#i do use thin consistent line sometimes but i dont like it as much?

[lesbianvamp1reeee]

ive been sketching again today, im enjoying using chisel pens

also messily drew out the cover for the first comic yippee

[espionn]

SkyWing tribe sheet!

my computer always fucks up colors in export for some reason and its really obvious with these guys :( i promise they're more saturated my computer just sucks

anyway i really liked doing these guys, skywings are fun and i think they have a lot of potential. enjoy!

Physical Appearance + Traits:

-SkyWings, as their name suggests, are dragons made for the wind and sky. They are better fliers than any other tribe, with enormous wings and several birdlike features. Some can fly for more than a day without landing, and even when they aren’t flying they make their homes at the peaks of mountains, with the entire world beneath them.

-They are quite large, taller than any other tribe, with long necks, long tails, and regal figures. They don’t have any obviously deadly weapons, but they have no clear weaknesses either; they are generally successful dragons.

-Their coloration consists of almost entirely warm colors, specifically red and orange. Yellows and golds are sometimes seen too, and more uncommonly, purples and browns. Their colors are bold and striking; they are one of the few Pyrrhian tribes that has no need for camouflage. 

-Young dragonets are hatched with a coating of feathers, particularly on their wings, necks and tails. Most dragons simply shed their feathers as they grow; some, though, carry a few into adulthood, usually lining their wings or making a thin ruff around their necks. These feathers are often even brighter than their scales.

-SkyWing horns are a mark of pride, and they continue to grow for as long as they live, meaning some of the oldest SkyWings have horns that resemble enormous and heavy antlers. Sometimes their horns are decorated with wires strung with jewels.

-SkyWing fire is the hottest and most powerful fire any tribe can produce. At its hottest it scorches through bone, and it can be used with accuracy from a long distance. It is their main weapon in combat, and quite a devastating one if their opponents don’t know how to properly fight it. They also use it for a number of other things, though. (More on this in the “society and culture” section.)

-Their wings are stronger than those of most tribes, allowing them to temporarily use them for balance rather than their front legs. This lets them hold and work on things more easily. (This headcanon belongs to @sidyashchiy-na-plakhe!! i saw your post and really liked it, hope you dont mind me adopting it)

-Not dissimilar to SandWings, they have darker streaks near their eyes to help with the glare of the sun when they’re flying, often facing the horizon directly.

Life Cycle:

-SkyWings are hatched in clutches between one and five, although four and five are a bit less common than one through three. SkyWing parents are not involved much with their dragonets. By tradition, they lay eggs in nests high in the mountain peaks, and return occasionally with food once they hatch. The rare unlucky SkyWing newborn may be snatched up by a large bird, but they’re big enough that it isn’t usually an issue. They are also hatched with disproportionately massive wings, big enough to make the fall less likely to be lethal if they fall before they learn to fly.

-Once the dragonets are large enough, though, or once they get hungry enough to search for their own food, they will leave the nest, often simply jumping out and letting the wind carry them, learning to properly fly quite quickly. Once parents notice that the nest is empty, they simply stop bringing food. They will never know who their dragonets are, but SkyWing superstition says all dragonets will eventually make their way to the kingdom, where they will be made a part of the tribe. And, truthfully, they almost always do.

-This practice, which some tribes find strange or even barbaric, is seen by Skywings as an important part of their life and tradition. Each of them took the same journey, and so did the generation before them, so they have faith that it will continue to work out well. It’s in their nature to leave their nest and find the kingdom, and it doesn’t result in enough casualties for them to try to halt the tradition. The only dragons this practice does not apply to is the royal family, for the sake of tracking bloodlines.

-By the time they are entered into the wider kingdom, dragonets usually know how to hunt and avoid danger, so all tribe life offers them is the ability to meet other dragons and find work. There isn’t much of an education system in place, with the exception of mentorships for some careers, such as metalworking, and military training. If they take part in work for the kingdom, they’ll have societal benefits and a secure place in the tribe, and most end up in that position eventually. But there are always a few SkyWings who simply live on the outskirts, uninterested in the larger tribe.

-They don’t form many close relationships, being fairly solitary dragons as soon as they leave their siblings. They do not very often form genuine romantic relationships, but marriage is fairly common simply as a formality or political maneuver. Royals in particular almost always get married, though they don’t usually form natural bonds with their spouses. The only responsibilities parents have is bringing food to their nest until the dragonets abandon it.

Culture and Society:

-SkyWings are proud and solitary; these things combined have given them a reputation of being rude, aloof and uncharismatic. They are powerful fighters and fliers, but their strength is not in diplomacy. Their kingdom norms, though, which allow every dragon to simply utilize for the tribe whatever talents they may have, at their own leisure and for whatever profit might be available to them, suits them well and has made for an uncomplicated but successful society. (This is excluding a few periods such as the reign of Queen Scarlet, who reshaped the tribe into something more dictatorial.)

-They are generally quite matriarchal; every tribe has a queen, but SkyWings tend to have a more overall unbalanced system. Females are a bit larger than males and are usually in higher positions of command.

-Fire is extremely important to SkyWing culture - it produces light, warmth, and without it they would be much less deadly in combat. It has its place in almost every tradition and is used in almost every career path. 

-They are the most superstitious tribe in some ways, their lives dictated heavily by tradition and spirituality. The way dragonets are raised is one example; there are countless others, including funeral rites that involve burning, gladiator fights performed for glory, a general belief of night marking bad luck, and others. 

-Continuing on this note, SkyWings - though most would never admit it aloud - are almost universally afraid of the dark. The caves and caverns in which they live are always warm and well-lit, via torches lit by their own fire, and they are almost exclusively out by day. They worship the sun and daytime, believing it to chase away the shadows in its glory. NightWings, for similar reasons, tend to be unnerving to them.

-And to elaborate on gladiator fights: The arena near the palace was originally constructed for SkyWings to prove their prowess by fighting other SkyWings and completing various challenges. During these fights they would wear a special set of ceremonial armor, which they could then keep if they succeeded. (Scarlet, of course, transformed this arena into a convenient way to execute prisoners, and later Queen Ruby reinvented it completely by erecting a hospital where it had once stood.)

-In general, SkyWings are one of the only tribes to wear armor, and the only tribe that has used it for entire armies during war. A particular emphasis is placed on wing armor that allows for comfortable flight while still protecting the wing membranes, as a flightless SkyWing is considered as good as dead by its tribe.

-Jewelry almost always involves precious stones, particularly rubies, diamonds and citrine. It’s very common to have these jewels embedded in scales; some royals have done this with such excess that they appear to have crystals growing out of them.

Diet: Carnivorous. They eat birds, mountain goats, deer, and occasionally fish, rodents or whatever else they can catch. Sometimes raw, sometimes scorched. They don’t typically make full and elaborate meals like other tribes; the only common seasoning they use is salt. Other than the rare use of herbs for flavoring, they eat no plants at all.

[evercelle]

i really love your lineart!!!!!!

sometimes in the inking stage i kind of mess up about the thickness about the lines and such. and in general it looks stiff in comparison to the sketch. any advice for a novice?

thanks!! wow it's been two years since someone asked me about lineart :') in addition to the stuff i wrote in that post, some ways my process has changed since then:

using a pen at lowered opacity w/ velocity variation:

(example used is ciro pen!) if you draw a fast stroke it thins out, but consistent speed/pressure gives you a uniform width. it took me awhile to get used to bc developing speed + control just takes practice, but i like how pens with velocity make it quick to vary line width easily. (it might be a placebo effect but i also feel like drawing with these types of pens forces you to have more line confidence, bc it's very visually apparent when you go slow or unsteady...haha)

2. sketch vague, draw detail in later

for pictures that i draw separate lineart for, i usually do rough bodies/shapes and then draw in details while inking. if there's too much detail in the sketch, i think it's easy to focus too much on following the sketch perfectly with your lines, so it gets really stiff and loses the motion in the original sketch. example sketch -> lineart

3. the "this is fine" or "eh fix it later"

try not to overwork it! its fine if there are holes... and the lines dont connect... and the width is weird... it is okay.... employ the time honored techniques of "it's fine" it or "ill just fix it later" lol i tweak or add details as part of coloring to correct places where the lineart got weird. you can probably see it better in this process vid i posted before, but i also drew an example today ft. my boy gaming

like any other skill, i think developing skill + speed with lines follows with time and practice, but i totally empathize with the struggle against it looking too stiff... getting past the mental block of trying Too Hard and losing the charm is tough. you can do it!! i hope this helps!

[mimicmew]

Updated list and info of the species in the Monster AU!

Since some people seemed interested.. here we go!

If you’d like to add your OC or make a new character for this au, use these as a basis! Feel free to ask me any questions if you’re curious or unsure. ALSO IT’S VERY LONG

Humans

CANON CHARACTERS: none lol

- Humans are the basic species of this world.

- They can rarely learn magic and become mages, but most cannot.

- Most humans fear and hate monsters, hunting them down and killing them.

- The Pale Kingdom, regarded as the most hateful kingdom, is currently under attack from a dangerous dragon and it’s siren ‘companion.’ They have managed to cool this by sending regular sacrifices to the ocean.

Sirens

CANON CHARACTERS; Mono, Thin Man

- Sirens are very uncommon, as many of them are hunted down by other species when young, as they are very dangerous.

- Sirens live in pods consisting of 3-15 members. These pods usually exist of siblings from the same hatching, and rarely separate pods fuse to make larger groups. This is uncommon as Sirens are often quite territorial.

- Babies are called pups.

- Sirens never cut their hair, unless they lose a battle. A siren with long hair is to be feared, as they are undefeated in combat.

- For design, Sirens have normal skin colours until their waist, where it fuses into scales. These scales are usually cool colours such as blue, green or purple, and fade into a darker or lighter shade down their tails. They have fins on the sides of their faces that open and close as they emote. They have bright spots across their tail, face and hands. The spots are usually warm colours such as red, yellow or orange. These spots are different shapes depending on where the Siren is from. The only canon ones right now are the eye-shaped spots that both Mono and Thin Man have, so go wild with the shapes! They’ll usually wear shirts as a way of mimicking humans.

- Their magic can be very varied, but is always tied to their voices. A siren without a voice is a dead siren.

- Siren’s grow for their entire life! They grow to about 8 ft by 18, and then they grow roughly half a metre a year, so as you could guess, Thin Man is very long.

Centaurs

CANON CHARACTERS; The Hunter, The Toddler

- Centaurs live in large herds, ranging anywhere from 20 to over 100.

- They live in both forests and open plains.

- They are very naturalist and believe in not taking any more then they need.

 - They have a belief that the face (Particularly the eyes) is the most vulnerable place for spirits to enter, so at a certain age, (around 5 years old) they begin to wear masks. This can range anywhere from beautifully hand-carved wooden masks to just… a sack.

- Centaurs have long hair that runs down their back like a mane. It’s not uncommon for centaurs of any age, no matter the gender, to grow out beards or chest hair. 

Gorgons

CANON CHARACTERS; The Lady, The Lady’s unnamed mother

- Gorgons come from a long line of cursed humans, which have split off to its own species. They are very rare and usually exist in powerful families.

- Gorgons are almost only female, and can reproduce with the same sex.

- Gorgons have rock-hard scales that are always muted colours. Their underbellies are a lighter colour. The snakes that make up their ‘hair’ can be any colour.

- Gorgon’s eyes can turn people into stone through their eyes, so most cover their eyes.

Harpies

CANON CHARACTERS; Raincoat Girl

- Harpies are tall, with their human arms replaced by large bird-like wings. Their legs are much like that of a bird of prey’s. The can have feathers on any place of their bodies.

- They often resemble an existing species of bird, from a bright scarlet macaw to a pitch-black crow.

- Some harpies live in large flocks, while others live alone.

- they usually wear long singlets that do not cover their shoulders, as to avoid restricting their wings.

- They often gather odd trinkets and items.

Fauns

CANON CHARACTERS; Runaway Kid

- Fauns are the deer-like cousins of centaurs

- They usually live alone in dense forests, but can sometimes be seen travelling with centaur herds.

- They have horns that can be any shape, and long, floppy ears.

Gargoyles

CURREN CHARACTERS; The Janitor, The Wax Bellman

- Not much to say, usually just enchanted statues. Aren’t always made of stone, and can be made of most materials.

- Can really look like anything.

- Usually made to serve a master.

- Don’t need to eat, sleep or drink. 

Changelings

CANON CHARACTERS; The Pretender

- Changelings are creatures that, after having a hatchling, will sneak into a human’s house, usually kill or dispose of the human’s child and replace it with their own. Because of this, many changelings grow up unaware of the fact that they are changelings until they grow older.

- They have two forms, a regular human one, and a more monstrous one, often resembling some kind of insect or reptile.

Cyclops

CANON CHARACTERS; The Twin Chefs, The Lollipop boy

- uhh just big Cyclops honestly not much in terms of lore or design.

- Usually very tall and large.

Zombies

CANON CHARACTERS; The Viewers, Some of the Guests, The Doctor

- Zombies can be made in many ways. However, the ones in this area are specifically made by the haunting songs of the Siren.

- They are killed by the first song, then slowly revived by the second, usually over a timespan of about 5 months.

- These zombies are mostly unfortunate humans who got too close, or sacrifices. They can be of any species, however.

Werebeasts

CANON CHARACTERS: Six (werewolf)

- Werebeasts are a collection of species. Some of the most well known are the Werewolves, but many more exist, such are wereboars, werebears and werecats.

- They usually resemble humans, but after some time will shift into a monstrous half-humna, half-animal form. Some will change back, while others will remain like that forever.

- They act very similar to their animals. Some are more human, while others are almost entirely beast.

Ghosts

CANON CHARACTERS; The Sheet Kid, The Glitching Remains

- Just funky little ghosts! usually only of people who died tragic deaths :( 

- Usually have stains on their face resembling tears, and can seem like they are fading away, missing parts of their bodies.

Dragons

CURRENT CHARACTERS; The Eye, The ‘Hunger’, The North Wind

- Ancient and powerful beasts, dragons are the most dangerous species to roam this world.

- If you’re going to make a dragon, try to use it for very powerful entities. Double check with me if you’re unsure.

- They can really look like anything, as there are many subspecies, such as wyverns, wyrms, hydras and more. However, they are unfortunately dying out at a rapid rate.

- They cannot die of old age, only of illness or injury.

- They usually have very strong magical abilities.

- While not always evil, most dragons will horde things. These can be jewels, people, plants or anything really.

ALSO:

Here are some species that might exist, but I dont have any proper lore on yet

- Shapeshifters

- Vampires

- elementals (living elements)

- half-borns (people who are half-animal, half-human)

- Fae

- Selkie

And these are just the ‘sentient’ species! Many mythical animals exist too, such as Phoenix or Unicorn, but are only. animals

[zippers-flowers-and-wine]

so im a bit too nervous for kisses...… can I pet all of the mers hair? getting your hair pet or massaged always feels nice, for me at least (please dont murder me im scared)

They all pause, and you can see Narancia vibrate from where he's being held back, Mista's hand (and a tentacle.. Or two... Maybe 5) being the only thing keeping him from launching himself across the glass once again. Giorno smiles serenely when you give him a questioning look. "Although Narancia may be a favoured member of my cluster, I believe he's gone first quite a few times now, let's have..."

His green eyes flick upwards, gleaming as he eyes someone. "Fugo?"

The lionfish blinks, lifting his non-lethal wrist and bicep fins with a curious trill. Making some sort of high pitched squeal, clearly a beckoning calll, Giorno motions him over.

Eyeing his leader warily, because Giorno was often a bit of a asshole trickster, Fugo glides over. "Yes Giorno?"

Even under Fugo's piercingly scrutinizing stare, Giorno's facial features hardly even twitch, although a small flex of his tail may have given him away. Dude would be wicked good at poker if he ever got into that kinda stuff. "Lean down will you? I believe our dear asker wants to give us something."

Fugo purses his lips, squinting so hard that the stripes beneath his eyes scrunch up. It's clear he wants answers, and judging by the way Giorno drifts backwards, the pod's head isn't going to give him any. Sensing that, Fugo glances back at you, scanning your face with a sharp eye but ultimately sighing and doing as asked. You do your best to stay blank, though it's really hard with the most unstable mer staring at you so intently even as he leans within range.

"What is it that you wanted t-"

Willing yourself not to chicken out, and also hoping he doesn't nip at you for surprising him, you shove your hand into his thick hair, making him choke in his words.

Not giving him a chance to pull away, you scratch your nails lightly against his scalp, watching his shoulders droop along with his poisonous dorsal fins and he subtly pushes back into your hands. Your nails are gentle on his scalp, applying barely there pressure in random spots until Fugo shivers under your attention, so you pull back a bit, concerned. He doesn't let you move too far, looping his arms around your waist to pull you against his chest which makes him rest some of his weight against you.

You yip his name, still worried but a subtle vibration that ripples up and down your chest makes you pause. He's... He's purring. You peek up at him, carefully resting a hand back onto his head. Fugo clicks, nuzzling his face into your neck and shivering again. Right, so shivers are actually a good thing. Okay, good to know. Feeling a little braver as you internally awe at him, you reach back up to take in the texture of his hair. It's a little coarse, which is to be expected since he lived in saltwater, but you didn't expect it to have a wavy underside.

Gliding up to his three, hanging bangs, you lightly rake your nails across the skin between them. Its seems to please him, making him almost more boneless than he already was.

Eyeing his ears, you take a breath nd gently scratch behind one. Fugo jolts, purrs becoming nearly thunderous as the fins flare out to give you more room to work. You drag a nail across the thin membrane stretching between the spines, tracing said spines up near the tip as feather light as possible and that seems to break him.

He makes an unintelligible noise, one that's garbled and slurred and he yanks away from you to slink further into the water. Fugo is red from head to toe... Er..? Tail fin? Caudal fin? Whatever, he's blushing brightly, and so are you, and wow all this affection is intense huh?

When you finally get the courage to actually look at him, you find that Fugo looks a little dumbstruck. His eyes are unfocused, staring dazedly at you with a sort of quiet reverence, and he looks really fidgety; rubbing his knuckles, flaring his spines and twitching in his spot. Giorno drifts back into your line of sight, opening his arms and you gawk a little when Fugo happily nuzzles into the somewhat smaller lionfish. Spotting your surprised look, the blond chuckles."Yes, I probably should have mentioned this."

Bruno slithers forth, waving off the young leader. "I've got this, you go bring him down." Giorno nods, turning back to purr and coo at a blissed out Fugo. You can't help the small bubble of worry that blisters up into your throat, choking you with a small amount of guilt.

Like some kind of psychic, Bruno hums, "You're probably wondering what's wrong with him, right?" You nod, skin itching with the need for answers. Bruno reaches out, smoothing a hand across your tensed shoulder as he purrs. "He's fine, just... Hmm? I believe a proper comparison would be to say he's in a sort of "subspace" at the moment." You immediately turn red, unnoticed by Bruno who is turned around to watch their blond leader gently smother Fugo, who is eating the affection up. "Giorno apparently forgot to warn you about that part of our species."

He retreats into himself for a moment, thinking with a hand on your shoulder and the other pressing into a loose fist.

"Alright, it seems like we may have to have a small lesson in cluster bonding." You parrot the last two words back at him, confused. "Yes, cluster bonding." Bruno flicks his body, pulling himself up to rest on the glass. His posture is rather stiff, upright, with his chest subtly puffed out and his hands folded onto his lap. "Touch is a big thing for merfolk, much bigger than it is for humans. In fact, what humans may perceive as harassment, uncomfortably personal contact, or even just a general invasion of one's comfort zone is usually something different for merfolk."

He hums, taking breath before humming. "You see, every touch a mer gives out has meaning. Sometimes it's very straightforward, like if a male wanted to... Inform a female that he was sexually available, he'd initiate some sort of sexual contact." When you stare at him with most deadpan look ever, he demonstrats by resting his weight on one arm, and grinding his hips upwards. Oh... Oh my god.

Satisfied you now know what he means, Bruno resumes, "More subtle things, like shoulder, arm and hand touches are considered friendly, under general contexts and situations." You have a somewhat nagging feeling you know where this is headed. Bruno easily takes note, nodding.

"It seems you understand where I'm going with this." He seems amused by your now permanently flushed face, his lips quirked to the side as his small, triangular pelvic fins flutter. "Head, neck and fin contact is something generally reserved for cluster, or even podmates, although it's not uncommon for merfolk to allow people outside of their pods to do so. It sends us into a highly vulnerable blissed out state, as you can see with Fugo." He tilts his head over his shoulder, guiding your attention to said merman.

It seems as if he's mostly recovered, still leaning against Giorno with Mista wrapped around his shoulder. He looks relaxed, although he is still purring hard enough for the water around him to ripples consistently. "I do know, however, that some humans consider it very similar to having sex. That's why I must ask..." You look back at the eel, freezing when you realize that those guarded blue eyes are mere inches from your own.

"Do you still want to follow through with your request?"

[og-danny-dorito]

(N)sfw matchups, daredevil/punisher pls? Straight she/her Leo (Sag moon), I have black pixie cut, dark blue eyes + dimples. I’m 1/2 Navajo, and love any kind of skating. I don’t really use sarcasm. I usually tell ppl what they want to hear. I’m thin and like to wear rings. I love animals and kids. I used to be a live-in nanny. I can’t stand the feel of velvet. I’m good at baking and usually do it when I’m stressed (even at 2am). I adore being called angel or bunny. Thank you! ♥️♥️

of course! and- unrelated i know -but i’ve personally always wanted dimples! i just think i could pull them off nearly as well as you do tho :0

I Ship You With... Frank Castle!

S F W :

- OKAY so like, usually when doing lists like these i’ll look up certain characters that i think would fit and see if the zodiac signs match up, and my dumb ass KNEW from the start exactly who you’d get

- not only are your signs compatible, but your personalities just click!!! it makes so much sense for him to just have such a kind and fun s/o for someone so roughed up by the world. you compliment each other in your interests, in the way you think- even down to how you act (sometimes)

- frank would be more gentle if he hadn't gone through so much to make him more of a brute-force kinda guy, but your kind and carefree demeanor makes him feel less,,, guarded

- at first he didnt like it, how easy you could real down his walls, but the late night calls and meet-ups at random places at 2AM soon made it apparent that he was falling. hard.

- it’s in his personality to fall in love with someone’s personality before their looks but the first time he saw you something invisible gut just knew that you were perfect

- from your short and spunky hair, small frame, even your cute little dimples when you smiled at something he would say- you were pure.fragile.deicate

- at first he tried to stay away from you. he didnt want to cause you pain like he had done to others in the past, or worry you with his line of work. it wasnt something he was willing to risk, both for his sake and your own

- but somehow, someway, you wormed your way into his heart, and now he wouldnt be able to imagine it any other way!

- after the death of his family, he’s been a little bit more aware of the gifts of the good things in life. you might think he’s paranoid from how nervous he gets when you’re away from him, like hes scared of loosing you if he lets you slip too far from his grip

- but he means well in the end. between the consistent texts when you’re away for an hour longer than you usually are and the death glares at any friend he finds “suspicious”, he genuinely just wants to keep his honeybun safe

- frank’s love language has always been more of the ‘acts of service’ type since hes feels like he never gets out what he means when he tries to speak, so expect to wake up in the morning with your dishes done, trash taken out, and food made for you with a little sticky note saying how much he loves you and when he’ll be back

- hes just very considerate and soft but the kindof soft that wouldn't hesitate to kill a man if someone were to hurt you

N S F W :

- you probably shouldn't be surprised that his generous nature will spill over into your sex life as well 😂

- dude is more than eager to please you at his own expense and will spend HOURS using his tongue to work wonders on you

- it doesnt help that his mouth is absolutley filthy (in more ways than one). while he does love and cherish you and want to make you feel loved, he wont hesitate to be a little disciplinary with you if you’re being bratty on purpose

- not exactly sadistic but likes to have some sort of authority, whether it be in an endearing way or in a commanding way

- you don't have to call him “daddy” or anything like that if you dont want to, hes indifferent, but any term of authority usually gets him going really quickly

- if you do call him daddy though- ...oh lord

- frank is flipping you over in less than a second to have facing away from him, his lips coming dangerously close to your ear as you feel him rub up against you from behind with the sudden closeness he’s adopted

- its pretty undeniable that hes rock hard, his gravelly voice barely above a whisper as he utters a few simple words that get something within you forming a tight- and frankly annoying -coil at the pit of your stomach: “Don’t tease daddy, bunny. Unless you want to get yourself punished.”

- with your consent of course, hes more than willing to let up on it to resort to gentle lovemaking instead

- his favorite position for this is usually missionary since he can kiss all over your face while ramming into you with a force unbeknownst to man, but this GOD of aftercare is cleaning you off in less than a second and cuddling up with you as soon as you’re both done

- showers after rae always nice too since he can still fall asleep with you in his arms after, but generally speaking he loves you regardless of what you may want for him

- “Anything for you, angel.”

[ ~Thank You For Asking!~ ]

[comicteaparty]

June 20th-June 26th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 20th, 2020 to June 26th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

What is something you’re just not very good at right now writing and/or drawing in general?

Deo101 [Millennium]

mysteries. 100% I can not write mysteries!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

ears

Deo101 [Millennium]

the connection between legs and torso. No not hips, I can draw hips fine, but like the movement aspect of it

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Action scenes. Orchestrating fights or big motions on the page... it doesn’t come naturally to me! I have to look at a lot of reference to see how other artists do it. Impact shapes, speed lines, anything to convey movement...

But I am slowly building a vocabulary of... fight shapes? I’m calling them fight shapes, haha

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I feel that

Your feeling I feel deeply

"visual library" is a term that comes to mind

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Composition. I just talked about this earlier today, but.... yup. Composition is my bane.

Mitzi (Trophallaxis)

I'd like to get better at writing in general. I have a lot of trouble verbalizing things I see in my head, and so I gotta rely on images and thumbnails to get any idea across, sometimes. otherwise im a windbag and use 5000 words to say 0-1 things, lmao

carcarchu

I have trouble writing simply. I always want to embellish, add extra details, more characters and make everything more complicated and i worry it ends up making things unnecessarily convoluted

Drawing-wise i hate drawing hands

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

The legit thing I am worse at writing is fucking

Deo101 [Millennium]

omg

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

essays to convince people to hire me

Deo101 [Millennium]

OH OKAY

WAY TO CUT IT OFF

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

YEAH

Mitzi (Trophallaxis)

OH

carcarchu

let her finish deo

Mitzi (Trophallaxis)

comedic timing at its finest

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

omg

I was very confused for a sec(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

but seriously like speaking of filling gaps this is what I'm legit struggling most with right now so any help much appreciated

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

raises hand

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I need to write a personal statement and every time I sit down to edit I want to die

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I volunteer as tribute

writing is basically the only thing I'm really good at

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

It's not the writing I hate

It's the writing about me

carcarchu

is that the thing where you have to write in 3rd person? like those blurb things on people's websites?(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

It just feel so gross whoring out my deeply held passions and struggles for a spot in med school

No I'm talking about college essays lmao sorry for derailing

The blurb things are an interesting topic though!

Have you guys writtent those before and does anyone actually like writing them?

carcarchu

i had to write a blurb about myself for my university's website and yeah it was uncomfy

lemme see if i can find it

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I HATE writing those

because I just start like, "Crona J. is an artist and writer from Chicago......." And I have no idea how to continue

Deo101 [Millennium]

god yeah even just writing a profile or about me is hard enough!!!

I'm always like "deo - 22 - she/her - illustrator - webcomic author - student" and then i leave it

thats it thats all you get

depending on the platform i MIGHT put bi - disabled and thats it!!!!

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

yeah

half of the stuff I write doesn't even feel relevant to the audience either

who cares that I have been drawing since I was 12 lol?

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Mate I don't even write those. My bio is like "UCSD" "Read my comic"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

hahaha

Deo101 [Millennium]

I also always feel like when I see "ive been drawing since I was 5!" I kinda think like... well everyone has been -_- like this doesnt tell me anything, how long have you been an aspiring pro, how long have you been studying art...? that tells me more

so I never put that kind of stuff in my biod either

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

yeah, and also, I didn't go to prestigious school, so I don't even include my college

and I only have one comic project so far, just under a chapter

so what do I write?

Not that important an issue, but irksome nonetheless

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I don't include my school because it's prestigious, I include it because it's not an art college

Deo101 [Millennium]

owch

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I want fellow stem-y yet artsy people from my school to recognize me as one of them(edited)

DEO stop interupptung me at the worst points!!

Deo101 [Millennium]

i love jumping to conclusions. so no.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

If it's a bio where I can talk about the comics, I try to spotlight a few tropes/genres that'll catch the eye of potential readers. Not a full-fledged summary, just a quick hit of If You Like These Words, You'll Probably Like Reading It. ("Fantasy, comedy, shapeshifters, PTSD, time travel, cats")

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

And if it's gonna be personal, same deal with bits of personal info -- not trying to be a Comprehensive Biography, just pulling a few details that are relatable connection points

The problem with "I've always wanted to be a writer/artist/cartoonist" isn't just how generic it is, the problem is also the vibe of "here's my thing, your role in this is to support me"

Whereas if you say something like "I like drawing cute girls and writing fantasy," the response can be "oh hey, I like seeing cute girls and reading fantasy, tell me more!"

Or if you go with "Sailor Moon fan, will put extra cheese on everything," people can go "cool, that's relatable, we can like Sailor Moon and cheese together." It gets at your shared investment in a fun thing, it's not about expecting them to be personally invested in you

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I think perhaps the most fundamental thing is "you can't please everyone." I've never liked the 'random food related weird tidbit tacked on' thing because it feels too try-hardish to me, but I understand for other people, it's not a matter of trying too hard and is genuinely how they just talk.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Oh definitely, you hold out for a bio that connects with everyone and you'll never get it done

AntiBunny

Personally I'm not great at drawing cars. It's why all my cars early on in the comic were side view only, and old blocky looking things. It was all I could do. I've been getting better by using references.

Every so often I buy a little hotweels or matchbox car when I'm buying groceries. I aim for realistic ones based on real vehicles, especially utility vehicles like ice cream trucks, ambulances, fire trucks, and whatnot you'd see every day in a city. I keep a little box of them on my desk, so if the scene calls for a car to be visible, I have a reference that can help me get all the curves and angles right.

Sure beats drawing from memory, but also practice time in the sketchbook with them is a necessity.

Now crowd scenes are beginning to be my bane. Not because they're hard to draw, just because they're time consuming.

Suddenly I realize why old episodes of Sailor Moon has cities with people free sidewalks and empty streets.

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

That's a great idea, gathering the model cars! I should do that for a future comic.

kayotics

I also struggle with cars so, uh, my comic takes place in fantasy 1700-1800s

But also horses are bad too

Cars and horses! They suck

Deo101 [Millennium]

do what I did and make up an easier animal to draw than a horse ;)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Vehicles in general. Should just put everyone on roller blades and be done with it

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'd lov that tbh

kayotics

I’ve considered making something other than horses......

Deo101 [Millennium]

I highly encourage it, the people love it and also so does my brain

kayotics

Or else lean into them being ugly

Deo101 [Millennium]

heres the trick about horses though they look really weird and as small as you make their legs, when you think "this is way too thin..." youre wrong and their ankles are probably smaller than that

kayotics

The thing that gets me is their faces

Deo101 [Millennium]

... mask

kayotics

Hahaha

I should just make deer the normal mode of transport

Deo101 [Millennium]

that would be really cute tbh

kayotics

I love deer and they’re cute

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Just exaggerate them to the point where it looks like a style choice

Your people already have unrealistic proportions

Why not the horses too

kayotics

That’s how I draw buildings tbh because I hate buildings

Deo101 [Millennium]

I also gave horses dog mouths, maybe do something like that? someone can be like "horses dont look like that?" and as long as youre consistent you can say "they do in this world!!!"

kayotics

Oh god no that’s like a devil creature

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah they look horrible but its fun

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I legit remember saying that to you deo lmao

Deo101 [Millennium]

ive had dog horse for years you didnt give me this

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Not the they look horrible part

kayotics

I’ve already got beasts, I don’t need horses to look WORSE than they did

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Bwah I remember

Time to archive dig(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

I love dog horse

kayotics

Honestly it’s good but they scare me

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah... maybe instead give them cat mouths

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

https://discordapp.com/channels/472908933045026827/634081658018070549/688589449562423422

wait omg this is the message that led to your first dm to me lmao

Deo101 [Millennium]

is it??? omg i think it is... historical moment

dog horse brings us together

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Another point to convince kay to draw uncanny animals!

Deo101 [Millennium]

what I do to make birds fun to draw is making them sparkly

maybe try that

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

god you're gonna ruin kay's carefully crafted aesthetic

is this your competitiveness showing its face again(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

they can make it work! why do you doubt their abilities

make this the main mode of transport

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

ah is that how it works in that case i have 10 shitty indie game ideas

make them pls

Deo101 [Millennium]

implying my ideas are shitty??? rude!

kayotics

I have an aesthetic?

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Or if you want to be very efficient, everyone in universe can teleport

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

lmao you have an excellent aesthetic

crona

i do that already

kayotics

Crona.... that’s my comic already!! Haha

Deo101 [Millennium]

kay does also have teleporting to be clear

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

don't underestimate my laziness!

Deo101 [Millennium]

LMAO

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

See

It must be great advice

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

oh crap you're right kay also does have teleporting

and unrealistic beasts, to be fair

kayotics

Sometimes on the same page

That’s the eyes I draw on the beasts

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Or be even lazier, and make it so that horses and beasts either don't exist or haven't been domesticated in that region. Everyone walks. Their feet hurt, but their calves are glorious.

Deo101 [Millennium]

you get it

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

wait crona and deo also have comics where teleportation could exist

will you join us?

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

lol, yup

Deo101 [Millennium]

nope

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

(nah, I've already drawn horses. They're not so bad if you stare at photos)

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

drawing horses is fun!!

[multiple people are typing]

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

And there will also be hella walking, because the leg game must be strong, otherwise I'm not doing my job

Deo101 [Millennium]

ive decided that millennium is like really in the future but things like time travel, teleportation, warp speed... nope! You can go really fast in a spaceship but like nothin crazy

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

man these planets real close together then

or maybe people just live a really long time ...?

Deo101 [Millennium]

I just do my version of teleporting which is "wow it'll take a week to get there" and then its a week later

dont worry about it

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

nice

Deo101 [Millennium]

its not realistic, but its consistent

🌈ERROR404 🌈

ahhhh horses are really nice to draw imo, if i can get it right lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

I like drawing horses a lot I just never do it tbh

🌈ERROR404 🌈

something needs to fuel my addiction to cowboy culture

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Consistency is key tbh

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I just do my version of teleporting which is "wow it'll take a week to get there" and then its a week later

when my whole comic takes place in like a week lmao

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

if you decide that gravity doesn't exist in your world, as log as you're consistent with it, you're golden

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

in the unlikely event i get tired of drawing my comic i can adopt deo's strat "wow it'll take a week to get to the ending"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

My comic takes place in about a year (not counting flashbacks which span... uh... a very long time)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

"man sure seems like this conflict will take approximately a week to be resolved" "one week later"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

hahaha

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

"sure did get resolved"

the end

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

convenient

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i wonder if anyone's done that

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

One Korean series I followed for years did it

and everyone was pissed, as you can imagine

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

lol

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

better than cancellation?

Deo101 [Millennium]

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

what a way to go

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I'd honestly have preferred cancellation/ abandonment

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Just have a fan finish it for you at that rate lmao

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

OH that's a good discussion topic. If you got tired of your comic, or life got in the the way of you working on it anymore, how would you end it as quickly as possible?

Deo101 [Millennium]

maybe rephrase that a little

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I would toss it at my little sis, and she would do it for me, no joke

Deo101 [Millennium]

My little sister also would probably take over it for me

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

let's move to general?

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

eyyy!

Deo101 [Millennium]

but also I could just be like "They got an email that john died of old age its over now"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

MVP sisters!

lol

an email

what a way to end it

eliushi [Keyspace]

For me it’s panels. Past me thought that the four panel structure would make things easy. Nope. It’s limiting how I want to tell the story so... I’m trying to branch out now and looking for other inspirations for panel and layout

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Just change the shape of your panels. It forces you to be creative.

eliushi [Keyspace]

True true! I have those in upcoming updates

But my heart swoons for the page spreads

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

oh yes

They are so gorgeous, but difficult to plan

eliushi [Keyspace]

Initially I was planning on storyboards but now I’m more comfortable with comics I think I’ll be aiming for traditional layouts

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yeah, storyboards are an entirely different beast

Desnik

I'm currently working on clearly portraying character motivation

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I think for me I don't draw animals often and rip have to draw a few for the upcoming pages so I'm just doing my best at this point lol

AntiBunny

Panel arrangement is the heart of comics as an art form. It takes practice, and study to learn how the eye flows from one thing to the next.

And once you have a thorough understanding of the rules you can learn how to carefully break them to produce something truly eye catching.

If I had to say the simplest rule to understanding flow is, if you need arrows to tell you which direction to read, then you're doing something wrong.

DanitheCarutor

This is candy for my self-deprecating mentality. Lol Honestly though. I'm not the best at writing in general, I don't like doing it physically, avoiding it at all cost (outside of dialogue and poorly done bullet points on scrap paper.) so I don't really know if/think I'm particularly good at it. I remember the last time I tried to physically write something was back in high school, I still have it saved on my computer, but it was something else. Too many dialogue scenes and overly detailed descriptions of things and characters. I only made it a little ways before giving up with "You know, this will be easier to just show than describe.". Story and character wise for my current comic, I'm not sure how well it's turning out or how good it will be in the end, my brain defaults my work to mediocre so I tend to be totally blind to what I'm doing right. I know my characters aren't the best for sure since they're all fleshy flaw bags with too many flaws, and I know I could have presented certain scene changes and such better, but that's all I can think of objectively. The art portion is something I at least know I can execute decently, but my color composition is the worst. I'm aware that I need to improve it, and I know what needs to be done, but it's something I can't really accomplish with my comic since I just want to focus on finishing pages. I'll have to make time to draw up some throw-away illustrations to experiment with, which I hope to have a little bit of now that I'm not on a regular update schedule. Also I can't draw vehicles and architecture for the life of me, I've referenced and studied but I still can't wrap my head around it. ALSO extreme angles and perspectives are still things I need work on, like 4-point circular perspective, ground level shots and over the head shots.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

There's a lot of things I want to improve, but something I haven't seen mentioned yet: I would like to get better at deciphering feedback, how to glean useful things from multiple conflicting feedback.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Ooh that's a good one keii

I haven't really had to deal with that before though because all the negative feedback I've gotten is pretty consistent

Can I ask what the conflicting feedback you got is?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Oh gosh, I legit spent a long, long moment trying to figure out where to even start

eliushi [Keyspace]

I really like this approach to feedback

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Yo Eli this is so good

eliushi [Keyspace]

Mary robinette is goals

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

this is spectacular already

wow

eliushi [Keyspace]

Pretty sure a wiser writer passed this onto me I have since used it a lot and it works for me

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

This is so so good Perfectly said about crits in creative fields

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

One example I can think of isn't actually something that was criticized, but showed up a lot in various ways: "this is (supposed to be) an exciting adventure romp centering Danbi" vs "this is an emotional journey story centering Ethan" ... Not a criticism, but two very conflicting interpretations. People who have one interpretation are shocked and confused when I tell them about the other one.

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Holy crap, Eli... This is one for the folder of absolute knowledge

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

woah, excellent advice

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

And yeah, that is a really good one. Symptoms are extremely useful, and diagnoses tend to be more useful in a conversation rather than a one-way "here is my diagnosis" thing

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I haven't heard it said before but the explaining eliminating a clean reaction rings so true to me

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Ahhh, this is literally the one document I have needed my entire life

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

also the helping someone tell the story they want

also the stream of consiousness, MAn

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I think I'll save that for my future high schoolers lol

some of the stuff said there is what I've noticed in the last few years critquing in academic settings but its nice to kno!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

People have given me stream of consciousness reactions before and they were the most helpful. Almost all the changes in the story from others' reactions were from stream of consciousness reactions, not intentional critiques

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, one of the most helpful "critique" I ever got was also completely unintentional

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

One of the most useful tips in this guide for me in particular is the "As a writer don't:" section. I struggle with it a lot.

On the note of things we are bad at in the comic-making process, I am very bad at taking critiques!(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

tbh for a long time, my biggest struggling point that's not in the "as a writer don't:" is "don't throw yourself into the void of self-hate." I'm better now, but boy, when it was bad, it was bad.

But perhaps that kinda thing better fits into "as a person don't:"

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I am pretty good at taking critiques, but pretty bad at giving critiques! Right now the point I'm at is I'm just gonna not give critiques until I'm more mature

But then after I decided that an amateur writer friend told me his story idea that I not only disliked but was sort of offended by

and I really wanted to tell him but I didn't know how to do it nicely...

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

ooof

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

oh no

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

yeah, that's really tough

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

rip I tend to do kinda a sandwich method. I had to say some rough things few days ago on a practice pitch run and I pretty much said

Deo101 [Millennium]

Uh oh

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

"Your idea is developing for sure, but I think you need to reconsider some of the world building choices you done. Have you thought of researching such and such."

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

That's basically what I said

But I think I had to say "research ffs" in increasing intensity like 3 times lol

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Oh, nice, the "let's give them compliments too so that they know I'm not just being mean" method

It's a good method tbh

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Rip it's not that like

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Deo might have something to say about this but it was about schizophrenics in a mental institution being portrayed in a real weird way by someone who didn't know anything about it(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Ooof

Deo101 [Millennium]

Ah man

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

ewww

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'll always stand by "asking people who've lived what you're writing about is the best form of research and can't be replaced"

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Yeah I would said the to the person consider researching more on the topic and interview folks who have schizophrenia

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Dude I brought you up lmao

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

and also like "is there a reason you want to depict it this way?"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

oooh

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I know I'm agreeing idk... Idk what else I'd have to say on the topic

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

That's a very good question to ask someone

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

and depending on their responses, I would just put my two scents in there that rip

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I always ask "what are your goals?" Before I ask anything else

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

critiques are kinda my strong point sinc eLMAO I do em all the time in my class

and teaching so yeah LOL

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Deo I mean I brought you up to this guy like saying "my friend messaged people online and they were super willing to talk to her you could do that"

Deo101 [Millennium]

OHHHHH gotcha

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I try my best to figure out what they want out of it and just deliever with some handful of suggestions

but I won't sugarcoat it unless you're a high school student or younger lmao

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I'm often told I'm a lil too harsh but like idk

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I wouldn't say sugar coating it per say... More just telling them what their strengths are too, so that they have an idea of where they're at

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

telling someone their strengths is just as useful as telling them their flaws

that way they can highlight them

like just because you story has no flaws doesn't mean it's good right?

gotta have stuff that stands out in a good way as well

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Someone once phrased it as "Let's list everything that's wrong here, and find out how we can fix them" vs "How do we take this to the next level?" and that really resonated with me. It's not about sugarcoating; it's more about helping them get to the next level in the direction they wanna go.

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

THIS

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I try to point out things that are going well, and I usually try to only point at things that ppl can work on immediately

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I should phrase my statement more clearly. But yeah Kei that's what I usually look for when critiquing

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

There's often no need to tell them "your writing is only at level 3, and that's bad because the max level is 99." Just tell them how to get to level 4.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I dont' see it like its something bad but something that is challenging to them at the time

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Unless they have extremely unrealistic expectations or whatever that are standing in their own way

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

just have to figure out how to get out of the hump

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Yep. I see this phenomenon in animation a lot. A good animation director will help you boost your existing work to something stronger, but still yours. A bad one will tell you to do it their way, and chide you for doing it ‘wrong.’

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

rip I know a person like that and lmao

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yessssss

That's why I always ask "what are your goals" to start

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yup

🌈ERROR404 🌈

I totally agree!!!! A LOT of the most important bits of great criticism is understanding exactly where the original creator was intending to go, and formatting your statements around helping them achieve that!!!!!!!

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Critiques are impossible if you don't know what the person is trying to achieve

🌈ERROR404 🌈

Just stating things that you would change if you were making it may seem useful and relevant to you the critic, but unless the creator is headed the exact same direction as you, they have just as much reason to invalidate the entire statement as they do to nit pick out the things they care to agree with

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Sometimes a prospective critic is simply too far removed from the target audience of the work, like on a fundamental level, and it makes it impossible to give them useful feedback. I think it's important to acknowledge that this can happen. It happens to me a lot and I just decline to give crits when it does.

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yeah, like don't ask me to critique a comic about sports lmao

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I agree on that notion, esepcially when seeing professional aritsts giving crits to folks starting out but it doesn't go as er ideal as they thought it would be

Deo101 [Millennium]

That's why I usually only seek out criticsm (for more than just general direction/advice) from people who's work I like

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I remember reading advice on getting beta readers, and it’s really REALLY important that they’re excited for your stuff. They want to make it better. They care. They can give critique, but they absolutely must be jazzed about your subject matter in some way, or else it’ll be a slog for everyone.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

for me, I have my peers who I contact daily and we give each other advice, tips

despite having er difference interests in fields, but we experienced a lot in our program lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yes... (Speaking of if anyone wanted to beta read my next comic uhhhh let me know id love to have u)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

very good point claire

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

100 percent agree Get people who are excited and know your vision

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I have a small group of writer friends who know all my goals and a lot of my stuff? So they make a very good little critique circle, and we all help eachother

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I'm always ready to beta read if it's a concept I enjoy

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

like people who critique comics they hate. I'm like, damn, tough work but also ?? why

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

(Be careful about people who are excited about what they think is your vision.............)

Deo101 [Millennium]

Fish is this a callout for me

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

slightly?

Deo101 [Millennium]

Ahsjfkdjdkskdjdjdj

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Keii I experienced the oppisisite like rip

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

it's just mystifying to me, I don't think it's wrong or anything

Deo101 [Millennium]

Also crona I'll send u when I'm at my comp

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

sure

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

What do you mean Tuyetnhi?

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Ohh that would be oof to deal with Kei

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I had to let a person down to reality bc I know they're excited about their idea but uhhhh

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

(Is it the fish romance?)

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

it wasn't engaging to me

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yes that one qjdjfkskdkk

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

nor my illustration friends

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I don’t have beta readers but I think that’s how it all goes lol

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

and we were like

"AAAAAAA"

Deo101 [Millennium]

Oh that's awkward

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Ooooooohhhhhhh... oof

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I have a couple friends I send pages to sometimes but they're always really positive about it

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

It was a rough critique

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Having creative friend circles is so essential for growth and screaming at eachothers works for motivation too

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yessss

Also just the ability to talk about your process without having to explain yourself

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

agreed lol

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I occasionally tap my fiance's shoulder and shove my sketches in his face with zero context, just to make sure he can figure out what's going on without me explaining. Super helpful

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I feel like I have a couple friends where, when I read their stuff, I know things that would amp their work up tenfold. But until they ask me... I’m screaming inside lol

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

lol

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

my friend always makes me feel like i'm a better writer than i am because she thinks so much like me she gets everything i write perfectly lol. But then I post and the comments are like "wtf i'm confused"(edited)

eliushi [Keyspace]

Yeah feedback is most effective when both sides are open and invested

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Claire Senpai Wants To Help

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

also same crona(edited)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

It’s not bad, I just go I THINK I CAN HELP YOU MAKE IT AWESOMER AHHHHHH

eliushi [Keyspace]

Claire senpaiiii

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

But until then I remain still and supportive

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

why don't you ask them "can i suggest things?"

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I try and keep my mouth shut

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

or "do you want suggestions?"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

lol

eliushi [Keyspace]

I usually say what I like about it first and then. Are you looking for feedback?

Deo101 [Millennium]

Tbh hearing "can I suggest things?" Usually comes off kinda like "I see stuff wrong with this :)" which can hurt a little even then

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

YEeeeah

🌈ERROR404 🌈

At least for my comic, i have sent bits and pieces for critique from creators i am friends with , but i'm really hesitant promoting myself because I don't feel like I'm not at a place to even get a critique i'll be able to make anything of. O(--( i really don't know what I'd do if someone tried to seriously analyze my plot and break down the story right now

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

It's really hard, because a lot of people (myself included) get scared when someone else asks, "Do you need help?"

Deo101 [Millennium]

I usually trust ppl to say whether they're looking for feedback

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Its always so tricky to gague the reactions of that. Some people handle that better than others So i only offer when they open up

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Based on how people can get about even the offer of critique, yeah, I tend not to say anything. That’s their baby. If they want to open that door, then I’ll poke my head in

eliushi [Keyspace]

True too. I’m already in forums where feedback is wanted so I’m already in selection bias

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yeah, I like to only offer crits if someone is asking for it for that reason

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

for the record i'm always open to critiques

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

kinda mutal agreement on don't chime in unless asked lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah, at least in my groups we send things like "hey this and this are bothering me? Can you help?" And other than that it's just support

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yeah, that's a good idea

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

for both parties. For me, If it's something that I need thoughts I ask but otherwise, lmao my social circles ask me for help for their art stuff

Deo101 [Millennium]

We never agreed on that btw it's just kinda how it goes

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

That's a nice group way to handle that AND make the space more breathable for others who are more nervous about crit work

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

exactly

eliushi [Keyspace]

There’s a time and place for everything and feedback is no different

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah! Like here we have seperate chats for help and sharing

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yuss

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

When someone asks me if I'm open to suggestions, my reaction is usually "nOOoooOo..." but not always. I think it helps a ton if there's an existing rapport, like if I already know this person gets, REALLY gets, my work.

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

And that's okay Keii!

eliushi [Keyspace]

Yeah I’m super thankful for my betas for that

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yee same

eliushi [Keyspace]

It’s very rewarding when people are also invested in your work to make it better within your means and style

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Honestly u gotta do whats best for u and ur mindset in the end.

Deo101 [Millennium]

It also is a little but awkward to say "no I'm not open to suggestions' cause it feels like you're saying "I don't care to improve" when in reality it's more like "no... I'm happy with this and I don't want it to be soured"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I love the fact that if I post in #creator_art_share, nobody will critique me unless I ask. And if I post in #art_help, I can get that help. So incredibly nice

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Yes! Thats very respectful

eliushi [Keyspace]

So key

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Omg Deo.....such a mood LOL

Deo101 [Millennium]

I always feel so bad saying no thanks but it's like it looked good I thought

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

omg, I felt that in my soul

We beat ourselves up enough as it is

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Sometimes i know my work can be farty but... I dont also want perfection in every facet of my pieces too and thats okay! Some are learning pieces, others more indulgent

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I think I'd be very hesitant to accept ideas that will utterly break my core plot... unless someone comes out and outright tells me something about it is offensive or wrong or otherwise bad. But critique on the connective tissue between the bones, so to speak, heck yes. I've gotten some much better ideas from that.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

e.e even if i post in art share i would be honored to receive a critique from any of you

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Oh, if someone comes to me with suggestions that are that incompatible with my vision, I'm getting outta there.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

but i don't wanna post every single thing i do in art help hm

but maybe i should

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I am SO getting outta there.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I did had some suggestions that didn't... really help with my comic most of it are just comments and not pure criticism

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Just post it lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah it's probably best to leave crit in the crit section so as not to break that unspoken rule.

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

To signal to the rest of us

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Yea your vision is key, and i find that people who crit the work need a basic understanding of it for it to be a True Crit

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Yeah it's probably best to leave crit in the crit section so as not to break that unspoken rule.

good point

i wouldn't want people critiquing me to make others feel like it's okay to do that to everyone

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

A good attitude!!! Y'all are very respectable this is a wonderful topic

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yeee

eliushi [Keyspace]

I think the best feedback is one where it makes your work become more effective within your vision. Sometimes it’s finding the betas who are invested but I also find betas who focus on different crafts also can offer a lot of wisdom. I find it comes down to being open and it’s never a bad thing to ask for clarification

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

[also writes this down for a potential lesson actvity for high schoolers] (edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, a critique is supposed to help the work become a better version of itself, not a better [something else]

Deo101 [Millennium]

Mostly with true beta reading I am looking for "how clear is my work coming off to someone who knows nothing of my lore and backstory etc?"

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I like the idea of having at least one beta reader who's a writer, and at least one who's not. The writer can dissect things a bit more than a 'civilian' could while the civilian can look at surface-level things and react as the audience majority might.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

multiple beta readers are a blessing lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

Cause with my friends, they already know everything I'm planning, so i worry a lot that they are putting together things that a regular reader wouldn't

So yeah same thing as a "civilian" reader, sort of!

eliushi [Keyspace]

For sure. Within my critique group I have novelists, webcomic creators and artists. Those who read the complete script and those who haven’t. It’s important to have all sides I find

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Dang you people with your luxury of multiple beta readers... I don't even have one (but it's mostly my fault; my scripts are unreadable)

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

omg lol

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i'm sure you could use many of us as beta readers if you wanted to!

varethane

that surface-level 'first gut reaction' crit can be SO useful

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I change dialogue too frequently for a beta reader to have a fair chance, lol

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I started early with one years ago, but now I have like 5-10ish but they can't help me at the same time lmao

varethane

I agree upthread with when it was said that some of the most helpful crit was given unintentionally lol

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

same. i asked some people, including deo and crona, for a beta read of a script a while back but then ended up changing most of it lol(edited)

eliushi [Keyspace]

Most of my betas I found in forums like these! I’m sure a lot of us want to help each other out!

Deo101 [Millennium]

I usually only share stuff once I have at least a solid sketch and dialogue is in

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

so much changes in the thumbnail/layout stage for me. SO MUCH. whole scenes get swapped/cut/extended

I never keep it the same way

Deo101 [Millennium]

I don't like to share scripts cause also I don't usually script much anyways lol

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) As a long-time reader of HoK, I would be more than happy to beta read if you ever wanted it. Just throwing that out there!

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

same Lazuli like

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I'd love to beta read for anyone too

varethane

I prefer sharing sketched pages because my scripts usually change SO much in between being written and going onto the page

like, sometimes they're outright unrecognizable

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

@Deo101 [Millennium] Same. The couple times I really wasn't unsure about a scene, I had to find someone and give them cleaned up thumbnails

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah I don't share more than sketched pages with dialogue

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

SUPER cleaned up thumbnails

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

from thumbnail to final, like they aren't the same from before lmao

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Most helpful critique for me was just someone engaging with the story. "Man I love - and -, they're such good friends, but - pisses me the fuck off" and that was my intention, but i realized it was coming on a bit stronger than i liked and changed the next scene dramatically to make a future plot point where the last character needs to be trusted feel more earned(edited)

varethane

(anyone who seriously is down for beta reading, I have 3 finished chapters burning a hole in my buffer hhnnnnggggg)

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah cause also like, 80% of the crit is usually "well this paneling is unclear" kind of stuff too

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

also i don't mind if anyone is asking me to beta read

Deo101 [Millennium]

Which you can't do from a script anyways

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

or (I don't usually do this often but)

I'm also a sensitivity beta reader too

so if you have questions about POC stuff, asian-american, er mixed-asian or mixed-black experiences

I'm willing to help lmao

but i'm just one perspective to the table

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

A lot of comments, not critiques, have influenced scenes I put later too. Things to clarify, expand, emphasize. I take every comment like that as an idea. I love knowing what the readers hope to learn.

eliushi [Keyspace]

I’m in the midst of a 180k plus word count novel beta and alphaing a couple works but once that’s all done, happy to take a look too

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

holy

Deo101 [Millennium]

Wowie

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Getting trustful beta readers i gotta say again is so important bc sometimes when asking for some, u run into betas that are there to just exploit that privilege too (tho rare) And!!!! Be respectful of ur betas on the other side of the spectrum

Deo101 [Millennium]

Exploit how?

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

like to read your work early?

eliushi [Keyspace]

Definitely pick your betas wisely

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Usually just the free ride of Knowing the Story or the opportunity to just Constantly Crit (non helpful) bc of personal reasons

Deo101 [Millennium]

Damn

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I'm imagining having someone sneak in as a beta and reveal they're a rabid toxic fan trying to influence the plot to their liking. As an absolute worst scenario

Deo101 [Millennium]

Spooky

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Yea.... There's def ppl out there that would do that THOUGH RARE again. I think that's more of like Competition in the field or spite? But ive heard it happening and its not cool

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

like people just looking for a free ticket to complain about your work?

i can see that

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

Oh yeah, I had folks like that before

after that I'm just like "thank you for your time" and block them after LMAO

Deo101 [Millennium]

That sucks :(

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

hhhhhhh

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Yea And u can always tell a sincere crit from a one that comes from a place of malice and ill intent pretty easy.

eliushi [Keyspace]

Exactly

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

oof

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Still!!! A horrible experience

Deo101 [Millennium]

:< yeah

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yeah.. I've never had anything like that happen, but wow... that's a terrifying notion

eliushi [Keyspace]

You tend to want to know your betas more than just them being a reader too. I like to think my betas are my friends and it’s a two way street where I help them too

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Some betas sign papers of confidentiality to avoid these instances of people running off with ur work too

eliushi [Keyspace]

There are paid betas but that’s business side and yeah Krispy

Deo101 [Millennium]

/stress

eliushi [Keyspace]

I don’t have them for mine

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Its scary bc we're all so small and our work is mainly for free U have to be wary of this

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I could easily see myself getting sucked into a bad situation like that I trust people too easily sometimes

but ugh... ya gotta learn

eliushi [Keyspace]

It’s good to know the risks. That being said, I think the rewards of having a good beta far exceed the bad apples. You have to set good boundaries

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Not that any of yall would do this omgjghg

Deo101 [Millennium]

Same Claire ajdjdnsdjjjdjdjdjddj

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

gonna steal all y'alls IDEAS

eliushi [Keyspace]

It’s also totally valid to say, hey something came up and I can’t beta anymore

Key is communication

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

lmao ya gotta kill me for my ideas

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Isossn Watch out for that Claire lady

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

https://tenor.com/view/laugh-giggle-mutley-dick-dastardly-snicker-gif-5552702

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Omg Eli yesssSSSSS that!!! Is important for both creator and beta to have that communication

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Oh no, my precious ideas!!!

Deo101 [Millennium]

Eh even if u steal my ideas you can never steal my characterizations!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

just steal everything and make a horrible hodgepodge of all of our webcomics, like some sick frankenstein's monster

Deo101 [Millennium]

I don't think my ideas are the best part of my stories anyways :P

Ahsjdjfjdjfjdjfjdififiididkfkdje Frankensteins webcomic

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

my ideas are relevant to my cultural background so I'm like lmao

eliushi [Keyspace]

I learned from my novel days that ideas are dime and dozen and it’s the execution that counts(edited)

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I would actually love that tbh

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Oh no id read it tho XD

Deo101 [Millennium]

Massive crossover event

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

YES

PLEASE

eliushi [Keyspace]

Super smash bros when

varethane

lmao

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

hahaha

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I really want people going into healthcare to critique my personal statement, but I won't send it to anyone because I've legitimately heard of people stealing others' personal statements and getting both people rejected

Deo101 [Millennium]

Wow

eliushi [Keyspace]

That’s scary and unfortunate

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

ooof

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

it's almost worse than stealing a story idea because you're stealing like

someone's life story??

or their personality??

it's extremely strange to me

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah that's ??????

eliushi [Keyspace]

I would consider having a mentor look over your statement but that’s veering off creator babble territory

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

oh i am doing that and very very thankful to them

Deo101 [Millennium]

Good suggestion and good point

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

After recently seeing a whole comic style/theme completely and obviously lifted from another one... yeah, the things that make your comic yours? They can absolutely be stolen whole-cloth

It's scary

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

oh no

god what even is the fun in that??

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I don't know. I really don't.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

you know what i want to spend years doing? telling a story that's already been told, except worse!

varethane

D:

Deo101 [Millennium]

I've had someone steal designs before

varethane

dpsofasdj I am so curious about these cases now aaahhh

Deo101 [Millennium]

Ppl do steal stuff. But what sucks for them is I'm the one with a brain and I can make new things

eliushi [Keyspace]

I’ve seen similar styles but have not seen a purposeful recreation of another’s style whether as impersonation or plagiarism

Haruh2 (Colony Life)

i just read a webtoon that was "inspired" by an anime with many ideas from anime too

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

It was a case where I always thought the two looked surprisingly similar, but then... yeah, you learn more things and you go AW GOD OKAY

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

this, and offensive stuff, is a case where i think unsolicited critique is 100% okay

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah, though then it's the line of "is it offensive just to me? Or overall?"

Though I guess saying "this offended me" isn't horrible or whatever

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i think of the trend of lgbt youtubers making videos making fun of anti-lgbt crap and that's a case where i'm like yeah! pile on!

You have a good point and there are cases where something is almost objectively offensive

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah, and then there are other cases where ppl are offended by how I've decided to have no homophobia where it's like "okay sure but I'm not doing anything wrong"

But yeah there are definitely times where it's like "no that's bad for sure and I'm allowed to be critical of and mad about it"

I also think there's a difference between criticizing mass media and criticizing independent media

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Wait What what omg???? Thats???? So backwards

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

well, here's an anti-critique. it offends me when someone says that being lgbt must be hard and sad all the time!

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah! I'd agree with that LOL

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

can I just be happy

as a bi woman

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

"IT'S NOT LIKE MY LIFE THEREFORE IT'S INACCURATE"

Deo101 [Millennium]

Ahdjfjskfkdkckskfksdksk yeah

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

So true tho!!

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

God, I hate that argument

Deo101 [Millennium]

Though I do think that its worth it to open yourself up to that kind of critique to potentially reach the people who do need your story

Krispy §[Ghost Junk Sickness]§

Yes def agree

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

True true

If there's a blind spot you're missing, then for sure

Deo101 [Millennium]

Well, I was meaning more like "you can't please everyone, but that shouldn't stop you from trying your best anyways!"

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Ah! also true

Deo101 [Millennium]

Like not necessarily blind spots, but more like. Some people will be mad no matter what sorta thing

Yee

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

so tru

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Yeah for sure. I've tried to cover my bases on certain things in my own work, but I'm sure if it ever gets bigger, someone will be unhappy about something.

I'm not ready for that day, but... maybe it'll come

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah. Like I said I had someone get mad at me for not having homophobia

Where it's like... Okay stop reading then cause this isn't the story for you

Actually my friends replied to then and they did kinda turn around on their thinking, I think, so that was nice!

There's something I'm bad at for the question, is replying to my comments

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

oh? :0

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

okay sometimes i've said to my friends "yo weird ass comment, right?" and they've gone and defended me like way extra hard

i'm always grateful but also a little (edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah same. .

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

too mch man

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah it's like Thank you but

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I do have some weird comments but the ones that I just kinda trying to offend me

I don't look at it till after a few months and respond to them calmly lmao

no point for me to just get rilied up for someone trying to get on my nerves but rip that's probably just me and how I deal with that stuff in irl too

I don't let my friends go after bozos lmao

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah for me I just like. Try really hard to be diplomatic, I guess? But it takes a lot of energy

When what I WANT to say is "lol read another comic then" or something but I try to think of a way to be nice

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yee I understand on that. for me I'm just say it as it is if at's the moment but for more heated comments I address them after a few months lol

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I haven't gotten any weird randos yet apart from... one legendary one But things are always calmer on your own site far away from Tapas/Webtoons

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I agree on that but lmao

I did had one angry commenter going agro for few of my pages

and I looked at it and I was like "Oh worm man"

they were just reacting to my characters being shit LMAO

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

OH WORM MAN

very good

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I ignore it tbh. I recently had someone comment "All lives matter" at the end of my comic because I included "Black lives matter" at the end. And I honestly knew i didn't have the mental fortitude to explain to them why that was so rude and missing the point.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

lol my mom is saying that stuff and i'm just like :|

okay mother

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I guess for writing for me, now thinking about it is that

on the prompt: I don't respond quick and I'm not really active much on interaction but I want to try more

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I haven't gotten any weird randos yet apart from... one legendary one But things are always calmer on your own site far away from Tapas/Webtoons

I really haven't either though! Just a few people saying mildly :| things, no hate or anything. Wt is not always as scary as its reputation

or maybe i'm in the eye of the hurricane idk

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

lol

I have had mostly good experiences too

Deo101 [Millennium]

I've had mostly good too!

I know I complain a lot but really I'm just salty and that's just a few bad things here and there

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

The comment I was thinking about earlier was just an innaccurate interpretation of characters' feelings. They thought some people had a romantic history. I wasn't going to respond but my friend went all "if you actually read the comic you would see th- " and I was thinking omg tone it down a bit

Deo101 [Millennium]

Bajsjdjekdjdkdjd

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

never underestimate the Friend Army

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I had a reader I didn't know defend me in the comments once. The original commenter was complaining about the length of my updates, and the other reader started railing on them. It was powerful lmao. I didn't even need to say anything

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Oh! same

Deo101 [Millennium]

I've had some ppl defend me or explain for me and it's like. Idk a special kind of magic ahahahah

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Oh for sure! It feels magical to know that some of your readers passionately love your work

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Update-length complainers are so cathartic to smack down. Not that I've done it, I just... like seeing it

You're getting a free comic. Made by a human with a life. Chill

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

All my comments are normal where are my weirdos

boogeymadam

someone take some of my weirdos, my comic attracts them

but not really because i accidentally gave claire one of my weirdos and i feel Sooooo bad

Haruh2 (Colony Life)

i feel im still a long way off from getting anyone with my comic

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

weirdos are contagious apparently

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

You don't have to be popular to get a weirdo

Sometimes like... you could have 1 regular commenter and that person is a weirdo

or not even a commenter, you show your work to a RL friend before posting it online, and the friend takes off their mask dramatically, and reveals their True Identity as a professional weirdo

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

for real, i was posting on SJ and had all of like a dozen followers and one guy went through and heavily critiqued a ton of my pages

Like technical stuff like paneling and flow of action?

Also said my female lead looks like a man and my animation was nauseating lol

Haruh2 (Colony Life)

heh well after i do this current update im working on, i'll be scraping how ive been doing updates and following some tutorials i finally found

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I like critique but even so that guy was :|

boogeymadam

omg noooo sorry that happened fish! D: unsolicited critics are some of the worst

DanitheCarutor

I guess that is the one thing I've been lucky with. I actually don't mind unsolicited critique, but I've never gotten any outside of one time someone corrected my character's grammar in the comments. Commentary like that is way more welcome than the occasional anonymous hate comment, and malicious article calling me a fetishist, which is all entertaining in its own way but not as easy to deal with. Now that critique is brought up I'm reminded that I need to work on how I respond to it. Like, I actually get kind of excited when someone takes the time to break down my stuff (even if it totally misses the mark with what I'm trying to accomplish), but I end up responding with a novel and sometimes it's worded in a way that sounds like I'm upset. I need to get better at keeping it short and sweet.

Feather J. Fern

I raise my hand to say I can't draw hands for the life of me still after praticing for a long time. I used all the techiques, tricks, and still my hands are just butts.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

make a universe where people have butts for hands

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

This is a really minor one and thankfully easy to correct after publishing, but: my ESL-ness shows sometimes, especially with prepositions and articles. My English isn't terrible; there's just some occasional "wait did they mean 'on' where they put 'in'..." That's on the surface level. I also can't do that 'just write the dialog and see how the characters bounce off each other' thing in English. I hadn't thought much about that until I started writing a story in Korean, and I was surprised how much easier it was to get flowin' with the dialog. I'm not toooo concerned about this one, as Get Flowin' is just one way of writing a scene. But it is a thing.

Feather J. Fern

Eightfish stop calling me out that I can draw butts better than hands okay(edited)

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

feather have fun drawing the gluteus maximus

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I see nothing wrong here

Moral_Gutpunch

I'm bettign most people here can draw hands better than me.(edited)

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

S’okay, my hand drawing is pretty bad

Feet is...also an issue

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

The best reference is the one attached to you, I always say

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

or make your so pose for you

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yes

That

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

looks back at comic and sees lots of guy characters with slender palms MHMMMM

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Hahaha

Lol

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

ahahha i have the same problem

some guys have thick ass fingers when i look at them closely omg

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yeah, everyone has pretty thin fingers in mine, because I have thin fingers(edited)

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Okay yeah not gonna lie I HAVE made my SO pose for me. Several times.

Oh yeah don’t forget

Guys can have hairy knuckles too

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I have had my SO pose his hands retroactively for me, imitating a panel I did And I was screaming inside LOL

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

this stuff makes me :00

Deo101 [Millennium]

I have hairy knucles and my hands are bigger than my dads

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Ughhhh, that's too much detail for me, Shadow

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Yoslslzlzrhlzxzzkhzhlztututs funnily enough my SO’s hands and mine are of similar length

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

For such a small person, I have really long fingers

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

reminded me of a convo i had with some friends

they sent a reference and said they thought it was unrealistic because of how much the tendons stick out

and i said, no, that's how mine look

and it was interesting seeing the differences

Deo101 [Millennium]

everyone share hands

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I mean, especially since your fingers are stretched, the tendons stick out lol(edited)

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Someone told me I have piano fingers

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

like i always think of my hands as the 'default,' because I see them the most but really there is much variation

deo has nice hands

look elegant

shadows hands look a lot like the rest of her :0

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Whhhhhhhhh

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

tall librarian

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

GJOXJPSLZLJZDXKXYOF

Yeah true XD

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

My nails are super long rn

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Holy shit the manicures

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I did it myself

Deo101 [Millennium]

thank U i have lovely hands that are big as fuck, and I can use as a ruler

because my pinky and thumb can stretch out exactly 10 inches

this cup is 10 inches tall

youre welcome

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I have stubby baby hands as well as double jointed fingers, so I'm very aware my hands aren't "average" looking. Yet if I don't pay attention, I tend to draw hands kind of like mine

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Hahahaha, Deo!!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

wow so useful i should measure my hands

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Me too tbh

Deo101 [Millennium]

I atually suggest it it comes in handy (ha) more than youd think

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i found a joint that measures exactly 1 inch and i use it so much

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah!!!

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Whoooooa

Mine goes 8 inches

Deo101 [Millennium]

my hands are fookin hyuge bro

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

Wait

8.5

YEAH YOURS ARE GIANT

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

exactly 8 inches

omg your hands are huge

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Mine stretch out to just under 7.5 inches

Deo101 [Millennium]

in yalls defense I also have ehlers danlos so theyre probably stretching more than yours too

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

I have smol hands because I am smol

Deo101 [Millennium]

tiney

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Yus

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

surprised shadow managed to find a way to measure in inches haha

Deo101 [Millennium]

she said it wrong its actually 8.5 cm

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

8.5 inches

I used a ruler

In cm it’s 21

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

she said it wrong its actually 8.5 cm

hm maybe that's why she thinks hands are hard to draw

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

LMHfhgzmzjKfhl

Deo101 [Millennium]

because she has tiny baby hands and can barely hold the pencil... yes

its all coming together

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

I will slap y’all with my tiny baby doll hands

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i'm learning so much about you all today

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Now you see my pain

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

o h wait do you play music crona?

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Uh... Not really. I've messed around on the piano, and failed at playing the French horn

Deo101 [Millennium]

LMAO

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

Playing instruments is hard for smol hands

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

rip

Feather J. Fern

My tiny hands compared to my pen XD

Also I took the picture close up and at an angle so not cone cna make fun of my writsts which are narrower than my computer mouse

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

my wrists are also narrower than my mouse, and my mouse is pretty small

Deo101 [Millennium]

mine's about the same as my mouse

Feather J. Fern

Yeah I got a pretty small mouse too, I been told by people to eat more becuase of my wrists (It's an Asian thing apparently) and I'm like "First of all rude, second of all my health is not any of your concern random lady on the street"

Cronaj ~{Whispers of the Past}~

yup

Tiny wrist solidarity!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Solidarity!

varethane

I don't have especially thin wrists but my hands are lowkey shaped pretty oddly. I only posted a photo of my hand petting a cat to FB and got a lot of comments like 'cute cat but what's with that hand????'

(it did look pretty weird from that angle. Like a noodle with a couple of noodlefingers at the end)

spacerocketbunny

Oh no Vare ;;;;;3;;;;;;;;;

[modern-oedipus]

Conflict post that got too long and title doesn’t match the rest because I didn’t plan to write so much

Please be honest: Do you think Conflict is an angsty fanfiction?

Despite the amount of sadness, suicidal tendencies, ptsd, panic attacks and even implied incest; I can’t bring to think that Conflict is angst. It’s just the story of two flawed boys falling in love in their most vulnerable moments and learning how to know themselves as they get to know each other.

It might be because I know the whole story, though, unlike the readers who know the first arc only. I mean... it’s perfectly fine however you interprwt their story. It’s not like I’m mad. I’m just surprised when I see things like “this is so sad!” I mean, yes, Ray is not going through best time of his life, but I think it is honorable. It’s honorable that he is trying his best, despite the depression blowing his mind. It’s honorable that Norman is trying to be a little honest with himself despite the chaos he is living in. It’s honorable that Emma sticks with Ray through thick and thin. It’s just characters trying their best, I don’t think it should be needlessly tagged as “angst” because I don’t think I write them that way for the sole reason of sadness. Rather, there is something I want to tell— something I want all of my readers to see.

But I can’t blame anyone since I haven’t written 3/4 of the fanfic yet. I haven’t shown you even a bit of the path I’ve already decided and mentally written for Conflict. I actually wanted to write Conflict tonight, but due to personal reasons I’m not feeling my best and despite my efforts to write Shotgun, I couldn’t write shit, and it won’t be good for my mental health to be in fiction today. Today I need my science and my facts (I say today but it’s 2.40 am and maybe I should sleep).

So, basically, I want to just SHOW by writing instead of giving leaks and stuff, but...

But...

You have no idea how much braining it takes to write Conflict.

Sure, I’m not a professional writer and there may be many better, smarter stories out there, but to me, personally, I put my best into Conflict. I give it all I have. I give it all my experience and everything I’ve learned until age of 21. It is a very condensed, artistic way of me talking about my life and experiences and observations throughout a fictional universe where it is not directly my life, but a world I try to represent in balance. So— to me, ever since I started writing first chapter I treated Conflict like my first book, I mean, sure it is a fanfiction but I thought “I’d give it a try as a hobby and if it goes well— if i can stick to it determined and if I get nice feedback and if people like it, this will give me strength to write a real book!” and BOY I got SOOO MUCH MORE THAN I’D EVER EXPECT, I even got FANARTS and people messaging me or commenting how much they personally relate or how much the fic helped them to go through bad days or how much they’ve seen themselves in Ray or Norman’s situations, and when I read those messages I can’t help but think all of you deserve to see the way Conflict builds up. You deserve to see how many times Ray and Norman are challenged, by themselves, by each other, and by society, and you deserve to see how they respond to them, and you deserve to see how much and how little of a difference it can make to have two people really love each other. Anyway, I went off topic, I was saying that, to me Conflict is a story I’m giving all I have got as the person I am today.

Other fanfictions of mine are moreee easy to write because they don’t have sovmuch in depth characters or complex plots and they are just that, fanfictions, in which I write a ship. But Conflict, man, I treat it like my real novel— which is technically one to me, though a non-profit one dedicated to the manga that really challenged me, and I have no regrets writing it or making it a fanfic. Anyway! Thing is, given the fact that Conflict is heavy, content and chapter length wise, I can’t always get to write it. I could, if this was summer, but this is collehe time and even though I really want to get going, sometimes I need to save Conflict for another time when I’m more available. Me publishing easy to write things like Shotgun doesn’t mean I’m available for conflict. The mental energy they take is A LOT different.

But it’s not in a bad-different way! I love both my fics! I have no regret over time and dedication I have for Conflict! I just, don’t have the time for it all the time, which can’t be helped.

It’s 2.49 am now. I really want to write conflict. First draft of chapter 16 was written two months ago. The scene is completed as a draft. But that scene includes a terrible pstd & panic attack about Ray and I just... /sighs/ don’t really wanna get in mood for something so gloomy? I wanna write more cute stuff like their awkward date on Shotgun... but I really want to keep Conflict going. I guess I’m terrified that given how fragile my mental health is right now, the content of Conflict might make it worse. I’d still proud to have finished a chapter. But thinking about writing about Leslie’s loss and its effects on Ray makes me shiver, because that’s a topic I’m sensitive of and although I almost never get affected emotionally from the ficsbI write (for example, I dont cry writing sad smiles neither do I smile a lot at soft scenes, I’m usually neutral and I simply enjoy act of writing itself) but the 1% chance that Conflict’s content might fuck with my mental health.. as if one last trigger before a breakdown, makes me want to stay a few steps back from Conflict and just breathe.

But I also somehow feel like I’m really available to write Conflict. I don’t know. Why do I care so much about Conflict, you may ask, since it’s just a fanfiction.

I think that’s because Conflict is the first real thing I’ve done (along with many other achievements that exactly started on the same day, July 1) after I got out of depression. It proves me that I can create something— get it visualized— and having people respond to it makes me feel connected to world. Remember the scene I wrote about Ray’s detachment to Emma’s calls? I’ve never gotten physically unresponsive like that, but there were times depression made me detached and to me that’s the scariest part... feeling detached. I feel as if I don’t post a fic for too long (assuming I’m in mood to write), or if I don’t go out/go to school/go to gym for too long, if I don’t meet up my friends or reply back to my texts for too long, I may get detached. If I get detached, I’ll think of dark, terrible stuff. If I don’t return world easily, it may easily slide into a depressed day. Or two days. Before I get back. And those one or two days are scariest because I’ve lived a YEAR worth of them, continiously, and god forbid me or anyone experiencing that. It was terroble.

So when I don’t write even when I want to, I feel as if I might get depressed. Not emotionally. But rationally— be being unable to do things I want to do EVEN WHEN I HAVE TIME AND SOURCES AVAILABLE FOR THEM would build depression up. I sm not saying right sway. Anyway. That’s why I care about Conflict. That’s why I’m staying dedicated. Dedication prevents detachment. When I’m not detached, and thankfully having readers interacting to me, I feel— or prove— that my work is reaching someone. I exist. My ideas mean something. Even if it’s just fan base, ie friends— I consider y’all friends— I mean, we are still kids, right? Most of us are 16-25 and that ain’t even real adult to me, we are just friends befriending each ofher oe so I believe, so like, even if its just with friends it means a thing. It prevents detachment. When I’m not detached I’m motivated. When I’m motivated I want to live. When I want to live I go out and do things. When I go out and do things I get motivated again. When I’m motivated again I write again. When I write I’m not detached. The cycle continues, see? Of coursw, writing is just ONE way to prevent detachment. It itself can’t carry all burden. Same goes for me regularly going to classes, going to gym, meeting up or calling my friends, etc. I’ve learnt that the more places you put a bit of yourself in, less likely you are from detachment. And that’s good. Idk, that’s why comments are important to me. It’s too personal at this point but they really, really, really help me to stay in connect.

So I want to write, so I can be happy, and I can interact, and look at my published chapter, so I can be further motivated to do things tomorrow... but it’s now 3 am and, I, if I start now I won’t be done earlier than 4.30 am and it’ll be cold and I’ll be brain dead, so for my sake, it’s better if I sleep. Msybe studying a bit before sleep will prevent detachment as well. I usually don’t EVER get detached, I’m quite successful at holding myselfnon line, but that’s bc I am careful about triggers. So... not starting conflict will be the best decision.

I don’t know how much time I’ll have in sunday but I hope it will be enough for a chapter update.

If you’ve read so far, thank you, this post went out of hand— but I can comfortably talk about it now because I’m over it, and I’m trying to rationalize the fact that me consistently updating really makes me happy and excited and having fun instead of feeling detached and it’s important and I just love my story and I hope you all feel content and satisfied when you read Conflict’s final.

[crownandwriter]

match up request

Hiii matchups are open aaaa i’m so happy ///

Okay so I’m 160 cm (5'2" or something like that I think), I’m 21 and a bisexual female, and I prefer males. (irl I’m not really talking about it tho). I have the bisexual haircut tm going on, with my natural light brown hair color. (in the summer it gets all blonde, ayy!!) 

As for personality, I would say I’m a huge people pleaser, and I always have to be with someone. Clingy I know, but being alone for more than a few hours will probably drive me crazy, I just need people. I’m not shy to go up to someone and talk to them, but I like it more when someone else initiates talking first. How much I talk totally depends on my mood and how nervous I am, at first I will be rather quiet for sure, but once that “who is this stranger” phase wears off I’d say that I talk openly and honestly about the topics we have. (Trust doesn’t come that easy though.) I love to make people laugh, and I find it easy to do. 

Come to think of that, I always help someone if I’m able to do so. I notice that people like to use me for that, but no need to worry about me because I can draw the line when something is just too much. 

I would say I am polite for as long as I can, but when I catch someone lying or mistreating me for too long, then I’m not afraid to be mean or harsh and cut them out for the better. Don’t get me wrong, if theres some issue between me and someone I adore, then I prefer to talk. “No but baby tell me whats wrong. What can I do to help. Come on let me help you find a solution.” Etc. Im a huuuuge romantic.

I would say that when it comes to romantic relationships I have my expectations, so to say. Like I just can’t fall in love if someone can’t talk about emotions openly, or gets defensive, doesn’t consider at all how actions/words would make me feel, things like that. It’s also a red flag for me if the person I’m interested in dates multiple people. Flirting with different people is okay, but on very thin ice. Also don’t do that in front of me, I get jealous hdkdjdh. To win me over, I love flowers, and theres no wrong choice in chocolate. I love someone who is consistent, honest, and can have deep conversations with, and who is patient enough to wait until I lower my guard because even recently I had my heart broken for the manieth time. But when I love, I know that I give everything and more and I will absolutely put myself second, and them first. 

As of my flaws, I am a very stubborn girl and I understand why some doesn’t like that. I can also be hot-tempered especially if I notice something that I don’t like that I listed in the previous paragraph. Sometimes I’m sassy but I keep that for the people I dont like. 

For interesting stuff, I love traveling, sometimes I go really far away for months because of my wanderlust. Ofc I prefer to do this with loved ones, so it would be cooler if they could join, if not then we just have to make it work with distance. ;)

I also like watching/playing video games, Stardew Valley for example.

I’m a second year student at uni, majoring as a History-English teacher. I like kids, they are cool. 

Also I’m bilingual, English isn’t my native language. I also speak a little bit of German, Latin, and Polish, but like I’m not even close to being fluent in those lmao. I would love to learn more though. My native language is Hungarian.

Also I love cats!!! So much!!! I have 3!!! 

Thank you so much for doing this, so excited for the match you find!<3

 I ship you with Connor!

-The two of you fit together like puzzle pieces! The things you prefer as romantic gestures are the textbook expressions Connor would prefer after all his studying. Keep in mind, it will take some trial and error for Connor to get his timing and execution down--for example, you might not always end up with your favorite flowers, or maybe he leaves a gift somewhere for you instead of presenting it personally, but Connor is nothing if not a swift learner. If push comes to shove, it’s usually a safe bet to give him the benefit of the doubt that he meant nothing by any disappointment.

-I think the ice would be broken fairly quickly between you two. Unless you’re probing him for details on a case you have nothing to do with, Connor is an open book and pretty willing to talk about anything and everything. More than likely, he approached you first. Maybe with some mundane or ridiculous social question (because even as a deviant he knows very little shame), something to establish you early on as a trustworthy confidant and source of nuanced information.

-While it takes time for him to learn to express himself, Connor is open about his emotions if only because he needs help navigating them. Whether or not you offer opinions and advice it moot, because really what Connor needs is an opportunity to say things--in order to make them real--and to know someone is willing to listen. That alone means the world; unvalidated, he’s prone to forgetting his own soul.

-Exploration and discovery is another strong suit of his. Connor wants to see the world, to know its entirety, and understand his place in it. He always wants to go back to work, of course, it is his purpose, but he is more than willing to disappear with you for a month or so at a time. He’s also going to pick up new languages in the blink of an eye, and can very easily teach you while navigating foreign cities.

-Connor, precious baby, most flirting flies right over his head. And when he does pick up on it, his very likely to outright ask someone if they’re making a move on him (although in less colloquial terms). This is pretty well likely to make someone uncomfortable or embarrassed enough to drop a pursuit, but rest assured if they prove brave enough to continue Connor will shut it down immediately. You are his beloved, and no one is going to change that.  On that note, Connor is equally susceptible to jealousy while also being less equipped to handle it in a healthy fashion. If you’re willing to be as direct in your rejections, it will do a lot to soothe any unaddressed worries he may have.

-The level of attentiveness you offer as a partner is flattering to Connor. Even being as capable as he is, it’s good to know he’s loved and cared for, and above all has someone he can lean on and share his newfound burdens with.

[eligrantbooks]

gotta vent about my day real quick

highlights of the day

> be professional ghostwriter.

Agreed to edit a 25000 word segment of a finished manuscript for a much loved regular client, who said the MC’s dialogue needed to be punched up. Easy enough. I figured it would take a few hours.

Was briefly excited to discover the manuscript was for a concept I had outlined and written several chapters for a few months ago.

Excitement rapidly dwindles as I realize that beloved client has hired another ghostwriter to write the majority of the book. Which would be fine, except this other ghostwriter has no fucking idea what they are doing.

Formatting is a god damn disaster and I spend several hours just getting the document into a workable condition.

You ever open a word doc, look at the navigation pane, and just see a wall of blank links, because someone applied the header formatting somewhere and then just hit enter a million times instead of using a page break like a civilized god damn human being?

in the middle of this forest of blank headers, actual chapter titles are scattered at random, and also they only applied the header to roughly one out of every five chapters or so, you know, just, when they felt like it. when the spirit took them. when the stars aligned. when the feng shui was right.

Also, apparently they like the way first line indenting looks but don’t know how to make word do that (spoiler: its easy as shit and takes like two clicks) so every once in a while they start manually hitting tab before every line, until they get distracted and stop for a while, luring you into a false sense of security before they remember and start doing it again.

Sometimes, when a scene transitions but they dont want to just end the chapter for some reason, they break it up with spaces. Other times, they like to use asterisks. Once or twice, just for flavor, they throw in one of those page width lines that word makes when you type a line of hyphens.

There is random highlighting in places, for no discernible reason.

Once I have the document formatted in a way I can bear to work with, I start actually reading through it. About the first seven chapters were written by the client. They’re cheesy but solid.

Then I get to chapter eight, and the suspicions i had begun to form while putting the formatting through traction (namely that whoever did this was a fuckwit) quickly crystallized into a shining certainty that my beloved client had mistakenly hired An Ass Clown.

Not just An Ass Clown, but An Ass Clown who thought 50 Shades was a beautiful love story, actually.

And they gave This Ass Clown, this literary reprobate, this paste eating remedial english mother fucker, my outline.

let me clarify that i did not expect to have sole control of this story when i produced the outline for beloved client, and I was okay with that. That’s how it works. If I’d been dead set on writing this myself, i wouldn’t have sold the outilne to beloved client. but it really rubs salt in the wound to have spent hours of my life crafting the bones of this story, which i really liked and was excited to see take shape

and then find out it has been put into the pie fondling hands

of An Ass Clown.

first hint that something has gone drastically wrong: the arrival of completely unnecessary and ridiculous fantasy names for things.

“oh we dont drink coffee in this book. it’s kofee. at least until three chapters from now when i forget and it becomes kofe. Oh, and watch out for those thornaby bushes! I’m going to misspell that one literally every time I use it! It’s entirely possible that this isn’t a fantasy name at all and I just have a small seizure whenever I try to type the word thorn bush!”

second omen of my impending anuerism: phonetically written accents which are so comically stereotypical and inaccurate that native speakers of that accent should be entitled to financial compensation, except they can’t even stick to the stereotype accurately, producing gems such as  “It’s not safe in that there pen with ‘em swine, young miss.” I don’t even know what accent that’s supposed to represent. To top it off these accent abominations are sprinkled in with all the consistency and reliability of a lactose intolerant cheese enthusiast’s bowel movements.

But this, I tell myself, moving on, is not my problem. I just need to punch up the mcs dialogue. It’ll be fine. I can do this. I just need to take this shit: “A fond idea, but I doubt I have that ability.” I joked. “I can’t imagine living without true sunshine. Even the triplet moons must shine less brightly without their sister sun.” and make it… not like that.

Except, and here’s where I start hitting the real roadblock guys

this book is in first person.

essentially, the entire novel is the MC talking.

So sure I can change the spoken lines, but her internal monologue

which is, i remind you, the entire narrative

her internal monologue is going to keep being maggie gyllenhal’s character from The Secretary if her copy of the script had been swapped with just a binder full of sonnets written by a middle school english class during the Shakespeare unit.

I get to chapter ten around three in the afternoon. I have been working steadily, with an unusual degree of focus thanks to my recent adderal prescription, since ten in the morning.

this is where shit begins to go truly bananas.

this is a YA beauty and the beast type fantasy

that good fun indulgent shit that’s almost as enjoyable to write as it is to read

usually. previously. before i had to endure this traumatic twelve hour experience.

Chapter ten is the first big “dinner” scene. this book isn’t being shy about pulling from the source material, but that’s fine. the beast “apologizes” (heavy quotes there) for having earlier used magic to force the heroine to answer his questions truthfully. They talk and almost seem to making progress for a bit, and then have a fight and storm off. Standard stuff.

Except, uh, the beast’s apology is, essentially “Yeah I shouldn’t have done that.” “so you’re apologizing?” “no but it’s the best you’re going to get so deal with it.”

and the headstrong, independent heroine who wears pants and wrestles pigs and dont need no man

just kinda rolls with this. There’s giggling.

They have their big dramatic fight, exit stage left, much angst and todo.

The next morning heroine wakes up to find the beast has (presumably) snuck into her room while she was sleeping and dumped a bunch of new dresses on her. he has also (apparently) replaced her brain with Bella Swan’s more vapid cousin.

She forgives him instantly. Because pretty dresses. She also starts calling him master, because why not. She has, over night, become the darling submissive Tumblr doms dream of.

This is not a bdsm book. I am eighty percent certain it doesn’t even include soft core smut. I’m telling you this so that you understand this transformation was not a contrivance in order to facilitate kinky sex. I have written a contrived set up to a sex scene or two in my day. This is not that. This is Not what is in the outline. I know, because i wrote the outline. It is My Outline.

No, The Ass Clown just… decided to do this. Apropos of nothing. I’m beginning to think the Ass Clown’s decision making process involves whipping pies at a comically large dartboard. And all the options on the dartboard are just “lol whatever”

By the time I get to chapter eleven, wherein our newly lobotomized heroine is “excited to wear a new frock and please the master!” - direct quote I have given up any pretense of editing dialogue and I am just straight up rewriting shit using the previous garbage as a loose outline.

I have eaten, maybe, three bites of a bowl of oatmeal all day. I have not taken a bathroom break since before noon. I have missed my deadline. Beloved client is concerned. I’m sure I can still do this, I just need a few more hours.

the words sound like truth but my soul knows i am a liar

I frantically restructure scene after scene, deceiving myself each time that it will be the last, and I will be able to get this crazy train back on the rails. But this crazy train has no interest in being on the rails. It’s a direct line no stops right off the edge of the cliffs of insanity.

The beast jumps unpredictably from homicidal rage and threats of violence to jokes and flirting as though he did not just declare her his property and threaten to rip her tongue out a few paragraphs ago. Heroine swoons and sighs and giggles regardless of whether she is dealing with Dr.Jekyll or Christian Gray on PCP.

But I’m still sure I can do this. I’ll just adjust these two full chapters to make her appropriately scared and angry, and then replace this weird conversation here with a heartfelt apology from him and an effort to do better. That will totally work. Unless, you know, it turns out that conversation I want to replace only starts out with them joking and laughing together, and turns into him berating and abusing her mid paragraph of a fuckin montage a page later! But, haha! Why would The Ass Clown ever do that? It would be completely irrational, tonally jarring and out of character! Only a seltzer slinging rainbow suspender-ed peanut butter fumbling son of six fucks would do that.

so of course The Ass Clown did that.

It’s eleven at night. I know when I’m beaten.

I inform beloved client that the Ass Clown has bested me and I can do no more.

She is very understanding.

I send her what I managed and I check the added word count while im at it

i added a full 6,000 words to that manuscript just trying to patch up this sloppy motherfucker’s lopsided prose and gossamer thin understanding of narrative structure

son of a bitch had about as firm a grasp of romance as i currently have on the trembling shreds of my sanity.

their grip on character writing could not be more tenuous if they had first dipped the target brand Hulk Hands which I assume they always have on their person into a barrel of adult-film-grade silicon lubricant and then taken their Leapfrog 2-in-1 Leaptop Touch down a waterslide.

Do you know how much I usually make for 6000 words?

$180.

Do you know how much I made for enduring this ass blasting, which I naively believed I could tackle in a matter of hours?

$100.

You owe me $80 Ass Clown. And I aim to collect.

Also I lost my damn mind for a minute and said the words "i dont know shit about fuck my guy” to my actual father on facebook

so there’s that.

[goponylover]

I Knew Him Tree Bros Fic

Based on @nellos12 Middle School AU

Evan was cleaning out his closet. He had just finished a big project for college and found himself with nothing to do. Ever since he started working at the Pottery Barn he always felt the need to keep himself busy. It was tough, balancing work and college but he managed. He was also slowly reconciling with Jared and Zoe. How they forgave him he'd never understand...

"You're trying to put your past behind you, remember" He thought.

He pulled down a stack of books from his shelf and found they were a bunch of old yearbooks. Evan smiled slightly. He had never really cared enough to want his yearbooks, no one signed them anyway, but his mom had made sure to order and keep every single one. He pulled a random one from the stack, his seventh grade yearbook, sat on his bed and began flipping through it. Within minutes he found his old class photo. He traced along the many faces searching for his own but something else caught his eye. A tall boy with tangled red hair falling into his eyes and a cheeky grin on his face.

He recognized his eyes. 

Blue with just a smidge of brown in the left one.

Could that be...?

No. No way. There was no way he and Connor were in the seventh grade together! He would have remembered! He would have...although his hair was different. A lot about him looked different. His frame was much more filled out in this this picture than the thin, lanky teenager Evan had come to barely know. His cheeks weren't so hollow, though his cheekbones just as high, and his eyes weren't so angry. The more he looked at the picture the resemblance grew.

"If I don't get an answer for this I'm gonna lose my mind!" He thought.

He hesitantly picked up his phone and dialed Zoe's number.

"Hello?"

"Hey! Zoe It's-It's me. I um...I kinda have a-a-a question for you. I uh I was looking in this old seventh grade year book and I saw something and I really didn't wanna have to ask you but your really the only person I could ask and this is gonna drive me crazy if I don't figure this out and-"

"Evan!" She interrupted. "Just...ask the question."

Evan took a breath. Zoe had always helped him calm down. Carefully he asked the question. "....Did...did Connor ever have red hair?

There was quiet for a moment and Evan was sure he had really screwed up but then-

"When he was younger, yeah. He was a natural ginger like mom. He dyed it brown in freshman year and he kept it like that ever since so...yeah."

"Oh...ok...I'm sorry."

"Don't Evan. It's okay. Why'd you wanna know?" He could hear her smile over the phone and thanked God that she was so understanding.

"...I think Connor and I might have had the same seventh grade class."

"Oh..."

Silence reigned again. Evan hated that. Those moments of silence when no one was sure what to say or even if something should be said and it was all just so horribly awkward. Evan HATED it. With a passion. He was about to stutter out something, ANYTHING just to break the tension when Zoe did it for him.

"...Hey maybe sometime...you could let me take a look at that picture? I've almost forgotten what Connor looked like with red hair."

"Y-Yeah of course." Evan answered.

Zoe chuckled. "Y'know this whole...mess...its kinda given me a new perspective on him. Made me remember the good days."

"I thought you said there weren't-"

"I was wrong." She sighed "I guess I spent so long thinking about the bad stuff...I forgot about the good. Heh. Y'know the other day I was thinking about this video interview thing dad was doing for his company and they had Connor and me stand in the background and they told us 'look like your talking, it'll look more natural'. And Connor said to me, 'So we could say anything and no one would ever know?' He he! So we were like, 'Watermelon, watermelon watermelon, crocodile, hairdryer, toilet paper!' just talking random nonsense! I had to try so hard to keep a straight face and not ruin the shot!"

She broke into giggles.

Evan chuckled. "That's...awesome."

Zoe's laughter died down and for another short moment there was silence over the line. 

"I haven't thought about that in so long...how could I...forget something like that?"

Evan felt like he should say something but all that came out was "I...I-I don't um..."

Zoe interrupted before he got too lost in his rambling.

"Evan?"

"Y-yeah?"

"Thanks for calling."

"Oh...oh yeah uh n-no problem thanks for uh...thanks for talking to me, Zoe."

"Bye Evan."

"Bye."

Evan hung up the phone and put his face into his hands. So much was coming back to him. 

"Hey."

Evan turned and saw a somber looking kid with messy red hair. He had seen him before, he was known for his hair triigger temper and most kids avoided him. One time a girl had shoved him up against the wall in fourth grade and called him a "psycho freak". She had gone home with a bloody nose and missing four teeth. And now he wanted to talk to him?!

"W-what? Me?" Evan stuttered.

"Yeah. C'mere." 

"W-why?"

"Just come here! I'm not gonna do anything bad!" He stomped his foot childishly.

Evan reluctantly approached the preteen and was almost hit in the face himself by accident as the boy stiffly held out a crumpled twenty dollar bill.

"Come to my bar mitzvah." 

Evan blinked at him. "...what?"

The boy rolled his eyes when he doesn't understand.

"Come to my bar mitzvah and you can have this."

Oh. Ooohhhh. Wait. This guy wanted him to come to his party? Why? And why was he paying him?

"I-I would come anyway."

"...Really?"

"Y-yeah."

The red haired boy stood there looking stunned, almost confused for a moment. He looked him up and down, almost like he was assessing him, before sliding the Spider-Man backpack off of his shoulders and fishing an equally crumpled invitation out of it. He handed it to Evan who took it, still not quite believing this was happening to him.

"Its this friday. The address is inside. I'm Connor. By the way."

"Uh...okay...why me? N-not that I don't wanna go! I-I I do! I was just wondering-" Evan stuttered, flailing his arms trying to communicate his point. He half expected Connor to just snatch the invitation out of hand.

"Cause I have no friends. And I know that you don't either. So..." 

That stung a bit but it was true. The two stood awkwardly, staring at each others shoes for a moment before Connor began to walk away.

"I-I have a barmitzvah coming up soon!" Evan blurted out before he could stop himself. Connor turned to look at him, confused. "W-what I mean is uh i-If you wanted to come...that'd be...uh...that'd be cool."

There was that stunned look again. "Um...sure." And with that he turned and walked away.

It was a relatively small party for such a big house. Probably because he was the only one who showed up. They mostly stayed in Connor's room, played video games and ate cake and chips. Evan was actually having a pretty good time. After a little while Connor's mom had ushered them outside to play. Having nothing else to do they started playing tag. It was a little childish and kinda weird with only two people but fun. When Connor caught up to him he tackled him, trying to roughhouse and bruised his cheek. Evan had started crying and Connor let him go immediately. He led him inside and gave him a water bottle for his cheek. "Shit! I'm so so sorry Evan!"

"...That was a swear."

"I just gave you a bruise and you're worried about me swearing?!"

"S-sorry..."

"What're you apologizing for?"

"I-I'm not m-mad. It's okay." 

They stayed inside and talked until Evan's mom came to pick him up.

Connor did end up coming to Evan's Barmitzvah later that year.

"So my m-mom's f-finshing the cake w-we could just h-hang out until then." He said timidly as they walked into his room. Connor stood awkwardly in the center of the room looking around before his eyes fell on a bin of carefully ordered comic books next to his bed. "You like comics?" He asked.

"Y-yeah! Wanna see em?" Evan perked up after being asked about something that interested him. Connor smiled. 

"Got any Spider-Man?"

"Sure! I-I like Wolverine." Evan added as he picked up a Spider-Man comic and handed it to Connor.

Connor shrugged. "He's okay."

"D-do you not have any? C-comics I mean." Evan asked.

Connor frowned. "A few. My dad doesn't like em."

Evan didn't say anything more. So he and Connor sat on the bed, read comics and talked about superheroes until his mom called them down for cake.

Connor and Evan talked consistently through seventh grade. They didn't often go over to each others houses but they saw each other at school and hung out there. So when the middle school dance came around it was only natural that they'd go together as friends. Neither of them were gonna get dates and their parents were pressuring them to go ("It'll be good for you!" They said.) so they went together. They stood off to the side in a loud, crowded, sweaty room before the noise became to much for Evan and they went outside. Evan was breathing hard trying to calm down.

"You okay?" Connor asked. 

"I'm fine! J-Just...don't like crowds...why did our mom's make us go?" Evan panted. Connor shrugged. "Cause they want us to make friends."

Evan shook his head, finally calming down a bit. "Yeah...I guess." 

"But I've already got a friend. I've got you." Connor said, pushing his red hair behind his ear.

And then Evans heart was racing again as soon as it had calmed. "I-I'm you're friend?"

"Yeah. Do you have a problem with that?" He asked, suddenly becoming defensive.

"N-no! No I just d-didn't know if you were okay y'know...with me." Evan looked at his shoes. 

Connor looked away. "I didn't know if you were okay with me."

"O-of course I am! Y-You like Spiderman and videogames and your funny and c-cool!-"

"And psychotic." Connor smirked self deprecatingly.

"...I d-dont think so." Evan muttered. Connor half smiled. "You're pretty cool too."

Evan's heart skipped a beat. There were butterflies in his stomach.

Before he could think about what he was doing he stood on the tips of his toes and pressed his lips to Connor's. The kiss was quick. Barely a few seconds. When Evan pulled back Connor's face was taken over by a shocked expression. "Oh crap! This is it! I'm gonna get punched!" He thought. But Connor didn't move. He was rooted to the spot. A blush slowly rose to his cheeks and as it slowly sunk in what he had just did Evan began blushing too. The blonde turned away and covered his face with his hands. "I'm s-so sorry!" He whimpered. Connor didn't respond. Evan summoned his courage and peeked between his fingers. Connor still hadn't moved, his hand was covering his mouth, his eyes stared straight ahead and a dark red blush was up to his ears.The muffled sound of the booming music was the only sound between them. And that's how they stayed until their parents came to pick them up.

After the dance they talked less and less. Evan asked Connor if he was mad at him, Connor had said no but the distance between them continued to grow. By the time eighth grade rolled around and Connor moved house the separation was pretty much permanent.

Evan lifted his head out of his hands and felt the tears running down his face. He knew him. He actually knew him. Connor had been his friend. He had been his first crush. Evan laid back on his bed. In a few minutes he would call Zoe again, or maybe his mom, he would explain what he had remembered, he would explain to someone who would understand. But for now he lay back on his bed and cried for a bit. For the first time he fully felt the effect of Connor's loss.

(Points if you recognized the JaidenAnimations reference!)

[tf-guru]

Basic Transformation. Tf story featuring woman -> pig, woman -> ????, man -> ????, man -> ????. MC

"What group of motherfuckers know how to pass an exam?" Derrick shouted to the group. His girlfriend Makenna replies

"It was a semester of basic biology, it's not like it was anything insane"

"I know I know but still, I'm proud of us!" Derrick respondes.

The group of four consisted of two couples, Derrick and McKenna, and Hailey and Joe. The group had just finished their biology exam and had decided to celebrate with a trip northward from their small llinois college. Derrick was the light hearted guy you'd always want to be around, his girlfriend McKenna had a bubbly personality as well but also would attempt to curb Derricks zeal.

"So you said your uncle owns a cabin up in Michigan?" This question came from Joe, a soft-spoken realist who often served as the groups leader. He was dating Hailey. Apart from Joe Hailey was probably the only genuine hard worker of the group, having been one of the biggest reasons they had passed their bio class.

"Yeah you guys are going to love it. My dad would take me their sometimes in the summer." Derrick said. The group continued driving for another half hour when suddenly, as if by magic the car came to a stall and Derrick began to pull over.

"What the hell Derrick?" Questioned Joe. Confused, Derrick responded

"I dont know? Everything seems to be fine! Let me go check the engine." Derrick, accompanied by the rest of the group got out and headed to the front of the car. While the rest of the group examined the engine Hailey inspected the area they were in. Looking ahead a shimmering sign at the side of the road caught her eye. She adjusted her glasses as it came into focus and came to read 'Pan's Haunted Museum and Auto Mechanic Shop' the auto mechanic section hung off to the side and Hailey could almost swear that part shimmered for a brief time longer than the rest. Upon finding the sign she called to the others

"Guys! Let's just head to this place, inform the owner of our problem, and be back on the road in no time?" The other two looked to Joe.

"I agree with Hailey, lets go check this place."

It didn't take long to reach the road the attraction was on. The area contained what was advertised, a small shop, a strange circus tent looking area, and a small farmhouse. When they arrived a small, hunchbacked man carrying a small bundle on his back sprang out at them. He had one crazy eye and a chin covered in black and white stubble. He looked at the gang and said

"Who might you be? Peculiar attractions have yee come to see?"

Joe, unshaken by the man's strange odd appearance or weird speech simply said

"We would like to see the mechanic sir." The man began to turn to the house and informed the group

"Hes out. I'll go call him. Feel free to check out the haunted musem over yonder."

After around fifteen minutes McKenna started to head over to the strange tent. With nothing better to do the group entered with her and found themselves in one of those cheap fair booths with "freaks of nature" including fake mermaid and pixey skeletons, magical rocks, and so on.

"Well this is... soemthing." Mckenna said, inspecting the fake mermaid.

"It really is isn't it." Derrick responded only half sarcastic. After throughly inspecting the room McKenna walked over to the far end of the room where a tarp covered an almost hidden door.

"Guys, lets head through here" Mckenna said

"Mckenna we should prob- and she's already gone. Lets go get her and make sure she doesn't get into trouble." Joe instructed as the remaining three went through the door.

The next room was a simple barn area with some hay scattered around. Upon seeing this Joe said,

"Alright, its probably just a staging area for the haunted attraction. Are you satisfied?" Mckenna turned around to retort before abruptly collapsing onto the ground.

"Mckenna!?" Derrick shouted before rushing to her side. He then continued

"She seems fine but just asleep, lets try and drag her back to the other room." Hailey went over to open the door but as she looked for the handle she couldn't find one, or even any sign there was a door at all. She was going to call out when she heard two distinct thumps behind her. She turned around to see both Joe and Derrick had collapsed on the floor. Before she could say anything she suddenly felt extremely dizzy.

As she collapsed on the floor Hailey saw the hunchbacked man before...

Hailey awoke, standing up in a completely different place. While still on a farm she was now outside standing in front of a man. The man was saying something when Hailey focused in

"You okay there? You look dazed." The slightly rotund man carried a pitchfork and wore a pair of blue overalls. Hailey replied

"W-wheres Joe and McKenna and D-" the man cut her off

"Who?"

"My-My friends we were on a vacation trip and and"

"Vacation trip? You've been here for a while. Remember the extra credit opportunity for your veterinarian class?" She did remember vaguely about applying for something along those lines but it seemed almost blurred in her mind.

"Sorry I must have just been day dreaming ha ha."

"Well, time to get to work. I'll show you where I want you today." The man led her into one of the long barns. This one contained a single area for pigs. In the opposite corner was a large mysterious container next to a dolley. The man then informed her

"Okay, I have you on trough refill duty. Fill the pig's trough with the slop and come find me in the farmhouse when your finished. Any questions?"

"No, I can do it." With that the man exited the barn and Hailey got to work.

She first went over to the barrel in the corner, lifting it onto a dolley. Bringing it over to the pig trough she undid the large plastic lid and started to pour the strange slop mixture into the trough.

"Damn, you'd think this would smell horrible but its not that bad!" She thought as the other fat pigs in the pen started to waddle over and treat themselves to the slop.

As she finished pouring a bit of slop spilled out onto her arm. Pulling the barrel back Hailey looked at the gloop on her arm and did a very un-Hailey like thing. She licked it off her arm.

For some odd reason the slop tasted amazing!

"Holy shit! That was so good! I need more!" She ran her finger along the edge of the barrel and consumed it once again. Realizing there was still some at the bottom Hailey poured it over and grabbed some by the handful.

As she ate her body reacted to the slop. Hailey always had had a thin figure but now she was teetering pass chubby. Her small breasts became bigger and her ears grew slightly larger. When she had emptied the barrel a wild hunger overtook her, causing her to go to the only other place near her with slop. The pig pen.

She entered, ignoring the mud starting to cling to her legs. First she simply grabbed slop and ate it but soon found it easier to just eat straight from the trough. With every bite she was less concerned about the other pigs and only focused on eating. She grew plumper and burst from her clothes.

"Will need to grnnt buy clothes, after grnnt eat this delicious..." she said, her feet crusting over into pig hooves, her mouth slightly pushing out into a pig snout, making it easier for her to eat more and more slop. This caused her glasses to fall off and to the side. She was on all fours. Each bite made her eyes fog slightly more and more. She didn't even notice when a tiny curled tail sprouted from her thick lower back.

The farmer walked in to see the piggish Hailey eating from the trough. He walked over to the pen and shuts the door, he calls to Hailey and says

"Damn, thought you were going to make it." Hailey turned around at this, still on all fours.

"Never seen anyone wake up from a sleep spell that fast. Well, don't worry well take care of you as a pig, Pan will be happy to see you." With that he exited the barn and made his way to the farm house.

"Me... me piggy?" Hailey sluggishly thought her famed intellect slipping by the second. Something about what the farmer said confused the pig as she shook her head in an attempt to focus but this only caused her fat cheeks to jiggle and her large ears flop out and down. She turned around to go back to the slop when she spotted her glasses laying atop her shredded clothes.

The sight of her clothes next to the other pigs made the sow-to-be strain and think hard.

"Im not pig... grrnt right? I h-h-human? Or hungry?" She let out an annoyed snort and went to touch her temples with her still human hands. As she raised them she brushed by her snout and came to an epiphany.

"I am Hailey, a human!" This jogged her human memories, her getting to the attraction with her friends, seeing Pans Museum. This realization cleared the fog from her eyes as she finally got a look at herself.

"Im grnnt, turning into a grnnt pig!" She grabbed onto the fence and with her strong will, pushed herself onto two legs. With this act of constitution some other changes receded as well. Her hooves began to soften and return to human feet, some of her fat receded until she was back to a chubby state.

"I... am... a... human!" She thought defiantly and with that she returned to a semi normal form. While still chubby her snout receded and her curley tail snaked back into herself. She quickly exited the barn and headed up to the farmhouse.

She ran to the door of the farmhouse, her new fat giggling as she went. Sneaking up to it she grabbed a shovel that was lying by the door and entered. Inside she found a simple farmhouse and peculiarly a pair of overalls and a straw hat on the ground.

"What the hell?" She thought as she moved further into the house. After a quick inspection of the house she didn't find anyone. She once again went into the main bedroom and opened the closet, hoping to find something to cover her much larger and curvier body. She opened the closet and found around twenty pairs of overalls, all different sizes.

"Thats weird, why would you need so many in so many sizes?" She went through them before finding one that would cover her new frame.

Finally dressed she headed into the kitchen, she opened the door she assumed was for the pantry and then stepped back in shock. Instead of a pantry there was a massive room akin to a warehouse with many rooms and hallways splitting off.

End of part one.

[san-bika]

Old Habits Die Hard - Lance-Voltron fic

Bring on the Langst ficlets!! Many plot bunnies were had over the holidays.

***Trigger Warning - EDNOS; disordered eating in general***

****This is a paid comission, meaning someone asked for me to write this, worked with me while writing it, and paid me for it. Please see the notes regarding this fic below from the person who requested it.****

NOTA BENE - I, figandmelon, appreciate the concern for my health but the italicized text below is not mine, as I wrote above, but is the sweet girl’s who commissioned the story. She had written a rough outline and gave a me a few paragraphs to start with. I don’t have food issues and this story is not meant to promote or romanticize disordered eating. I have written a follow-up story to this to prevent any idea that this is a good thing or that I approve this. That story was not commissioned by the girl but I felt I needed to write it. Also see the unedited text below - I had fixed the grammar but my patron has asked me to revise it to what she actually wrote! Sorry!

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I am working out some food issues. Please dont take this as any kind of endorsment of disordered eating.

Food is delicious, Good, important, and healthy. Food is one of the necissities of life and it is amazing how many ways food is prepared tasty healthy, inventive good for the environment, etc. Food makes us strong and can heal us and is tied to our all culture and heritage and family.

If you start to feel diffrently about food or struggle wth eating, get help as soon as you can and avoid a long &dangerous road.

Please know this isn’t realy a headcanon I have for Lance. I see him feeling like this, yes. But I had these feelings when I was a kid and my last years in school when I had no money to buy food and just ate whatever we threw out at work. This is my way of letting go of that. Thanks.

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Rating: T - disordered eating, anxiety

Pairings: Klance (ish)

Length: 1585 words

Tags: angst, disordered eating, OCD, anxiety

Lance glanced down at a large bowl of space gelatin, blocky and trembling from the movements around the table.

It wasn’t ideal given its green coloring or gel consistency. It tasted vaguely like a sweet chicken broth, off-putting but you got over it. It wasn’t tostones or yuca or black beans and rice but you played the hand you were dealt. Lance knew that all too well.

For all of its drawbacks, the goo sure was plentiful. It was dispensed from hoses, for quiznak’s sake. And it doubled as a hydration source.

Food was a spartan necessity for Alteans; their pleasures tended to indulge their senses of touch (shape shifting in micro and macro ways was both a talent and physically enjoyable, which Lance occasionally liked to daydream about…alone if you catch the drift) and superior sight (apparently double pupils and triple retinas and lenses gave them something like super mega HD vision and millions of colors to delight in) rather than taste. Allura and Coran usually ate the goo quickly and with oh-so-perfect manners.

Everyone was eating and chatting. He lifted the spoon and licked it but felt his throat seize before dropping it into the bowl. This wasn’t going to work. And if that was the case Lance was going to do what he did best. Make a scene.

“Princess, aren’t you feeling tired?”

Allura looked up at Lance’s raised voice interrupting her quiet interlude with Shiro. “No Lance,” she said slowly, “are you? I thought the training session had an appropriate difficulty level. Perhaps you-”

“Well you should be cuz you’ve been running through my mind all day.” Finger guns. Wink. Lecherous smile. Ugh, he was the worst.

The silence was actually painful and the brunette felt all kinds of first and secondhand embarrassment for himself. But it was worth it not to worry the others needlessly.

“LANCE, why?!”

“Really, why though?”

“Come on buddy, you’re still on this?”

Allura was speechless but the twitch in her eye spoke volumes. Coran looked torn between laughing at the pun (he loved puns, dad jokes, basically anything that would make the average person or alien groan) and shaking his finger at the disrespect.

Pidge stood up with her bowl and laptop balanced in some unholy manner, her nose curled in disgust. “Well.. I’m off to my room. If I stay here for another of Lance’s pick up fails, I’ll lose my appetite and I’m a growing teen.” She hurried off still muttering. So quick to judge, Pidge?

Lance felt the red flush of shame creep up his neck. But if this was going to work, he’d need to go all in.

“Aww come on guys! I can’t be the only who sees that Allura and I are soulmates. I mean she’s like my catnip! Uhh, lion nip?”

A chorus of groans and complaints was his response. Allura was aghast, forming words without speaking, clearly ready to unleash fury on the unfortunate paladin.

But with perfect timing Coran escorted her away, clearing their perfectly clean bowls and sending an apologetic half-smile to the blue paladin. “This way, Allura, some space will do us all a world of good so we can come back and practice our flight drills in excellent form tomorrow. Space will clear our heads, isn’t that right Lance?”

The pilot wanted to laugh at the redhead’s twitching mustache but couldn’t. He just summoned an awkward smile/grimace and turned to see how well his plan was working.

Keith had started in on his second bowl of goop, eating so quickly that Lance had to look away before his stomach turned. Guess that desert shack didn’t have an etiquette book after all.

Hunk had scooted off to start dishes in the kitchen. He didn’t handle conflict too well. Man, Lance would have to do something really nice for him to make up for this ridiculousness. Maybe he could work with Pidge to set up some solo interspace video chat time with his alien rock girlfriend….

Shiro was already gone. Huh. He must actually have a crush on Allura and truly not be able to hear even the lamest of pick-up lines meant for her with any modicum of dignity. Or he must have wanted to kill Lance for the sheer audacity of hitting on the last known survivor of her species while aware it was an unrequited crush.

Yeah, Lance didn’t feel great about that either but he didn’t exactly want to tell the other Paladins that he couldn’t eat sometimes.

After Keith had downed the last of his food, he pushed his chair back and strode off with that permanent aggression to clean his bowl.

Lance noticed the faint eye roll and scoff as he walked past him and added that to all the other chips on the shoulder. Well, he was sitting with his spoon up and mouth open like some elementary school kid. He tried to adopt a more effortlessly cool pose but the hothead had crossed the room already and had his back to him.

That went well. Lance McClain, ruiner of dinner parties and cargo pilot extraordinaire.

He wilted a little as he felt the exertion of the day’s exercises. He hadn’t managed much that morning either. He needed to eat but he just… couldn’t.

Every time he lifted that spoon, he wondered if Javier had eaten dinner yet. Or if he’d gone to bed after drinking a cup of water so the little ones, Yany and cousin Carlito could. If Uncle Jorge had found a workplace that would hire him despite his disability. If Mama was taking care of herself.

Had Elisa managed to find a summer job to help Mama stretch her stamps? Were the food pantries any good this summer? Pidge and Hunk had figured out that it was sometime in July, Lance couldn’t remember. All he knew was his siblings didn’t get supplemental meals from school in July. In summer, they were on their own.

He lifted the spoon again but his growling stomach started roiling with nausea. He lowered the spoon. Of course he could have food whenever he wanted. Of course it would be like that.

Despite being the shittiest person in his family, he had found a nice cushy place where food was so plentiful, it wasn’t even a thought. People could complain about it. And even if he hadn’t found Blue, if he had been at the Garrison, he would have had three perfectly rationed, calculated, and healthy if tasteless meals plus snacks whenever he wanted.

Getting into the Garrison had been a promise. He would make it out and provide for his whole family. Even those teasing cousins who gave him a hard time about how tall and lanky he was.

They all had sacrificed enough that his absence was a loss. Mama and Papa had needed to work so hard just to pay for the testing. Now that he had effectively dropped out, all his studying and scholarships, all of his family’s money, stretched so thin with so many needs, it was all for nothing.

If he at least had dropped out and gone home, he could work. He could contribute. He could make Javier and Mama eat at least. Here his destiny was to save the world or die trying but at his family’s expense.

Always at his family’s expense.

Lance slammed the table with his closed fist, willing his frustration and other more painful things to dry up. He swallowed to prevent the nausea from making him sicker but feelings of bitterness and shame drew more tears out of him.

He dropped his head over the full, jiggling bowl. Twisting his hair between his fingers, he imagined it with cartoon eyes and a smile but it didn’t help.

He was a Paladin of Voltron. He needed to be strong to defeat Zarkon and help his family. He needed to eat.

Lance lifted the spoon from the table. He choked down a bite and clamped long brown fingers over his wide mouth. He managed to keep it down but it was a close thing.

Rather than better, he felt worse, like he had run a marathon without water. His throat burned as if the space goo was stuck in it. A headache came on around his temples. His eyes watered.

Had Mama even eaten today? Would she? Could she? Was there even food in the house?

Lance rose quickly. Thick emotion warped the air around him and he swallowed hard against his sadness. He threw the space goo in a trash receptacle and left the bowl on the table. It was a dick move but would throw off any suspicions for now. And Hunk, bless his sweet angelic nature, wouldn’t hold it against him.

Normally he would share his food with the mice but they were too damn chummy with Allura and if they told her that he skipped a whole meal, he’d definitely be questioned.

And at this point he wasn’t sure what would help him, if anything even could.

He loped off towards Blue in a haze, one hand firmly clenched around his mouth and the other around his aching stomach. He missed his mother terribly and his lion was the closest thing to her. Just sitting next to her was all he wanted.

Lance didn’t see Keith walk out from the kitchen doorway and pick up his bowl. The red paladin’s face was neutral but his keen eyes were lit with worry and disbelief.

[topsolarpanels]

Against Enormous Odds, A Chinese Official Is Trying To Green Up His City

RIZHAO, China Facing South Korea across the Yellow Sea and beyond that peninsula, Japan, this resort town takes its name from an old poem ri chu xian zhao , orfirst to get sunshine. These days, three million citizens enjoy that early sunshine, along with the beach, sea breeze and a swelling array of amenities, including modern apartments outfitted with televisions and hot water.

The men and women who govern Rizhao have another hope for the smaller city: to make it one of the first in China and the world to spew no more greenhouse gases than the city can get rid of through technology fixes and planting trees. Much of the citys greenhouse gas currently comes from coal burning and cars.

The city will try to go carbon neutral, says Fan Changwei, a middle-aged lawyer who has worked his way up the leadership ladder at the local environmental protection bureau and who has helped lead this seemingly quixotic attempt. He resembles one of the tall, thin smokestacks on the local coal-fired power plant, only he burns through as many cigarettes, rather than coal, as time permits.Taking a deep drag and exhale, he adds, I dont know when we will succeed, but we will move in that way.

Rizhao is just one of a handful of places globally Copenhagen in Denmark, Arendal in Norway, Melbourne in Australia and the entire country of Costa Rica, to name a few that even attempt to balance their daily exhaust of carbon dioxide, the same greenhouse gas inhaled out by Fan amid all that cigarette smoke. The local Communist cadres who run this city believe that leading a transition to a cleaner economy will help drive economic growth and their careers.

Rizhao is growing, like most cities in China, constructing skyscraper after skyscraper and apartment block after apartment block amid the long, low houses that make up its older homes and industries. The local mayor went on to become vice governor of the entire province of Shandong due to his success in creating what is known as a circular economy, which could be Chinas answer to the challenge of climate change and perhaps a style to build an enduring Anthropocene.

To save money is very important, Fan notes, as the purpose of explaining sorts.

The circular economy is a simple idea but hard in practice: no waste. The residue of one process say, attaining citric acid for soda at the Jinma Industrial Park turns into the feedstock of another.

The grainy smell of sour mash wafts throughout the park, and a whirring roar fills the air. The key component is a special biodigester from Holland, basically an industrial belly for turning corn and sweet potatoes into citric acid, stinky water and residual grains. The wastewater ponds exude methane, most to be captured as what the Chinese engineers call marsh gas.

This industrial stomach makes 25,000 cubic meters of marsh gas per day, and there are 10 similar enterprises throughout the small city. The marsh gas get burned to run six generators pumping out electricity. The residual heat from that process is used to warm local buildings. As for the leftover bits of corn, sweet potato and cassava, that becomes feed for the animals.

Encouraged by government subsidies that encompass at least half the costs of installation, more than 80 such biodigesters in the villages around Rizhao help households that are fueled by pig or fox excrement. Some of the marsh gas is burned in the ubiquitous greenhouses that grow veggies, both to keep the temperature warm and to kill off pests. In the future, the hope is to stimulate so much of this marsh gas that it can even be used as a ga for the vehicles multiplying on Rizhaos streets.

The technology of compressed marsh gas is not too difficult, Fan says.But it is very expensive. A more efficient stave alone will set a peasant back at least 1,500 yuan( about $230 ), a significant portion of a peasant familys annual income.

The circular economy is an old idea in China, as old as the human dung gatherers who sold night soil from the cities to the farmers as fertilizer for the fields. Organic fertilizer is much better than chemical fertilizer, Fan notes, adding that it is used to grow the regions famous tea, some of the northernmost tea grown in China.

Kevin Frayer via Getty Images

Smoke billows from a large steel plant at an unauthorized mill in Inner Mongolia, China. Nov. 4, 2016.

The circular economy is a synonym for thrift an old-fashioned value everywhere in the world. After all, the poor dont produce much litter, as anyone who lived through the Great Depression can attest. Economics are important, as Fan sets it. In this sense, aluminum cans may be the ultimate object of the circular economy: endlessly recyclable with no diminution in quality and saving much of the mega-energy required to create aluminum from bauxite ore. Everything else is a bit more complicated.

People like Fan drive Rizhao toward being carbon neutral through a mix of using less energy to produce more, recycling the wasted energy of one process to drive another and get energy from cleaner resources like replacing coal with solar, wind, marsh gas, even nuclear. The small cities economy is built around the cargo port and manufacturing: electronics and electrical systems for vehicles, furniture, newspaper, textiles and food processing.

Fans workday consists of enforcing the law issuing fines for corporations that pollute too much and sometimes even shutting them down. But it is all within reason because helping peasants deliver themselves from poverty via the city remains Chinas overall strategy: political stability through economic growth.

As the joke runs, the pollution haze is a deliberate plot to hide China from the snooping eyes of American satellites.

On a recent visit to Rizhao, Fan and I drive from the Qingdao airport to the city on a highway lined with newly planted poplar trees. Trees are also good for carbon neutral, Fan find, smiling.Government officials had to learn the hard way that planting all the same trees left them vulnerable to death by a single pest. Now the governmental forces plants a variety, albeit still in the same rigid lines easily distinguishable from the random scattering of a more natural forest.

Earth movers and mechanical shovels have dug into the hillsides here in the quest for ever more material for cement to build smooth roads or concrete foundations elsewhere. Geologic features seem to be collapsing in on themselves, and there are no trees on those distant mounds. Erosion is everywhere.

The local crops are largely wheat and peanuts, Fan says. Everything is cultivated in tiny, human-size rectangular plots. It is the number of land a single peasant household can work and the hallmark of this deeply worked-over landscape. Lonely smokestacks poke up out of the fields where peasant kilns churn out bricks. In all the kilometers between the airport and Rizhao, there is not one centimeter of land unmarked by human hands, except perhaps some of the stone outcroppings on the mountains.

China has become an enthusiastic those participating in globalization, kicked off by the British Empire and brought to its current state of interconnectedness by the United States. The road signs on these gleaming new highways are in both Chinese characters and the Roman alphabet that spells out English words. Globalization induces Chinas air pollution whether the carbon dioxide that invisibly warms countries around the world or the tiny particles of soot that smear the sky some of the worst in the world. On certain days, the air in Beijing has approached 500 points on the air quality index. In the U.S ., even a forest fire be included with smog from cars and haze from power plants rarely sends levels as high as 300. This is the world-famous airpocalypse.

Athwart that pollution apocalypse stands Fan. For years before carbon neutrality became the hip new thing in Rizhao, the goal was to tamp down on dust and sulfur dioxide and eradicate water pollution. Fan and his colleagues have so far failed to do much of that. It is not easy, Fan tells of environmental protection in general in a land trying to grow as fast as possible as an economic giant and a global superpower. We will try. And was also able to do … something.

Stringer Shanghai/ Reuters

A laborer employs a machine to stir crushed peanuts at a workshop in Rizhao. Dec. 11, 2010.

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Modern Beijing is burning, its sky choked with smoke that turns the afternoon into dusk. The tang of combustion even filters into the airport terminal, which is shaped like a mythical dragon without doubt a fire-breather. The sweet smell of diesel and gasoline in the parking garage arrives as a relief.

The tang from all that pollution may be the taste of growth, and the peach haze of a morning the looking of progress. This is the price of an economic project that has enabled hundreds of millions of peasants to lift themselves out of lifetimes of poverty. In 1981, the majority of people in China lived on less than $1.25 a day. By 2008, some 660 million Chinese or two times as many people as live in the entire U.S. had worked their way out of such extreme poverty, helped by a nominally Communist government and their own pluck.

My flight from the U.S. to China was much more than a crossing of the international date line. I traveled more than a half-century into the past, when a murderer smog killed 20 people in Donora, Pennsylvania, and the skies of Pittsburgh were dark at midday. If there is another way to grow rich, China has not find it. China is currently living in the future past, a Dickensian steampunk sci-fi drama in Mandarin, complete with high heels and disfigured orphans.

Life goes on in Beijing under this empire, like the others before it taxi drivers gamble and giggle over cards, old people murmur as they shuffle mah-jongg tiles. Kids play in the street, and in the ancient alleyways known as hutongs, gangs of small boys already smoke cigarettes. The change is the power lines leading into the hutongs and the brilliantly painted majestic doorways, even if weeds poke up here and there among the roof tiles of the rapidly gentrifying area.

China is living in the future past, a Dickensian steampunk sci-fi drama in Mandarin, complete with high heels and disfigured orphans.

There are ambitious but unsustained attempts to build an eco-city in China in Huangbaiyu, Dongtan and Tianjin. Perhaps first among these was Dongtan, or East Beach, on the alluvial island of Chongming, across the mouth of the Yangtze from Shanghais Pudong district. And although a bridge and a passageway connect Chongming to Shanghai , no city yet troubles the marshes there, which is good for the birds that use them as one of the few remaining landing spaces in all of China.

This city-in-a-marsh promised to produce little trash thanks to its circular economy, rely on the plentiful sea breezes for power and permit only those vehicles that spew no CO2 from their tailpipes, such as hydrogen or electric cars. Hundreds of pages of plans, maps, charts and even a glossy coffee table book laid out, in great detail, the inner workings of this ecotopia: energy-efficient buildings clustered close together to promote walking among the 50 residents per acre, organic farms arrayed around the new development for food and a power plant fueled by rice straws that would also heat homes. Even the birds would find a comfortable home among the canals and ponds that brought the surrounding wetlands into the citys design itself.

Meant to be completed by 2010 when Shanghai hosted the World Expo, Dongtan instead remains a dream and a marsh, done in perhaps by the corruption arrests of its local government and developer champions or perhaps by the impracticality of its fantasies. Dongtan is a Potemkin village that never even get built.

MCT via Getty Images

An artist’s rendering of Dongtan, China’s unbuilt eco-city, showing micro windmills and low-lying buildings that use special thermal technology to save energy.

Rizhao is also an ecological civilization trial site. The seaside city with its enclosed marina is essentially a tourist community. Last year, 27 million Chinese, primarily from inland provinces, visited to insure the sea. But no one is accounting for all the carbon dioxide the tourists from Anhui, Henan, Hubei and Shaanxi emitted getting to Rizhao.

Still, all those tourists mean the instance of Rizhao could spread. Perhaps the Anthropocene should be renamed in Mandarin, or Sanskrit. The developing men burden will be nothing less than saving the world.

In 2004, the city that is first to get sunshine used said sunshine to heat water. The Shan Shui hotel( Mountain Water) installedsolar hot-water heatersfrom Tsinghua University on its roof. Glass tubes with black carbon inside assimilated the suns hot and transferred it to the water.

Now such solar hot-water heaters are the law, and regiments of them line the rooftops of every new house. Natural gas is cheap but sunshine is free, even if the systems expense at least 4,000 yuan( virtually $600 ). Plus, Rizhao gets a fair share of it 260 days of sunshine, according to Fan and the local weather bureau. This is why we install solar energy, he explains. Still, on the day of my visit to Mountain Water hotel, it is raining in the sunshine city.

Sunshine to electricity might be key to a world that burns less coal. China is the home of much of the worlds photovoltaic production. More than 500 companies compete to churn out solar technology, and the country has already seen the rise and fall of at the least one Sun King.

Even as solar gets cheaper, however, it is still too expensive for most Chinese. If you want to generate solar energy, the costs are very high, Fan explains. But in the future we can use this technology. That future can be seen on some of Rizhaos lampposts, which use solar energy to light up the beachside at night.

Rizhao also now has over a million solar hot-water heaters, which line the rooftops of new buildings.Glass tubes with black carbon inside assimilated the sunshine hot and transferred it to the water. Fortunately, Rizhao gets a fair share of sunshine: 260 days of sunshine, according to Fan and the local weather bureau.

The developing men burden will be nothing less than saving the world.

Like the imaginary Dongtan and all-too-real pollution of Tianjin, Rizhao has a plan: the ecological city construction plan authored by members of the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development. It is not just clean energy or the circular economy. A World Bank loan enabled the city to build a world-class sewage treatment facility, with chlorination and reverse osmosis intended to build the water discharged into the sea clean or at the least cleaner.

Rizhao is torn between tourism and industry, especially the port. The most polluting industries have moved from the city to the surrounding countryside. They impinge on the villages but allow Rizhao to inch closer to carbon neutral. In any larger scheme, however, there is no away to throw away to; the pollution that spews from mills on the suburbs of town will eventually impact the city. In some sense, climate change is the new front in a war between local government focused on growing local economies and the central government focused on preserving social stability at any cost.

Fan is not like other officials, according to Frank, an affable young man who accompanies me on my second visit to Rizhao. Frank is his adopted English name, which he selected because he wants to be frank. Twenty-eight years old, he shelters his broad face under a baseball cap. He has a big, easy laugh that exposes the white teeth that brand him as a nonsmoker, a relative rarity among Chinese men. He complains of being too fat.

Trained in science, Frank now works on history and literature at a small press, simply because there are too few tasks for physicists. He is an ardent believer in free markets and Austrian economics as well as being a Communist Party member, voicing near constant criticism of his own party. Such is modern China. If you think you have big government in the U.S ., come here, Frank says.

VCG via Getty Images

Yoga on the beach in Rizhao. Oct. 6, 2016.

The newest part of Rizhao is a former lagoon that now hosts luxury hotels, a marina and a venue for the local bourgeoisies weddings. In only four years in the early 2000 s, Rizhao filled in nine square kilometers of lagoon, reshaped it and built on it.Thats more than one-quarter of Rizhaos entire sprawling extent.

That is far from the only beneficial reuse of waste in this would-be circular economy. The fly ash left over after the coal is burned in the local power plant becomes brick, cement and even cinder block, used for the continuous apartment construction. Waste even becomes energy, burned immediately in Honolulu, for instance, where landfill space and gasolines are both at a premium.

Yet still there is more garbage on the land, in the water, in the air. Air pollution dust and soot rises off the North China Plain like steam from a lake in wintertime. The Great Pall of China wholly obscures the country, turning the sky a dull amber or blue blur, depending on the type of pollution.As the gag runs: The haze is a deliberate plot to hide China from the spying eyes of American satellites.Too bad it cuts short the lives of the Chinese themselves and travels all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S ., the same route as the tidal wave of imports whose fabricate partly made it.

Some of that haze is pollution from the thousands of coal-fired power plants and millions of cars that China has added in the last few decades of unparalleled economic growth. But some of it is older: dust blown off the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts, great arid swaths advancing on cities like Beijing and held back merely by one of the largest geoengineering projects on the planet, the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program. In 1978, China began planting trees to hold back the desert; the goal is 100 billion trees serving as a Great Green Wall across a 4,500 -kilometer belt of northern China. Its efficacy remains in dispute, but no one can dispute the fact that the Chinese, when they do something, do it big.

Heedless growth leaves a long-lasting mark.

To diminish the mountain of coal burned every day to power China, the country is planning other huge engineering projects: a hundred or more nuclear reactorsand the largest wind farmsand dam in the world. The apparatchiks who operate China were often developed as technologists, so engineering answers seem to appeal to them. In some routes, it is reminiscent of 1950 s America and the can-do optimism of scientism the idea that science can be applied to solve social problems.

China is being run by the same triad of military, industry and science professionals of progress who ran the U.S. in the halcyon days of I like Ike. Xi Jinping trained in chemical engineering, Hu Jintao in hydroengineering, Wen Jiabao in earth moving. Scientism run amok also the dams that litter the western U.S. not all of them necessary, a mistake China is currently repeating as local governments rushed to procure the jobs and money available for such projects.

All these nuclear power plants, wind farms and dams are the only hope China has to keep its promise to stop using the atmosphere as an open sewer. That may demonstrate a swooning hope. As Frank tells of the massive build-out of nuclear power plants, Anything built in China cannot be safe. Too much corruption.

That goes for the dams too and the wind turbines often spinning to no purpose. At Daya Bay in the south, Chinas first nuclear reactor, a viewing platform shows where the steel bars necessary to reinforce the containment ship were left out, forcing a rethink and modifications to buttress the reactor boat in some other route. The concrete wharf stands as a testimony to transparency perhaps but also to the kind of corruption that allows a construction firm to undercount the number of steel rods necessitated or to claim so in a day and moneysaving step. The very first reactor the Chinese ever constructed, at Qinshan in Zhejiang Province, had to be torn down and rebuilt because of flaws in the foundation and flaws in the welding. And the former head of the China National Nuclear Corporation has been sentenced to life in prison for corruption.

Kevin Frayer via Getty Images

A Chinese laborer stands near a furnace at an unauthorized steel mill on Nov. 3, 2016 in Inner Mongolia, China.

Heedless growth leaves a long-lasting mark. China is repeating the coal-to-gas blunder, setting up conversion facilities and power plants that convert coal to natural gas, given that the country has lots of coal and wants natural gas in order to cut down on all that choking smog and soot. In addition to a problematic tarry residue, turning coal to gas has the downside of increased carbon dioxide emissions, even worse than only burning the coal directly. This is not the only recurred mistake.

Chinas chemical industry turns rivers all the colorings of the rainbow, and a flotilla of dead animals is not an uncommon sight in the waterways. The rivers operate black sometimes thanks to such effluents, tells Ma Jun, one of Chinas preeminent environmentalists. Most such polluting runs unpunished, and those who do draw the ire of the local, provincial or central government pay penalties that are a small fraction of the profits gain access to the pollution. It is increasingly difficult to find clean water, Ma told me.

Some 300 million people nearly its population of the U.S. still have no access to clean water, and two-thirds of Chinas booming cities do not have enough water of any kind, a condition the government calls water-stressed. Rivers are dry mudflats with smaller rivulets engraving a track through the muck or pooling in fetid dead end. The central government is building a massive viaduct to siphon water from the Yangtze River and bring it north to Beijing and beyond, a megaproject called the South-North Water Diversion, which forced 300,000 people to move out of the route. Meanwhile, waterless urinals thank patrons in English for protecting water, which is a scarce resource on Earth.

No one can dispute that the Chinese, when they do something, they do it big.

Still, some lessons have been learned. Shanghai Chemical Industry Park is building a swamp to deal with its wastewater, cleansing chemical contamination in a habitat built for marsh life like frogs , not people.

I sit for hours in Shanghai traffic to reach this small fake wetland on the suburbs of township. Trees are everywhere. There is toad sung, there is birdsong. Dragonflies perch on the edge of marsh grass as towering gust turbines spin slowly in the distance. Crabs scuttle beneath the wooden bridges, and tadpoles join fish for a swim in multiple ponds. The polluted water flowings in at a rate of 22,000 cubic meters per day, expends a week meandering through the 30 -hectare artificial swamp, building the algae bud, and comes out cleansed, prevented from oozing into the ground by a plastic liner that pokes up here and there like a partially buried garbage bag.

On one side of this water park is a village, and village life sneaks in too, like the guy cutting through the inundates wooden paths on his motorcycle and local farmers hoeing simply over the wall. As everywhere else in China, there is a farm on any available piece of comparatively flat land, which includes terraced mountainsides from Liaoning to Yunnan. Styrofoam, plastic wrappers and discarded cans of Suntory beer litter the verdant pools of this custom-built inundate. On the other side is the China Petrochemical Research Institute, which contributes much of the fouled water. The rest comes from the litany of chemical companies in the area: Air Liquide, BASF, Bayer, CITIC, DuPont, Fluor, Hagemeyer, Huayi, Mitsui, Sinopec, 3M. The problem is not a lack of technology or a lack of money; it is a lack of motive , not unlike the worlds absence of will to combat climate change.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Water runs past a petrochemical plant at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park. May 29, 2007.

On a bus trip-up back to Rizhao with Frank, we pass Mount Tai, one of the most sacred mountains in all of China. Smog renders it virtually invisible, even though this is technically a blue sky day for the area surrounding Jinan. Tiny peasant plots encompass the countryside, interspersed with the occasional village, some with the fancy doorways on homes that denote new wealth, and some still poor. Franks obligations for the Communist Party include working in one such poor village, which would really like a sewer system, for which Frank has no funds. Without funds, poverty alleviation is all window dressing.

On arrival, Frank and I share a taxi from Rizhaos bus depot to our hotel that runs on a tank of compressed natural gas so big there virtually isnt enough room for luggage. Fueling up necessitates driving past a line of waiting automobiles and backing into a refueling station trunk first. On a per-kilometer basis, natural gas is cheaper than petroleum in China, even though the gas comes all the way from central Asia or Russia. The U.S. may talk about an all-of-the-above strategy on energy, but the Chinese truly live it.

Everywhere there are more and more cars, growing by 20 or even 30 percent per year in some cities, including Rizhao, precluding any hoped-for carbon neutrality or even smog reduction. Frank believes carbon neutral might be possible in some wealthy Scandinavian country like Denmark. But not in China. There is actually too much growing to do.

I meet Fan at a seafood eatery. In some routes, he seems even younger than a few years earlier, with his buzzed hair and skinny physique. The smoking helps keep him thin, perhaps , now that he no longer bikes to work. He claims to have gained 5 kilograms, but I cannot see it. While we feed, the ubiquitous television broadcasts the doings of Xi Jinping and the central government, as they war on corruption, unrest and pollution.

The problem is not a lack of technology or a lack of money; it is a lack of motivation.

Fan is now working on total pollution control, though that totality apparently does not include carbon dioxide. He admits that there is no way even to constrain any kind of pollution during the present epoch of growth and industrialization. Maybe someday, he says, breath a cloud of smoking from yet another cigarette. But not now.

So many cleanup endeavours have fallen by the wayside in China over the early years of the 21 st century: green gross national product, green growth and now, perhaps, carbon neutral. These days the talk is of how growth will be sacrificed for clean developing, but there are few signs of clean air and plenty of new coal-fired power plant, port expansions, building cranes and goods from cars to solar panels churned out by mass-production lines.

Just as Frank cannot get the money for sewers in his village, Fan cannot get the money for pollution-control technology. Mills cannot afford to install their own pollution controls and, as everywhere, environmental protection is resisted or, as Fan sets it , not all the owners are cooperative. They want to play sneaky, he says, though emissions-monitoring technology and new regulations including penalties may help with that. And factories are much easier to handle than, tell, the volatile organic compounds released at the citys growing number of gas stations.

The next day daybreaks peach and clear over the East Sea. Fan comes to visit Frank and me at our hotel for another friendly chat. Fan touches his ear as he tries to remember the past or some arcana from his pollution control battles. He leans back in his chair and remember a time when the tallest building in township was merely five stories. Now several reach 40 narratives or more thanks to investors from other provinces. My taxi driver thinks all the new construction is just a hiding place for ill-gotten gains from mining. Miners get cancer while proprietors get rich. The coal afflicts everyone from village households that lose fathers to Beijing residents inhaling fouled air that cuts short their lives.

Villagers from the surrounding countryside are ushered into Rizhao , now swollen to 3 million people. And yet tall apartment buildings avoid the intensive use of solar hot-water heaters, because the available roof area is just too small for all those apartments. People leave for work before the sun has even risen, too early for the solar heaters to have warmed up their bathwater.

Barcroft via Getty Images

Workers install solar heaters on the roof of a house in Rizhao. Dec. 21, 2009.

In Fans youth, the air was much better than now. Yes, Rizhao has always had marine haze, but it was different from the gray-tinged smog of today. However, he cracks a window for pollution in other words, so he can smoke. My friend Fan no longer cares to discuss carbon neutral plans, or even climate change, genuinely. Instead, he emphasizes what improvements there have been on his watch in air and water pollution.

That afternoon, Fan comes back with a driver in his special 0 0 government license plate auto to give me a VIP tour of the port, the seashore and other points of local interest. The first stop is to show how tall builds can still utilize solar hot-water heaters by hanging them off their balconies. There are bigger yachts in the marina, and any algal buds have been tamped down by the crisp autumn weather. Better than Qingdao, Frank tells. A bride wearing a brilliant red wedding dress has her picture taken in front of the glamorous boats.

On the other side of town, a Great( Plastic Netting) Wall has been built around the entire port at great expense to hold iron ore and coal dust from blowing into the city. Water trucks prowl the streets, spraying to keep down any dust that does escape. To cut down even further on dust, trucks carrying grime have netting on top, something that never happens in other cities, according to Frank. There are even a few trucks powered by liquefied natural gas to decrease the soot from diesel burning, a problem that plagues ports the world over. A giant conveyor belt is being built to move iron ore and coal from the port and eliminate 20,000 truck trip-ups per day, according to Fan.

To get to dinner after the tour, Frank, Fan and I stroll through Silver River Park. The Silver River is the Chinese name for the Milky way, our home galaxy. The park is really an old quarry transformed into a pond and greens dimly lighted by solar lanterns. The real Milky Way is invisible, but I do actually spot a superstar in the sky, a first for me in urban China. Rizhao differ from the gray-tinged hellscapes of, say, rare-earths rich Baotou and smog-socked Beijing. But why?

So many environmental cleanup endeavors have fallen by the wayside in China over the early years of this century.

The edicts of both governments are only as good as those following them. Take the war on pollution. Rizhaos coal-fired power plant has pollution-control technology for two of its four units. Controls for the sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain are slowly being added. The six local kilns that churn out cement have technology that cuts down on the smog-forming nitrogen oxides that would otherwise go up the smokestack. Small boilers are being shut down across the province in favor of big, efficient ones like those at the big power plant. Fan describes all this as very tiring work.

Even with the controls, however, the issues to remains whether the technology even gets turned on. That decision has more to do with the powerful power company Huaneng and its relationship with the central government than anything the municipal government might command. Plus, the power plant must provide the citys heat in wintertime despite all those solar hot-water heaters.

There is no immediate prospect for Rizhao or even Shandong Province to switch away from burning coal to burning natural gas to construct energy, even if fracking comes to China in Sichuan Province or elsewhere in the west. Imported gas from Russia is simply too expensive.

There is not enough marsh gas to light a city. And then there is the fact that even with such controls at big industrial sources, the burgeoning fleet of cars builds the point moot. So although the amount of pollution from Rizhaos mills, power plants and port has gone down thanks to Fan and his colleagues endeavors, the air quality[ is] a little worse, Fan admits. The main problem may be vehicles. Such vehicles are impossible for Rizhao to control, Fan adds, taking another drag on a cigarette.

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A fisherman on stilts nets shrimp in Rizhao. Oct. 13, 2015.

Some of the necessary work in China is simply to imagine a different future, cities built better, happy people, life beyond the daily grind. The Chinese people can certainly attain the future they want to see. A key to that will be seeing through illusions.

Rizhao is not actually the first city to get sunshine. Japan has it beat, and by international rules, Apia, the capital of Samoa, is the true first city in the world to get sunlight each day. But perhaps Rizhao can be the first to show how sunshine can be better used in China. Meanwhile, the megacities of Beijing, Guangzhou and Zhenjiang have all pledged to stop growth in CO2 pollution by 2020 and the country as a whole plans to do the same by 2030.

Shandong Province is now a pilot region for the circular economy at a provincial level. And if old Shandong can become a circular economy, then perhaps so too can China as a whole. The Chinese dream does not have to be a nightmare for the rest of the world. A better Anthropocene might come to be.

Just as one man in Tiananmen held back the tanks with a single act of fortitude, single acts like the ceaseless work of Fan and his compatriots across the country can stand athwart the juggernaut that is the fossil fuel economy and started to shifting it, ever so slightly at first but then more and more and more, in a new direction.

This is a modified excerpt fromThe Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earths Newest Age, by David Biello( Scribner, a division of Simon& Schuster, Inc. 2016 ).

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George Saunders: Haughty, Thin-Skinned Trump Is the Anti-Lincoln

George Saunders, one of Americas most admired short story writers, recently published his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, about Abraham Lincolns visits to the ghost-haunted graveyard where his young son was buried. Saunders says that researching the book really made him appreciate how much tragedy and derision Lincoln had to endure.

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“Lincoln was criticized in his tenure as president so much, from so many quarters,” Saunders says in Episode 243 of the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And then his son died, right in the middle of that.”

People who met Lincoln consistently reported that he was one of the kindest people they ever encountered. Saunders says it was that kindness, along with Lincolns sharp mind, that allowed him to lead the country through the darkest days of the Civil War.

“You see this really incredible intelligence,” Saunders says. “It always reminded me of somebody in a pitching sea, drowning, with an open wound, but still managing to think logically and empathetically.”

Saunders spent four years writing the novel, completely immersed in Lincoln’s life and thoughts, so it was a bit of a shock to go from that to writing about Donald Trump.

“To come out of that into the current political environment was pretty interesting,” Saunders says, “and to see in Trump so many of the direct contradictions of [Lincoln’s qualities].”

Saunders says that one of Lincoln’s greatest assets was his ability to absorb criticism without lashing out. It’s another way in which the two presidents are polar opposites.

“Trump, as this super-sized celebrity, made a running joke of that kind of haughty, thin-skinned snappish quality when he was on TV,” Saunders says. “It’s just mind-blowing that we accepted that as a leadership trait.”

Listen to our complete interview with George Saunders in Episode 243 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

George Saunders on writing at work:

“It was the old days, and they gave us these big clunky PCs, and at that time Wordperfect was the dominant software. It was Shift-F3, I still remember the command, to go back and forth between files. So the trick was I’d get my story up there and start working on it, and then when somebody walked in you’d hit Shift-F3 to bring up your work document. And I’d sort of figured out the optimal location for the desk so that it took them the most steps to get behind me. … Sometimes somebody would say, ‘I need a cover for the Kodak document,’ and you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s an hour.’ And really it was just centering some text, so you could kind of build in a little bit of cushion to get some [writing] done. … Though especially as I started publishing, there was more policing by certain people.”

George Saunders on science fiction:

“Somehow I had kind of a wall up between what I considered ‘serious literature’ and that sci-fi stuff that I loved in my everyday life. It was a bit of a working class idea that literature was way too holy for any of that stuff to come in—that was for fun, that was the stuff you really loved, but it didn’t belong in your writing. And then I had the realization that if you’re going to compel a reader to keep reading, you have to use what’s best in you, and most joyful and genuine, whereas before I’d been keeping a lot of stuff out. I’d been keeping humor out, I’d been keeping dirty jokes out. … [I was] trying to be very refined, keeping my class origins out, and keeping the sci-fi stuff out. And then when I took that wall down, suddenly I was like, ‘Oh god, now I know how to proceed.’”

George Saunders on writing Lincoln in the Bardo:

“After Tenth of December was done and was about to come out, I was like, ‘Man, you’re 54. You’ve had a good run. This thing has been bugging you for years, and the reason you think you can’t write it is because it’s too hard, it’s going to take too much emotional earnestness. Why would you say no to that?’ Thats cowardly. To get to that point in your career and go, ‘Well, I better just keep repeating myself so I dont make any mistakes.’ So I just made a little contract with myself that I was going to try it, in that three or four months before the book came out, and see if it caught fire, and it really did. … I have a friend who’s a writer, and about that time I wrote to him and said, ‘I’m writing something that may be the best thing I ever wrote or a real career-ender.’ And he goes, ‘Well don’t forget. It could be both.’”

George Saunders on Lincolns religious views:

“As the war seemed to be a total stalemate that looked like it was going to stretch 20 years into the future, he did do this kind of turning toward something [spiritual], and his conclusion was something like, ‘Well, whatever runs this universe, if it wanted to stop this war it could and it would. It seems that it doesn’t want to stop it, so therefore it must have some purpose.’ And he came to believe that the purpose was—I can’t remember the phrase, but basically to expiate the sin of the nation that was slavery, through blood. Which is a kind of mystical way of saying something that was literally true, which was that the two sides in this were not going to compromise. They could have talked for a million years and never broken through. There was too much money on the line, and so they just had to kill it out.”

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