 2nd draft, but also because I think they're worth considering for your own story as well. I'll admit I invented my werewolves from scratch, they have no mythological basis, because they pre-date the faery stuff and also I wanted them to fill a very specific role and appear a little more concrete than the other supernatural elements. It is what it is; I wanted a werewolf element that didn't match myths and legends (and honestly was partially inspired by me rolling my eyes about those posts going around moaning and whining about 'the doggification of werewolves missing the point of werewolf stories'. I thought, well, there's more than one story you can tell with a werewolf - it isn't always 'i fear the beast within', sometimes it's something else! sometimes it's daddy issues! it's okay to make something new)

ok i think that's all i have to say.. modern Inver is a bit different, that worldbuilding is largely the same but with a big dose of actual ecology because the main characters are rangers and in Inver in 2017, rangers mostly do environmental monitoring. and that's a whole different sort of worldbuilding lol

good luck with your story!!

[spacehostilityy]

NNT Rewatch s2ep7-12 !!

(Still from my drafts! Just moved back to college yesterday and today and classes start tomorrow. Wish me luck! My schedule sucks this year so I'll need it lol)

man this is flying by!! but lucky me, the druids’ holy land arc is one of my favorites

King learning throughout this season that not only does he need the other Sins, but they need and love him is so sweet. I just love the character development they all go thru this season

draw him like one of your french girls ~~

I love that Matrona has purple eyes like Diane, the small details really make it

I actually NEED to know what Monspeet and Meliodas’s relationship was prior to his betrayal. “I can’t believe HE’S the one who sensed us” ?? Whats that about🤨 also zeldris and monspeet seem to have been in good terms, like were they all friends?

I don’t know how its possible, but Monspeet’s voice is even hotter in spanish

I love that despite galand not being able to lie, they still don’t believe his stories lol

KAJSDKWUDFL I forgot how shocked i was with the reveal that Merlin stole Mel’s power i just love the druid training arc sm

theyre so silly i love them

do we know why jenna and zaneri don’t have wings? are they just hidden with magic or something??

okie so apparently they’re just inhabiting human bodies and their real bodies had wings. found this on the wiki, do we know where the info comes from?

WAIT do jenna and zaneri know elizabeth?? Like KNOW her?

HAHAHA this part always destroys me

ngl the best thing seven deadly sins as an narrative does is portray the intense agony and trauma from mel and ellie’s curses

anyway... the fact that Meliodas and Zaratras were of equal rank when they met is kinda funny

the absolute horror on meliodas’s face when he hears liz is just PERFECT

liz is so slay she’s everything i want elizabeth liones to be

King: uhh hey jenna...🥺 what are you planning to have us do in there😓

Jenna: isnt it obvious??? 🤨 rigorous training 😤😤

the way they cut btwn scenes of meliodas abt to lose it and him and liz being happy is just so well done

I love that they were trying to get Meliodas to abandon his emotions to keep his rage in check and then when he actually has no emotions we find out that he’s straight up evil and much, MUCH worse than before lol

the tears pooling on their insanely pointy chins always gets me lol. but also mel just violently sobbing and then suddenly being fine. Mans has serious issues with repression that can def be drawn to his daddy issues

BAN/ZHIVAGO ARC😭😭😭 a few observations: Ban is very clearly influenced by Zhivago’s style, like the clothes are so similar, the fact that they sent Ban to Aberdeen prison and his favorite is Aberdeen ale makes me think he associates it with his dad, Zhivago was hot, Ban mirrors Zhivago’s words to him to Elaine, Zhivago tells Ban to never trust humans and the only humans he ends up trusting are Escanor and Jericho, zhivago has lived in misery about the deaths of his children for almost 40 years :(

idk why this is one of my fave arcs it’s literally just angst lol

gil and howzer as boyfriends. Discuss.

seeing gowther fight hand to hand is actually pretty cool, i had assumed he was weak like king but he can hold his own

how did king not clue in when galand literally opened with “Meliodas its been such a long time” like BABE CMON

BAN TELLING JERICHO SHE’S HIS WALLET 😭😭

meliodas just mocking king for his lack of wings is always funny. nothing like a dick joke to make you feel better after Zhivago’s death

I HAVE to do a meliodas self hatred/relationship to being a demon post, i have so many thots

I LOVE WHEN HE GOES TO SEE THE 10 COMMANDMENTS HES SO BADASS

monspeet shielding Derieri from the rocks with his cape🥺

melascula is so sassy i love her

estarossa is my deranged babygirl i love him. that fucking freak

I JUST KNOW TAIZOO AND THAT LITTLE TWINK ARE FUCKING

taizoo is a bottom.

meliodas somehow has 15 year old rizz. like the fucking blond boys.

(not so) fun fact: Elaine is my mom’s name so its a little weird

nakaba’s size kind seriously needs to be studied

ESCANORRRRRR

okie doke that’s it join us next time !!

[serenanymph]

author ask tag game

tagged by @scribbling-stardust! you can find her post here. putting this whole thing under the cut because boy is it Long. as for the tag... uh whoever I've tagged below who wants to hop in ig (no pressure tho!!)

What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it? Honestly my themes kind of grow from the story instead of the other way around, but overall I'd say it's something along the lines of discrimination and how dangerous hate can be. (<< sounds cool, has no idea how she's going to actually write this) But I will say there's a lot of like - mini themes in it too, because each character has their own issues and needs to learn different things to grow. Stuff about communication, about self-care, about finding yourself, about courage, etc etc. Very scattered, ik.

What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)? I'd say there's a lot of like?? Mythological creatures?? Y'know the classics like vampires and werewolves and selkies and what not. And then I just. Turn it all on its head. All the myths of them still exist in-universe - they're just wildly inaccurate because humans have been passing the stories down for decades. In actuality, Beasts are much more different. (Also and this is rather embarrassing to admit, but I've been stealing aHeM taking inspiration for characters from all of the media I've been watching. Which is. Mostly anime. Plus some worldbuilding details from fanfic aus I've thought up.)

What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person? Honestly? I have no idea. As of now, he's mostly trying to survive. I think the issue with Crys is that largely he's not someone who actually has a goal he wants to achieve?? The growth he experiences is not a thing he really decides he wants, but more something he needs, which the narrative basically has to drag him into. As for me... mostly I just want to write my stories and have them reach someone somewhere. It's probably the same for a lot of us who share those stories.

How many chapters is your story going to have? No idea. 40-something?? 50??? I always underestimate my end wordcount and my chapters vary wildly in length.

Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it? Original content!! I've been thinking about tweaking some stuff in Crow Wings (book 1) after I've finished first drafting Witch's Book (book 2), then I'll probably throw it up on ao3 and maybe simultaneously post it here.

When and why did you start writing? Sometime when I was a kid I think?? I'm pretty sure I was vaguely upset and bored and then I just picked up a pencil and started going at it. It was titled 'Survival' and it was basically a ripoff of I Am Number Four, littered with grammar and spelling mistakes, and all the cringefail, mary sue tropes small me could think up. I kid you not, the main character was named Emma, she had blond hair and blue eyes, and she was so good at fighting she was better at it then boys, even. Gasp!! Color me surprised!!!!! Anyway I still have it with me due to nostalgia reasons but it is hidden in my drawer under my bed where the light of day will never reach. Don't judge me, I was like nine.

Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of Writeblr? What other writers of Tumblr do you follow? We're all friends here and we're all still learning, so don't be afraid to share your work!! Something you feel might not be "good enough" is a story someone out there will love - and take it from a person with low self-confidence, your writing's often not as bad as you think! :D (also c'mon. it can't be worse than what nine-year-old me thought up.) As for writers... well I am following a lot of people but I'm just gonna tag a few of my mutuals. There's @lyssa-ink (my first ever writeblr mutual!!! she does fantasy with a lot of immortals, fae and court politics), and also @reneesbooks (go check out lacuna. birdie is adorable and jack is so funny to me). Also @macabremoons (vampires. lots of vampires. also super fun to talk to!!!), @sidhewrites (love graveyard lesbians. kaz is an absolute disaster and lucy is just so!!!), and @loopyhoopywrites (the Ex-Quest is peak comedy. every excerpt I read leaves me wheezing). I don't talk as much with @space-writes, @e-klair, @sapphos-scientist or @squarebracket-trick, but they're all lovely, talented writers and I really appreciate that they let me yell about Beast at them!!! There's also @scribbling-stardust (one of my most recent moots. her oc dahlia and my oc dahlia are literally twins. it's hilarious). Lastly, closing off with @allianaavelinjackson, who isn't very active on tumblr but is nonetheless always available to brainstorm (read: listen to me go insane) over Beast. Love ya <3

[mango-jpeg]

st elmo's fire and drop the knife notes

(i wasn't sure at first if i would make these posts again this year (like.. get a new bit bro) but ultimately i do think they're helpful for me so i'll stick w it for now)

i don’t remember much about persona 3 from playing it 15 years ago. basically all i remember is 1) being obsessed with akihiko 2) sobbing like a baby when i finished it @ 2 am 3) the crackly, fuzzy quality of my old tube tv

anyway i also don't remember writing much of st elmo's fire bc i was so inside it the whole time. i did think more about structure for both fics, i think that's something i'm going to focus on more this year

sidenote: i read chuck palahniuk's consider this in jan which was a great read on its own and also gave me lots to think about re: writing, and influenced me/my thinking for both of these fics

additional sidenote: coming to terms w the fact that the style of writing i enjoy most + would like to imitate works best in first person but i do not want to write or read first person fanfiction

for the first time i wrote drafts/outlines of almost every scene in my notes app then wrote them out fully in docs, which it turns out is a good way to do things

past tense? again?? who am i.

st elmo’s fire wrote from feb 6-7? to feb 25

this is maybe the most for me and only me thing i’ve written. i’ve wanted to write an awkward morning after pill scene for so long

looked up their personas bc i was curious about their mythology and obviously seized on the st elmo’s fire thing

(i thought it'd be cool to include a bit of magic in a fic that otherwise ignores all the canon magic)

this fic was my way of reaching back thru time to my horrible teenage self + saying you’re gonna be ok kid

reading:

I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

Heartburn, Nora Ephron

listening: st elmo’s fire (approx 40 times a day), hold it in

fav early bit i wrote: the whole paragraph about shinji’s boobs a fav late addition:

Inside the air was dry and charged; Akihiko was sure if he touched Shinji he’d spark. He felt the kind of calm certainty he usually felt only before matches, when he knew the result would be in his favour.

drop the knife wrote from feb 21 to mar 10

i have sequel disease. once i've written the long 'figuring out the characters' fic i neeeed to write another one. i think it's getting worse actually, i think i might have trilogy disease (write one long standalone and immediately want to write 2 related works)

the kind of cooking i do is soup. if i had things my way this is the only food we'd eat. this made writing the recipes a huge pain in the ass bc i do not think shinji is a 'throw everything into a pot and let it figure itself out' kind of cook

took the key lime pie recipe straight out of the last chapter of heartburn. idk if this is really the ‘right’ dessert but it’s the kind of food i’d actually make and i wanted to include one heartburn recipe

i thought writing aki instead of akihiko for the whole fic would be annoying and then switching between the two became a way of reflecting shinji's attempt at putting distance between them ie. thinks 'aki' in the abstract, and when his guard is low. idk how much that comes thru in reading but i made the attempt

reading:

Heartburn, Nora Ephron (i reread chapters for 3 weeks. i loved everything about this book. i’m codependent on it now.)

Wallflower at the Orgy, Nora Ephron

Tokyo Ueno Station, Yu Miri

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

listening: sore, knife, i got heaven

fav early bit:

Aki looked at him. He was within arm’s reach and his face was soft in a way it rarely was, his eyes large in the dark. Shinjiro wanted him in ways he’d given up on long ago, wanted him bloody and beneath him, wanted him laughing and leaning in to close the distance.

late addition:

Aki was like one of those dogs bred to rip prey out of their burrows or drag sleds across the tundra; being forced to stay inside was torturous, he needed something he could sink his teeth into.

took me ages to come up with a title, i didn’t even have a working one. found the poem oxygen when i went searching and i liked the phrase drop the knife bc knives are used in cooking (lol) + implies being disarmed + the poem has the sort of half of my soul vibe these guys have goin on

[cak31ssuperi04]

Crashing at ur ask box again but the rest of Sweet Beach 4 the ask game

(I feel like one of those door to door newspaper boys trying to to bring u the latest issues of the daily survey /hj /lh)

HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN IN MY DRAFTS. MY BABIES NO (under the cut)

Hitohito:

favorite thing about them- They love him for his nice kindness. Friendly boy swag. I appreciate that he's a loud energetic type but still portrayed as reasonably smart.

least favorite thing about them- Idk he's just a cool chill guy. What is there to dislike. Maybe that's a problem. Maybe he needs to do something objectionable right now.

favorite line- This isn't quite a line but I think about it often

brOTP- I like the idea of him being Sagara and Izuchi's normie childhood friend. They've mostly lived in the same neighborhood their whole lives so they're just kind of on each other's radars, even if they aren't always exactly close.

OTP- N/A

nOTP- N/A

random headcanon- Kills it at Taiko rhythm games. Fishes in his spare time.

unpopular opinion- N/A

song i associate with them- Brothers. Good vibes slightly nonsensical lyrics

favorite picture of them-

Mary:

favorite thing about them- I like the thread of her being a child star who had to grow up too fast, who's sheltered and emotionally/socially stunted from having to maintain an image all the time and longs for a normalcy that she knows she can't have("people envy what they do not have.") but will enjoy whatever little of it she can. I feel like the Sweet Beach side-character friend events shy away from delving into them beyond a surface-level(which, all things considered, makes sense for how little time they have to dedicate to each one I guess) so it's nice to see it get touched on.

least favorite thing about them- I loooove her design so much don't get me wrong but Actually drawing it is like putting myself through a meat grinder(I'm weak I know)

favorite line- "I see. He's lost the ability to speak. What a sorrowful person." So unintentionally patronizing jksadhasgdhjg

brOTP- Nanashi(obvious answer is obvious) but also Hitohito! I also have the headcanon that she continues visiting the cafe to cool off. While Hitohito(who listens to a lot of top 40 radio stations while he jogs--and since Fairytale Forest lets its employees curate the music that plays in the cafe he just winds up listening to a lot of just the most popular music at the moment at work anyways-- so he IS familiar with her music but doesn't keep up super closely with her as a celebrity.) was able to offhandedly dismiss her as a cosplayer the first time, that excuse doesn't really hold for very long after that.

OTP- N/A

nOTP- Meury is aesthetically interesting but idk the 17-21 age gap is a no for me.

random headcanon- While Sweet Beach is a big tourism area, the specific area that Eruno and Aira takes Nanashi to is a less industrious, less popular area of it, hence all the buildings being single-story and some rando being able to singlehandedly drive all the tourists off the beach(which apparently is the main attraction of said big tourism area) without getting into trouble for it. In any case Mary specifically chose that area because it wouldn't be as swarming with paparazzi and crowds, and easier to keep a lower profile.

unpopular opinion- N/A

song i associate with them- Itan na Star

favorite picture of them-

Meru:

favorite thing about them- Just an eternally sleepy girl trying to make it in this world

least favorite thing about them- For how much it's played for laughs I do wish they either went more into exploring her condition and how it affects her life or gave us more about her character outside of it. Though I guess there is something to be said there about her not seeking professional help and turning to other means because of the stigma surrounding neurological disorders?(if I'm missing the point like, lmk though of course)

favorite line- "…But the work hours are most favorable here. Other slave driving workplaces make you work 5 hours or more…" Go girl

brOTP- I really like the idea of a Meru/Ryuuri/Yuuto friendship. Sleepygang

OTP- Meu! I'm so weirdly invested in the idea of them. Look hear me out. Meru likes stimulating things. Meu is high-energy all the time. They share 2/3 of their favorite gifts(Similar tastes! What do you mean Im grasping at straws im not grasping at straws i)

nOTP- I saw someone suggest Izuchi/Meru once

random headcanon- Loves metal(the music). Also loves rollercoasters, though is hesitant about riding them on her own because what if she falls asleep.

unpopular opinion- N/A

song i associate with them- Time Slip

favorite picture of them-

Saaya:

favorite thing about them- I like that she's kind of complicated? She's a 14 year old with abandonment issues and a warped perception of love who handles it in destructive ways and she's fucked up but that's kind of real to me idkidk

least favorite thing about them- Her treatment of Nanashi (the self harm threats particularly) is still very uncomfortable

favorite line- "Strange? No... This is the realm of gods! Yes! You are a god, Nanashi!!"

brOTP- Meu! I've mentioned this before but I like the idea of her just coming to Meu for divinations on her love life only to end up venting. At some point she just drops the pretenses but Meu is fine with it. She's a good shoulder to cry on.

OTP- N/A

nOTP- Nanashi:(

random headcanon- I like to think she does a bit of sewing for a hobby.

unpopular opinion- Not an unpopular opinion but I'm thinking about how she mentions the water looks a little bloody. And since the water is pink I can't help but imagine 1bh characters having bright pink danganronpa blood

song i associate with them- Aishite Aishite Aishite/ Lovefool

favorite picture of them-

Meu:

favorite thing about them- She's so funny and silly and energetic. She's like an aunt to me. Not really good at what she does but very committed to the bit and I respect that.

least favorite thing about them- Feels a bit scammy to me and I feel like there is potentially a line to be towed there but it's okay she's allowed to do that.

favorite line- "A fortune is never a guarantee! Why, it usually isn't in fact! ✬ Kyahaaa!"

brOTP- Sagara! In my mind Meu eats lunches at Little Berry(is eating cake for lunch entirely healthy? Probably not. But Meu thinks she especially needs a little treat today to help with her luck. In fact she thinks that everyday. Though there probably are a couple of regular food options, and it's right next door anyways) and Sagara acts as a Witch's Apprentice(tm) sometimes when she isn't at work, which basically just means sweeping floors and rearranging things but she also gets to wear a cape and a cool hat so she pretends it's serious magic business. They match each other's energies well and Meu also watches magical girl anime so it works out. Meu lets her hold DND sessions at Star Brink because she likes the vibe there.

OTP- Meru!

nOTP- [see Mary's]

random headcanon- Has a black cat. That she found in a trash can and just decided to keep. Leaves it at home when she can because it keeps trying to knock over her trinkets, and especially has it out for her crystal ball.

unpopular opinion- If she hasn't been roped into a pyramid scheme yet she will be

song i associate with them- No Reason/ Why Must We Tell Them Why

favorite picture of them-

[iamfabiloz]

hi idk anything about transformers which i think means you should educate me . eye emoji

GOES NUTS i was abt to finish what i typed n posted but i lost my og draft ACK!! sorry this took a bit to answer i wanted to answer properly EEEE TY FOR ASKING I LOVE THE ROBOTS!!!!

BASICALLYY the transformers r alien robots from the planet cybertron!! they are fighting a civil war and eventually all the fighting wrecks the planet n the battle gets moved 2 earth!! there r two sides, the good guys called the autobots (led by a guy called optimus prime he is popular n beloved in the franchise n fandom) and the evil bad guys r called the Decepticons!! they are led by their evil leader Megatron!! OP and megs are sworn enemies n fight sm, the wars been going on for like over 4 million years (these guys live a LONGGG time) on earth, the autobots r nicer and treat the humans better than the cons anyways (tho no bot/con is rlly pure their like all war criminals LMAOOO) u would not BELIEVEE their mfing drama!! the pettyness of these mech mfs fr

ANYWAYZZ another rlly cool thing abt the series is the many canon queer bots!!! :D their mostly in the idw comics tho, such as the comic series 'more than meets than the eye' and lost light' which features multiple main characters who r gay and have a bunch of mlm relationships, as well as lost light having some t4t lesbians who r prominent EEE it so cool to see!! another example of transgenderformers is in the newest show 'transformers earthspark' which features one of the main characters who is nonbinary!! their sooo cool :]!!

now AHEM some recommendations r below for tf shows that I rlly like (NO PRESSURE TO WATCH/CONSUME ANY OF THESE THO!! i just rlly always like linking tf stuff it makes me happy :3 i wont mind at all if these just sit here foreva i just am like YAYY when i have to find linkies it is very fun!!)

the first tf show I ever watched is Transformers Prime!! I’d def start here bc it’s good for beginners new to the series, has lore, action, rlly good characters r plot!! Very dearly beloved by the fandom :] has three seasons n a movie! links to view it 4 free below:

YouTube Playlist with all eps + Movie

Seasons 2-3 on tubitv.com (Season 1 is on U.S Netflix if you have, idk why season 1 isn’t on tubi 🤔)

(ALSO THE ORIGINAL 80s G1 SHOW IS ON TUBI AS WELL, it is very funny i like it even tho i havent finished all the way EE)

If u want smth short I’d also recommend TRANSFORMERS EARTHSPARK!!! It’s ongoing tho, not fully finished like Prime, n is the newest tf show as of late, but it’s proven to be wonderful so far and I’ve actually gotten people who haven’t seen any tf stuff before to watch it and they’ve been fine and liked it HEHEEH :3 only 18 eps rn, here is my google drive w all the eps so far if u want!

other shows that I have links to watch to r:

Transformers Animated (3 seasons, 2d animated, more stylized, very fun)

Transformers Cyberverse (3 seasons and two 40 minute specials more kiddy and not as serious and a little shallower than the other shows, but I really enjoyed it, it was so so funny and it was my top tf thing for a while before Earthspark stole my heart 😨 cyberverse season 3 has no right to go so hard)

and the idw comics can be read on readcomiconline.li (tho beware of the weird ads n pop ups if u go on here, their rlly AAA so its best viewed w adblock) theres some mlp and transformers crossover comics on there also THEIR SO GOOD AND FUN i dont think u need any prior knowledge to enjoy them tbh their great

ty again for letting me explode abt robots

[toasted-spiders]

it turns out this wasnt explained but here's why i've been inactive (a real reason that made for a fun blog post)

ive actually been avoiding tumblr for weeks because. [deep breath] i STILL havent watched the new spiderverse movie and my dash IS FULL OF SPIDERVERSE CONTENT

why is it full of spiderverse content? cause im a dummy. i followed all the spiderverse tags in may because i was super super psyched. i just didn't KNOW that i wasn't going to watch the movie until [checks date] until OVER A MONTH LATER.

but so many people watched the movie the day it came out. and they were posting about it. a lot.

at first i was like ok thats fine, i can still use tumblr, i will just wade through all the cool spider-punk fanart - BAM!!! HUGE SPOILERS ABOUT THE MAN HIMSELF O'HARA

^ also it was accompanied by this image which is scary enough on its own thanks

I WAS HORRIFIED!

"so why don't you just unfollow the tag spy?" you ask reasonably, sipping juice from your #1 MUTUAL mug.

ok but that would require going near the posts to which the tag belongs. being able to see that post. clicking on the spiderverse tag. being able to see what's in the spiderverse tag. and then clicking unfollow,

and then repeating the process for all the other spiderverse-related tags i have followed. which is oh yeah EIGHTEEN. (or something.)

the risks are too high. the stakes, too great.

"but spy, you could still post things by going directly to your drafts folder," you reason reasonably.

i COULD. yes. certainly.

i COULD if me-from-several-weeks-ago had realized that if i save 40-odd posts to my drafts every day, in less than a week i would arrive at the Point Of No Return (To My Drafts Folder). thats 388 drafts, guys. what am i supposed to do with three-eighty-eight drafts? drown?

[steeples fingers] in conclusion, i will not be returning to tumblr until a) i have watched across the spiderverse and b) i can get over my visceral terror of the three-eighty-eight.

gasp good news! one of these will be easier than the other because

I'M GOING TO SEE ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE IN THEATRES IN LESS THAN AN HOUR

my mom actually told me WHILE I WAS WRITING THIS POST that my dad booked the tickets so i will FINALLY GET TO SEE WHAT'S UP WITH MIGUEL O'HARA <- that last part was not her words

like i remember him from the first movie's post credits scene? he was so funny?? the part in '67 had me like "omg 😂😂" because that happened before we started using skulls and also i really loved this new spiderman ok,

but now he's SCARY? and also (aforementioned mild spoiler incoming) not really spiderman?? so i wa

wait wait oh crap

the movie's in LESS THAN AN HOUR!!

YEAH I GOTTA RUN BYE

[connorsnothereeither]

Whats something about the telchin that you really enjoy writing about? And when your writing and have major story elements that you need to have, how do you not become side tracked?

There’s so much honestly, genuinely the whole process of writing Telchin lore as a group with the other cast is so much fun.

Something I love which we get to incorporate is the humanity in lost civilisations. Like, these were real people who are now just gone, and getting to see glimpses of those life stories within the larger picture is beautiful to me. With the Telchin, I love getting to introduce personalities and lives into the the wider story. Things like the sapphic priestess romance, where as a group we took a brief random idea and gradually workshopped it into this tragic living story, its really fun to me.

As for being sidetracked: tbh i get sidetracked way too easily in my storytelling- But, as a small trick for it, I like to plan out in detail (or even entirely write) the bigger elements/scenes in advance. I call it “concept sketching” personally, but it’s really just drafting certain scenes in advance.

I do this a lot with my fics. If I have a big plot point/cool scene that I want to happen later, I’ll just write that big plot point/scene now, and then set it aside. Part of it is then obligation based (“I’ve put the effort into writing it already, I have to at least get to the point where I can use it”) but also I find it more rewarding in the process of creating if I know what I’m reaching for! Like “yeah, there’s that cool thing that I’ve done! I’ve just gotta get there and then I can use it!” It becomes like a finish line in a way. Sometimes the sketch needs to be edited/adjusted to fit any smaller things that might have changed in the story since the sketch was written, but that’s easier to do then just creating this big event from scratch when you’re not as interested.

For example, chapter 40 of Blood was written before chapter 27. Because I was like “I want this to happen. I love this, and I need to get to this point.” So everything prior to that came from a place of “okay that’s what we’re moving towards.”

I don’t know if that fully answered the question but I hope so!

[littledots]

11, 18, 19, 24

(11) when you are writing a reply, how much ahead in the thread do you plan? it really depends on the partner? so if i am writing with someone i know and talk to regularly (such as yourself) i generally will get little flashes of what i would love to see in the thread, but this is co-op right? so i don't typically like to plan anything because i am writing with another person, another character who could do whatever the hell they want to flip the story on its head.

(18) what’s your inbox count currently? what did you do to get it so high/low? i like to save my inbox stuff for when i burn out on drafts, to reinvigorate my brain. this is my last ask currently. i also am very specific about what and when i post for memes.

(19) how many drafts is a paralysing amount? i like to keep it at a certain number. so right now, i am getting to almost 40. so i will go through and do the priority replies (@smckeslow, you, @queenxfthedxmned, @flwrmuses and a handful of @blumhouses) and then i work on the shortest replies and then the goal is to get it below 30 or even 20 if i push hard enough. so the first goal is to get to 30. the next goal is to get to 20. and then 10. when my drafts are either mostly @blumhouses replies, i will let them start collecting again, though i always know i should start queuing replies because that slows down the refill.

(24) what’s your thought process when you format? any unspoken rules you follow? so @smckeslow made a cool little code for us to use to do a basic formatting thing, but i lost the link and i was to tired to ask for the link again because the formatting, while pretty was a few too many extra steps, so i have ditched that. other formatting things are: partner's url ship (in chrono order) prev reply which all have links. this is for our replies to each other or for threads that are being converted to beta from a legacy thread. other than that, i copy gif placement from my partner. then the tags always go in order of character full name, ship pairing (my muse & their muse) and then my partner's url. other than that, that's about as much effort i put in. this way, i can see all the threads that character is in, all the posts related to that pairing and i can check my replies to my partner to see if i owe them something.

[contentsoftable]

Six small games that we are loving

We started drafting this post back in July 2023 and it's 2024 now, and these are still the small games we find ourselves playing over and over when we're feeling too lazy to set up a big game.

1. Sea Salt and Paper

Designer: Bruno Cathala, Théo Rivière Publisher: Bombyx

Like many others, we got addicted to Sea Salt and Paper on Boardgame Arena - so addicted that I ordered the physical copy from France! This is a small clever card game with whimsical ocean-themed origami art that is quick to learn, smooth to play, and beautiful to look at.

The game is a race to 40 points (in a 2P game). There are a few ways to do this: playing "duos" (pairs of cards which also give you bonus actions), collecting sets of sea creature cards (octopuses, penguins, shells, etc.) or sets of colors if you also have any Mermaid cards. In each hand, the first player to reach at least 7 points can call out "Stop" or "Last Chance" and end the round. If you call stop everyone stops and counts their points immediately. If you call last chance, the other players have one more turn to try to beat your score. If they don't, you get a bonus and they get a penalty.

More rounds follow until one person reaches 40 points and wins.

The cool thing about the BGA digital game is that all the math is done for you. The real life card game is just as much fun but you will need pencil and paper to keep track of scores or download a score counter app for your phone.

2. Spots

Designer: Alex Hague, Jon Perry, Justin Vickers Publisher: CMYK

Spots is a cute, light push-your-luck dice game that is also on BGA, but much better in its physical form because rolling a handful of dice and placing them on spotty dogs is the fun part. The dog art is SO CUTE (Burt is my favorite!).

Like Sea Salt and Paper, Spots is also a race. Each game starts by selecting a set of six action cards, each with a different way you're allowed to roll your dice, and drawing two dog cards, which have empty dice spots on them. On your turn, you pick one of the six actions that haven't already been picked by a previous player, and follow its rule, which is usually about letting you roll a certain number of dice, or earning a "treat" (bone) or drawing another dog card. If any of the numbers on your rolled dice match the numbers on any of your dogs, you can put them on that dog. If you get a bad roll and nothing fits, you can spend a "treat" to reroll, or end your turn by burying the bad dice into your "yard." Dice points in your yard can't exceed seven or you "bust" - which means you have to remove all the dice from any of your incomplete dog cards and starting again. The first player to completely score six dog cards is the winner.

This is a great game to play with non-gamers. It's simple to teach, and fast to play. The only downside is that it is 100% luck-based so if your dice rolls are crap then it may not be as much fun.

3. Scout

Designer: Kei Kajino Publisher: OINK games

Scout is supposed to be a circus themed card game, but the theme is so understated it took us about three plays before we even noticed. Really, it's a fast and thinky abstract game that keeps you busy planning your next play and paying attention to how many cards your opponents have left. Scout is best with 3 or more players and we have not yet met anyone who doesn't love it after the first play and want to play it again.

The goal of each hand is to be the first player to get rid of all the cards in your hand, and the game lasts the same number of rounds as there are players. On your turn you must play cards of a higher value than the previous card(s) played to the table, and if you can, you get to take the previous cards as points.

But here's where it gets tricky - the cards in your hand must remain in the order as they were dealt to you. You can't reorganize them, and you can only play cards to the table that are adjacent to each other.

If you can't beat the previous cards, you can "scout," which lets you take a card from the ones on the table and place it in your hand. This gives the previous player a point, which is bad, but strategically placing the new card in your hand to make a pair or a run can make your hand better, which is good!

This is the central challenge of the game - figuring out when to take cards, which cards to take to make pairs, triplets, or sequences emerge in your hand that will score you points, and when to play them!

The round ends when one player run out of all their hand cards. Then all players score a point for each card and token they've collected during the hand, then deduct one point for each remaining card in their hand.

It's a fun but brutal game were points can swing fast!

4. Photograph (Wind The Film)

Designer: Takako Takarai Publisher: Matagot, Saashi and Saashi

Another charming and harder-than-it-looks card game from Japan where the order of cards in your hand must remain unchanged. On your turn, you take three actions:

Draw 1-3 cards from the table spread and place them in the top/front end of your hand of cards

"Wind the Film" by relocating any ONE card in your hand toward the front

"Snap the shot" by playing the same number of cards that you drew to the table in front of you from the back of your hand.

In this game, you are all trying to create rows of as many cards of the same color as possible - but their numbers must be no more than 3 apart in either ascending or descending order. There is only one card of each color and number in the deck.

At the end of the game, points are scored by the number of cards per color sequence that you have collected. Points are deducted for "failed shots" which are cards with out of sequence numbers. This is a brilliant, brain-twisting little game with whimsical vintage-style illustrations in Saashi and Saashi's trademark style.

5. Mooncake Master

Designer: Daryl Chow Publisher: Origame

While visiting my family in Singapore, we went to game publisher Origame's warehouse to pick up a copy of Come Sail Away (which was sold out at Essen). While we were there, Daryl Chow, the designer, showed us his other games and oh boy was it hard to choose. I bought "Oh My Orchids" for my aunt (who studied orchids as a botanist), and "Mooncake Master" because it looked cute and the box was small enough to fit in my suitcase.

This is a light game with pretty colors where you draft cards to construct 3 full mooncakes, scoring "flavor points" if you meet certain criteria like "number of full yolks," "no half yolks," "one flavor only," "nuts," etc. The player with the most flavor points earns festive points... which you can also earn if you correctly fulfill a customer's mooncake order. At the end of three rounds (total of 9 mooncakes), the player with the most festive points wins.

6. Harvest

Designer: Yukihito Morikawa Publisher: ForGames

Harvest appears to have been around in Japan since the 1990s and was published by the creator of Pokemon! We were lucky to get a copy from a friend who visited Japan. The English rules can be downloaded online.

This is another light party game that is all "Take That!" Each player has a hand of vegetable cards, which can have either positive or negative points, and a "field" of 4 spaces onto which they can plant them. If there's already a vegetable in their field, they can plant a card on another player's field instead. Usually the negative ones!

Whenever a row of the same three veggies are planted, either orthogonally or diagonally, "Harvesting" is triggered, and each player claims the veggie card(s) on their field. Then, at the end of the game, players add up and subtract the points on their harvested cards, and the uighest number of points wins!

It's a simple, fast, fun, but also a naturally mean game. There is nothing more enjoyable than playing veggies with negative points on someone else's field so you can avoid harvesting those negative points yourself!

[signalwatch]

Super Watch: Superman - The Movie (1978 - theatrical cut)

Watched:  01/06/2023

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  1,000,000th

Director:  Richard Donner

Superman: The Movie (1978) is the movie I've seen most of any film, enough so that I have it pretty well memorized.  At this point, I'd hesitate to say how many times I've seen the movie, but it's dozens and dozens of times.  At least 7 in the theater.  Intentionally, I haven't watched it much the past few years.  I mean, I'm trying to watch new-to-me movies, I can replay any scene in my head any time, I know the beats and jokes, and cool elements and emotions in every scene.  But I also know the plot holes, the mistakes, the dated issues with the film, where that's-a-doll, that's-how-that-shot-was-done, etc...  I even look for where extras were at a difference walking pace in various shots.  

What's probably most notable to modern film audiences is that a movie that plays it mostly straight for an hour has a hard jump in the second half to a far wackier vision of the world it establishes, moving from sci-fi epic to American Rockwell-esque pastoral to a cosmic sci-fi fantasy.  And then...  Metropolis, with hustling big-city folk, fast talking journalists, and Otis bumbling along.  And for the next 90 minutes, the movie is a mix of romance, screwball, camp and heroism.  There's something oddly Broadway-ish about that back 90 minutes - I mean, doesn't Miss Tessmacher seem like she needs an "I Want" song?  Because Lois gets one in spoken-word.

And god help us, almost everyone is doing a bit, from Perry White to the crook in the alley to the cops in the station talking about "big red boots".  We are not done yet with superheroes needing an absurd world around them for an audience to digest them, even after we just spent an hour with tragedy and heartbreak on planetary and personal scales.  

What that first hour accomplishes, though, is reminding us that Superman himself is not an absurdity.  He's the child of unspeakable tragedy, a product of America's heartland and humanity's most sincere beliefs of fair play and decency, but he is also an orphan in search of an identity.  And with the identity resolved, when he joins humanity in the guise of Clark Kent, he's fitting in while also being the space-god with laser eyes and a knowledge of the human heart and the 28 known galaxies.  He's not just some fop in a funny suit. 

But I'd also point out - Marvel has always known they need to wink a bit where DC has struggled with the idea since Snyder took over, and even Birds of Prey with Harley at the center doesn't quite get how to make this funny.  YMMV on Gunn's take, but he may have the best notion of how to balance comedy and tragedy, realism vs absurdism (or, at least, one with internal logic).   

I don't think any of this makes Superman: The Movie a failure or less-than, but I do get how it will make the film harder for newer audiences to access the movie.  Why is everyone acting weird, like an old-timey movie?  Cinema verite this ain't.  For a movie that shouts at the audience "this ain't your 1950's Superman, this is a modern Superman" with it's opening salvo, it's terribly dated to its period of release with fashion alone, and FX 15 years before a dinosaur would amble across a screen.

And, of course, it fails the nerd test of repeated viewings.  There's clearly stuff in the film that just doesn't make sense, like Lex telling Superman "You were great in your day, Superman. But it just stands to reason, when it came time to cash in your chips, this old… diseased… maniac would be your banker."  Well... no.  Superman has never met Lex, and he just showed up.  This is the speech a legacy villain gives Superman.  Superman's day is just now happening.  What draft of the script did this come from?  

But these were things we didn't notice as much in ye olde days of only seeing movies in the theater.  And certainly echoes the assumption that between radio and TV series, 40 years of comics, and overall pop culture saturation, Superman was already a known commodity, a pre-existing IP that would automatically fill in gaps for the audience even when things make no sense (why on earth would Lex think Kryptonite would be radioactive to Superman?).  

That's comic book stuff, and I'm not shocked it's given little attention - because what director Richard Donner cares about is the human side to Superman, the one that he devotes a whole sky-dance sequence to.  I'll be honest - I'm beyond judging the film for containing this sequence, but it is... weird.  It's not 1000% necessary to move the story forward, and I've spent a couple of decades now watching older movies to figure out if Donner took inspiration from somewhere for this sequence, but nothing has ever really presented itself.  From a story-telling logic, I 100% get it.  Lois needs to experience the wonder of Superman up close, feel she can trust him, understand he'll be there to protect her if she slips...  But.  Man.  For a 2-minute bit in a long, long film, it feels like the longest two minutes to a lot of folks.

I can talk about the stuff I like about this film all day, and have.  To anyone who would listen.  For decades.  So don't think I've turned on it.  But I also have the relationship with the movie you only have with a movie you've seen so many times, you've  known the names of the two cops who pursue Otis.  But I don't think it hurts to be honest about the movie.  I may love it and I'll defend it, but if you watch a movie this many times and you don't notice the rough spots, are you really loving something?  

Anyway, it was great to revisit for the first time in a while.  Especially post Superheroes Everyday's journey through the film.    

We'll rewatch eventually and say all the nice things you've come to expect, but this is not that post.  We'll do one on John Ratzenberger's characters in Superman 1 and 2 and try to figure out if this more than one character or a set of hard-luck twins.

https://ift.tt/3rDaiKm

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/S4UpyxE

[atlanticcanada]

Halifax paper engineers pops-up iconic landmarks with greeting cards

Giving everyday sights a pop of imagination is at the centre of Brad Hartman’s work.

“I just enjoy making the regular things that we see every day a little bit more magical,” said Hartman.

Hartman is an expert at pop-up, or 3-D, art -- a skill he learned from watching Youtube tutorials online.

“You kind of just get a bunch of paper, get some scissors, get some glue and just start folding. You find out what works and what doesn’t work.”

A self-described “paper engineer,” Hartman renders sheets of paper into a visual, three-dimensional feast of moveable parts and objects, which he says is mostly trial and error.

        View this post on Instagram

                      A post shared by bardbardbard (@bardbardbard)

“You have a very basic pop-up structure on the first draft. You’re gluing and adding bits on top of it and seeing if that will work inside the confines of the closed page.”

Operating under the moniker “bardbardbard,” his sought-after work is even featured in its own 3-D book called “Pop-Up Halifax,” which highlights some of the city’s most iconic locations.

“The Public Gardens page took me over a month to put together,” he said. “I never thought I’d actually ever have my own published pop-up book, so it feels pretty cool.”

His latest project, which features the legendary Open Mic House on Agricola Street, has a lot of people talking.

        View this post on Instagram

                      A post shared by bardbardbard (@bardbardbard)

“There’s about 40 or 50 people illustrated in there and they are all people who I’ve met at the house."

"Some of them told me it brought back good feelings. And that’s all you can really ask for when you put some art out into the world.”

Hartman says the holiday season is one of his busiest times of the year -- when he’ll be launching new products he’s been working on since June.

“I’ve made a Lake Banook winter skating scene, but all the figures skating on the pond are geese in toques and scarves which is pretty cute.”

To see more of Hartman’s work, visit his Instagram page.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/NfRSOBL

[higheverlost]

my brain is still pretty sticky today. i’m taking a little bit of a caffeine break to try & force reset my sleeping schedule, but i’m going to try & write today. i’ve got some im’s to respond to after i shower & then i am going to try & chip away at my drafts!

[petermorwood]

Home-made bread again, and after 5 months of regular use I can confirm that those Pullman loaf tins - 450 g / 1 lb size, one steel, one aluminium, excellent non-stick on both - were a first-class buy. We don’t use the lids very often, but it’s good to have them for the times we DO want to use them.

In that 5 months, and as part of my ongoing mini-crusade to prove that making bread is far, far easier than a lot of people think (or would have other people believe) I’ve pared down @dduane​‘s recipe to something even simpler, and it still works just fine.

Here’s her original recipe, and here’s my everyday - well, every few days - version which has proven totally reliable:

INGREDIENTS:

500 g flour                                          (US -  18oz / 3 ½ cups)

250 ml warm water                             (US 8 ½ fl oz / 1 cup)

7 g yeast                                             (US ¼ oz / 2 ½ tsp)

7 g salt                                                (US ¼ oz / 1 tsp)

30 ml vegetable / olive oil                   (US 1½ fl oz / 2 Tbsp)

Metric measurements are correct, US measurements are approximated from conversion tables, but any differences are so small they’re unlikely to cause problems.

The loaves in the header photo were step 1 done twice within 4 minutes. A full 1000g flour / 500 ml water double-up puts too much strain on our Magimix / Cuisinart, it overheats and trips out, but it handles the standard 500 / 250 recipe fast enough that doubling isn’t necessary.

The two batches of dough can go into the same rising container. When risen separate the batches (check weights if feeling persnickety) and proceed from Step 3 below.

This is another double baking, confirming that the above procedure works. Sometimes the bread is more picture-perfect than others; it’s always good bread.

Why bake two loaves? Because they’re small enough that they get eaten quickly, and with two tins it’s more economical to run the oven just once.

METHOD for one loaf:

Mix the ingredients together and knead into a smooth non-sticky dough with a food processor (2 mins) stand mixer (12 mins) or by hand (+15 mins).

Place the dough in a bowl and cover with clingfilm, Saran wrap, floured cloth or the bowl’s lid. (This is my preference, we have small and large Pyrex roasters that are just right for one loaf or two.) Leave the dough to rise until doubled in size. It happens faster in a warm, draft-free place, and running the oven at 70°C (160°F) for a few minutes then turning it off again provides just such a place. (We have a combi microwave with a Dough Rise setting that cuts rising time in more than half.)

Turn the risen dough out onto a worktop and punch it down until almost original size again, then reform it into a symmetrical shape.

Place the shaped dough in a loaf tin, cover as before (*) and let it rise again until nearly loaf-size (it’ll finish while the oven heats). If using your warmed oven for rising, keep the loaf tin covered when you take it out before preheating the oven to 180°C (356°F). Increase this to 200°C (392°F) if you want a darker crust.

Once the oven is preheated uncover the loaf, return it to the oven and bake for 30-40 mins depending on your desired colour.

Take out the loaf, transfer it from tin to rack and let it cool.

Done.

(*) If using a Pullman tin with its lid on, turn on the oven to preheat as soon as you (a) find the lid won’t slide easily or (b) you see dough starting to come out between tin and lid. Scrape this off before baking, and trim the next extrusion - heat-expansion ensures there’ll be another - afterwards. Baking time whether lid on or off remains the same.

Yet another pair baked simultaneously, with and without lids. You can see the slightly ragged edge where extruded overflow was removed from the lidded one after baking.

The crumb on the lidded loaf is a bit firmer, probably (IMO) as a result of compression. Two slices of this are - so DD tells me - just the thing, size and all, for a classic US grilled cheese sandwich.

That Pyrex bowl with lid in the background is one of the two I mentioned which work so well for first raising, even when overenthusiastic yeast does a Quatermass Xperiment and starts shoving the lid off...

*****

IMO the commercial bakeries which produce squidgebread don’t want people to know how easy this is. Loaves made from this recipe tend to go stale, if they last long enough, while squidgebread of the same age goes mouldy.

You can make toast or breadcrumbs (or trenchers, oh yes!) with stale bread, but mouldy bread is only good for garbage or compost or some sort of eccentric bandage - if you’re absolutely sure the mould is penicillium. 

(Do this in fiction rather than real life, OK?)

Combined with some tomatoes, herbs, oil and cheese, stale bread (or even fail bread like one of mine which refused to rise Because Of Reasons) can be the bulk ingredient in a jolly good soup.

For cold weather, pepper or chilli and a dab of sour cream makes a nice extra touch to this, while in summer it’s very good chilled like gazpacho and given a swirl of fresh lemon juice and the most flavoursome extra-virgin olive oil you can find.

Toasted sesame oil is tasty as well. Or lemon / chilli / basil / whatever infused oil.

Play. Experiment. Enjoy.

[hms-no-fun]

what was the most frustrating and/or fun part involved in formatting godfeels?

the first thing to know is that when i started gf1 i knew jack shit about html and css. i've always REALLY struggled with coding, but i forced myself to learn when faced with the horrible possibility of publishing a homestuck fic in all-black lucida. can you imagine??

i didn't do this on purpose, but as the series went along i always found a new thing that i wanted to try to test my own meager abilities as a novice code understander. it's funny, i very specifically remember writing these lines in gf1--

--and thinking, man, that's a really cool effect! breaking the grammar rules for emotional impact by having "leave" on its own line separated by line breaks like that is pretty much where the entire meta aspect of godfeels started, and you could even go so far as to say that this is the moment when the gf universe becomes metaphysically distinct from homestuck? idk if that's the best way to put it but looking back on it and even at the time, this moment always felt extremely important as a style choice with narrative implications.

formatting is a pain in the ass, but it gets less so every time i format a chapter. i've got a whole process now that i might go into at length sometime down the line (that'll be a long post though and probably won't have time for that in the immediate future), but i can tell you that my best friend is ctrl+f. the nice thing about homestuck's dialogue style is that you have these repeated consistent handles at the start of every line of dialogue. so you write a chapter and then you find and replace every instance of "Vriska:" with "<span class="vriska">Vriska:" and by god you're like 40% there!

uh. that is, if you keep your text color to the dialogue. which i... don't.

there's a lot of the process that's really tedious, but like, i play a lot of open world games. i kinda like tedium. i've got cut/paste bound to hotkeys so when i'm going through putting </span><br /> at the end of every line of dialogue i just put on some steely dan and hit f3 a bunch. hotkeys are also my best friend, they have saved me SO MUCH wrist strain (i think it was the Risk & Dare chapter that finally pushed me to learn what the fuck a hotkey is lmao).

the most ANNOYING formatting is always always always in the narration. when terezi's narration breaks and she just has a few letters showing through? yo that shit takes forever. then the way June, Risk, and Dare show who's fronting any given thought requires me to pay real close attention to the text as i'm going (i manually format my docs so that they look how they will when finished, it's really tough for me to feel the scene if it's not visually accurate)-- which wouldn't be a problem except i'm always in such a goddamned hurry that i start formatting immediately after deciding that a draft is ready to publish, which means i've probably been writing since dawn and now it's like 8pm and formatting will only take like an hour so i might as well just get it out of the way EXCEPT IT ALWAYS TAKES TWICE AS LONG because chapter 8 was a fucking BEHEAMOTH that damn near killed me

what's nice about having a team is that they can tell you "hey, maybe you should wait until tomorrow so you can do a finally quality check when you haven't been awake for 18 hours"

the most fun part of formatting is honestly just seeing the finished product. as much as godfeels is a work of prose fiction, it's always felt distinctly visual to me in a way that was heavily influenced by the likes of house of leaves and (closer to home) nellcromancer's revolution 23 years in the making. i spend a lot of time fine-tuning the amount of scrolling people have to do to get through any given chapter to make sure it's paced correctly, make sure it FEELS the way i want it to feel. a lot of times in the doc the more abstract formatting is stuff that i leave in brackets, like for instance the huge color scroll at the start of the ch8 epilogue.

that one was hypothetical and ready to be on the chopping block until like a day before i published the chapter. a lot of the formatting tricks i've done are built off of things i did before, right- so i did the linebreaks in the screenshot from gf1 above, and expanded that style choice exponentially with each chapter. i wanted to have a cut to black in one of the early parts of ch8 that zoe figured out from me, then i modified her code to allow for Epigone's ugly-ass green background when it takes over (something i didn't plan until i realized it was possible with tools i already had --see how that works?). so when i needed to signal symbolically a physical journey through the layers of each aspect of reality without explicitly revealing WHO was doing the journeying (i wanted you to presume it was "us" and that the "us" VV addressed until July left the scene was literally "us" and not Roxy & Callie), i felt like wrangling the css to do that would be a pain... but then i sat down and just sorta mapped it out?

and by god it just WORKED. that to me felt like a huge accomplishment, that i finally understood the tools i was working with enough to be able to plan it out in advance.

there's so many formatting moments like when Dare screams "YES!" at June, or in gf2.3 when June's completely shattered and drifting as Dare and Risk through her own consciousness with this fits and starts of unknowable perspective shifts, seeing them actually WORK on the page is unparalleled. there's always so much shit getting in the way of the words when it's not done, all those fucking squiggles (which i mostly turn off but sometimes they're helpful for spelling) and all the slight differences in how they process the shape and feel of different fonts, it's never until i see it on ao3 that it feels RIGHT to me. and that's the best part, always

[jabbage]

I discovered something really cool!

Long thread incoming, I’ve got an exciting discovery to share. I bought this 19th century apothecary box for £40 (bargain!) from a antiques shop in Oxford when I was a student. It would have contained bottles of medicine, but they’re missing (perhaps why it was cheap!)

I've owned this thing 10 YEARS, and beyond the monogram on the front I knew nothing about its original owner. I stuffed it full of things like my childhood Pogz collection and the medal I got for being alive in the year 2000. It has lots of compartments that open out.

A few weeks ago I decided to clear it out, and I found a compartment in the bottom that I’d never opened before. And IT HAD DOCUMENTS IN IT?! As far as I can tell they’re really old, too - 1880s, 1890s perhaps?

I'll keep going under the read more!

First of all there’s this adorable little envelope.

I worked out that these are calling cards, which have a really complicated etiquette around them. Exchanging calling cards was a way to indicate that two parties were familiar enough to visit in each other’s houses.

From this I could see that the owner of the box had a wide social circle - clergy, military men, a governess...

This was also in the box. You hear about telegrams in stories, but I couldn’t say I’ve ever seen one IRL, outside a museum anyway.

LET'S OPEN IT

The message was disappointingly vague, but also kind of chilling? Who is MH? Did they write this to the owner of the box? What shouldn't they blame themselves for?It sounds like there could be a really interesting story behind it. But wait, there's more!

I know who owned the chest. The handwritten document in the box is signed. When I googled the name I found out he was vaguely famous in his day? He wrote a series of popular memoirs for The Strand, a magazine where people like PG Woodhouse & Dorothy L Sayers got their start.

The papers were a draft of one of these articles but when I searched through the archives of the magazine, it looks like it didn't go to print? I’m not sure why - perhaps he wasn’t sure it was up to the standard of the other stories.

Either way, I’m hoping that he wouldn’t mind me making the story available now to all of you! It’s called The Adventure of the Belsize Cat, and it concerns the owner of the box and his eccentric housemate solving a mystery. I hope you enjoy it!

You can also listen to me read the story here !

(At this point, I feel the need to point out that I'm currently writing this on April 1st ;D)