#EDIT: THIS HAS BEEN IN MY DRAFTS FOR SO LONG. I FORGOT ABOUT IT

[hrokkall]

You were created by humans to protect. They died, so you continued to protect—protect everything they hold dear. You rest in the corners of hell that make mockeries of their holy places and tell yourself that you, you are the last bastion of everything they held dear. You are more than a machine, you fight like man—with honor—as you still bow before the thing that claims to be you. It fights like a dog, and you flee. You can't bring yourself to go back and see what has become of the temple.

You have a new purpose now. If it seeks to destroy, you will give it destruction. You use everything that humanity taught you to create, study the curvatures of their statues to weld together a new arm out of the remains of a sentry you mangled (what a worthless, worthless warmachine—knowing nothing but itself) resembling their own. You settle, once again, in a faux temple—this one of golden stone—and you wait.

It arrives. Of course it does. And you rend it apart. Piece by bloody piece. You take apart everything that you hate, hate, hate. It takes until your chest is dented in for the red haze in your vision to clear, to realize the scrap lining the floor is your own.

So you flee. Not in cowardice—you are not human enough for cowardice, you have always known this—but for the most mechanical thought of self-preservation. You flee and it follows, and some sinking feeling knows that the only thing the two of you feel is hunger.

You were never human, nor did you truly seek to protect anything but yourself. You will never know peace, for you were nothing more than a leftover of war.

It hardly matters. You were created by humans to die—and you die like the machine you are.

[crossbackpoke-check]

Substance, Shadow, and Spirit [remixed, abridged] by Tao Yuanming

[pan-magi]

*posts random rukh thoughts over a month late b/c I forgot about it*

Are the rukh an actual light source? The things my mind gets stuck on repeatedly while working on shit.

The answer would appear to be yes. This is shown when there is enough gathered at one place, usually in a relation with one of the magi using enough magic and producing magoi at a rate to be visible to everyone who can't usually see them. With the exception of Judar, but I'll get to black rukh in a minute. This is usually conveyed through light even if the surroundings are dim. The first time Aladdin is seen really going off is one such occurrence.

I keep thinking to myself. How does rukh produce light when magi using magic isn't involved? Do magicians constantly see hundreds, thousands, of light sources no one else can see? Or is the light so minimal it doesn't make a difference? I like to know what light sources I'm dealing with.

The closest we get for this is with Baba. She sees the world directly through rukh; it is her source of sight. Though tbf, the anime doesn't really touch on her being blind outside of her interaction with rukh. The manga is only a little clearer. Point being, light source or not, it is a way to see and experience the world.

Does that mean that it acts as a sort of passive night vision outside of Baba? Who knows. The one time I can think of an example is that while exploring the fifth district there isn't much light shown outside of some lanterns and dim lights, but Aladdin, Titus and Sphintus don't seem to have much trouble. Meanwhile, Marga and the rest of the citizens there are used to the level of light and don't work really as a control group. So I dunno.

The other conclusion is that it's not the rukh that produce the light. It comes from the magoi that they produce. When Judar explains the magic system to Aladdin (imo, a condescending smartass doing an exposition dump is a surprisingly effective way to deliver information to the audience in a quick manner), he produces magoi to deliver his point. It acts as a bright beacon that everyone reacts to and sees, especially when Judar starts attacking people with it.

I don't really have concluding thoughts on this. It's more of a ramble dump. Good place as any to switch to talk about black rukh.

I kinda dislike in the anime that black rukh is also shown to produce light. A dim purple light typically, but a light nonetheless. One of the reasons I think of to why is so that each is distinguishable in a way. That a mass of black rukh isn't shown to be a massive black blob and nothing else.

(left about normal, right darkened slightly to show point of black blob)

It isn't how I ever imagined them to be though.

I'll end this on a headcanon of mine. I always thought it made more sense for the black rukh to absorb light or at the very least cast a massive shadow. The first impression Aladdin gets from seeing Judar is describing him like a black sun. What would be the cause for someone to come to that conclusion? Mine was that the overwhelming amount of black rukh from Judar would be a blot of darkness until Aladdin can focus on him properly. If it is only dozens of black birds surrounding the guy the description will be less extreme.

An eclipse (what I can attribute to being like a black sun, outside of blackhole) doesn't just cast ordinary shadows. It is putting out the main light source of the planet. It isn't a cloudy day, a storm, or night time during a new moon: the closest other comparison. The darkness of an eclipse hits different. Plus, when Aladdin gets memories about the fall of Alma Tran the sun there looks like it is permanently eclipsed. That's the quickest shorthand to show that it is nothing but darkness all the time.

Anyway, that is how I see Judar and the black rukh in general. They are opposites and out of spite literally and metaphorically counteracts the light from the white rukh.

Yup, no closing thoughts. Thanks for reading this word vomit if you did!

[airborneice]

can we talk about how @the-hilda-librarians-wife is just out here writing poetry in the tags like it’s no big deal

@sketchbookweek Day 3 - Sun & Moon / Family

you know I had to bring up my sketchbook kid Mattie for this one. in my mind this is like…impromptu midnight storytime bc someone woke up the entire household and now she’s almost settled no one wants to get up or go back to bed

(Kaisa has become a little more comfortable with openly doing magic by this point, partly because of reconnecting with Tildy in season 2 and partly because no matter how shoddy her spells come out, they never fail to entertain her kids, especially her youngest. Kaisa does the best stories in this house. no child can resist magic floating pictures)

[redgoldsparks]

I went all out for Hourly Comics Day 2025! These took between 6-7 hours to draw across three days, and then another at least hour to scan and edit which I wasn't in the mood to do which is why they are a week late lol. Had a wonderful time at Lumacon though and I'm glad I was able to document it! Transcript below the cut :)

insta / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my books / print store / bluesky

Page 1

7:50am: Alarm goes off

Morning phone: check eSIMs, insta, discord, Spanish vocab 

El tiene pelo largo 

Jonathan Van Ness, is that you…?

Drops App 

8am: My friends gave me a delicious new black tea that’s very easy to over steep 

3 minutes seemed too long, but 2:30 was a bit weak… I’ll try 2:45… 

Honestly, I prefer a tea where I can leave the bag in the whole time I drink the cup… 

For the first time in many years I’m actually doing something cool on hourly comics day! Today is Lumacon! This is the show’s 11th year- I think I’ve only missed 1. For the first time, it’s raining on con day!

Page 2

I’m so glad we had another avocado!

This bagel was so chunky I cut it into perfect thirds. Perfection

It’s so rare that I’m awake before my parents… SIP

Should I write about Larrupin sauce? My friend Alina buys this for me up in Humboldt since it’s hard to find… 

Every object/moment suggests a story when I’m paying attention! 

8 to 9am

Page 3 

Pick up Martina! Very cute raincoat (@martinamonster-art )

Chatting and Ateez on the drive 9 to 9:30

OMG why am I drawing cars :( 

LUMACON! 10-11AM 

My newest zine is a recruitment zine for Authors Against Book Bans (AABB). 

I zero in on folks I know to be authors–

Maia: I want you– 

Author: Me? 

Maia: To join AABB! (info zine)

Author: Oh thanks! I will! 

Maia: This zine is so fun to hand out!

Page 4 

Teen: Thank you so much for writing Gender Queen. I gave it to my mom and she credits it for a lot of her understanding. I came out as gender queer a year ago and she said “I love you.” I don’t know if that would have been possible without the book! 

Maia: Thank you for saying that! 

Different teen: I want to buy a copy of your book but I need to make more sales first. 

Maia: Where’s your table? 

Teen: Behind you 

Look. 

I spot some of the cutest round crochet bois I’ve ever seen including a nonbinary bee

Maia: Can I please trade you a book for that bee?! 

Teen: OMG yes! 

You know it’s a good trade when both parties think they got the better deal! 

12pm 

Page 5

I check in with Anna (@thebeanbaguette) 1pm 

Maia: How’s the con so far? 

Anna: Really good! I love how many furries are here! 

Maia: Oh yeah it’s fun

Maia: I had never seen the skull fursuit head before this show… for the size event it’s impressive furry turn out 

Cute goth/pastel couple 

Anna: To be honest, I’d love to get a fursuit head one day… and the hands! 

Anna: But I don’t know what animal…

(Table is covered in cute rats)

Later, another friend comments 

Cynthia: So many furries here! 

Maia: Yes, the per capita is very high… sign of a healthy ecosystem! 

(we all wore masks all day I just forgot to draw them) 

Page 6 

My friend Nic comes to visit & cover my table during my lunch break- 2pm

Nic: Don’t worry I’ll do my best impersonation of you! I’ll even sign books with your name!

Maia: Okay, great, thanks!

Maia: (Has not had water, snack or bathroom break in 6 hours)

Later we chat with Gio, another friend about knowing when a story is done

Maia: I had a publisher reject a pitch basically saying “this isn’t fully baked yet” which… was true. 

Nic: Unfortunately I’m doing that to myself! I’m on the 4th draft of this short story that just needs to be done. 

Gio: But when it’s a personal project how do you know? 

Gio: When it’s my own work, no deadline, no editor, it’s tempting to just keep putting it back in the oven. But at what point are you like, I’m making crackers. I thought it was bread but it turned into crackers! 

Page 7

3-4pm last hour of the con

My parents came! My Taekwondo teacher came! A trans teen who came to my first Gender Queer event in 2019 came! I saw so many friends & my heart is full! Thank you Luma! 

4:30

Maia: I think I’m ready to go…

Table: EMPTY

Martina: Me too! 

Maia & Martina: LOOK 

Anna- nothing packed, stuff fully out

Anna: Haha, you go! I pack slowly! 

In the parking lot & rain 

Maia: I’m really glad you came! 

Martina: Thanks for talking me into it! 

Martina: You’ve been manifesting this since September! 

Maia: Haha yes, 

(I talked both Martina & Anna into applying for this show; Martina’s first zinefest table! 

Page 8

5pm I drive home 

after all the rain, the ditches & fields are flooded 

Maia (texting): I just got home

Anna (texting): I haven’t left the venue yet

Page 9

6pm I should be unpacking but I’m lying in bed looking at my phone! 

Maia: Wow so many hourlies! I haven’t even started! I’d rather read them on tumblr & patreon later. How is my finch doing? 

Nic incepted our entire friend group into the finch app back in January. I’m pretty hooked. In the finch app you make a little bird persona who travels the world & gains experiences. You give it energy & earn points by crossing items off your to do list & completing self care tasks like stretching or drinking water. 

Maia: To be honest, I don’t really need an app to help me do tasks. But look how cute my bird is!!! Also! You can get pets for your bird! I have five! Owl, seal, caribou, ball of fluff, cow

Later, I pet my real cat. 

Maia: Don’t worry you are my actual favorite pet. 

Page 10 

7pm: Dinner with my parents. Big salad, fried tofu. We talk about clay deposits in odd places. 

My dad: There’s that Bentonite clay at Shell Beach! That’s the kind you want for poison oak rashes. 

My mom: And the deposit at school by the office, some teachers have kids use that for crafts. 

8pm: Formatting my January book reviews

I really like the monthly wrap-ups that Storygraph generates. 

Books: 11 Pages: 2855 Average Rating: 3.91

LGBTQIA: 5 Fantasy: 4 Comic: 4 Contemporary: 3 Romance: 3

9pm: I fall into the trap of looking at the news which I’ve avoided all day. Escape to tumblr where I discover some amazing Ranma ½ fanart. Should I reread it? 

10-12am: I draw the first 4 pages of these comics then go to bed! 

In total, drawing these takes 6 or 7 hours across 3 days. -Maia Kobabe 2025 

[airplanelanding]

r/tifu

u/scrapgege • 21h

TIFU by planning a wedding for myself, my husband, and our "fiancé"

(L)

I know the title sounds weird, but I promise it gets worse.

For a little bit of background and context: I (32M) am married to my incredibly doting, amazing husband (26M) and have been for 5 years as of last month. We have both been engaged to Fiancé (24M), an old friend of his, for just about half a year now. We'd been dating for a year prior to our engagement, making our relationship a year and a half in total.

Since we got engaged about 6 months ago, I've been diligently planning the wedding.

My husband has been stressed as of recent, so I took it upon myself to handle all the details, hoping to surprise him with a day that would make his heart sing — just like he did for me on our wedding.

I've picked a venue, drafted invites for our closest friends, and even coordinated with my husband's personal assistant to develop the menu for the reception. It's been a long, arduous task, but I'm devoted to making this the best day of their lives.

The problem?

Last night, my husband pulled me aside to have a "very serious" conversation with him. I was concerned, of course, because he's seemed increasingly restless as of late. So, we sat down with some warm tea and after a little hesitating and a lot of reassurances he loves me...

My husband suggested the idea of inviting Fiancé into our relationship.

That's right. You read that right.

Our fiancé? NOT our fiancé.

In fact, come to find out, we haven't even been dating!

My husband hasn't been stressed because of wedding planning, contrary to my belief. No, he's been stressed because he didn't know how to approach the topic without it coming across the wrong way.

Apparently, I'm the only one who thought we were already together!

In the end, my husband got a good laugh out of it, deeply amused by the whole situation.

I, on the other hand, am mortified.

Looking back on it all, I really should've known sooner. However, it's not as if I was hiding my planning!

We went cake tasting! I took them (individually) to the tailor! I can't even begin to imagine what my husband and our (Not) Fiancé thought was going on.

And to top if all off, his personal assistant — the one who was helping me plan? Apparently, he knew everything the entire time and was just waiting for us to figure it out. (He is now very conveniently busy with work my husband did not assign him whenever I try to speak with him.)

I don't think I'll ever be able to live this down.

TL;DR - I planned an entire wedding for myself, my husband and our fiancé, come to find out we weren't even dating said fiancé, and my husband has actually been trying to figure out how to ask if we can be, the whole time.

edit: we are asking him out this evening.

⬆ 8.2k | ⇩ 💬 934 🏅 ➥ 492

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u/forthenight 20h

OP, how do you imagine an entire relationship?

••• ⤶ ⬆ 641 ⇩

u/deleted 20h

deleted

••• ⤶ ⇧ -234 ⬇

u/scrapgege OP • 20h

I do understand your perspective, if you

are coming from a place of actual care.

However, my husband and I are very

happy and deeply in love.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 302 ⇩

u/masterofthewinds 19h

WAIT omg hold on is this abt who i think it is???

••• ⤶ ⬆ 37 ⇩

u/scrapgege OP 19h

Oh, oops. Forgot you have Reddit.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 2 ⇩

u/masterofthewinds 19h

TEXTING YOU.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 2 ⇩

u/carefulplanner 17h

edit: we are asking him out this evening

OP!!!! Don't leave us hanging, we need to know what he says!!

••• ⤶ ⬆ 529 ⇩

u/scrapgege OP • 4h

we are dating :-]

••• ⤶ ⬆ 797 ⇩

u/eternal_sleeper 16h

I took them cake tasting! I took them (individually) to the tailor!

Okay but what DID they think was going on?

Also props to the PA for having the chance to clear this all up & instead choosing to watch it all devolve.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 281 ⇩

u/scrapgege OP • 15h

According to my husband, he thought

the cake was me hinting that I wanted

more sweets while simultaneously

treating out Not-Fiancé, 2 birds 1 stone

style. As for the tailor, he says, and I

quote, "I had no idea what you were

planning, I was just happy to indulge

your whims." So...

edit: Not-Fiancé (now actual boyfriend)

was apparently "just along for the ride

and free food."

••• ⤶ ⬆ 440 ⇩

u/oneman-army2 12h

"just along for the ride and free

food"

he is so real for that tbh.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 24 ⇩

u/west-south17 10h

I think we're all ignoring the fact that this presumed relationship went on for 1.5 YEARS.

Our fiancé? NOT our fiancé.

How do you do that? Genuinely, how? What about the proposal? How does one make this error???

••• ⤶ ⬆ 127 ⇩

u/covermyblow 7h

No way this is legit. Did you just not think there was anything weird about your relationship? Like, did you kiss "as buddies" or something?

If not, how do you go 1.5 years without thinking it's weird or there's something strange about the fact that your partner has never been physically affectionate with you?

OP is either a liar or wayyyy oblivious.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 71 ⇩

u/scrapgege OP • 2h

Well first, kissing isn't by any means

a requirement for a relationship. But, I

just figured we were moving slow. He's

not always a very touchy-feely person,

and my husband and I respect his

boundaries. In fact, it would have been

fine even if we weren't just moving slow

and he simply didn't want any of that. As

long as he's by our sides, we'll be happy.

That's all that matters, really, is knowing

we love and care for each other, and will

always be there. Kissing is a bonus, not

a necessity.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 94 ⇩

u/masterofthewinds 1h

AWWWWWWW!!!!!!

••• ⤶ ⬆ 4 ⇩

u/fallingtree 23m

this is nauseatingly sweet i hate

couples

••• ⤶ ⬆ 2 ⇩

u/fu--yao 2h

My husband has been stressed as of recent, so I took it upon myself to handle all the details, hoping to surprise him with a day that would make his heart sing — just like he did for me on our wedding.

this is sickening I'm never speaking to you again.

In fact, come to find out, we haven't even been dating!

I HAD TO LISTEN TO YOUR LOVESTRUCK RAMBLINGS FOR NOTHING???

I planned an entire wedding for myself, my husband and our fiancé, come to find out we weren't even dating said fiancé, and my husband has actually been trying to figure out how to ask if we can be, the whole time.

Do you just not talk??? HOW DID YOU DO THIS???? I'm never talking to you again.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 64 ⇩

u/nanfengfeng 1h

I told you.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 5 ⇩

u/scrapgege OP • 49m

??? You helped me pick the venue.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 2 ⇩

u/fu--yao 43m

why didn't you ask me.

••• ⤶ ⬆ 1 ⇩

[Read More...]

u/northern-general 11m

OP, when's the wedding?

••• ⤶ ⬆ 9 ⇩

[steamberrystudio]

2024 wrap-up and 2025 plans

It's been a really weird year for me and the last few months have been particularly challenging - so much so that I can't really remember much of the start of the year. There's been a lot that has happened and yet it feels like almost nothing has happened.

With a personal move in the works at the moment, and lots of lists and packing and cleaning, the last couple of weeks have felt like a blur of limbo as well.

But rather than just complaining let's jump into the wrap up and plans for 2025.

2024 Progress Wrap up

When looking back over a year of visual novel development, it can be really easy to forget progress and victories because it all smears together into an indistinct timeline.

You know stuff happened but you lose sight of the details of that stuff.

Even while writing this last night, I forgot that A Faerie's Tale was something completed and released this year. I remembered it just now while doing a final proofread of this post.

Development is such a long and repetitive process that you forget all the individual steps it took to get where you are. When I look back over 2024, I admit I feel like I somehow didn't do that much...that time slipped away while I did very little actual work.  

And of course, that isn't true. (Or is it?? Self-doubt assures me that I didn't do anything noteworthy this year.)

When Stars Collide

At the start of 2024, When Stars Collide sat at 485,000 words. I was finishing up editing Asher's route but had portions of the other routes to draft. The UI was still the old design, most of the backgrounds were incomplete and none of the additional features like the flowcharts and affinity meters were set up.  

I wanted to release an updated demo and the more new people told me they were playing the demo, the more I died inside because it was not at all reflective of the project any more. But I was missing critical backgrounds that I actually got only a few weeks before Episode 1 went to beta.

The point is that back at the start of 2024 the game was still very unfinished but I had big plans. My goal was originally to start releasing episodes in June of 2024 but editing and coding just took so much longer than expected that it just wasn't possible.

From a writing perspective, I learned that drafting and editing a game in this overlapping route style was hard. It was just genuinely so much more difficult than the separate route structure I'm used to. It really requires different processes and styles of planning than what I've done in the past. The burden of meticulously matching a timeline of events across 6 routes simultaneously is really tricky with the way I write and form the choices in my games.  

You kind of have to either never refer back to anything that happens within a choice scenario or you have to remember and track a lot of variables and conversations and events. Additionally, writing one plot line from multiple relationship perspectives is actually quite tricky. Things have to align in very specific ways but you also kind of want to make sure that each play through is interesting. You don't want the conversations within the LI-specific content to be identical but they have to be similar enough you can manage the difference with a few key variables.  

I honestly found it a really exhausting way to write. There's so much less complexity and so much more freedom when you are writing separate routes. And for that reason, the writing took a lot longer than I am used to.

One day I want to write up all my thoughts on route structure in visual novels but I haven't had time yet.

Ultimately I drafted about 172,000 words this year. The total word count of the game before I coded it was around 657,000 words - plus an additional 8-10k or so of bonus content. Of course, that shrinks when I code it but that was the total uncoded word count. So that is quite a jump from the 485,000 words I started with this year.  

I always say that working on VNs really skews your view of what "a lot" of words is. To me, as weird as it is to say, 180k doesn't feel like that much writing, which is silly because it's like writing two YA novels.   

But between the end of the Kickstarter for Gilded Shadows and the end of that year, I think I wrote about 250,000 words. That's 70,000 more words but in less time. I think it just shows how much more difficult writing WSC has been due to the structure of the routes.  

I remember having a conversation with someone once where she told me that writing a game like Gilded Shadows is *definitely* harder and more work than writing a game like When Stars Collide. GS has multiple plots and a lot more words. In WSC, the routes share a plot, they share scenes and content, there's only one plot line and there are far fewer words.  

I think it really underestimates the simplicity buff and the freedom buff that you get from having a single separate route in its own space time where you don't have to care as heavily about continuity across routes or a shared timeline of events or all of this other stuff that was such a burden to me when writing overlapping routes.  

I maintain that I'm really glad I wrote When Stars Collide the way I did. I learned so much about game structure and choices and all this mechanical stuff about how visual novels work that I'd never really had to think about for. It was really, really enlightening.  

But I will never do this game structure again. Lemme just say that.  

Drafting aside, I had to also edit all that writing which was its own special layer of hell.  

And then the art. The art has been enjoyable. I really love this game's aesthetic and the character designs. And the characters. I really enjoy them all so much. They are the most adorable crew of nerdy gremlins out there.  

But the art has had is own challenges. I've done about 20 CGs for the game so far and a lot of them are easy enough but the colour slider MC is definitely a bit of a challenge for the CGs. With GS where I recoloured by hand, there were times that I had to slightly tweak Morgan's default colours to look good in CGs. For instance, one of her skin tones looked quite odd next to Magnus, who is very pink. And I had to just slightly tweak that skin tone in his CGs so they looked okay together side by side. It was easy to test that sort of thing before the CG even got into the game.

But I colour Wil in greyscale and I don't see them in colour until I test. And each colour available on the slider is represented by a number. And there are essentially 100 of them. So testing all of those isn't really viable. I do test multiple skin tones from my saves. But in some ways it's more cumbersome to make sure all of that looks good.  

Wil also has 8 hairstyles…in two colours (which are recoloured manually because a couple of the hairstyles just don't really looks as good recoloured automatically (it's my art, not the dynamic colour slider tool).  

It's a lot of work. Hair 5 usually puts my hand out of commission for the rest of the day (so I save it for last. Ha ha). I don't regret it and again, it's something I wanted to to do as an experiment. I knew that 5 hairstyles was probably manageable and 8 was definitely pushing and I was right so no hard lessons really learned there.  It's sometimes valuable experience to push yourself right to that line and really see where the division between "feasible" and "too much" really is. Because then it's no longer hypothetical. You know where the line is.  

A lot of how WSC is set up was me testing if the line was where I thought it was.

Beyond the art, I also got all the other new features set up and experimented with a few things I hadn't been planning on. Many of those features had the core elements set up and coded by wonderful programmer friends and colleagues (Feniks and Windchimes and Jeneara) but I still had to implement all those things in the code to make them function as part of the game.  

Which, for things like the flowcharts - is time consuming. Flowcharts are like that.  

The flowcharts in WSC use a different method than the ones in GS. It's a brand new tool and I'm still learning how to use it but there are also some kinks that rear their heads (not those kind, you guys! The annoying kind that break the game!)  

I think the feature most people are most excited about would be the save screen. It's quite popular. Ha ha.  

With all of that stuff done, I was able to finally….*finally* release the official version of Episode 1 to Patreon and on Itch.  

And I released Episode 2 (minus two CGs that have been delayed by an abrupt move to a new place and me just not having time to draw right now) to Patrons in early access. (and the Itch version should go out mid-January. I hope).

So the point is…that is actually a fair amount of work that has taken place this year. And a lot of challenges that have been met and overcome.

A Faerie's Tale

Another thing I did this year was finish and release A Faerie's Tale as part of Amare Fest and with a team of friends to help out.

AFT is a concept I've had since about 2020 (prior to WSC actually). It was based on a dream I had as was always meant to be a cute little side project. But it kind of fell by the wayside in favour of my larger projects.

Being able to get it released was definitely fun. Jen and I definitely want to go back to it and release Lachan's route though - it was something we didn't have time for previously and it would be nice to get it truly complete.

Thornewood

And while I haven't specifically mentioned it anywhere outside of my server and Patreon...

The truth is...

I've secretly been planning my next project. But not really all that secretly since I have mentioned it a few times.

I've been torn, for a while, on two projects I'd like to tackle. One is called The Crown Wheel and the other is called (tentatively) Thornewood. I still go back and forth over which one I really want to do next. 

Crown Wheel is the one I *really* want to get out there. It's another story that's close to my heart with some ancient characters of mine that I really love and would love to throw out there for other people to enjoy. But…

Thornewood is a bit more solid a project when it comes to planning and plot. Crown Wheel is a little more nebulous in terms of where the story would go. I'm getting side tracked…I'll get into this more in my 2025 plans.

I have not been working on any other project regularly or in any truly significant way. I've really been working on outlines and character profiles more than anything and I typically do it late at night when I can't sleep but can't draw any more because I'm resting for the day and while I just don't want to be working on WSC because I worked on it all day.

I think I have about 13000 words of outline. I did a rough summary of each route and have been trying to expand those and detail them out a little bit more. So technically that is work I've done this year too.

2024 still somehow feels like a weird year for development. I can't articulate why but it definitely was an odd year for sure.

So What are my 2025 Plans?

That's really the big question at this point. What is in store for Steamberry Studio?

First and foremost, the plan is to get When Stars Collide fully released. This isn't as straightforward as it seems though. With the writing complete, I'm focused on the coding and art, but...

Coding expressions is currently a bit tedious because there have been a ton of group scenes in this game so far. This is because it is somewhat of a 'closed set' so when you are not 1x1 with a love interest…you tend to be with a group. This will diminish in upcoming chapters as the plot kicks off more and you also get longer scenes with the love interests. But unfortunately it does come back in the last few chapters.  

But for now I'm looking forward to heading into parts of the game that are more 1x1 or at least smaller groups at a time.  

Additionally the CG situation has been somewhat up in the air for me. I was originally planning to do CGs in every chapter but I wasn't sure if that would a) be sustainable for me and b) make sense.  

I suspected that there would be chapters coming up where there just weren't necessarily any good CG moments. So the "CGs in every chapter" thing was always going to be a bit squishy.   

I know, for instance, that chapter 6 probably won't have any because there aren't any good moments for it to be honest?  

Anyway. I am thinking that I may take a less formulaic approach to CGs and focus on making sure there are CGs in every episode if not every chapter. Maybe chapters 5, 8, 10...and then...Idk. One or two of the ending chapters. 

Even if it's just four of the remaining chapters, that's still 24 more illustrations for the game. Which I feel like is a very reasonable amount considering there are already about 20. 

Another thing I'm really going back and forth on is the nature of episodes moving forward.

Do I want to continue with 2 chapters per episode or do I want to drop to 1 chapter per episode? I battle myself on this all the time. It's such a hard call for me.

One challenge with moving into single chapter episodes is that I just feel the episodes would be less satisfying with only one chapter. Realistically the chapters aren't that small - even the short ones are more than 30,000 words each. That's...half a YA novel.

But, again, *realistically* when we reduce that to a play time, it's not that much.

People consume unvoiced visual novels at a rate of about 250 words per minute. That means 15,000 words per hour.

So 30k is just two hours of content. When you start dividing this up between "main plot" and "LI route content", you start whittling away at how much content *per character* there is. If there are 20,000 words of "LI content" - yeah, that's more than half the chapter. But that gets divided by 6 characters. And that means 13 minutes of playable content *including all the choices* for each character which isn't a lot. And most people are not going to play through every choice option.

Which means people could be getting through the unique content for their favourite character in less than 10 minutes.

By combining chapters, that means we get episodes that are 70,000 words or 90,000 words. It boosts the amount of content per character by a significant amount and that is really what I'm looking at when I consider episode layout. 

I try to think about what is going to make for the most satisfying episode for players. The drawback of 2 chapters per episode is that it's…a lot. It's a lot of expressions. It's a lot of flowchart work.  

It just takes more time.

Regardless of whether it's just 1 chapter at a time or whether it's 2 chapters at a time, I really want to move forward with steady releases and get the game fully released to players in 2025. That is obviously my primary focus going forward.   

The story is finished. It's burning a hole in my laptop. (Not really). But I want to get it released.

Having the story already written but delivering it in smaller bites to players is doing a lot to save my drawing hand from inevitable doom but it's so hard for me mentally. I know the things coming up in future episodes and I'm so keen to release it and see reactions and talk to people about it. And it's just so difficult to not be able to do that as fast as I want.

I'm trying to be patient and I hope all of you are willing to be patient with me.

In other work…

I will likely continue to plan out my next game on the side, though I don't intend to start working on it or writing it until WSC completes. It's too hard to manage two projects like that - at least for me - most of the time.

When it comes to Thornewood (the most likely contender for 'next project'), it is a 'dark fantasy' in that the setting is gritty and grimy fantasy with an underlying darkness in the world. It's not really a dark romance though.

I always view dark fantasy as including settings where the darkness comes from outside the main character interactions. The setting is dark and the stories have danger and darkness....

But dark romance is when the relationships themselves are also dark. And I feel like I don't really write dark romance. I don't write perfect relationships either but I wouldn't describe them as 'dark' by any stretch.

Either way I'm looking forward to working on something more overtly fantasy again.

I've been dabbling in science fiction for a long time now (since 2019 - that's when I started Gilded Shadows!!) and I've been wanting to move back into fantasy settings for a while now.  

Even just working on the profiles and outlines and world building for fantasy projects, it feels like the Fae and the magic are calling me back home. So I'm really eager to wrap up WSC and bury myself in a more fantasy themed setting again.

But I have a long journey to get to that point.

There's a lot to do in 2025 and I still have a lot of stories to tell.

I hope you will all be here with me for the journey.

[official-crab-posts]

Did you hear about the collapse of the Alaskan snow crab population/closure of the fishery two years ago? I don’t think they bounced back last year. It’s a sad day for crabs.

yeah :( it’s really sad to see. the population change has been so huge, it’s estimated that 10 billion crabs disappeared between 2018-2023.

sorry to get serious for a second but it’s really hard sometimes to be coming of age in a world where you can see people and basically every living thing under constant threat. i’m studying marine biology at the moment and it can be very disheartening when a major part of each class is discussing pollution, climate change, species going extinct, etc. it can really feel like “hey aren’t you excited to learn about that thing you love? well get ready to hear about how the people in power are totally destroying it!”

and it’s frustrating when i tell people what im studying and they say things like “oh wow! so you’re gonna save the planet huh” because on the one hand, i know they’re trying to be nice, but on the other hand, this is a sentiment i and many other people my age have seen and heard so many times and it’s not the comfort to us that some people think. i’m 20, i shouldnt HAVE to save the planet. if we agree that the planet needs to be saved, why wait until we’re old enough to do the things they should have done before we were even born? sorry i got off topic. it just makes me really sad and frustrated.

edit: this ask is from august 2024, since then the alaskan snow crab population has shown some signs of recovery, but things are still not good for them. also i forgot this ask in my drafts so long that i changed majors and also turned 21. i am so sorry it took me that long. i don’t even know why i didn’t post it, maybe i thought it was too depressing or something

[erinwantstowrite]

i feel like if you released a 24 hour + video of you talking about your plans for your original book i would sit and watch all of that with no breaks. so: would you be willing to share at least the bare bones of the plot you have now? or even some tropes that would be in it? or maybe random questions like how many main characters? how many povs? if it's sci-fi or fantasy? just stuff like that!

ahhhh!! i'd love to talk about them because they're constantly rotating in my brain!! i hope this doesn't get too long but we all know me, i can never stop yapping 😭

(okay this is present erin editing before posting and yeah this got long guess who called it. anyways there's art and stuff under the cut as well)

(Marked this as mature with violence only because there is an image below where I drew injuries/cuts on a character)

This book has been a thousand different books in all kinds of settings, plots, lessons, etc, and that's because I've had these characters since I was in middle school. At first I was so obsessed with them that I'd write and draw them all the time, to the point that my teachers were concerned I wasn't paying attention. I was seriously into magic and fantasy at the time because Harry Potter books were still the epitome of writing to my middle school brain. Ruby was a wizard with a bird theme that lived in the countryside and one day found out that her town was "alive" in a sense... But after I lost that sketchbook with all of the details (devastated to this day), and started venturing into other books series and shows, etc, I sort of forgot about the og story or what it was like. What remained was a love for the characters I had made over anything else about them, so I'd end up writing stories with a different theme each time, but the ocs being the same, just with their backgrounds shifted. (Around the time I was obsessed with VLD, Ruby was in a sci-fi plot set on a planet in another solar system.)

One of the most recent iterations was Ruby and the other characters essentially struggling to understand death, life, and everything in between. The story is called "Behind the Blue Glass" and I still really like that title lol. All of them had died on the same day, at the same time, just in various different ways, and then all of them came back to life in the same manner. They all developed different powers from the experience: Liam could float/manipulate gravity), August's body was essentially a phantom that could go through objects and disappear, Vin could possess people, Jean had an empathy link with the dead and could talk to and see them clearly, and Maya could figure out someone's cause of death/also tell when people were about to die. As for Ruby, she's the only one who can move freely between the land of the living and the land of the dead. It's different from Jean seeing the dead, as she's still in the land of the living.

The plot of that story was Ruby having dreams/visions of these other people she had never met before and knowing she needed to find them and set "something" right, but she didn't know what. She sets out to find them anyways, and they each join her on her quest to find everyone simply because they never got an answer to how they came back from the dead and find it weird that they all died on the same day and time. They solve deaths of ghosts they come across, meet people who are still grieving lost ones, have to lay some of the ghosts down to rest- all while figuring out why these shady people have started following them and trying to stop them from figuring out what happened to them. I even made some first draft titles (definitely, 10000% inspired by PJO because I was reading it at the time):

to top it all off, it's set in the 2010's I believe? Around that time. Just because I think more books should write about the time era

I have some (recentish) art of the characters:

first image: (Liam on the right, August on the left)

this is what Ruby looked like when I was first designing them for the story:

They're meant to look dead-ish but this art was SO long ago when I wasn't confident in my art so Ruby just looks like a wet rat or smth idk what is going on here

And here's Vin!! I don't hate this drawing of him that much, surprisingly, but this was also drawn a while ago

and this was some art i was planning at the time:

i think that's all of the art that i have for this story (at least on this computer. My old laptop might have more but it's been laid to rest)

to be honest, i'm still thinking about writing this story, but Ruby's name would be changed because at this point, this iteration of her character is VERY different from present day. She's two different characters at this point 💀 that's how you know I've had her for SO long because she looks so different from her original drawings.

The latest version of Ruby ended up in a story with completely different characters in the cast and a completely different setting (even if some of the characters were inspired by their og versions). It's called "The Clocktower's Chime"

It's very much inspired by those reincarnation manhwas. I like those stories but they all have the same plot over and over, and while I was more interested in the versions where the character is sent back in time to live their life again but with all the knowledge they had in the future, I always struggled with the aspect that the characters' mental age is far older than they are. It makes the dynamics a little weird, but they can be excused unless it's a romantic dynamic, I would think? I dunno, it was hard to get into the plots mostly because of that.

So I used Ruby as a placeholder OC and came up with a story where upon their death in the future, someone casts a spell or a god sends them back, and instead of having a mental older age, they get a journal with all of the details of their future. Ruby woke up one day and found a journal written by herself that detailed everything about her future up to the point of her death. It was more like a book, however, rather than a journal. It just looked like a journal because it was in her handwriting.

So Ruby gets this book, doesn't believe it at all, until she notices that there are way too many "coincidences" lining up with the events of the book. She starts believing it could be true, and then decides it must be when she finds out that a prominent family in the country she lives in is going to visit her hometown. In the book, they were there because they learned that Ruby was their daughter that had been kidnapped as a baby and believed dead. However, in the book, Ruby had spent her entire life living as a weapon instead of a daughter, and she died by their hands when she refused to kill a woman that is prophesized to end a war that would devastate both countries.

Ruby is, like, 12 at that point. So her kid brain is like "obviously I run away and go to school in a different country and tell everyone I have a different name and there's no way this could go wrong." Except before she can even do that, she runs into Julias Parlia, a Duke's son from the country that is supposed to be her enemy in the future. Ruby is like "shit this is THE worst adult to run into and I haven't even gotten to the running away part of my plan" and Julias ends up being the reason she doesn't even get to the train station. He's fucking hilarious by the way. He's got a well adjusted family with two loving parents and a bunch of little siblings and he basically picks Ruby up by the scruff of her neck and is like "I want this one she's insane."

This is Julias (kneeling on the ground to talk to Ruby) and Emelie (Julias' knight and childhood friend, she's so silly)

and this is the part where I share art from many months ago... when I posted my most recent art and said Ruby keeps getting buffer every time I draw her, I meant it 💀

Ruby and her love interest, Cecelia

This is Vekenti, a character that was also supposed to be a "villain" in the original timeline. Ruby goes looking for him to prevent his death as well, and Julias obviously is like "Omg another weird kid, how delightful!" Everyone thinks Vikenti and Ruby are related, but they are not. They're just raised as siblings in both timelines and have a lot of the same mannerisms

Julias' love interest (unnamed? I can't find her name anywhere) and him

REALLLY old drawings of what they looked like in the OG timeline (I desperately need to redesign these because I could do better now)

Julias and Ruby again

and that's all the art I have for this one (besides the other post of Ruby I posted today, this is the story that that version of Ruby belongs in. She's looks very different now!).

All of this has been in the back of my mind for a while, and I've been trying to figure out which story I would want to write first. Middle school Erin would love for me to finally write Behind the Blue Glass, but sometimes I find myself wanting to write a fantasy story like Clocktower's Chime a lot more

[tavina-writes]

MDZS Society! aka: there's a lot less killing than you'd expect

This follows from this post and also the recent translations of MXTX’s most recent interview (which I can now no longer bother to find bc this has been sitting in drafts for like, siiiix months? More? Oh god anyway.) which reminded me about my feelings regarding MDZS society and how different it is from the martial societies we see depicted in typical modern wuxia. (Small disclaimer, I am a wuxia genre fiend and I love like, thinking about fictional societies so this is like, “AHA! You’ve unlocked my trap card!”) 

For the purposes of this, I’m going to be looking at MDZS/CQL’s depiction of the jianghu (which I think is fairly similar! I don’t actually think the show writers made CQL’s jianghu/martial society more genre typical than it was in the book) and comparing that with modern classic wuxia (mostly Jin Yong and Gu Long works.) For this comparison, I’ll be looking at a Jin Yong book — Legend of the Condor Heroes (which is widely considered the starting point of modern wuxia as a genre) — and one Gu Long book — Dagger Li/Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword (widely considered his most popular work) — and seeing how their societies differ from MDZS society. 

This will likely come in two parts because this one was already getting long, and I don’t think we can fit “how often does nobility exist in a typical jianghu and what do bloodline sects look like normally versus what they look like in MDZS” in this post along with the main topic of “is MDZS society a particularly physically violent place?” 

This post discusses how often cultivators are socially expected to kill people. Like, actual living human beings instead of, say, monsters or ghosts which have been categorized differently than like, human beings. 

EDIT: I forgot to talk about Dagger Li but this was already much too long sorry. Feel free to hmu for more thoughts though.

Now, it might be easy to think that cultivators killing actual people is a really common thing in MDZS/CQL universe! After all, they do have martial arts training and one of the prominent things about the first life is just how many people die both in the Sunshot Campaign and the fallout afterwards. However, I would argue that a lot of the traumas and related issues and reactions that happen in MDZS happen because cultivators are, by training and education, not actually prepared for killing actual living breathing human beings! (And also that the morality of this world prevents it for the most part) 

Now, we do actually get a pretty good window into what the typical training is like for young cultivators in MDZS, because we get a fairly well defined schoolhouse scene where LQR is asking them questions about "how do you tell the difference between various different problems we have to solve?" and "how do you go about fixing this problem?" and none of those include the moral quandary of "if I, a young cultivator out in the Jianghu, see a guy who is doing something I morally disagree with, under what circumstances do I beat him up and/or kill him." This does not appear to enter the curriculum at any point, leading me to believe that the morally correct number of people not like, ghosts or ghouls or fierce corpses, a regular average MDZS cultivator is supposed to have killed is approximately 0.

Which. Is a thing you get in a normal martial arts wuxia jianghu. There is generally the threat of "oh yeah this that or the other faction will be doing shitty things and thereby try to murder you." Instead, in MDZS/CQL most of the heirs of sects are...attending school together. Doing teenage things like partying and gossiping and attending classes.

And sure yes, there was a case of WWX and JZX trying to beat each other up. But the sects did sure let their kids stay at Lan summer camp for months on end (sometimes repeatedly, see NHS) without fearing for their lives or that anyone would steal another sect's techniques or otherwise causing real havoc or intersect warfare etc.

Which is infeasible in any other sort of Jianghu situation. For example, contrast this scenario with this scene from LOCH where Guo Jing's shifus are giving him advice since he is newly 17 and about to set out by himself into the great big world:

Guo Jing therefore bid farewell to his teachers. They had witnessed his battle against the Four Demons of the Yellow River, and were not too greatly worried. The young man had proved that he knew how to use the skills that they taught him. Therefore they let him leave alone. On one hand, the meeting of outlaws in Yanjing worried them greatly, so that they could not ignore it; and on the other hand, a youngster always had to travel the jianghu alone, in order to learn lessons that no teacher could pass on. At the moment of parting, each made their last recommendations. As usual when the Six spoke after one another, Nan Xiren was the last one to express himself. "If you cannot defeat the enemy," he said. "Flee!" He knew that given Guo Jing's dogged character, he would prefer to die rather than to surrender, if he met a master, he would certainly fight to the bitter end, even at the risk of death. That was the reason Nan Xiren gave him this common sense warning. " Martial arts have no limits," added Zhu Cong. " As the proverb says, 'For every peak there is one yet higher', so for every man there is one stronger. Whatever your power, you will always one day meet a foe stronger than you. A true man knows to retreat when necessary, when facing grave danger, it is necessary to contain one's impatience and anger. This what is meant by the adage, « If one preserves the earth and its forests, one does not fear to lack firewood ». It is not therefore not cowardly to take good advice! When the enemy is too numerous and that you cannot face them there, it is especially necessary to avoid being too reckless. Keep in mind Fourth Shifu's advice!"

Does this seem like the sort of advice that any Young MDZS Cultivator would get? "You're a good kid, but when you go out into the world, there will be people who straight up want you dead even though they met you 15 minutes ago, you cannot persist in fighting with these people because they will want you dead and you are a baby cultivator who needs to learn to run away when shit gets rough or you will be dead."

And again I come back to how MDZS cultivators are more like occupational ghostbusters because this really does inform how their society functions and runs and how everyone reacts so badly to the Sunshot Campaign beginning and its aftermaths and possibly explains how JGS could get his way after Sunshot.

Because what happens when you get a society that does train heavily in martial arts and have Able To Kill Real People Weapons who spends most of their time solving very black and white situations of "okay is this ghost whose eating people's livers good or bad? y/n?" and a clear hierarchy of "how do we get rid of the ghost eating people's livers in town x" instead of say "is it morally correct to kill this group of bandits who's been threatening the town" or "is it morally correct to kill this shitty businessman who's been holding people hostage and threatening to hack off their limbs" you have a reduced level of philosophical musing on like, "what is the purpose of martial arts, which is designed to kill people and what do I use martial arts for?" and "under what circumstances and situations would I personally find it morally correct to kill a man?" Which are all questions that Wuxia coming of age stories typically have, and I think MDZS does have, but expressed differently.

Again, it appears that the number of Real Live Human Beings that it is morally acceptable to have stabbed in your life is approximately 0 in this universe, and the expectation that you, personally, might have to fend off people trying to stab you over brunch is also approximately 0.

This also leads to a situation where like, questions of vengeance have very difficult escape hatches! If your parents are murdered on the job by an evil rampaging ghost, this is very sad and tragic and now you're an orphan and of course that's not good, but this is a occupational job hazard, not like, "Yeah Joe Bob from the sect down the street murdered my dad because #Reasons~, and now it's my legacy to grow up to murder Job Bob from the sect down the street to avenge my dad."

(I have a whole essay about how this pertains to both of the Nie Brothers, and how it pertains to JGY and also Jin Ling, and how this seems to routinely fuck people up in MDZS in a very specific way we don't typically see in other wuxias, but this is getting SO long as it is).

But yeah "the socially acceptable number of real living people (instead of ghosts or demons or fierce corpses or whatever) to have killed in your lifetime as a cultivator is approximately 0" means that the Sunshot Generation gets really really fucked up by all of this "killing real people" they did.

Which! might be why JFM was so slow to move on "yeah the Wen are threatening to kill your heirs." <- socially inconceivable behavior. Why society in general is so shocked by Xue Yang and the murder of the Chang <- which would be bad normally but not quite like this. And why no one did anything specific about JGS even if they felt he wasn't entirely correct. What are they going to threaten him with? Death???? A trial of his peers? Social Shunning??? Public shame???

"But Tav how does this relate to CQL!Su She's morality?" I hear you ask. Well you see, the question of "he should've been ready to die for his sect!" is utterly baffling in a society where nobody is expected to be ready to die for their sect on a regular basis because the idea that you should be ready for someone trying to stab you before brunch is utterly nonsensical in a world where most people expect that the baseline number of murders a cultivator does in their lifetimes is 0. That's the world he lives in.

On this regard CQL!Su She is utterly blameless. Nobody handed him a rulebook or expectations sheet for "the sect down the street will try to kill you" nor SHOULD they expect he'd be ready to die at a drop of a hat when no part of the education or social expectations include "ready to die for your sect because it's routine for people to try to kill you."

If you don't even expect to be stabbed and possibly die at a discussion conference where there are lots of cultivators from many sects why on EARTH would you expect to be facing down death in your own home when there's. cultivators here to kill you, this situation is so out of left field?

[bragganhyl]

'obviously there are other reasons why I like them' ahem can you share what those are? i miss aloth x watcher sm

sorry, Anon, I started writing this, saved it as a draft bc i wanted to make edits to it and then promptly forgot about it, I sincerely apologize

Tbh I covered many of my thoughts about them in these ask responses ages ago (X X) so I'll probably just end echoing those but anyway:

Generally speaking I like how their characterizations tie them together - Aloth's bravery and intellect manifests in the dynamic. He immediately approaches the Watcher with curiosity and by the time we get an actual sense of how anxious he is about everything and how lonely he's been for who knows how long, we also have a pretty fun rapport between him and the Watcher. You really get a sense that he trusts them, that he feels comfortable around them or at the very least, he's willing to take a chance on them (and when you consider that he's part of a cult hunting the Watcher, that last bit hits extra hard). And what's better is that the Watcher can match that intellect and bravery (well they kinda have to in terms of bravery, given... everything). Obviously, gameplay-wise they have a leader/follower dynamic but the narrative constantly frames them as equals - or people trying to be equals I really really like that Aloth takes the time to work on himself bc he caught himself treating the Watcher as an authority figure akin to his father and Thaos, it's ouggh so good - and mirrors of one another which I appreciate greatly.

Speaking of mirrors I also like how their POVs compliment one another. The Watcher by default is someone with a unique perspective so part of the companions' purpose in the story is to ground and expand that perspective, and the companions not only show the Watcher a different perspective but that they learn to view themselves differently, as well as they reevaluate their approach to the Watcher. And with Aloth this just hits so hard, his admission that he hoped the Watcher would "fix him" has been living in my head rent free ngl.

And just *gestures vaguely* they're so tender with one another, they have so much hope for one another and trust in one another even though they're acutely aware that they might not be mentally in the right place for a proper courtship (and Aloth is a little scared to form commitments not bc he's scared of commitment itself but bc he knows his duty might call him away from the Watcher but he still gives it a go) but they still try and they just take every day for what it is and cherish every moment they spend with one another and just 😭😭😭

[random-non-shower-thoughts]

Write with your heart, edit with your inner critic and ears

My last two post have been more from the heart, but I think more people need actual editing advice like I have talked about in a previous thought post. Like I said there, plenty of teachers and professors have no issues talking about writing and formulating and drafting works. I only know of one professor over all my years of writing that I can recall with 99% certainty that taught us useful tips for editing.

And I will say that like writing, there's no one size fits all, because nobody writes the same as anyone else--or even themselves as they hone and improve their skills. A lot should be based on what vibe you want to create and what is needed for the work/chapter/draft you are focusing on.

But if nothing else, there's three things you want to focus on:

Spelling and punctuation as fitting for the message you want to convey

Formatting to make it readable and to improve the message

And most importantly: READING THE WORK ALOUD BEFORE PUBLISHING

The last one is what I don't see talked about enough, and was reminded by a community post recommended for me (I will never follow them, they're impossible to share and most seem like a waste of time), so I decided to expand on it in a more shareable format.

(Note: I believe that doing this with your own voice or text to speech are equally helpful. Sometimes you want to go at your own pace and use voices. Maybe you have to have another voice to notice things. Both work to reach the same goal of polishing your writing!)

I am going start by saying that there's times when you can tell a piece could have used an extra pass by how it reads. There's often weird turn of phrases and spelling that is not obtrusive but makes you pause (and I will be the first to say I want readers to tell me if they catch these for whatever reason, even the less error prone machine still lets flecks of misspellings and pebbles of forgotten commas). The missing period that makes two sentences become a long run-on sentence that technically makes sense.

The editing is on the surface sufficient, but missing a last pass that could buff out a final draft and have you read it later when more experienced with pride. And without asking why you forgot something so obvious, or why you worded it that way. (I love looking at outstanding line from old works, I often laugh at how even my spicy stuff can have a raw scene outside of the bedroom).

One of the best ways I found, after formatting and spellchecking and double-checking the right words are used, is to give it a final read out loud! Yes, I can understand that you might ask why it has to be out loud when you already went over it so many times, and the editing software and you not say it's fine. And that's exactly why. Things that a computer might say is good might not be the right wording for the story. You might have changed something to get the sentence to make sense but it ruined the actual mood, or you added something that is out of character. An extra adjective you thought worked didn't actually fit and you forgot to hit delete. There's so many times I have changed something because I wasn't satisfied with the flow and just didn't backspace enough during a much earlier draft and it slipped through till the final pass while I read it aloud.

Or--and this is a big one for me--reading it out loud made me realize that it won't work at all. Not due to anything technical or because the section makes no sense. Just something about having it spoken out loud awakens my inner critic to an issue I didn't notice until now. A whole paragraph might finally show it can be cut and make a transition easier. A sentence might be deleted because it was more distracting fluff and I see it should be deleted (no matter how nice it worked in my head). Or if not gone, it was in the wrong spot. Now I have to read it out loud, word by word, I can paste a section in a better place and change the whole flow.

I've seen people talk about how they use text to speech to see if something goes on for too long and know when to stop by how it starts to distort it's voice to keep going. You can do the same too.

By reading aloud, you'll at last understand the readers' plight of flowery purple prose by struggling to catch your breath. Suffer while the TTS malfunctions from you using too many adjectives about the MC in the mirror. See if maybe you can change that comma or em dash into a period or semicolon. Play with different voices and see if that fanfic about your favorite character sounds OOC or you are really that good at getting inside their head. See how the words fit as you get a fresh perspective, watching them fall into place like puzzle pieces while observing how each flows like a poetic melody.

It is all experience for when you write that next chapter or work. Sure, it's not as intense as typing it all out, but it's not like you're not learning from it. Editing is writing too; what you master here can translate to better writing next time, and a cleaner first draft in the future. (Like I've said before, you'll never have a perfect first draft, but you can write a clean first draft to make it easier for yourself.)

Just remember, writing is supposed to be as good as you are today, and never a suffering contest. Not every aspect of it will be exciting but do not force yourself to make it more difficult than you can handle. If I am miserable, I am not creative, and this is true for so many; and if anyone tells you that makes someone a fake/poser/imposter, ignore them. If they like being sad to write a depressed and angsty character, that is their method alone. Editing does not have to be a slog, but it should be something you put effort in to so the final product is something you are proud of.

Listen to the fun writing voice when you are outlining and writing, and unleash the inner critic when you edit. Both are there for a reason.

[twyla19]

Hello,

This is an offering to those looking to support a college student who is an artist.

If you are interested in digital pieces, i am looking and would like to be commissioned! Here are some of my fave most recent pieces.

I am a queer, trans, disabled artist who has been working on getting my craft the best for my abilities. It would mean so much to me if you are interested to DM me.

Pricing, gosh pricing. Basic works like sketches and line art will start at a base of $25 (plus the hours), and a full color, shaded, and background piece will be $75 minimum. I have cashapp and venmo for online payments. This will be DM'd to those who commission (unless people want to support me without a trade-off, but I'd need feedback on that)

THESE PRICES ARE AT THE LEAST AMOUNT

Due to hours of work it will get higher in price. Especially due to this being a hobby. i can't just beep boop them out. I want my art to be the best it can be, but also what others want for their pieces.

I know a year or two back, i did make a post similar, but I wanted to reshare that my commissions are open, and if i get many people, i will have a waitlist. I am a college student, after all.

Edited: i forgot about this draft for months on end but finally made the effort to post. I am concerned about finding a summer job and would like to make others happy with the art i create! I want to get into creating more content and art in general again.

[Alt text: image 1. A cartoon illustration of a non-binary person with green and purple money pieces in their hair with blonde elsewhere, wearing purple and green cat ears, expressing a lively and whimsical spirit. They are wearing pins of the nonbinary and asexual flags as well as a 6 teirer bracelet with the colors of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple Image 2. Two men, Wolverine and Deadpool characters. Deadpool is being held in Wolverine's arms. Wolverine is unamused at deadpool's whimsical pose. There is a spotlight on deadpool. Image 3. A young woman with brown hair is sitting in a chair unamused by the way she has to sit. Her legs crossed in a layered dress with an apron overlay. And a corset on top. Image 4. A well-dressed trans masc individual in a renassaince-like suit. A white ruffled shirt underneath. They have a flirtatious facial expression. Astrid's hair is blonde tied up into a bun. 5. Astrid, with their blond hair and roots of brown growing in. Facing off in the distance with a jean jacket, rolled up button-down shirt, and jeans. Their jacket has a bunch of pride patches and more. Their arms are above their head in a relaxed lean against a wall. 6. This is Twy's Loki varient. They have dark academia attire with a long purple cloak. Leaning against a table. Their staff is brown with a purple snake wrapped around it with an emerald green crystal on the top. ]

[fictionalhoedown]

Stanford Pines x Self-Insert

Summary ;; Ford Pines discovers a strange glowing red flower, obviously he brings it back to the shack to bring it underground and study it. But Stanley has other plans, seeing it as a business opportunity, but of course he messes it up

~~~~ (I'm sorry I forgot to use they/them pronouns so this is a Stan x female self insert)~~~~

EdIt;: Im rly sorry if its bad, its been a long while since I wrote fanfic but I love this man to death I need this ;( y'all would tell me if this is shit or not right? pls hlp

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stanley's POV

Ford comes barreling in with something glowing red in his hands "the hell is that?" his brother didn't reply, instead he neatly stacked his books and gently places on the diner table a black pot with a large glowing flower.

Similar to a Lily, three long tubes with large pollen balls on each end gently emited small visible spores. I get irritated that he's ignoring me, again, and turn the tv off to lessen the noise "hey dick face!".

He looks at me with the highest form of disrespect, "Can you please tell me what the hell that thing is doing in my living room?" Ford huffed and straightened his glasses.

"techniqly this is my house Stanley. secondly! I don't know! I found it today. But I do know that I need to drive to my lab and retrieve some nessecary equipment items that I think would be beneficial of concealing this thing until I can learn more~"

The nerdy Pine brother looked 'too' excited about this research, "riiiiight, because playing with a flower is scientific?" my brother groans again "god why are you so childish! Just let me be happy about this discovery" I held my hands up in defense.

As he packed somethings up, he takes a step and looks at me very seriously, "listen Stan, I'm gonna be gone a while. Please, do not sell the damn flower in your freak shop. And more importantly. Do. Not. Touch. It."

I look back at the flower, everything about it calling to me to not sell it but cause general mischief for my brother and his nerdy hobbies. "yeah yeah, I promise! Jeez, you really think so low of your own blood?" he rolls his eyes and exits the living room with a sarcastic "yes.".

_______________

Self-Insert's POV

My cold wet hair dripped down my hot skin, I wrapped the towel around my chest, securing it well, then clipping the bottom, for no unnecessary 'drafts' of wind.

I combed my hair back out of my face and misted some perfume on before leaving the bathroom with the intention of going to my room and getting dressed. Until, !CRASH!

Rushing down the stairs with zero regards for slipping on my ass, I make it to the bottom to find Stanley Pines, my dear close friend, face covered in what looked like red spray paint and a broken flower pot with soil on the ground.

"Stan! What the- " I run to his side, holding his face with my hands to inspect the damage. I sprint to the kitchen and get some wet paper towels, trying to gently remove the mystery color from his face.

"Yeah yeah I know, Ford told me not to touch it already. But I didn't techniqly!" As I am dabbing his nose with the wet towel I give him a 'bruh' look. He protests "I'm serious! That damn flower basically farted this stuff in my face!" I laugh at his explanation.

As I finish cleaning the last of the flower spores from his eyes and nose, I notice an unfamiliar heat radiating from him like he was a mobile fireplace. Looking at his face, I see without the spores he is very flushed and red faces, a gentle sweat beginning at his bushy silver brows.

I put my lips to his forehead to feel his temperture, only to be met with an iron skillet burning my face, "Ow! Good Lord, how are you still alive! Your burning like grits with no butter!" I push the hair from his dripping face, to better see, he seems shy and sheepish? Stanley Pines? Shy?

Stanley's POV

I can't handle it, god this was such a mistake, I should have listened to Ford! Her glowing skin was the only thing I could pay attention to, as she spoke it was like how adults speak in cartoons.

When she was cleaning my eyes with the paper towel, I felt her breath, it sent chills through my whole body, like I was a teenager again! Her neck looked so... exposed... My body was turning up the heat like it was thanksgiving day.

I unconsciously trailed my eyes downward, (Self-Insert) continued her health assessment check with me, all my senses got more and more sensative. The TV volume was on low but it sounded like it was wracking inside my skull.

The living room light looked so bright and yellow for my eyes, I thought they were gonna dry away to dust. (Self-Insert)'s smell, fueling me into my lungs and straight to my member, so sweet, like honey and vanilla.

Her touch, as she nervously holds onto my arm for foundation, I can't think about anything else but the electrical storm going on with her beautiful body being pressed up against my old ass having a stroke on the floor in my fucking boxers. Real charming Stanley.

I unknowingly found myself gripping her wrist to bring her closer, hooking my arm around her waist and cupping each hip perversely. "T-Toots-... I can't... think... I don't think I... can even breath right now... but-" looking up deep into her eyes, the tent on me rises high to the sky.

Self-Insert's POV

The elder man aggressively shoved me, falling to my back but not hitting my head, thanks to his hand engulfing the back of my skull. Stanley's arms were firmly planted next to my head, his girtle not present but his very, very large lower half pushing past my legs, nothing but the thin blue and white striped cloth gently laying against my womanhood like a dog sitting on top of the bun.

"I can't explain how much I want- no..." Stanley falls forward, dipping his head to my throat like he's gonna rip it all out, "Need you~" I watch carefully, scared but, weirdly excited? His giant hands engulfing my wrists, the heart violently beating against his palm, "Stan." I say, to try and get his attention.

Suddenly rocking his hips to an imaginary song, he shifted his hands from my wrists to my biceps, pushing his weight on me as both our pre-cum juices covered and soaked his boxers. I couldn't run, the man was 5x larger than me, and I mean, It's not like it doesn't feel good~

Stanley grunted exhastedly, looking like a horny boy humping his pillow. The stubble on his face scratched all over me as he open mouth licked me like a loli-pop and drunkenly sucked hickies from my throat to my collarbones, he kept saying stuff like "I swear. you taste so good.", "I wish I could eat you like cake~", "say my name again, and I think I'll bust".

Gently removing himself from licking my neck, Stan suddenly rips my towel open, my no longer steaming body, hitting the freezing cold ac air of the mystery shack. Not saying a word, a small dripple of saliva dripping from his lip as sweat poured from his face.

His calloused fingers found their way to my chest with no hesitation, picking each bud with his pointer and thumb and rolling them around, my breath hitched as he pulled and let them fall back watching the buds grow stuffer and pinker "pretty, pink, buds" he murmurs.

While he gawked and played with my titties, I open my legs a bit more, adding to the closeness, his shaft firmly pressed to my soaking entrance. Reaching for the elastic of his boxers, I stick my thumbs in, circling around his waist and intending to push them down, feeling his swelled tip bed for attention.

!!EHEM!!-

Stanley's POV

(Self-Insert) sat in my lap as we watched my favorite romantic drama movie, my brother sat at the table next to us, toying with his glowing flower, that surprisingly lived.

Ford gagged once more, like he did for the 100th time, "I fucking hate you Stanley.".

I groan and drop my arm from the air dramatically, "Jesus fucking Christ Ford I already said I was in the wrong and I was sorry. How was I supposed to know it was gonna spit some sexy love juice in my face!" (Self-Insert) chuckled nervously as her face turned beat read again.

"Lets all of us just forget it okay. Please? Ugh~"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I"M SO SORRY THAT WAS BAD- It was rushed and I'm finishing this at one thirty In the morning- AND I ALSO WORK- the lengths I go for horniness...

pls like...

<3

[ghostinthegallery]

I can't believe The Silence and the Storm is over a year old! The first anniversary was May 27th (yes I missed my own fic's birthday in my defense I was traveling and forgot how time works).

I'm trying to compose my thoughts because this sure feels like a time a blog post would be fitting. However, my engrams are scrambled because...wow do I have too many feelings.

As some background, I've been a writer for a long time. And I've written 3-5 books (depends on how you count "completing" a book but it's 5 full drafts, 3 of which were heavily edited). I wanted to be a trade published writer (still do) and for a while I was feeling good about my chances! I got lucky and received some wonderful professional mentorship (and met one of my best friends during that program!). I took that guidance to query agents (a necessary step for access to most big/medium US publishers). I knew it would be hard and take time but...4 years later all I have to show are a few requests, hundreds of rejections, and one agent who asked me to rewrite my entire book only to reject me anyway (me, bitter? No not at all nooooo).

I'm a creative person and sharing my work feels like sharing a part of myself. Something that is not easy for me to do. After a while I just assumed I was missing something necessary. My work didn't resonate, but I didn't know how to fix it. I’d never reach anyone in the way I so desperately craved, and it was my fault for not being good enough. I felt broken.

During one of many major depressive episodes my spouse bought me a copy of The Infinite and the Divine. That book has changed my life. I was never much of a fanfic writer before. Either I thought the original work was too good and I didn't think I had anything to add or it was too bad so why would I bother with it when I could just go read/watch something better? 40k inspired me though. The ideas are incredible but underutilized enough that I felt like I had something to add.

So I started writing necron fic because why not? There wasn’t enough for me to read, and I needed more robot stories. Maybe I could rediscover my love of the craft, make some friends, make some robots kiss. Distract my mind from the horrors. So I posted a little OC fic and actually got some nice comments. Hey! Positive reinforcement! Hadn't had that in a while.

Emboldened, I continued in the most normal way possible. Going from a 7 chapter OC story to a giant civil war epic including every named necron character I could find with 6 (then 7...then 9) POVs. It was the type of grand space opera I've always wanted to write but never did because I didn’t think I had the skill and it's harder to sell. Luckily AO3 is free. Ain't no playing to the market there!

Now, a 40k necron civil war space opera is...niche. So I wasn't expecting much. I would have been happy with some kudos, some comments. Fan art felt like a pipe dream, but what are writers if not dreamers? The main goal was to enjoy myself. It was low pressure fun, I love the characters, what could go wrong?

Nothing, but I was wholely unprepared for things to go as right as they did. Y’all have been amazing. So many great comments and ideas exchanged, gorgeous art, fun asks, a lot of screaming (it’s fine probably don’t worry). I’ve never had such a strong outpouring of support for my work. It feels incredible. But also sometimes confusing. I’ve trained myself so well to handle rejection that I kind of forgot how to handle acceptance. Especially for something so personal. This is a weird story about undead space robots, there’s a lot of politics, sometimes the robots have sex. It’s got out there head canons, and 99% of the tyranid parts are pulled out of my ass because nobody knows how the space bugs work okay. My weirdness being embraced on this scale is one of the greatest feelings of my life. But it’s also new, and way out of my comfort zone. I’m being seen and adjusting to that.

Still, writing in this space has been one of the most consistently joyful things in my life for…well, over a year now! It’s changed how I view my art. I actually can create stories that touch people and make them feel things. I can take risks and have them pay off. I know not everyone will love this, but some people really seem to love it. That is mind blowing to me.

It’s making me reassess a lot about how I approach my art. Writing and other. I still plan to pursue publication. I want to get paid for my work, but this is making me consider alternate paths that might fit my style (and psyche) better. I don’t know what the future holds, but if you’d told me a year and a half ago that a big part of it would hinge on an AO3 gay robot skeleton space opera…I would have thought you were nuts, but also hoped you were right because that sounds rad as hell.

So in conclusion, thank you all so much for reading <3

[therealstacyfakename]

Hey I was reading your Omegaverse BobNix fics and I was wondering if you have any pregnant Bob headcanons?

Hiii so I completely forgot about this ask and it’s been buried in my drafts for weeks I think but I'm finally answering it yay

yes I do actually, I started writing sequels to that fic and one of them will include bob being pregant so this was actually a really great ask to get my brain going :)

They got pregnant really fast, going off of suppressants once done with flying combat missions with the hopes of eventually having children not RIGHT NOW. But within two months of stopping his perscription he’s suffering from morning sickness and definitely pregnant.

Bob didn't really suffer from morning sickness long, and has more issues with fatigue and food aversion.

His scent changed early during the pregnancy, becoming sweeter and thicker almost cloying to the sense. Something he’d embraced about initially, he knew his body would change with pregnancy but scent was the first one and it was upsetting.

She’s obsessed with his scent change, constantly scenting Bob’s clothes and nest.

Natasha is obsessed with his body changes and makes sure he knows how sexy he still is.

she’s so horny and so aggressively protective of her pregnant omega. Like in my fic she punched a stranger the first night she meets Bob, but now she’s a bit more settled and less showy, she will cut a bitch but also knows like that’s her omega carrying her child she doesn’t need to prove it to anyone you know

He goes into labor almost exactly on his due date

Edit: I just saw thunderbolts (like I’m watching the credits rn) and this is what I think he should look like pregnant

That outfit in the final sequence was so cute