#creative dashboard design

[faceless-crowd]

Experimental logo for a story I want to make, tell me what you think

[ibrahimkothari]

Everyone likes shopping and Technology and Internet did make sure we could shop at our Finger Tips.

Here is my Design for a Dashboard of an Online E-commerce Portal.

24 June 2023

[thememakker]

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[anim-ttrpgs]

If any of y'all had tips for aspiring TTRPG creators, what would they be? I'm hosting a "How to Make your own TTRPG" panel at a con this weekend, and anything to show folks from a fellow indie studio would be great!

Yeah a bunch. Each one of these could basically be its own post, but here are the condensed versions.

Social Media

You need social media. No one will ever hear of your game without a strong social media presence. And as much as it sucks, your best bet is probably tumblr. It’s the only populated social media site that allows your posts to be widely circulated without you having to pay, and also long form enough to actually include information. I dedicate one day a week entirely to social media and that’s just about the only reason we make any money at all.

Also, when using tumblr, the first five tags you put on a post are the most important, those are the tags that make it show up on people’s dashboards. The first twenty tags are the ones that make it show up in search results. Don’t put the name of your game in the first five tags generally, because if no one has heard of it yet, no one is following those tags.

Don’t Paywall Your Game

You deserve to be paid for your work if you indeed did any work at all (we’ll get to that), but that just isn’t the world we live in. Unless you have an advertising budget to essentially trick people into buying a game that might end up being crap, you need something to prove that your game is worth spending money on. Without an advertising budget, that proof has to be your game. Setting your game to pay-what-you-want, or providing “community copies,” lets people try your game before they buy. Plenty of people will buy up-front when given the option, and others who can’t afford it at that moment will download it for free then come back and pay later. Some people will never pay, but what that means for you is that they either never experience your game, or they pirate it. People experiencing your game, showing it to their friends, and talking about it is one of the most valuable pieces of advertisement you can ever have. It will ultimately lead to more people who are willing and able to pay learning about your game.

Start Small but Not Too Small

Do not make a one-page game for your first game. Do not be like us and make a 700-page game for your first game. Try to aim for something between 20 and 200 pages, especially if you’re one person or a small team.

Play and Read a lot of RPGs or Your Game Will Suck

Would you watch a movie by a director who had only ever watched one movie? Would you read a book by an author who had only ever read one book? Hell no, those would suck.

Read many rpg rulebooks, from many different genres and decades, play as many of them as you can (by the rules) to understand how the rules work and why they’re there. This will give you the creative tools you need to make something that isn’t just a weaker version of the last RPG you played. No, listening to "actual plays" does not count.

Most actual plays stray significantly from presenting a regular gameplay experience in favor of an experience that is entertaining for an audience. If you want to learn martial arts, you should be watching martial arts tournaments, not WWE.

If you want an actual play podcast that has my “actually mostly presents a real gameplay experience” approval, try Tiny Table.

If you say you don’t have time to read rulebooks, then you don’t have time to design a good game. Studying is part of the process of creating. If you don't, you won't even know about gleeblor.

This will let you know whether your "innovation" is more like "Cars don't need to run on gasoline!" or "Cars don't need crumple zones and airbags!"

The Rules Matter, So Design with Intent

The rules matter the rules fucking matter holy shit what you actually write down on the page matters I can’t believe this is actually the seemingly most needed piece of advice on this list. The. rules. matter.

Design your game to be played in the way you designed it. The rules affect the tone and genre of your game, they affect the type of people PCs can be and the kind of stories that will result from gameplay. Bonuses encourage PC behaviors, penalties discourage PC behaviors.

Do not fall for the trap of “oh well people will just play it their own way based on vibes anyway so it doesn’t matter what I write the rules to be.” Write that you wrote this game to be played by the rules and that significant changes to the rules mean that players are no-longer playing the game you made. Write like you deserve for your art to be acknowledged by its audience. If you don’t, then there is no point in anyone playing the game you made, because if the person who wrote it doesn’t even care what the rules say, why should anyone? The people whose “playing” of TTRPGs consists of never opening the rulebook and improving based on “vibes” will still do that no matter what, but the people who would have actually tried to engage with your game will find that it sucks if you don’t even care what the rules are yourself.

Playtest

You need to playtest your game if you want it to work as intended. You need multiple sets of eyes on it. If you don’t have the opportunity personally to do so, just release your game anyway with the acknowledgement that it’s unfinished. Call it an alpha or a beta version, and ask for people that do play it to give feedback, then update and fix the game based on that feedback.

Ignore Feedback

Most people do not have any game design credibility, perhaps least of all TTRPG players. You do not, in fact, have to listen to everything people say about your game. Once you ask for feedback, people will come to you with the most deranged, asinine, bad-faith “feedback” you can imagine, and then get really mad at you when you don’t fall to your knees and kiss their feet about it. You do not need to take this feedback at face value, instead you need to learn to read between the lines and find out which parts of the rules text are being misinterpreted by players, and which incorrect assumptions players are making about your game. Then, you update and improve the game by clearing those up. Only like 30% of “feedback” you receive will actually be a directly helpful suggestion in its own right at face value.

You can’t please everyone, and shouldn’t, so appeal to the people who actually like your game for being what it is, not the people who don’t.

Read Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Yeah this one sounds self-serving but hear me out. Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is as much a treatise on TTRPG game design as it is a game itself. When it presents mechanics and rules, it tells you what they are, why they are, how they are, and what you’re intended to do with them. This makes it an excellent example to read for anyone wanting to get serious about game design and learn how TTRPGs tick under the hood, and an excellent example of a TTRPG that expects players to play it the way it was written to be played, and why that is a good thing. Also you can download it for free.

[kalied0skull]

“I feel silly...”

“So?! You look gorgeous!”

“You really think so?”

“I know so, my love.”

now playing : Hey Lover — The Daughters of Eve ♪

little voice in my brain said T4T sandypop, and i sighed and got right to work...

★ ramble under the cut !

apparently I've done every sort of sandy drawing but her actual design that i have for her like by herself, and I'm slightly content with that

but ignoring canon sandy LOOK AT HIM!!! :,D AND LOOK AT SODA!

i dunno where this idea came from quite frankly, i read transfemme soda somewhere on my dashboard and immediately got pulled into the darkness by this shadowy hand who whispered "T4T SANDYPOP..." in my ear and i nodded and yessed incessantly

they're so :( i really do love sandypop so much

in my eyes t4t sandypop do not change their names, but sandy MIGHT... idk why i get the vibes she'd change it to like, Anton. a fun little A name, maybe even Andy... (get it hehe)

Soda though, psht, how could she ever disrespect her father's creativity? she's SODAPOP. that's my GIRL. god i love them so much

i post too much stevepop, sometimes i just gotta spin around and pull out a random whammy. and today... it was sandy & soda :3 (or in this case, ANDY and soda. hehehe)

sorry i keep deadnaming them i promise it's just for familiarity /silly

for this scene, I don't know WHY they're shirtless. but i like to imagine andy gives soda his bras and dresses, and soda gives andy her boxers and baggy jeans. they're little traders. it works out well because they're similar in weight, just a bit... short / tall. hehe.

they're so adorable i love them truly :(

my sandy / andy design is SO out there compared to the other manys i see of them. but i love my baby, i do. i plan to draw the outsiders girls more often soon in the near future... i have plans...

anyways I'm on the way to the racetrack ! wish me luck !!! or don't!!! I'll probably suck anyways depending on how dumb my kart is tonight !! AHHHH

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

[aclassitag]

Announcing Krem Week!

#kremweek2024 — 22-28 July 2024

background art credit: @xfreischutz [link to original post]

*text prompt list under the readmore

This year will mark 10 years since the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition! In celebration of that anniversary and the game that gave us our first trans character, here is a prompt list - and dates - for any who would like to participate! All sorts of creative content is accepted so long as they are not A/I generated. (See examples below)

*If you want to portray Maevaris Tilani instead, that is also fine!

Please read the guidelines!

If you have any questions, reply to this post and I will do my best to answer :)

Prompt list:

1 — Anniversary 2 — Euphoria / Expression 3 — Casual / Formal 4 — Family / Love 5 — Respite / Fight 6 — Play / Satiate 7 — (Free space!)

Guidelines:

Use the tag: #kremweek2024 (@ this blog is fine too) — If you want to portray Maevaris Tilani instead of Krem, that is also welcome! Please @ me so I can rb :) For non-Tumblr folks that somehow got here: You may post submissions, please link your socials. You may choose one of two prompts in a day or do both. You may also combine as many prompts as you want from any or all of the days into a single work, just mention it somewhere.

Types of content allowed:

Illustration and writing are the most obvious forms of art allowed, but they're not the only ones! Literary arts fanfics, drabbles, poetry, plays, lengthy headcanon/meta posts (for headcanon and meta posts, minimum of 100 words+) Visual arts doodles, paintings, graphic design, photoshop memes, photography, animation, tiktok skits, abstract, fiber arts (embroidery, knitting, etc), ceramics Audio art fanmixes(curated playlists), original or cover songs Other crafts are also welcome! e.g. culinary, resin, woodworking, etc etc ..essentially, whatever type of art it is, I'll accept it so long as it falls within rules and is related to Krem or Maevaris :) For things that are more abstract, do include an explanation of your thought process on how it relates to Krem. E.g. you made Krem's Seheron Fish Wrap or Rice Pudding, take photos of your cooking, and post that (with the explanation that it is Krem's recipes) - that's an acceptable submission! You're allowed to explore different mediums everyday! You don't have to stick to one form of art for the whole week. I will be attempting to schedule reblogs in the 'prime time' for engagement, and in the interest of fairness, things like headcanon posts, fanmixes, and WIPs will not take priority in that time slot over fully rendered illustrations or complete fanfics. They will still be reblogged, but scheduled for other time slots.

Content Rules:

No A/I generated content. (Specifically GenAI content) As above, any and all forms of art is welcome. It must be human made, and by you. The whole point of working off a prompt is to explore a creative process, anyway - do yourself a favour and just enjoy making something! It doesn't have to be pretty! No reposting of other people's works. This must be your own creation. Obviously, no transphobic content. No harrassing others over their specific headcanons - be it in regards to any trait or quirks that come with being a person. People come in all sorts of wonderful variety, please respect that. In addition to above: No whitewashing, racism etc. Please note that Krem is not pale-skinned in canon, and I will not be reblogging content of him being portrayed as pale. 18+ works need to be labelled. On this blog, its tagged as "#adult art". Please add content warnings as appropriate. (E.g. portrayal of binding with bandages should have a warning label of "cw: unsafe binding", etc.) If your post/submission is lengthy, please insert a read more. This helps readability on the dashboard. Progress / WIPs are fine too!

General tips:

First and foremost, do what you are able to! Don't feel pressured to complete a full week if you need to take care of yourself first. Some people work on the prompts before the week even begins, and only post it day of. You are not required to do this, but if you really want to fill something for each day, this helps reduce stress day of.

Mod things:

The mod isn't from the Americas, so due to timezone differences, there may be a delay in reblogging people's works. Either way I will not reblog the moment that it's posted in order to screen properly. Posts will be queued between 30mins-1hr apart, if there are multiple entries being submitted at the same time. All submissions will also be requeued after a week for later perusal :)

[notiongirlie]

Notion Fanfics Writing Planner

This fanfiction writing template is designed to help you stay organized while nurturing creativity. With a vintage-inspired aesthetic, it offers a comprehensive and structured workspace tailored specifically for fanfic writers.

Features:

* Navigation:

- My Fanfics: Keep track of all your stories in one place with an organized table for titles, fandoms, genres, word counts, and more.

- Plot Outline: Plan out your entire story with detailed plot points and scene breakdowns to ensure a cohesive narrative.

- Character Wiki: A dedicated space to flesh out character profiles, relationships, and arcs.

- Chapter Breakdown: Easily outline and manage each chapter, helping you stay on track while writing.

* Other Tools:

- Quick Ideas: Jot down spontaneous ideas or plot twists to revisit later.

- Brain Dump: A space to pour out raw thoughts, concepts, or story developments without pressure.

- Writing Tracker: Track your daily word count, writing sessions, and progress toward your goals.

- Inspirational Board: Collect quotes, images, and links that inspire your writing and creativity.

* Info Section:

- Research: Organize and store all your research notes on topics like worldbuilding, character development, or specific fandom-related elements.

- Sources: Keep track of all your reference materials, whether they are books, articles, or websites.

* Dashboard:

- Posting Calendar: Plan out and track your fanfic posting schedule across various platforms.

- Links: Easily access important websites or references with a designated space for quick links.

---

[thealexchen]

Hey, just wanna share my thoughts on Tape 1 of Lost Records. It really captures the 90s feeling that feels nostalgic to me and also the beginning brings back what it was like going through the COVID Pandemic as it goes back and forth between the past and present. The friendship between the four is really well done. If I could compare them... I'd say they're like if it was Max and Chloe with Cassidy and Steph. There was also a little detail they added where you can just blow into the game cartridge when examining it, and they didn't have to add that in, but as a Millennial that spent years playing on the Nintendo 64, I really appreciated that.

When filming with the camcorder, I like that the controller also controls the camera, and I had some fun being creative while filming, including the classic shaking the camera up and down like trying to say yes. But, there are some cutscenes that suddenly switch to filming, and I'm not ready for that, which causes the camera to be tilted unless I hold the controller back in the position it was in and it makes it awkward. But, that's just me, and not being ready to use the camera. Honestly, this kind of feature is what Max should've had in Life is Strange. I'm curious to know your thoughts of the game so far and some of the choices you made, and more importantly, which of the three did you bond with the most? For me, between the three, I have to say I liked Nora the most. In a way, she reminds me of Chloe, but more of a jokester and carefree. And also a bit of Luna Loud in her too with her being a rocker in the 90s. And, I did end up going with the more intimate route with her, even when they almost kissed, but got interrupted at the last minute. And she definitely looks so much different as an adult, in a good way. Even got the eyebrow piercing I suggested. Went from being a rockstar rebel, to a fashion designer. It's weird how she thinks her past haircut was bad. I liked it. She's even got white hair now and I swear her present hairstyle reminds me of someone else, but can't quite put my finger on it. I also think it's funny how she just has the worst luck with mosquitoes.

Thanks for your question!! I'm answering this two weeks late, so as you can probably see by now, I really enjoyed Tape 1! It feels like DN's true return to form to what they do best-- nostalgia, slower-paced character-driven stories, exploring trauma, environmental storytelling in one place-- after their more experimental narrative choices in LiS2. I also really think the inclusion of women writers this time improved the story even more and made the quartet feel much more realistically written. Actually, I quite like that the Bloom & Rage girls can't be compared one to one to existing LiS characters. Swann looks a lot like Max at first glance and Nora looks similar to Chloe, but Swann is also a horror fan who likes to troll her friends, and Nora isn't afraid to act dorky and excitable and is honest about her fear of the paranormal. If anything, I see shades of Chloe in Kat the most, harboring so much anger and despair about the cards she's dealt with nowhere to direct it, and it makes her sympathetic in the same way Chloe was. Kat became my favorite for her narrative depth: she seems like she has the most going on under the surface, she kicks off the plot by helping Swann with Cory and Dylan's harrassment, and she's most directly tied to the Abyss and the blood ritual.

The actual references to the pandemic really threw me. Just the little detail of Swann's mask on the dashboard felt more accurate than any attempt at a pandemic allegory in recent media. I didn't know that about the game cartridge, that's so clever! Honestly, even seeing all the in-game scribbles and drawings that are so clearly done by hand is such a refreshing step up from... whatever that anime-ass art style was in Max's journal in Double Exposure. It shows how much effort DN puts into assets that players might not spend longer than two seconds looking at. Along with all the bonus scenes, like Swann and Kat in the attic, that rewards players for exploring.

I've seen a lot of praise for the camcorder too, and it feels like a really fun step up in terms of interactive gameplay. I was surprised how much I didn't miss having powers when DN crafted such a compelling bond between these four girls and how they impact each other's lives. I know it won't stay this lighthearted in Tape 2, but I really enjoyed the warm nostalgic vibes of Tape 1, plus the spookiness.

[physalian]

On Describing Rooms (Or Transitional Settings)

Oh the dilemma of how much detail to give a space your characters won’t stay in for very long, but will be in long enough that grounding the area in context is necessary. Spending whole paragraphs coming up with intricate detail about the layout and the decorations of a space is better spent on more trafficked areas by the plot—kind of like designing physical sets for TV and film. You don't want to exahust your creativity budget on setting fodder.

There’s a whole lot of divisiveness already on how much or how little detail to give when describing any one thing. I’ve made it clear that I like lean narratives that don’t wax poetic on the fluff that isn’t necessary for the moment, but there’s a place and an audience for stories that do.

However, transitional/transitory settings, like the inside of a train or vehicle or a motel room they might only spend one scene in, somebody’s office, the school bathroom, etc—these have a stronger argument for being lean.

And at least for me, I like to give them the “vibes” of what I’m seeing in my head, without going overboard. But context and familiarity are important, and details like this are a lot like adverbs: Don’t waste time describing what everybody already knows, if you’re going to give details, they have to matter.

Like, if I my characters are on a bus, I’m not going to also tell you that it has seats and windows and a center aisle and those hand-loopy thingies and a dashboard. By nature of it being a bus, these things are presumed to be included. If this bus happens to be missing any of those presumed details, then I would tell you. Like if it’s been abandoned and the seats scavenged for some other purpose, or it burned up and there’s nothing left unscathed of the interior.

But I might tell you about how the fabric of the seats looks like the carpet of a roller rink, or how some kid’s gummy fingerprints are all over the windows next to the MC’s seat, or how there’s cheese-it crumbs in the grooves of the main walkway, or somebody left a tabloid magazine in the back pocket of the seat in front of them.

These details also don’t technically “matter,” but they give you vibes. It’s a dingy bus, a city bus, one the character probably isn’t happy to be on. It starts to feel more real when you can give random but realistic details for your narrator to notice.

Then it’s not just a bus, it’s this specific bus that only exists in this story.

Even if this is a repeat setting that appears in more than one scene, but is still a temporary setting—like a motel room the characters are spending one night in, but a fair chunk of book pages are spent detailing that one night, you don’t have to throw every little bit of information about the room at the readers all at once—and the same goes with character descriptions. Give details as they become relevant.

Like, here’s a paragraph I wrote:

Onna gave Elias Dorian’s usual room, the nice one in the corner with the little metal fireplace and shark jaws hanging like windchimes from the ceiling. The low-lying bed is little more than furs over woven kelp mats on a metal rack, ones he’d hauled straight from Tanarang.

To this narrator, Dorian, it’s a room he’s familiar with, so he’s not going to go overboard with details that he doesn’t think matters, but he will describe things that he doesn’t have at home, like the decorations and the fireplace, and details that are significant to him, like the kelp mats.

Elias, on the other hand, might take a bit longer when it’s his POV to describe things that he’s noticing, that Dorian wouldn’t. Things like the room’s wooden floor, when he’s used to stone, or actually having a window that opens, or how fragile and old everything looks.

No matter what, I’m trying to still tie these expository details back to how they reflect on the narrator giving them, so they feel less like exposition and more like just part of the story.

[boyfriendtodeathconfessional]

ungrounded anon back, thank you for not hiding my confession, I really need advice and I appreciate it. I know this crowd is really mean to people with more sensitive brains who can get like mine and I just need help, it’s a cry for help I think.

I've noticed a lack of care towards sensitivity in this fandom. Horrorporn is not an excuse to be a bully and I'm tired of that being the scapegoat when confronted with certain behaviors, because at the end of the day it's just a fandom and worse content is created in mundane spaces every single day.

That being said, let's dig in.

Try going into your settings and utilizing the Filter tools. There's two types, one for tags and one for posts. You can learn more about the differences here, but in summary, Tag filters block posts containing certain tags, and Post filters block posts containing any trace of those tags/words. These are my filtered tags.

I blocked every variation of tags I don't want to see. It doesn't matter if they were used tags or not, if it was a way to spell it, it went in the list. It may be tedious, but I recommend doing this in both Tag and Post filters, that way you can stay in the spaces you enjoy without the burden of broken boundaries. (Blocking users especially guilty of those posts would also help. It doesn't have to be personal, it just has to be.)

A healthy diet of content is necessary if you engage in taboo or darker media. If you have one foot in BTD, make sure the other is somewhere safe. Not as a fall-back, but something you are actively engaging in. Follow blogs of all your tastes and make sure your dashboard is catered to you in balance.

If it's the characters you're attached to, never be afraid to rip them from their source material in favor of your mental wellbeing. Gatobob stated herself that everything that transpires in the games is only a possibility and that she personally likes to explore the darker outcomes, but that doesn't mean you should. Somewhere, Ren's date only arrived late. Somewhere, Lawrence's absence was noticed and he was caught before going under in the lake. Somewhere, Strade swallowed his pride long enough to wonder what was wrong with him and got the help he needed. Derek recognized he was following the bloody path of his family name and diverted. Celia thought ten, twenty, thirty years down the line and decided that's not a life she wanted. Mason embraced Sandy's opinion instead of rejecting it. (Removing them entirely is also an option. Really into Animal Crossing? What would Strade's role on your island be, or is he just a villager? You like Elder Scrolls? Well, where does Ren fit? Is he his own species entirely? Your own OC world would even do.)

Try new things. New shows, new games, new movies, and indulge in that fandom. Make friends there. Create a distance between yourself and BTD/TPOF. It won't be fast, it usually isn't easy, but shattering your fixation is the best way to remove yourself, and the best way to do that is to find another place for yourself elsewhere. Remember that one fandom you enjoyed 10 years ago? Would you still call yourself a super-mega-fan of it? Do you still occupy the fandom like you did when it was fresh? Make that BTD/TPOF. You can't force it, which is why I recommend media-surfing. Find something that does the trick. (For BTD, I would recommend something horror but not too brutal. My first recommendation is Marble Hornets. It can be watched on Youtube for free, and there's plenty of video essays and documentaries on it to get yourself started.)

Leading from a previous note, Make new things. Get into more OC oriented work. Find someone who is also very into their OC's and trade amongst each other. Create your own world to build and explore, publish work of said world, explore other peoples OC work, curate a space of friendly creativity where your word (regarding your work) is final. Deviantart and Toyhou.se are flush with original designs to be sold or given away, like a marketplace of characters to reiterate into your own if you're worried about designing one.

And finally, find other sites to scroll that are less horrorporn inclusive. Sometimes removing yourself altogether is for the best.

Horrorporn fandoms are just fandoms. They don't have to be more or less than that. And if they are, if they're no longer entertaining, there's no reason to stay. But that doesn't mean you aren't accepted here. Having boundaries in an extreme space doesn't make you less than others who can stomach it. Being sensitive doesn't make you small.

I hope you're able to figure things out and rid yourself of what does nothing for you. Keep well, Anon.

[silusvesuius]

tbh in my head i was so ready to say twit is actually an okay (art-sharing) platform but then irealized i’m using it with 60 extensions and have everyone’s retweets turned off and i can’t stand to use it anywhere but desktop. I think like a lot of other drawing-hobbyists (artist just seems so corny) i’m getting burnt out of social medias for many reasons; altho i already had a weak relationship with anything but this platform cus i am like a…. Closed clam. Ok actually posting to twt was fun in like 2020-21. I see a lot of people switch to posting on designated websites of their own which is a pretty good idea and perhaps old-timey in a way but i can’t actually imagine anyone deeply bothering to check up and update all of that. online spaces generally just become a mass consumption factory that open up spaces for all kinds of artists. Professionals cloutchasers snobs the like. So making the change to get off actual developed platforms to other places, especially such isolated ones as websites, is difficult af. I don’t even look @ art from other people online anymore unless i’ve got them pinned in my mind as someone i want to check back on which isn’t a lot of people and truly speedrunning a dashboard full of random drawings makes me nauseous.. cus it is indeed the 'Wrong' way to digest creativity. idk wat point i'm making here tho i think i just like talking about online art spaces

[bitsofshanshine]

Pastel Core Homepage Notion Template: Your Dreamy Digital Sanctuary ʚ♡ɞ

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[interstellarleap]

Masterlist of Free PDF Versions of Textbooks Used in Undergrad SNHU Courses in 2025 C-1 (Jan - Mar)

Literally NONE of the Accounting books are available on libgen, they all have isbns that start with the same numbers, so I think they're made for the school or something. The single Advertising course also didn't have a PDF available.

This list could also be helpful if you just want to learn stuff

NOTE: I only included textbooks that have access codes if it was stated that you won't need the access code ANYWAY

ATH (anthropology)

only one course has an available pdf ATH-205 - In The Beginning: An Introduction to Archaeology

BIO (Biology)

BIO-205 Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association Essentials of Human Anatomy & Physiology 13th Edition

NOTE: These are not the only textbook you need for this class, I couldn't get the other one

CHE (IDK what this is)

CHE-329

The Aging Networks: A Guide to Policy, Programs, and Services

Publication Manual Of The American Psychological Association

CHE-460

Health Communication: Strategies and Skills for a New Era

Publication Manual Of The American Psychological Association

CJ (Criminal Justice)

CJ-303

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success

Without Conscious: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us

CJ-308

Cybercrime Investigations: a Comprehensive Resource for Everyone

CJ-315

Victimology and Victim Assistance: Advocacy, Intervention, and Restoration

CJ-331

Community and Problem-Oriented Policing: Effectively Addressing Crime and Disorder

CJ-350

Deception Counterdeception and Counterintelligence

NOTE: This is not the only textbook you need for this class, I couldn't find the other one

CJ-405Private Security Today

CJ-408

Strategic Security Management-A Risk Assessment Guide for Decision Makers, Second Edition

COM (Communications)

COM-230

Graphic Design Solutions

COM-325McGraw-Hill's Proofreading Handbook

NOTE: This is not the only book you need for this course, I couldn't find the other one

COM-329

Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology

COM-330The Only Business Writing Book You’ll Ever Need

NOTE: This is not the only book you need for this course, I couldn't find the other one

CS (Computer Science)

CS-319Interaction Design

CYB (Cyber Security)

CYB-200Fundamentals of Information Systems Security

CYB-240

Internet and Web Application Security

NOTE: This is not the only resource you need for this course. The other one is a program thingy

CYB-260Legal and Privacy Issues in Information Security

CYB-310

Hands-On Ethical Hacking and Network Defense (MindTap Course List)

NOTE: This is not the only resource you need for this course. The other one is a program thingy

CYB-400

Auditing IT Infrastructures for Compliance

NOTE: This is not the only resource you need for this course. The other one is a program thingy

CYB-420CISSP Official Study Guide

DAT (IDK what this is, but I think it's computer stuff)

DAT-430

Dashboard book

ECO (Economics)

ECO-322

International Economics

ENG (English)

ENG-226 (I'm taking this class rn, highly recommend. The book is good for any writer)

The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing: Second Edition

ENG-328

Ordinary genius: a guide for the poet within

ENG-329 (I took this course last term. The book I couldn't find is really not necessary, and is in general a bad book. Very ablest. You will, however, need the book I did find, and I recommend it even for people not taking the class. Lots of good short stories.)

100 years of the best American short stories

ENG-341You can't make this stuff up : the complete guide to writing creative nonfiction--from memoir to literary journalism and everything in between

ENG-347

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

NOTE: This i snot the only book you need for this course, I couldn't find the other one

ENG-350

Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction

ENG-351Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction

ENG-359 Crafting Novels & Short Stories: Everything You Need to Know to Write Great Fiction

ENV (Environmental Science)

ENV-101

Essential Environment 6th Edition The Science Behind the Stories

ENV-220

Fieldwork Ready: An introductory Guide to Field Research for Agriculture, Environment, and Soil Scientists

NOTE: You will also need lab stuff

ENV-250

A Pocket Style Manual 9th Edition

ENV-319

The Environmental Case: Translating Values Into Policy

Salzman and Thompson's Environmental Law and Policy

FAS (Fine Arts)

FAS-235Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic Classroom in a Book (2023 Release)

FAS-342 History of Modern Art

ALRIGHTY I'm tired, I will probably add ore later though! Good luck!

[vanillabeenflower]

My Reimaginings for the HB/HH Rings + Hellborns

My ideas for a redesign of the setting and its inhabitants to have it make a little more sense! I'll put all this under the cut so it won't be too long on the dashboard:

Okay! So, I've noticed QUITE a few slight discrepancies between some of the rings. I wanted to share how I would do it, based on some critiques I've seen. This is in no way anything negative, I just want to share how I would do it. With that in mind, know that I tend to be a bit blunt with my criticism but know that it's out of me thinking that it would be the obvious option, personally, and not out of any rudeness.

The Flaws

I want you to know that I in no way know anything about demonology, but I do know a bit about Dante's Divine Comedy and the emotions associated with colors. I'm going to go down the list in the show's order, one by one, and then give my versions at the end.

First is the Pride Ring, where the main cast of both shows reside. Now, I want to point this out: why are ALL of the sinners only confined to this ring? That doesn't even make sense from a biblical retelling perspective. Didn't the entire journey through Inferno show that there were sinners on every level of Hell?

Anyway, first off, I really don't see this as the Pride Ring. I expected this to be the Wrath Ring, which is what I thought until I saw the actual Wrath Ring. There's this thing called "color psychology", which is the study of how colors influence emotions or give clues to the atmosphere of someplace. Historically, purple has always meant royalty and wealth, since it was the most expensive color to dye your clothes in. I think that would be a more fitting color for the Pride Ring. As for the design, It's cool, but doesn't say Pride. It says New York, which I think would be the opposite of Pride.

Next is the Wrath Ring, which looks great. I have no actual criticism of the ring's design itself since it fits really well. I like the volcanic elements and the fiery sunset sky, and the fact that it's where many hell beasts/animals reside makes sense. Also, it is mainly rural and has fire-related weather (flaming tornadoes) which also makes sense. I have no fixes for this. Good work!

The Gluttony Ring is the same way. I appreciate the fact that the sky has hexagonal shapes in it (not shown above) and that it's mainly plant life since the actual Beelzebub is an insect, and most people associate insects with being outside. There are a few things I'd change, like pushing the plant aspects a bit and having the buildings look more like various insect nests, not just beehives, maybe a few dens or plant-inspired buildings (I really like how Zootopia's world is built because it was made with the builders in mind: animals. Since they use organic structures in real life for their homes, they made some buildings have a curvature that fit their "ancestor" instincts, it even extended to their cars at one point. I highly recommend reading The Art of Zootopia to see their creative process with a bit more polished language).

Okay, why did they make the Greed Ring green?? Everyone knows that green is the universal color of Envy, so why is it here? I get that making it green works much better than any other color, and I agree, it does look better, and it's the same color of money, but I have an alternate idea. Make the Greed Ring yellow.

This might not sound like a good choice, but here's my reasoning. I love that the Greed Ring is a polluted, overly industrial cityscape, that fits amazingly. But if you look at real-life smog-filled cities, what color are they?

Yellow. Or at least a dirty, dark yellow-brown. So what I'm saying is that you don't even need to make it a bright yellow, making it a dark yellow-brown would really show how filthy the Greed Ring is. Also yellow is the color of gold so it also makes sense symbolically.

I have my gripes with the Lust Ring. Why is it dark blue?? The color symbolism was right there, pink and red are the most associated colors with lust!

However, I do like the fact that it's always night in the Lust Ring, it's very symbolic of the "nightlife" aspect of the emotion. I just don't know why they chose a normal sky color over something else.

I am a sucker for good color combinations, but I don't really think making the night sky dark blue made sense. It doesn't even have to be a drastic change, just shift the night sky's color to the warmer side a bit. If the ring does have a day and night cycle, and I'm just stupid, make the day go from hot pink to light pink from top to bottom, then have the night sky go from red/magenta to hot pink, with white stars (or just make the sky a lighter version of those two options). It would look mega pretty!!

The Envy Ring is one we haven't seen yet, but I wonder what we'll get since we already used up our green card with the Greed Ring. Someone I was talking about this with said that since the Envy Ring is ruled over by Leviathan, the ring will be ocean-themed and blue, like the ocean. I like that idea since sea blue is, in fact, a real color (and I also think that those 2 twins from the Mammon episode are from there, because of the way they acted and since they are fish-themed), and the theme fits. But the problem is. Sea green is a real color too.

Wait, this was the Sloth Ring?? I assumed this was part of the Lust Ring because of the colors, and because I was holding onto some hope of the color psychology making sense!

But. I LOVE this ring. The more pastel color of the ring actually relaxed my eyes a bit, which I think was the intention. I love the floating islands and the waterfalls, it all gives off a very relaxing atmosphere. My only design change would be to change the sky to a color like baby blue since blue as a color is actually scientifically proven to reduce feelings of stress and anger.

My Rendition

Now that we have all that out of the way, here's my version of how I would've done things.

I would match the colors of the rings to their corresponding color. I would arrange them in the way that they are in the show, but we'd risk that cool rainbow gem order up top. But if we want to arrange them in rainbow order, they'd be inaccurate to the order of the rings in Inferno (I think??), so you can choose which order you'd like, I'm just doing this for myself. Also I realize that they aren't really based on the nine levels of Hell, but the 7 Deadly Sins, which is fine by me, I find that making more sense.

Red = Wrath (an obvious choice, since red signifies strength, danger, and actually stimulates energy in real life)

Orange = Gluttony (it just makes more sense than yellow, plus if we're assuming the bee motif, it's the actual color of refined honey)

Yellow = Greed (color of gold and matches the smoggy city it's depicted as)

Green = Envy (another obvious choice, plus since Leviathan rules over this ring, it would match the ocean aesthetic as sea green)

Baby Blue = Sloth (soft blues actually cause a relaxed response in the brain)

Purple = Pride (color of royalty, also associated with arrogance and wealth)

Pink/Hot Pink = Lust (OBVIOUS CHOICE)

The Hellborns

Now my headcanons on what the overall citizens of each ring would be. I actually have an idea for slight species dimorphism for all the imps in each ring but I'll have to design that another day. I want my rainbow imps dammit

The Wrath Ring would have the highest imp concentration, with any other demon species being the lowest here. Imps who are born here are red in color, about the same shades of red that we see in all imps in-show.

The inhabitants of the Gluttony Ring should be bug/insect demons since the ruler of the ring is literally an insect. Imps born here are shades of orange.

The Greed Ring would have those shark demons seen in Exes & Oohs, but someone I was chatting with said it would make more sense for all the aquatic demons to be in the Envy Ring, so I don't know. Imps here are born in shades of yellow.

The Envy Ring would have mainly fish/aquatic-themed demons. Imps born here are shades of green.

The Sloth Ring should make the demons there have more themes of ungulates or ruminant animals like goats, sheep, and pigs because Baphomet is not a demon species. Imps born here are shades of blue.

The Pride Ring is where demon royalty mainly resides. Imps are rarely born here and if they are, they're usually born into servitude. Imps born in this ring are purple.

The Lust Ring is where incubi and succubi live (like Verosika). Imps born here are shades of pink.

For Hellhounds, I think they should be found in all rings rather than mainly in the Gluttony Ring. Even though the reason that's where they are is because Cerberus apparently guards this ring is very clever, it doesn't make that much sense. I also think they should all be grayscale and have their eyes correspond to the color of which ring they were born in (I love achromatic color schemes with one bright color to add color to it).

Anyway, those are my thoughts! I hope you enjoyed this interpretation of mine!

[phoenixplans]

Planner Setup 101: Making Your Planner Work for You

A Step-by-Step Guide to Boosting Organization and Efficiency

Your planner isn’t just a notebook with dates—it’s a tool for transforming chaos into clarity. But too often, we try to cram our lives into someone else's idea of “organized.” What if your planner actually worked for you, not the other way around?

Let’s walk through how to set up a planner that fits your life, your goals, and your rhythm. Whether you’re brand new to planning or looking to refresh your current system, this step-by-step guide will help you create a setup that’s both functional and empowering.

Step 1: Choose the Right Planner for You

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Ask yourself:

Do you prefer digital or paper?

Do you like daily breakdowns, weekly views, or monthly overviews?

Do you need portability, or do you keep your planner on your desk?

Don’t be afraid to experiment until you find the format that clicks. It should feel like an extension of your brain—not a burden.

Step 2: Define Your Planner’s Purpose

Be clear about why you’re using a planner. Is it to:

Track appointments and deadlines?

Manage projects or business tasks?

Build habits and routines?

Prioritize self-care and mental wellness?

All of the above?

Once you define the purpose, you can design your layout accordingly. This step prevents overwhelm and helps you stay focused.

Step 3: Create Your Core Sections

Every effective planner has key sections that reflect your priorities. Here are a few you might include:

Monthly Calendars: For long-term planning and key events

Weekly Spreads: For mapping out tasks and routines

Daily Pages: For detailed to-dos, time blocking, or journaling

Goals: Break big dreams into achievable steps

Habit Trackers: Build consistency, one day at a time

Notes/Ideas: Capture inspiration when it strikes

Only include what you’ll actually use. A bloated planner can quickly become a dusty one.

One of my daily spreads that helps me keep my day on track and aligned with my overall goals:

Step 4: Customize with Intention

This is where your planner truly becomes yours. Add:

Color coding or labels for quick reference

Stickers or washi tape if you’re creative (and motivated by visuals)

Tabs, bookmarks, or dashboards for easy navigation

Inserts or templates that reflect your lifestyle—like meal planning, finance tracking, or project management

Customization isn’t just for aesthetics—it boosts usability.

One of my favorite custom spreads:

Step 5: Set a Planning Routine

A planner only works if you use it. Set aside time regularly to:

Review your week every Sunday (or your reset day)

Check-in each morning to adjust tasks or priorities

Do a monthly reflection to reset your goals and intentions

This habit turns planning into a rhythm, not a chore.

Step 6: Give Yourself Permission to Adjust

Your life changes. So should your planner. Don’t be afraid to revise your layout, simplify sections, or even switch systems if something’s not working. Flexibility is the key to sustainability.

Final Thoughts

A well-set-up planner doesn’t just organize your time—it helps you own it. Whether you’re juggling multiple roles or simply trying to stay sane in a busy world, your planner should serve you.

Remember: It’s not about having the perfect planner. It’s about creating a space that supports your unique goals, pace, and priorities.

So take a deep breath, grab your favorite pen, and start building a system that lets you thrive.

---

PS. Yesterday I released the Phoenix Burnout Buster and Mini Study Planner to my shop. Have you had a chance to peek yet? If not, take a look here: Printable & Digital Study Planner + Burnout Worksheet Bundle and let me know what you think!