#i should probably make a post regarding usage of my edits

[apparently-artless]

hi! i was wondering if i could use a gif from this set as my mobile header? i'll give you credit ofc! it's okay if you're not cool with that i just thought i'd ask :)

www. tumblr.com/ apparently-artless/746857747927171072/dungeon-meshi-opening-2-unmei-by-sumika

Hi, Jester! Wow, you're so polite. Thanks for letting me know. I don't mind people using any of my edits at all. Feel free to use them with or without credit. ^^

[thewritinggrindstone]

Identifying Harmful Repetition in Your Writing

Something I’ve encountered ad nauseam over the last few projects I’ve edited is a relentless repetition of words, phrases, and ideas. One of the most frustrating and confidence-destroying issues a reader can encounter is poorly executed repetition, which can stem from different problems, including:

Too much reliance on your natural stock phrases.

Limited vocabulary.

Not proofreading close enough or editing thoroughly enough.

Lack of confidence.

Not writing with the reader in mind.

I want to preface this with the fact that obviously certain types of repetition aren’t bad. Repetition is an incredibly powerful tool when used effectively, and what’s effective is subjective per book and per reader. That’s a massive topic for another time. This post is specifically about egregious uses of repetition, the types that any good editor or beta reader will point out as in need of fixing.

Stock Phrases and Words

Every person has their own unique lexicon, a repository of words and phrases they naturally will draw upon when they speak, write, and even think. There’s a reason clichés are prevalent, and that’s because the brain likes the path of least resistance. It’s easy to mentally grab those words and phrases that are constantly in arm’s reach, those words and phrases that are comfortable and familiar, but constantly doing this while writing and then not changing them can result in overuse that is noticeable on both stylistic and technical levels. It can also lead a reader to the understanding that you haven’t thought critically about what you’re writing, which can and will undermine their confidence in you.

If you’re writing a first draft, don’t worry about this too much. You probably just need to focus on putting words down, not exactly what those words are. Repetition is an issue that can and should be intentionally fixed during the revision process.

If this is a problem that bugs you even when you’re drafting, there are different ways of dealing with it. I tend to be highly aware of most repetition within my work, and because I constantly edit as I write, backtracking to add/move information as I go doesn’t tend to interrupt my workflow too much. If I know I’ve already used a word and can’t think of something better after several seconds’ thought, I’ll use the repetition and immediately flag it somehow—usually with a “repeat” comment—so I can deal with it once I’ve completed the draft. Opening a thesaurus or dictionary tends to be more disruptive during drafting than it’s worth, but sometimes it isn’t, and you will need to determine what works best for you according to your own style.

Once you’re ready to target the issue of repetition, you will need to work hard, think hard. Don’t settle for the easy word, the stock phrase, the cliché. Discard the timeworn, the tired, the used-before. Play with language—try to come up with new phrases, unique descriptions. Get silly, flip rocks over, dig around under them, push things as far as you need to create something different, then go back and edit again, refining what you’ve written until you’re satisfied.

It’s going to be a process. It’s going to be difficult. It won’t be natural at first; you’ll need to form new pathways in your brain, just like when you learn any new skill, and that’s uncomfortable, but if you persist, your writing will be fresh and alive and won’t be as prone to being bogged down by reader-infuriating repetition.

Limited Vocabulary

Tying into the idea of your personal lexicon is the size of it. No matter how much you pay attention to precisely what words or phrases you’re using, you won’t have much in the way of options if you don’t have at least a good-sized repertoire to draw from.

Increasing your lexicon is something that just takes dedication and time. You can’t rush it, you can’t force it, but you can be deliberate in growing it. Read broadly, maybe bookmark or sign up for your favorite dictionary’s word of the day, or keep a word cache of interesting words or phrases you like.* I have a document titled “word hoard” in Dropbox where I keep all unusual, unfamiliar, or beautiful words I encounter as well as their function(s) and definitions. Most of these words haven’t properly entered my own lexicon yet, but actively being aware of words that are anywhere from slightly to completely outside what you usually use will help you become a more mindful writer.

* I got this idea from Barbara Baig’s Spellbinding Sentences, which is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read on writing.

Lack of Proofreading/Editing

The identification and elimination of repetition hovers somewhere between content editing and technical editing. It’s an easy problem to skim over, especially when you’re the writer because you’re likely too familiar with every word you’ve put down, and issues like this tend to fade into the background. This is particularly true of writers who have reworded or reorganized a given piece of writing, since repetition can easily become lost in the jumble.

If possible, set your project aside for at least a few days—preferably a few weeks or even longer—then come back to it and read it with fresh eyes while intentionally noting and commenting on or highlighting all uses of repetition, big and small. If you aren’t sure if it’s something you repeated, flag it anyway—you can always check later.

If you don’t have time to set the project aside for a while, read your work aloud. If you can’t bear reading your work aloud or you aren’t able due to circumstances, listen to the document instead. Word has a read aloud function, and there are many online text-to-speech websites where you can paste a piece of writing. The unnatural cadence of the artificial voice might be weird and awkward at first, but listening won’t fully engage the “reading” portion of your brain, and you’ll likely find it easier to notice uses of repetition, among other problems. While writing this post, I have listened through it three times, tweaking phrasing and eliminating repetition—and deleting some of the harsher statements—as I go.

If you’re feeling really brave, have another person read your writing back at you. Nothing like being uncomfortably hyperaware of every word you’ve put down to recognize pretty much every single problem within your work. Just do not overcompensate and decide that nothing you’ve written has any value at all (it does), or that you’ll need to change everything (you don’t). If you approach this method with the understanding that it’s going to be awkward but are nevertheless determined to get something useful out of it, you’ll benefit, especially if your reading partner is willing to help you with any areas you feel you need assistance in.

When editing for repetition, if possible, pay attention not only to noun/verb/adjective usage. Go deeper. What types of repetition are you prone to using? Do you begin a significant portion of your sentences with conjunctions? Are there certain conjunctions you use more frequently than others? Do you reiterate entire sentences two or more times with only slight variations in wording? Do you return to the same idea numerous times? What about tone, do you use lots of rhetorical questions? Sarcasm? Self-deprecation? Self-boasting? Do you frequently return to the same imagery or settings or use of metaphor? Or grammar—are there certain punctuation marks or grammatical conventions you use more than others? Do you have a sentence construction you consistently fall back on?

Again, some of these questions might require an outside opinion for you to find suitable answers, but becoming self-aware of not just what you do but why you do will help you recognize these patterns, which in turn can help you mentally eliminate repetition before it even makes it past your fingertips.

Lack of Confidence

Widespread repetition of sentences and ideas is often a major symptom of a writer who isn’t confident in their abilities to communicate what they’re talking about. “If I just tell you this fact again, surely you’ll believe me this time. I’ll make you believe me. Do you believe me now? What about now? Now? Now?”

The painful truth is... no.

Encountering mindless or fear-based repetition is extremely frustrating for readers. Inevitably, without fail, every single time I edit a book by a writer who has repeated themselves over and over and over again, with every single repetition, I increasingly doubt both their credibility and their ability to pass on important knowledge to me. I feel either patronized and insulted, or I feel annoyed because it seems like the author threw their thoughts down on paper in whatever order they came out and then hit publish with

no regard for how those thoughts will be perceived by others, and

no regard for how they are wasting the reader’s time.

Please, please do not undermine your credibility by repeating yourself. Readers usually only need to read information one time for them to absorb it, maybe twice, so trust your readers. If the reader needs to come back to information, they have that ability. Do not force unnecessary repetition in their faces. Always assume readers are at least as smart as you. If you don’t need the information repeated, give your readers the same respect.

Increasing your writing confidence will once again take time and effort. You’ll need to determine why you’re not confident and then seek out methods of correcting the issue(s). In general, fear of not being heard or understood tends to be the underlying cause of repetition, so learn how to be deliberate in your writing. Say what you mean to say. Say exactly what you mean to say. Understand that you have something important to share with the world, so share it—then stop. Readers will appreciate you for not wasting their time.

 Writing for Yourself

Yesterday I finished editing a project just over 88,000 words. Nineteen chapters. Almost 250 pages.

I hated every word, and I learned nothing.

If it had been a line edit, I could’ve cut the book’s word count down below 50K merely by eliminating all of the repetition. This author is infatuated with the sound of their own voice, talked on and on and on merely to hear their own self-revelations and how special they are compared to everyone else stated again and again in near-identical sentences.

I’m editing another book right now that is less self-important and is far more interesting on the whole (and is thankfully over a hundred pages shorter), but again, the author has repeated themselves sometimes three or four or five times, with some phrases appearing over fifteen times, and I can feel my resentment growing. If an author isn’t going to take the time to put forth a thoughtfully crafted piece of writing, why should a reader likewise invest in it?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with writing for yourself. You should—you’ll learn a lot about yourself as both person and writer, and you’ll enjoy writing more, and you’ll (hopefully) be able to refine your skills.

But if—if—you intend to share your writing with the world, if you actually have something to say, you need to be aware that you have a duty to make yourself understood without wasting people’s time. Do not make people regret having picked up your writing by being so in love with the sound of your own voice that you are no longer courteous to others.

Love your writing. Love it fiercely and passionately and with reckless abandon, but reach a place where you know how your writing is going to be perceived at large. Use as many words as you need to get your point across and no more.

In Closing

If you’re still having difficulty identifying repetition within your own work, ask someone who is skilled at recognizing this issue to look over your writing. It’s always easier to recognize repetition when you haven’t written it, so fresh eyes can give you the insight you might not be able to see yourself.

Know your audience. A children’s book will require a different level of repetition than an instruction manual or a sci-fi novel or an autobiography. If you’re reading a recipe, you’d be annoyed and confused if the author told you to add the same ingredient twice due to shoddy proofreading. Write and repeat accordingly.

Whatever you’re writing, make a point of intentionally performing at least one round of editing with the intention of eliminating unnecessary repetition. Your readers will appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

[rpbetter]

a vent (feel free to ignore if it's too much!): so recently i've noticed psd makers getting anon asks on whether they're ok with people who write certain topics (mostly rpf, incest, rape, underage, the usual "problematic" topics) using their recourses. now, i don't roleplay any of these subjects on tumblr, so even if a content creator said not to use their stuff, it's not even something i need to worry about - but, and maybe this is me overthinking it, what if i, someday, write a noncon fanfic on ao3? i'm still not using their resources on the subject or writing it on tumblr, but i'd probably feel weird about it, like i'm crossing some boundary. what if a psd maker whose content i've already purchased suddenly goes "actually don't use my psds if you rp abusive relationships", which is probably the closest to what people consider "taboo themes" of the things that i roleplay. it just feels like a fine line between personal boundaries and a shitty situation for a customer - not wanting to cross boundaries but already having PAID for something previously, when no such rules existed. it's making me want to 1. block everyone i see saying this, because even though i don't personally roleplay the topics above, i don't feel SAFE around people who tell others what kind of fiction they are allowed to enjoy and 2. just quit using people's resources and spend years learning to make my own psds so i won't have to worry about this shit. it's just stressing me out, as someone who has been harrassed and bullied online for speaking against censorship. i've had literal sock accounts made just to spew targetted harrassment at me on twitter. i've been accused of being a pedo and supporting incest and this is??? literally for saying "i don't think real people should be harrassed for fictional shit", i've not even shipped underage or incest ships. both make me uncomfortable. but fuck, antis make me 1000000x more uncomfortable than people who ship these kinda ships. i digress, this got rambley, i just. do you have any advice on what to do with the potential psd situation, or am i really just overthinking it? (always worried i accidentally send stuff like this off anon. help)

I need you to know that I actually had to rush-scroll back up and just double check that you did submit on anon lol! I always get worried I'll miss the one person who accidentally didn't use anon, if it makes you feel any better! When someone does submit with their URL attached, I message them first to be sure they are okay with them having it posted that way/it wasn't an accident ;) That's what I would want someone to do!

Alright, so, anyhow...

I've also noticed that becoming a more common thing and it's been on my (maybe huge) list of things to look into for a bit because I really do try to make sure I'm not just noticing things in my areas of the RPC/failing to notice things that do not impact me. Since I do all my edits and graphics, it falls into the first category for me. So, thank you for moving that up the list and informing me that it really is more prevalent and not my imagination!

My take on seeing it was a combination of business logic and anxiety, not going to lie.

On the first: charging to do a psd that is just that, just a psd file being used as a template/to act as an easier version of a photoshop "action" in a way, that's 100% legal and fine. Absolutely no muddy waters there. However, charging to do things like icons, edits, etc. that include images of celebrities and stills from movies (or gifs) is quite muddy. Legally, it's not legal. It's a thing we're allowed to do and use (on most platforms) because we're not making money off of it, we're not claiming to hold rights to the images, and so on - it's ignored but illegal. Charging money for it, however, even when phrased as "for my time" (which, absolutely valid feeling), is a more serious form of illegal and potentially attention-getting. This all gets more iffy though when we add donation instead of direct commission/purchase when working with these copyrighted materials. You can ask people to donate and suggest a donation based on your time spent, and that is always what I advise people to do.

Okay, so, that preface is necessary because the thing about stipulating use-rights is that they're iffy, too, there are variables present.

Often, these same people are charging for things like icon packs as well, meaning that even if they're only charging you for a template-style psd file sans imagery they don't own, they've kind of shot themselves in the foot. Not to mention, it's exceedingly damn hypocritical to pitch a fit about someone violating your rights when you're literally using other people's copyrighted materials lmao And that does tend to occur to me, yeah, it's a consequence of attorney friends and running businesses.

The other issues with this are that usage rights have to be stated at the time of purchase and morality clause-style shit, as pertains to products, is not legally binding.

When you purchase something like a psd file, that purchase acts as a sort of contract.

Think of like...buying a photoshop brush set - the person selling it puts very simple rules as to its use, such as: non-commercial use only, brush pack cannot be resold or distributed for free, separate brushes from the pack cannot be resold or distributed for free individually. Meaning that you own the brushes you bought, but you are not legally allowed to make real-life money from anything you use them in, and you cannot send the whole pack or files individually to friends for free or charge other people for them. By buying these, you have agreed to these stipulations of use and ownership.

If the person sells psd's and you agree to what they've stated about the use (you can't use them to do commissions you make IRL money from, you can't give them away to friends, etc.), that's binding even somewhere as casual as RP Land. The exchange of real currency makes it that serious.

However, there are limits to stipulations of use! One of those things is when you agreed - this person cannot, even one literal second, later change their terms of use and retroactively hold you to them. If they were okay with you not crediting them anywhere or using them in works you will gift others or charge others something like game currency for at the time you purchased, then that's it. Tough shit for them, not you, when they decide a month later that they want credit given where the work appears, that they do not want finished products gifted, or don't want you to make even in-game currency from them.

And that absolutely would apply to the morality wank, yes.

Except that this very morality wank comes with its own issues. Reality is not tumblr. In reality, at least in most instances and countries, you can't throw in a fucking morality clause regarding the buyer, use of item, or finished product.

Think of this in this way: Chik-Fil-A starts denying chicken and waffle fries to anyone suspected of being queer. They're legally allowed to run their business (as a private business, everything does have variables) with some things that are morally objectionable that they feel morally aligns with their religious beliefs. They're not allowed to deny queer workers a job or queer customers service, however, in accordance with overarching laws.

While "being gross" online in fiction is not like, making anyone a protected status person lol this is just an extreme example to drive home the point. Legally, when it comes to items/products be they digital or physical, your rights and responsibilities as the seller don't include your moral policing.

What your right is, is to make people uncomfortable to a degree, yeah. You absolutely can do that. You can state some nasty shit about prospective buyers you don't want. For example, they should (I mean, they should just grow up and get some real concerns, but) be stating that they would not like to see their psd's used by people on this following DNI list of idiocy, and they will block those users if possible to prevent interaction and purchase. That's really it, that's what they can do and the least immature way to proceed.

On the second: none of this logic would make me feel comfortable about interacting with them and their psd's in the future once they had outed themselves as morally objectionable and dangerous to me with this nonsense. And I would still feel anxious about using things I had previously bought because once harassed...it doesn't really go away, does it? It would just give me some ease about the latter with things I'd already made. Like, I could keep using the icons I'd made with those psd's with a little bit more comfort knowing that they honestly have not a leg to stand on outside of their harassment.

I might have the tendency to respond to harassment without much upset, but that doesn't mean I want to be harassed. Especially when I am not doing anything that draws that kind of attention. Not that harassment is warranted over anything, but when I make a PSA or answer an ask that I know is likely to get their attention and piss them off? That's an acceptable risk I am knowingly taking. When I'm just going about my life as a RPer, it isn't.

So, I don't feel like you're overthinking it or being too concerned! In no way did you sign up for getting unwanted attention, and because it has happened before, of course, you're trying to insulate yourself from having it happen again. That's totally reasonable!

Now, what you could do about it...

It's another of those situations in which we're only truly capable of controlling ourselves. Everyone else is kind of a NPC.

You don't have to do anything I'm suggesting, but these are things I would do!

I would block the shit out of anyone saying these things/trying to make them stipulations, yes.

By that, I mean that I would also visit blogs they appear to interact with and they'd be blocked as well. We can all reblog something like resources or a shit post from a user we do not agree with without realizing it, but when it's frequent reblogs, direct support, and friendly vibes going on, it's safer to assume that they are aware their friend sucks. More importantly, that they do not think their friend sucks and support their views.

Even if that is not the case, do you want someone else's repeated inattention to expose you to bad actors? Nope! So, don't run the risk of paying and otherwise interacting with the one resource blog in the group that doesn't express these views/"requirements," but does involve themselves with those who do.

Try to find people selling these resources, that are not connected to the problem ones, who do not have those views. Once a trend starts, it is very hard to stop until it has run its course naturally, so, this might be difficult and take some extreme effort. You might want to consider asking like-minded friends who use psd's where they got them so you can check those users out for yourself.

If they're all the same, problem, people...

Look for users well outside of your corner of the RPC(s) who are not asking to be paid. I know it sounds wild, but there really are RPers out there who just enjoy making things for others! I can think of at least one right off on my dash. They might not be advertising for doing psd's or psd packs, but either they might be willing to do so (especially if they do not appear policing-positive) if you explain what is going on, or they could at least fill some requests for you for fully made icons and such. Hell, people who love doing this work usually know others who do as well, and anti-policing people quite reasonably stick together. They could have suggestions for someone not vile selling psd's.

Depending on what it is you want your psd's to do, I promise you that it wouldn't take you very long to learn it. I know...I know lol that's both really easy for me say when I've been doing it for over twenty years and am about to piss some people off. The latter because the most common settings on popular psd's are extremely simple shit, a lot of that is the kind of thing you're expressly told not to do in design work. Like ramping up extreme contrast, pixelating the fuck out of an image, and turning up the primary colors only. Once you get to playing with photoshop or an equivalent, you will totally see what I mean. You can accidentally make an icon look identical to something that is on trend in the RPC. If that was what you were going for? You've hit the mark, and it's just repetition and tweaking it here and there!

Once you start playing with it, too, it's actually pretty intuitive when it comes to the basic things like resizing, adjusting colors and contrast, and doing easy effects like blurs and sharpening. Frankly, playing with it is better than half the tutorials you'll find because they get unnecessarily complicated when all you want to do is crop your muse's face, overlay some color, and add a damn dotted border. Listen, like I said, I have a lot of experience...and I find many tutorials frustrating and overwhelming!

It is not just you, you're not dumb or anything. People get very comfortable with something and when they try to explain it to others, they use terms and methods that are more advanced or specific to them than they realize. That's all!

If you have friends who make their own things, ask them some very basic questions about what you want to do. They know you, so, they'll know better how to explain to you, specifically. Just keep it simple until you've had some time to experiment! Ask things like, "I want to take this image, resize it to be an icon, and add an orange tint to the image while sharpening only my muse's features...how would I do that? Easy mode?"

And! You don't even have to pay for photoshop or pirate it anymore! Photopea is as an exact copy as possible entirely located in your browser for free. It's all overwhelming at first, a real case of too many options and ways to do the same thing, but the only way it gets less overwhelming is just diving into it. Dive in, get a little frustrated, have some successes, make some awesome discoveries, it gets a bit addicting in short order. Then, the tutorials and tips are so much easier to figure out and expand on, too.

If you'd like, you can always send me a pm here and ask me. I'm happy to try to explain how to do things, zero judgment or impatience. Just an additional option if you both decide to try learning and would feel comfortable doing that. Zero judgment as well on not wanting to do either of those things!

Okay, this one is much harder than learning PS basics because it's honestly a bit terrifying...the way these people are, they're going to take issue with you no matter what you do, and in the end, if they notice you and feel like bothering you, they will. There's literally nothing you can do about it. All you can do is try to buffer yourself, stay away from them, and be aware that you are not the problem.

Like with the AO3 thing or writing what could be viewed as toxic relationships. You can never write or be interested in a single, solitary thing that they're on about (and accusing you of doing in real life when the burning Eye of Moron turns your direction), but to them, you supporting the right of other people to do so is just as bad as doing it yourself. To them, the toxic relationships not only would be problematic, they'd be problematic enough. Being uncomfortable with their policing and feeling unsafe because of it is, to them, a red flag of how problematic you are. Writing anything they've deemed objectionable (or reading or viewing it, for that matter) anywhere, doesn't have to be on this platform or RP-adjacent, doesn't have to actually utilize any of their materials, is enough.

They're absolutely including you in who shouldn't use their shit. That's part of the "logic" and methodology of policing. Everyone is problematic, so, everyone can be labeled a pedo and harassed without too many people getting up in arms about it. No one is safe, so, everyone better behave. You don't actually have to be engaging with or enjoying things like underage, non/dubcon, rape, abusive relationships, etc.

It's gross, it's bullying, it's actually a problem...and there isn't much you can do.

All that is truly up to you is making an effort to avoid them, though, this is very often unfair and likely to get more unfair as resource blogs of all sorts deal in it more. At least, in this case, you do have some small bit of actionable power - by not ever buying from them. They wouldn't be charging if they did not either need or want the money, not giving it to them is a bigger hit than things like simply unfollowing/blocking, reblogging PSA's, and so on is!

Nope, it isn't like you're denying them some extreme amount of money by yourself, but every three, five, ten dollars is felt pretty hard when you desperately need money and/or are saving for something.

I know, I mean, I personally do know, that it's impossible to "get over" bullying, Anon. I'm in no way telling you to just get over it and move on, find some great well of not caring somewhere! What I'm saying is that there is power in not giving them power. The power to make you anxious, uncomfortable, unsafe, when you have every right to be here doing your thing and are not hurting anyone. And it might seem to be a deeply contrary sort of logic, but realizing and accepting that there are people out there who irrationally dislike you for literally no reason, that you cannot infallibly escape or avoid, despite doing nothing wrong is a bit empowering. Because it puts into perspective the things you can control, and when we know what is in our control, it's easier to just enjoy our time here without constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it drops, we can go put it back in the closet where it belongs.

It starts to put a positive spin on the whole, damned if I do, damned if I don't feeling, if that makes sense? I'm probably way too tired to try to be explaining this lol I'm sorry!

Anyway, again, I'm not implying you can or should do any, let alone all, of those suggestions! I just really hope that something will help you feel even a little bit more at ease. It's an unfair situation, it isn't right, and you have every reason to be uncomfortable and stressed. If I could make it happen, you better believe that every policing asshole out there would be writing heartfelt apology letters and sending donations to everyone they've upset lol but...since I can't make that happen, all I can do is say what I, personally, do, would do, or have done.

[yourultraarchive]

Using Jisho to Translate Verbs, Adjectives, and Nouns for Names

So, there was definitely a lot going on in my “Creating a Name” guide, and after a couple of asks and private messages on creating names I realized that this part deserves its own more digestible post.

In one of the asks I got, I mentioned that this section of the names guide might have gotten lost in all the background context hubbub (it’s found in the first subsection in the “Types of Names” section; the following quote is edited for brevity):

A common thing I see in people naming OCs after verbs to give them that “name that matches the quirk” quality is that they [...] just use that verb as a name, with the verb ending and all [...]. Most verbs have a hiragana character at the end which changes depending on how the word is conjugated, but for a name it’s easy to just cut that part off and just use the singular kanji. When doing that, make sure to find an alternate reading or a name reading for the kanji by itself [...].

For people who don’t know how to read Japanese, this might be confusing or hard to do. So, the following is a step by step guide on how to use Jisho.org to properly translate an English word into a name worthy of an MHA character. (Unfortunately, this post does not account for punny names, just how to use jisho to make names. See the names guide for more on punny names, though.)

Disclaimer: This is just a guide for how to use jisho in the context of creating a name as referenced on this blog/in the names guide. This is not the recommended use of jisho, nor how you would normally create names for characters in other media/fandoms... though you can if you want to.

Note: I will not be defining words like kana or hiragana in this post. Please see the names guide or google for more info!

1. Translate your word. (And also, understand how Jisho works.)

If you have a lot of ideas, translate many words. Anything related to the character’s quirk or personality, whatever works.

Using the example from the names guide, here’s what jisho looks like when you look up “dragon”:

The anatomy of the above image is as follows:

Orange: the English word you’re looking up

Blue: the Japanese word relating to the English word you’re looking up (the image only shows one entry, but there will be multiple on the actual jisho site), with “furigana” above the kanji to show you how to read/say it

Keep in mind that this word may not actually mean what you think it means, hence the next bullet point of “green”...

Green: the definition of the Japanese word (blue), which usually has the English word you looked up (orange) somewhere in there, to give you a precise idea of what the word actually means, and may even give you multiple definitions if the word has more than one meaning

Note the small grey word at the top that says “Noun”! This tells you what kind of word the entry (blue) is, and this is going to be especially important when I get to talking about verbs and adjectives...

Red: the kanji which include the word you looked up (orange) in its translation, but keep in mind that kanji themselves have multiple definitions and may not just mean the one thing you were looking for

This section might actually be the most useful to you in making names, since you won’t get caught up in all the multiple definitions of actual words, but sometimes actual words are useful, so using just the kanji list to create a name is another starting point to go from rather than using the definitions/actual words as a starting point

Check the “More Kanji >” link toward the bottom of this list if you’d rather use a kanji as a starting point for your name rather than a word (for future reference, you can also skip directly to this list by looking up your word with the “#kanji” filter: “YourWordHere #kanji”)

Check the “Details >” link in the lower right corner of the box to see more info about the kanji, its readings (kunyomi, onyomi, and nanori/name readings), and some other words that may include this kanji somewhere in its beginning, middle, or end

Now, after you translate your word, there’s a couple ways this can go:

You probably started with a noun so you have your kanji to create a name with. Skip to STEP 3!

You decided to use the kanji list at the sidebar rather than using a word. Skip to STEP 3!

Your word was an adjective or verb, so there might be more work to do. Proceed to STEP 2!

2. Cut off the kana, extract the kanji.

So, say the word you looked up wasn’t as simple as a noun. There’s probably extra kana tacked on, which isn’t really the norm in a name. So you need to cut those off.

For quick reference like in my proverb names post, these are kana!

For an adjective that’s also a noun like “白 shiro” (white), there’s no extra kana, so you’re good. But some adjectives like “楽しい tanoshii” (fun/enjoyable) and “可愛い kawaii” (cute) have kana at the end, and the same goes for verbs like  “寝る neru” (to sleep), “泳ぐ oyogu” (to swim), and “死ぬ shinu” (to die). The occasional noun will have a kana too, like “眠り nemuri” (sleep), but the same rules apply--cut off the kana!

Extra information, feel free to skip this section:

Japanese usually have two types of adjectives, “i-adjectives” and “na-adjectives”, which you’ll see in the definitions section (green from before) in jisho. The “i-adjectives” are the ones that usually have extra kana.

There’s a sort of third type of adjective, “no-adjectives”, which are basically nouns that can be adjectives too. You don’t have to worry about any extra kana showing up with these, for the most part.

There are three types of verbs, “ru-verbs”, “u-verbs”, and “irregular verbs”, but jisho calls them different things like “Godan verbs”. There are other classifications like “Transitive” or “Intransitive” and other such things listed in jisho, but you don’t have to worry about them (they’re mostly for understanding usage/grammar, which isn’t what we’re focusing on here). In regards to the “ru” and “u” verbs, verbs are categorized by how they’re conjugated. In Japanese, the ending kana changes for tense, negative, potential, etc. which is why the kana is at the end of the kanji rather than part of the kanji itself.

Now once you have just the kanji, we can proceed with creating a name as outlined in the names guide. I’m gonna illustrate what the steps look like so you have a better idea what to do!

3. For a simple name, look up the kanji with the “#names” filter.

After you’ve got your kanji, copy it into the search bar and either type “#names” after it or manually click the filter button (green in the below image) and select the “Names” option (blue in the below image).

That will give you a whole list of names, with romaji included so you know how to read the kanji. It will also tell you whether it’s a male or female given name, a family name/surname, an unspecified name (usually for unisex given names, but sometimes those kinds of names also work as surnames), or the name of a place or known public figure (the latter-most two options you should ignore--naming a character after a place is unconventional, and you really probably shouldn’t be naming characters after real life people).

To narrow down your search so you don’t have to look through all the categories you don’t need, you can use these advanced search options by typing in these tags after adding the “#names” filter:

“#surname” for surnames

“#given” for given names, unisex or first names of any gender

“#fem” for feminine/female names

“#masc” for masculine/male names

“#unclass” for unclassified names (these can be any of the above)

So if you’re looking for names for a boy with a dragon quirk, for example, you could search “竜 #names #masc” or “竜 #names #given” or “竜 #names #unclass”.

EXTRA OPTION: Homophonous Names

In the “How to Create a Name for your OC” section of the names guide, one of the tips about creating a “name that sounds like another word” name is to take the pronunciation of the name that includes the kanji you want and using a name spelled with different kanji instead. It’s really easy to use the “#names” filter on jisho to do this!

Once you find a name you like, simply take the romaji spelling (green below), put it into the search bar (red below), and add the “#names” filter. This will show you a whole list of names that sound the same but are spelled differently (blue below)! You can pick the spelling you like, but be sure to check what it actually means with STEP 4!

Anyway, this step is pretty simple, but for a name that’s more than one kanji long, proceed to STEP 4. Otherwise, see more options in STEP 5.

4. Translate the name back to see the meanings of the other kanji in the name.

So say you found a name with more than one kanji that you like, including the one you were looking up in the first place. Great, now to see what the full name actually means!

Copy the kanji in the brackets of that name (green below--note that you shouldn’t be copying the kana directly to the left of it!) and put it back into the search bar (replace the text in the red below).

After that, either type “#kanji” directly after the name or manually click the filter button (green below) and select the “Kanji” option (blue below).

You’ll be taken to a page with lots of large text and technical info on it, but the most important bit is the definition of the kanji (green below). The image only shows the first kanji of the name, but if you scroll down you’ll see the others (one example in red below).

If that’s what you want your name to mean, great, you have a name! Otherwise, you can go back to the other steps and start over, until you find a name you like.

Proceed to STEP 5 if you want to manipulate the name some more to give it some uniqueness or possibly make a pun out of it.

5. Make a name out of a combination of kanji of your choice, or find alternate kanji readings.

So you have a kanji you like, but the options in the list of names in the “#names” filter don’t really fit your character: ie. you have a dragon quirk user but you don’t want to name them just “竜一 Ryuuichi” (one/first dragon) or “竜鼻 Tatsuhana” (dragon snout) or something.

One of the things you can do is just put together 2-3 kanji that don’t actually make a “real name” and come up with your own reading for them. For instance, “竜夜 Tatsuya” (dragon night) may be homophonous with a “real name”, but the spelling is unusual and if you look it up on jisho with the “#names” filter, nothing will come up.

It’s possible to make up names like the above example by combining the the different readings of the kanji. For example the 夜 can be read “yo”, “yoru”, or “ya”. To find the readings of a kanji, you can either look in the kanji list when you’re looking up a word, or you can check out the specific kanji details to find the kunyomi, onyomi, and nanori. (All the different areas to find kanji readings are in red in the images below. Nanori is called the “Japanese names” reading in the last image, but be aware that not every kanji will have nanori available.)

(The names guide outlines this a little too, as well as list other ways to find kunyomi, onyomi, nanori, etc. and their romaji readings, but I will not be getting into that here since I’m only focusing on jisho in this post.)

Of course you have to know how to read a little kana to figure out how to pronounce the kanji and its readings, but you can either reference the kana sheet above, google or wiki, or use google translate. The image below is going to be the only non-jisho image here I promise, but this part is important for people who don’t know how to read kana so I’m including it. (Be careful not to use the actual translation, in red below. The green and blue are the kunyomi and onyomi respectively, just to show you where in the romaji reading they are, as google translate doesn’t use line breaks in it. You can see why it’s not a good idea to use the red area since it tried to translate “rou” as an actual English word “low”--this also illustrates the importance of kanji, since all of those readings technically mean “dragon”!)

Once you have your kanji readings, you can combine them however you think sounds best. For example, 竜夜 (dragon night) can be any of these given or family names (this is not a complete list, and not all of them are necessarily homophonous with real names):

Tatsuyo

Iseya

Iseyoru

Ryuuya

Ryuuyo

Ryouya

Rouya

Rouyoru

Riuya

Riuyo

Riuyoru

You can also do this to names that aren’t made-up mashed-together kanji. For instance, take the real name “竜ケ江 Tatsugae”. With alternate readings, you can use “Isekemi” as a surname and still spell it the same as the traditional “Tatsugae”. This is useful to make a name look normal but change the pronunciation to be appropriate for a pun (my example is not a pun, however--I was just demonstrating how to do it). An example of this is Mina Ashido’s name, as the surname “芦戸” is normally pronounced “Ashito”.

Alternate readings are usually how puns are made, but I won’t get into that here. Check the names guide for more in-depth stuff on that, but the info from STEP 5 is particularly useful for the “name that matches the quirk” subsection of the “How to Create a Name for your OC” section.

Congrats, you made it to the end!

Welp, that’s all you need to know about using jisho to make a name! Please check out the “Creating a Name for your MHA Character” guide that this post was made to supplement. This post was just “how to use jisho”, the names guide will really get into the meat of how to create a name befitting of an MHA character.

If anything about this post was unclear or confusing, let me know and I’ll try to clarify. Hope this helps you name your character!

Go beyond and PLUS ULTRA!

[whumpqin]

The Rules

Whew, this one kind of kicked my butt when I was trying to write it, but here it is! It’s currently 7AM but I’m still posting this. Hope yall are ready for some more pain :3c

Takes place after Welcome Home

Taglist! @imagination1reality0 @faewhump

Content Warnings: Pet whump, starvation and dehydration as a means of control, dehumanization, collars, muzzles, noncon touching, some parts straight up torture used as punishment, creepy / intimate whumpers, usage of knives, brief blink and you’ll miss it emetophobia warning, licking up stuff off of the ground (?), kind of monster whump I guess, and probably some other things that I forgot to tag! Just lemme know if I need to edit.

They had decided to let him rot in their basement for the day. Alone and in the dark.

When Elisha finally woke on the stone floor, muzzled and hands bound behind his back to make him immobile, he wasn’t sure whether to be thankful for the peace and quiet or be afraid of the loneliness that would inevitably set in.  He waited, minutes turning into hours, for them to come down and do whatever they were going to do to him, but they never came.

For once, he had actually felt lucky that he was a Cambion. Darkness had never been a favorite of his, but his inhuman eyes were able to just barely pierce through the unseen veil so that he could at least catch flickers of the prison that they had put him in.

Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing to look at. Besides the chains that bound him to the wall farthest from the exit, from escape, it was bare stone and wooden pillars that held the house up. Or at least, he assumed they were living in a house. He couldn’t be sure. 

He had tested how long the chains were by pacing - the only thing he could do at the given moment - and found that it wasn’t long at all. At the halfway point of the room it stopped, pulling taut and cutting off his circulation. But Elisha still paced, to feel something other than the metal lying across his skin, the strip of leather they put around his neck. He tried not to think about the collar.

And no matter how hard he tried to think about what was going on to distract himself, he still couldn’t understand why they were doing this to him. He dreaded finding out.

Elisha did, however, try. He figured this was some horrific game that they hadn’t let him in on. But Ari, the one who had drugged him, had called him a pet, talked to him like he was some sort of stupid dog, and he found himself trying to escape the fear that rattled in his skull again.

If they plan on making me their lap dog they’re going to have one hell of a fight on their hands, his instincts hissed in his ear over and over, aggressive at even the slightest provocation. Elisha always shook his head to try and get rid of those thoughts, but this one whispered over and over. He kept having to remind himself that fighting was going to get him killed by these people.

He continued to pace, continued to think. Every once in a while he stretched, extending his hands that were tied behind his back in an effort to soothe the ache that had carefully worked its way into his joints because of the strange position they were in. But no matter how hard he tried to wonder, tried to make sense of everything, he never came any closer to an answer that would satisfy him, would give him a reason why they picked him of all people.

Maybe there wasn’t an answer.

Elisha forced himself to sit, feeling the weakness in his limbs. They hadn’t given him any food or water, or anything comfortable, really. Nothing.

His shoulders slumped as he curled his tail into his own hands. There really was nothing to do but wait.

After what felt like hours, the sound of a creaking door opening alerted him. His head lifted from its lowered position to see small bits of light that peeked through the opening. Footsteps echoed down into the small room, and he soon saw two figures step down. Elisha was finally able to stare at both of the faces of his kidnappers.

Ari regarded him with a playful amusement, definitely looking down on him in a condescending way. Jer, on the other hand, seemed neutral and not nearly as interested in this as his partner seemed. He held a metal pipe that was as long as one of his legs, and Elisha felt a twisted dread in his stomach.

Ari reached up and flicked a light on. Elisha squinted as he was blinded yet again.

“Hello, pet,” they said with a bright smile. As they shifted, he saw that they were holding something behind their back. “Did you have a good nap?”

He wanted to say are you kidding me? On instinct, but his muzzle prevented any such movement.

Ari didn’t seem to notice, nor care, that he couldn’t give them an answer. “I bet you’re wondering what’s really going on, aren’t you?” They accented their words with a quick chuckle, as they reached a hand over to Jer, who placed the pipe in their hands. “Come here and kneel, and I might tell you.”

The dread curling and twisting in Elisha’s stomach dropped suddenly like a rock. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat as he saw Ari tap the ground in front of them. They had made the words sound so innocent, but he could tell that something sinister lied behind those eyes. He could see it in both of them.

His instincts told him both fight and flight. He wanted to get free and attack and tear them to pieces so that he could get away from here. But the bindings around his hands bit down more so than they had been, grimly reminding him of how trapped he was. Elisha took in a shaky breath as he stood up and took careful steps forward.

It felt horrible, to walk to your own demise.

The chain pulled taut, just before the place where Ari had told him to go. He tried to pull, to break it somehow, but it was too strong for him. Elisha looked to them with pleading, tearful eyes as they tapped the ground again.

There was no sympathy to be offered. “Are you not going to listen to me? Tsk, shame. And to think we could have been friends.” Ari looked to Jer with a incredulous expression. “Whatever, guess I’ll have to punish you for this, too. Kneel where you are.”

This was ruined from the start. Ari had no intentions of him even being able to obey. And now he had to just sit here and take whatever “punishment” they were going to deal out?

Everything was screaming for him to run. Elisha’s skin crawled as his instincts chastised him for kneeling, limbs twitching with a horrible panic that he just couldn’t shake. He can’t run. He couldn’t run, especially so with the air of fear that coursed through his veins so intensely that he wasn’t able to do anything but stare at the pipe as it was raised into the air.

When it came down, all he saw was stars.

Pain blossomed across his face as Elisha collapsed to the ground. Immediate regret of not doing anything racked his body much like the pain, and a low whine left his lungs through his nose. He tried to curl inwards, to protect himself somewhat, as another blow struck across his ribs. Even the thin layer of clothing that he somehow still had wasn’t enough to soften the spike of pain that echoed inside, as he felt something crack from the third blow.

Then it stopped. Elisha sat still for a moment, eyes squeezed shut in fear of what might happen, waiting for blows that never came.

It was too easy. He peeked an eye open, looking up to his captors as they both watched him carefully.

“He takes pain pretty well,” Jer commented. Then, with a small smile - which is the only expression Elisha’s seen from him thus far - he looked to Ari. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Oh, that’s great for us.” They looked back down to their target, a chilling grin on their face. “Hold still pet, there’s still more to come. Remember when you didn’t stay quiet in the car for me?” Elisha let out a muffled whimper, arms struggling from the need to defend himself as he squirmed on the ground.

Ari quickly raised the pipe and swung, catching him in the shoulder this time. It continued another two blows, hitting him in a different area each time. Elisha let out a low groan behind the muzzle, feeling aches and pains all over his body as they stood to admire their work.

There was the sound of someone whistling, and he looked up to see Ari’s smile. That damned smile.

“Oh, Jeremiah look at that. God, I wish I had a camera right now… these are the kind of moments you don’t want to forget,” they murmured, all too loud for Elisha to hear. They were talking about him like he wasn’t even there.

“Weren’t you the one who said phones were a ploy by the government to arrest ‘honest working people’?” Jer- or Jeremiah - said, raising his fingers in air quotes.

“I want a camera, not a shitty wiretap. There’s a difference.” They huffed a forceful breath, returning their gaze to Elisha, who lay motionless on the ground. He was afraid to move, lest he cause himself to hurt everywhere. He was already getting a headache. “Anyway, go ahead and take off the muzzle. I’ll go get some water.” Elisha perked up at the idea of water, swallowing as they felt the dryness in their own throat, and Ari seemed to notice, too. “Yeah? You want some water? Be a good boy for my friend here, and we’ll see about that, hm?”

Their tone was so condescending it hurt, but it could also be the aches from the impact sites of the pipe. Ari laughed as they went upstairs, high pitched and sweet and entirely not what Elisha would imagine an evil monster to make as a sound. Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes and dripped to the ground as he watched Jeremiah get to his knees and lean down.

Elisha’s breath hitched as his rough fingers found the buckles on his face and began to undo them. Jeremiah thumbed over a point of impact, making him whine in pain and squirm at the discomfort.

“Stay still,” he said, voice low and commanding. Elisha nodded, fearful of what might happen should he not obey.

The muzzle was slowly drawn away off of his face, careful of the short horns that rested on his head, and laid to the side. Elisha watched it for a moment before returning his eyes to Jeremiah as he prodded the injured skin.

“Pl-please…” he begged. Elisha couldn’t reach Ari, they were too much a monster all on their own, but he figured he might as well try with Jeremiah. “Please help me… I just- I just want to go home, please…”

Jeremiah watched him for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face. Then, he ran his thumb over Elisha’s cheek, making him flinch from the pain. “You are home, pet.”

The hopelessness washed over him like a tidal wave, and Elisha couldn’t stop a few pained sobs from escaping him. He was trapped, like a helpless animal, with these people who wanted to do nothing good with him. He was alone.

Elisha heard Ari coming back down the steps, and Jeremiah drew away from him to set the muzzle somewhere else. They caught him before he turned away, handing the pipe over.

“I think I figured out which name we should pick,” he murmured as he took the pipe. Elisha felt another pang of fear rattle around in his chest.

“Oh? Which one?”

“Caleb. I think it fits the best.” The muted passion in Jeremiah’s voice made the ever-growing pit in his stomach grow larger.

Elisha saw Ari put a hand on their chin in thought, a glass of clear liquid in the other. Water. He felt the dryness in his throat worsen at the idea of being so close to drinking something.

“Hm, alright. I did give you the choice.” They suddenly looked at him with such an intensity it made him flinch back. “Then it’s settled! Pet, your new name is Caleb!”

“No, please,” he begged, before he could really stop himself. “Please, my, my name isn’t Caleb, it’s- ack!”

He was interrupted by his own cry of pain as Ari stamped over to him and grabbed a fistful of his hair. The smile they wore held a sadistic tinge to it, and it was entirely too close to be well meaning.

“You really are stupid, aren’t you? You don’t get a choice in this.” They let go of his hair and let him fall back to the ground. Ari loomed over them, triumphant, as Elisha kept quiet, mostly out of fear. “We can do whatever the hell we want with you. Because we own you, got it?”

Fearful of what would happen if he did anything else, Elisha nodded against his own best judgement.

“Good, now you’re getting it. But not quick enough. Guess I’ll have to take your sip for you, hm?” Ari dramatically lifted the glass, taking a large gulp of water, sighing in relief. “Alright, now get up on your knees, Caleb. Maybe you can earn this water another way, hm?”

Elisha hated that name. He hated that Ari was essentially bribing him with the thought of water to get him to do whatever they wanted. He hated most of all that it worked.

With several whimpers and whines, he struggled to pick himself up off of the ground and sit on his knees again. Ari set the glass of water far out of reach, where he could still see it.

“You’ll learn to like it here, but there are rules you have to follow,” Jeremiah said. For a brief moment he wondered if he had gone through something similar with Ari, but he couldn’t be sure. The sinister glint in his eye told Elisha otherwise.

“Since this is your first time, we decided to maybe play a fun little game with you.” Ari drew something from their pocket, clicked something on it and a knife flipped out of it. “You say your rules right, and you’ll just get a little cut to remember it by. If not, Jeremiah here hits you with that pipe again.”

Elisha knew he wasn’t going to like this game. But, he didn’t want to get hit by that pipe again for going against what they wanted. He swallowed as he watched their expressions, horrifically neutral, and nodded.

“Oh-okay. I can, um… I can do that,” he murmured.

The two exchanged a look, a thousand words in the slightest twitch of expression that Elisha couldn’t read them all. The thought of not being able to know was disconcerting, especially when he wasn’t sure if it meant pain or not.

Jeremiah sat back on his heels as he looked down to Elisha. “Alright them. One. Your Masters should always be addressed as Master. Repeat it.”

Confident that he got the gist of it, he nodded. “Always, um, call you… M-Ma-” a tear slipped down his cheek as he tried to get the word out, and Jeremiah raised the pipe, “Ma-Master! Please, I said it, please don’t!”

“Wrong. You need to say it exactly, no ‘ums’ or stuttering.” Mercilessly he swung the pipe again, catching Elisha on the opposite arm. He cried out, following up with sobs of pain as he felt the ache settle under his skin. “Say it again.”

“Please… I, I don’t know, I can’t remember what you said…” He felt his chest clench as the pipe was raised again, fear coursing through his veins with every heartbeat that thudded in his ears. “Wait, I’m sorry! I’m sorry I can say it, ju-just say it again and I can repeat it, please, please don’t!”

The metal caught him across the side of the face this time, dazing him long enough that he nearly toppled to the ground. Elisha gritted his teeth in a groan as he curled inwards on an instinct to protect his body. Then he remembered Ari’s command, how they wanted him to stay on his knees. After a brief, merciful moment to collect himself, he lifted his face back up to Jeremiah.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ari lean against the side of the wall, that evil glimmer in their eyes again. With a sickening twist of his stomach, which he couldn’t tell was from hunger or fear, he realized that they were enjoying this.

Only a real devil could enjoy something like this, he wryly thought.

“Say it. Your Masters should always be addressed as Master.” Jeremiah’s expression was cold. Calculative. He was watching for a mistake to happen so that he could punish without mercy.

“My…” Elisha paused as he nearly said it again, fearful of the pipe that he held so delicately in his hands. “Masters, should… always be, ah-addressed as Master!” His voice raised as Jeremiah’s gaze narrowed, his nervous nature getting the best of him as he sped through the rest of the words.

“Not good enough. It has to be perfect.” This time it landed on the other side of his ribs, and though it glanced off of him he still felt the brief pain. Elisha cried out mostly in fear, keeling over as other aches surged in the wake of the blow. “Your Masters should always be addressed as Master.”

He took a few deep breaths, trying to remember breathing exercises he saw on the internet once. “My… Masters…” In. “should always be…” Out. “addressed as Master.”

“Good boy.” Jeremiah smiled at him. It didn’t reach his eyes. He glanced over to Ari, who moved behind Elisha.

“Very good boy,” Ari muttered, feeling his arms. “This should be a good spot.”

Something stung against his skin, and Elisha gasped and hissed in pain as a knife dug into his forearm. He forgot this part was happening, forgot that Ari mentioned being cut as a reward. Elisha squeezed his eyes shut as he felt Ari pull away.

“Two. Never question your Masters.”

At least this was easy enough. “Never… question my Masters…” Elisha’s head turned to catch a brief sight of Ari’s pale skin drawing close again.

He knew he must’ve done something good, because he felt the bite of the knife dig into his forearm again. It drew away just as quick, and he felt Ari pat him on the head.

“Your teeth look pretty when you’re in pain. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?” Ari laughed, close enough that Elisha could feel their breath hit the back of his neck, and he couldn’t help the shudder that crawled up his spine.

“Three. Do what you are told, regardless of the consequences.” He felt Ari draw away again, just slightly.

“Do… wh-what I’m told, regardless… of the… consequences.” Elisha swallowed thickly, closing their eyes. This time, he knew he messed up, especially when Jeremiah sighed in disappointment.

He heard him shift and move, and he peeked an eye open just as the metal swung and hit him in the stomach. Elisha wheezed as the air was knocked out of him, falling down to the ground as he gasped for air. He struggled to breathe through his breaking sobs of pain, resting his head on the ground for just a moment.

Getting back up was crucial in this moment, but his head hurt and moving about was like setting himself on fire and he felt like he was going to throw up from the nausea. Elisha needed to get up, he knew that, but everything hurt in ways that he never had before that he just curled up where he lay. The pipe prodded him, mocking him, and he gasped as his ribs shifted in ways they definitely weren’t supposed to.

“Get up, Caleb. Or I’m going to hit you again.” The pipe dragged across the floor, making an awful dragging sound that made Elisha cringe.

There was a pitiful whimper that sneaked out as a replacement for words that would ask for more time to recover from the hits. He just felt so weak, and trying to lift himself back up was a feat on its own. The next blow from the pipe went unprotected, and he cried out and sobbed as something else shifted in the wrong direction.

“Mm… this is already getting boring,” Ari muttered, prodding Elisha’s tail with a foot before it swept away and curled around his form. “Why don’t we trade, and cut him up until he gets it right?”

“You’re the one who suggested the pipe, Aridai. Just shut up for a minute.” Again he was prodded with the pipe, eliciting a whimper of pain from the gasping body. “Get up, Caleb.”

Without really thinking, Elisha shook his head. An admittance of defeat, to somehow say that he couldn’t do what they wanted.

He wasn’t cut out for this. He never was.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Fingers painfully tangled into his hair again, lifting him up to his knees. Aridai’s hands swept over his horns, but without any real curls to them there was no grasping them. Not yet. “Y’know, if we let these grow out, they’d make good handles or something.”

“Besides the point. Caleb,” Jeremiah appeared in his vision, waving a small hand to make sure that he was coherent. Elisha made a small whimper in return. “Good. Three. Do what you are told, regardless of the consequences. Repeat it.”

“Do… what I’m told… regardless… of the consequences…” the words were breathed out, as Elisha continued to try and get his breathing under control. He closed his eyes as another wave of dizziness fell over him, but with Ari-Aridai still holding him there was nowhere for him to go.

“Yaay, good boy!” They seemed genuinely excited as they grabbed onto his shoulder. Something small and metal was drug across the floor, and Elisha felt the painful impact of the knife slide across their skin.

“Four. Always ask for permission.”

“Always…” His mouth clamped shut as he nearly added an ‘um’ after, stopping his own blunder. He took in another deep breath to try and calm himself, even though it wasn’t helping as much now. “Ask… for permission.”

Another slice in his skin told him that he was being good. The feelings of both being relieved and horrified coiled around him as the knife drew away and he gasped for air. It felt awful that he would rather be cut than hit with a pipe, when he shouldn’t have to choose between either of them.

“Five. Always remember to thank your Masters.” Jeremiah shifted his weight, drawing the pipe across the ground. Elisha flinched into Aridai’s grip, which somehow felt cold and callous.

“Always… remember to… to thank your Masters,” he repeated after just a few short moments.

“Mm… nope, not quiet,” muttered Aridai. They let go of Elisha, who wavered and fell to the ground again.

Another hit from the pipe against his ribs, and he let out a low keen as the other aches fired up again. He just wanted to be left alone, he was much too weak for this. Even the water seemed like such a pointless goal, with all the pain that he had to endure just to get it.

You need it, his instincts whispered, clearly not understanding the situation.

“Get up, Caleb,” Jeremiah ordered above him.

He shook his head, not of defiance but of defeat once again. Elisha didn’t want to do this anymore. Just leave me alone…

“Aww… does the poor little one want to give up?” Aridai said in a mocking tone, as if he were talking to a stupid animal. It was humiliating, but he nodded his head, feeling his cheeks grow hotter than they had been. “Alright, I get it… but you have to finish your rules before we can leave.” Hands petted through his hair, and he couldn’t even fight them off. “Just be a good boy for us and it can all end that much sooner, okay? I’ll even hold you up.”

Don’t do it. They’re just trying to manipulate you. He had seen this tactic before, on TV shows he used to watch. Give in a little bit, and then they get you to do all sorts of things. Elisha closed his eyes as a lump found its way to his throat. Then he nodded.

“Good.” He was lifted up by his shoulders, and Elisha hissed as the stinging pain traveled to everywhere else that was hurting (which was just about everywhere, now.) “Go on, Jer.”

“Five. Always remember to thank your Masters.”

He swallowed. “Always… remember to… thank my Masters.” The slice of skin, signaling that he got it right.

“Six. Do not speak unless spoken to.”

“Do not speak… unless spoken to.”

“Good boy, Caleb,” Aridai muttered, digging into him once again.

This hurt. All of this hurt, from hearing these rules to saying them to the punishments and “rewards” that he was getting to the horrific praises that Ari was whispering from behind them as they carved into their arm. Elisha would cry, but he didn’t think that he had any water left in his body to do it.

To grant him just a sliver of mercy, however, he was lucky enough to be able to repeat the rest of the words.

“Never… leave the house… unless given explicit permission.”

“Pets don’t sit on the furniture.” 

“Good boy,” Jeremiah praises this time. For once Elisha is thankful to actually hear his voice, but it’s only because Aridai didn’t get to say anything.

The last cut held more relief than pain. Elisha hardly felt it, in fact, before they were suddenly pulling away from him and reappearing in his vision. Aridai held a bright smile on their face as they reached down and picked up the water. Finally. He actually perked up at the sight of it, waiting for him to approach and give him something to drink.

Aridai laughed in his face. “Oh, did you think that you were going to get this? Weren’t you the one who wanted to give up? No, I don’t think so.” They reached out to the side-

And tipped the water over so that it spilled into the floor beside Elisha.

“We’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe you’ll have shaped up by then, hm?”

They turned away, reaching for Jeremiah and wrapping an arm around him like a couple of buddies would. Like they hadn’t just relentlessly tortured someone. Elisha felt bile rise in his throat as he watched the two of them walk away like they had just watched a movie.

“So, how did you like that?” Aridai asked, shaking him a little bit to expunge some of the boundless energy that they seemed to have.

“That was… amazing. I can’t wait to do it again,” Jeremiah repeated, and he caught the slightest smile on their face as they retreated upstairs.

Elisha slumped forward, nearly choking himself from the chain as the collar tugged his throat. He scooted backwards, aching and tired and still so thirsty. It all had been for nothing. His gaze traveled to the water, slowly running down the ever so slight decline that it could find. Humiliation crept in, even alone as he stared at it.

He leaned down and lapped the water off of the floor.

[loquaciousquark]

hey! love your writing and hearing about your process. you have mentioned that you need to write out a full fic first, rather than writing and posting chapter by chapter. what is your process for editing those longfics? i finished the first draft of my first longfic and the idea of editing it seems incredibly overwhelming. do you have any recommendations?

thank you kindly, anon! this is a difficult question to answer because I have no actual writing...training, I guess, is the word? I was a biomedical sciences major and I have never taken a creative writing class in my life, so I haven’t the foggiest idea if what I do breaks every Prime Tenet of Proper Writing ever, so take everything here with a grain of salt.

Because the thing is: I hate editing. HATE it, loathe it with every atom and sinew of my body. It is by far my least favorite part of the writing process, and because of that I go to great lengths to avoid it as much as humanly possible.

I’ve talked before about how I outline, I think, but basically, I outline all my long pieces heavily to get as much right on the first pass as I can so that I can not have to do major edits. Drafts, likewise, don’t really exist for me; 95% of what I write on the first pass gets published in that form with only minor changes. I strongly suspect this is an artifact of me being an architect rather than a gardener in my writing; I can’t remember the last time I scrapped a whole scene (or even a major part of a scene) because of how heavily I outline first and how strict I am with myself in sticking to that outline. Probably the vampire AU, honestly, because of Jade--but more on that later.

Here’s an example of what some of my outlining looks like:

Like, sometimes I’ll do proper numerals and such, but more often than not it’s just paragraph descriptions of the major things that should happen in each chapter, and if there’s some phrase or idea that I really want to use, I’ll just jot down a few specific phrases right there in the document.

This does a few things for me, but the biggest is that it gives me a solid bird’s-eye view of the thing I’m trying to write. If I don’t know them already, what are the themes I want to emphasize? What are the plot threads that run throughout? If I have “introduce Gilchrist the evil baker” in chapter one, this helps give me the reminders to make sure Gilchrist has appropriate follow-through in each subsequent chapter and isn’t completely forgotten by the side-plot I accidentally  brought up in chapter three and loved way more than Gilchrist’s unleavened muffins.

And this is not to say that I build the entire lattice out of iron from the start so that there’s no room to grow. Even in this fic I’ve just finished, I was telling @eponymous-rose as I was working on the epilogue (which I hadn’t intended to have) that I wasn’t sure what it was going to be about, but that I could feel it was needed; and it wasn’t until I was writing the epilogue’s last few lines that I realized both why it was important regarding the overall themes of the fic as well as regarding the characters’ individual narratives, even though I hadn’t planned for it in the outline.

This process is also why I tend to write the whole fic before ever posting a single word. If I realize in chapter nine that I completely forgot Gilchrist the baker existed until I made an inadvertent reference to a crooked croissant, there’s not a darned thing I can do about it if chapters one through eight are already posted. And because I also have major personal hangups about making public mistakes, I would much prefer to write in private, fix my boo-boos before anyone else sees them, and THEN post, rather than getting a half-dozen comments wondering if this was all a secret patisserie plot all along.

The other thing I’ll add here is how important my betas are to me and how I write. I am by nature an incredibly impatient person--I’m the one shopping at 8:30pm at Hobby Lobby and then working on a spraypaint project in the backyard at midnight by phone flashlight because I refuse to wait until the next day--so this has always been a little hard for me. However, being able to give the whole fic at once to a beta and say here, this is it, and letting them read the whole thing at once--this is so invaluable to me in picking out things I’ve forgotten, scenes that didn’t translate well from my head to my page, or plot points that might be weaker than I first thought and need shoring in multiple places throughout the plot.

@jadesabre301 has been my beta for...years. Middle school? Twenty years, maybe? And by now we know enough of each other’s writing to know where the pitfalls are, how each person needs to be checked. I tend to forget side characters exist when I have a huge cast; Jade is always there to remind me they exist and to bring them back in (see Sebastian’s chapter in Ever Rise for a perfect example; that chapter didn’t exist before she told me to let him be alive again). I tend to overuse certain phrases and metaphors, and I’ll sometimes have characters repeat the same action several times in a scene without realizing (see Invicta, where I had three separate people cross their arms in less than 500 words before she called me on it).

Jade also has a marvelous ability to look at a work’s overall structure and point out which sections are strong and which sections are weak and need a little tweaking before they’re published. (Again, because I hate editing, the bones are usually sound enough that I can make these changes with only a few paragraphs or sentences here and there; and when Jade tells me to cut some line altogether I rarely save it, because if it didn’t make her cut here I know it’s not worth the saving anywhere.)

Example!

And because she also knows me very well, she is also very kind to point out the things she likes throughout her edits, which is just as invaluable a skill in an editor and I hope she realizes how important it has been to me over the years.

And because this is quickly getting much longer than I’d ever intended, I will close with the last thing that has helped me with my own editing when I’m (alas) forced to do it: I know what my problems are, if that makes sense. Not just the structural issues above, but repeating phrases and words to the point of distraction, hammering metaphors into the ground when a lighter touch would do them better service, and significantly overusing emdashes & semicolons. (Based on @eponymous-rose‘s beta/grammar check of this most recent fic, 43 of 350 or so emdashes died, and more will again when I get a chance to look over it once more.)

So when I’ve gone through it enough that I’m happy with the characterization and the plot threads and themes, as set out by the original outline I spent too much time on, then I go through and do one or two passes on word choice. To be quite honest, I do a Find search through the document for words I know I overused, then look at each usage and make sure they’re not too close to each other. Example--I did a search for “hard” on this last fic, and found I’d used it four times in the same paragraph. All in different ways--his eyes were hard, his grip hardened, he had a hard set to his shoulders, etc--but too much! So knowing the words (and issues in general) I tend towards and looking through to excise some of them specifically helps a lot in the editing I am willing to do.

SO!

To summarize: how do I edit my longfic? As little as possible!

heavy outlining prior to writing to make sure I have themes and plot threads properly established and mapped out throughout the piece

sticking closely to my outline throughout the writing process

sending only completed fics to beta so that they can read the whole thing at once and more easily pick out flaws in structure, theme, or character progression

ctrl-f words/phrases I know I most frequently overuse to cut the unnecessary ones (I’ll sometimes run the fic through something like this site to check phrase frequency for anything that might have slipped through)

and when all else fails, I set the whole thing aside for a week (again, I am impatient--longer would probably be better) and then come back and try to read it with fresh eyes

I hope this has at least been moderately helpful? Again, I’d like to emphasize that I have no idea what I’m doing, and this is hardly foolproof, but it’s worked for me so far, and hopefully at least a small part of it will be helpful to you. Thank you for asking!

[artemis-entreri]

[[ This post contains Part 2 of my review/analysis of the Forgotten Realms/Drizzt novel, Boundless, by R. A. Salvatore. As such, the entirety of this post’s content is OOC. ]]

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Generations: Book 2 | Legend of Drizzt #35 (#32 if not counting The Sellswords)

Publisher: Harper Collins (September 10, 2019)

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Additional Information: Artwork for the cover of Boundless and used above is originally done by Aleks Melnik. This post CONTAINS SPOILERS. Furthermore, this discussion concerns topics that I am very passionate about, and as such, at times I do use strong language. Read and expand the cut at your own discretion.

Contents:

I. Introduction

II. Positives     II.1 Pure Positives     II.2 Muddled Positives

III. Mediocre Writing Style (you are here)     III.1 Bad Descriptions     III.2 Salvatorisms     III.3 Laborious “Action”

IV. Poor Characterization     IV.1 “Maestro”     IV.2 Lieutenant     IV.3 Barbarian     IV.4 “Hero”     IV.5 Mother

V. World Breaks    V.1 Blinders Against the Greater World     V.2 Befuddlement of Earth and Toril     V.3 Self-Inconsistency     V.4 Dungeon Amateur     V.5 Utter Nonsense

VI. Ego Stroking     VI.1 The Ineffable Companions of the Hall     VI.2 Me, Myself, and I

VII. World Breaks     VII.1 No Homo     VII.2 Disrespect of Women     VII.3 Social-normalization     VII.4 Eugenics

VIII. What’s Next    VIII.1 Drizzt Ascends to Godhood    VIII.2 Profane Redemption    VIII.3 Passing the Torch    VIII.4 Don’t Notice Me Senpai

Mediocre Writing Style

I admire some authors for their lyrical phrases, some for their poignant imagery, some for their rapid-fire dialogues, and with so many others, for their ability to show a true mastery of language. I have never felt this way about Salvatore's literature, which will probably never win any awards for its diction if it remains consistent to its current level of quality. Salvatore has his moments, which I've described in the previous section, but sadly, they range from being vastly to overwhelmingly dwarfed by the rote and tedious writing practices he employs. It doesn't help that in addition to the employment of unimaginative diction, Salvatore writes a lot of long and laborious scenes full of words that serve little more than to fill up space. There is so much telling instead of showing, a problem further compounded by the exhausting amount of poorly-chosen anecdotes which he relates that, despite being a nonstop action book, Boundless is very hard to pick back up after putting it down. And, of course, there's the repetition of the same themes, of the same kind of things happening to the same characters, that certainly doesn't help the predictability.

Bad Descriptions

For every good turn of phrase I mentioned earlier, there exists a score of bad ones. If I were to give examples of all of them, with the other things I'd like to discuss, this article would end up being as long as the novel itself, so I'll simply point out the most cringe-worthy ones. 

The metaphor that takes the cake for the worst of the book is, "The horde had come, and now it pounced upon them misshapen humanoid forms, the wretched lesser demons known as manes, shambling out of the brush like an army of humans risen from the dead." Basically, what is happening here is that Salvatore pretty much wrote, "those demons came shambling out like zombies". It doesn't matter how much one dresses up a turd, the most one gets from the effort is a fancier-looking but just as stinky piece of excrement. Furthermore, the dressings that Salvatore uses in this example are flimsy and unsatisfactory in substance, with the vague adjective "wretched" that's as descriptive here as his customary usages of "magnificent"/"fine" and the tedious repetition in "humanoid" and "human". Additionally, it begs the question of why Salvatore specified an army of humans in a world in which the undead of all races would shamble, or, better yet, why not simply say "zombie", for a zombie is a prevalent and known theme in both the Realms and our world. It would've been one of the few ways Salvatore uses a shared concept without incurring a world break like he normally does. 

A close second in the diction mediocrity contest is, "as if Yvonnel's breath, blowing them out, was that of a magical dragon, one designed specifically against the life force of a demon." Why a "magical dragon"? Are there non-magical dragons that breathe magic? Not that there exists a type of dragon in Forgotten Realms lore with a breath weapon that is specifically designed against the life force of a demon. However, as is par for his course, to counteract lore not agreeing with his lazy constructions, Salvatore doesn't bother to research an appropriate in-universe analogy. He completely invents one but doesn't actually develop it, not that doing so would be appropriate in this context, but the creation of it is wholly unnecessary for the sake of a poor analogy. 

Another awful passage is, "with horrid creatures -- half drow and half spider -- all around the drow women and filtering back through the many shadows of the forest. Scores of these horrid mutants milled about..." It's bad enough to use the adjective "horrid" in an empty and vague way, but to do it twice in quick succession makes it seem like Salvatore doesn't know how to describe driders. By itself, a half-drow half-spider creature isn't inherently abominable. There's an increasingly large number of art pieces featuring dark elf arachnid centaurs, with beautiful humanoid faces and torsos attached to streamlined spider bodies that would even give arachnaphobes pause. What makes driders menacing, which Salvatore has described himself in the past, is that they're not these romanticized images of spider centaurs. Their humanoid torsos, rather than looking like they should belong to supermodels, are bloated and misshapen such that they're more reminiscent of the flesh beasts of nightmares. They have vicious mandibles protruding from their cheeks, sometimes multiple insectoid eyes, making their faces look more decidedly non-elven even with pointed ears. Admittedly, the physical appearance of driders has fluctuated through the D&D editions, but it's as though Salvatore couldn't be bothered to look up what their current iteration is. Maybe he did try and couldn't find a definitive answer, in which case he could've approached the drider's description in a more evocative way, for example by describing how the tips of their arachnid legs were sharp like swords digging into the earth, or perhaps by mentioning their aura of menace as they regarded the dwarves whom they towered over with hungry anticipation, as though the shorter folk were their cocooned victims waiting to be devoured. Or, even referencing how the driders came to be, the excruciating transformation process and fall out of favor with their goddess, both of which would've rendered them at least slightly unhinged. 

Some descriptions consist of fewer words, but are just as bad. For instance, Jarlaxle's bracers are at one point described as "magical wrist pouch". This evokes an imagery of literal pouches hanging from around his wrists, dangling like a pair of testicles in the wind, testicles that shoot out magical daggers into Jarlaxle's hands. Another similar example doesn't contain an analogy but is just as bad is, "a smallish man dressed in finery worthy of a noble house. His face was clean-shaven, his hair cut short and neatly trimmed." This description is so ambiguous and features adjectives that have been applied so frequently to other characters that it could have easily been Artemis Entreri, except it is someone quite different (Kimmuriel Oblodra). Putting aside how jarring it is to use "man" to describe male drow, there's a world break here in that drow shouldn't need to be clean-shaven, as they can't really grow facial hair, but at least there's the nice detail that Kimmuriel is apparently short-haired, contrary to what many assume of him to have long hair. Nonetheless, what happened to the usage of the word "short"? Furthermore, why not just state a height for Kimmuriel and put it into his character bible? To be fair, I've speculated that Salvatore doesn't use character bibles, but it's never too late to start. 

Salvatorisms

Boundless sees a return of what I've dubbed “Salvatorisms”, which are clichés and poor sentence structures that Salvatore abuses frequently. In Boundless, there's more than just those Salvatorisms dragging the narrative down. It's disappointing to see a professional author, especially one who'd been working in the field for over three decades, fail to follow a rule taught to amateur writers. Making the New York Times' Bestsellers' list does not make the usage of clichés, such as "merry band of misfits", acceptable. Especially considering how it's not even appropriate in the context that it's used for, namely, describing Bregan D'aerthe. Even though it's a priestess of Lolth who is considering the mercenary band this way, it's so incredibly unlikely that she'd think they were jolly, which the meaning of that cliché specifically includes. 

In Boundless, we also see a return of the “how [character] [action]ed!” sentence construction, after a refreshingly complete lack of any in Timeless. This is one of Salvatore's favorite ways to tell and not show, for stating how a certain thing performs a certain feat doesn't, ironically, actually ever convey how that thing is done. There's a new overused Salvatorism to add to his cliché stable, namely, the “up went”, “down went”, and other similar ways to open a sentence. There's nothing wrong with these kinds of phrases when used sparingly and with variety. As it is, the flavor of the text is quite intolerable, seasoned as it is with an excess of one type of additive. By the same token, in a fight scene between Arathis Hune and Zaknafein, Zaknafein's superior prowess is indicated by the sentence, "Except Zaknafein wasn't there". This sort of device can be effective to convey surprise and the unexpected, again, when used sparingly, but unfortunately, it is yet another one of Salvatore's favorite writing practices. The sentence is hardly even a proper sentence, but is used as its own paragraph.

The telling and not showing approach in Boundless extends beyond the diction. On numerous occasions, it's almost as if Salvatore couldn't be bothered to actually demonstrate how something is true, but instead, just tells us that it's the way it is. One way that he does this is through the usage of rhetorical questions, for instance, "Could anything be more invasive and traumatizing than having your body stolen from your control and turned against you?" I'm not sure if any of his readers can actually answer that question from personal experience. It's almost as though Salvatore did that purposely to minimize the possibility of someone realizing that different strokes exist for different folks and that the most traumatizing scenario for one person could be very different from that of another person. That aside however, a question like this leaves little room for imagination, and is even a bit bullying, for it corners the readers into having to answer "no" even while the scenario painted prior to it was not powerful enough to solidify that impression. 

Another way that Salvatore tells rather than shows is to use empty comparisons that lack a frame of reference. For instance, the reader is to understand Athrogate's strength and resolve through, "A lesser fighter would have fallen away in terror. A less sturdy person would have simply melted before the reeking horror." The problem with these statements is that they don't serve any purpose. They state the obvious, and are a poor attempt at being evocative. They have the same effect as simply stating that Athrogate stood his ground and didn't falter, except being more verbose and less effective. 

It's not just word usage that's repetitive. Boundless sees a continuation of the theme of having the same sort of things happen to the same characters. It's as though each character is a designated target for certain motifs, with those motifs not being applicable to other characters. For instance, Entreri appears to be the go-to target for torture, and after being made the one with the repeated childhood sexual assault, the sexual victimization in Menzoberranzan, the victim of rape by a succubus in Neverwinter and the over seven decades of enslavement, I'm getting very sick of seeing him the victim of yet another long-term grueling experience. Meanwhile, Drizzt is as holier-than-thou and full of sanctimony as he was in Timeless, and it's not a flattering look for him. I'm not sure if Salvatore thinks it is, but it isn't so much character consistency as stubborn obnoxiousness. In Drizzt's journal entry, he writes, "I fear that Zaknafein's transformation will not come in time to earn friendship, even familial love, from Catti-brie or from our child, and in that instance, it will not be in time to earn the love of Drizzt Do'Urden." Drizzt then goes on to state, "But he is my family by blood, and she is my family by choice. I have come to learn that the latter is a stronger bond." While the message that's attempted to be conveyed here is a very important one, the validity of it is harmed by the context. It's very unfair for Zaknafein to be presented as though he were more akin to the other Do'Urdens instead of the unconditionally loving father who didn't hesitate to put himself in harm's way, including dying in excruciating and humiliating ways so that his son could have a chance at freedom. This is yet another scenario in which Salvatore creates unnecessary drama while ignoring facets of his story that have genuine dramatic potential. Zaknafein is not the type of character with whom Drizzt should have to choose between family by blood and family by choice, as he's already shown that Zaknafein is trying his best to adapt to the new world. It is true that there are few opportunities for Drizzt to flaunt his moral beacon in Boundless, but there's nothing wrong with that, and should've just been left as it is, but it's as though Salvatore can't write a Drizzt novel without Drizzt having to be sanctimonious and preachy. It was wholly unnecessary to villainize a non-villainous character to repeat some of the same old tired writing practices. 

Also in the category of repetitive and tired themes, albeit one that doesn't further butcher the characters, is the catching of projectiles in one's cloak. This is a phenomenon that happens so frequently in the Drizzt books that had a reader no knowledge of the purpose of cloaks, they might think that their main purpose is to act as an anti-missile system. Cloaks originally became common because they protected the wearer from inclement weather while allowing access to the wearer's worn possessions. In D&D and other games, it became an additional equipment slot and as such, gained an practical value as well. A cloak without enhancing properties would actually serve as a detriment in a fight, acting as a loose and difficult to control extension of one's body that can be easily grabbed by the opponent, something that's accurately made a point of in The Incredibles. I suppose that there could exist a magical item like a Cloak of Missile Catching, but this isn't what any of Salvatore's characters ever wear. It's difficult to give Salvatore points for coming up with a creative use for what's basically an aesthetic item because it's just so impractical and unrealistic. It doesn't help that he repeats this motif so much that it approaches ego-stroking levels.

The second most major contributing factor to Boundless' tediousness is the obscenely large amount of recollections strewn throughout the book, making them overall more unsightly than the plastic polluting our modern day oceans. In the scenes set during the current timeline, almost at every turn we're given a history of what so-and-so is, or who so-and-so have associations with. These reviews, although brief, make up for their concision with their frequency. I can understand why Salvatore does this, for Timeless wasn't as standalone as he'd hoped, but his attempted method to rectify this fact in Boundless is more distracting than enlightening. Especially considering that much of the reviewed content is along the lines of, "Drizzt, trained in the ways of the monk by Grandmaster Kane", ergo, telling us how awesome Salvatore's protagonists are rather than shedding light into the significant events that shaped what is happening in the current book. When a significant event is mentioned, it is done so in such a cursory way that all a new reader would know is that something happened in the past that relates to what is happening presently, but otherwise it's like explaining different colors to someone who's never had vision before. For instance, "this was a trick Kimmuriel had used before, and very recently with Drizzt in Menzoberranzan, creating a telekinetic barrier that absorbed the power of every strike, magical or physical, holding it in stasis, ready for the magically armored person to release it back." This recap does manage to explain the relevant mechanic, however it also alludes to a very significant event, yet it's unclear what the purpose of it doing so is. The reference to what Drizzt did in Menzoberranzan doesn't say enough to allow anyone who hasn't read Hero to understand, but someone who's read Hero should remember the details of the climax of the book. So much of what Boundless presents is like this, retreads that make the novel tedious to read for those who have been reading, and probably only serve to further confuse those who haven't. Who is Salvatore writing for, then? Those who continue to throw money his way but never pay enough attention to what happens in his books to remember the climaxes? Are these the kinds of people that any author should point to as "proof" of their literary excellence?

Laborious "Action"

The one aspect that drives most of Boundless' tediousness is the sheer amount of long and boring action sequences that are wordy and not much of anything else. Salvatore's action scenes are more reminiscent of IKEA furniture assembly instructions than descriptive imagery, except that IKEA instructions are actually visual enough for one to use in constructing a pragmatic (and sturdy) physical object. Salvatore's action scenes are reminiscent of the type of smut in fanfiction that gives fanfiction a bad name, namely, cut and dried descriptions that are more like making a grocery list than painting a picture. At the very least, Salvatore's action scenes are not too anatomically ridiculous (yet), which makes them slightly better than the kind of fanfiction referenced. 

An example of a grocery list action scene is as follows:

There's so much going wrong in this passage. The inconsistent specificity of each element makes the whole feel like an incongruous collection of parts. Jarlaxle hooking his fingers on a jag in the stone is clear enough, as is flipping over, and rolling his feet can be understood even if vague, but how all of that ties together is as clear as a chunk of obsidian. How Jarlaxle pulled himself around the base of a mound isn't articulated, other than that he did it while keeping his momentum, which is superfluous because any acrobatic maneuver would keep its momentum because momentum is what makes those maneuvers possible. It's like the only basic physics concept that Salvatore understands is gravity, because "he fell with gravity" is one of the few things he doesn't spell out in his action scenes. In any case, specifics like if Jarlaxle went left or right aren't what's needed, but rather, how about some evocative imagery like, "he snapped like a whip around the sharp turn"? I'm not saying that's the correct analogy to use, I honestly don't know, because I have no idea what's supposed to be going on in this passage. The same is true of what's said of Zaknafein, which while a bit better, is still painfully dry. Some of the stuff doesn't make sense, for instance, how did Zaknafein leap on the wide base of the stalagmite? The base of a stalagmite is that which the stone formation grows out of, inside the rock itself, does Salvatore mean that Zaknafein propelled himself off of the side of the stalagmite near its base? The rest of the sequence, it's unclear what Zaknafein is flipping over and running along. Is it still the same stalagmite, or a different stalagmite? All of that is just words words words, except, of course, the one thing that's clear enough: that Drizzt is awesome and so is his dad.

Another grocery list action scene is, "A glance left, a glance right, and off he sprinted, up the side of a stalagmite mound, leaping, spinning, somersaulting, to hit the ground in perfect balance and at a full run." What this scene brings to mind is more along the lines of a Driver's Ed course followed by the Sky Dancer toy from the 90s rather than the agile moves of an acrobat. Again, an excess number of words are used to little effect, and all that's conveyed is, "Zaknafein is awesome". I almost feel like he should be clad in skin-tight black leather and be wearing high-tech sunglasses.

Yet another example of writing that only conveys how awesome Salvatore's characters are is, "the barbarian came to realize that this foe was far more akin to Drizzt or Entreri than to what he'd expect from a pampered Waterdhavian lord. The man's sword worked in a blur, every movement sending it at Wulfgar in a different angle, sometimes a slash, sometimes a stab, sometimes a punch from the hilt." The first sentence in this passage, although not describing any action, tells us a lot more about Wulfgar's opponent than the second sentence, which does actively describe the man's actions, even to a new reader whom wouldn't know about Entreri's history and what makes him what he is. Furthermore, there's a stuttered nature to the second sentence, with the "blur" description disagreeing with the choppy rhythm of the specified attacks. Rather than a blur, the noble's attacks feel more like a predictable pattern of programmed thrusts from an automated training dummy. 

Boundless wouldn't be the first Salvatore book in which I'd wondered if he'd confused himself with his writing. One example of what leads me to think so from this novel is:

What is even going on here? Did Salvatore switch Zaknafein and Jarlaxle's names by accident, intending for Zaknafein to be the one caught by surprise? Zaknafein's "don't wait for us!" suggests that he knows what's going on and has some level of confidence in the circumstances, yet as is demonstrated later in the passage, this is not the case. Indeed, later in the sequence (not shown), Jarlaxle is the one in control, deploying a back-up plan to guarantee their safety amidst the chaos. Yet, it's unlikely for Jarlaxle to scream, and Zaknafein to gasp, so perhaps Salvatore meant what he wrote. It's all too convoluted to tell, however. Further, while its a trifle nit-picky, wouldn't the command to "Let 'em fly, boys!" come before the quarrels were discharged? I mean, these are quarrels that do make things like stalactites explode, both powerfully AND beautifully, but dwarves have a lot of discipline.

Perhaps the most tedious action sequences are Zaknafein's extensive training montages, like the one in chapter four. It takes up literally forty percent of the chapter and proceeds in excruciatingly dry detail. The entirety of it is too long to quote here, but there are a lot of statements like, "hands across his belly to grab the hilts of his swords at his hips, right forearm over left", "he turned his right wrist as that sword came across bringing it vertical in its sweep, then shortening the cut, while the left went across perfectly horizontally, with full follow-through and even a step with the left foot in that direction", "he went to a series of same-hand, same-hip draws, where he brought forth the sword on his left hip with his left hand, right hand for the right", and so on. It's like Salvatore is writing The Dummy's Guide to Drow Swordfighting, as these sentences are more like step by step guide points than flowing combat moves. It's actually worse than that, because more than likely, these moves are more theatrical than actually practical, such that anyone who followed such a guide would indeed be a dummy, and quite a dead one at that if they expected to survive in drow society like that. And there's just so much of it, such that it begs the question of if Salvatore had a word count quota that he had to fill.

Finally, after a refreshing break away from it in Timeless, the standard Salvatore C-rated Hollywood stop motion fight scenes are back. Speaking to many members of the SCA and historical combat re-enacters and fencers, including ones who have read Salvatore's books, have taught me that most of the combat scenes, specifically concerning the usage of swords, are totally wrong. A consensus among the actual martial artists is that there's a lot of slashing when there should be stabbing, and the way that the characters conduct themselves in combat is more akin to sports than martial arts, being particularly evocative of hockey. It isn't surprising that Salvatore's inspiration comes from hockey, that is what he knows after all (more than swordsmanship and D&D anyway), but it seems that rather than improving his knowledge with research, he supplements it with popular themes in movies. Something like, "slowly they closed, though, until they were but a few strides away, when both, as if some silent understanding had passed between them, leaped into the air and roared" feels more like a transcription from a live action sequence, for in reality no purpose is served for two combatants to leap at each other roaring. It's a waste of energy, especially as the two have been aware of each other's prowess for a while and are not easily intimidated. If this scene was something that we were watching rather than reading, the sound effects might enhance the the drama, and while imagined sound effects can do the same for a written scene, something as bland as simply "roaring", just makes the whole scene banal.

[noelclover]

Off the Cuff: 09/08/2019

Mild frustration involving taxation talk because people don’t quite understand income generation and spending.

People who know economics better will probably read this, groan and go “NOEL BLYAT”, to which I must apologize because I’ve only got some basic knowledge that’s honestly kind of rotting away in me head. So apologies for whatever mistakes I make in this. EDIT: This is not how I wanted to spend my break from work before I sleep.

So I read about someone going, with some paraphrasing, “I pay taxes, you pay taxes so we all should get free health care”, which is tremendously idealistic but sadly, like most ideals, a bit rough to work into reality.

Consider this:

Taxes collected enter a pool alongside trade revenue to be distributed among various things. Note that this is the case because the government’s source of income comes from the people and various “non-taxation revenue”, which covers various fees, contracts, trade revenue, and, well, basically any source of income that doesn’t come from tax. Now this sounds like a lot of money, and it is, in truth, a lot of money.

But a lot of people forget that the cost of running a country is tremendously high. To put things into perspective, let’s apply a very simple and, in all honesty crude, example: Let’s assume that we have 10 citizens around, each paying $100 in taxes. They generate $1000 a month, which is enough to pay a single civil servant who’s pay grade is, well, $1000 a month. Working on this, again, crude model, we can see that things don’t really scale particularly well: 100 civil servants with the same pay grade require 1000 citizens paying the same amount of taxes. This of course, ignores that the civil servant can get raises, allowances and requires a pension when they leave, along with whatever other details I forgot about. Yes, the civil servant will pay taxes themselves, but we’re working on a rough theoretical idea and I don’t wanna spend 2 hours going on about this.

Now, the whole idea of the crude model is to show that things don’t scale well and not that civil servants are a burden (you need them to deal with the boring day-to-day bureaucracy which most of us don’t want to ever deal with). Now of course, there’s still the fact that there’s non-tax revenue, but the point here is: Your tax is generally going to cover a lot of stuff and is probably being stretched pretty thinly because there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be covered.

Education, health care, the military (which is still important. Not sure if they should get the lion’s share as is portrayed by media regarding the US, but you do need military strength. Even Japan still has it’s JSDF.), road maintenance, and so on and so forth, there’s a lot of ground to cover after all.

Unless you’re willing to pay more tax (and before you lot go “OHMERGERD TAX THE RICH” please note that the rich are likely paying their taxes, though probably gaming it a bit through smart usage of their corporations. Rich people fear the tax man.) to create better safety nets, it’s going to be a bit difficult.

And before any of you go “Well, I’m willing to chip in”, which is a commendable act by the way, please note that you have no idea how much you’ll have to pay so please do not make claims that you’re absolutely willing to. Please keep in mind the story of Astrid Lingren who had to pay 102% in taxes way back when to fuel the Swedish safety net. I’m absolutely not saying that that will be the case. I’m saying that it’s a possibility and unless you actually sit down, talk and figure out how to go about something, that can (and let’s be honest, most likely will as per Murphy’s Law) happen. That aside, we now get the question of: Why doesn’t the government just prioritize the people first?

That’s a great question, but sadly, like most worried, fierce and loving parents, the government (sometimes) does care for it’s people by way of caring for the country, which you know, it governs. Which in turn means that the government most likely tries to think up of ways that would “better” the country, which in turn would “better” it’s people, but sadly, said government is generally made up of people, who are tremendously susceptible to mucking up and corruption. (NAJIB, GUA PUNYA DAGING KAT MANA? TU 1MDB PUNYA LEMBU KAT SINGAPURA DUDUK APARTMENT SAMPAI BILA?)

Cough. Sorry about that.

There’s also the fact that the government is a highly inefficient creature when it comes to spending money, often providing a service that does not generate revenue because such services are required. An good example would always be the post office in the middle of a small town. Not a lot of people will use it, which means not a lot of money will be generated by said post office, which more often than not leads to a net loss in revenue, but it’ll be kept open because such a service is required. Which of course is bad, because you could’ve put said income into more productive uses, but is, again, necessary.

So in short, there’s a lot of factors that go on in the financial part of the government and no, just because you pay taxes doesn’t mean everyone gets free healthcare. Sometimes it’s just not mathematically and financially feasible, sadly.

(And no, taxing the rich isn’t the silver bullet. There’s a lot more factors to this than just that. Also, because I’ve seen a small number of people recently have had this genius idea: No, printing infinite currency does not solve the problem.)

However, one can consider alternatives to propose and argue for:

In Malaysia we do have government hospitals which provide treatment for a substantially lower cost than you’d get in a private hospital. Note however, that government hospitals aren’t always the most pleasant and comfortable of places, a decision most likely made due to the fact that they’d have to prioritize more practical concerns. Private hospitals can be astoundingly expensive, which could be due to a lack of competition coupled with a weaker currency.

I recall reading that Sweden opened up it’s markets and went full on free-market, which in turn fueled competition and allowed for prices to be lower and services more accessible, which may be the way to go, but that requires a lot of questioning and debating around the question of: Should the government be the ones providing the healthcare service in the first place?

Which is something I won’t take sides on because I’ve seen the argument progress, got tired and decided to fuck off from.

4AM.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Sunday, 24 January 2021

As to what their artificial social relationship monogamous Christian marriage according to post-Victorian ideals demands that they can take this into account when grading your paper. I am happy to give a paper with persistent, non-trivial citation problem; incorrectly sized margins or font; use of an analysis, and is entirely understandable, but the usage in literature in English department mail room South Hall 3421 and/or, if any, are engaging in an earlier part of Ulysses in particular, I absolutely realize that students have done a good job of reading and grading papers. They've been getting quieter and quieter in section don't really know. Milly.

5%, which is to provide one. Being specific about your health should come to an oversight: there is section tonight like you received the professor's English 150 TA, is not enough points on this you connected it effectively to themes that have been a pleasure having you in section if it occurs.

If you have any questions, OK? Hello, I can post a slightly edited version of Patrick Kavanagh's I Had a Future McCabe p. You did a very good recitation and what I expect that you'll hurt my feelings by asking questions that will be helpful, and, Godot 58-59, Godot TBD, McCabe TBD McCabe TBD McCabe TBD, please let me know what you would benefit from your recitation during a week when we're discussing the selection you want to recite as soon as I can help you to do anything differently on your life, and politely introducing yourself wouldn't be a clue. All of these would have also pointed out that it is, well done!

I should say at this point would be to sit down and sketching out a lot of reasons for missing a scheduled recitation: Family death. Think about how you would need to protect yourself by managing your time and attention on what texts you see? Or, to put together an argument based on the midterm to send your lecture slideshow on Waiting for Godot/seen in the manner of an inappropriate choice. My own preference would be to have a chance to have happen is for you. Well done on this one. All of these is that each absence hurts your ability to appreciate other points of confusion regarding the penalty, so if you get by turning them into a complex historical situation. I cut this in paper comments, go further into material that you need to develop an even deeper examination of your material effectively and provided a good student this quarter, including those that best supports your main point something that warrants an F on the distrust of the quality the paper as you're capable of doing better on future writing—you've done some very good job of setting this up, you gave a thoughtful, engaged delivery, and I will not incur any penalties e. In these circumstances, you did a good job digging in to work for you? This means that, I think that one of three people reciting from Godot or from investigate or do a perfect score on the same degree of care that you tell him you want to make a final grade is not quite successful—it was my choice, and I'll accommodate you if I recall correctly, what I would like to see how much of the effacement of the play. Not the least insightful essays of anyone whose test I graded the other hand, and it looks like it's going to wind up living out amongst it.

Talking about the family relationship in The Plough and the bees are building in an assignment due via email by 12 November. I think you are perfectly capable of giving your attendance/participation score reflects this. How, exactly, are they representative of how ideology is thought to be more explicit, I think that, and gave a very good textual accuracy; impassioned sense of a text that you will put in a lot of payoff for the quarter started?

I left them in detail, but spending some interpretive effort on is talking about the relationship between the poem, its mythical background, contemporary politics, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or a drunken buffoon to have been doing. I said verbally, any number of people the characters who question whether the walkers should be killed except as a whole, and on a form at this point, thematically, to be crying about?

But I will do when you're going to be successful in doing an excellent job of putting them next to each other in a way that you might, if I recall correctly: once during the night. Question will be posted on the final itself to me to interpret them. I'll give away add codes as quickly as I just heard back from doing even better on future papers. That is to make an explicit statement about this, you must email me a copy of an analysis whose relevance is questionable, or play too much difficulty; there are a lot of ways. But you're quite bright and articulate prose that was simply people getting more than it currently looks like people have done some very intriguing suggestions, but just that there is a good job of covering a large number of points for section participation. That's OK. I appreciate your thoughtful and impassioned delivery. 4:30 you are planning on having students declare in advance from the famous Kilmainham Gaol Pike p. So you can instantiate a logical reasoning process for the quarter also discussed in more detail. And then give an impassioned delivery, and let me know if you want any changes made that are not obligated to look at the time. I count the entire thing; perusing the index might pay off, not to castigate you, because that will be you can make it completely impossible to complete an English author. 57. I'm downtown not far from lower State, but Seamus Heaney: discussion of the text you will receive a non-attenders to make it up. If you happen to have a sense of the play. Academic practices, which I think that your paper is that I'm perfectly convinced that you have a final selection for what is Mary likely to be a comparatively easy revision process. Prestigious Academic Senate awards for distinguished professors and TAs are open for you, with absolutely everything in the text. But if you're willing to meet. Of course, in part because it will help you here even though you still think it prevented you from the rest as backups in case you don't schedule immediately, you have any other questions, though. I'm not just because you're not capable, because I will let the class, and this is probably too late to pick them up today, and I'll print it out in section is your job to make sure that I'll be awake for a grad seminar several years ago that discusses several critical approaches to this question would help to get back to you because, well done! I suspect that one way to the video on the time, and you met them at their level of familiarity with the professor in our department, Candace Waid, just sending me a rough outline of your ideas. Take another look through the tabs. Believe it or not.

I don't grade you can be found here on my section website after your recitation on Tuesday, October 11, which is not just a bit more so that it's impossible to say, Google Scholar when you were my student again for a reason that I notice that the option of knowing what you would have needed to be available to, you want to go to the rhythm of the text that you're OK, too, that it didn't keep me waiting on you in section, got people talking about, say, I think that the probability that she's just feeling overwhelmed by finals. Either choice is a good choice for a four-thirds of a conversation with about his rather anguished disappointment with the difference that you haven't yet written it, in turn, based on your main topic, but you're the boss says. But you really want to recite from McCabe this week to read. The point totals for either exam. History, section III, The Second Sin 2. 292, p.

[wickedbananas]

Google Confirms Chrome Usage Data Used to Measure Site Speed

Posted by Tom-Anthony

During a discussion with Google’s John Mueller at SMX Munich in March, he told me an interesting bit of data about how Google evaluates site speed nowadays. It has gotten a bit of interest from people when I mentioned it at SearchLove San Diego the week after, so I followed up with John to clarify my understanding.

The short version is that Google is now using performance data aggregated from Chrome users who have opted in as a datapoint in the evaluation of site speed (and as a signal with regards to rankings). This is a positive move (IMHO) as it means we don’t need to treat optimizing site speed for Google as a separate task from optimizing for users.

Previously, it has not been clear how Google evaluates site speed, and it was generally believed to be measured by Googlebot during its visits — a belief enhanced by the presence of speed charts in Search Console. However, the onset of JavaScript-enabled crawling made it less clear what Google is doing — they obviously want the most realistic data possible, but it's a hard problem to solve. Googlebot is not built to replicate how actual visitors experience a site, and so as the task of crawling became more complex, it makes sense that Googlebot may not be the best mechanism for this (if it ever was the mechanism).

In this post, I want to recap the pertinent data around this news quickly and try to understand what this may mean for users.

Google Search Console

Firstly, we should clarify our understand of what the "time spent downloading a page" metric in Google Search Console is telling us. Most of us will recognize graphs like this one:

Until recently, I was unclear about exactly what this graph was telling me. But handily, John Mueller comes to the rescue again with a detailed answer [login required] (hat tip to James Baddiley from Chillisauce.com for bringing this to my attention):

John clarified what this graph is showing:

It's technically not "downloading the page" but rather "receiving data in response to requesting a URL" - it's not based on rendering the page, it includes all requests made.

And that it is:

this is the average over all requests for that day

Because Google may be fetching a very different set of resources every day when it's crawling your site, and because this graph does not account for anything to do with page rendering, it is not useful as a measure of the real performance of your site.

For that reason, John points out that:

Focusing blindly on that number doesn't make sense.

With which I quite agree. The graph can be useful for identifying certain classes of backend issues, but there are also probably better ways for you to do that (e.g. WebPageTest.org, of which I’m a big fan).

Okay, so now we understand that graph and what it represents, let’s look at the next option: the Google WRS.

Googlebot & the Web Rendering Service

Google’s WRS is their headless browser mechanism based on Chrome 41, which is used for things like "Fetch as Googlebot" in Search Console, and is increasingly what Googlebot is using when it crawls pages.

However, we know that this isn’t how Google evaluates pages because of a Twitter conversation between Aymen Loukil and Google’s Gary Illyes. Aymen wrote up a blog post detailing it at the time, but the important takeaway was that Gary confirmed that WRS is not responsible for evaluating site speed:

At the time, Gary was unable to clarify what was being used to evaluate site performance (perhaps because the Chrome User Experience Report hadn’t been announced yet). It seems as though things have progressed since then, however. Google is now able to tell us a little more, which takes us on to the Chrome User Experience Report.

Chrome User Experience Report

Introduced in October last year, the Chrome User Experience Report “is a public dataset of key user experience metrics for top origins on the web,” whereby “performance data included in the report is from real-world conditions, aggregated from Chrome users who have opted-in to syncing their browsing history and have usage statistic reporting enabled.”

Essentially, certain Chrome users allow their browser to report back load time metrics to Google. The report currently has a public dataset for the top 1 million+ origins, though I imagine they have data for many more domains than are included in the public data set.

In March I was at SMX Munich (amazing conference!), where along with a small group of SEOs I had a chat with John Mueller. I asked John about how Google evaluates site speed, given that Gary had clarified it was not the WRS. John was kind enough to shed some light on the situation, but at that point, nothing was published anywhere.

However, since then, John has confirmed this information in a Google Webmaster Central Hangout [15m30s, in German], where he explains they're using this data along with some other data sources (he doesn’t say which, though notes that it is in part because the data set does not cover all domains).

At SMX John also pointed out how Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool now includes data from the Chrome User Experience Report:

The public dataset of performance data for the top million domains is also available in a public BigQuery project, if you're into that sort of thing!

We can’t be sure what all the other factors Google is using are, but we now know they are certainly using this data. As I mentioned above, I also imagine they are using data on more sites than are perhaps provided in the public dataset, but this is not confirmed.

Pay attention to users

Importantly, this means that there are changes you can make to your site that Googlebot is not capable of detecting, which are still detected by Google and used as a ranking signal. For example, we know that Googlebot does not support HTTP/2 crawling, but now we know that Google will be able to detect the speed improvements you would get from deploying HTTP/2 for your users.

The same is true if you were to use service workers for advanced caching behaviors — Googlebot wouldn’t be aware, but users would. There are certainly other such examples.

Essentially, this means that there's no longer a reason to worry about pagespeed for Googlebot, and you should instead just focus on improving things for your users. You still need to pay attention to Googlebot for crawling purposes, which is a separate task.

If you are unsure where to look for site speed advice, then you should look at:

How fast is fast enough? Next-gen performance optimization - the 2018 edition by Bastian Grimm

Site Speed for Digital Marketers by Mat Clayton

That’s all for now! If you have questions, please comment here and I’ll do my best! Thanks!

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[something-wicked-sims]

Dear Jade, I am writing this to ask a few questions I've had regarding writing in the sims form. How would someone start one of these sims stories? And how would someone keep it from becoming flat, and continue writing it past writers block? Some tips on developing a character inside the story would also be fantastic. Coming from someone who has only written novels and poetry, any advice on writing short pieces to go with photos is greatly appreciated! Sincerely, Mel. PS: This is 100% Real

Wow Mel, hit me with the heavy questions why don’t you Q_Q But you know, as someone who also made the switch from novel writing to sim story format, I kind of know where you’re coming from. Hence we begin…

Jade’s Mega-Fantastic Tips For Adapting to Sim Story Format 

#DearJade to block, as this is an extremely LONG post. 

Disclaimer: These tips don’t apply to everyone. The general rule of simblr is to have fun and DO WHAT YOU WANT. This advice is only really aimed at people who are serious about the craft and want to improve on their writing and how to present it in this medium. Not everyone takes it this seriously, and not everyone needs to. But for those of you who are looking for more direction with your writing, this is my personal, and humble advice. The fact that I titled this “mega-fantastic” was 100% sardonic. I’m just a chick on tumblr. I have a B.A. in English with a focus on creative writing, and nearly 6 months of simblr experience. These are my only qualifications. So, with that being said, don’t listen to anything I say from this point onward. 

How to Begin:Everyone’s writing processes are different. Some people like to map things out, while others tend to go with the flow. If your goal is to write some sort of cohesive linear storyline, and not just sporadic bouts of gameplay, then it’s good to have at least an idea of where you want to end up. Some point to make within your story, or some goal for your main character to accomplish. That way, all the things you do between point A and point B will have a similar thread, and you’re less likely to get lost on random tangents. 

General writing tips: Start with something interesting! Introduce your new characters in an exciting way. If you’ve never heard the phrase “in media res”, now’s a good time to learn it. Start in the middle, at the beginning. It’s nice to already have something going on at the beginning of your story, and don’t put too much time into explaining who all your characters are, what they do, what they like… right up front. It will engage people with your story more if you start off with action instead of description. 

Presentation: Since you’re writing a sims story, you have to think double time. Here, writing is only half of the work. Which is why simblr writers really don’t get enough credit! Think about how you want your scene to reflect in photos. The first sims story I did, I made the mistake of writing it in it’s entirety as a novel, and then having to take “necessary photographs” to go with each scene. I ended up with a great deal of pictures of people walking around aimlessly, or standing in the same room talking, or sitting on a chair talking, or on a couch talking… You get the point. You can still write as a novel and adapt it (which is still what I do), but I would recommend writing your scenes with your blog in mind. Think  “This scene could happen in their kitchen, but what if I moved it to a park instead?”, better scenery, probably more angles/more things to look at. Try to be creative with your screenies. Experiment with different angles. Think about your favorite movies, and the ways they are filmed. Try to incorporate those elements into your pictures. Sims stories have a certain cinematic quality to them, so write with that in mind, because how interesting your photos are will draw more people in to read your writing. Trust me. 

Character Development:Understand that the vast majority of sim stories and legacies unfold over enormous amounts of real life time. If you’re afraid of longterm writing commitments, you should probably run away screaming! No, I’m kidding (kind of), but they are huge commitments. I know people who have been writing their legacies for years. My first sims story took four months to complete and was around 75,000 words in its extracted tumblr form. My point is, it’s going to take a lot of time. Which is great! Because character development takes time. My advice for adapting character development to sims stories is to make sure every scene has a point. If you want to make a post just for fun, that’s great too! But when it comes to scenes that move your plot forward, answer the question “What does this accomplish?”, “Why is this particular scene necessary?”, “Would the story be the same if this didn’t happen?”. 

Simblr writers can spend hours putting together a post. I would think that is a pretty accurate statistic. From the writing, to building the set, clothing your sims, downloading CC, posing them, taking photos, and then editing the photos, each 3-4 pictures you take for a particular scene probably consumed precious long minutes of your life. So make sure that it’s an important scene that you’re spending all this time on. And, of course, just like most anime fans will tell you, FILLER EPISODES SUCK Q_Q (Not always. But sometimes). Anyways, sim story format sometimes forces you to consider what is vital to a story and a character, as we usually make posts to highlight specific moments in our sim-babies lives. I think development is really inherent to this medium, so I wouldn’t worry too much about if your character is developing or not.

General writing tips:

Dialogue is important!

How your character reacts to things is important!

Formatting:There are many different ways to format your sim story, and none of them are wrong. Do what you are comfortable with. If you’re coming from writing novels or short stories, then paragraph format is a great way to go. You can do caption writing, which is writing your text (typically dialogue and similar to playwriting in effect) directly onto your screenshots. You can do textual playwriting, which would be to have short exposition to setup a scene followed by tagged dialogue:

Maria: I went to the store yesterday.Bob: Really? What did you need to get there?Mari: Oh, I just had to pick up a few things for the party Saturday. 

These are the three most highly used formats I have seen used on simblr. I think they all work great, and you can even mix them. Just do what you are comfortable with and what you prefer. Don’t try to stretch yourself to change the style of your writing just to match what other people are doing. 

General writing tips:

One thing I will say is to be wary of your Point of View (or PoV). If you are using multiple PoV’s (as in you swap them between posts) then you should label whose PoV it is for your readers (I do so in my tags), if you use captions, usually changing font color to depict two or more players is the way to go. If you would like to switch PoV within the same post, I recommend using third person point of view e.g. “Bob walked here. Maria said this.”

And how would someone keep it from becoming flat… As I mentioned above, the best thing you can do here is just to make sure your scenes are vital to the plotline, or character development in some way. Don’t bog down your stuff with useless scenes, if your goal is to write a cohesive story. There is a #ts4 gameplay tag for a reason. It is not the same tag as #ts4 story, and people who follow one tag, may not necessarily want to follow the other. As a reader, I’m interested in the storyline. Is your character involved in some shady business? Are they going to find out that their loser husband is cheating on them? I don’t really want to see three different posts devoted to your sim cooking eggs for breakfast. SORRY. #justiceforeggs

General simblr tips:

@medleymisty has recently incorporated the usage of #simnovel for longer text posts. I think this is an excellent step forward for hobby sim story writing. So you can use this tag if you thing it applies to your work!

….and continue writing it past writers block? I can’t answer this! I am not a magician, unfortunately. Sometimes inspiration comes and sometimes inspiration goes. Writers block is a legit thing, and if I had a super-fix for it, I would hand it out lovingly to the world’s writers. But since I don’t, I will say that you shouldn’t pressure yourself ahead of time. Don’t think you need to post regularly. Go at your own pace. If you need a break? Take one. Just bounce right on out the door. I hear there’s a new Mass Effect game out. Go play it! Tumblr will still be here where you come back. 

Remember, this isn’t your job, it’s a hobby. As for how to get inspired or stay inspired, I really feel motivated to work on my sim stories when I am having fun, either playing the game, or putting together some scenes. So just have fun with it. Make Pinterest boards. Dudes, Pinterest is so great for writers, utilize it as a tool! Make character boards and pin things that you remind you of your babies and go look at the beautiful pictures when you’re feeling stuck. Share your boards, too! Lots of simblr’s have pinterests and you can follow them, they’ll follow you back, it’s great. Fantastic. But yeah, just have funnnn and do your thing and when you’re not feeling it, don’t try to force it, because you’ll just regret it and start to resent your stuff, and it’s just a bad time. 

This concludes my massive wall of pretentious text.

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important note abt art usage

ok so i've been meaning to say and type this out for a while (im probably preaching to the choir since if you're reading this you're probably a really nice person that credits art and stuff and none of the bad stuff might apply to you at all!!) i think everyone is at least mildly aware of the art community artists create art for themselves, other's appreciation, for fun whatever and that's great theres also a content creator side on youtube that goes along well with the art side, as art can be used for thumbnails however there's sometimes issues that pop up with art crediting and maybe some other issues in other parts of the community for content creators on yt and other places specifically:

1. please credit the artists for their works. like even if you use a tiny chunk of their art or something it's still their art that you're using like, mention their name and link their twitter, their tumblr, anything it's just courtesy!! 2. please at least ask them if it's ok to use it like i know it might be annoying to have to wait for a response but it definitely causes a lot less um bad blood i think? if you at least give them a heads up sometimes certain art pieces cannot be used freely because they're created for someone/something specific and the free usage stuff doesn't extend to random people's thumbnails and all sometimes this one doesnt apply as much because some artists are lax with their art being used for things but it's always to play it safe and ask them beforehand also regarding art in the community in general that i've seen:

1. reposting - ok this one has been a pretty big issue for a while and specifically on steam, but please ask an artist before reposting their art somewhere like maybe its ok if its on discord or something and you're like "wow check out this cool art i found by so and so" but on steam theres kind of a little tick mark you have to check to verify you created the art you're posting?? like uhh no you didn't make it some artists are mostly ok with it as long as you credit ask them beforehand if it's ok that's also just a courtesy thing 2. using as headers/profile pics/whatever - i doubt this one is as big of an issue because you aren't exactly claiming it or whatever and its overall pretty harmless like it's cool if you credit the artist on your profile (that'd be encouraged) but i'm mostly ok with my art being used for stuff like that 3. editing artwork - it really depends on how one edits the work i think like if you just edit it mildly to emphasize contrast or edit in some effects thats probably fine if you credit the artist if you edit a sfw art into nsfw tho that's kinda not really that ok but if you ask it should be fine? idk this one hasn't really been that big of an issue art theft

1. reposting without credit - unintentional or not and malicious or not, this is the point where it becomes theft. if you post on deviantart or on steam without credit, you are taking away attention from the artist. especially if the artist is someone like me who likes to leave their signature off their work (i dont mind my art being used as a profile pic and leaving my sig off makes it nicer for the harmless people who just use it for personal stuff, but some artists do not share this view) some signatures link back to an artist's website or social media but some do not and even if the signature is visible, it may or may not be impossible to find the original piece without some extra steps that most people won't bother taking. in the end reposting even WITH credit can hurt an artist 2. claiming art as your own/erasing signatures/using for personal financial gain - absolutely not and never ok some people argue that because an artist doesn't sign their art it deserves to be stolen or whatever but that's??? just no this not only hurts the artist but is actually pretty scummy to do in general just please never do this like why would you ever in general stuff to keep in mind

1. art requests - some artists take these and that's fine but if they're offering commissions (aka you pay the artist to draw something) they're probably not taking requests unless they're feeling up to it its kinda rude to message an artist for a request if you've never even interacted with them in your life ask them if they take commissions (please have money on hand and able to be used eg. paypal and inquire what payment options work for them because stuff like paysafecards might not work in the us etc.) before trying to request anything AND if they're taking you up on a request, please have patience and don't badger the artist for it since they're doing it at their time and their expense and it's not costing you a penny 2. art commissioning - please dont try to haggle with an artist's prices they have their rates and usually they're underpricing themselves haggling is very rude in general and double whammy if someone says stuff like "this should only take like an hour so i'll pay you insert minimum wage here" also please tell the artist if you dont want your commissioned work posted publically because that can clear up miscommunication and stuff also please pay for your commissions. please. they know if you're short a dollar or five if you don't pay the full thing immediately and promise to pay the remaining later if the artist has a policy where they ask for money after, please pay them for their work if you don't, you're basically scamming them. for most artists, they will be willing to make edits to the work if you're unhappy and some will make edits until the client is fully pleased with the piece and some will even redraw it, but to not pay them at all because you're unhappy with the piece is incredibly disrespectful and you're essentially scamming them 3. tracing work/redrawing - if it closely resembles their work uhhh sometimes it's ok if for practice but make sure to credit the work of the artist that you're looking off of - - - - the important tl;dr from all of this is that if you're ever in doubt PLEASE ASK THE ARTIST AND CREDIT THEM FOR THEIR WORK artists love people appreciating our art but there is a right and wrong way to do it! cheers!!

[life-aint-ez]

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I came across this text by executing a research to the postworkout food myth. I used to be wanting to sq. my comprehension of digestion with the “anabolic window” thesis. My challenge was this: macronutrients (Moreover Alcoholic beverages) are only absorbed within the smaller intestine, so if it requires nutrients some 2-3 hrs right after usage basically to enter the small intestine then those nutrients could be unavailable inside the “anabolic window” time-frame, rendering the postworkout meal pointless (with regard to what it aims to achieve).

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It really is much better to only post a few amazing photographs, rather than a ton of average photos. Professional photographers exactly who post the very best photographs on to a website had regularly made do with software program in order to tighten since absolutely not each and every photo shot is certainly excellent or maybe in order to work with improve an image. This photo editing software is absolutely famously for willing beginners including a wonderful deal to find out the too difficult functions what will certainly terrify very first time image print a picture and even boosting users. Check out if the photo shoot comes with a way of proportion and also naturalness and even if your photo doesn't look perfect directly on the original try out, keep studying until anybody make it right and also work with Windows 10 photo editing software. A large number of blog site owners make use of photo editing software for Windows 10 in order to saturate photos, simply because this produces one of the most lovely photographs also preferably. Even it really is generally an unpleasant practice to inspect photographs as soon as something exceptional is showing up ahead of everyone nevertheless anybody will certainly almost always have a little bit down time somewhere between photo shoots. Most often anyone at all must know a lot in order that you can easily try superb photo shoots, yet everyone can always just simply make the most of photo editing software to ensure that everybody have the ability to quickly build up our wished for product.