#this is a wip and i want to add the subtitles in the final but i need to like. get it all done before i fuck with text

[draconicdetective]

for all 3 pzpth fans on tumblr...pspsps

[footnotesandendings]

meme

Tagged by @heffer-wen, I think this is a "getting to know people better" meme? Not tagging but feel free if you want! Includes WIP snippets at the end.

last song: hmmm not a fun answer but I have a friend visiting and we were driving around earlier with So Much (for) Stardust playing in the car. I don’t remember what was playing when we parked, though, so let’s just go with the title song.

currently reading: <em>To Name the Bigger Lie</em> by Sarah Viren, which is subtitled “A Memoir In Two Stories.” The first thread is about a teacher she had in high school who was supposed to be teaching philosophy and instead took the idea of “what is truth?” and taught conspiracy theories (including Holocaust denial!!!). The second thread is about her wife (a university professor) being accused of sexual harassment. I’m only about halfway through so I don’t know how they tie together (besides the idea of “what is truth and how is it manufactured”) or how it ends.

Also friend and I have gone to several bookstores and my TBR pile is back up to 40, so. That.

currently watching: I wish I still had the ability to watch TV! When will my sports come back! (like next week, since I’m going to watch the women’s World Cup.) I do need to regain the ability to watch fictional TV other than Ted Lasso, since that’s over. I’m not open for recs at the moment but possibly soon.

latest obsession: I don’t have one right now and it makes life boring. I guess the thing I think about most while staring off into space is still Jordan/Virgil.

tall or short?: Short-ish. A little under average.

student or worker?: Worker, but with what the internet loves to call a “stupid little emails job” so do what you want with that.

colour: Blue.

flower: Ooh that’s a good question. Hmm. I planted coneflowers earlier this year and half of them died but the half that made it are just starting to bloom and I’m so proud of them, so I guess them right now.

food: Bread. Give me your carbs if you don’t want them.

WIP: A few things lurching toward being done.

1. The big Jamie hurt/comfort fic that is also ot3 and is going to be 50k by the time I add the last few scenes why does the universe make me suffer. Snip:

Then they have film review, which is boring, and he puts his jacket across his lap so he can text Keeley underneath it. She’s free after training and she’ll take him to a shop to look at planners and notebooks and then show him how to do something called bullet journaling, which sounds absolutely mad and confusing but he’ll give it a try if it makes her happy.

Roy comes over and leans down next to him just after they’ve finalized their plans. “You are either texting or having a wank under that jacket,” he says quietly, “and I don’t want to know which but either way you need to stop and pay attention.”

“I wouldn’t wank in front of all the lads,” Jamie whispers back. “That’s harassment. We watched a film about it.”

2. The one where Virgil is Virgil but Jordan went into ballet instead of football.

He was just out the doors and into the corridor when a voice came from behind him. “Excuse me.”

Virgil braced himself a little—being recognized in public was part of the job, but he was tired and his foot ached and it was a fucking medical office, for god’s sake—but stopped and looked back. “Yes?”

It was the blue-eyed man, holding out Virgil’s AirPods case. “This fell out of your pocket.”

“Oh.” Virgil went back and accepted it, noting in a distant part of his mind that the logo on the man’s jacket was a simple text one spelling out NORTHERN BALLET. “Thank you.”

The man tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. “Awful to lose those.”

“It is. But easy to do.”

That got him a faint smile, just a twist of the lips. Thin, pink lips, settled in a neatly trimmed beard. Everything about the man was meticulous, his hair gelled mercilessly into place, his fingernails short and spotless when Virgil had taken the case from him. “I’ve had to switch to buying the cheapest brand. That way I’m not out a few hundred quid every time I lose them or run them through the wash.”

“Don’t remind me.” Virgil tucked the case in his pocket and offered his hand. “I’m Virgil, by the way.”

That gets another smile, wider. “Did I play it cool enough that you didn’t know I recognized you?”

3. The one where they’re both at Liverpool but Jordan is a woman.

Virgil knows that watching a woman for half an hour without talking to her is creepy. In his defence, she's out in the middle of the training pitch, which is sort of the center of attention for anyone going in or out of the indoor facility. He had been on the way to his car with Milner and Robertson and stopped at the sound of a ball clanging off the crossbar.

"Who's that?" he'd asked, though her LFC women's team training kit narrowed it down a bit. He'd only been in Liverpool for a few weeks, though, he didn't know the women's side yet.

Robbo squinted across the pitch. "Oh. That's the women's captain. Horseface."

Milner slapped the back of Robbo's head. "Try again."

"Henderson, ow, Jordan Henderson. You don't have to hit me, the girls call her that too."

[saltminerising]

Running An Art Shop With Minimal Crying 101

Hey y’all, not sure what compelled me to write this Now but I wanted to put together a list of helpful ‘good business practice’ tips for artists who want to start selling commissions on FR and want to build up a good reputation and make bank. I’m not sure if I’d feel comfortable throwing this on the forums personally so here you go, y’all have to look at my stupidly long possibly helpful brutally honest post cuz I don’t know where else to put this.

I’ve been doing art on FR since I was a young teenager in 2015 and through that time I’ve definitely learned some lessons the hard way. I’ve taken on more than I could handle, I’ve let commissions rot for months because I got overwhelmed… you know what I mean. Here’s some of what I’ve learned over the years that’s helped me run a consistently successful art shop for well over a year now.

I don’t have a tumblr and I don’t know how to add a ‘read more’ to a submission, so happy scrolling <3 I apologize for causing some people a very minor inconvenience

-Do not take prepayment for either more than three commissions at a time, or more than the number of commissions you think you can finish within a month or two, whichever is smaller. This is especially true if you’re like me and you have ADHD. Trust me, the more commissions people have already paid for you have piled up in your to-do list, even if they’d only take you 20 minutes each, you will get more overwhelmed and discouraged and people will wonder why it’s taking you so long. Even if you aren’t getting concerned PMs, a lot of people are just too anxious or polite to ask for updates. (On the flipside, if you commissioned someone and haven’t gotten any word/updates in a while, you’re not in the wrong to ask how things are going and when you can expect an update.)

-Full payment upfront is something I definitely recommend for smaller pieces (headshots, sketches, etc) you can finish in one sitting. However- if you’re doing a ref sheet, a rendered fullbody, etc, and you’ll be spending multiple sessions on the piece and getting feedback for it multiple times- split it up, take half upfront and half either after the sketch is approved, or before you send them the final unwatermarked version. I’ve done dozens of commissions like this and never had a problem, personally. There’s a low chance of a customer backing out on you if you’ve already started and sent WIPs because, y’know, sunk cost, and on the other hand it is reassuring to customers (especially if your shop is new) that if you drop off the map, they paid $20 upfront and got at least a sketch, instead of paying $40 upfront for an unfinished piece.

-In the same vein: if you’re doing a large piece like a rendered fullbody, ref sheet, etc, more communication is always better than less! I always stay on the safe side here. Some people will tell you they just want you to go apeshit and do whatever you think will look cool, other people might have much more specific ideas of what they want and how closely your artwork needs to match the image of their character in their head. Send them the sketch and ask them if they want any changes. Send them the lineart and ask if it looks good. If you’re working on a time-consuming painting that will take you weeks to finish, please please please, communicate! Send updates! Your customers will feel a lot less anxious about how long you’re taking if you keep them posted (plus this is just a personal thing but I love seeing peoples’ artistic process, it sparks joy!!)

-If, once again, you’re like me and stuff like painted fullbodies take you so much longer than other commission types- the worst thing you can do is underprice. Let’s say a detailed, shaded dragon fullbody takes you, for instance, 8 hours, maybe longer because you get burned out and can’t finish it in just one sitting, but you don’t think people will buy an $80/8kg fullbody. Do not lower the price you think your art is worth. If fullbodies take you really long compared to other art, or you get unmotivated, just… don’t offer painted fullbodies, or scenes with multiple characters, or whatever. If there’s a form of art you’re capable of creating but it’s faster, more fun, and gets you more money to do smaller things, just do more smaller commissions instead of taking the big ones. This one was a lifesaver for me.

-Once again in the same vein: It is okay to say no. Just because you are physically/artistically capable of drawing a detailed scene of multiple dragons with complex apparel, doesn’t mean you won’t get burnt out or bored. For me, larger pieces take exponentially longer because I just get bored and don’t want to work on them anymore. If someone asks if you can draw something that will require so much of your personal time and effort to go into a single piece, just say no. Sometimes I’ll say yes to some big commissions because I think the character is cool and inspiring and I want to draw them; otherwise, I will admit, I’ve said no to big commissions because I personally found the character boring as hell (though I wouldn’t phrase it that way). And that’s ok! 

-If you are going to be really busy in the near future, stop taking commissions. You have finals? Don’t say “sorry if things take forever, I have finals”… just don’t take the commissions while you’re busy. If you have too much on your plate, commissions will just stress you out more, and nobody likes to draw motivated by stress. There’s nothing wrong with temporarily pausing your art shop. Put your mental health first. And if you aren’t able to get commissions done on a regular basis because of mental health, or because you don’t give enough of a shit about other peoples’ characters: don’t do commissions. I don’t mean this in a bad way; I’ve been in that spot before and it’ll just cause more stress and guilt than it’s worth. 

-NO PARAGRAPHS. That sounds hypocritical of me writing this lol but do not put long paragraphs in your art shop, ever. I promise nobody will read it. Put your rules, and any other information, in bullet points that are one or two lines. Keep your rules clear, simple, unambiguous and short, or everyone will ignore it and I won’t blame them. Put titles and subtitles wherever you can. If you have a block of text longer than probably five lines, it will be ignored by most people. I have decided not to buy art from people because I didn’t want to have to dig through blocks of text for information.

….so yeah I think that’s about all I can think of at the moment. time to sit back and get yelled at for not being able to shut the fuck up and get to the point lol, hope you (yes you) have a great day c:

[morifinwes]

hi laura!! sorry this is a bit late i barely survived finals week :’) i just woke up after sleeping for like 18 hrs after my last exam fjdns

oooo yes i love yanqing too!! they’re my fav ship apart from wangxian (also jc/lwj w h a t why would anyone do that o.O)

halsey!!!! i love her sm i’ve followed her from the time she released badlands (i was such an emo kid istg that album was everything to me) omg your music taste is so similar to mine wtf??? the other side by ruelle AND mystery of love AND folklore ur taste is exquisite. i’ll check out the other songs i’m sure i’ll like them! (also based on your music taste i recommend u listen to the loch ness monster by matilda mann 10/10 would recommend)

okay today’s questions!

🎀 since i asked about non-canon ships last time, what is your favourite fic you’ve ever read in the mdzs fandom? or a favourite trope?

🎀 tell me about your favourite show(s)/movies other than cql/mdzs! i need something to binge watch over winter break hehe

hope you’re doing well! it’s getting cold where i live so if it’s the same where you live i hope you’re staying warm >.< now that i’m free i will try to send asks more often! - 🍵

hey c!! don't worry, you have to take care of yourself, i'm glad that you finally have more time for yourself too!

sleeping 18 hours after being stressed is valid, after a panick attack i once slept like 16 hours simply because i was extremely exhausted.

i listened to the song and it's!!! so good!! i really like this part of the song: now you've faded, / with no traces, /so who could ever tell. / what you've taken's, / been misplaced / but your name doesn't ring any bells, / since the day that they took you to hell.

halsey is!!! i remember hearing badlands when it came out but i only really got into her mid 2018? i listened to hopeless fountain kingdom then and realized that badlands and hfk where both from the same person!! folklore is @/keepyourlife's fault, annika reblogged a bunch of things and just went crazy over it, so i listened to it. i don't listen to much else from taylor, i like getaway car a lot tho tbh. i saw mystery of love in a wangxian edit on youtube and went !!!!!! over that song, so now i'm obsessed with it.

1. i've got a bunch of favorite fics but _none of them are finished _and ajdkskks i do have some that are finished but i can't remember for the life of me what they're called. so here are five of my favorites: love, in fire and blood by cicer (which i'm recommending to all of my mutuals always) which is a 212K wip of immortal/yp!wwx + war prize au with no rpe/noncon but in the first two chapters lwj is afraid of that happening. it doesn't. then there is this time/universe/dimension travel fic called a song to bring you home by neoserenity, where basically canon!lwj who mourns wwx meets a modern!sick wwx and apparently there is no modern equivalent of lwj? or at least wwx doesn't seem to know one. the updates are sparse but i reread this so often in hopes that updates will appear. an arrow through time by syrus_jones is a young!lwj time traveling to post canon mdzs and pining after "husband" and wwx at the same time and feeling guilty over it bcs he doesn't know wwx is "husband" and then there is the murder of crows by cerbykerby which is a yilingwei sect au. here is a modern office au: hello, IT. have you tried turning it off and on again?* **by overmountainandmeadow, which us just really funny so i've been reading this for stress relief. i actually quote like time travel aus? also just wangxian meeting other versions of themselves is fun!! i have a bunch of modern college au tabs open but i don't actually seek them out, if i see one and like the plot then i'll read it. there are a lot of good time travel aus in this fandom!! also i like it when people get wangxian together earlier than in canon, it's just really fun to see how that would go. i don't remember the name but i think there was one fic where lwj tried to flirt with wwx and wwx just didn't notice? until somebody pointed it out to him i think? that was fun to read because lwj was just so frustrated!!

2. i feel like i forget what shows i watched after i watched them? movies too, though i like to stick to rewatching movies i already know. but here are some shows: dark on netflix, if you have netflix it should be there, it's a german netflix show about time travel and fate and things being really fucked up. basically there is this endless loop of the world apocalypse happening in 2019? 2020? i'm not that sure of the timeline rn but it's either 2019 or 2020!! and jonas, the male lead, wants to prevent it but this shit gets complicated because this is a time loop, everything he has done has been done before him. there are some really great quotes in the show about things, there is a wangxian gifset that actually uses a quote from dark, and that's the one about having three deaths. (i'll probably add a link to the gifset when i find it) also martha, the female lead, seems not that important in the first season but don't be fooled by that. the ending is.... complex and cool and holy shit there is still one thing we don't know and ahdkksks it's a surprise tho so 👀👀. i recommend watching it in german if possible and with subtitles. i've watched a few scenes in english and idk the voice actors don't seen to fit, but i don't know about other languages. the 100 is also a pretty good show but it's.... it has queerbaiting. and to be honest, the queerbaiting is probably the only reason the show made it to a seventh season. lexa, a lesbian, dies and they use her death for the queerbaiting since she gets together with clarke, the lead character. clarke is a character that gets a lot of hate from both fandom and the characters, a lot of unfair hate if you ask me. she has to do a lot of decisions that are just not meant to be for a single human being, @/solntserises and i and a lot of arguements over placing the blame on her or placing the blame on society and the situation itself. clarke basically does what she needs to do, what she needs to do in order to protect her people, her friends, her family. she often just doesn't have good options, and if she has then she deems the risk too high or something too good to be true (which, she often is right about???). after s1 her friends push her into situations where she has to make the hard choice, but if it doesn't work out how they want it to work out they get mad at her. which is not fair. i remember hearing that raven finally understands what clarke goes through in s7? but i haven't watched the season. i gave up the moment lexa died and didn't want to watch past it, but when @/solntserises started we watched the other seasons together.

there is also shadowhunters which is an okay show ig, i've watched vikings until s5 too and i quite liked it, prison break has a lot of cool stuff to offer but i'd be careful watching it in case of any triggers you might have. i don't remember 100% of the plot but enough to say that one of the characters is a pervert and an awful person, so lots of murder, a lot of blood and yeah. the two main characters are brothers and mostly innocent in this but yeah. they break out of a prison y'know.

lucifer is !!! i think it goes after dc comics? so ig it's somehow part of the dceu but they're like.... never mentioned so idk. it's really fun tho!! you probably have heard from the vampire diaries right? yeah well, there is a spin off called the origianls and it's actually really good. it had some times where i was going to call it off but it's fine, legacies is both tvd's and to's spinoff and from the quality it can't really compare, it's still fun to watch and seeing the new generation grow up. (also a lot more canon gays)

for some movies: i don't really watch many but i've watched every movie in the mcu so far, i have the extended special editions for both the lord of the rings and the hobbit trilogy, the half of it is about ellie chu, an asian girl living in a small town with her depressed dad and falling in love with aster flores, and just.... finding herself, finding out what she wants, who she is and trying to figure out where life takes her. the movie is great!! the romance process is really slow and not that much of the main focus, but more of ellie finding her place in the world? the old guard is a fantastic movie that i watched because of @/keiraknigthly, it's really fun to watch!!

i look forward to talking to you more often!! 🥰💞

[brianhandy]

Final Name & Marketing

Wild Honesty: A game for deeper conversations. That is the final name of the game! It is a balance of informational and styling for our primary market of mental health more than indie game, and we even got the web domain for it. Our first build is approved for the app store, marketing research is underway, and Testflight builds are out in the wild and generating more attention than expected. It’s been a good two weeks!

I am reading so many articles like this now. This Disney+ analysis was excellent!

Investing in Marketing (and financing that!)

There was a big pivot here these past two weeks! The planned release is end of this month but a financial assessment from tax rebates tomorrow will set this up more too. Where publishers want more ownership and larger investments, the new plan is instead a line of credit for the LLC and a justified (low risk to my best judgement from lots of WIP numbers!) investment on marketing as long as it could make back its own cost. That’s a lot! This is a big change for me, and I’d still love to have a market specialist to run those numbers, which might be a call with an advisor soon, but in the meantime is about researching marketing techniques and taking a chance on one - hopefully with a marketing company. 

The goal is to connect the game with people who would pay to have it, and I think that could not only be done, but up to a certain point even be worth the financial investment to get the word out. The numbers look like other high quality titles make about $10-20k back if they are in the top 10% of the market, and we have enough strong and positive feedback consistently to lead me to believe that is a real possibility here. The question instead is, how much financially do we want to risk in attempting that?

Names are a key element of concisely & verbally sharing the value of a product.

The Words & Tones of Naming

The last minute name change comes out of the ongoing debate, which almost finalized on Cute Animals & Tough Questions, but was highlighted to me in a final meeting with an old advisor/friend as “that sounds like an indie game” when that has recently become our secondary market. Friends outside of games talk about this title just as a deep conversation starter, and while still a game, they are not focused on it for distraction. That makes the market lifestyle and mental health, and Wild Honesty is a stronger name for invoking that as the primary use. The subtitle, “a game for deeper conversations” establishes both that it is definitely a game, and that it is definitely about opening up and involves talking. The promise is in getting to that closeness, and I feel pretty confident with this final decision moving forwards. Expect a logo (or rough draft at least) next blogpost!

Apple has extensive and clean documentation to help with all this.

Submitting Builds: Content!

Submitting to Apple for an early build approval was important. It, as always, involved a lot more content than expected. iPhones have amazing export features for screencapture now from a connected MacBook directly - including audio capture - and trimming video in the Preview app is ridiculously easy in the latest version of Mac. It’s great to see Apple support how proliferative video is in users’ lives now, both in creating and sharing content, with simple but important tools easily accessible. Even so - App Store submissions, to have video, have very strict resolution and time length requirements. I upgraded my Adobe suite to add Premiere and After Effects just to more easily deal with all this. Content is still the hardest part of submitting, but now there are Privacy Policy and HTTPS government form requirements too (that one will still have to be done soon). Submissions are hard! Always leave extra time for the unexpected here.

Online tools, mailed forms, and face to face time all helped make this happen.

Applying for Business Credit?

A marketing plan needs a marketing budget, so since our last blogpost, I both applied for and was given a company line of credit and a company credit card with a low interest rate and no interest for 9mo respectively. This is a perfect tool to try taking a chance at investing in marketing, and with enough funds to cover any budget up to our target returns. Still on the table is research on bankruptcy and what happens if things go wrong, aside from being in debt, as my understanding is that legal entities have a lot more protection and opportunities for forgiveness here - but I still need to do my research on those topics. For now, it creates a powerful safety buffer, and an opportunity to experiment short term with a launch budget even if later it means paying down a failed attempt at an investment. 

Our 100% unrelated Global Game Jam game this weekend: Turkey’s Revenge!

Conclusion

Wow launching a game is hard. It seems that taking on more ambitious indie projects, targeting wider audiences, and doing more experimental things in more experimental conditions leads to even harder game launches than we previously had. And launching a normal game is hard enough on its own! Time, money, and quality are always the resources at stake here. I’m taking as much time as I can to make up for the other two, but time seems to be at the expense (living expenses, specifically!) of money, so that may run out soon too. More info in a coming blogpost - but the core game with 300+ questions has been getting really solid feedback and, almost every time I show it, gets brought up again sooner than I expect and catches me off guard! That’s great! People keep asking when they can buy the game and if it will be on their platform. That seems... really good? I don’t know what will happen at the end of February, but I am very excited to find out!

2/3/2020