#grid view with image and text

[oikarma]

xoxo, gossip girl

pairing: lando norris x reader

summary: you kind of popped into lando's life out of nowhere-and he loves it. but there's no such thing as being private when you're dating a formula one driver. sorry, did i say dating? i mean when you're friends.

a/n: yay first smau of the year and the second driver i'm writing for! i started watching gossip girl recently n i was inspired

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liked by alex_albon and 128,407 others

f1gossipofficial: mclaren's lando norris was spotted out and about in the big apple last night with a mystery girl!

view all 6,353 comments

user1: uh oh magui's going to be mad...

user2: ngl thought that was her at first user3: they got back together AGAIN?? user1: @/user3 someone posted a vid of them partying

user4: alex being messy in the likes LMAOOO

user5: aww did he give her his hoodie in p1

user6: such a gentleman 😍 user7: THATS WHAT I THOUGHT user8: girl be fr he's nothing compared to osc

user9: lando stick to one girl at a time will you

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yourinstagram has added to their stories

replies:

hannahstjohn: i bet you're glad i convinced you to get dinner w me that day 👅

yourinstagram: oh shush i had to sit through two hours of you and liam gazing into each other's eyes. DISGUSTING. hannahstjohn: please. don't act like you even looked at anyone other than him

yourbff: regular dates now i see...

yourinstagram: we're just friends!!

lando: i learned for you 🥺

yourinstagram: liar lando: hello?? yourinstagram: you literally told me the other day you used to do your sister's hair lando: maybe i lied yourinstagram: well you definitely did at some point

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liked by hannahstjohn and 203,991 others

f1gossipofficial: we think it's getting serious with y/n l/n, daughter of NYC-based tech mogul y/d/n l/n, and lando norris. rumor has it that they met through liam lawson and his girlfriend hannah. despite the newly promoted red bull driver lacking friends across the grid, norris is probably grateful for the introduction 😉

y/n and lando were spotted at not one, not two, but SIX different locations across new york in the past week. above is a compilation of photos fans have taken of them dining out, shopping, and even going to the opera together.

view all 10,274 comments

user1: grocery shopping?? do they live together already??

user2: sleazy af if they do user3: maybe they wanted to cook something together its not that deep

user4: what a golddigger...

user5: how is she a gold digger user4: @/user5 did you not see how she dressed for the opera? probably his money she spent on that dress user6: the way people r so illiterate and yet so confident drive me crazy IT LITERALLY SAYS HER DAD IS A TECH MOGUL user7: i don't even know what a mogul is but it sounds rich user8: @/user6 right and if you just googled her dad you'd figure his sister was the one owns the brand she's wearing 💀

user9: the way he looks at her in p1 though

user10: wonder how long they've known each other 🤔

user11: hannah we see you

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lando has added to their stories

replies:

user1: LANDO DID YOU POST ON THE WRONG ACC

oscarpiastri: mate

lando: 🥺 yes osc? oscarpiastri: lily says this is why you've been in NYC for so long lando: idk lily's always right oscarpiastri: you said it was for a brand deal! lando: maybe her dad wants to sponsor mclaren lando: actually forget about that i think he already does 💀 oscarpiastri: i don't like talking to you on instagram text me lando: what if i don't. lando: hello???

mclaren: so cute!

lando: HI ADMIN

maxverstappen: someone's been busy

yourinstagram: what happened to being private 😭 now they definitely think we're dating

lando: sorry i didn't know it was such a bad thing yourinstagram: at least my fake boyfriend is a lot of people's celebrity crush yourinstagram: can't be ruining my image

user2: LANDO ARE YOU STALKING THE #LANDOYN TAG ON TWITTER?? HOW DID YOU FIND THAT??

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liked by scuderiaferrari, redbullracing, and 1,913,500 others

f1: lovely seeing all of you at the o2 ❤️ we hope you enjoyed the livery reveals! one week until pre-season testing begins in bahrain.

view all 253,014 comments

user1: admin you know what you're doing with that pic of lando

user2: missing him and yn *liked by f1 user2: f1 a landoyn stan confirmed?

user3: eh liveries, great articles about max trying to get out of going

user4: alexandra the prettiest wag

user5: yn appearance when 😔 did anyone see how he looked around for her then stopped bcs he remembered she wasn't there

user6: I KNEW I WASN'T CRAZY

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yourinstagram has added to their stories

replies:

lando: did me so dirty with that pic

yourinstagram: shh you look adorable lando: adorable AND pretty? you flatter me yourinstagram: don't get used to it

yourbff: "friends"

yourinstagram: but you're my best friend 😋 yourbff: cause he's more than a friend where is your media literacy

hannahstjohn: I SAW HIM CALLING YOU BACKSTAGE

yourinstagram: so did everyone else it seems hannahstjohn: whoever runs the f1 account loves wag appearances🤷‍♀️

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lando has added to their stories 🔁 yourinstagram's story

replies:

oscarpiastri: are you sure you don't like her

oscarpiastri: sorry i meant are you sure you're not in love with each other lando: you know i think she might fancy me a little oscarpiastri: a little?? lando: im not sure how i feel about her though oscarpiastri: the cameras literally caught you blushing on call lando: ARE YOU SERIOUS oscarpiastri: yeah admin outed you oscarpiastri: they tagged you

user1: posted her on main again aww

yourinstagram: im not even complaining

lando: am i that charming yourinstagram: no i just look great in that photo yourinstagram: y/n l/n, absolute baddie who bagged what's his name norris lando: ☹️ yourinstagram: its okay your fangirls still love you

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liked by oscarpiastri, f1, and 330,217 others

mclaren: lando when y/n calls him (for legal reasons we can't repost that clip until f1 posts it but you know which one we're talking about 🤐)

tagged: lando

view all 57,341 comments

user1: admin you're so brave * liked by mclaren

f1: it's okay we won't rat you out

mclaren: thanks bestie!

user2: oscar crying in the club because his boyfriend is in love with someone else

user3: @/oscarpiastri would you like to comment user4: he's been crying since jan prob

lando: admin i am literally going to hunt you down

oscarpiastri: he follows the landoyn tag on twitter lando: @/oscarpiastri HELLO??? mclaren: he said it not me user5: they're so chaotic

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bahrain

you saw him get out of his car, landing evenly on the ground. you looked at oscar, who gave you a small nudge. "go on, he doesn't know it yet."

"what if he doesn't-"

"then he's a dickhead for leading you on." you liked his bluntness. it was a change from how polite he normally was. and it showed just how strongly he believed it.

you nodded, then strode forward. you could hear the cameras turning, but it didn't matter. lando had taken off his helmet, and his back was to you as he talked to his race engineer.

it was now or never. you gave him a small tap on the shoulder. he whirled around so fast you almost toppled backwards. realizing it was you, his hands shot out and wrapped around your waist. "y/n? oh my god."

you gave him a shy smile, wrapping your arms around him. "told you it was good."

he buried his face in your neck, embracing you so tight you didn't know if he was capable of letting go. eventually, he did.

"so what did you have to tell me?"

you blinked at him slowly. "try to guess."

his eyes widened, as if a hope had come into him. "you won't laugh?"

a shake of your head. "promise."

"then-" he bit his lip, looking down for a minute. "do you like me, like that?"

"what are we, in grade school?" you deadpanned. you saw his heart plummet, then wanted to take back your words. "yes, lando. yes, i came all this way just to see your stupid face. yes, i like you. like that. like i can't get your smile out of my head and i'll stay up until 5 just to watch you hold an award. like i'll respond to you any time, because talking to you is-"

he raised one of his hands ever so slightly so he could pull you closer, so close his lips were on yours and you were cut off mid-sentence. you'd been waiting for this since you'd met him, you realized. since you'd first seen that curly mop of hair at dinner with liam and hannah. since the first time he'd laughed and you realized you'd never heard a prettier sound.

"i like you like that too."

and the cameras caught all that, words and kiss and pictures and all, but it was different. this was something you wanted to remember.

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liked by yourinstagram and 1,504,891 others

lando: a great end to pre-season testing, all thanks to my lucky charm 🤍

tagged: yourinstagram

view all 94,102 comments

yourinstagram: me fr -> 🍀

yourinstagram: (get it. FOUR leaf clover) lando: i literally worship the ground you walk on lando: you're the reason i believe in fate yourinstagram: woah slow down there buddy user1: i'm so single its not okay user2: they're basically a married couple already

mclaren: your team in the garage rn like 🧍‍♀️🧍

lando: love you guys too! user3: @/mclaren f1 account alr posted kiss why have you not 😡 mclaren: @/user3 we're carefully selecting the cutest ones

hannahstjohn: lando norris and his "friend"

yourinstagram: IM STUPID OKAY hannahstjohn: can't believe it took you that long

user4: hes so happy 🥹

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liked by lando and 919,501 others

yourinstagram: by your side 🖤

view all 71,440 comments

tagged: lando

lando: baby where'd all your posts go ☹️

yourinstagram: oh i forgot to add you to my close friends lando: is that because we're more than just friends yourinstagram: no i just forgot user1: HELPP

user2: hottest WAG on the grid

oscarpiastri: i'm sure you'll take good care of him

yourinstagram: scout's honor 🫡

user3: okay her dress is so pretty though where's it from

yourinstagram: my aunt's brand! (brandname) <3 user3: @/yourinstagram OMG TYSM QUEEN

user4: she finally made her acc public AHH does this mean landoyn content

lewishamilton: lovely meeting you, y/n

yourinstagram: 🤩 you too lewis!!! lando: you're such a fan. yourinstagram: you're just jealous

[vuelode-irbis]

[ID: the first three images are zoom ins from the last image, described next: a digital drawing with various sketches of mustelid species. They were drawn with marker textures over a math grid. They're all next to their respective reference image, which is a little transparent. From lefto to right and top-down, a pine marten that looks like it's smiling with its mouth open; a stoat that is closing its eyes and looks disappointed, below, there's a note in Spanish that says "no puede ser" (translation: it cannot be); a sea otter in the water, lifting its front paws and looking up, looks like its cheering something or someone; a stoat in its winter coat, looking to the left with its eyes halfway closed; a giant river otter in the muddy water, giving a side eye; three river otters curled up together in the shape of a heart, and lastly, a tayra pup in a front view, the text besides it says "Tayra chiquito <3" (translation: little tayra"). End ID.]

More practice, this time some mustelids

[sam-keeper]

Hey Look At This Comic: Smut Peddler Presents Pitch Black

I can't remember how we got on the subject of the comics that my friends Iris Jay and Nero Villagallos O'Reilly did for an old Iron Circus april fools bit. maybe we were chatting about Megan Delyani's blank frame comic Spaces, which I wrote a whole review of last year, but it might just as easily have been talking about comic structure generally. cause we're huge nerds. being a huge nerd, I was all over the premise of the joke: a fake kickstarter for a Smut Peddler volume full of comics with all blacked out panels.

it's a great gag, a full webpage duping the Kickstarter layout, with a fun tongue in cheek explanation: comics don't leave enough up to the imagination, there aren't enough interpretive gaps for the reader, so to fix that Smut Peddler will publish a bunch of Pitch Black comics where YOU have to provide the visuals. Joke, maybe, but it lends credence to frame-focused models of comics reading: it's not the images that make something a comic, but the breakdown of page space into discrete units. So goes one theory, anyway. How do these pages fare without their images?

Lin Visel deploys a regular grid of long, thin columns, with a kind of horizontal capital at the top. The speech bubbles drive a lot of the action here and there's a sense of simultaneous movement across the bottom, with the bubbles breaking the panel borders at the top and the sound effects flowing into each other below. So, there's an interesting division between the upper strip, which is relatively subdued, a moment of reassurance that exists almost in its own zone before the rush of the bottom. And, as we'll see with a bunch of the others, in the absence of images the style of the text, the shape of the word balloons, and the font colors all become more crucial to conveying what's happening (sex, to be clear). That's already a lot going on with a series of black panels.

I love how Iris's comic bakes an explanation for the blacked out panels into its narrative. The apparently dominant character gloats that her streaming site won't let her actually display the brutal force-fem pegging she's giving to some shitty gamer bro. Sure enough, at the bottom of that panel there's a black and white video control interface and LIVE signal. Text alone and the design of the speech bubbles transforms the whole diegesis of that second panel, from the floating omniscient "camera" of the other panels to a webcam. Which is crazy because don't forget, there is no diegesis at all. It's all black!

There's so many great touches in this. I love the fact that the tongue in cheek panel containing the "guy's" internal monologue ("I can feel my epic skills draining away with every thrust... along with my masculinity!") is not just a second panel on the upper strip but an inset, separating out this moment of more intimate first person experience from the more remote view of implied fucking. And look at the flowers in the final orgasmic speech bubble! This is a total tangent but I feel like a lot of older attempts at structuralist comics decomposition wanted a firm line between the panel, the image, the characters, the speech bubbles, and so on. But comic elements can constantly interpenetrate, with the apparent domain of text becoming more complex graphical elements. Also, what a cute way to depict orgasming so hard you get turned into a girl. Head full of flowers. :)

It's incredible what you can achieve without breaking Tumblr's draconian terms of service at all.

Robin Tess offers a more straightfoward humorous panel, which lets me catch my breath after Iris's hot and heavy speech bubbles. Yet, this could have been a straightfoward 2 x 3 grid, couldn't it? 6 panels? Instead, this joke about over-engineered jargon names for what could just as easily have been called a "fuckmachine" (left delightfully up to the imagination) gets its core pacing from an irregular panel format. The premise is introduced in a big splashy full-strip panel at the top, the elaboration takes up the middle row, and then the bottom, in two equal panels, displays the two part punchline. I like the subtle way the middle row panels get progressively smaller. It increases the tension as we move toward the release of the punchlines, in a way that could be easily obscured by the panel contents if the page wasn't all blacked out in this way. Like Delyani's work, it makes me want to see notable comics blacked out. It could offer a whole new perspective on the medium's language.

Speaking of which, Nero uses a series of tall regular panels that suddenly POP into one that seems to squirt across the page, the other panels moved to allow for the white negative space to show off the irregular splash of the panel edge. This could be the silhouette of literal fluid, but I also like the idea of a frame that just has this kind of irregular energy. The comic structure itself becoming unruly and fluid to highlight a climax is a staple of many comic genres, but I'd say that I see it deployed most consistently by adult creators, who seem more willing to throw page literalism to the wind in order to achieve heightened expressivity. And once again we've got this escalation to a climactic panel. Typing this up I actually realized I don't have a specific idea of what I think the visual for these panels is or should be. Part of the excitement comes from filling in the blanks, to be sure, but that's true of any comic, which requires us to engage in closure to make sense of the transition from panel to panel. No, it's the drama of the reveal of the vibe plug one character apparently has been hiding, the invitation to intimacy, and finally the release, all achieved through dialogue physically arranged on the page. I don't think this would really make sense at all without the visuals that ARE there--the buzzing sound effect that moves across panel borders and is simultaneous to rather than sequentially arranged between lines of dialogue, and the incredibly suggestive final panel shape. Even without apparent visuals, this is visual storytelling.

Abby Howard wraps things up with the most abstract of the pieces, one that doesn't use frames at all but implies panel contents simply through the convention of word balloon tails. The result is a disorienting dark mass. It's hard to know what exactly is happening here and actually I'm having a hard time imagining what the last visual is "supposed" to be. It sort of is what it is: groping claw marks raking a black void. It's part of the april fool's joke, but it's a creepy one, and it feeds into the final joke of the page: that all this overthinking, all this trying to make sense of black panels, has worn you out, made you vulnerable to the Dark. Well, looking at everything I typed up here, I can't deny the inevitability of this end. Time to get in the maw!

Actually I think this end uncovers the close relationship that comics and hypertext narratives or more experimentally formatted texts have to one another: the space on the page becomes, itself, a signifying element and a way to direct the flow of the story. It's a shame that this is, I think, still considered a bit gimmicky in the realm of professional publishing and criticism. We have all these tools we've barely employed for storytelling, made far more accessible than in the days of having to manually set type!

Well, maybe it'll all have its day in the sun, or I suppose night in its new moon, soon enough. With an increasingly puritanical treatment of sexuality in society and on the internet, maybe we'll ALL have to black the action out of our comics and leave the frames to imply what we socially no longer want to see.

Pitch Black: Comics Code Authority approved!

you can read more reviews in the Hey Look At This Comic tag and support me on Patreon at least until they get my ass for being an adult writing about comics for other adults.

[bluejayblueskies]

ten thousand flowers in spring | bluejayblueskies

[ID: Three photos of a hand-bound book from different angles that show the front, side, and back respectively. The book has dark green bookcloth, a decorative red and gold ribbon along the front cover and a black ribbon along the back cover, and a gold painted cherry blossom design on the front and back covers. The title and author name are also in gold on the front cover and spine and read, "Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring" and "bluejayblueskies." /End ID]

Last November, I got a Silhouette cutting machine for Black Friday. This weekend, I finally got the chance to use it for a bookbinding project! I bound my fic ten thousand flowers in spring as part of one of my Fandom Trumps Hate typesetting gifts, and I had a lot of fun going all-out with the flower iconography.

[ID: Two photos of the interior of the book. The first is the title page spread of the book, showing a pastel-colored painting of a cherry blossom-scattered hill with sheep and a shepherd that spans both pages. On the right page, there is the title "Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring" and the author name "bluejayblueskies" in a sans serif font. The second is the colophon (left) and table of contents (right) of the book. The colophon has details about the binder, the original fic, and the fonts and image sources used in the book. The table of contents has each chapter title and corresponding page number listed in a grid format with flower icons above each chapter title. /End ID]

Each chapter is titled after a flower that has a specific meaning that ties into the chapter content. I decided to style this bind after old botany books. Along with the cover, which is inspired by the covers of old botany books, each chapter header has an image of the titular flower pulled from public domain botany book scans, along with the flower's name and meaning below it.

[ID: The inside of the book, showing a page of text on the left and the chapter header on the right. The chapter header has an old-style image of blue salvia on it, with the name "blue salvia" and the meaning "friendship, family, thoughtful gestures, thinking of you" beneath it. /End ID]

Each chapter also begins with a faux-excerpt from the book Jon is writing throughout the fic:

[ID: The inside of the book, showing the introductory faux book excerpt on the left and the beginning chapter text on the right. The faux book text has an image of a flower beneath it; the beginning chapter text has a drop cap with a floral design at the beginning of it. /End ID]

Some more notes and pictures on process are below the cut!

The binding style of this fic is sewn boards binding, which I like for thinner books as the spine is much less fiddly to work with. It's also a really nice binding style in general because it eliminates my least-favorite part of the binding process: casing in. When casing in a regular case-bound book, you construct the entire case separately from the text block and then attach the case to the text block via the endpapers. Inevitably, I always end up just a little bit crooked, and because my brain currently refuses to let me try using paste instead of PVA, it's very hard to fix once the endpapers are pasted down.

With sewn boards binding, the boards are attached to the text block via an extra signature of folded cardstock on the ends of the text block. The case is then constructed directly onto the text block, and glueing the endpapers down is very, very easy and near-impossible to mess up.

The ends of the boards do end up exposed with this binding style. The first time I did it, I covered them with paper. This time, I painted them gold to match the cover:

[ID: A side view of the book, showing off the exposed boards near the spine which are painted gold. The front cover of the book can also be seen at an angle. /End ID]

I plan to experiment more in the future with potentially adding endbands to this binding style, as that's one thing I wish this book had that it does not.

For the cover design, I first cut out the stencils using my Silhouette:

[ID: A cutting mat with white vinyl stuck to it that has been cut and weeded to expose the backlit cherry blossom design. The title "Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring" and author name "bluejayblueskies" can be seen in the designs for the front cover and spine. /End ID]

I'd heard a lot of things about weeding, positive and negative, but I actually enjoyed doing the weeding on this 😂 it was like doing a puzzle in a way. I think I would like it less if I had to keep all of the tiny little pieces and make sure they looked nice, but as it was, all I had to do was remove them and it didn't matter if they got bent in the process.

The fabric paint I have dries very quickly, so I got very little bleed on my stencil and was able to remove it almost right away:

[ID: The back cover of the book with the vinyl stencil stuck to it, painted over somewhat messily with gold fabric paint. /End ID]

Overall, I was very happy with the stenciling process and will probably continue to do stencils as opposed to heat transfer vinyl unless I want to do some bigger, blockier designs in the future.

[bloodsadx]

sorry if you’ve answered something similar before but how do you format things for your website? in the collections you have for poems

i love how it looks. the book kind of format it has

and i want to do similar/the same formatting for my own works but im really struggling…

i've been asked stuff like this a lot and i don't mind explaining it often because i want people to make websites more. i made a tutorial video at some point but it's kind of hard to make a curriculum or tutorial or whatever around this kind of thing because it's really just a self expression thing. i'll try to break down as much of my thought process as makes sense.

i design my pages in photoshop with either double/single page display in mind and then i use html to set them next to each other. most of the choice here comes down to how overwhelming i want my designs to feel. in the case of the lonely leaver page, the entire book was designed to be something that could be a physical book, and so from the getgo i made the pages in that kind of format. i previewed things in acrobat which has a booklet view mode (which singles out the front and back cover around the contents of the file) & allows you to process double page view as well. as for the actual process in photoshop before that point, i typically will open a canvas that is the size of the full 2 page spread (i.e. 8 inches wide for 2 pages which are both 4 inches wide) and i set grid lines for bleed margins and to mark the center of the page so that i can make the composition something that im comfortable with having a gap in the middle from the book folding. with lonely leaver i had to reformat about half the book at some point because i wanted to make it a larger resolution which was annoying but i just keep my guidelines for a print size in mind while im working. often if im a certain amount of time into a project that i feel like i will be spending a lot more time with i'll create a dummy psd file at this point which is devoid of content but which has all of the margins/resolution stuff set up already so i can just open that up and save a different version of it when i'm done.

my actual writing process and my design process is generally extremely intertwined, that's why things tend to be varying degrees stream of conscious in my work i think. i'll for instance, have a thought im stuck on for several days, and then open photoshop without having a poem or comic in mind, but i'll fill the canvas with some kind of color like red or yellow or a photo or whatever, and then open a text box or start drawing. telling a story through composition (i.e. page layout itself) is generally my favorite aspect of art and design because i enjoy how violent and dramatic framing angles can make the content of a piece feel so i'll try to move stuff around as much as possible in order to get my desired effect, often times using place holder shapes in lieu of finished design elements in order to get a rough blocking. as i do this i tend to react to what i'm writing/making as i'm doing it, and i do a lot of selective self editing during this part. for instance, i'll start manipulating rasterized text or cutting around images or whatever. i'll reread and look at whatever im doing for a couple of hours and then when i'm done with a spread or whatever i will save the document as a psd with a combined full spread and then each page separately as pngs or whatever (split at the middle grid line, back to the example, i'll save 2 different 4 inch wide images by changing the canvas size).

when it's time for me to put stuff on my website i then batch convert whatever pngs i exported into webp's because they load faster and take up less space on the server/my computer. you can look at my direct html/css files in your internet browser's explorer mode to see exactly what i do but essentially i just have either 1 or 2 images in a block and then a series of repeating vertical blocks containing images. i don't have an extremely efficient way of uploading pages and i'll typically just copy the same

"<p><img src="01.png"> <p><img src="02.png">"

like, 30 or 40 times or whatever into a html document. i use visual studio code for this stuff because it lets me do a bunch of stuff like having several files open at once & the navigation pane is nice & there's a live server extension that automatically refereshes the html file in my web browser on file save which is really awesome. i have a css page that i made like, 5 years ago, and i usually just link new projects to that because it has a bunch of different settings in it which i'll toggle on or off depending on the needs of whatever page or i'll add new div id's to it. it's kind of messy at this point, but it gets the job done. i use filezilla and something like bluehost or something for webhosting/file management.

i arrange and organize all of my art extremely methodically so usually in my like "<root catch all poetry folder>" inside of my "<root catch all art folder>" there will be a "<name of specific poem book>" folder which just contains the poems named by their actual name e.g. "dedication to saint eulalia 4.png" and then another folder inside of that is called "paginated" where i, using the acrobat document i arrange stuff in as reference, rename copies of my pages which i have placed in that folder to be named things like "01.png" so that i can then manually flip through it sequentially in the windows photo viewer and also just so that i don't have to go through the arduous process of renaming and tracking stuff inside of the root folder i'm containing that project's files in.

i'm 26 now and i made my first website when i was like 18, and my first zine project and i'm tired of feeling feeling around that same time, so i've got like, coming up on a decade of trial and error behind this and this is generally what has worked for me. my website isn't super complicated and mostly just gets the job done but because i try to think about style and presentation up front with whatever projects i'm doing i tend to just make plans based around that as early as it makes sense. to me having a website for art presentation has always been the Primary Method and intended landing zone for my art so it's genuinely always been a consideration in my process to try to plan around how i will put it on my website. i do this because i believe having my own curated space for containing my art allows it to exist in a context which best heightens whatever message i'm trying to convey. if there's an issues with my website right now they are that i'm very bad at mobile browser formatting & i havent updated the main look of the website in something like 4 years barely at all.

anyway, at the end of the day i think really as long as you can identify whatever your intentions are and do some planning/problem solving around that you should probably be able to find your own method which works for you better than mine might but if you do just want to copy my website the tools to do so are within your brain and internet searches and i believe in you. i think the biggest strength of my website is that it shows how easy it is to just put art big as fuck on a webpage and how effective that kind of minimalism can be. i just want my website to be like a museum's walls. and it's not super complicated to get to that level of html knowledge.

[embodiedfutures]

image description by @swosheep

ID 1: all images are screenshots of an Instagram post by j3wess, and are on a light green background with an even lighter green grid pattern. The first image is a title written in dark green text. It reads: "Evangelicals are the primary supporters of Israel in the US, not Jews". There is two Stars of David beside the words 'not Jews'. A wavy green line underlines everything.

ID 2: the second image is titled "why?". The title is separated from the body by a wavy white line. The body text reads: "the protestant fundamentalist theory of dispensationalism views history as a series of seven events. so far, six have already occurred." An ordered list, in white text, reads: "1 the era of innocence: before adam's fall. 2 the era of conscience: from adam to noah. 3 the era of government: from noah to abraham. 4 the era of patriarchy: from abraham to moses. 5 the era of mosaic law: from moses to jesus. 6 the era of grace: from jesus to today." The green body text continues: "and the seventh and final dispensation will be millennium, an earthly paradise. and millennium requires gods chosen people, the jews, to all be living together in israel. it is there, supposedly, that they will rebuild the temple. then, as described in the book of revelation, armageddon will take place and in the process 2/3 of jews will die and the other 1/3 will accept jesus as the messiah. jesus will then return to earth and will institute a millennium, beginning a thousand year reign over earth as king."

ID 3: the third image is titled "the statistics". a white wavy line separates the title from the body text. The body text reads: "results from a 2017 research study on evangelical supporters of israel indicate that of the 67% of evangelicals with a 'positive perception of israel':" Below, there is a bar graph. The first bar is captioned: "the bible says g-d gave the land of israel to the jewish people". The bar is at 63 percent. THe second bar is captioned: "israel is the historic jewish homeland". The bar is at 60 percent. The third bar is captioned: "israel is important for fulfilling biblical prophecy". The bar is at 52 percent. The fourth bar is captioned: "the creation of israel shows that we are getting closer to the return of jesus christ". The bar is at 80 percent.

ID 4: The fourth image is titled "what's scary about this?" A white wavy line separates the title from the body text. The body text reads: "a majority of christian support for zionism and israel is because it will supposedly trigger the return of christ. in order for this to happen requires for a) all diasporic jews to return to the land, therefore displacing palestinians and b) jews to be either proselytized and abandon their own religion for christ or die." Below this text, a second title reads: "what's even scarier?". Body text reads: "despite israel claiming to represent and protect all jews, it prioritizes the support of evangelicals."

ID 5: the fifth image is untitled. It has a screenshot from an article which reads: "Former Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer suggested Sunday that Israel should prioritize the 'passionate and unequivocal' support of evangelical Christians over that of American Jews, who he said are 'disproportionately among our critics.' 'People have to understand that the backbone of Israel's support in the United States is the evangelical Christians. It's true because of numbers and also because of their passionate and unequivocal support for Israel,' Dermer said in an onstage interview at a conference organized by Makor Rishon, a news outlet affiliated with the national religious community". Green text below it says: "this represents not just the goals of dermer but of israel. he just ended a seven year term in january as the ambassador of israel in washington. he was known as the ears and brain of netanyahu. his words are representing much more than just his thoughts." There is a white arrow pointing from the green text up to the article screenshot.

ID 6: the sixth image is titled "sources". There is a wavy white line separating the title from the body text. The body text consists of four sources, which are as follows: "times of israel: dermer suggests israel should prioritize support of evangelicals over us jews. lifeway research: evangelical attitudes toward israel research study. city journal: why don't jews like the christians who like them? america magazine: understanding the evangelical obsession with israel."

working links include:

[modoreadsttrpgs]

Game Reactions: SUPERSTARS Racing Icons

Link: https://feelingfickle.itch.io/superstars-racing-icons

I’m back on the motorsports idea again. This is the second game from Mint’s list (https://www.tumblr.com/theresattrpgforthat/748009076009697280/any-games-about-cross-country-racing-or-just) that I’ve checked out. Turned out I already owned this from a past bundle purchase! So… technically this is reading a game I already own rather than buying a new one, even though it wasn’t actually in my backlog?

Anyway, it’s a Firebrands hack about racing. I haven’t actually read Firebrands, but I’ve heard about it, as a game from Meguey Baker and D. Vincent Baker of Apocalypse World fame. Firebrands is here, and is about mechs so I’m sure I’ll end up buying it at some point: https://lumpley.itch.io/firebrands

As I understand it, Firebrands is essentially a series of mini-games with limited mechanics, a sequence of scenes framing and encouraging roleplay and collaborative storytelling. Superstars uses that framework to facilitate stories about racing. Although it’s themed around modern motorsports quite directly, with images of formula cars and motorbikes etc throughout, it’s explicitly built to support anything that you could deem ‘racing’ - pod racing? Sure. Mech racing? Why not! I’d say that some of the language (though not much) refers directly to tires or pit stops, or other things that you would need to address if your setting is significantly different.

It’s a 34 page zine, and looks really good. Every page has a full background shot, mostly of a car or track, some of other possible settings, but they’re all heavily glitched and distorted so you’re dealing with vibrant colours. Text is white, sitting on semi-transparent black blocks, so it’s legible whilst letting the background stand out as well. It’s kind of busy, but the font is very neutral and clean, and the layout itself doesn’t go wild, so it’s a pleasant read.

There are a few character backgrounds to choose from, these are really well done and very recognisable to any motorsports fan. Players then determine their relationships with each other and get underway. The mini-game/scene format means that you’re getting a broad view of your character’s interactions, with 4 or 5 (depending if you count practice) of the 8 total scenes being set away from the track. It was so interesting for me, reading this soon after Grid Beef and with research for my own idea in my mind. Grid Beef was weighted toward on-track action, and it helped me to realise I wanted to be more zoomed out, and possibly to focus on specific moments rather than playing every lap of a race. Superstars does exactly that, but I know now that I want to be somewhere in between, with more focus on the racing itself than there is here.

What it does mean, is that Superstars is great for bringing out relationship melodrama from a group of racers. Think of it like Drive to Survive TTRPG. On that point, you could probably create equivalent hacks for many sports or other similar situations. Knowing the community, there’s probably dozens of them on itch already! And I’d read them all if I could…

If that’s going to be your vibe though, I could see this working really well. I think I would struggle a bit, if I’m honest, and maybe this would go for the original Firebrands too. It’s very lightweight, and feels like you would need a creative bunch of players who could really bounce off of each other, but also keep themselves aligned on tone and direction. I worry that there’s also a strong possibility that each scene sort of goes nowhere, or goes so off the rails that what you end up with won’t feel coherent.

Prompts have also been a discussion topic a couple of times recently (certainly on the Dice Exploder podcast, I’m sure in a couple of blogs or reviews I’ve read as well) and I had those in mind reading Superstars. The one piece of advice that has been pushed strongly, and resonates a lot, is to make prompts really specific. I know I would’ve assumed you needed to leave a lot of space and ambiguity for the players to take a prompt in any direction they wanted. But extremely specific prompts can actually be more creatively stimulating, forcing you to think and come up with an interesting take. I know from playing through the Citizen Sleeper TTRPG, it’s tarot-based and you’re left to your own devices in creating storylines and determining how they play out, and while I really enjoyed the game overall I struggled a lot with that. The scene prompts in Superstars are generally very open. Take an example like “I hope to convince you that ___. Can I?” - there are two players involved in this scene, granted, so two people to iterate and lift the scene up. However, would it be more interesting to state something concrete in the text? “I hope to convince you that I didn’t take you out on purpose in the last race. Can I?” - this would immediately give the players options of roles to fulfil. Did you take them out on purpose or not? Is there a history of this happening? You could even go more specific, and state within the prompt that you did in fact do it on purpose, or that this is not the first time it has happened, or that it cost them a shot at the championship. Adding detail and stakes could give it more flavour immediately on the page, where right now I wonder if the quality of the group will almost entirely determine the quality of the game.

It was cool to finally read a Firebrands hack though, and while it’s very different to Grid Beef, it’s another game clearly made by someone who is a genuine fan of motorsports. I may never actually make a game, but I’m certainly enjoying finding that there’s already so much crossover of motorsports into TTRPGs!

[toppamplemousse]

helloo! I hope you're doing well 😊

Just wanted to come in here and let you know that I absolutely love and adoreeee your fic – La Rentrée so so much that I’ve read it twice in just a week! (and will probably read it again :D) The writing & characterization was just so so so good, soo fabulous. I think I’ve just found myself a new comfort fic that's for sure💗

Even the second part was just. so. damn. good🥵🔥 words are failing me to explain just how much I loved reading both the parts of this cute and sweet story!!

Absolutely no pressure at all, but is there any chance we could see more glimpses of this universe? Because I am gonna eat up everything related to this AU from now on. Maybe A Day in the Life of the Verstappen-Leclerc Household?

If not, then that's totally fine as well, I am happy that you shared this piece with the rest of us; thank you so much for this fic❤️

ahhh thank you so much, so glad you liked the fics and the universe!! it is truly so much fun to imagine what the grid would be like as PTA parents and to assign roles to all the current and former drivers 💕💕

your ask inspired a bit of a brainworm about a morning in the life of the leclerc-verstappens, below the cut because it then snowballed into almost 3k of chaos and fluff and charles and max being obsessed with each other.

and please send in any more ideas you have for this AU, we’d love to write other little scenes and we’ll try not to make them all 3k 🤪

hope you enjoy!! 😊🥰

wednesday morning [a la rentrée bonus scene] charles/max | 2.6k words

Max feels himself slowly start to wake up, tendrils of awareness yanking away the fog of sleep that covers him like a blanket. The fragmented images of his dream (an Italian villa, a view of the sea, Charles’ golden skin) dissolve into more mundane, but no less welcome, images of their darkened bedroom (the fan whirring overhead, clothes heaped onto the chair beside the closet, Charles’ golden skin).

His husband is still asleep, his legs entwined with Max’s under the covers, his head pillowed on Max’s outstretched arm. Max watches the steady rise and fall of his chest for a few moments, and smiles. All in all, not a bad view to wake up to.

Recalling his dream, Max leans forward to press a lingering kiss to the top of Charles’ shoulder, then ghosts his lips up his neck to mouth at the underside of his jaw. Max gently kisses Charles’ cheek and he feels his husband drift awake, a dimple forming underneath his lips and eyelashes fluttering against his nose. Max pulls back to see those green eyes blink open sleepily.

“Morning schat,” he whispers, pressing another brief kiss to Charles’ other cheek. Charles sighs in contentment and his hand scrabbles briefly under the covers to find Max’s and intertwine their pinkies. Max traces the cool metal of Charles’ wedding ring with his hand, twisting it around Charles’ finger, and he feels as content as Charles sounds.

“G’morning,” Charles’ voice is still deep and raspy with sleep. He shuffles closer, kissing Max’s temple and then nosing at the juncture between Max’s neck and shoulder, looking and sounding like he wants to fall back asleep right there, “‘T time’s it?”

Max loops a hand behind Charles’ waist, both to pull him closer and to check the time on his phone on the nightstand. There’s another text from an unknown number that Max swipes away without a second thought.

“Almost seven,” Max whispers, “So we’ve got a bit of time before the kids wake up.”

“Mmm,” Charles hums, satisfied, and smiles against the skin of Max’s neck. His finger traces a nonsensical pattern on Max’s chest and Max can read the intention behind it.

Just as he’s thinking about doing something about that intention, the door swings open, little feet patter across the floor, a small weight lands on the end of the bed with a tiny “Oof” and then, inexplicably, there’s a cat in Max’s face.

“Dada!” Ollie flops on top of him, grinning, “Jimmy wanted to say hello!”

“Yes, I can see that, liefje,” Max replies, ruffling his son’s messy curls and maneuvering Jimmy off of his face and into the divot of the bed between him and Charles. Jimmy pops one eye open, almost scolding, as if Max was the one throwing him around, and then settles in the warm sheets. “But try to be careful with him, yes?”

“But Dada he likes it, he told me!” Ollie protests, scrambling to stand with his feet on either side of Max’s legs and bending forward to try to do a handstand with his little hands on Max’s shins. “He wants to play!” He insists, voice muffled.

Max is skeptical, given the fact that the cat is already back asleep, but there’s no way he can say that in the face of Ollie’s innocent glee. Max’s fingers tangle with Charles’ on Jimmy’s fur and they exchange a bemused glance, imbued with all the affection they have for their son and the fleeting frustration at having been interrupted.

“Come on, lollipop, let’s leave your Papa to wake up a little more and we’ll go get dressed.” Charles flashes a grateful smile as Max scoops Ollie around the waist with one hand before he can fall off the bed and snatches Jimmy up with the other hand.

“Okay, Dada, and Vivi is making us breakfast, so then we will have it!”

Before Max can even process that statement, there’s a loud ‘thunk’ from the direction of the kitchen, followed immediately by Violette’s voice exclaiming “It’s okay!”

Max looks at Charles again and all hopes for a peaceful morning fly out the window. Charles shakes his head, but smiles, and Max can read the look in his eye as She’s your daughter alright. Max wouldn’t have it any other way. Charles swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, pulling on a faded Heineken t-shirt that Max got as a gift from a client.

“I’ll go see what she’s up to, and you can help Ollie,” Charles says, tickling their son on his stomach and squeezing Max’s hip as he passes them to open the door and head down the stairs, “Vivi, sweetheart, we talked about only helping in the kitchen when there’s an adult there.”

Once out in the hallway, Max lets Jimmy jump down to the floor, and watches him skitter into the guest room, probably to hide underneath the bed with Sassy and be safe from grabby five year-old hands.

Those grabby five year-old hands are currently pointing to each of the dinosaurs on his pajama shirt and proudly telling Max their names – the red one, ‘apallosaur’ (apatosaurus, Max guesses), the blue one, ‘velonactor’ (velociraptor, Max is pretty sure), and the green on is T-rex and did you know that we are learning about dinosaurs in Mr. Alonso’s class, Dada?

While Ollie narrates, Max fetches his uniform clothes from the dresser. Ollie stubbornly refuses to let Max help him get dressed, insisting that he’s a big boy and he can do it himself.

Max relents with a bemused smile, and watches as Ollie furrows his brow and fumbles with the buttons on his shirt, the same line appearing between his eyebrows as when Charles is poring over blueprints at the kitchen table late at night before an important pitch meeting. Ollie lets out a frustrated huff as he struggles to fold up the cuffs of his shorts the same way that Charles does whenever Max insists that they take the BMW on a road trip instead of the less practical but much sexier and more fun, Max, come on Ferrari. And the way that Ollie’s lips twist to the side in a pout as he tries to yank his socks on in a way that is so undeniably Charles that Max can’t help but laugh.

Ollie’s personality is so unique, a perfect blend of Charles’ impulsive enthusiasm and Max’s thoughtful kindness, but his mannerisms are all Charles. Max can’t wait to see the similarities grow as Ollie does.

Max makes sure to tuck Ollie’s shirt in, lest he get another reminder from the Friends PTA president about the proper way for the kids to wear the uniform, Mr. Verstappen.

Ollie finishes getting dressed, just as Charles calls up the stairs for the two of them to come down for pancake breakfast.

“Pancakes!!!” Ollie cheers as he races out of the room and Max follows him, entering the kitchen to the heavenly smell of baking pancakes and also the sight of flour and chocolate chips scattered across the countertop. His husband and his daughter are not the most organized chefs.

“Ollie, will you set the table for me?” Charles asks, “And Vivi, honey, will you get the plates and cups out?” Both kids immediately set off on their tasks, and Max takes the opportunity to wrap his arms around Charles’ waist and rest his chin on his shoulder.

“If you find any eggshells in your pancakes, don’t say a word, Vivi tried very hard to pick them all out,” Charles warns, flipping the last of the pancakes onto the serving platter and turning off the stove. Max laughs and feels Charles’ answering giggle in his own ribcage.

“Not the most relaxing morning, hmm?” Max says, burying his nose in Charles’ hair “If I had my way, I’d have kept you in bed for another hour at least.”

“Max!” Charles gasps dramatically, reaching around to hit him with the oven mitt, “Si obscène! You only have to wait until Friday, and then the kids will be at Lorenzo’s for the weekend.”

“Hmm, so I have until Friday to think of all the things I’m going to do to you this weekend.” Max murmurs, “The things I’m going to do, the places I'm going to do them.” He gives the counter a significant look and Charles flushes pink as he elbows Max away to grab the serving platter.

There are very few things in the world that Max enjoys more than riling Charles up, he thinks to himself as he grabs the maple syrup and follows Charles into the dining room, where Violette and Ollie are already sitting and chattering away.

The topics of conversation over breakfast vary wildly, as they often do, with Ollie and Violette ping-ponging between discussing their various friends, activities, and opinions, and Max and Charles resigned to exchanging amused glances across the table and barely being able to get in a word edgewise. Today’s conversation ranges from the parts for the school play to the new football cleats that Violette can’t wait to show Coach Ky to the vacation that Clemmie is taking to Australia over winter break.

(Which involves a brief detour into an argument about the capital of Australia: Vivi insists it’s Melbourne and Ollie insists it’s Sydney and Max is unable to resist pointing out that the capital is actually Canberra.)

(Charles smirks at him and Max briefly and vividly recalls the many times he has had to recite the European capitals in his head when Charles is on top of him, or under him, or in front of him, the sight of his husband's golden, glistening skin and the filthy sounds dripping from his lips making it almost impossible for Max to control himself.)

(He also recalls the time that he drunkenly confessed that to Charles in a moment of weakness and now has to endure teasing about it for the rest of his life.)

Max blushes and kicks Charles underneath the table.

After breakfast, Violette sits on the carpet in the living room and Max sits behind her on the couch and he takes a second to briefly marvel at their little family, how much he loves having a morning routine like theirs, where he braids Violette’s hair while she excitedly fills him in on what her plans are for that school day, how his heart warms as he watches Charles in the kitchen with Ollie, giggling as he holds the little boy up to the kitchen sink so that Ollie can help with the dishes, Papa, I can do them for you!

And how he wouldn’t mind adding another tornado of chaos to their lives sometime soon, even if it means that relaxing mornings in bed with Charles will be even rarer than they already are.

Max thought he was the luckiest man alive back when Charles kissed him for the first time, a decade ago now, when he realized that Charles felt it too, that magnetic pull between them. But every single day since, Max’s luck has only continued to grow, giving him two adorable, sweet, happy children, a family and a life he adores with the man that he loves.

Max combs through Violette’s thick blonde hair with his fingers, careful not to pull on the tangles hard enough to pinch. His daughter squirms around in her seat and her mouth opens and shuts a few times, before she continues wriggling around more.

“Vi, is there something you’d like to say? Does your hair hurt?” Max softens his touch a little as he begins to separate her hair into sections.

Violette is quiet for a moment before she says in a stage whisper, “Dada, can you keep a secret? And pinky promise you won’t tell?” Violette holds out her pinky and Max hooks it with his own, promising in a voice that matches Violette’s serious tone, unbelievably curious as to what she’s going to reveal.

Violette’s eyes widen and she lowers her voice, “Yesterday, at recess, Jamie and Lila and Sadie painted their uniform shoes green because it’s Mr. Alonso’s favorite color. And they also spilled the paint in Mr. Webber’s classroom but he doesn’t know yet.”

Violette reveals the secret as if it’s the single most important piece of information she possesses. Max makes sure to gasp dramatically enough to show that he’s really taking this secret-revealing business seriously. He can only imagine how all the involved parties will react when they found out: Mr. Webber, resigned dismay, and Mr. Alonso, restrained glee.

If George found out — which he wouldn’t from Max, he’d made a pinky promise, after all — there would definitely be a fun conversation with Lando about Jamie corrupting the Russell twins that Max would pay to see.

The kids rush upstairs to get their backpacks and Max follows Charles into their bathroom to brush his teeth and get ready. Max can feel Charles’ eyes on him in the mirror as Max fixes his hair, turning his head left and right to see it sticking up all over the place, and thinking about how he should see when Pascale is free for a haircut.

Maybe Charles can read his mind, or maybe he just knows Max really well, but Charles spits his toothpaste into the sink and fixes him with a glare, “Don’t you even think about cutting your hair, I will call Maman right now and tell her she’s not to let you within a meter of a pair of scissors, don’t think I won’t.”

“Why can’t I cut it?” Max protests, “It’s getting way too long, and it just looks shabby.”

“First of all, it looks very dashing and handsome and I don’t want to hear you calling yourself shabby, mon amour.” Max’s stomach flips pleasantly, still excited after all these years to hear Charles call him handsome.

“Second of all,” Charles lowers his voice, “It’s the perfect length to pull on right now, so if you cut it I’ll be very unhappy.” As if to illustrate his point, Charles runs a hand through Max’s hair and gently tugs on it, and Max wishes that they didn’t have to be leaving for school and work in literally two minutes.

“If you don’t stop saying things like that, then I’m adding this bathroom to the list of places I’m going to fuck you this weekend,” Max leans in closer, lips brushing Charles’ ear as he speaks, “And you can pull on my hair all you want while I suck you off, but only after I’ve bent you over the counter and had my way with you, yes?”

“Max,” Charles whines against his neck.

Max presses a kiss to the spot below Charles’ ear, reveling in the shiver he watches spread across his husband’s body. They both giggle as they pull apart, overly flushed for a routine Wednesday morning.

Max finishes getting ready quicker than Charles — no surprises there — and heads downstairs to help Violette pack her backpack and Ollie tie his shoes. A few minutes later, Charles races down the stairs, drafting papers spilling from his briefcase, hugging Ollie and Violette goodbye, promising to see them at pickup, and pressing a chaste, minty, too-quick kiss to Max’s lips that has Max leaning forward to chase his lips as Charles breezes out the door, late for a meeting as usual.

Max hears the Pista engine rev as Charles pulls out of the garage. He hopes that George isn’t watching through his blinds, otherwise they’re going to get another strongly-worded email about respecting the speed limits of the neighborhood.

Max himself makes sure to not go a kilometer above the speed limit as he drives the familiar route to Friends, Ollie and Violette in the backseat giggling about something Mr. Raikkonen said in class yesterday. As Max pulls into the parking lot, he barely has time to slow the car to a stop before Violette is skipping over to Estrella and Ollie is running to greet Jacques.

Max would love nothing more than to get back in his car and begin the commute to work, but unfortunately, as Charles always reminds him, part of the drop-off job includes socializing with the other parents. He glances to the side of the playground and sees George chatting with Oscar and that blond American guy who has a crush on Charles. Resolving to talk mainly to Oscar, Max heads in their direction.

“Max!” George calls as he approaches, “Did you see my text about your assigned dish for the potluck after the Christmas pageant? It’s really quite urgent, we only have two months to go.”

Max congratulates himself quite heartily on his ability to resist the urge to roll his eyes, and wishes more than ever that he could be back in the dream he was having this morning: the sun on his face, the sea in the distance, and Charles – just Charles, only Charles, always Charles – to keep him company.

[abeloth]

Novel Planning/Writing Programs/Sites

I wrote this mostly for myself as I've used many different things over the years with varying success, but I think it might be useful for others as well. Not sponsored. All below the cut. If you want the TLDR, scroll to the very bottom.

1. Google Docs

Free. Just regular ol' Google Docs for writing and organizing. If you lose a Doc, you can contact Google and they're pretty prompt about getting it back for you if you accidentally delete something and then empty your trash.

For writing, it helps to get one folder and then have a bunch of folders inside that folder for drafts. It also helps to make one Doc that's just for background information you might need or for outlining. For this, I've just made tables or used Google's built-in outlines. However, this is the model of an eleven year old and it can get pretty messy trying to keep track of too much.

2. Airtable

Free with paid version available. Not for writing, but good for organizing. There's a novel template as well. I like that you can link records together. I've been using it for awhile for things like species, scenes, locations, etc.

For family trees, I recommend changing the view from "Grid view" to "Kanban" and categorizing it by "Generation" (Gen 1, etc). This works really well for planning things out and world building in general. You can add images really easily as well. It's very user intuitive and I recommend playing around with categories and fields until you get it to your liking. Btw, if you sign up with the above link I get referral credit on the site! I'd appreciate it if this post proves helpful.

3. Notebook.ai

Free with paid version available. This is one of those programs that's technically free, but you need to pay for it to be really usable in some respects. I really like how it organizes characters and asks you questions that prompt you to think more about your character. Same with locations. So it's great for characters and locations, but not for stuff like species or races. If you want to write fantasy, I would not use this alone (but I would take a look to see if any of the questions help you with world-building or characterization). I'd use it in conjunction with something like Airtable.

4. novelWriter

Free. This offline software is great for novel-writing! You can move chapters around which is nice. It has all your work in this nice lil' collapsable list. It also has options for you to note stuff about the plot, characters, location, etc at the bottom. Not super user intuitive, but it's not very hard to figure out and their site can help you out. Also, the next several are very similar to novelWriter (similar features and are not browser-based), but with more features.

5. Manuskript

Free. Same as above, but it includes an analyzer that can tell you how often you used a word or phrase. It also has some neat features like a distraction-free mode you can customize and a novel assistant–though I have not used that feature. The devs recommend having backups because it's still in early development. However, you should have backups regardless. I’ve personally had some issues losing progress and my .msk file not loading completely within the program. I’m trying to play around and find a solution, but I might lose motivation since I haven’t had this issue with Quoll or novelWriter.

6. Quoll Writer

Free. Great for novel writing. It also has bonus features like a fullscreen distraction free mode you can configure and a guide meant to identify problems with your writing. You can easily do text annotations as well. It has stats to view your productivity AND an editor mode that includes sharing with others. There is also a warm-up feature that comes complete with writing prompts, though I’ve never used this feature.

7. Atomic Scribbler a.k.a SmartEdit Writer

Free. Great for novel writing, especially if you're super used to Microsoft Word. It has the same look and feel, so if you're considering transitioning, this is a great fit. Just like the ones above, it lets you go chapter by chapter and scene by scene so you can easily view your novel and rearrange it to your liking. Disclaimer that I have not used this because I hate Microsoft Word so much it's unreal.

8. yWriter

Free. yWriter seems pretty similar to novelWriter, but is only for Windows. I have Mac, so I haven’t tried this one but it looks nice and uncomplicated.

9. NovelEasy

Free. Browser-based, so you can use this if you have a ChromeBook (4-8 require Mac or Windows to run). It has a similar set up and some similar features, but it goes by chapters, not chapters and scenes. However, it does still have the option to see your daily progress with word count, time spent writing, etc. Disclaimer that I have not used this, but it looks like a good alternative if you can't run the aforementioned programs.

I haven't tried Scrivener (since it's paid), but I've heard good things about it. I'm not sure if there's anything included you couldn't get elsewhere for free. Campfire is free, but I'm unsure if it's free like Airtable or like Notebook. If I check it out, I'll update this post with my thoughts on it.

TLDR: What I’ve been using to write is Airtable (#2 on the list) for worldbuilding, characters, and outlining, Google Docs (#1) for at least the first draft, and novelWriter (#4) for the second draft onward since it’s so much easier to move scenes around and see what else you need to edit.

[galindaelphaba]

hi! do u mind explaining how u did the square overlay in this set? thank u sm 🫶🏽

hi sorry for taking so long to answer. i hope this helps and makes sense (if you have any other questions feel free to ask or I could even send you the psd if you want). tutorial below the cut as it's image heavy :)

So basically I started with my 2 gifs at 540x540 pixels. This isn't essential, but I'll also note that when I crop the gifs I like to uncheck the "Delete Cropped Pixels" box so that I can move them around after cropping in case I don't like how it was cropped initially.

For this gifset I ended up putting the two gifs and their colourings in a group with clipping masks for the colouring layers (curves, vibrance, etc). Making the two gifs into smart objects would also work and would be my usual preferred method, but for this particular set it was easier to use the groups so I could keep the colouring of the you weren't a maybe speech.

Once the gifs are overlayed on top of each other only the top gif should be visible (as below)

To create the grid effect there are some tutorials for versions of photoshop which have a setting where you can just input the configuration you want (e.g 4x4) and it will draw up the guides for you. Here is the initial tutorial I saw showing how to do that and another one I found just now which outlines the exact same grid effect as in my set. This way is easier than the way I did it, but my photoshop doesn't have the option 😭

For mine I created a New Guide by following the menu path "View > New Guide"

This opens up a dialog box that looks like this

As the guide menu is in cm I doubled checked what the size of the canvas is in cm. A 540 x 540 px canvas comes to 19.05 cm. I wanted to draw a 4x4 guide, so to start I divided 19.05 by 4. This comes to 4.76, so I input this value into the box and clicked ok.

To draw the other lines I just added 4.76 to each previous line drawn so that the lines were even. The guides ended up being (4.76, 9.52 and 14.28). I then repeated the same numbers but with the Vertical orientation button selected.

This gives you a guide which looks like this:

To start exposing the other gif I grabbed the rectangle select tool and started selecting the areas I wanted to mask. The tool should snap to the guides so it is fairly easy to stay within the squares.

Then I just masked over it with a black paintbrush

I continued on with this until I was happy with how it looked - this was my final result

And this is how my layer mask looked

To draw the lines I then selected the line tool and set it to white and 2px. To draw them I held down the shift button, which allowed me to snap the line I'm drawing directly on top of the guides and continue with it as all one shape.

When you draw on top of the guides they go orange

I then toggled the guide off by pushing ctrl + ;

I checked to make sure all the boxes and lines were aligned properly and just cleaned up the gifs by using the selection box and masking until it was perfect (as I'm very type A)

I set the line layer to "Lighten" blending mode and an opacity of 70% as I thought it looked better.

Then I just added the text and moved it around how I pleased.

[entropy-game-dev]

The cheeky last minute UI rework

A week ago, I had Lucinius play a near-complete version of the demo build and he had a bunch of good suggestions after playing it for a solid few hours.

One part of his feedback centered around how move information was displayed. Previously, in non-battle menus, the move info would follow your cursor, and thus you weren't able to mouse over the various stats or check the description (which would have outputted to a log that isn't visible anyway).

Now I've made it so that clicking on the move icon displays the window in a static pane, letting you mouse over the various icons. Also, the description now appears in-line inside the window, regardless of where you're looking at it!

I made a whole bunch of other changes, and ahead of tomorrow's demo release (I can't believe it's finally happening), you can read about them below the cut!!

v0.18 - Demo Build 1

Features:

Auto-deposit materials is working and on by default

Mouse over now shows curr/max for hp/en/ammo + stat title

Going past the max floors now sends you back to the ship

New trap added that instantly spawns an encounter

Clicking on an attack icon with the mouse now makes the info panel stay open

Clicking the description button/pressing pause with a move selected now displays it within the panel

Archive sprite added to base

Game now tracks enemies encountered and killed

Added target marker to tutorial area

Archive can view logs and tutorials, and enemy names

Balance:

Starting area has slightly more loops

Starting area has slightly higher encounter density,

Removed local relay from starting area

Added spatial constant to starting area

Added Holepunch routine to Punch Press

Slightly increased passive random recruit chance from 1 to 2%

Buffed max damage recruitment rate divisor from /3 to /2.5

Nerfed heal recruitment rate divisor from /3 to /4

Changed starting system escape fuel needed to 20

Gain a small amount of fuel when researching local/relativistic navigation

Added party size to the base matrix research rather than subsequent research

Features now scale around the mid floor of the dungeon instead of around floor 2

Dungeon floors, rooms, and corridors get bigger as you go down

Damage/heal recruit function ceiling'd so you make at least 1% progress when you do the correct action

Slightly revised title screen animation

Revised enemy encounter formula to scale around the center floor of the dungeon + adjusted dungeon encounter mass respectively

Changed Gimbal Lock's status from stun to slow

Made summons recruitable

Buffed all part slots and changed power load formula to compensate

10% buff to large enemy stats for each square above 1

Make killing with an element apply advantage, even if it resists or was neutral to the element

Polish:

"are likely in rooms" -> "are more often found in rooms"

"can be used for fuel" -> "could be used for fuel"

"once a line has formed" -> "once a line has formed in the element grid"

"the astronaut has been destroyed" -> "your suit has been critically damaged"

"the robot core's power load." -> "the robot core's power load (to the left of the equipped parts)."

Power load tutorial only comes up when you exceed it

Changed POWR to HEAL when looking at a healing move in the attack description

Disabled interaction with central 3x3 core area and changed description

Changed first strike/ambush bar colour and text

Added fuel unit value to fuel item descriptions

Added filter menu icon

Deep Diver sprite updated

Burrow sprite updated

Recruit chance icon doesn't show mouseover text when invisible

Swapped weapons 1 and 2 equip location on the assistant to match sprite appearance

Removed extra line on the bottom of the big map

Equip vfx effect now appears under move info panel

Black outline added to all dungeon features

Made recruitment pink text appear over the damange numbers

Made it so that locations can't spawn directly behind the black hole image in the navigation screen

Made the main black hole image slightly transparent in the navigation screen

Reordered research tutorials

Scan description revised to indicate it can reveal more and more information progressively

Updated matrix tutorial to talk about core tiers

Changed equip sprite fx to green

Swapped arm that has the arm computer in a cutscene

Tutorial edited to say cores have innate routines

Edited lowest_5levels to be an accurate tutorial

Bugs:

Disabled the ability to look at the big map during the beginning of an encounter

Floor scanning effect now shows all the time for unexplored tiles

Removed debug value allowing you to interact with lore objects infinite times

Priority of mouseover is only cleared with the text now

Fixed player recruit chance status doing the opposite of what it says it does

Fixed healing-type recruitment not working

Fixed no item tutorial firing incorrectly because research inventory manager was not ready

Conduct animation was not happening when the conducted element was not the last hit on an enemy

Fixed lowest floor tutorials not firing

[poiscns]

@whisperdreams-blair

when: 11:11 am, blair's phone inbox

Static crackle, then Nico’s grin fills the screen—too close, fisheye-warped, his eyes blown wide like neon warning lights. Another video lands in Blair’s inbox—just the latest episode in their escalating, lethal feud. One day soon he’ll catch that witch. He doesn’t bother narrating himself; the phone reads every taunt he’s typed, letting the tech do the talking. The frame wobbles as though the camera can’t decide if it’s filming or fleeing.

A migraine-pink title card slams into view: “WELCOME BACK, CAULDRON QUEEN!” Comic Sans, homicidally bold. It flickers with bite-sized flames gnawing the corners before shattering into digital confetti. Smash cut. Nico perches on Blair's car’s hood, boots muddy, jacket speckled with glittering shards of something that was probably expensive glass.

“Hi! If you’re seeing this,” he sing-songs, voice pitched an octave too cheerful, “you’re already late.” A klaxon whoops low in the background, rhythmic as a heartbeat. Nico slaps the windshield, and a wireframe overlay blossoms across the glass—a bright-red lattice tracing every seam of the vehicle. The grid pulses.

Jump cut. Now he’s upside-down, hanging from an overpass like a bat with a GoPro. “Fun fact,” he chirps, hair dangling into frame, “your trademark anti-theft runes? Totally incompatible with C-4, mercury tilt switches, and my sparkling personality.” Static tears the image; for half a second his face pixels into a skull, teeth clacking in stop-motion animation.

Another title card whiplashes across the feed: “POTION LAB MEETS DEMOLITIONS LAB!” Each word arrives in a different font—Papyrus, Olde English, bubble-gum cursive—before liquefying into green sludge that drips down the screen and smears into the next shot.

Inside the car now. Camera POV skims the dashboard, passing over a bouquet of chemistry vials wired to the ignition. Each vial glows a different sickly color, labels scrawled with doodles: regret, third-degree, implodey-splodey. Nico’s voice sneaks in through radio static: “Turn the key, mix the cocktail. Boom—drive-thru chemistry!”

The feed glitches again; time stamps jump backward, forward, sideways. Nico reappears in the rear seat, whispering through a megaphone: “But hey, I’m not heartless. There’s an key to dewiring it hidden somewhere in the city—clue drops on my channel at midnight. If you’re still in one piece.”

He winks; the screen fractures into kaleidoscopic shards, each reflecting the same single word in red looping text: RUN. The audio cuts to dead air—then one final beep marks the end of the recording.

[smallearthboundfindings]

Did you know that a few things sit outside of ordinary view in Smash’s Onett stage? I’ve gathered a few shots of this to show a few things out of frame! (Sorted by exactly where these are.) The layout of the town naturally has a different layout to how Onett actually is, but it’s kind of cool how most of the essentials are there.

To the left:

[Id: a screenshot of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Onett stage. The camera is rotated left to show a blue house, a yellow fire hydrant, and a tunnel.]

In the fourth wall:

[Id: two screenshots of the same subject, this time tilted back to show objects in the fourth wall. The first picture shows a small market with one stall and red and yellow tulips spread across two yellow checkered picnic blankets, and the corner of a baseball field. The second image shows two bikes across the road in front of the blue house on the stage. Hi Marth, what are you doing on the roof?]

Behind the stage:

[Id: two screenshots showing the area behind the stage. The first one shows the cliffs while the second does not, showing more of the paths and roads. There is a meteorite on the tallest cliff and three houses closer to the viewer on the cliff. The Onett hotel and hospital are in front of the cliffs followed by a grid of six houses. An excavator is between the two houses on the top-right corner.]

To the right:

[Id: two more screenshots, this time with the camera facing the right. A purple house with a billboard, the Onett arcade, and another tunnel can be seen. The billboard says “Onett Message Board. Caution: a black van driven by this guy has been spotted racing recklessly through town. Be careful!” There is a picture of a member of the Runaway Five beside the text.”

[sirfrogsworth]

So, I guess Justine has appointed herself one of the main advocates negotiating the use of A.I. within the film industry.

I don't know how else to say this... she is a ditz.

I used to follow her on Tumblr. I even gave her kids laser eyes. And then I started seeing bad take after bad take. And it is disconcerting when someone with mostly progressive ideology veers into poorly informed points of view. And she went completely off the rails when the COVID lockdowns interfered with her local small business. She was ready to throw grandmas under the bus to protect her profits.

Negotiating how A.I. is used in filmmaking needs to be handled competently by someone who understands the technology.

And that is not her.

First you have the pretentious "very raw" statement. Movies contain multitudes and the ones that are not... raw... are valid too. Then she conflates visual effects with A.I. and throws VFX artists under the bus with the grandmas.

If you want her seal of approval you can only do minor fixes and effects. That is so vague and not at all how modern movies are made. Even smaller films without superheroes and crazy CGI can make extensive use of VFX for set extensions and myriad other invisible things. And while there are some "A.I." powered tools in VFX, that is completely different than generative video. Those tools are used by legit artists and still require skill and experience.

The latest Spider-Verse movie used A.I. tools. They trained the A.I. using their own artwork so it could understand their inking style and apply it to the CG characters. It was not a magic push-button effect. But it did save artists hours and hours of tedious, frame-by-frame work. Would that get Justine's stamp of approval or is it not raw enough?

And then she imagines this A.I. blender thing that does not exist. I guess she thinks the still image generators will easily translate into video and work the same way. I'm reminded of Y2K when people were predicting exploding electrical grids and digital armageddon.

The truth is, we have yet to really see what A.I. will be like in a more video-centric context. The tech is mostly based in the realm of still images. From what I understand, generating images is extremely intensive on servers. Actually, text generation uses quite a bit of computing resources as well. So generating complex A.I. video could require orders of magnitude more resources.

Currently any A.I. video you see is usually just a static talking head that had an animation assist from After Effects. Corridor's controversial A.I. anime video required taking live action footage and converting every frame to an anime-style still image. It took them months.

If you look at this video, no one talks, there are no dynamic camera movements, no dynamic lighting, and people mostly just... blink.

Generating still images is much different than generating video.

And as of now, you cannot even create a finished product with A.I. with still or moving images. I mean, it can barely do hands. The stills are not very high resolution, the prompts are often finicky and take a lot of trial and error to get a usable result. And usually you still have to do a lot of cleanup to use an A.I. image for anything considered professional.

Yes, it will get better and probably at an exponential rate. But we don't actually know what the capabilities will be and how people will take advantage of them.

So to make wild predictions of A.I. blenders that can mix multiple actors into a composite super actor is a little premature.

Creating feature length, cinema quality 4K video is a very long way off. Which means we should probably focus on the current problems and when the technology advances more and we have a better understanding of how it will be used, we can cross that bridge.

Also, even if the studios had the capability to create a composite virtual actor, I don't think audiences would ever accept it. People already get grumpy about CGI. Virtual actors do not worry me that much. I think audiences are always going to demand real people saying lines written by human beings. Maybe I'm being optimistic. And I'm not saying we shouldn't put in place safeguards to prevent misuse of A.I. tech. But I still don't think this is a huge concern.

Right now deepfakes on social media are more troubling than A.I. video generation. A scam Mr. Beast deepfake was just passed around and it was definitely good enough to dupe people. We need to figure out how people's likenesses can be protected. We need ways to verify a video's authenticity.

And when deepfake tech is used in filmmaking (e.g. The Mandalorian season 2 Luke Skywalker) actors need very specific approval powers. It makes sense to use deepfake tools to put an actor's face on a stuntperson. That is an amazing way to improve safety. And I don't have a huge issue with de-aging effects (again with consent). But the actor should be able to approve everything on a case-by-case basis and also control what happens to the training data.

Beyond that... what do we do about dead people? Is it good enough that their "estate" approves? Perhaps it would be a good idea for all living actors to make their wishes known before they pass.

And we need to come up with protocols to ethically train A.I. tools.

I believe A.I. has great potential to actually *help* the filmmaking process if we approach this intelligently. It isn't all good or all evil. It could be used for things like rotoscoping which is a thankless and mind-numbing task. It could make big budget-style VFX accessible to indie filmmakers who can't afford ILM. People could make their own superhero movies outside of the studio system on tiny budgets and a gaming PC.

I have been using A.I. tools to paint out things in Photoshop and it works so much better than the old clone and heal tools. There are so many tedious tasks with my photography and art that I would happily pass off to A.I. so I can focus on the more artistic aspects of creation. And I really hope that is the future of how A.I. is utilized.

I don't know if the dreaded A.I. blender is on the horizon, but I really hope a more serious person takes up this fight. We absolutely need to be careful how this technology develops. But if we leave this to silly people, all of the *actual* negative eventualities are going to happen because we were trying to stop a mutant JLawMeganMerylGinger Cruz from dancing in our movies.

[brokerkisser]

Gold Coin/Trigger Happy - Skylanders Phighting au

(click for better view & image id under keep reading) I'll also add on legendary & spring variant designs when I have ideas for those.

IMAGE ID : First image is Gold Coin drawn as a bloxy robloxian it has a paper white skin tone and it's color is a browny red It's horns are shaped like pointed bunny ears that point backwards with a smaller pair of horns under it's face has a brown marking across it's eyes with a mischeivous look on it's face with it's fangs and tongue poking out of it's mouth Gold coin is wearing a cowboy hat that sits betwen the gap of it's horns the cowboy hat has a gold coin emblem on the front it also has a orange torso and legs it's torso has a small star to the right that's half covered by the vest it wears with a belt with a coin buckle it has a pair of gloves and boots on the glove cuffs are clipped with the same coin emblem on the back of it's vest is the Cloud Scape symbol a simple cloud behind a floating island it's gear is a dual pair of golden revolvers the revolvers are stylized and blocky with a large barrel and handle with a small circle with a star at the top of the handle at the hammer Second image is Double Dare Gold coin it's redish orange in color it's wearing a tan helmet with red orange lines and orange visor with a tan full body suit that has red lines and orange shoes with a pair of tan gloves with red orange lining and orange tassels on the side the body suit is undone on the top with a knot revealing it's chest and a single curly chest hair on it's back is a knee length cape that's a dark red orange underneath with a tan and orange outlined front that has a gear design it's gear is a dual pair of golden cannon barrel looking guns that have red and orange detailing with a gear attached to the back and a ring of fire at the front and a small star keychain dangling Third image is a info sheet that has a small doodled portrait of gold coin to the top left with it's catch phrase under it " No Gold, No Glory! " the info text reads Name: Gold Coin Nickname: Trigger Happy Race/Species: Demon Age: 42 Pronouns: It/Its Mirror nouns Faction/Region: Cloud Scape Class/Job: Part time super charger and phighter full time cow boy Height: 3'2, 97 cm Gear: a image of it's dual golden revolvers next are a row of sliders reading Nice Neutral Mean Nice is hightlighted Brave Middle Cowardly Brave is highlighted Silly Neither Serious silly is highlighted Honest Mix of both Liar mix of both is highlighted Famous Average Off the grid average is highlighted Questions: " Any Notable friends or relatives? " Generally refers to many phighters as an ally. Gold Coin respects a fair worker A good friend to playground & theives den. Lightly weary of Lost temple, but it's chill While concerned and untrusting all of blackrock, It respects Hyperlaser's work Gold Coin refers to Hyperlaser as a fellow worker, and does have an interest in helping the man out " How about enemies? " While not very knowledgable, Subspace and Medkit give it bad vibes. Not enemies by any major means for medkit at least Gold Coin has no trust in Subspace, It's weary and neutral on Medkit. It does not like or trust Biografts at all It finds Biografts facisinating but their use and creation are not it's fancy " Are they good at their job? and do they like it? " Gold coin spent many years training, so it's quite good at it's jobs as both a gunslinger and supercharger It never takes it's job that seriously, always having fun roleplaying as some sort of sheriff or stunt devil Gold Coin is also well versed in phighting gear and machinery, It often tinkers around with engineering Health: 200 Shield/defense: 30 m1 pew pew guns m2 golden charge, hold down m2 to charge up a laser shot Q Lucky Sheriff's Coin Flip, RNG self status boost, Tails - slow debuff, Heads - Damage buff E Pot 'o gold - throws a pot of gold at enemies, short blast radius, slows down enemy Ult Golden machine gun Activates a golden turret machine gun, short radius blast when activated

[hob28]

Learn HTML and CSS: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

Introduction to HTML and CSS

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are the core technologies for creating web pages. HTML provides the structure of the page, while CSS defines its style and layout. This guide aims to equip beginners with the essential knowledge to start building and designing web pages.

Why Learn HTML and CSS?

HTML and CSS are fundamental skills for web development. Whether you're looking to create personal websites, start a career in web development, or enhance your current skill set, understanding these technologies is crucial. They form the basis for more advanced languages and frameworks like JavaScript, React, and Angular.

Getting Started with HTML and CSS

To get started, you need a text editor and a web browser. Popular text editors include Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, and Atom. Browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are excellent for viewing and testing your web pages.

Basic HTML Structure

HTML documents have a basic structure composed of various elements and tags. Here’s a simple example:

html

Copy code

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

    <title>My First Web Page</title>

    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css">

</head>

<body>

    <h1>Welcome to My Web Page</h1>

    <p>This is a paragraph of text on my web page.</p>

</body>

</html>

: Declares the document type and HTML version.

: The root element of an HTML page.

: Contains meta-information about the document.

: Connects the HTML to an external CSS file.

: Contains the content of the web page.

Essential HTML Tags

HTML uses various tags to define different parts of a web page:

to : Headings of different levels.

: Paragraph of text.

: Anchor tag for hyperlinks.

: Embeds images.

: Defines divisions or sections.

: Inline container for text.

Creating Your First HTML Page

Follow these steps to create a simple HTML page:

Open your text editor.

Write the basic HTML structure as shown above.

Add a heading with the tag.

Add a paragraph with the tag.

Save the file with a .html extension (e.g., index.html).

Open the file in your web browser to view your web page.

Introduction to CSS

CSS is used to style and layout HTML elements. It can be included within the HTML file using the <style> tag or in a separate .css file linked with the <link> tag.

Basic CSS Syntax

CSS consists of selectors and declarations. Here’s an example:

css

Copy code

h1 {

    color: blue;

    font-size: 24px;

}

Selector (h1): Specifies the HTML element to be styled.

Declaration Block: Contains one or more declarations, each consisting of a property and a value.

Styling HTML with CSS

To style your HTML elements, you can use different selectors:

Element Selector: Styles all instances of an element.

Class Selector: Styles elements with a specific class.

ID Selector: Styles a single element with a specific ID.

Example:

html

Copy code

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

    <title>Styled Page</title>

    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css">

</head>

<body>

    <h1 class="main-heading">Hello, World!</h1>

    <p id="intro">This is an introduction paragraph.</p>

</body>

</html>

In the styles.css file:

css

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.main-heading {

    color: green;

    text-align: center;

}

#intro {

    font-size: 18px;

    color: grey;

}

CSS Layout Techniques

CSS provides several layout techniques to design complex web pages:

Box Model: Defines the structure of an element’s content, padding, border, and margin.

Flexbox: A layout model for arranging items within a container, making it easier to design flexible responsive layouts.

Grid Layout: A two-dimensional layout system for more complex layouts.

Example of Flexbox:

css

Copy code

.container {

    display: flex;

    justify-content: space-around;

}

.item {

    width: 100px;

    height: 100px;

    background-color: lightblue;

}

Best Practices for Writing HTML and CSS

Semantic HTML: Use HTML tags that describe their meaning clearly (e.g., , , ).

Clean Code: Indent nested elements and use comments for better readability.

Validation: Use tools like the W3C Markup Validation Service to ensure your HTML and CSS are error-free and standards-compliant.

Accessibility: Make sure your website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, by using proper HTML tags and attributes.

Free Resources to Learn HTML and CSS

W3Schools: Comprehensive tutorials and references.

MDN Web Docs: Detailed documentation and guides for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Codecademy: Interactive courses on web development.

FreeCodeCamp: Extensive curriculum covering HTML, CSS, and more.

Khan Academy: Lessons on computer programming and web development.

FAQs about Learning HTML and CSS

Q: What is HTML and CSS? A: HTML (HyperText Markup Language) structures web pages, while CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) styles and layouts the web pages.

Q: Why should I learn HTML and CSS? A: Learning HTML and CSS is essential for creating websites, understanding web development frameworks, and progressing to more advanced programming languages.

Q: Do I need prior experience to learn HTML and CSS? A: No prior experience is required. HTML and CSS are beginner-friendly and easy to learn.

Q: How long does it take to learn HTML and CSS? A: The time varies depending on your learning pace. With consistent practice, you can grasp the basics in a few weeks.

Q: Can I create a website using only HTML and CSS? A: Yes, you can create a basic website. For more complex functionality, you'll need to learn JavaScript.

Q: What tools do I need to start learning HTML and CSS? A: You need a text editor (e.g., Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text) and a web browser (e.g., Google Chrome, Firefox).

Q: Are there free resources available to learn HTML and CSS? A: Yes, there are many free resources available online, including W3Schools, MDN Web Docs, Codecademy, FreeCodeCamp, and Khan Academy.