#is a few too many paragraphs for me to manually edit out the weird space tumblr decides to put between them so. have this

[witchersgoldenbard]

If you haven’t already answered a question about the breakfast club wip i would love to know more!!!!

oooh, that one was one of the first witcher fics i had started way back when, while watching the breakfast club. i only have the beginning (as per usual..) of it, but still strongly love the vibes and hope to continue at some point bc this fandom needs a berakfast club au. it's a classic, but there's still none?? a crime.

Geralt: the quiet, brooding guy who gives zero fucks about school or what people think of him Jaskier: the loud, cheery theatre kid who runs his mouth before he thinks, a bit feral sometimes Yennefer: the insanely pretty mean girl who hates popular kids Triss: the Princess, a popular kid who’s actually very kind and likes to help but peer pressure prevents it Renfri: nerd who likes to get into people’s business, ace

they're all there for detention, stregobor sucks. it's definitely geraskier and probably yenntriss because renfri is just judging them all and simply hoping for this day to be over before they can decide to kill stregobor the next time he enters the library.

you can... have the entirety of the beginning, which is everyone's introduction in true breakfast club style. but it's 1.5k words and splitting it up would make no sense.

Saturday, 13 March 1999. Temeria High. 6:56 am.

A silver BMW is parked in front of the school, the engine still running. Triss Merigold is staring at the abandoned building in front of her. Never before has she seen it so deserted, and never again does she wish to see it this early on a Saturday morning. She sighs in trepidation and turns back to her dad who is smiling at her in an almost patronising way. As always.

“I can’t believe you can’t get me out of this,” she sighs, looking back at the building. She finds that she doesn’t mind it as much as her father’s condescending patience. “It’s so absurd I have to be here on a Saturday.”

Her father turns in his seat to face her and she looks back at him. “I’ll make it up to you,” he grins, and she refrains from rolling her eyes. Of course he will. Of course he didn’t listen to a word she said. Of course he never even asked why she has to be here in the first place. Merely jumped at the opportunity to take her here and pick her up this afternoon before her mother could get a single word in.

Triss isn’t stupid. She knows her father doesn’t care about her so much as he cares about getting back at her mother. Another proof for how he will take every chance to get into Triss’s good graces is the bag of expensive sushi he presses into her hands now. They never actually make food at her house, and Triss is beginning to despise it.

She takes it and doesn’t even bother to fake a smile.

“Have a good day,” her father says like he doesn’t know, doesn’t even care about where they currently are. Detention. De-fucking-tention! Nobody here will have a good day. She wants to scream at him, wants him to listen to his own words – but it would be no use. Her mother has tried. She has tried. All he did was smile.

So she doesn’t scream. Doesn’t say a word. Only rolls her eyes and gets out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her and not turning back to wave. Her dad wouldn’t check if she did anyway.

She exhales and summons all her strength. Right. Detention. Let’s do this.

****

Another car, red this time, pulls up on the empty parking lot before the school. The atmosphere here is just as tense as in the one before.

“I this the first time or the last time that we do this?” Renfri’s mother asks venomously before the car even comes to a stop.

Renfri clenches their jaw and breathes deeply, looking at the building instead of their mother. They don’t want to face her piercing eyes, her commanding tone, anything. They just want to survive the day and get this over with.

“The last,” Renfri murmurs, still not meeting mother’s eyes.

“Well, get in there and use the time to your advantage,” she demands. That woman has no idea how the real world works anymore.

Renfri rolls their eyes and looks up. “Mom, we’re not supposed to study in there. We just have to sit there and do nothing, you know?”

Now it’s her turn to roll her eyes. “Well, missy, you figure out a way to study!” Her tone books no room for discussion, and Renfri doesn’t bother. Doesn’t try to correct her either. Just sits there and tries not to reach out and punch their mother in the face. It’s a close call, this early on a Saturday morning.

“Well, go!” she calls, and Renfri does. Feeling miserable and misunderstood and godsfucking tired. They should have brought coffee. Or a whole machine, rather. Fuck. This day already sucks.

****

Behind the red car, a brown SUV comes to a stop. Within it, a tense silence. Vesemir isn’t looking at him, but Geralt knows that even if he were, there would be no judgment in them. Disappointment, maybe. Annoyance at having to be here once more on a Saturday morning. But no anger, no judgment.

“Let’s not do this again next week,” his old man grunts with a hint of resignation that tells Geralt he’s very well prepared to be in this exact same spot this time next week. It almost makes him smile.

Almost. Instead, he grunts. “Hm.”

Geralt doesn’t give a single flying fuck about school and grades and detention. He just wants to finally be done with it all so that he can work full-time in Vesemir’s garage like his brothers already do. His family knows that, and they are patient with him.

He brings home passing grades, sometimes even more than passing, and he aces shop. Stays out of trouble as far as he can, but he knows that some teachers just have it out for him. One, because he’s a Rivia, and everyone’s still traumatised by Lambert. Two, because he’s apparently intimidating and the assholes they employed here want to take him down before he can become dangerous, or something.

“Geralt,” Vesemir says, and he meets his eyes. A beat. “Try not to get in trouble.”

“Hm.”

Again, it’s not like he tries to get in trouble. It’s just that trouble usually finds him.

“Want me to pick you up after?”

Geralt shakes his head. “I’ll walk.”

It’s not a long way to the garage, and this way he also gets a chance to cool off, as he so often needs after pointless detention. Maybe, if he’s in good spirits, he’ll pick up some late lunch or early dinner on his way, bring some for the rest of his family.

It’s a comforting thought.

Vesemir reaches over to clap his shoulder, neither of them men for a lot of words. “Have a good day, kid.”

Geralt huffs at the sarcasm in his old man’s voice and rolls his eyes. “Hm. You, too. Saturday morning customers are known for their patience.”

Vesemir groans. “Maybe I’ll put Lambert on front desk duty, then. Will teach them a lesson.”

“And him,” Geralt agrees.

“And him.”

Grabbing his lunch bag, Geralt opens the door and exits the car, though he is careful not to slam it shut. He scowls at the familiar picture of the deserted school building glowing in the light of the rising sun.

Let’s get the over with.

****

The lone boy approaching the school has nobody to bring him, but he favours the crisp air of early spring to the confinement of a car full of people who will judge him. He doesn’t care about walking or the early morning hours – they are the least of his worries. All he cares about is the music coming through his earphones. It’s the third time this morning that he listens to Come On Eileen, and he needs the energy of this song to survive this day. It’s working, so far.

Lost in his music and the general apprehension of this whole day and every one that would follow, Jaskier doesn’t even care about the approaching blue car that almost hits him if it wasn’t for that slight side-step he does in tune with the song. Shame, really. Maybe being hit by a car would have got him out of a whole day of detention.

Come on Eileen, tah-loo-rye-aye

Come on Eileen, tah-loo-rye-aye

I say, too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye-ay

What a great song to be hit by a car to. Maybe next time.

****

Yennefer steps out of the car, sparing a passing glance at the boy they just almost hit. Her parents ignored him just like they always ignore her. She idly wonders what would have happened if they’d hit him – the boy never even faltered. Just keeps walking with his stupid headphones on. She wonders what he’s listening to. Considers stealing his Walkman or his headphones. But he doesn’t strike her as popular enough for her attentions.

After all, she doesn’t bully loners.

Without a single word or even a backwards glance through the rear-view mirror, her father takes off again, not even acknowledging her existence. She tries not to let it get to her.

She fails. As always.

Swallowing down the lump that has been forming in her throat ever since she was born, Yennefer follows the boy with the misplaced spring in his step to the front door and into the library. Artificial, blaring light hits her and she can already feel the headache coming on. The fluorescent tubes in the ceiling are doing nothing to wake her up and only increase her already bad mood.

Three rows of tables are set out in the middle of the library. She takes a seat in the second one, wanting to be in the middle of the action – because of course there will be action. She’ll make sure of that if she needs to.

ask me about my wips

[corvidry]

All About RP Icons For Beginners by Birdy

Hi OP, I’m not sure how experienced you are with all the nonsense surrounding the making and using of RP icons, so I’m gonna come at it as though you don’t have any experience with it at all and I’m sorry if that’s too simplified for you, but also if I’m gonna write many paragraphs about one topic I may as well make it accessible for as many people as possible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This post goes into what tools are out there for the popular methods of finding/making RP icons in the first half and my personal methodology for choosing and using them in my RP for the second half. This is a very surface level answer to the question and is not meant to be an in depth tutorial for the more labor intensive aspects of the process, but if you guys want more information and can’t find it elsewhere, please ask and I'll know what I should be talking about next. 

Also I’m also contractually obligated to mention to the masses that I do take commissions both for the drawing of RP icons and the service of capping, cutting, recoloring, and framing canon icons. Sometimes I even post batches of canon character icons for free on this blog so like,,,,, hit me up if you want. But!! You don’t need me, you can absolutely do all of it yourself!!  I go into the broad strokes below.

Question 1: “How do you get icons?” 

This is kind of a broad question and the answer depends on what your needs are. The right answer for you is gonna live in one of two camps 

Find some that already exist that are free to use

Make them yourself / commission somebody else to make them for you. 

What you'll choose is gonna depend a lot on your character first and foremost.  The big determining factor in most cases is whether or not the face you want has been in anything you can take pictures of. 

If you have a canon character who exists in visible media--

--you're in luck! The chances of you finding some resources that exist already is higher when you have a canon character who is in at least a few pieces of media. OP asked about Pearl from Steven Universe, and she's a great example of a character with a lot of resources. Searching for rp icons of a popular character will often yield packs of icons on Tumblr, Dreamwidth, Livejournal, etc. Most of these will be completely free to use or have very reasonable conditions for use (like credit the person who made them for example.)  It's often a good first step to see what preexisting resources are available to you even if you still plan on making your own icons. 

If you have an OC or a character that's not all that popular--

--you're gonna fall into the second camp. If you want icons, you have to have them made. So what are your options?

Help! My character appears in no media! What are my options?

If your character appears in no media you're in a tough spot. Different people approach this problem in different ways. 

Face Claims

One option you have is to choose a face claim to represent your character. In roleplay a face claim or ‘FC’ is a person or character whose appearance you use for the physical description of your character. I personally am not big on doing this, I prefer drawn icons and I tend to RP as animated characters, but some people really like using celebrities and stuff to represent their characters.  When I was playing Angus McDonald he hadn't appeared in any visual media yet, so I sometimes used Bryce Clyde Jenkins as the face claim for certain types of threads.  

If you're somebody who likes to use face claims there are loads of resources out there for finding the perfect one, including here on tumblr. Try searching up RP Faceclaim Directory and playing around with some of the ones that pop up.

DIY RP Icons

The other option you have is to create those icons from scratch. Draw them yourself based on icons you like or commission an artist to draw some for you.   If you can't draw yourself, I've seen some people get really creative with this. Some people create their character in the sims, dollmakers, or their favorite RPG and then take screenshots of that to use for icons.  There's also no law that says every icon you use has to be your character's face. When I was writing a trashy mermaid AU I got a lot of mileage out of icons that depicted harbor and oceanic scenes with no actual faces. Get creative, go nuts, have fun.

Icons Aren’t That Important

The other thing to remember that icons are not a must in many RP circles. It's perfectly possible to have a great time and write cool stuff without any pictures at all. Depending on your platform of choice there are probably also other interesting ways you can make your posts unique to you by formatting the text or using symbols or emojis or otherwise denoting your personal style in text.

Help! My character appears in lots of media! How do I make icons?

Again, there are a million and one answers to this question and it really depends on what tools are available to you and what your preferences are. This section is not a tutorial but it will outline some of the options you can look into.

The icon making process is typically in 2 stages-- stage 1: get all your images of your character, and stage 2: edit all of those images into icons.  

If you have access to the source material, any version of Photoshop, and software that automates the collection screencaps from video (KM Player, VLC, etc) you're pretty much gucci. You're gonna have no problem getting loads of nice icons in a reasonably short amount of time and there are a million different tutorials on how to use those things whichever way you prefer. 

If you don't have access to those things you still have options. 

You can still screencap things manually, and you can screencap in batches by holding down the windows key and pressing PrtSc any time you want to save an image. They should be saving to >pictures>screenshots unless you’ve set things up differently. It’s a good way to take a lot of screenshots without stopping in between.

( EDIT / UPDATE: to say that if you use automation for taking screencaps remember to turn that shit off when you’re not using because it oh mylanta it WILL continue to take images without you realizing. Figured out where all my disk space has been going with this rookie mistake, thanks OP)

Additionally, PhotoScape X is a really great little tool for windows and mac that I've never seen anybody talk about, but I use it sometimes and it's totally free with the exception of a few paid features I’ve never once needed or wanted. This program is not as efficient as using Photoshop but it has presets for cropping images easily as well as batch editing options for some basic borders and color retouching.  While it’s not as powerful as Photoshop, you can get a lot done with it reasonably quickly compared to other choices. You can also take and edit snips of anything on your screen with it, which is really really useful if you don’t have access to the video or image files you would need on your hard drive for other version of this process.  The program looks like this:

Also, not to be like a minimalist about it, but you can also just fucken use Microsoft Paint or whatever you have. Like, whatever, there’s no law. You graphics dont have to be comlpex or deep fried. Half of my icons have been made or edited in paint at some point. It wont be as fast as some of these other methods but a lot of us aren't out here making icons in batches of 100 at a time. 

Anything that you can use to make smallish images of your characters face will work to make icons.

If you want more information about any of these methods of icon creation let me know and I’ll talk about them.

Question 2: “How do you make your icons ‘work’ in posts?”

I'm a little confused on what you mean by "make them work" so I'm gonna cover my bases here. I'm assuming what you're getting at is a sort of sense of cohesion in the icons I use, or having the "right" expression for the scene I'm writing. Either that or them not stretching and looking weird thanks to tumblr. I’ll get to both of those.

And before I go into my own rationale for icon choices I feel I should point out that a lot of people who aren't me do successfully manufacture cohesion out of their images by doing fun stylistic things like recoloring their images all the same way or putting cute borders and stuff around them or making them fun shapes, and that's totally something you can learn how to do if it interests you.  I do this for icons commissioned by other people and I’m not against talking about how to do those things, but I don’t really bother with them for my own icons all that much. That stuff is all fun and it’s a neat thing you could get into that can make your icons all look really nice together.

BUT ANYWAY --

Since the character you asked about is Pearl, I’m going to focus on her. Nearly all of my Pearl icons are completely unedited and a lot of the credit I would have to give regarding icon quality goes to Pearl herself and the consistently good lighting that the show uses. I don’t have a huge need for editing or color retouching beyond making memes or whatever other goofy things I might be getting up to. Pearl is extremely expressive compared to other characters I have written and since she's in nearly every episode, I've managed to collect…

...oh god, that’s too many icons.

Pearl is a main character and I've been RPing as her for over 6 years now so I have a fuckload of images to choose from and I'm not gonna pretend that doesn't help when I wanna “make things work”. She gives me a lot of options.

That said, you absolutely don't need 3000 images to make a good post. The way I've collected and organized these images may be of use to you even if you dont have as many icons. I've done a lot with my setup to make finding the right icon very easy. 

For starters, a minor subset of my Pearl icons are grouped by a particular defining feature. I have one large Pearly folder full of icons and then a few smaller folders inside for icons I thought worth grouping separately. For example, all icons of SUF Pearl in her new jacket are in the same folder. All icons of Pearl in short term alternate outfits are in the same folder. Anything I sourced from Attack the Light is in its own folder. I do this with anything that has a very specific use, such as writing AU content or flashbacks to specific time periods. If I can picture an icon in my head, I usually know where in my ridiculous hell collection to go to find it. 

This folder was originally just for her pre-canon outfit but now all of her outfits that only appeared temporarily are in there.

Perhaps more important for the sake of cohesion is that nearly all of my icons that aren’t squirreled away in some smaller folder are loosely arranged by episode. What that means is that most of the time I have icons from the same scene right next to one another. It makes it incredibly easy to make my RP replies appear as though it's all one cohesive scene even if I use more than one icon. When you do it this way it becomes very easy to choose icons that have the same lighting or that appear to lead from one expression seamlessly into another. Exhibit A:

While the vast majority of my icons are numbered, I do take the time to name ones I find myself using a lot or that have particularly unique expressions. Usually I'll choose names that I'll find descriptive or easy to remember based on the context of the icon. You can have a lot of fun with that and never lose your favorites.

Also don't be afraid to lean on icons you got from weird places if you like them.  The icons of Pearl from the official comics run don’t look like most of what I have. I think them being different would turn a lot of RPers off, but I use them a lot because I like the style and I almost never see other Pearl RPers using them.  It either makes me stand out or it makes me tacky, one of the two, haven’t figured out which, but also I’m not stopping.

And just to reiterate, you can use icons that aren’t your character if they’re thematically relevant or vague enough to look like them. When I’m capping I’ve started saving a folder of miscellaneous environments of interests, hands, and other everyday types of scenery that appear in the thing I’m taking screencaps of.

You can use any size you want for RP icons but the most common is 100x100 or 150x150 pixels.  Any smaller than that and the image gets to be difficult to read and work with in my opinion. That doesn’t stop people, of course, but I’m elderly and need glasses now, so no tiny icons for me.  On that note, I rarely see RP icons larger than 300x300. Any larger than that it tends to get bulky and be in the way of other people’s comfortable internet browsing experience, especially on mobile.  Of course, these are just my suggestions. What you choose will ultimately be up to you, but somewhere in that 100 to 300 px range is pretty safe.

A very tumblr specific thing to know is that any image that is wider than 300 pixels will be stretched to hell, so you probably want to keep it smaller than that.

Thanks, Tumblr, I hate it!

Also, don’t be afraid to make trash images for fun if you’re so inclined. People love that, or at least I do. Not having the right icon can be fun and lead to a very silly solution. Lean into being a shitposter if that’s what you’re called to do. 

So yeah, that’s basically what my suggestions are. Collect your images in a way that helps cohesion and ease of use. Keep them a good size. Don’t be afraid to get unconventional with your choices or make memes or whatever. It’s all for a fun time.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of right now, but more info on any of this can be obtained at the price of one ask, I know it was a lot of different moving parts.

[ilovereadingandilovebreathing]

all of them :P

There’s LITERALLY 50 omg >_> Ah well, if I’m procrastinating, might as well go big or go home. Warning: LONG.

Finally, an ask-meme for writers!

01: When did you first start writing?

My first ever time writing stories was in 2nd grade; we wrote stories weekly in my class. The first time I began to consciously write and consider myself a writer was probably 8th grade.

02: What was your favorite book growing up?

Ahhhh so many. Series more than individual books. Starting from when I was really young, my iconic series were: Clifford the Big Red Dog, Henry and Mudge, Horrible Harry, A to Z Mysteries, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Nancy Drew, and The Chronicles of Narnia, to name a few.

03: Are you an avid reader?

Actual books? Not as much anymore. I’m too tired or busy. I read fanfics, though :p

04: Have you ever thrown a book across the room?

Where the Red Fern Grows lol one of the only books to date to make me cry. 

05: Did you take writing courses in school/college?

Writing-specific? No. 

06: Have you read any writing-advice books?

I mean, I had to read like MLA manuals and other “writing tips” books for school, so yeah, I guess.

07: Have you ever been part of a critique group?

Not like a real one, just in class in college

08: What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

I think the best feedback I get is on here, really! You guys are super sweet, and some of you offer some great concrete feedback! I can’t think of anything specific, but I also get really tickled when someone comments on my writing style. 

09: What’s the worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

Worst as in quality wise was “this was good.” or something like that lol

Worst as far as soul-crushing...ooo. Story Time!

Freshman year of college. I had to take this like early-level English class, and the focus was on nonfiction writing and stuff like that. My professor often picked apart my papers because he didn’t like my writing style, especially not my prose, because he said it was way too florid (flowery or wordy). That made me really sad, but then I had another professor who taught a senior level class who LOVED my prose, so. It’s all relative. 

10: What’s your biggest writer pet-peeve?

Mmmmmmm when people use the same word over and over and over again (which, I am so guilty of, so that’s probs why it bugs me haha) Also too many short sentences. I literally can’t read something if the syntax isn’t varied enough to flow.

11: What’s your favorite book cover?

OOOOoooo I like this one! But sadly I don’t pay attention enough to have an answer to this...Citizen by Claudia Rankine has a pretty thought-provoking cover. I also like the Penguin Classics cover of The Crucible. 

12: Who is your favorite author?

C.S. Lewis is a p cool dude

13: What’s your favorite writing quote?

Quote about writing? This was an important one for me as a growing writer and person, tbh:

“I deal with writer’s block by lowering my expectations. I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent—and when you don’t, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent. I write a little bit, almost every day, and if it results in two or three or (on a good day) four good paragraphs, I consider myself a lucky man. Never try to be the hare. All hail the tortoise.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell  

This is literally me and the roots of my procrastination and anxiety with writing anything, be it fanfiction or school work. I worry too much about making it perfect the first time, but another great quote is: “The first draft is always perfect because all it has to do is exist” or something like that. It’s something I’m still working on, but have gotten better at.

14: What’s your favorite writing blog? c;

You mean besides mine :p haha JKJKJK I don’t follow any purely writing blogs, but I’ve read many GREAT pieces from (I missed SO many people in this, so I’m really sorry if I didn’t tag you. I’m too tired to go hunting too far.)

(Sanders Sides) ssides, random-snippets, tinysidestrashcaptain, stillebesat, pirate-patton, among others

(Soul Eater) smokeandjollyranchers, professor-maka, tsarodat, makapedia, kittenintheden, raining-down-hearts, earth-shines, sandmancircus, poisonedscarlett, among others

For non-fandom stuff, hawaiianmint and garnet-portrait have some great poetry that really makes my heart hurt.

15: What would you say has inspired you the most?

As far as writing, I assume....honestly, being involved in fandoms and writing fanfiction! I’m only where I am now because I read so many great writers and  adapted their good habits to my own. 

16: How do you feel about movies based on books?

I haven’t been a fan of a ton of books turned to screen productions, so that doesn’t help. I liked the Narnia movies until the Dawn Treader. I liked the ASOUE movie, and I’m still deciding how I feel about the Nextflix series. Other than those, I can’t think of any significant ones, to me lol

17: Would you like your books to be turned into TV shows, movies, video games, or none?

Books that I like or books that I write? Etiher way it depends on who’s directing.

18: How do you feel about love triangles?

Eeehhhhhhhhhhh overused trope that ruins otherwise perfectly good plots.

19: Do you prefer writing on a computer or longhand?

Computer. It’s so much easier. I won’t even pretend.

20: What’s your favorite writing program?

I just use Word, my dude.

21: Do you outline?

Not as often as I should, but it helps me a lot.

22: Do you start with characters or plot?

It’s give and take between both, usually characters, though.

23: What’s your favorite & least favorite part of making characters?

Favorite is customization and how no one can tell you that your own OC is OOC.

Least favorite is how involved and difficult it can be.

24: What’s your favorite & least favorite part of plotting?

Favorite is how much fun it can be to throw in twists and make it all interesting!

Least favorite is how I tend to overthink things or not be brave enough to really GO for something. Also research can suck.

25: What advice would you give to young writers?

You’re young. Don’t worry about being amazing at first. You’ll learn and you’ll grow. Online, ins a supportive community, is a good place to start. 

26: Which do you enjoy reading the most: physical, ebook, or both?

Physical 100% (I’d print out and read fanfiction that way if I could okay)

27: Which is your favorite genre to write?

Uuuuuuuuuuummmmmm fiction? lol

28: Which do you find hardest: the beginning, the middle, or the end?

Depends on the story, but usually the end.

29: Which do you find easiest: writing or editing?

Editing

30: Have you ever written fan-fiction?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah yes. help me. 

31: Have you ever been published?

Naaahh

32: How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work?

Anything other than my fanfics: Shy, but ok.

My fanfics: NONONONONONONONONONONONONO TOO MUCH. EMBARRASSING. -Virgil Sanders 2k4ever

33: Are you interested in having your work published?

I mean maybe, but I’m not good enough, tbh lol

34: Describe your writing space.

My bedroom.

35: What’s your favorite time of day for writing?

I don’t have a favorite, but it often strikes when I should be doing something else.

36: Do you listen to music when you write?

Sometimes! Depends on what I’m writing and how tired I am.

37: What’s your oldest WIP?

I have a lot of things I never finished, but in this case, WIP means, to me, that I might actually finish it, so that would probably be one of a handfuls of old Soul Eater fics I never finished or posted lol

38: What’s your current WIP?

Just one????? LOL

“Patton’s Intuition” (Sanders Sides Fic)

“Virgil the (Semi-)Friendly Ghost” (Sanders Sides Human!GhostAU)

“Eggs and Black Coffee” (A Soul-Eater College!AU)

“A Rose by Any Other Name” (Another Soul-Eater AU)

“Bedside Manner” (Soul-Eater Hospital!AU)

39: What’s the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had?

Mmmmmmm I don’t think I’ve really had any weird ideas. I once thought of doing a Soul-Eater Avatar:TheLastAirbender!AU. 

40: Which is your favorite original character, and why?

I have a few original characters. I guess my favorites would be the twins, David and Preston, from a story I wrote in high school called “Buried Alive.”

41: What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline?

Go with it. 

42: Do you enjoy making your characters suffer?

No, but sometimes that’s just how the story goes.

43: Have you ever killed a main character?

Not actively in the story.

44: What’s the weirdest character concept you’ve ever come up with?

I don’t have one lol

45: What’s your favorite character name?

Cassidy

46: Describe your perfect writing space.

In the mountains, a sunny day, on my back deck

47: If you could steal one character from another author and make then yours, who would it be and why?

Oooooooooooooooo in the fanfiction world, I really love Marin’s (ssides) University!AU versions of the Sides. 

I really like the characters in The Book Thief, To Kill a Mockingbird, and East of Eden. I just really like the personalities and characterizations of those characters. 

48: If you could write the next book of any series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about?

I’d start a new A Series of Unfortunate Events series about little Beatrice. 

49: If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be and what would you write about?

I’d love to collab with so many writers I’ve read on here.

Mmmmmm IRL though it’d be too embarrassing to try to write with a published author because I’d get too nervous and doubt everything I did.

50: If you could live in any fictional world, which would it be?

NARNIA

[kiyote23]

Evernote - Oh, How I Want to Love You

I’ve been using Evernote for years now. At one point, I was all in on it, using it for almost everything I could think of. Any project I was working on had an Evernote notebook. And once I got my iPad, my use really exploded, as suddenly I had a notebook that automatically synced between my desktop and my tablet. I have the Evernote Moleskine notebook, and at one point, the Evernote Adonit stylus.

But Evernote has it’s problems, and eventually, I started looking elsewhere for my note needs. It really started when Apple Notes matured beyond a weird add-on to Mail.app. After a while of playing with it, I switched to using it full-time. And then Bear came along, and I tried just using Bear. And now things have swung full-circle, and I’m back to using good old Evernote. Evernote has some tricks that the others just haven’t learned yet.

Evernote is one place to stash everything. Any piece of information that I think I might want to look at later, I send it to Evernote. Little bits of information from work, like how to handle a certain problem, get chucked into a work folder. I’ve clipped a ton of articles about different games that I’m playing, tips and tricks, and tossed those into Evernote. And with a robust search feature, it’s pretty easy to get things back out.

And it’s really easy to get things into it. There’s a Safari extension on macOS, and Chrome extension, though I’ve had trouble with both of them hanging and locking up, and I’m not sure why. There’s a share sheet extension in iOS, and the feature that I love, an email address that I can forward emails to that causes them to get added to Evernote. This was great when I was getting a lot of different correspondence from different teachers and administrators regarding my sons school—I could send them to Evernote and be sure I could reference them at any point, even during a meeting.

Evernote also automatically OCRs any image that it gets handed. I’ve been doing a lot of handwritten notes on my iPad using GoodNotes, and I can toss those into Evernote as images, yet still be able to search my own handwriting because of the built in OCR. I routinely take pictures of different signs and notices I see, knowing that I can send them into Evernote and be able to search for them later.

Evernote has a pretty decent tagging system, allowing you to put any tag you want on any note. You can then filter your view to just see notes with certain tags, allowing you to create some pretty creative perspectives. I was just reading about someone who uses tags of dates to create a custom calendar within Evernote:

He organizes Evernote differently than some of the other ECCs, and his ingenious system creates a running agenda for him. “I organize by year, month, date, and time,” he said. “If I sort this way, then I don’t have to do anything to set my schedule for the day. I just look at Evernote, and it’s already there. There was a point when I stopped using calendars altogether. Just let Evernote tags automatically generate a calendar for you.” — 7 Tips From Experts: Watch Business Productivity Soar in Evernote

You can also organize notes into notebooks, and you can even group the notebooks into stacks, to really compartmentalize things. You can make the notebooks private, or you can make them public, allowing you to share their contents with other people. My wife and I share a notebook for our son’s school correspondence, so we can both access the information easily.

You can add a reminder to a note, allowing you to use Evernote as a task manager as well. You could use notebooks as projects, and tags as contexts, and create a useable GTD system. The reminder system is pretty basic, allowing you to set a date and a time, but there’s no allowance for creating recurring, repeating events.

There’s a built in chat system in Evernote. Like the reminder system, it’s a little rudimentary and not very robust. Like a lot of things in Evernote, it feels a little like a cool idea tacked on at some point without anyone following through to make it an integrated part of the Evernote process. This really sums up the Evernote problem: a lot of good ideas, some well implemented, and others not so.

You can share notes with other people, but they have to create a free Evernote account to see the note that you shared. There’s no option to share outside of Evernote, but the free account is pretty simple to set up. The sharing feature is nice if you’re working on a team alts using Evernote, or if you just need to work with one other person. The ability to let other people add to a notebook or edit a note is pretty cool, and might be one of the most under-leveraged functions within Evernote.

Evernote is robustly cross-platform, with clients available on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. There’s also a pretty good web interface, so you can get to Evernote even if you’re not at any one of your many devices. I played with Evernote’s cross-platform capabilities a lot when I was trying to figure out a way to work with Android devices. Evernote was able to easily sync between two devices, and gave me a viable way to write on one device and be able to pick it up on another.

Evernote is a cloud-based system, so putting your notes on a new device is as easy as installing the client and signing in. Changes made on one device sync onto another, and everything is accessible through a web interface. Having your notes in the cloud means that they’re always backed up, always accessible.

It all sounds good, but even as I’m writing about its good points, I’m reminded of the problems. Evernote uses an RTF system to provide rich text notes on the screen. Even weirder, this RTF system is HTML-based, so it’s prone to same problems of formatting that a lot of rich HTML editors run into—problems with bulleting and nesting lists; spacing issues; spaces between paragraphs. If you don’t care about these things, then writing in Evernote can be fine, if sometimes a little weird.

Sometimes there are syncing issues. For a while, the version of Evernote on my iPhone was behind all my other devices. It would hang while syncing, and then just give up. I’ve had both the desktop and the iPad give me errors with syncing as well. Eventually with my iPhone I just deleted the whole app and reinstalled, and it started syncing up again just fine. The syncing issues aren’t major, but they do detract from what feels like it wants to be a seamless experience.

And I don’t know if it’s related to the syncing issues or not, but I’ve had image issues as well. One set of hand-written notes that I imported wouldn’t display on my iPad. There were just empty blank frames. When I opened the note on my iPhone, the images were there. Even weirder, when I did a text search on my iPad, it highlighted the words on the missing images, so something was there.

A common complaint about Evernote is the cost. You can have a free account, but you’re limited in how much you can store, and maybe even what you can do. You’ll have to set up a yearly subscription to get more space and features, and there are different tiers. There was a lot of backlash when the subscription was implemented, and more when the prices were raised. I’m actually fine with the cost, because I use the app and the service, and I’d rather they focus on using the app to make money instead of selling notebooks, pens, or even socks.

Like I said, the main problem I have with Evernote is that it’s trying to do too many things, and as a result, it’s not doing some of them very well. The work chat feature is a little silly, particularly since so many people use the app on devices that already have communications apps on them, apps people use. I’d rather have an easier way to share a note over something like Slack than this rather transparent effort to get people to use Evernote.

And the HTML-based RTF WYSIWYG editor really shows Evernote’s age. Six or seven years ago, that was the easy portable way to do RTF. Now there’s Markdown, and there are even people who prefer to write and work in plain text, and it would be nice if there was an option to use those. I’d love it if when I imported something that had Markdown if the RTF editor would recognize it.

But for all of it’s flaws, I came back to Evernote. I tried Apple Notes, but found that there were a few features I really relied on in Evernote that weren’t in Apple Notes. And I tried Bear, mostly to use the Markdown support, and while Bear is nice, it’s not as powerful as Evernote.

Like I said, I use Evernote to collect things: Recipes; articles; pdf manuals for household appliances. These are things that you could put in Bear or Apple Notes, but they’re harder to get out. Evernote’s OCR and capturing and importing the text of a web page really make it a lot easier to search for what you’re looking for.

I’m also using Evernote as a, well, notebook. I’ve been taking notes of different things that I’ve read over the past couple of years, and I’m collecting them in Evernote. It’s a habit left over from years of being an English major, to collect a quote that really sums up a work, or something that’s really interesting. I can pull stuff from the web, from iBooks or Kindle, even from Pocket, and put it in my notebook. I have no idea what I’m ever going to do with them, but at least they’re there.

Ironically, the thing that I really want to use Evernote for, the thing that it seems to really want me to use it for, is project management. I’ve created notebooks for projects, collected materials, set reminders. You can even, pretty easily, create a table of contents note for a notebook, that helps you organize things. I guess what it would really function effectively as would be a project organizer, a project binder. That’s something I’m going to keep working at, I guess.

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