#this html stuff is really tough

[salty-dracon]

i figured out how to build a theme selector for my potential new website! yay!

[thousandsun]

My favorite client (Sanji x fem reader)

Warning:None

Genre:Fluff mostly

Words: 1.7K

Author's note:Watch me realize I know how to code in HTML and I don't need a site 💀

You are a marine,a powerful woman who lives for justice. After your last fight, with a crew of powerful pirates,your subordinates have gotten severely injured. That made you spend a few sleepless nights thinking about what you should do. Your doctors are barely holding up and your supplies are running low.

Finally,one of your most trusted men came up with an idea. "Ma'am?" He asked approaching you.

"Yes?" You turn to look at him. It's currently 1 am and the only thing that seems to be on your mind is your current problem.

"I found this map that indicates there's a sea restaurant. It's actually close to us" He remarked showing you the map, pointing with his finger at the destination.

Your eyes widen as you realize there is hope for your subordinates. You keep your professionalism on the outside as you reply to him in a calm tone "Then we're heading there."

The few men that seem to be alright gather to change the course of the ship. You make your way into your room. The moment you close the door,you feel tears in eyes,running down your cheeks. There is hope. There really is. You thought to yourself. You grew quite attached to your subordinates in the past years. You didn't want to lose them. You know it's wrong. It's wrong to care about those people so much. It's the marine,you are all destined to die for the government. You must accept it.

You lay down on your bed looking at the ceiling thinking,and thinking about everything.

The time flies by faster than you expected and the morning comes.

Of course you couldn't sleep all night. You are up,on the deck, waiting to get to the sea restaurant.

"We are expected to reach the destination in the following minutes,

Y/N-sama" The navigator informs you. You nod as you begin to notice the Baratie. You are the first one to step on the sea restaurant.

You enter the restaurant as some stuff welcomes you. "We need food. I have a whole ship,full of people, wanting to eat something. We have all the money you want" You hand him a suitcase full of berries. "I'll be sitting at one of the tables. Please bring me some food as well"

The man in front of you gives you a confused look. You choose to ignore it since you feel your stomach arguing with you for food. You take a seat at a table patently waiting for someone else to notice you.

A blonde man with curly eyebrows, wearing a suit notices you. His eyes are sparkling with passion. He quickly gets closer to you,to take your order and admire you,of course. "Good morning, mademoiselle. May I take your order?" His smile is brighter than the sun. He can't help but analyze you.

"You were fast to notice me." You remark. Your instincts are telling you not to trust him. Being a marine is tough,of course you can't just talk to anyone. Everyone can be dangerous. At least that's what the marine told you."Yes,you may,sir. I would like a steak with a salad." You reply politely.

He quickly writes down your order. He looks at your uniform and realizes that you're an officer. A beautiful and dangerous woman? Exactly my type. "So what's such a beautiful lady doing here,in this humble restaurant?" The blonde asks. Such a beautiful officer,like her, should have a private cook.

"Don't you ask too many questions for a waiter?" You raise your eyebrow giving him a cold gaze. "Know your place, waiter. I am not here to chat."

"Oh,my apologies, mademoiselle!" He turns around leaving her at the table. The waiter can't help but slightly bite his lower lip. Whatever was that,it was damn hot.

"Why are you smiling like an idiot,Sanji?" Patty,a muscular cook,with oversized forearms asks him.

"There's this beautiful beautiful lady sitting at the table 5!" Sanji makes a little dance out of excitement.

"Whatever. Just focus on the food." Patty easily gets angry, however he maintains his calm this time."We have a lot of people to feed. A marine ship stopped by. Those people are hella hungry"

Sanji takes a few moments to think about what Patty said. He realizes you were there for help. He realizes you're probably stressed out since your subordinates are starving. I'll cheer her up. I will bring her the tastiest food! I will sure impress her this way. He begins cooking. He chooses fresh ingredients for you. He pre-heats the oven so he will finish the steak faster. The blonde spreads the pepper,the salt and the garlic powder on the meat. He carefully adds the oil to get just the right amount. As for the salad,he isn't going to make anything easy.

You wait at the table thinking about your waiter. Maybe you were a little harsh on him. After all he is helping feeding you and your subordinates.

You sigh thinking about a way of returning him the favor. He was nice and trying to help,yet you were too frustrated to give him a nice smile.

Sanji brings the food to your table, waking you up from your overthinking. "Here's the food" He smiles once again.

"Right..." You look at him a bit ashamed by the way you behaved "Look,I am sorry. I have been really stressed and... I know I shouldn't have been so hard on you" The blonde lights up a cigarette. "Don't worry, mademoiselle. I don't get easily mad."

You're surprised by his patience. He works in a restaurant after all,he must have experience with rude clients. "Even so,I am really sorry. If there's anything I can do to-" He leans closer to you placing his finger on your lips.

"Shh. I said don't worry." You feel your cheeks burning. You nod,not being able to talk.

Sanji moves away his finger from your lips. "If you really want to do something to atone your mistake,you can come here again." He smiles giving you a little wink. "I'd love to see you here more often"

You finally realized what's happening to him. He has a crush on you. Unfortunately,you have always been lonely. You had no time for relationships since you were in the marine. "Sure" You smile back. You take a look at the food he just brought you. The way he carefully arranged the food makes the plate look bigger and tastier. You take a bite from the steak. "Oh! Wow!" Your taste buds are begging you to eat more.

Sanji sees your reaction and his eyes quickly filled with joy. "I love to see people enjoy my cooking. Especially you"

Your cheeks are burning again. You struggle to respond without stuttering. "My name's Y/N" You say hoping he doesn't see your red cheeks. Maybe changing the subject will help?

"What a lovely name." He grabs your hand kissing it gently."My name is Sanji" Of course he noticed how red your cheeks are,yet he seems to wonder how shy you can get.

You feel your heart beating faster. "N-nice to meet you..." You stammer out the response. As much as you try to focus on the food the only thing in your mind seems to be the man in front of you.

Sanji chuckles seeing you like this. He leaves you to eat your meal as he has to feed your subordinates too.

Soon enough,you visit him again and again. You find yourself seeing him almost everyday. You find yourself enjoying when he talks to you so passionately about cooking. You find his silly compliments heartwarming.

One day,you enter the Baratie, taking a seat at the usual table. Sanji knows this is the time you usually show up so he was there waiting. He comes up to you, with his usual bright smile "Hello! What can I do for you,my favorite client?" He asks excited to see you.

"Actually... I am not looking for anything to eat" You could see his expression changing from excitement to confusion. "When is your shift over? To maybe...test out my new ship?"

Sanji is surprised to hear you ask something like this."In 1-2 hours I am free."

"That's perfect!"

"Is this a date?" He couldn't contain his curiosity on this matter. He wants it to be a date. He has been craving your touch.

"I guess so" You smile feeling shy again. You get up from your table. "See you soon,Sanji." You walk away leaving Sanji burst out of excitement in the middle of the Baratie.

"Get back to work!" Zeff yells from the kitchen.

After Sanji finishes his shift,he waits for you at the Baratie, knowing you'll probably come pick him up. You show up in a small ship,one you purchased recently mostly for undercover missions. You invite him on your expensive ship. There is only one navigator that was instructed to not bother any of you.

The sea seems calm and serene. You two have the pleasure to see the sky's different shades of pink,orange and yellow of the sunset. The sun looks like it's about to fall asleep, leaving the moon to do it's job.

"What a beautiful sunset" Sanji remarks gazing at the sky."Yet,it doesn't compare to your mesmerizing beauty" He grabs your waist, pulling you closer to him. You blush hearing his compliment. You gaze into his beautiful eyes noticing the love for you overflowing from his gaze. He has so much love for you that he can't keep it for himself,he needs you to feel it,to feel it all. "May I steal a kiss?" He can't stop thinking about your lips. You don't reply,yet the answer is in your eyes and he sees it. As he leans closer to you,his warm breath caresses your face. Finally,his lips are against yours.

The sun rays are gently hugging your figures, warming you and Sanji just like the passion running through your bodies. You brush your fingertips on his left cheek.

[thebigcjart]

Here are some extra bits on Kane!

ngl trying to match the fonts on the assets was super tough so I ended up just using the font listed on the wiki.

Infodump under the cut >:3

Strife Specubi

Kane's strife specubi consist of catkind and 2xlegkind. Kane brings Cazador into the Medium, but I don't know if they prototype him or not yet. I haven't really thought of sprites yet tbh.

Cazador does most of the fighting, but it's still registered as Kane "fighting" using Caz as a weapon through Catkind. Kane can also use cat statues, and other weapons that involve attacking the enemy with a cat of some sort. Cazador never strays (pun!) far from Kane, but Kane knows how to kick (with both legs only) through 2xlegkind. This also includes dual wielding legs as weapons, funnily enough.

Fetch Modus

The Claw Fetch modus was something that just kind of... happened? Whenever Kane captchalouges something, the captchlogue cards are thrown into a big hole with lots of platforms. Smaller items fall much slower than large items. Items must be retrieved by playing a claw mini-game, avoiding the platforms and undesired items along the way. The item fall speed thing is so if they captchalouge something by accident, they have a chance of catching while it's falling or following it closely if the item is small enough.

I had the thought that the deeper the claw goes, the more spaced out the platforms would be, to the point where if they go deep enough, there wouldn't be any more. From there, I imagine that the claw would leave the mini-game window and be able to grab things in the world. Either that, or there may be something down there in the deepest reaches of their sylladex. Waiting.

Or both of those things idk lol

Internet Browser (and Denizen)

So... let's talk about Khaos. I might have more to say on their presence and impact on the session in a separate dedicated post, but I'm going to talk about the design here.

So, the browser consists of a display window, which displays whatever webpage they're on, and a raw html console to interact with said display window. I don't know any html, and Kane only knows barely more than me, so most of their internet browsing has been through sheer dumb luck. Things just sort of work, and Kane doesn't really care but Jake, oh Jake is pissed that Kane can just... Use something without fully understanding what they're getting into. Jake isn't the kind of guy to really get "angry," but this is a conversation that Kane and he have often, to keep it brief.

This pet peeve is reinforced when the Khaos browser automatically downloads both a SBURB server program and a client application to everyone's devices ;)

Khaos is very clearly derivative of Yaldabaoth, but for good reason. I tried many things to try and move away from the stereotypically "edgy dark shadow version ooOOOoooOOoo" design tropes, and this is the best I could do while still keeping a recognizable homestucky design. All instances of the original denizen sprites on the wiki and online had a sort of dropshadow/transparent gradient outline that didn't exactly mesh well with mspaint's lack of transparency. I could have very easily removed the resulting black border, but I think it makes the grey tendrils pop more and serves to boost the void themes.

I really want to move away from setting up Kane as some edgelord figure with all the "no emotions" "Chaos" "emptiness and darkness and shadow" stuff, and just sort of treat them as kind of just another flavor of person, if that makes any sense? probably not, but just know that edginess is NOT my goal here.

Where Yaldobob is a sun-headed snake with Dirk's text color, Khaos is a black hole or black sun-headed snake with Kane's text color. As I talked about in my original Kane introduction post, the black sun is a symbol representing Nigredo, an alchemical component with an immeasurable quality of emptiness that is the first step toward creating the philosopher's stone.

In Greek mythology, Khaos is the primordial void state preceding the creation of the universe, perfect for Kane's voidness.

And much like Yolobroth, Khaos is also associated with creation and universalness. These parallels were designed this way on purpose :)

[pixystixxxdraws]

so. hey. twitter immigrant here

I feel like I want to comment on this because I'm a twitter immigrant, about the stuff the staff posted? just like, my experience with tumblr from migrating to twitter. I am outing myself as a fifthy casual, since I haven't been an active active user in almost a decade, so.

I can kinda get what they're talking about with their intentions?

Jumping from a place as interconnected as somewhere like twitter to tumblr is very jarring. It feels like you have to rely on friends or finding the right tags. It feels very much like relearning the game and personally, while I understand it's very likely for people to get swept up in the numbers game, it's something that pushes me to do better, so going from that to dead quiet is a little...demoralizing?

This sounds crazy but I like making my art better and better to do better numbers, I like growing a following and honestly? I like having a bit of an algorithm because I can't always find the artists I like based off the artists' I follow's RTs. I've found some of my biggest inspirations on the for you page.

That's not to say I don't have my frustrations with twitter as well as love aspects about tumblr. For one, I will always praise tumblr about how much customization you have over things like having an in depth tagging system you can block/mute at your own will, all the niche communities you can explore (for example I'm a huge fan of oldwebcore), and especially being able to use HTML and CSS! it's insane how little control you have over your page on other websites.

As much as I said I don't mind the for you page on twitter, that's met with a huge asterisk. Your page is WAY too easily moved by clicking one post and then suddenly that's the only thing you see for a week, especially things like that spiral into a cycle of negativity. I usually have to look at at least 5-10 art posts to recalibrate my for you page.

And dear god, I NEED that tagging system on twitter. As someone who has, uh, several ships I'm not comfortable with, I have to mute accounts ad nauseum to not see content for that ship. If I click like on one image of one of the characters, it's impossible to distinguish "I want content of this character but not this ship"

Though I don't think Tumblr is perfect. There's a lot of confusion where certain things I can't find because I can't tell if it's delegated to my blog or my account. Like, apparently there is a mute an account feature? Someone tried directing me to it but I couldn't see some of the options. I'm sorry to that one person I still have blocked, it'd nothing personal :x

Was I going anywhere with this? not really, I think I just sympathize with the idea that tumblr is hard for newcomers to get used to because well. I'm a newcomer and I can say for sure it is tough!

Though I don't want to be unsympathetic to the people who use this site on the daily. While I said I kind of like a for you page to introduce me to new content I think the setup we have where it's not the default is fine, it just needs to be improved.

I don't think my word has more merit than the people who actively use and love this site, but I also think tumblr isn't wrong in trying to make the site more accessible for people new.

Anyways, I guess I just wanted to put my thoughts out there? feel free to disagree, I hope I didn't make anyone too mad.

[rabbivole]

sorry i have to ramble about this *somewhere* or i'm going to die. this mysterious ripmaster has a bunch of even the weird shit that was basically made bespoke for a server i played on, so presumably someone i used to know sent him some stuff. (he has a collaborative halloween map a bunch of us submitted houses for and i might literally have a house i made in there.)

i went looking for something on a whim and: he has avbar1. this is the picture he's provided, and the actual bar the map is named for is behind the camera, but this room is the other half of the map:

that's a big working accordion. i had completely forgotten until seeing this, but i am intimately familiar with this room. i have run circles around this room chatting with people i was way too young to be talking to many, many times.

the other thing i remembered upon seeing this was that accordions and polka were sort of a meme (it was the era of weird al, you see) and there was something you could do in this room, some hidden button you could press, to play a polka song. and from the detritus of my brain from 20-odd years ago i'm thinking... john jeski - sailing? definitely jeski and sailing. i can't really remember the song well but i'd know it if i heard it.

i go to youtube and find nothing. i google 'john jeski' as a flailing attempt and find the obituary of John Jeski, the 'Polka Master'. he lived in connecticut and passed away in 2007. he started the John Jeski Band in 1974, apparently performing throughout new england and receiving a congressional plaque. his obituary fondly remembers him as 'one of the best accordionists in the Polish American field'. i dig a little more and i find a raw html 1998-ass page for him on polkas.org, and sure enough, something's labeled Sailing. i somehow remembered this perfectly. and it's only a 30 second clip, but jesus christ, this is it. the map had a much longer excerpt, but this is it, hosted by nancysplaceforpolkas.com. please join me in enjoying 30 seconds of what i can only describe as joyful oompah music that i had forgotten, remember perfectly, and never expected to hear again. (and cursory googling suggests finding the whole song may be tough. hmm.)

it was just this weird polka song that was included in a map that the guy must have heard somewhere and included as a half-joke, the way that meme songs live on beyond being memes because 'well, it's a meme song, but it kinda goes hard, though'. we wouldn't have used any of those words at the time. i probably said it pwns j00.

god, avbar1.bsp is probably old enough to drink. avbar1.bsp can probably fight and die for its country (canada, i think? i think he was canadian)

fuck. this is so much and if i'm able to get even 10% of these running i may have to start thinking about taking pictures of them

ok well. as of like two weeks ago, some absolute fucking hero i don't think i've ever crossed paths with has uploaded a rip of ~5gb of team fortress classic maps. the number of these i remember intimately is fucking insane and i thought a lot of them were lost forever

a) i'm like weirdly emotional about this b) after a quick glance in my old SIERRA folder, i think i have a few things he's missing. so uh i should. probably send this person a message

[3wisellamas]

Some insights from the Japanese version of chapter 2!

(I'm not THAT great at Japanese, and am NOT a native speaker, it's been years and even then I never got super-fluent, but I can still read a little, and just used my dictionary for the rest. So, if anyone wants to correct me on this, go for it.)

-In case you missed it, Spamton's speech is translated REALLY interestingly, using "death" in English instead of "desu" (since they're pronounced the same), spelling daisuki (love) as "die-suki", uses Watakushi (formal and gender-neutral, though not exclusively, pretty much anyone can use it) as his pronoun but replaces "kushi" with the numbers 9 and 4, which are pronounced Ku and Shi but whose sounds out of context can mean "death" and "pain/torture" and are therefore considered unlucky numbers, etc. Also, less horrifying, instead of BIG SHOT he just says he wants to be "BIG" -- which, given that he's a literal email spambot from the 90s, has some implications...

-Seam's pronoun is...Atashi? o____O Which is, like, really feminine. The girly girl pronoun. If they don't straight-up identify as a different gender in Japanese, I guess we're supposed to interpret this as them seeing themselves as being more feminine?

-King and Queen both use Watakushi, with Queen even using it and all other words referring to people/specific topics in [brackets] sorta similar to Spamton (though in Japanese this translates more as just being in quotes), along with other formatting quirks like everything she says being enclosed in <!-- HTML comment tags -- >, making her seem more computer-y.

-The Addisons don't use any pronouns at all. None. They NEVER say the equivalent of the words "I" or "Me" ANYWHERE in Japanese.

-SCC all use male pronouns:

Sweet and Cap'n both use Ore (very masculine, tough guy, arrogant, connotations of being a delinquent/gangster).

Interestingly, Sweet rarely refers to just himself, but as part of the whole group (Oretachi), while Cap'n does both.

K_K uses Boku (standard friendly male pronoun)

-Susie also uses Ore, which makes sense for her since despite being almost exclusively a male pronoun, she doesn't care about that shit! She is tough and you WILL respect her.

-Now for the big one! Swatch also uses Watakushi (gender-neutral, formal). Now, literally anyone can use that or its less-formal version Watashi, male, female, or otherwise -- it's pretty much just the default pronoun (I use Watashi whenever I speak Japanese, since I'm NB). But, in this case, without any English equivalent to go on, I think we can officially say They/Them Swatch confirmed!!

-I've seen others bring this up before, but I'll include it for completeness: Rouxls Kaard uses Yo as his pronoun, which is...basically Watashi but EXTREMELY formal and a little old-fashioned, only really used in writing rather than speech. So, pretty accurate to him!

And now for some more SCC stuff, since I focused on those scenes (for obvious reasons):

-Sweet and Cap'n both speak pretty normally, albeit VERY informally, with the latter using slightly harsher/even more casual language and not really ending his sentences properly, but K_K's manner of speaking is different. He basically speaks in either a really lazy or cutesy manner, rarely using difficult kanji and ends every sentence li~ke thisssss!!~

-In Japanese, K_K's nickname makes a little more sense -- the line where in English he says "K_K is short for 'Cakes.'" is instead "K_K wa 'Kēki' no ryaku da yo~" or "K_K is an abbreviation of Kēki (Cake)!~" In Japanese you abbreviate something by either using the first kana of each word or, especially in cases like this with a shorter word in katakana, the first English character of each kana. So, his name is Kē Ki -- KK!

-Instead of "See ya! Smell ya! Hear ya!", they all just say goodbye, but in their own way:

Sweet: "Mata kaiou!" (Until we meet again!)

Cap'n: "Mata na!" (See ya, very casual)

K_K: "Mata ni~" (Same as Cap'n, but in a much more cute, childish manner)

-Instead of lemon drops, K_K talks about lemon jelly. Which...explains a lot of the Japanese fanart I've seen with K_K eating it.

-Instead of saying Queen gave him candy for being so sweet, Sweet says that Queen gave him a nickname that translates directly to "Little Sweets/Candy Boy". And when he hears it, Cap'n says he wants to be called that too!

-Cap'n drops the freaking k-word! Granted, it's referring to the damn Berdly statue, which, I would use that word to describe too, but still. Someone wash this boy's mouth out with soap!

-"Boku wa sweets daisuki!" / "I love sweets!" Shippers, this one's for you.

[dedalvs]

is there anywhere someone could find a list of all the conlangs youve done? your langs seem really interesting but i cant seem to find a ton of documentation on them

The ultimate repository will one day be here:

It's essentially wiktionary, but for my languages. I've put a lot of material on there, but not all of them. It takes a lot of number-crunchy effort to put up a new language, so when I got a whole bunch of new ones, I dreaded having to relearn how to do it, because there's a lot of back-end stuff that has to happen. But also, even when a language gets added, then you have to add stuff to it. Right now there's a team of people that are updating High Valyrian, so that language is documented exhaustively on the wiki, but otherwise, some have very little up. Part of that is because I have to figure out what an entry should look like for a given language, and that's tough, too. The point of making it a wiki, though, is so that other people could help. So little by little, all the info will be online, and it'll be there.

Also, though, you should know about this site:

This is a zero-css, zero-html dumping ground for everything I've done for every show and film I've worked on. Everything's up there that isn't massively NDA, or is not mine.

Between those two places, you can find a lot of what I've got, but more will be coming in the future.

[hyperthinks]

15 questions for 15 mutuals ^_^ i was tagged by @socialbunny!

1. are you named after anyone?

nope to both my birth name and chosen name! my motivation behind picking the name miles was that it 1. had the same first initial as my birth name and 2. PEOPLE COULD ACTUALLY SPELL IT LMAOOO

2. when was the last time you cried?

i graduated college last weekend and i dont know if id consider it a Full Cry because all i did was tear up but when i gave my favorite professor a hug after i went onstage i was screaming and crying and throwing up on the inside

3. do you have kids?

nope!

4. do you use sarcasm a lot?

yeah but in a lighthearted way! im a goofy guy but i dont ever want my jokes to come off as too mean spirited

5. what sports do you play/have you played?

HELP im so shit at sports 😭 my hand eye coordination and depth perception are both awful so im not good at any of them… when i was in the 3rd grade my mom put me in cheerleading and i had such bad social anxiety as a kid that when it was my turn to cheer i would just CRY. it makes for a funny story though

6. what’s the first thing you notice about other people?

ooh this ones tough. uhhh it depends on the situation i first meet them in but generally their voice and speech patterns? when i was a kid i didnt inflect a lot (autism.) so i had to “study” other people… i think that’s kind of a holdover from that ?

7. eye color?

brown! ^_^

8. scary movies or happy endings?

hmmm. depends on what mood i’m in and also how well its written!

9. any special talents?

well i just graduated magna cum laude (CUM? 🤨) with a BFA in graphic design so i HOPE i’m good at that LMAOOOO

outside of that? im decently good at digging through code and messing with hex editing for someone who has no formal coding experience outside of HTML and CSS

10. where were you born?

the united states! i was born in missouri but i’ve lived in georgia most of my life

11. what are your hobbies?

ooh lets see. i like researching unused content and the effects of glitches in video games (lifelong special interest. teehee) in addition to, well. actually playing the games. i used to draw a lot more (if you’re reading this and you followed me from my furry twitter: I’m Sorry) but i’ve shifted a lot of my creative energy towards writing (check out my tycutio fanfiction) and graphic design (i need to post some of my stuff here… my senior project was sims 2 themed even)

12. do you have any pets?

i do! we got my dog daisy (lab mix) when i was really little, and she’s 15 now!

we also have a tortoise named tortimer (after the guy from animal crossing) but we just call him torti

13. how tall are you?

5’8” but i used to be 5’9” before scoliosis nerfed me (<- coping and seething)

14. fave subject in school?

in high school it was probably literature, but in college i’d say typography? i like letters. teehee

15. dream job?

please for the love of god i want a job making promotional materials for a game company SO BAD.

i tag… YOU!!! >:D nahhh jk but i AM gently tapping my mutuals on the shoulder if they want to do this . ^_^

[hms-no-fun]

what was the most frustrating and/or fun part involved in formatting godfeels?

the first thing to know is that when i started gf1 i knew jack shit about html and css. i've always REALLY struggled with coding, but i forced myself to learn when faced with the horrible possibility of publishing a homestuck fic in all-black lucida. can you imagine??

i didn't do this on purpose, but as the series went along i always found a new thing that i wanted to try to test my own meager abilities as a novice code understander. it's funny, i very specifically remember writing these lines in gf1--

--and thinking, man, that's a really cool effect! breaking the grammar rules for emotional impact by having "leave" on its own line separated by line breaks like that is pretty much where the entire meta aspect of godfeels started, and you could even go so far as to say that this is the moment when the gf universe becomes metaphysically distinct from homestuck? idk if that's the best way to put it but looking back on it and even at the time, this moment always felt extremely important as a style choice with narrative implications.

formatting is a pain in the ass, but it gets less so every time i format a chapter. i've got a whole process now that i might go into at length sometime down the line (that'll be a long post though and probably won't have time for that in the immediate future), but i can tell you that my best friend is ctrl+f. the nice thing about homestuck's dialogue style is that you have these repeated consistent handles at the start of every line of dialogue. so you write a chapter and then you find and replace every instance of "Vriska:" with "<span class="vriska">Vriska:" and by god you're like 40% there!

uh. that is, if you keep your text color to the dialogue. which i... don't.

there's a lot of the process that's really tedious, but like, i play a lot of open world games. i kinda like tedium. i've got cut/paste bound to hotkeys so when i'm going through putting </span><br /> at the end of every line of dialogue i just put on some steely dan and hit f3 a bunch. hotkeys are also my best friend, they have saved me SO MUCH wrist strain (i think it was the Risk & Dare chapter that finally pushed me to learn what the fuck a hotkey is lmao).

the most ANNOYING formatting is always always always in the narration. when terezi's narration breaks and she just has a few letters showing through? yo that shit takes forever. then the way June, Risk, and Dare show who's fronting any given thought requires me to pay real close attention to the text as i'm going (i manually format my docs so that they look how they will when finished, it's really tough for me to feel the scene if it's not visually accurate)-- which wouldn't be a problem except i'm always in such a goddamned hurry that i start formatting immediately after deciding that a draft is ready to publish, which means i've probably been writing since dawn and now it's like 8pm and formatting will only take like an hour so i might as well just get it out of the way EXCEPT IT ALWAYS TAKES TWICE AS LONG because chapter 8 was a fucking BEHEAMOTH that damn near killed me

what's nice about having a team is that they can tell you "hey, maybe you should wait until tomorrow so you can do a finally quality check when you haven't been awake for 18 hours"

the most fun part of formatting is honestly just seeing the finished product. as much as godfeels is a work of prose fiction, it's always felt distinctly visual to me in a way that was heavily influenced by the likes of house of leaves and (closer to home) nellcromancer's revolution 23 years in the making. i spend a lot of time fine-tuning the amount of scrolling people have to do to get through any given chapter to make sure it's paced correctly, make sure it FEELS the way i want it to feel. a lot of times in the doc the more abstract formatting is stuff that i leave in brackets, like for instance the huge color scroll at the start of the ch8 epilogue.

that one was hypothetical and ready to be on the chopping block until like a day before i published the chapter. a lot of the formatting tricks i've done are built off of things i did before, right- so i did the linebreaks in the screenshot from gf1 above, and expanded that style choice exponentially with each chapter. i wanted to have a cut to black in one of the early parts of ch8 that zoe figured out from me, then i modified her code to allow for Epigone's ugly-ass green background when it takes over (something i didn't plan until i realized it was possible with tools i already had --see how that works?). so when i needed to signal symbolically a physical journey through the layers of each aspect of reality without explicitly revealing WHO was doing the journeying (i wanted you to presume it was "us" and that the "us" VV addressed until July left the scene was literally "us" and not Roxy & Callie), i felt like wrangling the css to do that would be a pain... but then i sat down and just sorta mapped it out?

and by god it just WORKED. that to me felt like a huge accomplishment, that i finally understood the tools i was working with enough to be able to plan it out in advance.

there's so many formatting moments like when Dare screams "YES!" at June, or in gf2.3 when June's completely shattered and drifting as Dare and Risk through her own consciousness with this fits and starts of unknowable perspective shifts, seeing them actually WORK on the page is unparalleled. there's always so much shit getting in the way of the words when it's not done, all those fucking squiggles (which i mostly turn off but sometimes they're helpful for spelling) and all the slight differences in how they process the shape and feel of different fonts, it's never until i see it on ao3 that it feels RIGHT to me. and that's the best part, always

[earthstory]

Hidden in the deep. Deep beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean sits…something intriguing. We’ve never sampled it directly as far as we know, but seismic techniques show that there’s something odd in the mantle at these sites. Something that may well have shaped the development of our planet as we know it today.

If an earthquake is large enough, it will release energy in the form of seismic waves that can be detected even after the waves travel through the entire planet. These waves can be used to illustrate properties of the materials they travel through; if there’s a boundary they can bounce off it, if there’s a change in chemistry or temperature they can slow down or speed up. Measuring how long it takes for a seismic wave to get from the source of an Earthquake to a detector on the opposite side of the Earth thus gives scientists a way to probe Earth’s internal structure. Turning measurements of individual earthquakes into a full 3-D picture of the planet’s interior is a time-consuming, computationally demanding job, so it took until recent decades for scientists to really use these waves to look for variations in the planet hidden within the lower mantle. When they finally were able to do so, two features stood out. Seismic waves that travel through the mantle deep beneath Africa and beneath the Western Pacific Ocean slow down. These areas aren’t small features – they’re over 1000 kilometers high (over 1/3 the height of the mantle) and the size of continents, and when waves enter them they slow down consistently. Their outlines are shown in these rough images – the slow areas are the red zones as is typical for how seismic data is displayed (the dark blue is the outer core). This slowing of some types of seismic waves gives these features their technical name, “LLSVP” or “Large, Low-Shear-Velocity Provinces”. That’s enough of a mouthful for scientists that they’ve been given other nicknames – some have called them superplumes, thermochemical piles, or superswells, but since we don’t know exactly what they are it’s hard to apply any of those terms. The techniques show they’re present, but small structures and even what the edges look like are problems that seismic waves have a tough time answering without a lot more data. Slow seismic velocities in the mantle generally are associated with warmer temperatures, but not always – chemistry can play a role as well. The names superplume or superswell come from assuming these spots have slow seismic velocities because they’re warm. These superplumes could be piles of hot material formed at the bottom of the mantle that are gradually trying to move upwards. Alternatively, they could be chemically distinct from the rest of the mantle. If they were denser than the rest of the mantle (say, from having more iron, a particularly high-mass element in the mantle), they could be stable over long time periods and even last over a billion years. The Earth has processes that can create piles of dense stuff – subduction zones send dense material downward, towards the boundary between the core and the mantle, and a pile of old, subducted slabs could fit the measured seismic signatures as well. Since we don’t know exactly what these provinces are, we also don’t know what they can do, but there are ideas. One of them sits directly under Africa and, if it is hot, that object could be sending up plumes of hot material that keep running into Africa and tearing it apart. The East African Rift Zone has likely interacted with a plume of hot material from the mantle that has contributed to pushing the plate apart, and the opening of the south Atlantic Ocean also coincides with the eruption of plume lavas that could have come from this site as well. A super-plume sitting in the mantle could be shooting these plumes of warm material upward, and in the process implicated in the breakup of Pangaea. Similarly, the site in the Pacific sits below an area filled with volcanic islands. Plumes of hot material coming from the LLSVP could be contributing to these islands as well. Some scientists even think the Pacific structure could contribute to the Hawaiian hot spot, but linking Hawaii directly to the LLSVP is difficult since Hawaii isn’t above the area where its been detected. Other scientists have suggested different ways these features could interact with the surface. One recent paper argued that both mantle plumes, as noted above, and kimberlite eruptions, which are sudden, violent eruptions that originate hundreds of kilometers deep within the mantle, have been correlated with these sites for several hundred million years. However, that’s a difficult case to make since plates are able to move on the Earth’s surface and we don’t know exactly how these features would generate either of those eruption types. These structures have been the focus of decades of research already and will likely remain intriguing to geoscientists for decades to come. Anyway, if you’re ever in Africa or the Western Pacific, take a second, look down, and remember something super sits below you. -JBB Image credits: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cartoon_of_Pacific_LLSVP.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cartoon_of_African_LLSVP.jpg Read more: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFMDI22A..07Z http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n12/full/ngeo1328.html http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GC003808/full http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7304/full/nature09216.html

[nutty1005]

Marvelous City – Chongqing Special

Video Link: https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTA2NzMzODYxNg==.html

Translator’s Note: This is translated off the Marvelous City - Chongqing Special Episode. I wrote it in an article form because of video copyrights issues. This documentary was filmed early 2020, but only aired recently. Xiao Zhan’s episode aired on 12 Jan, this special episode aired on 17 Jan.

Q: What difference do you feel returning to Chongqing this time round?

A: Actually for all my years, I’ve never seriously experienced Chongqing like this. Because when you’re living within it, you will not jump to an outsider’s point of view and deliberately observe places, scenery and food. I grew up with Chongqing and it’s melded within me, hence this time I came back, including the air raid shelters, the local delicacies, or the Xiao Mian, I have a new understanding and knowledge of them. The feeling in my heart is different as well.

Q: What are your biggest takeaway from this visit?

A: As a Chongqinger who has grown up and lived twenty odd years in Chongqing, I realized my understanding of the air raids shelters, I originally thought they were just shelters. But after my discussion with Mr. Xiang, I discovered that there were many stories regarding them. Yesterday, he spoke of an example, an elder he interviewed, and that elder told him that during those years, once there was an alarm, he was actually secretly happy. He would watch for the shelter the lady he liked ran into, and he would follow that lady to that shelter. So you see, it’s that sort of finding joy in their chaotic lives. I feel that that is, very accurately, the description of Chongqingers’ optimism. But actually, it’s easy to say that we would feel like that – since we have to live every day, living a day happily versus living a day miserably, why should we not live happily. But few are able to do that, moreover in such a chaotic environment. So when he told me those stories yesterday, I felt especially touched. I was quite moved, actually.

Q: How was the experience when you previously rode the light rail?

A: The line for Niujiaotuo was especially interesting. To walk from Rail Line 3 to Rail Line 2, it took 15 minutes. If the person in front of you walked especially slowly, plus everyone was going to work in the morning, it’s just shoulder to shoulder crowded. Basically, even if you wanted to run, you couldn’t, you could only push your way through and then run forward. That period was especially weird. I was thinking, why weren’t these ladies and gentlemen in a hurry, then I’d be “excuse me excuse me”, push through them and run forward, then start queuing.

Rail Line 2 would come, because it was suspended between bridges, when the glass door opens you’d have to squeeze your way in, and there would be some situations, like some people with their bags stuck outside, their slipper stuck outside, and then all kinds of stuff, sometimes even their breakfast would be stuck outside. Then there’s like burst soy bean drinks, there’s a lot of situations like this, and actually below Rail Line 2, there was a huge safety net. The net was there because they were afraid of falling objects from great heights, and these might fall and hit someone below. So sometimes, well sometimes in the summer, I would see that there’s some ridiculous things piling on the net, someone’s slipper, belt, bag or umbrella, etc. I don’t know if it’s still there, I guess they would clean it regularly. But I felt that this was especially funny, funny and sad at the same time. I mean who would want to squeeze with people early in the morning, you’d be squeezed half dead, everyone would be angry, and you’d argue in the morning.

But you couldn’t help it, it’s for livelihood, hence that time when I saw that there were many reports saying “it’s so tough, this year is so tough on me”, but then I also felt that actually everyone had it tough. I feel that everyone is moving forward while trying to live, actually we’re like a battalion, and we are all being pushed forward by our lives. We’re already at 2020 and every single day before was tough, it’s all tough, so I feel that we just have to manage and adjust. I feel that our attitudes need to be managed well.

I remember that time, I was squeezed so badly that I was plastered onto the glass door. That glass door, I was literally stuck onto it, and then when I looked down at the Jialing River, because the Rail Line 2 was suspended over it, I just looked at the Jialing River below and thought, actually that scenery was rather pretty. So, I’d just watch the scenery, and when you start to carefully observe, you would feel that it’s actually quite beautiful. In the mornings, there would be elders swimming in the winter, and then there’d be some reefs, because I recall that it’d be dry season during the winter, the water levels would go down and hence the waters would also become somewhat clearer. Jialing River, with those oddly shaped reefs, and then there was all kinds of people fishing, jogging alongside. What also attracted me was the windows, they looked like film, frame by frame, and the windows on the light rail were also frame by frame. And then after night falls, because the light rail was built along the river, the night view by the river, those lights and those skyscrapers would be varicolored, just like a movie.

Q: What do you like about Chongqing?

A: I like its summer and I also like its winter. There’s two sensations, the summer’s passionate like fire, whereas the winter, and you’d feel that the chill seeps into your bones, just you’d feel hurt magically. Hotpot, Xiao Mian, spicy diced chicken, peppercorn chicken, there’s too many of them, I love them all. Double-cooked pork… I feel that these food are something engraved in your bones since childhood. When you mention those food, your mouth instinctively salivates. I already have the taste of peppercorn chicken in my mouth, it’s strange, but I haven’t had peppercorn chicken for a very long time, but now I am just… *swallows saliva*

Q: What is the Chongqing delicacy of your heart?

A: There’s no need to say. I used to go to this noodle stall in the past. It didn’t have a name, it’s just an aunty, and that aunty is especially nice. Because every time I went there I would tell her, aunty, for example I wanted to eat wontons, we call them Chao Shou, I’d say, “Aunty I want less wontons more vegetables”, and then the aunty would put in a lot of vegetables, but she didn’t really remove that many wontons. Every time I went there I don’t have to give her my order, I’d say “the same old”, and she’d know exactly what to make, just put more vegetables inside. So sometimes, I’d just watch her cook, and while watching her busy around, you’d feel especially warm in your heart. It’s just a stall, but every neighbor would be eating there, and they’d be eating there for decades, their children and even grand children would be eating there as well. Slowly, the stall would became a part of their emotional support, like maybe I won’t eat this noodles today, or perhaps she didn’t open today, it would became a kind of concern for that person. Eventually, it’s no longer a matter of a bowl of Xiao Mian, but a habit of life, an emotional interaction. I feel that this is the power of Chongqing delicacies in my heart.

Q: How was your childhood like?

Actually when you talk about my childhood, I really liked the environment I lived in when I was really young. Sometimes I would dream and I often dreamed of that period. When I was young, the early 90s era, multimedia wasn’t as advanced, there were no mobile phones or computers. There were probably arcade centers during that period of time, those that you needed to slot in coins, but children weren’t allowed to go, we had to sneak in. But mostly, it was our neighbors.

As a child, once we finish our homework, we could go downstairs and yell out “So-and-so, come down quickly”, and with a whoosh, all the children in the district would come down. Everyone would play hide-and-seek and then beanbag toss (TN: similar to cornhole), just all kinds of board games, any sort will do. All of these games are interactive. I still remember the shop on the first floor downstairs from my home, he modified the shop to become a snack stop, and all of the kids would buy snacks from him. I remember that real fresh milk was delivered on a bicycle, everyday freshly squeezed, and we would collect from him using our own bags or buckets. It’s just especially down-to-earth. I remember that time at around 5pm or 6pm,you’d hear yelling, as in that sort “selling milk” (TN: in Chongqing accent) and those fat sausages. Over there, fat sausages (TN: in Chongqing accent), all these kinds of finger food, you know? Wow, I miss those days.

And during that period, the smells of cooking would fill up the entire district, whether by mothers or grandmothers, they’d be cooking and the whole district would permeate with delicious smells. It was just especially wonderful, I feel that that period was really down-to-earth, everyone was especially vivid. Actually, I feel that our lives now are a bit cold, just a bit cold. Then, we would know all of our neighbors, but now, I doubt that we understand our neighbors well.

Q: What do you think of the phrase “pa erduo”? (TN: henpecked, literally means to be pulled by the ear)

Pa erduo (TN: In Chongqing accent), it means that the person’s ear is especially soft. It used to mean that the man is some kind of a loser, but I feel that now, this phrase is adorable. I feel that it’s a compliment, it means that Chongqing men treat their wives well, it’s a display of love for their wives, so I feel that it’s adorable. When I’m out, I am upright and indomitable, I can be your pillar of support, but when I’m back home, I will dote on you fully. I feel that it’s especially good, my father is like this. My father is especially cute sometimes, oh dear, I’m going to betray my father. He is especially cute, he would often tell my mother to let him maintain some dignity when they’re out, just especially cute. I feel that as a couple, they are quite good, just very standard, in my eyes, they are the standard Chongqing couple. Because actually my mother doesn’t talk a lot outside, she listens to whatever my father says, but once we are back home, my dad will give in to my mother most of the time.

Q: What is your relationship with your hometown?

To me, I feel that I am just very proud of her, she’s my pride. Maybe there are some youths, actually I was the same when I was a teenager, I thought about whether I should leave Chongqing to a bigger city. At that time, everyone was talking about Bei-Shang-Guang (TN: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou), and I thought about whether I wanted to take a look there, for example design, obviously Bei-Shang-Guang is the forefront of China, spearheading. I thought about it as well, whether I should go and take a look, but when I was studying in the university, and then after I graduated, to me, I was slowly adjusting to the life in Chongqing, so I feel this differs from person to person. Hence at that time I felt that it was also quite fine remaining in Chongqing. If I can’t attain a top leader position outside, or become a highflier, then why shouldn’t I just stay grounded and do well in my own hometown? Actually those were my thoughts at that time, but as fate has it, I still left Chongqing. So I feel this is really just fate, just something mysterious. Now that there’s so much skyscrapers in Chongqing, so many office buildings, so many of them graded 5A, there are so many youths working in there, fighting for their dreams. There may be some people who doesn’t like it, some may be forced to work by their families, or the job was found for them by a relative, but I believe that most youths have an ambitious heart, and they want to fulfill the dreams they had when they were studying, their endeavors, and they are just fighting for their ideals. I feel that every city has its own charm, and Chongqing charm lies in the fact that it’s vivid. It’s very lively, it’s a young city, and everyone is fighting, for their lives, for their ambitions. She is a very lively city.

Q: Do you think you have the tenacity of a Chongqinger?

A: Very tenacious. I feel that I am a very tenacious person. Just when I encounter things, like I’ve lived in Chongqing for 23 years, well-adjusted to the living and working environment of Chongqing, and then suddenly I went to Beijing, to the entertainment business. It’s just worlds apart, two entirely different living environments. And truth be told, that period of time was quite tough. Whether it was singing, dancing or acting, to me those were all brand new things, but at that time I felt, since I’m already here, then I must do it well with all of my efforts. No matter how tough or how difficult, those were my choices, even if I had to crawl I had to finish the journey, that’s how I felt.

[d-eard-iary]

20-03-2021

Hi,

how is everything going on world!

i really dont know i am depressed? but i  know that i am confused ? yes

and sure way i am looking for job  & money and a job which can lead to me a proper direction.

so for that i am doing some progress in my mind but I don't think I really am doing anything good enough.

But talking to friends make me think more. & get confused more.

i am looking a way where i can study , get job, learn , earn money & get settled in out of India that is what i want for the situation.

i am learning salesforce admin, but not sure about getting a job into it.

I have experience in support talking with people & clearing all there doubts.

that is the only thing i really know right now?

i guess i know more than that of support.

i know some good tech such html, css, c, c++ but not in clear i know how to develop a website. i know how to takle client.

i but i think i lack in a communication skills where i find it while talking to a HR person or on a call where my words do really matters & i fucked it up all the way.

i always looking to find a job which can promote me to a new role & responsibilities. 

but my current job has nothing rather than call client give application support .

Most of the time i really do think about all the stuff everyday but god i dont know where i lack most. every time i learn something i get confused. but in a such way that i choose to let go that learning & choose to learn new thing.

fuck me.

So now what?

tomorrow is my hackerank interview but i know fucking nothing about the coding part & i am going to definitely lack at it. and interesting new is that i am doing nothing about it. not learning anything not looking to any book nothing at all.

just looking at another salesforce lesson, trading, Facebook, web series. 

i really do hate myself mostly i guess!

i say every time that i can start now. i am going to tough. i am going to continue it. i am not going to let anything across my path. but BAMMM.

i get call/ message/ social media which fuking say that “hey your friend got a job in this”, “hey he is earning good” “ hey hes got a car” hey he is going to america” 

ohhhhh noo. 

these seems that my dreams are some other grabbing it so easily.

& i can’t do anything about it other than thinking about how should i get it other than thinking about what are the steps should i follow to get it.

oh i really lack at something.

[karldecorpse]

Hearing Classmate’s Life Story

Personal Development - Day 2 

Karl Wyndyll M. Lamban

“ Understanding others does not mean that you have to necessarily agree with their point of view, or feelings. Instead, it means you recognise their point of view and accept that it is different from yours.“ - Thomas Oppong 

Picture source:  https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/listen-family-how-active-listening-mental-health-b1347188.html

 Communication is a crucial part in life. It enables us to more aware of ourselves and also to the people around us. 

          A year with my classmates, didn’t give me enough information to know them deeper but with the activity “Getting to know Oneself”, it surely shown me of how they feel about themselves. Some of them were like brittle as glass, most of them are hard as rock. And I didn’t know that before because it might be that I was busy doing my stuffs and they were too with theirs. 

          The activity flashes me others plans as to how to treat myself like how they treat themselves positively. I thought of never to be hard to myself again because I only got me and I should be proud of me more because I didn’t experience to tough things they faced.           Also, knowing them tips me on how to react and deal with them whenever I encounter them soon. And I also wish to help them when their struggles do come. 

Lesson Learned: Be gentle because anyone has been facing their hard times and LISTEN AND UNDESTAND FIRST BEFORE YOU SAY SOMETHING TO THEM. 

           And the last, though this is not a part of the topic anymore but still I learned it today is the need to be early and the importance of greeting. I really felt guilty about coming late and not able to greet earlier in the session. I should never do that again anymore.   @krishavanessa​ 

[nitchi]

Hey! It’s me again.

It’s been a tough week trying to balance school and work, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon enough. For now, I’m stressed out. Haha.

This week, I learnt new things- not just school stuff but life in general. What I’m particularly excited about is my progress with HTML. I must say, learning HTML is somewhat easier than CSS and Java Script but it’s just my observation. Or maybe it’s because we haven’t gotten in-depth yet but I’m hopeful. Lol.

Anyway, I’d like to share few of the things I learnt about HTML in class, and from other web materials/videos I found online. First, in the picture, you will see what a typical HTML document looks like.

HTML is basically a markup for creating a website. To me, it’s like building a house. In building a house, you need a lot of materials in order to complete the project. Thus, HTML is a block of texts and elements that make up a webpage.

In my last post, I showed you a bit of what I learnt from Solo Learning which is an app that teaches HTML. However, that was me cramming what I saw. This time, I got to understand them.

HTML is made up of tags and tags are elements. Elements are those building blocks that make up the webpage- the heading, body, paragraph, etc. To be honest, there are so many tags and if one is not careful, they could get lost in them. I’m speaking for myself anyway.

The wonderful thing about HTML is that it does not need any special server. The only things you need are a text editor and your web browser. I had to download Sublime Text rather than using the conventional notepad on my laptop and it works really well. Basically, every tag has a special colour and it just helps you know if you’re on the right track or not.

Typically, every HTML document starts with <!DOCTYPE html> which is a declaration that it is a HTML file. Next comes the tag <html> (which is just the pattern. Can’t explain why because I don’t know. Lol) and under that, comes the head where you have the title of the page and the body where you have the headings, paragraphs, links, images, etc. I found out that once you type <html> on Sublime Text, it fills out the rest of the tags for you. Easy peasy.

I could go on and on about it but I’d rather you do some research yourself if you’re a beginner like me. I looked up “HTML for dummies” on youtube and I found an amazing crash course (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB1O30fR-EE) for beginners. I also saw some titled “Learn HTML in 5 mins” but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s literally not possible. You’d have to keep going.

Anyway, I’ll stop here. Enjoy your weekend!