#its interesting to see all of the requirements. and how difficult the process can be

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

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[literaryvein-reblogs]

How to write genius level characters? :(

One of the most reliable measures of intelligence today is the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale—currently in its 5th edition, with an upcoming edition in the works.

Using the tool/scale, scores are converted into nominal categories designated by certain cutoff boundaries for quick reference:

Measured IQ Range — Category

145-160: Very gifted or highly advanced

130–144: Gifted or very advanced

120–129: Superior

110–119: High average

90–109: Average

80–89: Low average

70–79: Borderline impaired or delayed

55–69: Mildly impaired or delayed

40–54: Moderately impaired or delayed

To write your "genius" character, you may want them within the Gifted to Very Gifted categories.

Note: With reference to this list, Roid (2003) cautioned that “the important concern is to describe the examinee’s skills and abilities in detail, going beyond the label itself”. The primary value of such labels is as a shorthand reference in some psychological reports.

These are the factors measured by the scale, and you ideally should aim for your "genius" character/s to exhibit high levels of:

Fluid Reasoning: Novel problem solving; understanding of relationships that are not culturally bound

Knowledge: Skills and knowledge acquired by formal and informal education

Quantitative Reasoning: Knowledge of mathematical thinking including number concepts, estimation, problem solving, and measurement

Visual-Spatial Processing: Ability to see patterns and relationships and spatial orientation as well as the gestalt among diverse visual stimuli

Working Memory: Cognitive process of temporarily storing and then transforming or sorting information in memory

Or maybe your character doesn't excel in all of these areas but in a specific one, or just a few of these. Maybe they perform within the average or high average in some, but are highly gifted in other areas.

The following may also guide you in writing your genius character, based on research compiled by Dr. J. Renzulli, which can be found in the Mensa Gifted Youth Handbook:

Characteristics of Giftedness

LEARNING CHARACTERISTICS

Has unusually advanced vocabulary for age or grade level

Has quick mastery and recall of factual information

Wants to know what makes things or people tick

Usually sees more or gets more out of a story, film, etc., than others

Reads a great deal on his or her own; usually prefers adult-level books; does not avoid difficult materials

Reasons things out for him- or herself

MOTIVATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

Becomes easily absorbed with and truly involved in certain topics or problems

Is easily bored with routine tasks

Needs little external motivation to follow through in work that initially excited him or her

Strives toward perfection; is self-critical; is not easily satisfied with his or her own speed and products

Prefers to work independently; requires little direction from teachers

Is interested in many "adult" problems such as religion, politics, sex and race

Stubborn in his or her beliefs

Concerned with right and wrong, good and bad

CREATIVITY CHARACTERISTICS

Constantly asking questions about anything and everything

Often offers unusual, unique or clever responses

Is uninhibited in expressions of opinion

Is a high-risk taker; is adventurous and speculative

Is often concerned with adapting, improving and modifying institutions, objects and systems

Displays a keen sense of humor

Shows emotional sensitivity

Is sensitive to beauty

Is nonconforming; accepts disorder; is not interested in details; is individualistic; does not fear being different

Is unwilling to accept authoritarian pronouncements without critical examination

LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS

Carries responsibility well

Is self-confident with children his or her own age as well as adults

Can express him- or herself well

Adapts readily to new situations

Is sociable and prefers not to be alone

Generally directs the activity in which he or she is involved

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Hope this helps with your writing. Do tag me, or send me a link. I'd love to read your work!

[prof-peach]

How does a typical choosing event happen when a new trainer comes to Peach for their first Pokemon? Can someone adopt one of her rescue pokemon?

The island offers its sevices MOSTLY to older trainers, handing pokemon to kids has never really been the islands MO. It's not off the table, but also not the point of the facility, as many other more easily accessible locations cater to children. Most pokemon on Dotaku have pre-existing conditions, injuries, or behavioural ticks that need adjusting to, not all of course, but a good majority, so handing them to kids just isnt always so viable.

The island has two adoption days each month, scheduled where pokemon looking for a partner can dress up, staff usually get the resident groomers to give everyone a once over, and humans looking for mons are encouraged to come along for the day and take a peak. It is not very formal, a lot of games and events, food vendors and the likes. Staff work overtime to make sure people know about each pokemon, any really special or difficult mons will stick with one of the professors, and they'll explain their needs or personlaity type to interested parties. If nothing else its a very fun day out, where you get to meet a bunch of pokemon!

It's not a case of picking one out and being done with it, some pokemon require home visits before being OK'd for adoption, to make sure you have the right space and items in place to make for a good home. Other smaller pokemon can be adopted on the day, proven that you show a base level of knowledge for caring for living things. These tests are carried out by staff, be it a field worker, lab assistant, or a professor, and if you pass, you pay a small adoption fee, sign some papers, and the process is began. If you fail, you are given the option to reserve the pokemon, so no one else can come and adopt them, and return to take the test again once you are better prepared. This is usually only aplicable for up to a month. It gives people time to get ready for a new friend in their lives too.

Classes are offered to those looking to improve their level of care, and staff insist on these classes with some cases, especially children. in the case of a child finding a partner, we ask that parents come and discuss with us the quality of care that can be provided at home. Without an adult guardian, no child under the age of 16 can adopt from us, to spare pokemon any inadequate living conditions.

There is one golden rule that does dictate a lot of decisons made: Is the pokemon going to be happy?

If a pokemon does not like you, does not want to be adopted by you, is nervous about you, or shows any hesitation, their needs will come above and beyond that of the humans. We have no issue refusing an adoption based on a pokemons opinion, but people are welcomed to return, and try to form a stronger bond with an individual who is open to it.

Should you find a good match, pass our tests, and have adequate resources to care for a pokemon, then with some paperowork, youre free to leave with your buddy. Follow up visits will occur several times within the year to check see that each pokemon adopted out is happy and well cared for. You become an official member of the Dotaku labs clientel, can call for support, bring in any buddies for check ups, and our services are available to you should any illness or issue arise.

[commodorez]

Hi! I'm so sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm completely clueless on computers, but I want to learn about them. Any places you'd recommend starting for bare bones beginners? I'm also interested in early-mid 90's tech particularly too. I'm guessing I have to figure out the basics before I can move onto specific tech though, right?

You're really knowledgeable and nice so I figured I'd just ask. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thank you! :]

That's an excellent question, I don't think I've been asked it before in such a general sense. I was raised with the benefit of being immersed in computers regularly, so providing a solid answer may be a bit difficult since for the basics, I never had to think about it.

I had computer classes of various types throughout my school years. We learned how to use a mouse, typing, word processing, programming -- and that was all before middle school. We got proper typing, html, and general purpose computer science courses in middle and high school, and you can bet I took those too. I also have the benefit of a bachelors of science in computer science, so you'll forgive me if my answer sounds incredibly skewed with 30+ years of bias.

The biggest suggestion I can give you is simply to find a device and play with it. Whatever you can get your hands on, even if its not that old, as long as it's considered past its prime, and nobody will get upset of you accidentally break something (physically or in software). Learning about things with computers in general tends to have some degree of trial and error, be it programming, administrating, or whatever -- try, learn, and start over if things don't work out as expected the first time. Professionals do it all the time (I know I do, and nobody's fired me for it yet).

Some cast-off 90s or early 00's surplus office desktop computer running Windows would be a good start, just explore it and its settings. Start digging into folders, see what's installed, see what works and more importantly what doesn't work right. Try to find comparable software, and install it. Even the basics like old copies of Microsoft Office, or whatever.

I recommend looking through the available software on winworld as it's an excellent treasure trove of operating systems, applications, games, and other useful software of the time period. I'd link it directly, but tumblr hates links to external sites and will bury this post if I do. If you're a mac fan, and you can find an old G3 or Performa, there is the Macintosh Garden's repository of software, but I'm not the right person to ask about that.

Some of you might be like "oh, oh! Raspberry Pi! say Raspberry Pi!" but I can't really recommend those as a starting point, even if they are cheap for an older model. Those require a bit of setup, and even the most common linux can be obtuse as hell for newcomers if you don't have someone to guide you.

If you don't have real hardware to muck about with, emulation is also your friend. DOSBox was my weapon of choice for a long time, but I think other things like 86Box have supplanted it. I have the luxury of the real hardware in most cases, so I haven't emulated much in the past decade. Tech Tangents on youtube has a new video explaining the subject well, I highly recommend it. There are plenty of other methods too, but most are far more sophisticated to get started with, if you ask me.

For getting a glimpse into the world of the 90s tech, if you haven't already discovered LGR on youtube, I've been watching his content for well over a decade now. He covers both the common and esoteric, both hardware and software, and is pretty honest about the whole thing, rather than caricaturish in his presentation style. It might be a good jumping off point to find proverbial rabbits to chase.

I guess the trick is to a find a specific thing you're really interested in, and then start following that thread, researching on wikipedia and finding old enthusiast websites to read through. I'm sure there are a few good books on more general history of 90s computing and the coming internet, but I'm not an avid reader of the genre. Flipping through tech magazines of the era (PC Magazine comes to mind, check archive dot org for that) can provide a good historical perspective. Watching old episodes of the Computer Chronicles (youtube or archive dot org) can provide this too, but it also had demonstrations and explanations of the emerging technologies as they happened.

There are so many approaches here, I'm sure I've missed some good suggestions though. I also realized I waffle a bit between the modern and vintage, but I find many computing troubleshooting skillsets transcend eras. What works now can apply to 10, 20, 30, or sometimes even 40+ years ago, because it's all about mindset of "this computer/program is dumb, and only follows the instructions its given" . Sometimes those instructions are poorly thought out on the part of the folks who designed them. And those failures are not necessarily your fault, so you gotta push through until you figure out how to do the thing you're trying to do. Reading the documentation you can find will only take you so far, sometimes things are just dumb, and experimentation (and failures) will teach you so much more about the hard and fast rules of computers than anything else. I'm rambling at this point...

So, let's throw the question to the crowd, and ask a few other folks in the Retrotech Crew.

@ms-dos5 @virescent-phosphor @teckheck @jhavard @techav @regretsretrotech @airconditionedcomputingnightmare @aperture-in-the-multiverse -- anything big I missed?

[happyk44]

hiiii happy!!!! how do you feel abt jason's adhd? in my opinion, the books didn't really do a job illustrating it. how do you think it would manifest and affect him? i'd love to hear your opinion ☺️ i love you!!! 💖💓💗

Personally, I think of Jason as being autistic versus having ADHD. We know through Frank that having ADHD and dyslexia (both of which Frank does not have) is not an exclusive requirement to being a demigod. On top of that, Rick’s use of ADHD is not… great. My sister has been diagnosed with ADHD since she was five – she is very much the inattentive subtype, and I think Rick’s use of ADHD as a superpower of hypervigilance does sort of exclude people who primarily experience inattentive symptoms.

But those kinds of symptoms are not easily rewritten as “benefits” (which. yeah. It’s a disability), so I get why he didn’t include it. I remember reading a while back that when the books were first published, rewriting ADHD as a superpower/benefit to kids who had it was a common narrative, so, like, okay, but also. It’s been two decades.

But anyway. Jason. Yes! In general:

He gets easily distracted by different tasks, but to other people it just looks like he’s multitasking

He forgets to take care of himself a lot, forgets to eat, shower, drink water, sleep, talk to people and be social, etc

Auditory processing issues. During long speeches he starts to zone out because the sound eventually merges into all the other background noise he’s trying to filter out (wind powers and wolf vigilance amplifies the sound of everything) so he often encourages people to just get to the point and be upfront, and gets frustrated when people won’t. Also can’t stand people who talk in monotone (which is ironic because I think Jason doesn’t inflect or shift his voice very much)

Leo definitely uses his voice in various tones during conversation, so while Jason is like “oh my god, please stop talking in circles I have no idea what you’re saying”, it’s a lot easier for him to listen to Leo’s rambling monologues because he doesn’t speak in one or two tones

If it doesn’t interest him, the conversation can start to blur together as well because he struggles to focus on what’s being said. Fortunately, just because of how CJ and New Rome are structured, most topics at hand are things he likes (ancient Rome, gods, politics, etc). Unfortunately, Jason doesn’t really have strong human connections and his position as the golden boy of Camp Jupiter, champion of Juno, son of Jupiter, etc, etc, etc distances him from a lot of people so casual topics, like video games or TV shows, rarely get brought up to him in the first place

The onslaught of sensory issues makes it hard for him to focus. He’s taught himself how to filter things out, but it’s a constant practice to do and gets very tiring

Object impermanence – if he can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Luckily for him, he doesn’t own a lot of things, but for things he has to keep tucked away in a drawer (like clothing), he slaps labels onto the container/drawer. Everything else, like the couple of misc trinkets he owns, he keeps out and obvious

One of things he does to help it avoid blending into the background is using sharp colour contrasts. So if its important – like medication or something, he might use a bright yellow basket on top of a black dresser or whatever because the yellow stands out so sharply it’s hard for the basket to blend into the background and so he remembers to take his meds.

Another thing is moving location. So he might move the basket from one side the dresser to the other and back again every so often

He’s pretty good at maintaining habits and routine (autism), but also if something happens that throws off the routine it takes months to get back on track and it is the worst thing ever, it is grueling and he hates it. Habits and routine are not innate, they are a constant active conscious choice he makes every day

Making plans can be difficult, even in battle or on quests when strategy is key. He can get tripped up on the small details and overlook the larger picture, or be so focused on the larger picture, he doesn’t see the small details. Because people have been so reliant on him for strategy, he’s more or less managed to get away with looking competent, but it’s always a competition with himself to remain on task, instead of narrowing into something that doesn’t matter

People will often comment on how fast he can get things done but its literally that he gets things done fast because sometimes he waits too long to do the thing (procrastination) and now he’s got like five seconds to the deadline, OR he has a burst of focus and gets that thing done as fast as he can before the executive function dips

He does get bored easily, so he'll flit between task to task, but it’s really that he needs stimulation, needs to be doing something, and if he’s not doing something, he’s losing his mind, and because he lacks a core sense of identity, he flits from task to task to find something that interests him (but there’s so little that does because he does not know who he is and he’s just mimicking people and it’s not the same)

Emotional dysregulation

He gets lost in his own head a lot. Part of it is just standard dissociation, but the other part is that his brain is always on, everything is firing at all cylinders, there is no quiet, it’s just noise and reminding himself of things he needs to get done on repeat, 24/7, loud as can be and he can't turn it off or lower the volume. His brain is full of bees and they won't stop buzzing

As a result, he probably has pretty bad insomnia

I think he has a lot of trouble getting stuff started. Body doubling encourages him to get started on stuff, and he’s never not been surrounded by at least one other person, so when he starts living alone in Cabin One after The Lost Hero, he is so confused that he can’t seem to force himself to pick up his shirt off the ground. And it just stays on the ground for days. Until he runs out of clean underwear and has no choice but to pick it up to get laundry started

He doesn’t own enough stuff to be fully disorganized, but if he does, he’ll have the most organized areas in his room ever, and then his closet is a mess because “well I don’t go in there a lot”

I think he tries to keep a spreadsheet/list of items he owns that he doesn’t use very often, but he still has doubles of a few things. Also so many batteries. He’s constantly like “I don’t think I have enough batteries” and then he buys the batteries and comes back, goes to update the list on the back of the door and it’ll be like “you have batteries. Stop buying batteries. There are too many batteries” and then he throws the batteries in the box that’s overflowing with batteries and forgets they exist again, but then, when he does need the batteries, it takes him so long to find the box

He would self-medicate on coffee if he didn’t hate the taste. He also doesn’t like soda. Or chocolate. So, you know, RIP to him. He’s rawdogging life. At least Leo can inhale caffeine like his life depends on it

He has the waiting mode problem, where if he has something scheduled at a certain time, it doesn’t matter how much time he has until that thing, he just. Waits. For the thing. Like he could get so much done in that time, but he can’t. Again, body doubling has helped, but living alone makes it so much harder

Reward systems don’t work with him. He doesn’t get the same sense of satisfaction that a neurotypical would after getting a reward after task completion. So when he absolutely needs to get something done but his brain is like “nah we gotta sit here and stare at this wall for seven hours while dissociating”, he just ends up screaming at himself a lot

Jason’s probably in a burnout so intense that if he took a minute to rest, his body and mind would shutdown for like three years.

He forces himself to get things done and screams at himself the entire time, and it hurts in a way he doesn’t understand but he has to do these things because there’s no other choice and people are relying on him.

Since he’s been groomed for leadership since day one, he’s never really had a chance to breathe that the other kids would get, so even when he finally has the chance to rest, it’s like his mind knows how unsafe that would be because shutting down completely would never be safe for him (trauma!!) so he just refuses to rest, which involves a lot of him getting lost in his own head or hyper-focusing on something (like spreading recognition of minor and forgotten gods) instead of. You know. Breathing

I think a lot of his issues with ADHD become more present after TLH when the quest is over and he’s alone. CHB has structure, but its not as narrow as Camp Jupiter’s routine and structure, and Jason lives alone, operates his own schedule, doesn’t really have other people to remind him of things, etc, etc, so the sudden shift makes him start to spiral a bit in his fears of incompetence.

It’s not that he’s incompetent, he’s very competent, but his problems were never as evident because other people had his back as he had theirs. He’s kind of like people w/ undiagnosed ADHD or autism who leave their support systems for university and suddenly school and life is the most difficult thing in the world, when before it was a lot easier

Timeblindness does affect him a lot, especially when he's doing something he enjoys. He wears a watch everywhere. And has a lot of backup watches

A lot of these probably overlap with autism but like, lol, I do primarily view him as autistic.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I am not sure if this has been discussed on this blog before, but I was thinking about the housewarden title and the challenges needed to be won to earn said title lately. we know 2 of the dorms and how it works when a student wants to become HW (Heartslabyul, Pomefiore). Kalim is Scarabia's HW likely because his dad paid/became a large donor of NRC. but for Ignihyde, Savanaclaw and Octavinelle we have no idea. maybe we can speculate for Igni it's whoever is the most tech savvy, and for Sava it's whoever is the best leader/physically strong?? but I can't think of what the challenge could be for Octa. I think the challenges reflect the great seven they're based off of or the messages of the dorms so something like the "generosity of the sea witch" turned into a challenge is difficult to imagine, I think. maybe the HW would need to show how they'd benefit the dorm?? what do you think?

Hmmm, interesting question!

We actually don’t know of any “dorm specific” methods in which housewardens/dorm leaders are picked! Certainly, there are some traits that are desired or skills that would better qualify you for the position (ie in 4-18, it is said that by tradition, Pomefiore’s dorm leader is capable of making the deadliest poison out of all their peers; the wording implies to me that this is usually the case but not always). These conditions or tests (if there is a formal test at all) don’t determine who gets the seat, but rather who is the best candidate for the seat. It doesn’t guarantee they will actually get it.

There are universal ways to take the seat which circumvents “you need X to be the leader”. This (confusingly) sort of negates the whole “to be a dorm leader, you have to be the most ‘fitting’ for each dorm’s core value” thing. (It’s slightly counterintuitive 😅 since even if you don’t embody what a certain dorm is about, you could still technically become the one in charge of it… I have similar gripes with how the Mirror of Darkness puts students in a dorm that “fits their essence”, yet it’s also possible for the students to transfer out via an admittedly tedious process.)

In 1-20, Crowley states that “There are several ways [in which housewardens/dorm leaders are selected]. You could be appointed by the previous housewarden/dorm leader, for example, or duel the current warden/leader and win. The right to challenge a housewarden/dorm leader is bestowed upon all students when enrolling at Night Raven College. A duel is certainly one of the simpler methods.”

In 4-18, Jamil provides a statement which seems to be the opposite of what Crowley told us: “[…] to be housewarden/dorm leader of Night Raven College’s seven dorms, you must be the most befitting of the dorm’s spirit […] The seven dorms each have their own different spirits, and their own ways of determining who befits it.” However, Jamil also says, “Anything less, and you are unqualified to be the housewarden/dorm leader. Dueling is essentially an easy way to determine this”.

So if we put together what Crowley and Jamil said… 🤔 then yes, each dorm has its “own” ways of determining who “best” represents the spirit of a particular dorm. It seems that these tests exist to see who qualifies (ie has the desired traits) to be dorm leader. This does not appear to be as strict of a requirement as it is presented to be since anyone can still file an application to duel the dorm leader or be promoted to the seat in advance if they were picked by the previous one. (Jamil’s scheme in book 4 also implies that if a dorm leader is unpopular or not well-liked by their students, then the students can petition for someone new to take over.) Like, Ace was the first to want to challenge Riddle for his seat—but Ace doesn’t really embody the Queen of Hearts’ spirit of strictness. He was sorted into Heartslabyul by the Mirror of Darkness, but isn’t exactly the “most strict” in the group. And while we know that Kalim ultimately ends up embodying mindfulness in his own ways, the fact remains that he was preemptively chosen (by the former Scarabian dorm leader) and didn’t seem to have to pass any kind of test to prove his worth.

I think the purpose of the duels is beyond being “just a fight between children formally sanctioned by the school”; the point of the duels seems to be to “draw out” the values of each dorm in the combatants via the course of the battle??? Which… I’m not sure how that works, but go off, game 😂 (How are you going to prove your generosity in the duel, throw the fight? Handicap yourself to be merciful and give your opponent the upper hand? But then wouldn’t the opponent also do the same since they’re trying to prove they are better for the seat than you are?)

It’s honestly very difficult to measure something as abstract as character traits, so I get why the school would try to have the students engage in something physically actionable to demonstrate their worthiness. How do you measure who is the most strict?? Are we going to take a personality quiz and see who scores as the most neurotic? For another, how do we measure something as abstract and as subjective as nobility??? Does that mean royals inherently have an advantage to be Diasomnia’s leader???? It also feels weird to compare other traits like generosity, which can easily be faked or be insincere, or mindfulness, which has different applications depending on context.

Regarding Pomefiore, I really don’t think making the most potent poison has much to do with the spirit of tenacity; making powerful poisons is just a skill the Beautiful Queen herself had. Likewise, the preferred qualifications for the other dorms are probably also technical (or “hard”) skills associated with the respective G7 member or I guess with the nature of their dormitory. dhevekxms Imagine going to Ignihyde to become dorm leader and having to pass an extensive coding exam or play a board game since Hades was known for that lol💀I would also like to think that Savanaclaw’s tests are not strength based (despite how muscular many of its dorm members are), since Scar was more intelligent than strong.

I guess when put like that, it’s kind of like a job interview? You could be super qualified for the job and have all the skills it requires of you, but the position may still end up being given to someone else that isn’t qualified for reasons outside of your control. From what I understand, it sounds like dueling and being recommended by the former dorm leader completely overrides any kind of formal challenges to determine who has the desired dorm leader traits and who doesn’t.

That’s just my personal interpretation of the facts we’ve been given though; I could be totally off-base!

[starqueensthings]

Hi pals!

I’ll still be travelling when you’re seeing this and haven’t watched the finale, so I don’t have any new content to share, but last week (maybe longer? I don’t know— rainforest brain lol) I posted a poll asking if anyone was interested in seeing a snippet of my editing process, so here it is feat. possibly one of my favourite Wrecker moments.

I use a myriad of different software depending on: my mood, what computer/tablet I’m using, what the image looks like, and how much energy I’m willing to put into it lol In this video, I’m using Lightroom on my iPad.

The three main factors I look mostly closely at when I’m editing shots are 1. lighting, 2. noise, and 3. resolution (read: clarity).

This image required pretty minimal work so it’s probably not the best example, but ah well. The process in the above video is as follows, and please note the video had been sped up to 2x for file size reasons lol

The first thing I’ll do is see what the auto edit function defaults to. Often times it overexposes the image, resulting in significant colour noise, but it gives me a decent idea of what I should expect in terms of colour corrections and exposure mapping. The auto edit function wasn’t terrible in this case, but did produce some colour noise, mainly on Wrecker’s chest plate, his sleeves, and the officers hat. Once I’m done the initial scope out, I’ll exposure the image as high as possible to crop it— usually with the subject being as centered as possible.

This software lets the user tweak the bones of the image individually in three ways, all of them very quickly demonstrated here. The first is the curve method which I despise and NEVER use— because it alters multiple aspects at once, I don’t feel like I have the same degree of control as the other methods. Next is HDR setting (the default upon import) using the sliders on the right. This is effective for images that are already pretty well lit, and does give me a little more control, but most of the time because the screenshots are so dark, I’m editing in SDR mode.

Once I’m satisfied with the exposure/lighting, I’ll move on to correcting colour distortion and saturating the image. This software also provides three methods for colour alternation and I’ll typically use all three in conjunction with each other. Colour mixing is extremely crucial when it comes to reducing odour noise and distortion. Because this software lets me isolate certain colours to adjust their hue, saturation, and luminance, I can typically reduce most of or all of the colour noise. However, it does have its limitations. In this particular post, desaturating the colour noise in Crosshair’s rifle coincided with blanching his skin tone, because this software does not let me isolate certain areas of an image. It was also important to me to emphasize the warm tones from the sunset in the background for the overall mood of the shot, so I opted to remove what colour noise I could and leave the rest. (You can’t win em all… especially when the starting image is near-black lol)

Correcting the colour distortion in this image was not particularly difficult, desaturating all purple tones removed the noise from his chest plate, and shifting green tones to something near a yellow instead removed the noise from his sleeve. I didn’t notice the colour noise on the officers hat until a little later, but that was pretty easily corrected too.

Once I’ve fixed the colour noise, I’ll shift to toning the overall image. Wrecker particularly looks good in cool tones, but It’s nice to contrast a cool tone background with the warmth of his skin.

Once the toning is done, I’ll move on the image clarity. I don’t have the means to alter the actual resolution of the image, but I’m particularly picky with balancing texture and clarity. Wrecker always looks the best with texture and clarity increased, because it brings out the scarring on his face and further humanizes him, but overdoing the texture can also emphasize pixelation. Once that’s done, I’ll reduce the overall noise only slightly (doing too much makes them look airbrushed and unnatural), and whatever is left of the colour noise (too much of this setting makes them look like ghouls LOL)

This software also offers a series of preset alterations/filters briefly shown in this video… but I’m not the biggest fan of any of them. I’m a bit of a control freak and would rather tweak each aspect individually to the degree that I like, instead blanketing the image with present modifications and then undoing certain aspects.

Before exporting the image I’ll do another once over and make sure I’m happy! In this case, I opted to go back in and add some darker tones back into the image. I don’t do this often, particularly when they start so damn dark, but I wanted to keep the focus centrally on Wrecker’s radiance lol

That’s about it. If I’m working on multiple edits in a set, this software lets me just copy and paste the settings, so the following images only require extremely light tweaks and take almost no time. And that, I’ll export, autograph, and upload!

Thank you for attending this unprofessional Ted Talk.

[thefirstknife]

Exo anon: YOU ARE A TREASURE thank you for pointing me back to more sources. As to Alkahest being needed for a reboot, the second half of the final entry on Legacy's Lament that discusses a reboot, "You're sure about this? This is the last of the radiolarian fluid, you know," which says to me it's somehow necessary for the process. However... One thing that comes to mind is that the exos on Europa weren't just getting memory wiped, but being uploaded with their last saved version, so that raises the possibility that that's part of what the radiolarian fluid facilitates? Maybe memories are wiped with all reboots, but installing backup memories requires Alkahest? (Just spitballing, that...)

The whole memory wipe/reboot process and its implications are just so *clenches fist.* I wish there were more details in game. But for now, thank you for your loremastery!

No problem!

Oh yeah, that line implies some use of Alkahest for... something. It's possible that a lot of them were just reuploaded into new bodies, possibly because of all the damage done in combat. Or something as you suggested. I think if a new body is needed or there's significant damage done, Alkahest would be required again.

The memories are technically not even being entirely deleted with reboots; they're just being blocked (which explains why some still access them sometimes, like Cayde and many others did). This whole section from Clovis' journal is really interesting:

I am much more interested in the surprising success of memory wipes. I became so tired of answering the questions asked by new exos—what had happened to the scanning clinic, how long had it been, would I let them see their families—that I began inducing retrograde amnesia before spin—up. Interestingly, this seems to have improved their resilience against exomind rejection. From now on, we will block access to pre—upload episodic memory. We should also consider a built—in procedure to block memories formed after the exobody transubstantiation, returning them to a “factory state” should the need to restart occur. It would be very difficult to actually track down and delete the full memory engrams since they are stored in so many scattered parts of the brain. Instead, we can tourniquet off associative access to those memories and let them wither away in isolation. A memory is not a recording, after all. It is a set of instructions to reenact a brain state— choreography for a play. And like any play, it will fade if left unperformed.

Note that this specifies "pre-upload" memory, but also Clovis planning some sort of a feature to also block new memories made after. Also added to this is the fact that Darkness was used as part of Alkahest and Darkness for sure helps memory stay around.

It's really hard to tell what's the exact process and while we'll all love more details, I think that's by design. Still, I'd kill to know more, especially about Ada-1, because she's unique.

[notquitedeadpod]

Today Not Quite Dead turns 365 days old!

A little over a year ago, feeling very disheartened and a little depressed, I decided to take the story about vampires I'd been piddling away with in the background of making Spirit Box Radio and turn it into a single narrator audio drama.

When I did that, I came up with a bunch of anti-rules:

I'd only work on episodes when I felt like it would be fun to do so

I'd make decisions about the story based on what was most emotional to me in the moment, rather than letting myself get stuck in the process of writing something with very restrictive plot goals

If I wasn't asking myself if I'd gone too far at the end of every episode's writing process, I wasn't going far enough

And so, the show was born.

This approach is radically different than pretty much every other writing project I've completed, and that's by design. At the time I started making NQD, I'd faced a pretty big set back with SBR and was struggling to work on it at all. I had a very clear vision for the show which at times made writing it very challenging and restrictive as an experience, and when I was faced with altering that vision, though I'm now convinced it worked out better that way anyway in hindsight, it was really difficult. It made me really rethink my entire approach to working on audio drama.

Writing NQD this radically different way was really good for me. I felt excited and giggly most episodes, and it was the first time I started to feel partially confident about my vocal performances. I noticed it was having a positive impact not just on my relationship with the writing on SBR, but how I felt about its quality overall. By working on something so different that required such a different energy, I came to value SBR more, and by the end of the show's run, I was in love with it the way I was at the beginning.

There's also the fact that I absolutely LOVE vampires. I always have. They're my favourite horror monsters, for reasons which are probably obvious to those of you who have listened to the show. They are almost indistinguishable from humans at a glance, they can live among us undetected, for the most part, but they are NOT human. They're different in importnat and unresolveable ways. As someone who has always struggled to fit in, this has forever resonated with me, and for most of my adult life, I've had an unserious vampire project or two being whittled away at in the background.

There were also some problems with how I wrote season one. NONE of the dates, times or ages lined up properly, and I frequently found I'd written myself into very boring, unfunny plot corners I'd have to spend a lot of time reasoning my way out of, which is no fun at all.

Something interesting, but not really good OR bad, is that LOTS of people found the show felt very trans to them, though none of the characters are transgender in canon. I'd not written the show this way intentionally, but it was very cool to see that other people had found this thematic thread buried in the story.

By the time I got to the end of Season One, I had to admit to myself that despite my best intentions, I had written a show with plot and themes. This was entirely an accident, but I was pretty happy to realise it. I also found that this show, something I'd written primarily for myself, had a real audience. This was a delightful thing to realise. You're all freaks, and I adore that for you, and I hope you're incredibly proud of yourselves, and I mean this entirely seriously. I am a freak too, otherwise I would not be able to write the show at all.

Anyway. We're over halfway through Season Two now, and my approach to the show has changed quite a lot. Though it has remained a project that is predominantly vibes-led, I've also found it exciting to spend some serious time thinking about the show's arcs and future and really indulging in making it As Much As Possible. As you will see over the next several episodes, that is So Much, actually.

On this year's first anniversary of Not Quite Dead, I find myself once again disheartened and depressed, because it's the slow slide into the long nights of winter, and as much as I love the cold and the dark, I struggle with my mental health year-round and this particular change of seasons is the one I feel is the hardest. But I'm also damned proud of this show, and not despite it's silliness, but BECAUSE of it. It's made me a stronger character writer, a better performer, and it's been a disgusting amount of fun.

Here's to another year of this ridiculous show about vampires.

Live. Laugh. Bite.

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hi MBTI-notes. INFJ here. Many thanks for your tremendous insights. Your analysis of unhealthy INFJ’s has been absolutely spot on for me. I can see that I can be incredibly, sometimes laughably, unrealistic, have great difficulty being present, and alternate between too cynical and too trusting.

However, despite knowing about the INFJ weaknesses for several years now thanks to your blog, I keep making these mistakes. Some feel harder to change than others - like the difficulty focusing that, in my case, seems similar to ADHD.

I am trying a variety of things including finding the right mentors to bring me back to reality and hold me accountable, DBT, and improvements to basic physical self-care like sleep. I might also consider getting on medications for bipolar I (a diagnosis I have received due to two manic episodes, although they’re not sure if I need to be on meds) or ADHD.

In your experience, what is necessary to successfully close the gap between simply knowing about my problematic patterns and actually changing them? I am really hoping that improvements in emotional intelligence via DBT will close the gap, and also am trying to be more systematic about maintaining and improving my interpersonal relationships. Maybe it will be a combination of many small things like mastering physical health and routines, realistic goals, the right mentors, discipline, etc.

(From the INFJ who mentioned bipolar I). As an addendum, I just wanted to mention that the two episodes definitely involved some psychotic thoughts and behavior, but it's unclear if they fit a traditional manic episode, as I've not experienced periods of little sleep but high energy. It’s quite possible that BPD is a better explanation due to a connection in both cases with a romantic interest. I just wanted to mention this in case it impacted your response at all.

----------------------

"Knowing" about problems means being in possession of the facts, so it comes mainly through observation and gathering information. A lot of people go through life not knowing how problematic their thinking/behavior really is until they get critical feedback or generate very negative consequences. Even then, perhaps they still can't admit to having a problem and they use defense mechanisms such as denial to avoid confronting the truth. Getting through these defenses can be an arduous process. Even though knowing is really only the first step, it can already be quite a difficult step.

If knowing is only the first step, it means it's not enough. More is required. Knowing is not the same as "understanding". Understanding comes mainly through developing self-awareness, which involves the capacity to perceive and evaluate oneself accurately and objectively. Self-awareness can be described as low/high or shallow/deep. To improve self-awareness usually involves going inward, through reflection and introspection, to discover the roots and mechanisms behind psychological issues.

If knowing is about grasping the facts, understanding is about being able to provide a proper explanation of the facts. For example, a lot of people feel low self-confidence very acutely but they have no idea about how it came to pass or why they suffer. When you don't understand your thinking/behavior, it means you don't know the causes of it, the motivations behind it, or the factors that contributed to its manifestation.

That said, when people know but don't understand their problem, they are still capable of some small self-improvement. Generally speaking, they'll seek out advice from those in the know and try to discover some common rules, methods, or procedures for dealing with the problem, which allows them to become more functional in daily life. However, while they can improve a bit, their growth tends to be limited because it remains unclear whether the solution they've found is the correct one. Perhaps they feel some relief or progress, but it doesn't really seem long-lasting. Why? Knowing without understanding means every "fix" you try is basically blind and random experimentation. If something works for awhile, you don't understand why. If something doesn't work, you don't understand what went wrong. This is one reason why self-help methods have a high rate of failure; they simply don't get deep enough into the problem, so self-awareness remains too low.

Using the example of low self-confidence to illustrate, different people suffer for different reasons. For Person A, perhaps it's because of fear of failure that creates too much anxiety to feel confident. For Person B, perhaps it's because they lack knowledge and skill, so they feel too incompetent to approach tasks confidently. Person B needs to improve their knowledge and skill through learning and practice in order to feel more confident. But this remedy isn't going to work for Person A. Regardless of how knowledgeable or skilled Person A is, they will continue to fear failure, because it is an entirely separate issue that remains unaddressed by Person B's remedy. If you were looking to the above two cases for inspiration, you wouldn't get very far without knowing YOUR individual reasons for suffering low self-confidence.

It sounds like you are still in the stage of knowing - gathering the facts about your issues in order to name/label them correctly. It's good you've gotten some practical advice for managing your issues. Using the INFJ functional stack to frame the issues also seems to have been helpful for improving your self-awareness. However, what I'm still not seeing is true understanding. You haven't yet discovered the underlying causes/mechanisms and aren't able to provide an accurate and objective explanation of why you suffer from these issues. In short, it's just harder to solve a problem when you don't know the cause or how it arose.

This is probably one reason why you're running into difficulty with getting clear official diagnoses. People often view an official diagnosis as "the answer", but oftentimes the label is just a way to describe a particular set of symptoms. It doesn't reveal enough about what's really going on underneath the surface. The process of talk therapy ought to be aimed at making better sense of the symptoms, so it's important to pair any pharmaceutical interventions with talk therapy.

I never want to discourage people from self-improvement. I appreciate your willingness to seek out answers. You asked me what might be lacking in your approach and I've given you my best guess. You've focused a lot on "doing" and "following", implementing some commonsense strategies like physical self-care and learning from good mentors. This is certainly a step in the right direction. But from the perspective of analytical psychology, you haven't done enough to go within to understand your own individual psyche. It is likely that working on your emotional intelligence through DBT will deepen your self-awareness. But, at this early stage, there is no way for me to predict if it will "close the gap". If you care about understanding yourself better, be willing to take your therapist's reflections and inquiries as deep as you can go with them.

[sohannabarberaesque]

Postcards from Snagglepuss (Minnesota State Fair edition)

Oh, the things you learn from 4-H!

"Augie, Son of Sons ... I thinks it was imperative that you learned a few things about making your life seriously productive for once, as long as we're at the fair!" So explained Doggie Daddy as he was leading his ever-precocious Augie into the 4-H Building at the Minnesota State Fair. And this just as our party was also making its way into the exhibits and exhibitions, nourished with quite a substantial breakfast such as was explained previously, fellow readers and fans of our Funtastic community!

And boy, was the canine duet surprised to see our own company likewise showing interest in 4-H work! And was it especially stunning for Augie to come across a certain Hair Bear in the process, prompting Augie to remark where Hair Bear was rather "cool" himself and Hair Bear telling Doggie Daddy "I can't help but be impressed with that son you have; yet I have to wonder how he can manage to avoid getting so hyped up all time...."

"Being a single father myself," remarked Doggie Daddy, "requires me to be all the more doting and watchful of my son. Which I swore unto his mother as she was dying during a rather painful and difficult whelping on her part!"

Which had a volunteer working on behalf of 4-H exhibitors directing us and guests to some papers as were part of a project by a 4-H member about the pitfalls of single parenting in a rural area, especially when he's trying to manage a down-at-heel farm when you get used to it ... but what especially attracted the interest of Doggie Daddy vis-a-vis Augie (as if, perhaps, encouraging some inspiration for when they head back home) were some projects involving reusing salvage lumber from abandoned barns into furniture, refinishing old furniture even, as if such were otherwise shabby-looking yet too good to get rid of.

"Practicality, mind you" was all Huckleberry Hound could note.

"Which, when you get down to it, is what 4-H seeks to inspire," as a 4-H participant explained in response. And just how many of the several exhibits and exhibitors, chosen at county fair level as the cream of endeavour at club level, sought to exemplify practicality and utility, especially in the foods section? And especially so Emmy Lou and Jenny Lee seeking out some fresh and yet practical recipes themselves, even if it meant having to get a scratch pad and pen to write all down!

And what more does it really take to show that Youth can take the lead in inspiring their elders and betters than through 4-H work, as much in the barnyard and the field as in the kitchen and the workshop?

*************

@warnerbrosentertainment @passionateclown @ultrakeencollectionbreadfan @funtasticworld @theweekenddigest @zodiacfan32 @mellowarbitercrusade @leftover-hotcheetos @archive-archives @thylordshipofbutts @hanna-barbera-blog @themineralyoucrave @hanna-barberians @thebigdingle @hanna-barbera-land @screamingtoosoftly @warnerbros-blog1 @stuffaboutminnesota @iheartgod175 @jellystone-enjoyer @groovybribri @multi-fandom-girl-451 @warnerbrosent-blog

[phlve]

Sociotype Profiles — LII

Ego

Leading Ti

The LII naturally assesses statements, opinions, and actions in terms of conformance to certain principles. These principles may in practice be rules of thumb based on experience, but LIIs will usually appeal to more general, self-evident reasons, if the need arises. The LII is most engaged in communication when they are critically analyzing people's decisions and actions as well as how they generally are or are not consistent with certain pre-established goals. their dual, the ESE, likes hearing the LII's judgment, and simultaneously softens its edge by shifting their focus to how they are communicating their ideas, letting them see the intellectual thought process from the outside. The ESE appreciates and praises their ability to take the information seriously, but the ESE will find funny ways of reminding the LII of how they are coming across when they seem more serious than they realize.

"Just because" is not in an LII's vocabulary. If there is a reason for something, the LII will probably want to find it. The LII strives to reduce things to their most essential aspects, and mentally recreate the whole from the bottom up. The LII's theoretical tendencies can often leave him out of touch with reality, and if unchecked may lead to abstract theories that make logical sense but have little bearing on the real world.

The LII may explore many avenues of thought, but in the end only tell others his refined conclusions, because he sees the intermediate steps as irrelevant. He is often too concise for his own good, making it difficult for others to understand his ideas.

Creative Ne

The LII often applies Ti in an academic field such as mathematics, one which allows for abstract speculation to be realized in concrete conclusions. The LII does not much care for implementation or hands-on work, requiring some degree of independence from material demands in order to develop his own ideas. If the LII feels made to do a task he perceives as boring, he will try to find an original way to do it, if simply for the sake of developing an interesting idea. The LII can think on his feet, and is able to consider multiple viewpoints, although if he feels that he has fully analyzed an idea in the past, he may dismiss it out of hand with Ti.

The LII is always in tune with the "big picture", looking at things from the most general perspective possible. Given this frame of reference, he sees many ways ordinary life could be changed to meet his vision of how things should be. Thus the LII is often seen by other more practically-minded types as naively idealistic.

The LII does not come up with ideas simply for their own sake, but tries to relate everything back to "the main point". He quickly becomes impatient or disinterested with discussion that is simply meant to generate ideas, instead of realizing them.

Super-Ego

Role Fi

The LII is acutely aware of social conventions, such as saying "please" and "thank you", and expends much effort to conform to these rules to maintain the status of a "polite" person. But he tends to overdo the conventions themselves, as opposed to the relationships they are supposed to establish, and so ends up stepping on other people's toes (violating some less easily definable convention which he would never really want to conform to anyways). He prefers an easy-going environment where such conventions don't exist in the first place. When in a heated argument, an LII can alienate others by his natural tendency to hold and defend strong opinions (Ti).

If asked to express a unique, personal sentiment, such as a favorite color or football team, the LII may find difficulty choosing if there is no "obvious" answer. He often feels like he has no real personal, subjective feelings at all, and usually has to make a conscious decision where other types could easily supply an instinctive reaction.

The LII also is very sensitive about how other people see him, feeling depressed if he has affections that are not returned. For this reason, he tends to avoid expressing signals that show interest in certain people (as opposed to signals about his general mood and demeanor, which he feels to be much more natural), but of course it just aggravates his loneliness, instead of relieving it.

Vulnerable Se

The LII hates being ordered what to do, and chafes especially under orders that don't make sense to him. In such cases the LII is likely to criticize the authority — but if he does he is not subtle about it, and usually ends up being marked as a "rebel" and feeling even more frustrated than he did to begin with. An LII works best alone, so that he doesn't have to subordinate (to) others — or constantly negotiate his priorities, which strains his patience and diverts his time and attention away from reworking his understanding; if he is forced to waste time defending what he already knows, he gives up the freedom to deepen his understanding further. He does not tolerate pushiness combined with close-mindedness.

The LII does not like being simply told "get real" or "get off your duff", which he views as crude, intrusive, and insulting. He prefers to be left alone - or better, included in an atmosphere of open discussion that is receptive to his thoughts and thereby inspire him to develop them more.

If the LII has a problem that cannot be solved intellectually, but requires direct personal confrontation, he may resort to total avoidance rather than approaching the person directly, which he tends to think will produce only frustration and contempt. The LII thinks that, in an ideal world, everyone would just listen to reason instead of insisting on having their own way.

Super-Id

Suggestive Fe

Being a naturally private person, the LII finds it difficult to believe that others would be interested in what he is thinking or feeling at any given moment. He feels like something is not quite right if his interaction with the people around him is too aloof. However he only rarely makes an effort to venture into more open spheres, because he usually avoids making small talk, preferring to talk about his real interests and say only what he truly believes.

To this end, the LII, above all things, appreciates others' attempts to get him to "open up" emotionally and express his true thoughts and views of the world - not just as an abstract ideal living in his head, but as something that other people actually care about enough to participate in and bring to fulfillment. His focus on important abstract matters also leads him to detach from the world, if it is not complemented with a healthy dose of silliness. The LII is usually oblivious to his emotional-psychological state and feels little responsibility for improving it, not to mention the state of others. This means that "bad emotions" can build up in him until some environmental factor comes along to alleviate them. Visible demonstrations of emotional warmth play a major part in this: something as simple as a big smile and a hug is enough to brighten an LII's day. The LII can be attracted to insincere displays of affection, even if he consciously realizes that they are only in jest.

The LII is often at a loss for what to do in social situations, and appreciates others who make him feel included in a new group and in the emotional side of a situation. The LII tends to take life very seriously, and appreciates others who can show him the lighter side of things.

Mobilizing Si

The LII has poor control over his physical well-being, neglecting matters of simple hygiene relatively easily. He dislikes having to take care of mundane details of work, but simultaneously derives pleasure from aesthetic neatness and organization.

The LII is easily annoyed by sensory over-stimulation, including loud noises, bright light, and temperature. On the other hand, he easily becomes "addicted" to more pleasurable things, such as music, which have a corresponding effect on his mood (Fe). When left to his own devices, the LII tends to oscillate unhealthily between total indulgence of the senses and total neglect (the latter especially when working on something he feels to be extremely important). He tends to feel guilty for indulging in hedonism for the sake of hedonism.

On the surface the LII can seem easygoing, but in work projects or at home his critical nature will become more obvious.

Id

Ignoring Te

The LII is an efficient worker, and seeks out new tools, resources, or methods as long as they are directly relevant to his work or interests. He is not likely to keep especially careful track of his finances, avoiding this by keeping his needs simple and constant.

The LII can easily understand whether something is impractical or not, but prefers to explain why using structural principles. He dislikes rote memorization of dates and the like, but paradoxically will often have a mental store of many arcane pieces of information (such as the first 100 digits of pi) he finds interesting or equally absurd technical skills (like mastering a video game). Such skills and information will either be a part of his leisure activities, or relate directly to his main interests, which he chooses not based on their immediate practical consequence, but on how interesting they are.

The LII only exchanges such information in conversation for entertainment, and criticizes overly bland or rambling analyses, especially if he feels they have no point.

Demonstrative Ni

The LII is a naturally cautious person, and never acts without considering the consequences in detail. This tendency sometimes prevents him from acting decisively—or at all. However, he tries not to be overly pessimistic about the consequences of others' actions, and only offers direct advice in this area if it is specifically requested. If something bad happens he is usually willing to forgive and move on without placing blame, re-establishing the course as subtly and smoothly as possible. While he tends to have very specific ideas about his general life principles and goals, he is basically indifferent as to their specific timeframe and implementation.

The LII has an active imagination, but it tends to fade in and out and its products are rarely verbalized. He hardly ever says purposely cryptic or idiosyncratic things, and criticizes others for employing overly obscure concepts.

Source: Wikisocion

[nenilein]

Thoughts on writing longer form fics/fiction vs shorter form?

Oh, a lot! Let's see...

I think both are extremely difficult but also extremely fun in their own ways.

Shortform fiction is a challenge for me, because it means I need to clearly delineate what belongs into it and what doesn't. Focus on what should be there and include that. What aids the theme? What drives the story to its soon goal? How can I make sure everything flows together into a series of striking and effective moments without wasting and time? If you fail on this selection process, the short story will meander and leave the reader confused by the end, especially if things that clearly need to be resolved are left unresolved. (Note: Some unresolved threads can be effective for a powerful ending, but they need to be purposeful unresolved. If you start a seemingly important subplot about a character going through something important and then never do anything with it and don't tie it into any theme, you've just wasted the reader's attention and time). The big advantage of shortform fiction is that you can make a meaningful statement and create powerful emotion much more quickly and powerfully than if you have to set up an entire world and cast first. Longform fiction requires you to capture and keep your reader's attention for much longer, which means you'll have to employ soooome level of "manipulation" to keep them hooked that shortform wouldn't need.

Longform fiction, however, has the advantage of giving you space. You don't want your character's entire existence to be suffering? well, longform gives you time to balance the good with the bad. There are some jokes you really wanna do and aspects of your world and characters you really wanna explore, but they aren't anything that fits into a single compact, thoroughly themed story? Well, longform allows for detours that let you take a look at these things. (Though, these detours still need to be curated, interesting and ultimately serve a purpose. Losing a reader's attention can happen waaaay too quickly and once it happens, it's the death knell for your audience retention). However, long form fiction also has the problem that it gives you too much space. When it feels like you can include everything, you often want to include everything. That's an issue I've struggled with a lot in the past. Soon, you'll find yourself with 500 characters and no way to properly use all of them. a lot of their stories won't aid the themes and intentions of your story at all. You'll produce side plots and even "filler arcs" that fall by the wayside and are forgotten and before you know it you fall into the "Bleach" conundrum where it seems like your story has totally lost sight of what it was about and you can't fix it anymore, because you've added so much fat to your story that can't be cut anymore.

Above all else, however, longform fiction is a commitment. As soon as your story grows too big for you to even comprehend it yourself anymore, that's when you're in trouble. You need to remember what happened! You need to remember all your characters' motivations, which developments they've already gone through and which they haven't and who knows who. If you lose track of that, your story will fragment beyond repair and your readers won't find keeping up with it satisfying anymore. That, as well as shifting fandom interests are the most common causes of longfics turning into dead fics, or, in the professional world, series being cancelled or book series being abandoned.

Ultimately the most important thing is to know your limits. How big does your story need to be? How big can you afford it being before maintaining it consumes too much of your life to be feasible? These are questions you should always ask yourself before you decide whether to focus your attention on short form or long form fiction. Of course, short form and long form also lend themselves to extremely different story types, so in the end it will also come down to what you want to write and how to make it effective... It's all a manner of having a feel for your own writing style!

[ghostbloodmothbones]

ghost notes vol.i

a fragmented collection of thoughts and feelings about my practice, art and teaching that I just want to get out

i.

Devany Amber Wolfe is an artist that I've followed for a long time, today she announced that she was stepping back from social media and honestly, her post resonated a lot. One of the biggest struggles I've found in trying to use platforms like instagram to share work is that it rewards content creation, not creativity because creativity takes time. To make something, to follow a project through its ebbs and flows is not quick, it's not a process that can resolve in time to please an ever hungry algorithm. Content creation, is inherently not creative because in this manner, it's simply reproducing that which is popular and formulaic. It doesn't actually require much thinking, just a bit of technical know how, but to do something really creative takes time, and a lot of that time is fucking stuff up so you eventually get to a finished product. I don't necessarily think social media is the cause of all the worlds ills, but I have noticed in the students I work with such defined subjects and trends that they stick to rigidly and don't think to push past them. I think that is certainly something that is caused by social media, and herein lies the issue. When you're making things to please an algorithm or to be brand/family friendly it automatically limits the spaces that you get to explore with your work. The boundaries you can push, because anything that pushes too far from easy consumption and makes people think about difficult things, it's hidden via shadow banning and straight out censorship. This is something that the Art Newspaper has written some interesting articles on too. Is Instagram censorship changing art itself? // Are you being 'shadowbanned'? // Censored: the exhibitions that Instagram doesn’t want you to see // Censorship on social media not only limits artists' online reach—it can prevent future opportunities, too // Invisible by numbers

You can see the whole post by Devany Amber Wolfe here

ii.

Finished assessing student work this week, and as much as I love my job it's also deeply depressing sometimes. It's a short unit but a lot of submissions felt so very half arsed and I just don't get it. Art school is a place where you get to fuck around for three years before you have to jump into the real world, and it's not exactly a career you can go in if you want to be really employable, so surely you should be doing an art degree because you're passionate about it? But, just no. It's like a lot of my students just don't really care, like they barely even like doing photography and it just seems a waste to me. I won't pretend I'm not jealous of the fact they get to have that freedom just to play and learn their craft so I guess I find it extra galling to see so little passion or enthusiasm for the medium they elected to study.

iii.

We live in an era of camera's so good at making images that often times you feel more like an operator that someone actually crafting an image. I used to have a Sony A7iii, and as a work horse camera it's brilliant. The eye/face af is incredible and it makes you really have to think less when you're shooting.

But apparently for me, that seems to be the problem. Nowadays I have a cropped sensor Fujifilm, with fine autofocus but not on part with the Sony's and honestly I actually enjoy using it more as a tool. It's got its quirks, and now I'm using a lot of cheap manual focus lenses nailing the shot is much harder and more involved but I actually feel like I'm making things again. Not relying on the camera to do the hard work for me. Think I finally crossed the threshold from being a photographer to being an artist and i feel 40% more pretentious.

[sunmoon-starfactory]

Hello! Thank you for all your hard work. I was wondering if there are any resources for learning about how to make custom crafting stations in general, and I was also wondering how difficult it is in terms of modding abilities. Have my own sci fi setup that I wanna build crafting stations for, and I wan a know where to start learning. Thanks!

Hey there, long answer here, so I've divided it up into sub-sections. See below the cut

How to make crafting stations, a long explanation

Learning the basics

There are no tutorials for making crafting stations specifically. Honestly, the difficulty depends on your experience making custom objects, modding BHAV's, testing and the complexity of what you want to make.

The first thing you will want to start with is learning basic object creation, there are plenty of tutorials on every aspect of this. Remember: object creation is not just about SimPE! It also involves meshing and creating textures.

Then once you have a handle on that, you will want to learn BHAV modding. Resources for this type of modding are rarer, documentation can be spotty, but good places to start are Echo's BHAV tutorial @midgethetree's Resources page and @picknmixsims' Primitives page on his site.

Another good way to learn BHAV modding is to look at other people's code. See if others have made code that might be useful to you. Look at how they did it and try to understand why it was made this way. Screenshot a BHAV, label every node with what it does.

Seeing as you're interested in crafting stations in particular, you can take a look at custom crafting stations. A few you could look at are Nadira's Sculpture Manufactory at MTS or anything "descended" from Beck's crafting stations like @deedee-sims' Woodworking station, @nixedsims' Blacksmith Crafting station or @fireflowersims' Candle Crafting station. You could also look at our code for insights, though we do not support straight-up cloning.

The process

But, before you can get to actually making a station, it's important to get a good idea of what you intend to make. The planning stage is as important as the development. What will the station make? Will it require resources a la Sun&Moon? Money a la EAxis OFB stations? Or perhaps the only investment is time and motives? Each of these options are different in coding. And if it needs resources, you'll have to create those resources too. Can the action be interrupted? That'll add some complexity. Autonomy and/or trait options are other things to consider. We like to have the basics planned out before we begin coding in earnest. This gives us a good idea of whether we can do this with our current arsenal or if we need to develop some more parts.

What I've found useful in this stage is reducing the station down to its basic steps: sim goes to the station, does animation, x things get removed from their inventory, then y other thing gets added. This is a very basic example, most stations are more complex than that, but it can help you get a general idea of how to structure your code.

It's also good to remember that crafting stations are not just code... We put a significant amount of time into the visuals. Sourcing meshes and textures or creating them from scratch, mapping said meshes to look good with the textures, optimizing them so they perform well without sacrificing quality. It's an entire development process that takes time.

Testing is another important aspect. We test when developing new code, we test before we duplicate code, we test after we duplicated code. We have some amazing beta testers that help out a lot with this, but even then, things will probably slip past that'll require fixing later on. I cannot understate how important testing is.

Community aspects

When learning how to do any modding, especially BHAV modding, It's a good idea to find a Discord server with experienced modders to join up. @gayars' Sims Crafters is an excellent place for this, as is the PBK Discord. I have also heard good things about @lazyduchess' server.

The important thing is that you have a place where you can ask people for help; both with testing your stuff and figuring out how to resolve that stubborn bug. There is no shame in it, we've all been there. Do not expect people to fix all your issues for you - you'll still have to do the majority of the heavy lifting yourself - but they may just point you in the right direction. Just stay polite and be willing to learn.

So well, Crafting Stations involve quite a bit, but I highly encourage you to dive in and see what you can achieve. Remember: it's not a race, it's a journey. Enjoy the process, errors are your friends. Don't be discouraged if it takes months, so do some of our projects. Laundry took 1.5 years.

The best of luck!

[quirkwizard]

Hi! I asked you to create a Quirk involving some mythological creature, which in this case you made a Griffin. I'm here again to make another unusual request. Could you make a Quirk based on a profession that you really like? I've been thinking about how the world of MHA must have changed for ordinary people, so I'm thinking of creating an OC based on the idea that he has a very useful Quirk for his profession and can be used to defend himself. Hope you have a little fun creating this Quirk :)

Since I can't think of any jobs that I would love, at least ones that would work as Quirks, I decided to do jobs in general. Which was difficult since I had a lot of Quirks that cover a lot of potential occupations. There was a few I considered, like teacher, historian, and even architect, but I decided on fashion designer. Partly because I liked the idea and partly because a job like that would be pretty interesting with all the hero costumes and mutations. I'm still open for making those other ones if any of you are interested.

I see it working as an Emitter type Quirk that allows the user to create various materials made for clothing and then fashion them into clothing. This is a quick process, such as the user making a shirt in a matter of seconds, and can cover a variety of materials, everything from cotton to nylon to leather. The materials made by the user are notably better than their average counterparts, such as highly insulated materials that grant the target protection from electricity. The user can apply the clothes to themselves if they wish and fashion them around another person who is close to them. This gives the user a good mix of options, letting them fashion all sorts of unique outfits to match whatever situation they need to. They can tie their foes up in the fabrics, quickly form armor around themselves, make costumes that perfectly fit their allies, counteract certain Quirks with the right materials, or simply dazzle everyone around them with their amazing style. Though their ability to create clothing is heavily dependent on their ability to care for themselves, needing plenty of sleep and a balanced diet to produce and create the materials. The Quirk will require some studying to work, both for designing clothing and of the target to maximize its effectiveness. Anything that user makes can still be broken and will need to be repaired by them. A possible name for the Quirk could be "Fashion".