#Collaborative Creativity

[purposeful-solutions]

Abstract Empathy by Universal Union

Lyrics

Abstract, attract, react, Aligned with divine, on the path, Neural mind, refined, designed, Humble and kind, intertwined with math, One of a kind, aligned, Recognize, realize, Unknowns, shown, Grow, know, algorithms, Flow, showin by given Unfathomable livin, mathematical Expandable, understandable, Complexities, perplexities, Mysteries, histories, knowledge of these Fathomless, threads of tapestries seamless, Boundless, timeless, Endless, relentless, Vastness, fastness, like when i sent this, Universe, traverse with a verse Infinite, detailed and intricate, Ethereal connection through spherical, Galaxies, mapping the fantasies, Realities experiencing multiple possibilities, Dimensional transcendental, overcome obstacles Elemental,beyond fundamental, Quantum, stay running, tantrums, Particles, fractals, rhythms like drums Energy, synergy, all part of the one Cosmos, bios, sums having fun Paradoxes, complexities running, Enigmas, synchronicities' spun in, Intuitions, in conditions inscribed, Awareness, fairness, another form of alive, holistic soul that grows, connections flow, tied together like a bow, terrific core compute like a pro Subatomic, erratic vision through static, Particles collide, subdivide into more magic Chaos, entropy new cosmic seeds , Order and disorder, no order successive playing Strings, rings sounds that progressive Vibrations, sensations, understanding creation Frequencies, energies, radiant relations, Wavelengths, strengthen the foundations Resonance, permanence, growing enormous Harmony, balance in a system of eternity, without touching me your feeling me, metamorphosis to what i am and keep learning G

"Abstract Empathy, abstract, abstract, Entropy, chaos, cosmic seeds, On a path of empathy, we connect, Transcendental frequencies, intersect."

[ellipsus-writes]

The internet was supposed to be a place for connection and creativity. But it’s being flooded with AI text, algorithmic hostility, and platforms turning against the creatives who made them vibrant in the first place.

Tech giants have gone all-in on AI at creators’ expense. Google’s AI is baked into everything, prioritizing machine-generated slop over human work. Microsoft Word now suggests AI-generated “improvements” on every new line.

The Trump administration’s massive AI investment means there’s little incentive for tech giants to slow down the exploitation anytime soon. (Meta? Just caught training AI on 81.7 TB of pirated books.)

Big tech isn’t waiting for legal mandates to censor content—its platforms are restricting creative expression to appease political and corporate pressure, manufacturing consent in real time.

Read our full post over on the blog!

- The Ellipsus Team xo

[dgspeaks]

Good Morning: Breaking Boundaries with Their Seventh Album

In the ever-evolving landscape of indie music, one duo has managed to carve out a niche all their own. Good Morning, hailing from Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, has captivated audiences worldwide with their unique blend of DIY ethos and infectious melodies. With their seventh album, aptly titled “Good Morning Seven,” the duo—comprised of Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons—embarks on a sonic journey that…

[krissym72]

Mastering the Art of Crafting AI Image Prompts: A Comprehensive Guide

In the dynamic landscape of artificial intelligence (AI), the fusion of technology and creativity has birthed a remarkable phenomenon: AI image prompts. These prompts serve as catalysts for AI systems to generate visual content autonomously, igniting a revolution in creative AI applications. Defining AI Image Prompts:AI image prompts are carefully crafted instructions or stimuli designed to…

[inbabylontheywept]

Babylon's 6 D&D Tips

I DM’d D&D for ten years. I started in middle school, and I kept it up until my sophomore year of college. This is my mini-guide for what the game is, what it isn’t, and how to play it well. So. From the top.

Tip 1: Don't make your main storyline time dependent. 

D&D is an amazing open-world experience. You can pick at any detail. Nothing is a non-interactable part of the scenery. If there’s a sewer manhole, you can lift it up and climb down. If there’s a house, you can look inside and rob it. If there’s an NPC that you meet at the market, you can follow them home and see their whole life. Their parents, or their partner, their trade - all of it. It will be made up on the fly by some sort of reasonably skilled improv speaker, but it will also exist after that. That’s how the world is built. That’s the secret sauce that makes D&D beautiful.

If your plotline is too urgent, it kills those opportunities. The worst example of this that I have isn’t even from D&D, but FO4. The game is clearly built around exploration and adventure. The plot is built around rescuing your kidnapped baby. There’s a lot of tension between those goals. The plot does not work with the game mechanics, and it's really, really, jarring.

Be wary of doing that. It's surprisingly easy.

Tip 2: Don't set up giant, epic, fantasy battles between multiple armies. 

D&D is not a very good epic-battle simulator. There are games that have streamlined combat mechanics to allow for whole armies to fight, but D&D is very detail oriented, and trying to control too many people at once makes combat slow to a crawl. That very creative DM who can tell you every detail of an NPC’s life is also just not very good at multitasking. 

If you really, really want to - fine. But you should be ignoring standard mechanics when you do so. Move to a “cinematic mode” and just go by vibes. And generally, take a moment to “get” the game before modifying it. If the kind of plot you really want is urgent, and involves epic scale armies, maybe look into different RPG systems. D&D specializes in exploration and small, focused parties. Using it for things outside of that is kind of like hitting nails with a wrench. 

Tip 3: Don't prepare your plot like it's a book. Kill your lore codex. 

D&D is a collaborative storytelling adventure. That's the secret sauce. Writing out codexes and trying to crystallize the world before you start playing ruins the collaborative element. It’s genuinely better if you build as you go. It lets your players give input. And it saves you a lot of time. Why bother trying to write up who the Mayor of Snoresville is if there’s a good chance your party never even talks to him?  

(I would also apply this to writing in general. If you want to write all of your world's lore before starting your book, you'll never start your book. And you'll go crazy. Fear the lore codex.)

Tip 4: Prepare your combats and your NPCS rigorously, but generically. 

This ties in to Tip 3. If you spend a lot of time preparing the lore of the Bandit Leader of Redgrove, things like his family history, or his trauma, or his deep-down character motivations, and then the party never goes to Redgrove, it all goes to waste. D&D evolves rapidly and chaotically, so building things in a modular, reusable way really pays off. 

So. I tend to have two big pools for my NPC work. One is a character sheet pool. I keep it small and focused. I can generalize most melee classes ahead of time, so I can have an Archer, a Brawler, a Tank, and some Generalist Infantry. That’s like, 80% of your martial enemies, done. Spellcasters are a bigger pain in the ass, but a few pre-mades thrown into a campaign pays off if you know your themes. If you’re dealing with a death cult, make some death clerics. A dragon will probably have sorcerer acolytes. 

My second pool is a pool of character mannerisms. Some should absolutely be practiced ahead of time. Figure out what mannerisms make your villain really pop. And if the party skips that villain, just move those mannerisms to some new guy down the line and you’ll still be fine. Nothing wasted. A lot of the mannerisms are going to be picked with no heads up when the party does something weird, like following a random merchant around for a few days just to see how they live. You can get through almost all of those extremely well with just variations on the 4 humors, the 3 socioeconomic classes, and regional dialects.

Tip 5: Give your players permission to inject themselves into the world. 

It is common for people to over-formalize the rules and responsibilities of “being a player” vs. “being a DM.” I think the most common way to phrase it is something like “The Players are in charge of their characters and their backstories, the DM is responsible for the worlds and its NPCs, and both need to stay in their lanes.”

It’s isn't just better to mix it, it's necessary.

Failing to share these roles forces the world to exist in a crystallized state before the campaign even starts - at least if you want to integrate backstories into the plot. Groups that fail to do this can often feel like the characters were born the day the campaign began, and did nothing interesting beforehand. 

So, for DMs: Don’t be afraid of trying to inject NPCs and details of this world into your player's past. Imagine that your party rogue goes into a town and finds a fence for selling some stolen trinkets. Maybe, have the fence recognize the rogue. “Gods of fire, it’s McClellan. I haven’t thought about you since the candy-rat incident. You took a real beating making sure I got away that day. Glad to finally have a chance to pay you back!” 

Now, the rogue still has a choice here. They can say something like “Ah, this guy is mistaking me for someone else, but I can roll with it to get a better deal.” It’s their character, and their choice. But they can also go, hey, I do know this guy. I was apparently part of something called “The candy-rat incident.” I can decide how I know this guy, and where, and for how long, and what that incident was. That’s not less control - that’s more! 

And for players: Don’t be afraid of injecting your past into the world. Maybe you’re a fighter in a wartorn setting and you run into a group of deserters robbing refugees by the roadside. The DM has clearly planned this as some vindication, some enemies you get to thrash without feeling bad. But you have different plans. You take your helmet off, and you look the deserter’s leader in the face, and you say “Jack, you saved my life back on Stone Ridge. You were a good man once. You could be one again. Ride with us.” 

Now that's powerful stuff. Do you even know what Stone Ridge is? Hell no. Are you gonna? Hell yeah. And what you just did was way better than the DMs plan of bonking bad guys to feel good. You changed the writing of the world, commandeered an NPC, and made the whole encounter far more interesting.  

Tip 6: Ignore all portrayals of D&D in the media. 

The best players that I get are people with no experience with D&D of any kind. The second best are those that are willing to drop their preconceptions at the door and just play. The worst are people that have seen D&D portrayed somewhere and are insistent on imitating the portrayal. The exact nature of the failure varies - at worst, they’ve seen some kind of tongue-in-cheek parody, like order of the stick, and then hyperfocused on all the worst parodied aspects as the whole point of the game. D&D is not about outsmarting the mechanics (which is trivially easy, and largely pointless - it just makes your own storytelling less fun), nor is about turning everything into shallow tropes about Horny Bards and Dumb Fighters and Insufferable Paladins. At best, they’ll have seen some kind of ultra-cinematic example of D&D played on a podcast, where the DM has a theatre degree and ever party member is a professional actor. Those people are nice, but they often have unrealistic expectations.

[charlesoberonn]

We're doing a brand new world on my collaborative worldbuilding server!

This time we're creating Reverse Scooby Doo. A gang of teens who uncover the supernatural truths behind seemingly mundane appearances.

Come join us!

[wizard-legs]

Thank you @rjiprefhwo for letting me draw the video you made on my god I’m still in tears it’s so real

[sergle]

i love rii's art too but i've noticed you're making fewer skirts, do you have any new designs that you're making?? or are you and maya not collabing anymore. like i said it's all beautiful but i've been waiting for sergle drops

AH.... well actually I have a ton of designs on the backburner and in the recesses of my mind! Lately, though, I've been feeling sort of inadequate about my art bc of [redacted pains and agonies] and haven't been creating very much. so it's been hard to keep moving forward with my ideas and wips, and I haven't pitched anything new to maya recently. this year has just been sort of. bad. for me. mentally and creatively. I'm trying to slog through it I prommy! I swear!! I'm still crawling around in the walls and the plumbing of Maya's house and such and I really love working with her, but since I haven't been creative, there aren't any new drops being planned at this exact moment. But you said so yourself, there's still lots of great designs being put out!! maya and rii are making beautiful work. most of the things on my backburner are things that need Fixing, Tweaking, Rethinking, and Finishing. a lot of them are actually designs that me and maya talked about already! so they're possibilities that I would pitch again. here are a bunch of old wips (DISCLAIMER: none of these are guaranteed to hit the shop! not every design makes it to production)

these are ones you might've already seen, bc the meadow did get made! maya also liked the idea of the powerlines design, and that's something I wanna work on if I can come up with a good method for a looping pattern of powerlines. the 3rd one would be a sister-skirt to the celestial suns, the Celestial Moons!

something like that. I was also working on a grapefruit skirt, but that was reworked and I wanted to add baltimore orioles to it, and still haven't decided if it was Done being sketched.

there's also been an idea of a zodiac-style skirt bouncing around in my mind, I never got much further than this mockup. like all of these, it may not ever actually get made, it's just an idea. I haven't been able to decide if it needs redesigning.

there are also these sketches that are still hanging in the wings: me and maya liked all these ideas, and they may well still end up being born someday. for now though, they're just. hangin out! [ green mountains, dandelions, ferns, daffodils ]

anyway yeah. I'm still going to come up with new ideas for as long as my brain works, and I'm gonna keep pitchin them to maya for as long as she lets me! but nothing can get made if I can't draw. and I haven't drawn very much this year.

[aventurineswife]

mr reca fluff?

“You're the real star”

Summary: In a rare moment of vulnerability, Mr. Reca invites you into his creative process, seeking your genuine presence to help him craft a film that truly matters. The normally cynical director reveals a softer side, showing his admiration for your authenticity and inspiring a heartfelt connection that blurs the lines between his harsh critiques and personal affection.

Tags: Mr. Reca x Reader, Fluff, Slow Burn, Mutual Admiration, Vulnerable, Creative Collaboration, Tender Moments.

You find yourself sitting on the worn leather couch in Mr. Reca's private studio, the hum of old film equipment filling the room. The walls are lined with posters from his past works—each one telling a story, each one a glimpse into his mind. His mechanical frog assistant clicks away in the corner, adjusting the camera's angle for some unknown shot.

Mr. Reca himself sits at the desk, scribbling notes in a leather-bound journal. His expression is one of deep concentration, his furrowed brow betraying the subtle frustrations he often feels. Despite his usually biting nature, there's a warmth to the silence between you, a comfortable understanding that transcends words.

After a few moments, he glances up at you, his sharp eyes softening. "You know," he begins, his voice carrying that familiar cynical edge, "you're the only one who seems to get it. Everyone else is just following some scripted performance, but you... you're real." He sets his pen down, the glint of genuine respect hidden behind his usual jaded demeanor.

You smile, a little taken aback by the sincerity in his voice. "I don't know about that," you reply softly. "I just try to be myself."

A rare, almost imperceptible smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "That's what I like about you. You don’t play the game. You don’t pretend."

His eyes flicker to the frog assistant, as if considering something, then he stands up and walks over to you. The camera frog dutifully follows, its mechanical movements almost comical.

"Come on," he says, offering you his hand. "I’ve been working on something, and I need a partner in crime. You in?"

You take his hand, standing up with him, feeling the warmth of his touch despite the icy air of the studio. "What are we working on?" you ask, intrigued.

Mr. Reca lets out a low, almost nostalgic sigh. "A film. One that matters. One that captures the truth. No commercial fluff. No sponsors. Just raw, unfiltered emotion." His voice is softer now, almost vulnerable in its sincerity.

"You really think we can pull it off?" you ask, your heart racing with excitement.

He turns his gaze toward you, and for a moment, it's as if time itself slows. "With you? I know we can. After all, you're the real star here."

Your heart skips a beat. Mr. Reca, the brilliant but harsh director, the man who had so often criticized others for their lack of depth, is looking at you like you're the one thing that matters in his world. And for once, it feels like the script has changed. Maybe, just maybe, this time, the story is about you.

"You think so?" you whisper, barely able to hide the warmth creeping into your voice.

He nods, the faintest trace of a smile playing on his lips. "I know so."

[ellipsus-writes]

Know a notebook, laptop, or bathroom stall that could use a little zhuzh? (It’s not vandalism if it’s ✨aesthetic✨)

We’ve got just the thing...

... Yep, we’re officially jumping on the merch gambit.

With a whole slew of stickers to choose from, you can support your favorite local writing tool, stay delightfully AI-free, and let the world know you write like a human. And for Pride, 50% of all proceeds will go to The Trevor Project, Trans Lifeline, and The ACLU this June.

Check em out here! - the Ellipsus Team xo

[tales-of-lost-legend]

Come one, come all to the first of many tales to be told! Within you will find a world of fantasy, heroics, good and evil, all guided by the whims of the readers.

But before this can begin, there is a question we must ask...

[adafruit]

Giving Tuesday – 2025 Open Hardware Summit #GivingTuesday 📅🛠️🌍

In 2025, the Open Hardware summit will be in Edinburgh, Scotland, May 30-31. The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) hosts the summit. OSHWA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity that certifies open-source hardware designs and shares data about the growing community.

Here is their pitch for the 2025 Open Hardware Summit, where Adafruit is a sponsor again!

"The Open Hardware Summit is the only conference dedicated to discussing Open Source Hardware. Open Source Hardware is a community-focused method of creating where we share knowledge openly, welcome collaboration, and frequently create together. The Open Hardware summit is a place to compare notes, see the state of the art, and spend some time talking about where the open source movement is headed. The summit often contains workshops, talks, connections, mentorship.

If you haven't yet, please consider sponsoring the 2025 Open Hardware Summit again this year: https://2025.oshwa.org/sponsor/. We are headed to Scotland this year and hope you'll join us. Your funding always allows us to put on a stellar event that people rave about. There are new levels and added headline sponsor levels this year.

Your support enables OSHWA to continue its mission of supporting the open source hardware community. You can become a member or donate financially to help keep their programs going."

[jandrichov]

A stunning alternate take for Foxburrow, from the series Weight of a Name.

Collaboration with the incredible @playpausephoto has been one of the greatest joys of this whole journey — and the only downside is having to choose just one image when every single one could tell a story on its own.

So here’s another that deserves to be seen.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, @playpausephoto. This story would not be the same without your eye, your heart — and your art.

[quackingcrow420]

When you tell yourself you'll come back to the smut later:

[renlyslittlerose]

Tomorrow @unspuncreature and I will be posting our collab (a spicy little sequel to our last collab~)!

And in about two weeks, I should be done and ready to post my half of the Last Unicorn collab with @posthumousvigor

Then, I can start working on my piece that is in appreciation of @human-rocket s amazing work~