#rl things made this project difficult to work on

[wideeyedloner]

There is no way what I wanted to do was going to be completed for @destielvalentineszine2025, but here’s a partial maybe still WIP of my apparently eternal brainworms.

Happy anniversary, Dean and Cas!

part 1 | part 2

[morganrivers]

04-05-2020

Who would have ever thought that this year would be filled with such troubling and questionable times...while only being barely four months into it. In January, the Australian bush fires shook the world. Affecting thousands of people and animals that call that country home. In late January, Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, among 7 others crashed in a helicopter on the way to a basketball game. Instantly killing every one on board. Every victim left families and loved ones behind. While not everyone was a basketball fan, everyone knew who Kobe Bryant was. You didn’t have to be a huge Kobe, Lakers, or even a basketball fan to feel what the world felt at that moment. Scared, heart broken, saddened. The unsettling reminder that life can be taken from you in an instance. No matter your status in life, your income, the amount of friends you have, or where you come from. Life does not discriminate. 

I was working Sunday morning brunch at the pub when TMZ first aired it on live television. Everyone in the restaurant, myself included, stopped what they were doing to watch the news unfold. At first, it was uncertain as to who was on board with him. Rumors and live footage of the crash flooded social media and every major news outlet. To find out the severity of the crash and the casualties was gut wrenching, I couldn’t even begin to imagine or fathom what their families at home were going through. 

Flash forward to March, a global pandemic made it’s way over to us. COVID-19, a new strand of the corona virus that mutates at a rapid rate. It’s an airborne disease that anyone can be affected by, especially the elderly and the immunocompromised. We’ve been in quarantine for almost three weeks now. All major businesses, except essential workers (grocery stores, doctor’s offices, etc.) are closed. The pub has temporarily shut down except for selling to go food and beer/wine. I haven’t worked a bar shift in almost a month now. I miss it. I miss my regulars, my work family, and the extra income. Other restaurants around us have shut down for good, Wild Wing, where I worked for 5 years while in college and Copper River Grill as well. I hate it for all the employees of those businesses, no guaranteed work to return to after all of this craziness is over with. A lot of those workers were our regulars at the pub whom I’ve formed relationships and friendships with over the last 3 years I’ve worked as a bartender.

What I’ve gathered from all of these recent events is that you never know when the last time you will experience something is. It gives me an uneasy and almost nauseating feeling when I begin to think of it. Life is fleeting. We take for granted each moment we experience. I try to stay present in situations and see them for what they are. Really experience them. Although, I am not perfect and that’s not always possible. I wish I could snap shot a moment and store it away until I want to relive it again. I will probably never see a lot of the people from Copper River or Wild Wing again. I wonder what their lives will entail within the coming days, months, and years. I wish them well and hope that they find work and comfort in a daily routine again. 

In light of everything, the world seems to be recovering. Pollution rates have gone down in highly populated areas. In Venice the canal has cleared up to where you can see the fish! Swans have returned. I believe Earth is getting a nice break because people are staying home. It’s a little bewildering to think about anything positive in such a negative situation. But I am thankful for it. Maybe this will be a wake up call for people, environmentally speaking. I think a lot of people are taking this time to do things that they usually do not find themselves doing. Me for example, here I am finally starting to blog. I tried writing in journals, sometimes it’s difficult for me to sit down and write. I find it easy to type out everything...easier on my wrists. I even got in my yard and made a flower bed, also stripped some popcorn ceiling in my bathroom yesterday. I’m hoping to finally get around to some chores I’ve been wanting to get accomplished in my house during all of this. Next thing on the list is to paint my bathroom and replace the mirror and light fixtures. I’m really looking forward to how it will look after it is done!

While I am trying to stay positive in my situation, I know that others are tremendously suffering right now during this time. There are many people who do not have a great home life. People who look forward to going to school or to work, just for an escape. Children who depended on meals from school and that positive environment to mold them into the adults that they will become. Women, even some men, who are in abusive relationships. Whether that be with a spouse, parent or guardian, or a sibling that so desperately wish they could escape from. I think of those people in this time, and wish that I could remove them from those situations. I think of those people and am grateful for what I have in my life, and wish I could give them the same. How I wish everyone on this planet had a loving, comforting, clean, warm home to go home to every night. I pray that this travesty that is wreaking havoc on our planet comes to and end soon. I pray that this changes how our world handles situations or better yet, prepares for them. I pray essential workers get a break; especially those on the front line of all of this. Nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, grocery store workers, pharmacists, FedEx/UPS, etc. I pray that those out of work can return to work soon. I pray that this doesn’t lead our economy into a recession. I pray. To whom I do not know. The universe I suppose, to help us in this time of need. We need to give back to the universe. Stop having so much hate for one another. To give love, to give kindness, to be less selfish. I hope that I can lead a better life and attitude after this. I want to keep up with what I am doing during this time; journaling, working in the yard, little projects on my house, and exercising. I hope for normalcy in life again. A routine. We all crave it.

I am saddened that the music festival that I was supposed to attend this year has been cancelled. It was an amazing line up of artists! Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, RL Grime, Post Malone, RKS and loads of other musicians I was so excited to see. I was going to go with an amazing group of people. We had rented a house on the beach where the festival was going to be held. I hope we get to experience this festival in the future.

Whenever all of this is over and we all get to go out in public and be together I know I will be overcome with emotion. To be able to be with all of my friends and enjoy drinks, a good meal, some conversation and laughs will be amazing. I can’t wait to go to my first concert again, to be able to hear live music among a crowd of people. Everyone feeding and vibing off one another among a musician they all love! I can’t wait to get weekly lunch with my mom and sister again. To see them everyday and give them a hug or a kiss on the cheek. I’ve had to avoid hugging and being my normal affectionate self because of all of this...that’s very hard for me. I can’t wait to be able to drive up to Greenville to see my best friend and go out with her and enjoy a hike at a near by state park. I can’t wait to be able to do outdoor activities. Kayaking on the river, going on a boat ride with friends, tying up at Sandy Beach and have a fun ass day drinking and hanging out with people. I can’t wait to be able to go get my hair cut or my nails done. To go shopping at a store whenever I felt like it. I will be so thankful when these days come again. And I hope to never take them for granted.

[laraslandlockedblues]

Ok actually I know the tags on my gif post I just did said I wasn’t sure when I’d be back, but I’m feeling strangely articulate tonight so here we go. Long-winded under the cut.

TL;DR - Real life is (and will continue to be) a busy bitch, a writer’s ego is a fragile thing, and my Lightning Struck series (Cullen/Evelyn) can now be considered on indefinite hiatus.

Hi! Yes, I’m alive and well and I really do appreciate the messages asking if I was all right and checking on me. You’re all too sweet and kind, and I’m so grateful for each and every one of you. Keep that in mind as this ramble continues, please.

This has been a weird year already, and it’s only March. Normally I’d be like “IT’S ALREADY MARCH?!” but no, this year...It’s only March. That’s how I’ve been feeling.

January started off with a weird mood for me. Over the holidays I had the usual  family stress and blahness that comes with adulthood, but a few fandom things happened too that put me into a rather...difficult headspace, shall we say. For one thing, I will say I’ve noticed I’m not the only one who’s pointed out that it feels like the fandom is dying. And it is. Which is sad. I feel like I only just got here - I’ve played DA for years but I only really started to interact with its fandom in late 2017, so for me it was still all fresh and new and exciting. Seeing that die down, compounded with the Tumblr wank, especially, was really disappointing.

As a creator, too, it was hard not to take that personally. It was hard not to take people moving on to other fandoms and interests and things as an indictment on my work. Rational brain knew that that was the problem, rational me knew that we were all just moving on because other things were catching our interest. It’s natural. But dumb, idiot writer brain was struggling with the fact that I was feeling like I was screaming into the void.

What bothered me more was that I even cared. I never once wanted to care about that. I always preach writing for oneself, and that’s why I write. But I hated  the fact that for a time I’d gotten so much feedback that I noticed its absence when it died down a little. And that’s not anyone’s fault, I’m not begging for comments or feedback, seriously. Again, rational me was shrugging and still wanted to write for me because it was fun and I enjoy it, but the fragile writer ego we all carry around inside us took a hit and began to doubt.

It stopped being fun. Especially because it wasn’t necessarily a total lack of feedback - it was, for me, a lack of feedback on what I was actually, currently working on. Over the holidays for some reason I began to get comments on WIPs that I hadn’t updated in ages - asking me for updates. Now, everyone has their own opinion on those sorts of comments, so this is only my own, and take it with a grain of salt and everything I just mentioned above.

It sucked. It absolutely, 100% sucked. Seeing the email notification that I got a comment would bring me so much joy - only to open it to see that it was a comment on something I hadn’t written for in a long time asking me when I’d feel like providing more content for that fic again. I began to feel like fic was a transaction and I was piling up debts. I started to feel like I owed fandom and readers what they wanted, instead of doing this for the reason I started in the first place - for myself.

I know that Rylen is niche. I know that fics that have very little to do with canon are niche. I know that Abby isn’t always super likable. I know that John is off-putting because he’s such a morally ambiguous OC who has nothing to do with DA and makes really shit decisions. I know all of that, and I’ve never expected any of those fics to get any sort of response, so the fact that they’ve gotten the response that they have still blows my mind and makes me insanely, insanely happy. And so I hated that I felt ungrateful, and that I was doubting my work, and that writing and fandom was beginning to feel like a labor and not something I loved.

The more I noticed I was struggling with working on updates, the more I started to think a break might be in order. When some RL stuff finally cropped up, the fact that I was sort of forced into a break was a blessing in disguise, to be honest. I leaned into the skid and let myself step back to reevaluate why I do this and what I want to get out of it. I fell into a new fandom and worked on random pieces of writing for it, which I threw into the voids of ao3 on a second account and only shared for myself and a few friends who were also falling into that fandom with me. I rediscovered the joy of writing and not caring what response I get. I reignited my love of crafting a story a certain way because I wanted to and not because I thought it was where anyone else thought it should go.

I remembered why I love writing in the first place - for myself.

And with that, I finally began to let go of some things, and let myself mull over decisions I’d been putting off or avoiding. I shrugged off the stress of expectation and “owing” anyone my time or effort, and I’m finally back to enjoying myself and my writing, free of doubt.

With that, I have some news, good and bad. The bad news first - my Cullen muse has left the building. I have waited, and hoped, and tried, but at some point he walked out the door and he hasn’t made an appearance since. That isn’t to say that I don’t still love his character or content about him, but personally, I can no longer write his POV or romance. The ability to do so has eluded me for months now, but I’ve accepted this sad truth at long last. Unless he’s trading banter with Rylen or Abby, his muse is no longer whispering in my ear. And that makes me sad, and for all I know he’ll reemerge some day, ready to help me write again. For now, though, that isn’t possible. Which does, unfortunately, mean that my Cullen/Evelyn WIPs are currently either abandoned or on an indefinite hiatus (I’ve tagged them appropriately on ao3 if you’re curious). If I do manage to return to them, I expect to only focus on Moments Passed and Miss Grey. As for what I’ll do about Beautiful Disaster...I’m not quite certain yet.

It did also mean that I was able to let go of something that had bothered me for a while as well. I’m almost positive no one noticed since it’s been kind of off radar for a while, but - my fic What Are the Odds has been orphaned. I’m still proud of it as a fic, but it came with a lot of baggage and my Cullen/Evelyn pairing was just ever so slightly OOC to the point that comments on it made me cringe. I’m a firm believer in not deleting, and so off to the fandom as an orphaned work it went, to be enjoyed without me having to be aware of it at all.

Now, the good news is - I do 100% still plan on writing Abby/Rylen. Their muses are still there and whispering to me, and I definitely want to continue working on the WIPs I have for them. At the moment After Rain might be slow to update (need to figure out how I’m navigating some canon plot to get me from point A to B to C to D and on). But I plan on trying to finish it as well as the others that I have for them. Abby/Ry live on, because I absolutely love them so much, and the idea of writing for them is back to bringing me joy.

I cannot make guarantees on update speed for the foreseeable future, possibly for the rest of the year. Currently RL continues to be a shitshow, as I was reminded today, and writing more than a sentence here or there has been difficult. In a few months I will also be moving, and once at my new destination I actually have a Big Project (a writing one I hope to be able to share here, if people are still around/Tumblr is still a thing) that I intend to make my full time focus. My goal has always been to be a writer, and while fanfic has been an amazing way to explore my writing style/storytelling/character voice, I have plans to get published. I’ll have a better opportunity to put those plans into realistic action later this year, which I’m actually really, insanely excited about.

If you have made it this far, THANK YOU. I love this fandom, and I’ve met so many wonderful, lovely, supportive, talented people in it and I have missed you all dearly during my time away. In no way was this a call out post directed at anyone in particular, and in no way was this a “woe is me, please give me attention” cry for help. I’ve just had a lot of thoughts and feelings during this break, and I actually wanted to sort of vocalize them because: 1) wow I already feel better after doing so, and 2) to let other writers know it’s 100% valid to need to take a break or occasionally get in your head about needing validation/feedback/wonder why we do this when it just feels like screaming into a fathomless void. It’s natural and normal and totally human, and if you’re feeling that way, find someone supportive to help you through and take a step back. Everything will be waiting there for you when you’re ready for it. And remember - do it for yourself because it’s something you enjoy.

xx

[laveritaswoman]

What If ... ?

(This post was inspired by some questions posed by @pissedoffsoka13​ yesterday, but I went so far afield of what she was asking that I didn’t want to weigh her blog down with my excessive wordiness and off-topic topics. So thank you for the inspiration, Soka.)

What if S/C would have come out publicly as a RL couple in January 2016? (Offered as a “what could have been.”):

If S and C had come out publicly as a RL couple when shippers suspected they were going to in January 2016 (instead we got the IFH, most likely thrust upon them by TPTB), I believe there would have been few negative effects. But I also think they would have achieved so much more ... together. I think they could have had more “coupley” fashion endorsements, a la the Saks and Departures magazine promotions (and probably Kooples, which may have been in the works but got canned by IFH). These endorsements would have raised their visibility and popularity factor immensely. The fact that they were a couple would have made the TV/magazine/newspaper entertainment section circuit. As a result, their visibility/popularity factor, again, would have increased markedly, garnering them more viewers who decided to check out OL simply because they were enchanted by S/C’s natural chemistry and funny banter during their appearances on entertainment TV segments or in magazine interviews.

I don’t think being a couple would have hurt their acting opportunities outside of OL. In my opinion, the entertainment industry would not have viewed them as less legitimate actors if it was known that they were together IRL. Just look at the ”Americans” couple and their noms, awards, and recognition. Both S and C have shown their acting chops in projects outside of OL and they have showreels to prove it.

Contrary to C’s rationale offered during the IFH as to why they couldn’t work together and “be together,” I believe that if S/C were together, they were not the types that would have succumbed to fits of jealousy and fights if one was getting the acting gigs and the other wasn’t. They have established too many other interests outside of acting to keep them busy. I think they wouldn’t have succumbed to the pressures if, after OL was over, they had to spend periods of time away from each other on their own acting projects. Both are mature individuals who’ve been living life on their own terms for over 20 years -- I don’t see them as clingy and they are quite capable of doing fine being apart, as evidenced by the vacations/holidays that they spend apart from one another now (but I do think they secretly meet up at the end of these vacays/holidays to spend leisure time together).

As for the impact on OL, I don’t think coming out as a couple would have been problematic to the show, even if they were to break up. S and C are mature professionals who understand and embrace the importance of their jobs and their roles. They would have continued to show their great chemistry in front of the camera on OL regardless of their on- or off- relationship status. Who knows, the OL TV series might continue through completion of all 8 (or 9) books; who better to take on a long-term project than a long-term couple?

If they had a child or children, which they’ve both expressed they would like, they wouldn’t have had to worry about hiding her/them from the world because of some fake narrative that they had to maintain. They just wouldn’t have had to hide, period, and to me, the hiding and lying would be the most difficult, stressful thing to do if I were in their shoes. But most of all, they wouldn’t have had to compromise the respect and love that they received from their loyal, passionate fans early on, but that they slowly chipped away at with their deceit, gaslighting, belittling (”crazy” and “delusional”), troll endorsement, and bullying enabling.

They could have had the most loyal, loving, creative, powerful fandom of any fandom out there, and not one that is now among the most fractured. Fans would have been able to proudly celebrate both OL and “S/C together,” without all the venom and vitriole of the antis, NSTs, celebri-trolls, and assorted nasties. They could have used the power of the fandom to win new acting jobs and entertainment industry awards, People’s Choice Awards, etc. They could have rallied their fans behind their causes to an even greater degree and brought in even more money for WCC,Bloodwise, MPC, and Cahonas.  

But most important of all, S/C would have been able to be their authentic, lovely, loving, joking, touchy, raunchy, perfectly synchronized selves around one another ... all the time. They could have openly, as a couple, shared all the exciting highs in their careers together. They could have slayed the red carpets together. S could have proudly escorted his wifey to all the awards show parties, and they could have made all their networking connections together as a team ... or separately if needed (but while watching each other’s back). S could have been there to cheer C on from his seat next to her at the GGs, the BAFTAs, the IFTAs, etc.

Perhaps, someday, we’ll be lucky enough to see S and C actually come out publicly as a RL couple and we can celebrate their love for reals. And I can guarantee you they will be able to obtain a much higher level of privacy by being public. I know that sounds contradictory, but it’s true. Once the fandom knows the truth ... the actual truth and not the fake truth ... everyone will take a collective deep breath, calm down, and celebrate S/C together. Those that aren’t pulling for S/C together will pack up their hatred for happiness and go home or move on to find another fandom to destroy. There will be no more intrusions on S/C’s privacy, and that of their family and friend’s, caused by fandom factions fighting over “are they/aren’t they?” and trying to examine every little micro-detail to prove that their side is correct.

Until then, we can imagine S/C together, we have that right.

[plumbobpost]

Fanfic Friday: Spotlight on Skell’s Fortune & Romance

Sul sul!

Today Week of Woohoo continues with a very special twist. I have had the opportunity to ask Skell a few questions as part of a new series of posts about storytelling in The Sims community.

Skell’s Fortune & Romance serves as a prequel to the Pleasantview and Strangetown storylines in The Sims 2 from the perspectives of the Caliente sisters, hence the title which references their aspirations. Her story takes place in the time period between the first and second games and fills in the gaps between the contradicting timelines of The Sims, The Sims 2, and The Sims 3. Although the story is largely from Dina’s perspective, it features most of the iconic The Sims 2 characters ranging from Olive Specter to the Tricous to Bella and Mortimer Goth, establishing its own vivid mythology in the process.

In addition to writing, Skell has also created beautiful Maxis-Match content for The Sims 2 and is a frequent contributor to the Totally Maxis Tumblr and the fansite Garden of Shadows.

Without further ado, I’ll let Skell speak for herself.

You’ve said in the past that Fortune & Romance started out as your attempt to make sense of Maxis canon for the premade characters of Neighborhood 1, Pleasantview, and Sunset Valley. How did this evolve from your personal headcanons into a full-fledged story?

“I had played TS2 off and on for years before I was part of the fandom, mostly just goofing around but I had a lot of fun taking pictures and experimenting with posing. One day I discovered Strangetomato’s “Strangetown Here We Come” on TVtropes and was amazed at the way she fleshed out the premade stories from the game. Through her comment section, I discovered the whole fandom and started paying better attention to the premades. Eventually I came up with a backstory for Dina that I really wanted to write and share.”

Why did you choose Nina and Dina Caliente to be your protagonists? Did you ever consider different lead characters?

“It was always gonna be Dina because I was intrigued her backstory with the mysteriously inconsistent Michael Bachelor and the fact that she’s part alien. I wasn’t as interested in Nina until I noticed that she was shy (like me in RL) and also autonomously beating people up all the time. That’s when I realized she was gonna be a co-star and balance to Dina’s antics.”

Instead of ignoring Maxis’ characterization of Dina as a gold digger, you embraced it and made it a focal point of her character. Similarly, you fully acknowledge Nina’s romance aspiration while not making her a heartbreaker. How did you find a balance between their implied “villainy” in The Sims 2 and making them more sympathetic characters?

“I enjoy classic movies where Marilyn Monroe or Thoroughly Modern Millie is like “teehee I’m gonna marry a millionaire,” and it’s quirky rather than villainous. In those stories, she usually falls for a poor guy and chooses love over money (and often he turns out to be secretly rich.) Since Michael didn’t give her a “married a rich sim” memory, I wanted to write Dina the gold-digger as a modern version of that kind of story.”

“Maxis kind of setup Romance sims for “villainy” by not allowing for casual or open relationships, but of course that can be fixed with mods. With Nina, it’s interesting that she doesn’t really fit the “outgoing party girl” type. I think of her as a quiet person with a very intense energy. She needs lots of exercise and woohoo so that she doesn’t explode.”

There are a lot of unconventional relationships in your story. Nina and Servo. Olive and Ichabod. The Tricous. Even Dina and Michael. That being said, there is very definitely a theme of “love conquers all.” What motivated your approach to these relationships? How does that relate back to your attempts at reconciling Maxis canon throughout different games?

“I have a thing for mixed supernatural relationships. Dina and Mike bonding over their hidden supernatural heritages was always key once I figured Michael had a magic side. I knew I wanted to have Nina be intimate with a servo because that’s HAWT, but I didn’t foresee how intimate things would get until I figured out Servo’s character. The Tricous’ happy polyamory was my explanation for all the weirdness going on with their relationships and family tree. And I wanted Olive, Ichabod, and DJ make up this very loving and weirdly “normal” Unholy Family.”

Speaking of reconciling Maxis canon, you created your own version of Michael Bachelor in order to match his appearance in The Sims better and to create a resemblance between him and his famous sister, Bella Goth. Why do you think Michael was depicted so differently throughout the first three games? What did you draw inspiration from in creating “The Ultimate Michael Bachelor?”

“I think it mostly comes down to them wanting to use a familiar name for Bella’s brother/Dina’s husband in TS2, and carrying that forward. In TS3, I saw a boy who had his life all planned out for him by his father. In my headcanon, he screwed that all up and became the graduate of TS1 who had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. His relationship to Bella is the reason why he’s still single by the time he reconnects with Dina, who helps him find direction.”

There is an abundance of strong female characters in F&R, some of which were not originally portrayed that way. Why did you feel that it was important to write them as such?

“Well, because I’m a proud “SJW,” of course! But seriously, it’s less about being strong and more about seeing them as people?”

^Best answer that I could have asked for.

A large portion of Fortune & Romance is dedicated to the mythology of The Sims universe(s) and to supernatural sims. How did you go about the process of world building? Did you draw inspiration from different games in the series and/or from outside sources?

“My biggest worldbuilding is the explanation of where the supernaturals came from. The fairies are sort of fallen angel types who each have an animal form, and their magic rubbed off on human sims to create the supernatural life states.”

“I try to base the worldbuilding off things in game or aspects of game play. The fairy backstory was heavily inspired by fairy tales, in the way they morally test humans for punishment or guidance.”

Aside from premade supernatural sims such as the Smiths, Calientes, and Summerdreams, how did you go about deciding which premade sims were supernatural and which weren’t? How did you decide what life state they were?

“Bella has that awesome bio about being descended from “occultists, decadents, and mystics,” but then in TS3 the Bachelor family is uber-normal, so it eventually became that Jocasta is a squirellier version of Samantha from Betwitched.”

How has Fortune & Romance evolved since you started? Are there things you would do differently if you were to restart it?

“I was such a younger, different person when I started it, and yes there are many things I would do differently. (Michael’s skintone, for example. I tried to split difference between games with a custom skintone in between S2 and S3, but everyone assumes he was whitewashed to S2.)”

“When recreating families for TS4 I came up with a backstory for Dulcinea and Nestor’s relationship as well as a backstory for Don that explains how he got to be the way he is. I still can incorporate these things, but it would have been nice to bring them in earlier.”

With your story having reached a climax, many readers are wondering whether or not F&R will come to an end sooner rather than later. Not to spoil anything, but will the story continue after the party and if so, do you intend for it to last until the events of The Sims 2?

“I never intended for it to last until the events of TS2 because then it would be really depressing. There is more stuff planned for after the party though!”

Aside from writing Fortune & Romance, you have also created a variety of Maxis-match custom content. Why do you prefer working in this aesthetic? How do you feel it complements your writing?

“The game is cartoony, and I like to use that style to tell the story. I prefer to keep things heightened and silly rather than realistic, which very much fits into The Sims aesthetic.”

Speaking of Maxis-match, you have been working on a project for The Sims 2 that involves adapting Maxis-based custom content to blend in better with the game files. Would you mind elaborating a bit on The Maxis Match Repository Project?

“The TS2 repository project is made up of conversions/separates/or otherwise adapted Maxis which pull their textures from the ones that are already in your game, rather than creating new ones. This makes the files much much tinier. I also wanted to create a catalog where you can easily find it all in one place rather than hunt all over the internet. Check it out and don’t miss out on the gems in the back of your catalog!”

You’ve played every main game in The Sims franchise, and you’ve even made some very popular 2t4 recreations of the Calientes and Michael Bachelor. Do you have a favorite game for playing? Creating sims? Making Content? Building?

“I enjoy a lot of things about TS4. The game looks great and CAS and Build Mode are the best of any game. My favorite aspect is making sims, especially that you can share sims with traits/careers/skills so they have their own little story packaged with them. However, it is much more difficult for storytelling since there’s not even a way to pick up sims and move them around.”

“TS2 is still the best as far as premade sims go, and it’s the only one I make content for. I’m a bit of a control freak with my sims, and TS2 has been mastered by fans at this point where you can have ultimate control.”

Why do you continue to play The Sims? Do you feel that the games provide a creative outlet?

“I always loved playing with Barbies as a kid and The Sims really is the ultimate dollhouse. The first time I ever heard about TS1 I knew I HAD to have it. My aunt bought it for me while I was on vacation, but I couldn’t play it until we got home! During the car ride back home and I read that manual from cover to cover multiple times, so many ideas buzzing in my head.”

Any parting comments, teasers, spoilers, public service announcements, etc.?

“I’ve been on hiatus a long while and am just now getting back into the swing of things. I’m currently working on finishing up the chapter I started posting on Tumblr but never finished. It was FreddyAirmail who got me back in the TS2 spirit by asking me to help out with the Crystal Springs neighborhood project. It’s a community hood with houses based on each of the Stuff Packs, and I made the families for Teen Style and Family Fun!”

Thanks again to Skell for answering my questions. To those of you out there who aren’t familiar with her work, go check out her Tumblr and make sure to catch up on Fortune & Romance.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to visit my ask box. If you are interested, give Plumbob Post a follow, and reblog for anyone else who you think would enjoy this blog. Stay tuned for upcoming posts!

Dag dag!

 *Photo Credits go to Skell*

[starberry-cupcake]

This is my entry for @whopooh‘s questions for fic writers! Thank you for developing this amazing questionnaire, it was very insightful and interesting to answer.  

I debated whether to answer these, but 2 out of 5 of my answers are Miss Fisher related and I have posted 1 Miss Fisher fic so far, so technically I’m good to answer these, according to the guidelines. Even if I do feel like I’m totally butting in, because I haven’t written for this fandom for as long as others and also I don’t tend to talk about my writing on tumblr much. Still, the questions were really good and I wanted to add my little contribution, so I hope that’s ok. It’s under “read more” because of length. Even if I probably don’t share all the fandoms included here with all of my followers, maybe some things are of interest and some of you, who also write (not only fanfiction, but anything at all) can relate to some of this. Sharing writing experiences is always interesting.   

1. Pick one fic that you’ve written and talk about what makes it important to you.

My Les Mis mutant AU The Downfall of the Juillet Institute is probably the most important I’ve written personally, even if it’s not my favorite. It was well received by readers, though, which is good for a fic that’s so personal. 

The main reason why it’s important to me is because it was there for me during some pretty heavy times, when a lot of things were happening and my life changed dramatically. In the middle of chaos, that fic was there. And I, the person who never writes chaptered fics because she thinks she’ll never finish them, had all the excuses to leave it unfinished. But I didn’t. I had a lot of encouragement and also very patient readers, and ultimately something very interesting happened. 

I started it with the intention of pushing myself to do in fic writing what I tend to do in personal writing. I don’t tend to use fic in the same way, I normally write fic to fulfill or add something I would have wanted to see in canon, but rarely I go as deep into it as I do in my personal writing, but not because I think it’s not worthy (it absolutely is! fanfiction is very important!). I had this idea that my fic writing and my personal writing were two completely separate things, with different reasons, motives and even languages (my original writing is in Spanish, my native language, and my fics tend to be in English, and I swear I feel my writing style is extremely different in both). I felt for a very long time that it had to be this way, because some things I had to “save” for one form of writing or the other, but in the end both are much more related than I thought and a lot of things I ended up including in my personal writing (I don’t want to call it “original” writing because there’s originality in fics as well) ended up being there because I integrated them first in my fics and worked through them there. 

With my mutant AU, though, I blurred the lines. I made an oath to push my fic writing to be more like my personal and create a story from the ground up with my own world-building in a complex setting (in sci fi, no less, which isn’t normally what I write), to include strong heavy emotional elements I don’t tend to include, and, to top it all off, to start posting it without having completely finished it. It was a gamble of massive proportions. 

I ended up learning more about my own writing process from this fic than I had with some of the creative writing workshops I’ve done. When all the issues started happening in my life, I found myself having to face this monster and some of the stuff I had set myself to include became triggering for me. So I had to find a way in which I could write it all and see it through. The fic helped me work through some heavy stuff and it ended up being an ideal place to project some of my issues and transform them into something new. 

I’m very grateful to that fic and very proud still today of having finished it. And even if some days I’m embarrassed of some of the ways in which I handled some stuff or some of the choices I made, I will always regard it with respect. 

2. Pick one of your older fics and say what about it you like most, and what you would do differently now.

I deleted every fic in my old fanfiction.net account and all traces of my young self in there, so I’m not linking it, but I had written once a ficlet in which I explored the different perspectives of the Black sisters from Harry Potter, Narcissa, Andromeda and Bellatrix. It was a bit lackluster, my English wasn’t the best (I hope it’s better now, who knows, not me), but the concept was rare for me at the time and I think it was a baby step towards my fascination with character archetypes and female representation in media. I had written plenty of HP fics before, but that one was a rarity and something that caught my attention at the time, how little we really knew of them individually and in comparison with each other. 

I think what I’d do differently now is a) fix the English grammar and b) go a bit deeper into each of them while also re-thinking my stance on some of my perceptions of them as women. I grew up and I see some things under a different light now, but I still feel strongly that it’s a worthy character analysis to do. I feel I was too tentative with it back then because I knew that it wasn’t really going to be meaningful for people, since it wasn’t a ship fic or had popular characters in it, but I think it was interesting and a bit of a prelude to something that’d be important for me in the future. 

3. Pick a fic and say something about why you wrote it – if there was a specific inspiration, perhaps from RL, fandom life, or a theme or a trope you felt needed to be written in a new way. 

I am not actively in the Yuri On ice fandom, in fact I wholeheartedly avoid it for different reasons. Still, last year I embarked on the task of writing a fic for it (A Revolutionary Act is its name) for one reason only: I wasn’t at all happy with how the fandom (and the show, for that matter) treated body image and Yuri’s body specifically. 

For those who don’t know me, I’m a plus size gal and have been my entire life.  Learning to accept and love my body is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done (I’m still not all the way there), and body positivity conversations are very important to me. 

For the longest time, I avoided writing fat female characters in the stuff I wrote, in my personal stuff and in fic, because I was scared that people would think I was self-inserting. I felt, for the longest time, that people saying “is that supposed to be you?” was an insult to my creativity. So I avoided it. And then, after years and years of not seeing myself represented in books often (let’s not even talk about the Latina aspect, that’s adds another layer to it all), I asked myself “why are there so many plus size ladies writing books with female protagonists but none of them are plus size?”. And then it hit me, maybe it was for the same reason I was avoiding it. I couldn’t blame others for the lack of representation if I myself wasn’t willing to do it. You know that quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? “the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature”? something along those lines. 

So I used fic to try that out and warm myself into writing characters more like me. I headcanoned my Cosette from Les Mis as a plus size Latina and projected that into her and left it for the world to judge. Surprisingly, people responded amazingly well to that. I wrote a fic for a friend in which I explored Cosette’s and Éponine’s relationships with their bodies using myself and my friend as inspiration for both points of view, no matter how shameless a projection that was (My Body Is Home was its name, because the Mary Lambert quotes are a thing with me). And some people thanked me for talking about it, some people needed to hear those things as much as I did, to see themselves in their favorite characters. 

Years passed and I came across the YOI situation. YOI is one of those kinds of “idol animes” in which the guys are represented as aesthetically pleasing for social standards of Japanese culture (mainly for women’s perception of male aesthetic archetypes in anime characters, that’s a whole analysis for some other time), and the fandom responded in the very same way. Yuri’s weight was a matter of mockery, of denigration and treated as an issue. Yuri’s “best” was when he was thin, Yuri’s “worst” was when he was fat. His fatness was associated with his lack of passion, his self-loathing, his loneliness. His thinness was associated with his triumph, his activity, his sex appeal. Both in the show and in most of fandom conversation/artwork/fanfiction. 

So, before embarking on a redeeming fic for that situation, I investigated about plus size figure skaters. I wanted to know how much of a “problem” weight was for competitive figure skaters and if there were plus size figure skaters anywhere at all. I found a lot of them, actually, and some of them competing professionally. And I also found the amount of awful comments they got, the bullying, people actively telling them in the comments of a video where they were pulling off amazing stuff, that they weren’t supposed to pull off that amazing stuff, because of their weight. 

I went ahead and wrote the fic. I had a lot of help for the Russian and Japanese cultural aspects, thanks to my amazing friends Anita and Aya, and I wrote what I knew would be my first and last YOI fic. My sole purpose was to put my grain of salt to fix a problem I felt the fandom was having, as someone who liked the show. It was the least I could do, if I felt something was wrong, to try to change it from the inside. 

The result was actually very good. My fic isn’t by any means as popular as most fics on that fandom, it may not be an epitome of modern storytelling by any means whatsoever, but I received comments from people who had no idea a perspective like that could exist in this narrative. At first I found it strange, because I surround myself with body positive people and vibes and inspirations, but I understood how it could feel for someone who doesn’t have the same influences, who was born in fandoms where aesthetically accepted social standards are conceptualized to sell and market character archetypes that propel fantasies that don’t necessarily associate with reality. 

All in all, it was somewhat out of character for me to write a YOI fic in the first place, because it isn’t the kind of fandom I tend to get involved with, but the results were positive for me and others and I feel I addressed a problem that I personally felt that had to be addressed. I did what I wish authors had done more of when I was a teenager reading fics, and I feel that’s a good use of my writing and time. 

4. Is there something you wrote in a fic that was read differently than you intended, and that made you see your own fic in another light?

Alright so here comes my first (and hopefully not last) Miss Fisher fic, In the Land of Lethe. This fic was a bit of an impulsive thing, which is a lot to say for me because I don’t do anything impulsive ever. I had seen and loved the show, I was (am) obsessed with it and I wanted to write something. I think I wrote it in like 3 days or so, I hadn’t been that inspired with a fic in so long. 

The truth is that I had been writing fic for fandoms where I either knew I didn’t belong, where I am not active but I create things for because I like the thing or where I didn’t form any strong bonds with people. 

So in I go to write a fic for a thing I just finish devouring, in a bit of an impulse, and it just came out so naturally and fast I was surprised. I had been writing a lot of original stuff but my fic work had been dwindling in the past years. I had no idea what to expect upon posting it, especially since I took a leeway with some things, (like focusing on Mac and Phryne’s friendship more than it was maybe originally intended, or being presumptuous enough to attempt to delve into Phryne’s thoughts and ideas of her own identity, when I’m totally new in the fandom). I decided to not question myself as I often do and post it anyway, and be it what it may. 

I am still shocked of how good people was to me. I got the nicest comments and the very things I was most worried about where the things people enjoyed the most. I realized that I had spent too much time writing fics for fandoms that were very critical and specific with the stuff included and that I was constantly trying to please, in a way, rather than please myself. And this impulsive fic I had done in a couple of days, with all the love for the show in my heart, was immediately welcomed among people who write amazing things. 

5. Is there a fic by another writer that has inspired you? 

In the Miss Fisher fandom once again, I have an interesting story with @firesign23‘s Snips and Snails and Squirrelly Tales, mostly with Fear Not The Bugle. 

I actually came across the last installment of the series first (Fear Not The Beagle) and, for some reason, didn’t see it was a last installment of a longer thing. So in I get into this narrative with absolutely no context whatsoever and I read that Phryne and Jack are married and have a kid. Cue my utmost confusion. I was not sold on the idea initially, to say the least, and when I discovered it was a series, I thought I’d do the right thing and start from the beginning (revolutionary idea, I know). 

And, holy crap, it was amazing. It was unexpected and absolutely in character and it introduced those unlikely things, that most people would normally feel at least a bit uneasy about, in a way that was so organic and true to their characters that you had no option but to give in and get this perspective. 

And I loved getting into that series/fic that way, from the back door kind of, because I got to appreciate the amount of work it was to develop these characters in a situation that left you no choice but to accept this reality and actually feel delighted by it. You need to know your characters, know your audience and know the absolute heck out of your social/historical context to pull a stunt like that fic. 

I don’t know this author personally, only through fic, but all my respect and admiration to the amount of work that was. A favorite, absolutely. 

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #176 - A Look Back At 2017 & A Look Ahead At 2018

Tomorrow's the last day of 2017. With that in mind I have decided that, rather than postpone it until the 1st or even wait until next Saturday, I will use today's blog post to take a look back at 2017 and give you an idea as to what you can expect from us in 2018.

So, without further ado, let's see what we have managed to accomplish throughout this past year!

Unfortunately, this year, we don't have anything as big as the release of SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair to look back on. Nevertheless, there are a number of things I'm rather proud of.

At the beginning of the year, I was mostly working on SHINRAI's sequel, Withering Without Hope, updating the sprites for recurring characters like Raiko, Nobara and Henjin, for example. I generally worked on a lot of basic things in order to lay the foundation for our next game. Like the story and setting, planning the layout of the new location and starting to work on its design. If you have read one of our more recent blog posts, you might already know that the events of WWH will take place at the Ginmaku Movie Theater. I'm planning to finish the first background of the game as soon as possible so that you can have an actual first look at it.

Over the past 1 1/2 months, I've gotten back into WWH again and I'm planning to continue working on it over the next few months as well... as opposed to pushing it aside almost completely like I did around April.

Why did I do that, you might wonder... Well, that's because I wanted to focus solely on GENBA no Kizuna, the other project we are currently working on and which we officially revealed in June along with its main cast.

Up until that point, I had referred to it as our "dinosaur project" and by now, you should know why that is (at least if you've kept up with our blog posts over the last six months).

GENBA takes place at the Kaseki Residence, home of a world-renowned paleontologist. As such, it features a dinosaur-themed interior, but this "dinosaur theme" is also seeping into character designs and other things, similar to how "Halloween" was the theme for BBD.

GENBA is going to be shorter, a bit more fast-paced and more gameplay-oriented than SHINRAI, featuring a lot more interactivity. With the police actively involved in the investigation, the story being told mostly through dialogue, as well as the ability to experience it through the eyes of multiple characters, it will certainly feel rather different from our previous VN.

Nevertheless, it is still a murder mystery and it does actually connect to SHINRAI in very important ways. A topic I've talked about not too long ago.

With our focus mainly lying on GENBA for most of the year, we naturally made quite some progress with it. By creating a whole bunch of assets ranging from backgrounds to sprites and even menus, the game's foundation is laid now as well, to the point that we're getting really close to the release of a first demo!

That's really what most of our energy went into this year. We did pull off a few other things too, though.

For instance, after all this time, we now have our own website, which we launched back in June along with the GENBA announcement. It still requires more work and I really want to finally expand the sections for GENBA and WWH as well as add some other things to it, but that will be one of my goals for early 2018.

Outside of that (after an eternal back and forth), we have also decided to launch a Patreon page, which we did back in September. Through this, we hope to get enough funds together to eventually hire more people for our tiny team. At the moment, however, it's main purpose is to help us with covering the costs of GENBA's soundtrack.

Now, you might wonder, what exactly you'll get in return for supporting us on Patreon. Well, here's a quick list of everything you currently get access to:

- 3 character design sketches for the suspects appearing in GENBA - design sketches for Kenji and Misaki, 2 of the new characters in WWH - 3 full-length BGM tracks for GENBA - a look at the full script of GENBA's prologue - the first part of WWH's prologue - a post featuring unused BBD art + talk about visual clues - higher resolution & alternate versions of seasonal artworks + a whole bunch of WIP-looks

Things patrons can look forward to in the coming weeks: the final suspect character for GENBA, WWH's first BGM track, the second part of its script and more character designs. You'll also be able to decide through a poll who will be featured in February's Valentine's artwork. And, last but not least, early access to our GENBA demo!

Patreon is really about getting to see things way ahead of everyone else and being able to influence the stuff we do by offering suggestions. Patrons will be able to help us prepare the demo for its public release, for example.

Another thing I want to use Patreon for, however, is to post more WIP-stuff and other things I've always been way too shy and embarrassed about to share publicly. One big other thing patrons can look forward to, for example, is a post about our very first VN project which never got released. I will talk a bit more about how we got started and share with you some very old assets to give you an actual look at our early work from way back in 2011.

So yeah, if you're curious about those kinds of things, please consider checking out our Patreon page. Your support would be greatly appreciated!

I'd actually like to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone who has supported us thus far, whether it'd be through Patreon or any other means.

Throughout this year, we had some incredible things happen. From something as simple as getting new reviews on Steam to even receiving fan mail, both digitally as well as physically. It still feels strange and very surreal to think that some people actually enjoyed SHINRAI that much. People have even asked about possible merchandise, which is kind of shocking to me. But I guess that will be something to look into in 2018.

One of the greatest compliments I have received this year, however, is that SHINRAI actually inspired others to go forth and make their own stories. That's quite touching to hear and... I dunno... like I said, it's surreal. Sometimes it's really difficult to believe that this isn't just a dream. Because these are the kinds of things I have dreamed about for the longest time. For a big chunk of my life, actually.

Really, I'm deeply grateful for all the support we have gotten. People going out of their way to leave us a good review or even send us a message simply to show their appreciation... things like that truly make me happy and I couldn't ask for more. And they certainly serve to fuel our passion. I hope that all of you will continue to stick with us until our next projects come out, no matter how long it will take!

Which I guess brings me to the final point: what's in store for 2018?

Well, like I said before, our main focus will lie on finishing that GENBA demo. It was already supposed to be released in late November, which didn't quite work out. And although not much is missing anymore, we didn't make too much progress on it in December. Which is mostly due to the fact that December is always a really busy month. Aside of a lot of RL stuff, we had to take care of the seasonal artworks and... I admittedly decided to rather devote myself to WWH, simply because I was in the right mood for it. And while I plan to continue work on WWH, I will definitely get back to that demo now, too.

When will GENBA be finished in its entirety? That's a good question. To be honest, I was hoping to release it in 2018, but it's always difficult to assess whether or not that will work out. I can't foresee what kind of hurdles we might stumble into or how long exactly certain tasks might take. That said, I still want to make it my goal to finish GENBA in 2018.

Please keep in mind though that whenever I set goals such as this (even the demo release for late November), it's more of a way to motivate myself rather than me making an actual promise. Might sound like a lame excuse, but... I know that, even if I don't manage to make the deadline, I will still do my best to actually meet it, resulting in more progress than I would achieve otherwise.

If I tell myself that releasing GENBA in 2018 is impossible, so I'll just say 2019... I will make a lot less progress on it, because I'll have that "there's still time"-feeling in the back of my mind. That's why I think it's always important to set personal goals and work towards them as hard as you can. Whether or not you actually manage to reach those goals doesn't really matter as much as the amount of progress you have made once their deadline hits.

Of course, those goals should still be somewhat realistic, so that you can actually feel as though they're perfectly possible to reach. There is no point in purposely setting completely unrealistic goals. That might actually be more detrimental to your work ethic than anything else. But finishing GENBA in 2018 seems doable to me, so I do want to work towards that. Just don't be mad at me please if it doesn't work out after all, haha.

Anyway, this is starting to get a tad too long, so I should finally wrap this up. I will talk more specifically about our January goals in next week's blog post. Until then, please take care and have a happy new year!

And once again, from both Natsu and myself: thank you so much for your interest in the things we do!

[irisbleufic]

You don't have to answer if talking about this has been stressful, but I can't stop thinking about how illogical it was for the Gotham troll to do what they did. Trying to use Ao3 stats against you, like the 30something people who defended you pointed out, was petty and illogical and spoke to deeper underlying irrational hate in the perp. I keep trying to isolate what it could be if not jealousy, because I've seen this happen to other people. Do you have any thoughts on this form of bullying?

First of all, anon, don’t worry about upsetting me.  I’m not that easily rattled, so no apology is necessary.  I find your question a fascinating one; I had to sit on this for a couple of days to gather my thoughts on the subject, because it turns out that I do have some notions about possible motives that stem from, oddly enough, some much older fandom attitudes and trends that I’ve recently seen return in a new guise.  I frame this with the usual YMMV caveat; this is my perception of the situation, but it might not be what’s really going on at all.  I’m going to do my best to explain this.  If anyone needs background on the troll situation to which anon is referring, those posts are here.

When I first got into fandom as a young teenager in the early-to-mid ‘90s, a significant number of the people whose stories I was reading (and who were my mentors) were very much part of that first wave whose writing and zine efforts had to remain hidden because the mainstream contingents, in the overwhelming majority, hated slash.  However, I noticed a common-thread attitude between some of the slash community and the larger part of the mainstream community, which was this: Canon Is God.  Even if you’re writing stories about romantic or otherwise nontraditional relationships between various characters (or even just writing gen stories, for that matter), you accept that what you’re doing should never be held in the same reverence as canon.  You are a pale shadow, and you must be self-deprecating.  You must allow that the creators know best and that what you do is, at best, wishful thinking.  Do whatever you like, but revere the creators and do not believe that you or any other fan-creator may be capable of making a wiser decision.

In a community as essentially as subversive as fandom, this attitude puzzled me.  My experience of the media with which I was beginning to engage and about which I was beginning to write was this: the creators did not, in fact, always know better, at least not what was better for me personally.  In some respects, I developed a reputation for being a civil, yet stubborn contrarian early on.  Even more than that, my writing gestures began to hit a register that sometimes made my mentors nervous: for the first time, I learned what it meant for someone to like you only up till the point you start to turn heads and develop friendships with like-minded people outside the circles that inducted you.  What I mean to say, mostly, is that my writing approach has almost always been along the lines of this narrative is broken, it hurt me and it hurt some other people, and I think I might know how to fix it; I want to write an alternative that will carry an equivalency of canon’s essential captivating qualities, but will alter the narrative such that it no longer damages me or the other people I know who have been similarly hurt.  And I learned very fast that thinking on that scale of ambition was something of a taboo to those who had grown up with the idea that Canon Is God (You Should Not Even In the Slightest Believe You Might Know An Equally Viable Approach).

Still, I never stopped writing that way.  I never stopped hoping I could offer an alternative canon-equivalent for myself and for anyone else who wanted something like what I was reasonably confident I could produce.  Scale this across twenty years, and I’m in a position where I’ve absolutely written a significant handful of what are considered some of the foundational fic-series for the fandoms in which I wrote them.  I prefer to make narrative gestures on sweeping scales, because that’s what storytelling is.  We fall in love with the media we fall in love with, usually, because they tell compelling stories across multiple novels, across multiple seasons, across multiple films, etc.  How can I hope to alter a story for readers who desperately want the alteration if I don’t try to do it on a scale commensurate with the scope of canon?  One-shots are a thing, and an admirable one, too, but I’m one of those creators with an insatiable heart.  I don’t like to stop until the story gives me the sense it’s time to stop.  And I’m at a point in my fandom career where I know I have readers counting on me if they get invested in a project, so I’m going to do my damnedest to see nearly everything I start to completion.  I know I’m not the only fanwriter who thinks and works like this, anon, and the fact that you’ve seen similar bullying happen to others is about to become relevant.

Let’s back up a second to the concept of Canon Is God.  For the most part, I’ve seen fandom as it exists now give canon the finger and never look back.  I think that’s glorious.  However, I’ve also seen movements within several of the fandoms I’ve been part of, in just the last ten years, argue that dissent against canon, even civil dissent against canon, counts as negativity.  I don’t necessarily want to talk about the fact that canon dissenters and canon supporters alike often go at each others’ throats as rudely and cruelly as you please; jerks are just jerks, and nobody with either philosophy should be behaving like that.  However, maybe you can see what I mean about Canon Is God appearing in its latest form.  Some feel that you can write what you want, but that it’s wrong to even politely dissent with the events of canon on your blog and in your fan-works.  The mere existence of dissent, even civil dissent, is offensive.  There’s an idea that the only way to participate positively in your fandom of choice is to accept that canon is canon and that you should like it, or, if you don’t like it, you should at least make an effort at pretending you do (in spite of what you may be writing or drawing).  

The trouble, of course, is that some of us aren’t adept at pretending.  Write or otherwise create with ambition—with conviction, with no intention to hide the fact that you’re discontent with canon—to the point that you effectively serve an existing like-minded readership and even sway enough other people (into feeling that your vision is indeed one way things literally could have or should have gone), and, in the eyes of some, you become this: a dangerous heretic and a narrative terrorist.  Your challenge to canon is perceived as effective, and a threat, because of the number of folks who latch onto it.

I’ve run into people before who don’t like the level of influence that they perceive I have over my readers’ perceptions of the characters at hand, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if the person who attempted to attack me is thinking along similar lines—but realized they’d have to disguise it as something supposedly more logical or community-minded.  I find this an incredibly sad outlook, though, because you can’t stop writers from writing what they want to write.  You can’t stop readers from reading what they want to read.  You can’t stop readers from commenting on, leaving kudos for, or reccing what becomes dear to them.  Fandom is a fucking free-for-all.  There will also always be some writers whose works get more exposure than others, and the patterns governing those levels of exposure are about as difficult to parse as any other trend.  In some cases, it’s the level of scale and conviction I’m discussing; in others, it’s because they’ve brought a fanbase with them from RL or a number of previous fandoms.  Sometimes it’s a combination of the two; sometimes it’s neither.  Sometimes it’s just that they, as a human, embody a bunch of differences that someone hates.  Heaven knows I embody enough of those.

This might be a more complicated answer than you were looking for, but, if we’re looking at me as the case-study writer that drew some mystifying and laughable abuse by just writing and existing, I have to take into account that high emotions (and even insecurities) usually drive the sorts of decisions that bullies make.  I have enough years’ worth of data to suggest that my stories are intensely meaningful to the readers they attract and, yes, even sometimes sway or convert, if it’s useful to keep using that language.  And this is the juncture at which I want to revisit the idea of writing with ambition and conviction, because that’s an approach I hold dear for a specific reason.

If we don’t transform our beloved narratives here at the fringes, narratives in the mainstream will never change.  Although it feels like mainstream trends aren’t changing rapidly enough in the face of our efforts, speed is not what matters.  It’s that we understand that the shifts we model and effect may not come in our lifetime—and persist.  I will not placidly accept what hurts me.  And if you fear the level of conviction and brand of vision with which I transform it, get out of my way.  Hell yes, I’m out to take the chance that I might sway hearts in addition to serving like-minded fans, because maybe, one day, I’ll sway the right ones.  You never know who’s watching; you never know who’s reading.  Maybe it’s no one, or maybe it’s someone with the power to make a different choice about how a mainstream narrative will turn out.  One day, some of us will have that power.  Some of us already do.  Changing the face of stories from the outside can, in a way, mean doing it from the inside.

(Besides, every broken narrative is a puzzle, and I love puzzles.  I just have to figure out where the useful pieces actually go, patch the gaps accordingly, and then rewrite the ending.  If you don’t like the way I do it, then find another way instead of coming at me with something as time-wasting as abuse.)

[ksapphire8989]

Hey guys, Kitty Sapphire here. How everybody doing? I hope your enjoyed your weekend/ Holiday this pass four days. For me, I enjoyed myself with my family, friends and big dinners. However, I was struck down by a nasal infection. I have been sick for the past four days and sadly, missing out on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday events. Even though, I missed this opportunities, It gave me some time to think.  I mean really think about the future of my Patreon and Etsy store.

Since there is a chance I will be losing my youtube channel due to the new COPPA. Those places will be sharing a bigger role in my brand. Many times, I feel that my personal life and professional life should be kept separate. However, not realizing the true nature of this particular career they overlap quite frequently.Too be perfectly honest, this year has been my worst year. I haven't been able to go to as many cons as I did back in 2018. My only huge break through was my 1st big con at Bronycon. (Give me a glimmer of hope but I have to work on for future next year hopefully.) But sadly, the break through was short-live due to RL complications. Also the support here has been quite minimal this year. ( Please don't misunderstand. For those who have been spreading the word, remain patreons, or bought my merch. I'm grateful more than you know.)

Now, I bet your asking....how does this applies?Well...to put it simply getting supplies to making new merch and sending it out has gotten much more difficult. So without the financial support, It get harder and harder giving you guys what you guys want. There is a lot of things that I want to do for you guys but at the moment due to the constraints. FOR NOW, I will not be doing any discounts or give out random stickers for the $1 tier.  I will be give out the digital Thank you notes that I made for each month.I still be doing giveaways for each mile stone we reach. ( Like 100 patreons or $100 milestone, 700 likes and followers on facebook etc. ) but I won't doings deals right now. 

On my Etsy shop the prices will remain the same. Hopefully for next year, I will be able to change that.Also for all those who support my patreon page.....you have to give me your addresses!!! Please, pay attention to the announcements I give out on my patreon and the emails that are sent. It is very challenging to keep track of patreons and continuously ask them for their addresses. Its not fair to newcomers or members that are waiting for their stuff. So please check your mail about announcements. (If people don't respond for the month. I  will have to move on to the next project. Nothing personally, but the list waits for no one.) I hope you guys understand and Thank you guys for all the love and support. I couldn't do it without you guys. <3

https://www.patreon.com/KSapphire8989

[comicteaparty]

October 26th-November 1st, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from October 26th, 2019 to November 1st, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

Describe your process for world-building.  How do you go about it both outside and inside the story?

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

Oooooh, last time it was @Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS 's time to shine, but this time it's me! I LOVE world building. Who doesn't, amirite? For me, there are a few different ways to go about world building, depending on what I need the world for. For general solo-projects, it usually starts with a QUESTION ("What if the world was turned on its side?") - and then we build from there. WAYFINDERS (working title) started as a D&D campaign. I knew I wanted 1) lots of islands and 2) weird magic effects on the islands. That was it. Luckily I had the absolute luxury of PLAYERS to help shape the world: - one wanted to be a trickery cleric, so I created a pantheon of gods - one wanted a warlock of the Great Old One, so I [spoilers] and created an eldritch-type patron - one wanted to be a frankenstein's monster-type girl, created in a lab, so I stared into nothing for a few days and then integrated laboratories and science projects - they all wanted to be casters, so I made magic an important, integral part of the world and plot (and I made them a barbarian friend so they wouldn't, you know, die immediately) From there, the ball rolls: Why would there be labs creating people? Answer: there was recently a war and wars need soldiers. How do people worship the pantheon of gods? How long has the war been going on? What does the Great Old One-patron have to do with anything? You answer one question and new questions arise. Then you answer those. Suddenly, you have a rich world with countries, trade routes, a magic system, a way to cheat the magic system, politics, architectural styles, divine intrigue, etc. etc. etc. ... Then you make a comic out of it.

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

To add design wise to world building! Since there is 2 countries, I wanted each country to have their own feel, their own design, in buildings and furniture so unconscious we can show what islands belongs to what territory because of that! So especially, how would the countries build kitchens, what is a living space like, for both poor and rich, colors used, material used. So one country is Norse viking inspired, the other more Mediterranean and Persian

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Seconding the questioning method for sure. I didn’t start from a question about the world, moreso “What would I like to draw for years?” but the questions came from that. Why is the world this way? Was it always like that? What changed to make it that way? Was it someone’s fault or was it random/accidental? What does everyone think about the state of the world? Are there factions that have arisen from these feelings? From that you can already create so many things: a mood, a lore, a main character, a societal tone, and a conflict. It’s a huge help for starting a basic world.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Then I just... went to Pinterest Once I 'solved' the main aspects of the world, I went image-searching for inspiration. Motifs, symbols, textures, color schemes, clothing, food, architecture... Find things that exist in our world, bring them into yours, meld them as you see fit. Comic work is such a steady combination of words influencing images, and images influencing words, and your worldbuilding should be the same way. Let them work together!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

But that's outside the story - inside the story, I still have lots of opportunity to worldbuild, and I'm still asking questions and solving problems throughout the process. Just from the questioning method, I've already created a lot of secondary conflicts that didn't exist when I started. Secondary conflicts are great at fleshing out a world. If you have an army/military as part of your world, who do they fight? If you have some sort of 'blight' or ailment common to your world, what effect does it have on society? If you have a rigid, unbending social structure, who/what is keeping it that way, and at what cost? If you work broadly enough in the beginning, you can keep your world open to really interesting changes down the line.(edited)

IzzyNinjaMaster

For Unlikely Heroes, I knew I wanted my world to be expansive and to seem like it was never ending, which can be a difficult task. I still find myself adding more and more things everyday. Such as: how does the magic work in the world? What gods do everyone worship? Are there any major conflicts in the land? Who is the nobility in charge of the land? What languages are spoken? Not to be spoilery but I've even developed drugs that are used and people's reaction to it in different areas in the world.

Right now I've really been focusing on developing my pantheon and the gods in it. I want the worship of the gods to feel like an actual religion. So to do that, I've been developing small stories of the gods and how they created the world and it's people. It's been super fun to do actually, and I know it will be helpful in the long run of the story.

Cronaj

Despite writing fantasy, I actually depend on the real world a lot for inspiration. This isn't just for my comic, but for pretty much all of my fantasy stories. You could consider it a part of my style. With that in mind, the setting of my comic was developed by studying history and many cultures to begin the process of world-building. I depend a great deal on thinking about the little things in life that make us tick. How we live day to day, what we eat, wear, sing, how we make money, what money is used for, what our beauty standards are like, the importance of family and friends and community as a whole. These are the things that make up our cultures, and obviously these things are different for every culture. Understanding that the world is not separate from culture, and vice versa, is also important. They effect each other. Why does one culture eat so much fish? Because they live near an ocean. Well, why do they live there? Because they believe that the ocean is a sacred place. Why do they believe that? Because their ancestors survived persecution by sailing across the ocean, and the story goes on. Nothing in the world of my comic is random. There is always a reason, a connection to some other thing in the world. In some cases, I created a character first, and then based on their personality, I put them in a particular setting or background. In other cases, a character needed to fulfill a specific purpose in the world, so I created them based on a setting or circumstance and developed them later. Obviously, it took a lot of time, but eventually, the gaps kind of fill in themselves. I wish I could be more insightful about how I created the maps, or the languages, or the poetry, stories, and songs, or the religions and ceremonies, but again, it just took a lot of research into real-world histories and culture, and some time to think.

AntiBunny

I use a fairly similar world to ours, aside from a few changes in history. So that said the city in which most of the story takes place is largely where world building happens. I have plenty of files for only my use mapping it out, and its history. That said I only reveal bits when they're significant. Exposition really should only happen when it's necessary to share information that a character wouldn't know. I let readers put together the bits of the world for themselves.

One of the biggest moments of worldbuilding in AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ happened at the end of chapter 5, which revealed something no one knew, that revealed the origin of the lagosapiens.

keii4ii

For HoK, writing what I know plays a big part. I grew up in both urban and rural Korea. A lot of things that are taken for granted in today's society, both in the US and in Korea (though especially in the US for obvious reasons), were quite different back then. That experience, strengthened with my relationships with my elders who grew up during even older times, informs how I write a fantasy society inspired by Old Korea. One thing that I really want to see more often in media is REAL cultural differences, deeper than the surface. (example: Avatar: the Last Airbender was very American in how the characters thought and behaved, despite the Asian aesthetics. That was fine for that show, but it did leave me wishing there was a show that took it several steps further with the culture.) I can understand why that territory isn't often explored. It's because you want to make your story accessible to your target audience. And if the culture you're depicting is confusing to your target audience (which is a very real possibility with RL cultures), so much of the story is going to be invisible and/or misunderstood to the audience. That's not a good thing! I find myself often struggling to strike a balance between accessibility and authenticity. You'd think I have it easy, with a main character who's from the US. When the MC is confused about something, it's not too hard to convey to the readers that there's a cultural difference issue at hand. But when the MC doesn't even realize he's misunderstood something (THIS HAPPENS A LOT IRL when different cultures mingle), the readers might not realize it either... Thus my struggle. (edited)

keii4ii

Oh and @LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) "What would I like to draw for years and years?" is not only a valid question, but also SMART.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Right?? I'm also lucky that my interests have stayed pretty consistent through the years. I feel terrible for people who get exhausted by their comics, and feel the need to switch to something else - either because they've developed new styles/interests, or because they didn't think the initial idea through It happens to the best of them, though!(edited)

sssfrs

I just include things I think would be cool into my world. I really like realism in worldbuilding so I model a lot after real history. Being in school for ecology helps with designing natural elements too

MJ Massey

I typically start with one singular concept that the main story will revolve around and then work outward from there. For example, Black Ball started with the idea of doing a fantasy concept in a historical setting that wasn't the typical "ye olden times". So I started with "magic in the 1920s" and what that would look like, and started riffing on two major concepts--what happens when magic was an everyday commodity and then suddenly isn't, and having two conflicting ideologies clashing against each other (Practical Sciences vs Arcane Sciences, basically science vs magic)

and I kept building out from there. How would a world where magic could take care of a lot of manual tasks be affected by it? What would society look like? Why are people Practicals over Arcanists, or vice versa? Would there be the same mass immigration to the US? What do race relations look like in this different timeline? And so on and so forth. Needing to answer these questions necessitates building out the world more.

Not all of it will be directly addressed by the story since it's more of a limited scope, but that's kind of the point -- Emily can't affect major change in her world, but she can try and solve her sister's murder case

sssfrs

Is your story Black Ball related to the line of packet ships of the same name?

MJ Massey

no I was not aware there were ships

Black Ball is taken from the saying "behind the eight ball", a 1920s slang meaning to be in a difficult spot or struggle (the 8 ball is black in billards)(edited)

and also being "black balled"

sssfrs

Oh interesting

There was also a Black Ball line of packet ships that ran between Liverpool and NYC sometime in the 19th century

[icarusdusoleil]

Uhhh long time no see?

I actually really like my year-in-review posts that I’ve been doing the past couple of years, so I’m gonna do another one for 2018. It kind of helps me remember the good stuff about the year and reflect on how much has happened.

2018 for me was… okay. Despite the bad, there was still a lot of good. If my year was a line graph, it would probably be really chaotic the first few months, then towards the end of the year it would start to even out and gradually rise. I feel alright. Maybe the closest I’ve ever been to content. And that’s a lot for me.

Right off the bat in January, the ceramics instructor that I was an assistant for left for a new job and I was promoted to be the instructor. It was a huge leap for me because I actually didn’t have a lot of ceramics experience. I focused on drawing and painting in school, not ceramics. So I’ve done a lot of reading and research and trial and error and learning over the course of the year so I could actually do my job. I very much felt out of my element and like an impostor.

But I’m getting more confident in ceramics now and I’ve been teaching my students (and my bosses!) really cool techniques. I’m really proud of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve improved the studio. I also began developing lesson plans and workshops, which I’m going to start teaching next year when we open up to the public.

Dungeons and Dragons continued to play a big part in my life this year. I started a second d&d campaign with some friends where we decided to take on Strahd. It was so much fun playing my hummingbird cleric of Pelor, Probably Thwerby. She was such a beast. Probably dealt the killing blow to Strahd at the end of the campaign and I was really happy that I got the chance to play d&d with that group of friends.

In my main d&d campaign (What Lies in the Sand), we reached our one-year anniversary in July! Things have gotten really intense and our group discovered that we were essentially destined to save the world. Our last session for this campaign (for now) is next week where we’re gonna face down a giant plane-jumping squid. While this campaign is coming to a close, we are going to revisit these characters again in the future (I don’t think I could ever fully stop being Myfanwy anyway). We’re also already planning our next campaign where I’m going to get to play a tiefling gunslinger called Faceless!

Cosplay-wise, I continued working on my Rey costume again. I initially intended to make it up to RL standard, but found that the idea was stressing me out too much, so I just decided to do the best that I could. It was one of the most difficult sewing projects I’ve ever done because I had to teach myself some new techniques, but I’m so proud that I managed to complete it. I finished it in May, did an incredible photoshoot with my sister, wore it to Fanime, and wore it to a few volunteer events. That helped me meet another awesome Star Wars costuming group that also does volunteer work like the RL, but is less strict and apparently less… drama. I ended up re-making Rey’s scavenger outfit later in the year as well.

I also made Pike from Critical Role! This was my first real foray into making armour, so I learned a lot. I completely designed, patterned, sewed, and made everything from scratch. It was crazy and I’m very proud of myself!

I didn’t draw and paint as much as I have in previous years, but that was partially because I was spending so much time having to think creatively and artistically at work, that I had little energy for that at home. I did manage a couple paintings and drawings though, so I’m proud of myself for that.

Mental and physical health-wise… things have been kind of rocky. I continued seeing my therapist all year until about October. She really helped me work through a lot of things and I was finally brave enough to find a new doctor and try some antidepressants. I’ve been taking medication since August and despite the huge adjustment period, I actually feel so much better than I ever have. My mental health isn’t perfect—I still have depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia—but the medication has definitely helped keep all of that a little more under control.

Because I turned 26 in October, I’m no longer covered by my parent’s insurance, so I now have insurance through my work. These past couple of months have just been kind of a waiting game for me, because I can’t see any specialists about certain things with my current insurance, but I’m going to have a better coverage next year to hopefully get some physical health things sorted out.

Anyway, so my year is ending on an okay note and I’m feeling alright. And that’s better than I’ve felt in a while, so I’ll take it.

[juditmiltz]

National Cheat Sheet: US home sales fell to a 2017 low in July, WeWork scores $4.4B investment from SoftBank … & more

From left: Home sales and WeWork’s Adam Neumann

From TRD New York: Co-working company WeWork gets a $4.4B investment from SoftBank

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s investment in WeWork is larger than previously reported. While various news reports earlier this year put SoftBank’s investment at $300 million and at $3 billion, reports now state that the co-working startup will be the beneficiary of $4.4 billion in capital, with $3 billion going to WeWork and another $1.4 billion put toward WeWork China, WeWork Japan and WeWork Pacific. WeWork, which manages 212 co-working spaces around the globe, has been valued at $20 billion. [TRD]

US home sales fell to a 2017 low in July July saw a new low for national home sales, according to a study released by the National Association of Realtors. Homes sales dropped about 1.3 percent, hitting a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.44 million, the Wall Street Journal first reported. The low number of sales can be attributed in part to an intensifying housing shortage. The report found that number of homes on the market fell about 9 percent from the same time last year. [TRD]

Federal judge clears Zillow’s “Zestimates”

A federal judge in Illinois dismissed a lawsuit by homeowners who claimed Zillow’s home appraisal algorithm generated “Zestimates” that undervalued their homes and made it more difficult to sell them. “The word ‘Zestimate’ — an obvious portmanteau of ‘Zillow’ and ‘estimate’ — itself indicates that Zestimates are merely an estimate of the market value of a property,” wrote Judge Amy St. Eve in her ruling. [TRD]

Compass hires Facebook, Amazon vet as chief people officer

Compass, the investor-funded startup brokerage, has doubled its head count in the last 12 months, with 1,600 agents nationwide. Now it has hired Facebook and Amazon alumnus Madan Nagaldinne to oversee the company’s human resources strategy. Stepping into the newly created position as chief people officer at Compass on Sept. 1, Nagaldinne will be responsible for recruiting, compensation, benefits, performance management and education at the rapidly expanding brokerage, which is valued at over $1 billion. [TRD]

Richard LeFrak still supports Trump despite “inappropriate” Charlottesville comments

Richard LeFrak, head of the LeFrak Organization and co-chair of President Trump’s now-disbanded infrastructure council, is sticking by his longtime friend. In an interview with The Real Deal, LeFrak did say Trump’s comments on the white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville were “inappropriate,” but argued that the president is not himself a white supremacist. “I would not even suggest that he is any one of those things,” LeFrak said. “But I can see why people would react to those words very viscerally. He’s made some effort to clarify it but not as far as he could have.”  [TRD]

Canadians skate away from US trophy towers, shifting to multifamily and industrial investments

Canadian investors have shifted their interest from commercial office spaces to industrial and multifamily buildings, according to a new report from Real Estate Alert. Only 39 percent of Canadian investment in U.S. real estate has gone to commercial properties this year so far, while industrial properties made up 29 percent and multifamily buildings took another 27 percent. [TRD]

Stonemont Financial buys 100-property portfolio for $1.3B

Private equity real estate firm Oak Street Real Estate Capital sold a portfolio of 100 office, industrial and retail properties to Atlanta-based Stonemont Financial Group for $1.3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. Chicago-based Oak Street will continue to provide management services to the properties, which are spread across 20 states. CBRE brokered the deal and secured the financing. [WSJ]

MAJOR MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

Halstead Property ends automatic feed to Zillow-owned StreetEasy in NYC

Halstead Property joined at least 10 other residential firms this week when it announced it would stop automatically sending listings to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned New York City-area listings service that has caused an uproar for its recent rollout of a number of costly new products and fees. Halstead will now send all of its roughly 1,000 sales and 600 rental listings to the Real Estate Board of New York’s new residential listing system, RLS. “We strongly believe the RLS syndication is an effective tool for streamlining the process of sending the most accurate and consistent data to listing aggregator websites,” said Halstead CEO Diane Ramirez. [TRD]

What does the Los Angeles residential market look like? Chart it by neighborhood and price

The average asking price per square foot in Beverly Hills is $447. Some 20 miles away in Canoga Park, it’s $170 per square foot. That’s according to an analysis by real estate research firm NeighborhoodX, which shows the range of asking prices on a per-square-foot basis for more than 20 Los Angeles neighborhoods. [TRD]

There’s 2 years of excess condo inventory in South Florida In Bal Harbour, Surfside and Bay Harbor Islands — the cities just north of Miami Beach — have two years of excess luxury condominium inventory, according to a new report from Condo Vultures Realty. Nearly 245 condos are currently listed for sale in the area, with 39 units sold in the first half of this year, the report found. Eight new projects are under construction, which will add another 300 units to the area’s market. [TRD]

Welcome to Seattle, Amazon’s company town Amazon now occupies 19 percent of the prime office space in Seattle, a Seattle Times analysis found. That’s the highest percentage controlled by a company in any major U.S. city. Amazon, which has an 8.1 million-square-foot presence in Seattle, has more office space than the next 40 companies put together. The company has spent $4 billion on real estate in Seattle so far. The report estimates that the company will claim a total of 12 million square feet in Seattle within the next five years. [Seattle Times]

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/2017/08/25/national-cheat-sheet-us-home-sales-fell-to-a-2017-low-in-july-wework-scores-4-4b-investment-from-softbank-more/#new_tab via IFTTT

[juditmiltz]

National Cheat Sheet: US home sales fell to a 2017 low in July, WeWork scores $4.4B investment from SoftBank … & more

From left: Home sales and WeWork’s Adam Neumann

From TRD New York: Co-working company WeWork gets a $4.4B investment from SoftBank

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s investment in WeWork is larger than previously reported. While various news reports earlier this year put SoftBank’s investment at $300 million and at $3 billion, reports now state that the co-working startup will be the beneficiary of $4.4 billion in capital, with $3 billion going to WeWork and another $1.4 billion put toward WeWork China, WeWork Japan and WeWork Pacific. WeWork, which manages 212 co-working spaces around the globe, has been valued at $20 billion. [TRD]

US home sales fell to a 2017 low in July July saw a new low for national home sales, according to a study released by the National Association of Realtors. Homes sales dropped about 1.3 percent, hitting a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.44 million, the Wall Street Journal first reported. The low number of sales can be attributed in part to an intensifying housing shortage. The report found that number of homes on the market fell about 9 percent from the same time last year. [TRD]

Federal judge clears Zillow’s “Zestimates”

A federal judge in Illinois dismissed a lawsuit by homeowners who claimed Zillow’s home appraisal algorithm generated “Zestimates” that undervalued their homes and made it more difficult to sell them. “The word ‘Zestimate’ — an obvious portmanteau of ‘Zillow’ and ‘estimate’ — itself indicates that Zestimates are merely an estimate of the market value of a property,” wrote Judge Amy St. Eve in her ruling. [TRD]

Compass hires Facebook, Amazon vet as chief people officer

Compass, the investor-funded startup brokerage, has doubled its head count in the last 12 months, with 1,600 agents nationwide. Now it has hired Facebook and Amazon alumnus Madan Nagaldinne to oversee the company’s human resources strategy. Stepping into the newly created position as chief people officer at Compass on Sept. 1, Nagaldinne will be responsible for recruiting, compensation, benefits, performance management and education at the rapidly expanding brokerage, which is valued at over $1 billion. [TRD]

Richard LeFrak still supports Trump despite “inappropriate” Charlottesville comments

Richard LeFrak, head of the LeFrak Organization and co-chair of President Trump’s now-disbanded infrastructure council, is sticking by his longtime friend. In an interview with The Real Deal, LeFrak did say Trump’s comments on the white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville were “inappropriate,” but argued that the president is not himself a white supremacist. “I would not even suggest that he is any one of those things,” LeFrak said. “But I can see why people would react to those words very viscerally. He’s made some effort to clarify it but not as far as he could have.”  [TRD]

Canadians skate away from US trophy towers, shifting to multifamily and industrial investments

Canadian investors have shifted their interest from commercial office spaces to industrial and multifamily buildings, according to a new report from Real Estate Alert. Only 39 percent of Canadian investment in U.S. real estate has gone to commercial properties this year so far, while industrial properties made up 29 percent and multifamily buildings took another 27 percent. [TRD]

Stonemont Financial buys 100-property portfolio for $1.3B

Private equity real estate firm Oak Street Real Estate Capital sold a portfolio of 100 office, industrial and retail properties to Atlanta-based Stonemont Financial Group for $1.3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. Chicago-based Oak Street will continue to provide management services to the properties, which are spread across 20 states. CBRE brokered the deal and secured the financing. [WSJ]

MAJOR MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

Halstead Property ends automatic feed to Zillow-owned StreetEasy in NYC

Halstead Property joined at least 10 other residential firms this week when it announced it would stop automatically sending listings to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned New York City-area listings service that has caused an uproar for its recent rollout of a number of costly new products and fees. Halstead will now send all of its roughly 1,000 sales and 600 rental listings to the Real Estate Board of New York’s new residential listing system, RLS. “We strongly believe the RLS syndication is an effective tool for streamlining the process of sending the most accurate and consistent data to listing aggregator websites,” said Halstead CEO Diane Ramirez. [TRD]

What does the Los Angeles residential market look like? Chart it by neighborhood and price

The average asking price per square foot in Beverly Hills is $447. Some 20 miles away in Canoga Park, it’s $170 per square foot. That’s according to an analysis by real estate research firm NeighborhoodX, which shows the range of asking prices on a per-square-foot basis for more than 20 Los Angeles neighborhoods. [TRD]

There’s 2 years of excess condo inventory in South Florida In Bal Harbour, Surfside and Bay Harbor Islands — the cities just north of Miami Beach — have two years of excess luxury condominium inventory, according to a new report from Condo Vultures Realty. Nearly 245 condos are currently listed for sale in the area, with 39 units sold in the first half of this year, the report found. Eight new projects are under construction, which will add another 300 units to the area’s market. [TRD]

Welcome to Seattle, Amazon’s company town Amazon now occupies 19 percent of the prime office space in Seattle, a Seattle Times analysis found. That’s the highest percentage controlled by a company in any major U.S. city. Amazon, which has an 8.1 million-square-foot presence in Seattle, has more office space than the next 40 companies put together. The company has spent $4 billion on real estate in Seattle so far. The report estimates that the company will claim a total of 12 million square feet in Seattle within the next five years. [Seattle Times]

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/2017/08/25/national-cheat-sheet-us-home-sales-fell-to-a-2017-low-in-july-wework-scores-4-4b-investment-from-softbank-more/#new_tab via IFTTT