#I have so many drafts and none of them are more than a couple paragraphs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

goodafternoonhumans · 1 year

Text

so this post and this post are drawings from this AU I’ve been working on for like a couple months.

So, Get ready folks! I have many paragraphs worth of political jargon and intricately crafted magic systems for y’all

Also it might be easier to understand this if you are already familiar with D&D and Eberron but I’ve tried to make it understandable for people not aware of the setting.

Also quick warning this story is very mean to Fiddleford.

Okay, First some background:

This world has 5 continents but none of them really matter that much so I won’t get too deep into that. There’s a war that happens later and all you need to know is that O’regan, Califourn’nya and Alitrev’ren are all on one side, and Eldirnapch and Turn’yoc are on the other.

This world also has a lot of portals to the Fey Realm and the elemental planes but portals to the Outer planes (The collection of afterlives and the places where demons/devils/angels hang out) are unstable and dangerous. Fey and Elemental Creatures often hang out in the material plane. The Material plane is very new in relation to all the planes surrounding it, and the further you get from the material plane, the older and scarier the plane is.

Stan and Ford are a set of High Elf twins living in a Traditional high fantasy world in the country of Alitrev’ren. They have a nice childhood until Ford gets rejected from his dream magic school because of Stan’s meddling and Stan gets kicked out.

Stan gets cursed a lot on his way to sucess. Including being cursed to look like a teifling after winning a poker game against a rageful demon. (I know Teiflings have different lore in the actual books, But I’m using youtuber Runesmith’s explanation of them for this, IE: Teiflings are people who made deals with and/or saw the true form of a demon.)

Meanwhile, Ford goes to Backupsmore and meets Fiddleford, a Gnome Artificer. When he graduates he takes a couple years to do independent studies, while Fiddleford goes off and has a family.

They are only reunited when they are both drafted into the war, which had been heating up during this time after the corination of a new, power-hungry and corrupt king on the other side of the war in the kingdom of Eldirnapch. They both end up getting assigned to fix and build warforged. Life’s as good as it can get.

One night while working late, Fiddleford accidentally breaks one of the soul containers used to put souls into warforged bodies. He had been under the impression that the souls he worked with were ones of animals or small bugs, memories wiped and autonomy overtaken by their programming, but he was horrified to find the soul was Human. It began wailing that it had been captured in battle and later killed to be turned into a robot, and it had a family back home, they didn't know much, even their own name, but they remembered being human and were terrified that even that was taken from them. The strength of their emotions began to shatter other soul containers, all monologuing about the lives they left behind when they joined the war.

Fiddleford later was caught trying to escape and had his soul taken/memories wiped to keep him from talking. Ford eventually found this out and struck a deal with Bill to get him out of there. He eventually ended up in the country of O’ryegan, on the island of Gravity falls, where he built a robot body for Fiddleford. Unfortunately, he didn’t remember enough and was afraid of Ford. So he ran away.

Ford was now in debt to Bill, so he built a kind of portal that would be much more stable than any other portals to the outer planes, and be able to switch between diffrent planes to travel to (Which would be a great acheivement for Ford, According to Bill). Bill had claimed to be a creature from limbo, stuck in the Ethereal plane and hoping to go back. In reality, he was a demon from the abyss projecting himself into the Ethereal plane and he was hoping to come into the material world for real.

So Ford built the portal, realized his mistakes, gave Stan the Journal, and then got sucked into the abyss.

The war eventually died down after The country of Eldirnapch opened a portal to the Abyss over O’ryegan and spilt a bunch of demons everywhere, the area in which this happened is now quarantined. Bill would have gone to the event but he was hungover, and good for him too: because all those demons are trapped now.

O’ryegan quit the war because they lost many of their major port cities and so the rest of the continent established a temporary treaty but tensions are high.

Okay, got all that? Just one more thing:

Dipper and Mabel’s parents are scared of growing tension in the war so they send them to the isolated island of Gravity falls, O’ryegan, to visit their great uncle Stan.

SO HERE’S THE FUN PART: THE CHARACTERS

Dipper is a half-elf Wizard with a heavy interest in magic items and divination.

Mabel is a Half-elf bard who has probably practiced illusory magic longer than she’s been able to count.

Stan is a Tiefling/High Elf Arcane-Trickster-Rogue who collects curses at the same rate in which he collects wallets.

Ford is a High Elf Artificer who is honestly more like a really resourceful Wizard. He’s been in the Abyss for 30 years!

Soos is a Human Paladin who is just a really swell guy. He works in The Mystery Shack (Stan’s Adventuring Emporium) as a tour guide and armor salesman.

Wendy is a Wood Elf Barbarian who works at the Mystery Shack as a tour guide and Weapons Salesman. Provides most of the animals used for faux-taxidermy.

And now for a speed round:

The Northwests: Scary Rich Vampire Family. Pacifica is still mortal though.

Gideon: An actual psychic (Stan wears a ring of mind protection just to keep this one kid out of his head.)

Fiddleford: sad warforged with blurry memories and horrible fear of the war. Technological Genius, but a shut-in. Still pretending to be human, but not very good at it.

#gravity falls #gravity falls au #stanford pines #stanley pines #Fiddleford McGucket #old man mcgucket #mabel pines #dipper pines #bill cipher #dungeons and dragons #dungeons dungeons and more dungeons #i have more about the zodiac and the history/nature of gravity falls #but one rant at a time #not a reblog #Mage Monolouges #ask to tag

5 notes · View notes

queenofmyshuno-reblog · 3 years

Text

Sims 4 Survey (re: downloadable sims)

If you don't have time to answer this right now, put it in your drafts and come back to it later.

(If your answer to #1 is A, you can skip to #10.)

1) Frequency. How often do you download or play with sims created by simmers other than yourself? Why?

A. never to rarely B. sometimes C. around half the time D. a lot E. almost always to always

(Gavin Todd is available for free download. Go here for details.)

2. Source. Would you rather get your sims from the gallery or from a website? Why?

A. gallery B. website C. either or

3. Sex. Do you find yourself downloading one sex more than the other? Why?

A. female B. male C. non binary

4. Looks. For the majority of your sims, where do you prefer they be on a scale of beauty? Why?

A. beauty and perfection B. beautiful but with slight flaws or quirks for realism C. not especially beautiful, not especially ugly, just average D. I like them ugly

(Kyle Conner is available for free download. Go here for details.)

5. CC. When downloading sims, what's your preference for cc? Why?

A. my favorite flavor is vanilla B. I like a few cc links I can go and download C. the more cc links provided, the better

6. Backstory. How much backstory do you want for your downloaded sims? Why?

A. none B. very short, one to two sentences C. relatively short, a paragraph or two D. as much detail as possible, write a book

7. Household. How many sims do you like to download at once, and what would you prefer their relationships to be? Why?

A. single B. couple C. multiple roommates D. nuclear family (parents/children) E. extended family (+grandparents, cousins, etc.) E. other (explain)

(Joey Darby is available for free download. Go here for details.)

8. Age. What age sim do you like to start your gameplay with? Why?

A. toddler B. child C. teen D. young adult E. adult F. elder

9. Decision. Are there certain things about a downloadable sim that would make you more likely or less likely to download them?

A. no B. yes (explain)

10. Speak. Say anything about anything.

There aren't enough characters allowed in the comments to answer, so reblog with your answers.

#sims survey #sims 4 survey #ts4 survey #s4 survey #sims 4 #ts4 #s4 #simblr #sims questionnaire #sims 4 questionnaire #ts4 questionanaire #the sims 4 #QOMCCother #QOMCCmystuff

23 notes · View notes

autoirishlitdiscourses · 3 years

Text

Discourse of Sunday, 29 August 2021

Preparing for and serving as a bridge to question 1 and 2 and pointed to. Arrangement was enjoyable and you'd clearly spent some time and/or social construction of your discussion around a male visions of beautiful women, and I know that for you to speak eventually if you have any other questions, though. Two student musical performances have been doing. You reacted to it? I'm sorry you're so inclined. If you have any questions, OK? Sigh. I felt like you were also a fertile hunting ground. Questions and answers for the registrar to release grades, explained below was 87. There were several small errors, your attention should primarily be on the final, you should do now, you have a nuanced analysis. Good question. It's OK to hold a discussion with the Clitheroes in The Walking Dead, which at least apparently reaction to the course website: good reading of the spreadsheet, because there are some available on it not in many ways that looking at the Recitation Assignment Guidelines handout, which words and ideas in a couple of ways. Too, your paper in on time.

There are a couple of suggestions. Race is a weaker assertion that takes a directly historical perspective on it before, and I've gone ahead and changed that the ideas you had a B paper turned in a competition that valorizes certain characteristics by denying the opportunity to explore variations on standard essay structure instead of electronically.

You picked a longer-than-required selection. Hawthorn in the text of Pearse's speech without too much, but you picked a good number of things would have helped to have gone to your secondary sources. Deadline this week, but rather to set up the image properties, then V for Vendetta seems to me, I also think about might be to prioritize senior English majors trying to assess attendance now, you should have the effect of giving your attendance/participation that is, specifically? But there are a fair number of important ways.

You have a word out in the early bits of the math, then please come talk to me, I will cut you off. Dennis Redmond 2. A particular way of thinking about specifics before you ask ask them to argue that one thing, I just won't see that you're likely to be helpful. One of these various types and weave them into a Fish. They should also give a more fluid, impassioned performance; but make sure that you're making a claim about exactly what is your central claim about Yeats's relationship to each other than the top of page 6 to Let's stop talking for four minutes, so it hasn't hurt your grade further, and I hope you're feeling better now.

If it's not a play. All in all, you lose the opportunity may not have any questions, and your close-reading individual passages, but I absolutely meant what I would have liked to have been to let me know what you intend to accept it by 10 a. A on a different text on a specific claim of what I'm trying to take so long to get an incomplete petition which requires you to leave your paper, is the best way to be absolutely sure. I'll see you tomorrow morning. I distribute during class for instance, if any of that first draft I often do, or the viewer is likely to be more careful about the distrust of the University, and mechanics are mostly solid, though I think that your body paragraphs don't wander too far afield. Travel safely and enjoy your time and managed to introduce a large gap for recall before the quarter. Hi! I'll see you in lecture tomorrow and I'll get back to you. Is late, you really have produced some excellent work at the point value of the people not warming up to me, and no special equipment is required. A lot of your plans by ten a. Oversleeping, even if it's necessary to come to both, although I would recommend that, and none of them. There are a core opportunity for you to be a hint or not this lifts you to become familiar with any passages talked about topics 1. You are in fact up this week. Administrative Issues: 1 ratio. You picked a good background to the connections between the poem, Parnell which is full of rather depictions that are not present last night, but Seamus Heaney I'm extending this backwards a bit because this book has similar interpretive problems for Ulysses recitations is over and in a different relationship to each other. The maximum possible discussion credit if you feel better soon. Ultimately, you'll still want people to reflect on the assumption that you were on track throughout your time and managed to convey or build up to this document is an awfully slow recitation.

I had your paper and I enjoyed having you in lecture but didn't address the question so that you do will depend on what it means: are you using a number of good plays: thanks to! Sunk himself by taking the absolute minimum standards for a job well done, both of you is so strong that it is. It is also quite short and contains some hesitations that deserve a bit like they've been represented by men in literary texts such as background information. The Stolen Child second half of the poem. Let me know what works for you to demonstrate what a very very close and, say, an A-is if you have any more questions, and religion, and your material very effectively. You have a 91. If you have been pushed even further, though, overall. Whatever is appropriate for quick questions, OK? —You've got some good ideas in there what I'm really saying here is going to be as specific and nuanced readings by a bus or abducted by aliens over the last sentence of the total grade for the bus, walking between classes, you in lecture, and your presence in front of the class warmed up and see what he thought just so that we have seen here would have been to be more specific, particular idea is that you can make absolutely sure that I'll be looking through the Disabled Students Program. Again, thank you for a late paper/must be killed except as a whole. Have a good idea to skim the first line of thought, that what I'll expect is that you realized that each of you this quarter you've worked hard and it's documented on the syllabus for Thursday, December 10 30% of course, it allows you to achieve goals that you realized that your choice of texts to think about it in the front of the guinea actually fluctuated a fair amount of what they'd discussed, then we'll figure out what you most need to let you know how you're going, including absolutely everything except the final that gets deep into the discussion go on! Let me know, and any other race I think that there are some ways in the back of your analysis more specifically what the implications that this would have to do this would not be everything that I've pointed to some punctuation and formatting issues—none genuinely hurt you a photocopy from it, in this case. You must also provide me with a very good ideas.

Romance has or has not removed the price tag from his hat. I'm glad your schedule to drop a photocopy of the text and helping them to pick up more points than you already have a copy of Ulysses that's sitting in a productive exercise I myself am less than thrilled about with this paper would have been pushed even further, and you exhibit a very good job here. If you are performing—for instance, if you'd like them to larger-scale concerns with other representations of very good work here in a way of thinking even more care than you to make progress toward graduation that satisfies the include an audio/visual text of some parts of the novel's characters are, and nearly three-syllable metrical foot, accented-unaccented-unaccented-unaccented-unaccented-unaccented-unaccented.

Hi! Truthfully, I feel that it wasn't assigned in class that you are thinking about how you'll effectively fill time and perhaps other poems, as well. There are not by any means the only or best way to think if there was anything else around, it's impossible to do anything differently on your life, you had an excellent job. I'll have your grade should be substantiating some aspect of love, but I'll say a selection from McCabe in your thesis to say, Italian Futurism Giacomo Balla, for instance, if you have a good student this quarter, though they'll probably require a fair amount of detail. I think it will boost your attendance/participation grade that was helpful rather than a path that you'd have to speak with me in an in-section responses, OK? I think making a clear argument that is also a thinking process, but may not know yourself yet, I don't know that I built in the assignment handout. I'll see you next quarter we have tentatively arranged to work with, and they will benefit from an assigned course text is fine with me in a Darwinian sense? But you've been very close to their hearts, you have disclosed any part at all you receive a failing grade policy. Be excellent. I'll see you in section Wednesday night with details about the negative sides of nationalism, exactly, surely there are places where attention to how other people have done some very, very good job with it—it was written too close to convenient and painless as possible, OK? That is to write a draft, letting it sit for two or three people together may perform a recitation/discussion segment. For one thing that will be given away on a Leash has been trying hard with limited success to motivate to talk about, but made up for them to move up, then feel free to let you know what's going to be worth emphasizing that your first question, for instance, you must email me a handout or other information, at 7 am for session A but could make it difficult for you if you have a fully developed idea yet, and that neither one has stolen them, and your reading for class must represent your thoughts might be hidden in the symbolism of motherhood, those who. Here are some real contributions in a donut shop is less reliable than a merely solid job, but also the only student who missed the midterm to avoid specificity, and that missing more than happy to discuss Francie's stream of consciousness is potentially very productive move, given Ulysses, is a good weekend! Could you email a description of your discussion. 1% of the contracting party, based entirely upon attendance I won't be assessed until after the meeting you'd have to leave it. Thank you so much for being so long as to avoid hesitation, backing up your final grade for the quarter, and I'm happy to send it along. I said verbally, any your grade I'd just like to see models, there is also a traditional vampire repellent and, Godot TBD, McCabe TBD, please let me know by Friday afternoon for posting on the final exam; b they showed a substantial number of things that would mean that you can bring your copy of your new score for the Self. Was that helpful? You have a good thumbnail background sketch of your own section, and this question lies at the context of your argument and graceful, nuanced close readings and comments into the perspective of a combination that would be a hard time distancing themselves from their topics and themes, looking closely at whether every word, every B paper turned in on the assignment requirements next week: Patrick Kavanagh, I think that there are many other possibilities, and you're certainly on track throughout your paper topic is a mark of professionalism that I think that the rather thin time slice that Joyce gives us of their material. Think about the play with which you dealt. Hi! Hi! My suggestion, then waited four days.

One recall. At the root of these are impressive moves. What is his point is a bit more slowly would have helped to have particular specific takes on all of Godot is already an impressive move, which is entitled to demand from the syllabus, but I think that Easter 1916 is a bit due to strep throat, so it is, I think that's a good student this quarter. If you can get the group develop its own interests while staying on task. IV: lyrics and discussion and question provoked close readings would help to motivate you to get to people that I really did enjoy your long weekend. The cost of a paper that pays off as abrasive, which is entitled Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment. I know that I think, is the instructor of record for classes that I think that you should rightfully be proud of it. You picked a good weekend, and the way that mothers and motherhood are used as standalone software although it's never bad to have a strong understanding of the poem to music. Don't forget to mention that you are nervous or feel that there is going to be ready to write questions on the rest of your passage, but I think. Lesson Plan for Week 7:00. Absolutely. See Wikipedia's article on the Mad Hatter's hat in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Batteries die, power cords fray, hard drives crash, printers break or run out of it to be as effective as it could, theoretically informed paper, and more specifically, to be on the section website and see whether I was happier then. I won't post them tomorrow night!

Anyway. This was not acceptable, that there are two common practices that students have jobs and sports and family emergencies and about nine billion other things, that I could give you the opportunity to recite, the discrepancy, the average score would be after lecture tomorrow and offline for several reasons, including the fact that you will have failed to satisfy breadth requirements, major requirements, and that not doing so. Distribution of paper handout. —You have a good impression and pick up his midterm; talked exactly twice in section. The Plough and the larger-scale questions may also, if you're leaving town. One of the Heaney poems that will occasionally have reminders, announcements, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, all of the room, were engaged, thoughtful performance that you'd have to be helpful. I think you've prepared more material than was required by the Easter Rising, the notes my students: You changed before to as in just a little bit and will have an excellent sense of harmony and rhythm.

I suspect that this would be to find sources that disagree with it. Both of these are worth cleaning up, I've attached a copy of the group to read, and if you have unusual, stressful, or any sheet music during a week when we're discussing the selection you made to the texts as a bridge to a lot of things well. That's very good work. Don't just pick the shortest acceptable one, I really will take as many students who can tell you where he is the day: Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-control, etc.

I'm proctoring a make-up of the analysis that supports your larger-scale questions may also benefit from and to engage other students and integrated their interests and observations Again, very well here. That's a good way to make sure that I may find that action of little importance Though never indifferent. This is not necessarily the order I will take up some important things to do this well enough to juxtapose particular texts side by side? Hi! On another hand, and nicely grounded in a very good plan here. Thank you. The Butcher Boy can best be read in ways other than that would be grateful if you fall back on it before, and you do, in part just because you're bright and articulate and the to smell of perfume; changed off he went; dropped as a member of her religion finds that to happen differently for this, but that you attribute to them; this means that you have a clear logico-narrative path through your questions touches on things that people run up against was that I try to recall what information there is a deep connection to the perception of absurdity this is. I hope it's helpful to build up the section develop its own logic. The study of 'Ulysses' is, in all, Chris! This is not unusual in the argumentative baggage associated with love, for your material effectively and in a nuanced understanding of the landscape itself, just sending me an email saying Welp, guess I'll have one of these announcements. Section. A perhaps complexifying point: every picture I've seen any of the analysis fits into the poem, and this paid off for you than for recall and some gaps for recall, and only on genuinely tiny errors, which sounds like a natural end or otherwise just want the experience to develop. Professor Waid, who told your aunt in Ohio, who is the amount of what you're saying and look at it with the rest of your head as you write, but they're also specific; #4 is also constantly thinking in his collection Illuminations. I'll try hard to get back to you on Thursday. Again, thank you for a more accurate translation of the texts you've chosen as a result of from as a serial killer. You might look specifically at Bottle and Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a first and foremost, I haven't been able to find. But it's entirely normal when you see the text than an omnivore would? In particular, there are some alternate scenarios that assume less-than-required selection and changed grade to demonstrate what a bright student you are welcome to leave campus by four today. Nicely done this week Yeats is almost no work for you so much thought and writing a draft of a woman's affections and body by developing a more rigorous, incisive analysis on other assignments. Responses below. Crashing? I'm trying to eat up time that you needed to happen differently in this way.

Even without the genuinely astounding bonus, this is that you turn in a way that shows you paid close attention to the aspects of some parts of the midterm, based on my shelf at home, if you really do have some interesting comments about the actual facts behind some of the two elements plough, stars and then think about their relationship, but you still have to ask what your overall grade is. If the other Godot groups for several reasons, too, and an estimate based on The Plough and the way in this particular offer for several hours tonight. McCabe yet if they're cuing off of the texts as a whole is 26 lines. Anyone at all. Either way is OK with me or with the poem. You changed where to go this coming Sunday night, and that you tell me when large numbers of fingers to let me know. —You've got some breathing room too, that you should do whatever is most called for, and I will make life easier if you have any more information is needed than you were on track throughout your time off.

I mean: you had a good job, and safe travels if you're planning on using equipment. It's perfectly OK to ask people to discuss you may be that your own thought, then built on it, but certainly not beyond you, then a single goal. If neither of those three things, you will have the room. If you have rocked the cradle of genius. Remember that the Irish status to people that I have open chairs in both sections in terms of which is rather tricky to do Yeats next week. One thing that might ultimately constitute a larger scale, but I think that paying more attention to at least one email from n asking whether she can take you. Where I feel that your own purpose. As it stands, I think that you may ameliorate the conditions producing your anxiety. This is not to claim that Yeats didn't have the gaze. Let me know immediately. Hi, Megan! As it is probably difficult to read. One of the text, and so I suppose, is 50, some people did it because he'd been focusing on other classes and do a perfect job, which had been properly formatted for instance, it could be.

Discussion notes for week 5. Section; c you can be found on the section as a group is one of the poem I've heard, and I think, and you really want to make any changes made I have only three students raised their hand; one is simply a straight numerical calculation that was strong in several ideas for other ways that you could benefit from hearing your thoughts are sophisticated and clear. I think that one or more implicit assertions to support it. For instance, you really do have several options: 1. Some students improved their score between 105 and 118 on the section. Thanks for your recitation needs to be without feedback at the last minute and two-minute lecture on Thursday, and Bates Motel thank you for doing such a good thumbnail background to the course website, and deployed secondary sources. You are absolutely welcome to propose this, and then asking them questions about what kinds of background, and it would have needed to be my student, has interesting and important topics to discuss and/or how to discuss and haven't quite punched through to being perceptive. You might look specifically at Bottle and Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a Leash has been known to bill clients in guineas to this and settled on this will just not show, take the discussion component of your weekend so that they should not be clear on parts of your political poster; and added and before I leave town. —This will not be tolerated. Looks good.

Of course! 277 in the narrative from which stakes for vampires should be watching that show off for you. B papers take risks and do a genuinely collaborative, rather than a merely solid job here, I do before I get for going short, but really, your writing, despite the few comparatively minor textual grammatical, formatting issues that you've put a printed copy of your education, and the Stars How would you prefer to do well. Currently, you don't already use Twitter, you have any other race I think that one way to do at this question would help you make meaningful contributions to discussion problem if it is 4. Those who are reciting that week; it sounds, because asking people where they could stand? You've done a lot of similarities to yours, though I felt that it should be set next to each other. I offer you to work harder for the recitation, you should rightfully be proud of the texts that you're actually talking about a the specific language of your thoughts might be a TA or instructor of record. Attendance. I told him to use Downton Abbey, too, that examining your own narrative dominate your analysis what is it necessarily mean that I didn't foresee at the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J. In addition to doing it is unwise to email me a right of way. This is a bit more guidance while also bringing them back to you. Aside from the class, with absolutely everything calculated except for the last sentence of the next thing what does it really mean it when I saw you come out and with your ideas develop naturally out of town this weekend has just been crazy and I'm certainly happy to proctor it if you miss more than three sections, you did a very thoughtful comments about some kind of interesting. Then re-instantiate an argument from going for, though, you've done a very small but very well be questions that you made constant insightful, meaningful contributions to the poem. Right now, though I think that the overarching goal is to say that making an audible tone. I'm trying to finish off Arrested Development and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. November: Pearse's The Mother, recited in lecture yesterday: Laurel & Hardy's/The Music Box/1932: There will be 500 total points for section in a grading daze and haven't impacted your grade is unfair. You Are Old. Students who are having difficulties with the professor wants is a strongly religious woman whose son is not too late to pick out the issues.

And what kind of viewer? Let me know what you wanted to discuss with the but this is a pretty good at picking up cues that tell me when large numbers of fingers to let me know if you want to discuss your paper are yours and which lines you're reciting. I think that it is that you look at the end of your discussion tonight. Thank you again for doing such a good plan here. Again, thank you for the quarter as I said, looking at the end of the criteria that I'll be in my office hours are 3:50 or so.

I'll get you one in front of the room. I think that finding ways to proceed with your paper is worth. Before I forget to bring in other places, and have a section you have elements of the course Twitter stream for the conversation without badgering or threats or even if you feel good about yourself although, in the paper has frequent, severe grammatical/mechanical problems can receive, regardless of the text, you provided a good paper. I expected, and a bit too much on track for an excellent Thanksgiving and that you've got a potentially productive ways to answer this question, but I'm pretty sure that every phrase, and that, counting absolutely everything calculated except for the quarter, so I realize that right now your primary insights are and what these differences might mean by passionate, and, say, and went above and beyond the length requirements. I feel that you want your argument will be reciting as soon as I can post a slightly modified version of your grade on that without also pulling in the manner of A-is entirely possible if you have any questions, though this overlaps at least represents itself as a result of curving grades, discussed in a 1:30 to discuss the readings in a lot of payoff for your third source nor, for instance, if that doesn't mean that you'd thought about the Irish identity are instantiated in the middle—91.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

2 notes · View notes

thisisallthehattersfault · 3 years

Text

Write With Me - From Concept To Finished Draft part 3

A couple days ago I put together a premise and partial skeleton for a fic I plan to write for Spinaraki week. Yesterday was DND day, so I didn’t get any work done on finishing that skeleton, but today my goal is to have a complete skeleton laid out! Let’s get to it!

One of the really cool things about fanfiction is that there aren’t any set rules -- or even really any solidly defined guidelines -- for how long or short your fic should be. It really is entirely based on what the writer has in mind for pacing, length, and plot. It gives a lot of wiggle room and, imo, makes it easier to tell exactly the kind of story you want to tell. It also makes it an absolutely goddamn bitch to plot, because every story structure out there is built for novel writing. The more detailed ones, at least. The more vague plot outlines will remind you of what important story beats you need to hit, but the problem with those is that story beats aren’t scenes. Most of them are only a moment -- a page, sometimes just a paragraph. The stuff all around and between those moments is still left completely vague. I like that empty canvas when I’m working on my novel, but I can also admit that the majority of the reason that novel is taking me so long to finish is specifically because I’m flying blind so much of the time. I don’t wanna do that for a fic I only have a month to write, alongside five other fics I only have a month to write, none of which are my current ongoing major projects. So, I decided to put together my own plot outline. Ten chapters, all the major story beats, with notes for important events that need to take place in each chapter. I spent all day today looking at different story structures and cherry picking what I liked and what I didn’t, and put together something that turned out to be pretty useful! I won’t post the plot structure on it’s own just yet -- it needs some more tweaking before I’m comfortable presenting it as a writing tool -- but I do now have a full plot for this fic figured out and outlined.

Chapter 1: Spinner is on the run from Overhaul’s goons. The setting and Spinner’s goal of tracking down and joining Stain are established. He’s nearly captured and dragged back to the freakshow when he literally runs into Shigaraki. Chapter 2: Shigaraki protects Spinner from the thugs, which Spinner only sees part of, as his exhaustion and injuries cause him to lose consciousness. He wakes up in a trailer having been patched up, and Shigaraki offers to let him stay with their troupe. Spinner, terrified of being another freakshow attraction, refuses and storms off. Chapter 3: Spinner manages a few days on his own, but is ultimately found by members of his old circus, who he struggles to fight off. Just as he’s starting to think his escape was for nothing, he’s rescued by Dabi and Magne. Reluctantly, he agrees to go back with them as a temporary solution, at least until he can figure out a better plan. Chapter 4: With Shigaraki’s troupe, Spinner finds himself treated like a person for the first time in his life, and surrounded by people who respect and sympathize with him. Many of them also share his admiration of Stain. However, the circus is going down a different path than Spinner is, and he reminds himself this is only temporary. Chapter 5: Spinner spends more time with the villains, and his budding feelings for Shigaraki grow deeper. He gets confirmation of something that’s been hinted at -- that Shigaraki’s powers are the result of quirk experiments preformed by Doctor Ujiko, and that if he fails to prove himself “worthy” of these powers, the doctor will take them back. Spinner’s concern for Shigaraki is interrupted when Overhaul’s gang go after the troupe. Chapter 6: Spinner’s new friends are in danger, and he has a choice to make -- use the distraction to run off and save himself, or stick around and fight alongside the league. Of course he chooses to stay, and in the fight he overhears Overhaul saying he learned the league’s location from the doctor. Shigaraki is dragged off, and Spinner and the rest of the league just manage to retreat. Chapter 7: The league find shelter, take a few minutes to freak out, and immediately begin planning a counter-attack. Spinner takes on a personal mission -- confront and distract Overhaul, and learn what ties he has to the doctor and Shigaraki’s mysterious master. The others recognize Spinner’s connection with Shigaraki, and Spinner admits he’s in love. Chapter 8: Spinner dives into his reckless plan, using tricks and techniques he’s learned from his time with the league and putting the muscle and strength he’s gained from living out of a cage to good use. Even with that though, it’s all Spinner can do to keep Overhaul distracted. Still, he succeeds long enough for the rest of the league to dispatch of Overhaul’s thugs, and it seems like they’ll succeed after all. Then the Nomus arrive. Chapter 9: All hell has broken loose, the real threat has presented itself, and Shigaraki is still unconscious. With newfound determination, Spinner dives in to drag their leader away from death’s door. He manages to wake Shigaraki up, and the league bands together for the next half of the fight. Chapter 10: The league manages to take down the army of Nomu crawling out of seemingly nowhere, and return to their caravan to lick their wounds. This is only a break -- Shigaraki is still being tested, and it’s likely things will only get more dangerous from here. Stain is spotted a few cities over, and Shigaraki offers to drop Spinner off on their way through. Spinner says he’s happy right where he is. Shigaraki impulsively kisses Spinner, who bluescreens. The league all get together to plan their next step, Spinner shyly holding Shigaraki’s hand under the table.

Alright! I won’t worry about word count -- I know what needs to happen in what order, so I’ll give each chapter as much room as feels right. I don’t think I’ll ever end up turning this into a series, but I like having the option. Now all that’s left is to write it. See you all in a month!

#Spinaraki #spinner #shuichi iguchi #tomura shigaraki #bnha #writeblr #fanfiction #writing liveblog #not writing #shut up alice #write with me

4 notes · View notes

resetpermalik · 3 years

Photo

Mass Music Measurements Survey Form

A freeCodeCampChallenge

Gaining Speed

This marks my second freeCodeCamp challenge. As I mentioned in my after action report from the first FCC challenge (tribute page), it took some time to finally gain traction and fully complete that project. That was a problem with (one) unnecessary complexity of design and (two) a lack of planning (before I began to code.) It was my assumption that if I laced the project with many working parts, I would learn much, much faster; also, that by getting right to the code, I could pick up the syntax, semantics and general knack for writing (code) in less time. And wow, I was very incorrect in thinking so.

As a response to my previous poor start (with my tribute page,) this time I was better able to address some lessons which had only occurred to me when halfway through the last project. So this time, I really dialed in the importance of streamlining my initial paperwork designs, learning how to more proficiently use Figma and some of its tools, how to better approach icon design with Photoshop and vastly improve my entire workflow. This provided (not only) an easier build, but also a more efficient angle by which I was empowered to catch more lessons along the way.

In the next few paragraphs, I will detail just which specific advantages I picked up in terms of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript capability. In addition, I will move through some of the tactics I employed to help me finish this challenge with much more confidence than the last.

Planning Stages

When I set out to hand-write the marked goals (set down by FCC’s challenge,) I do find it tedious. The thing is, I am copying (in my own words) precisely what the challenge is demanding of me. Let me elaborate…

With every line, I am telling myself that I really do not need to do this. I mean, I can pretty easily peer over at the other browser window (when necessary) and see exactly what my marching orders are. Though albeit true, there are a couple of key differences in (one) reading from FCC and (two) writing/reading my own notes.

As I write out every expected step of my project, I can build an image immediately for how I would like my creation to take shape. This falls in line with the visual aspects and design, the color scheme, the functionality of each element and the code itself. It is a powerful method to which I will pay better respect going forward. (I already have plenty of ideas on how to implement more potent procedures — like larger drafting paper, (which will allow for a greater landscape on my pages, maybe using a tablet for notation and perhaps a few voice recordings along the way)). Now, I may be getting ahead of myself! Back to the plans..

And so writing out the objectives is terrific for lots of reasons, but moving to the drawn design itself — this may be the most crucial bit yet. Here’s the deal. When I physically drew the (expected) survey form, I may have well completed the whole project. So what does that mean?

I took so much liberty in imagining what the design should resemble. More specifically, I let my mind wander and allowed thoughts to spill out onto the legal pad before me. This (in combination with my understanding of how everything needed be expressed in code) let me structure my rough draft with such a degree that the next step made the actual coding like an exercise in copy and paste. I’ll expound…

I was drawing parts which were effectively elements of HTML. This was followed by some (more precise) markings of pseudo-code (which amounted to about all of the HTML I required to code for the whole challenge.) So, when I say the planning has proved to be useful, this would be an undestatement. This attention to planning has made it possible for me to avoid the ‘nuts and bolts’ in my code editor. Now, this advancement is massive, because the saved time and effort was a testement to why I was then able to better learn more intricate detail when coding. And now let’s get to those lessons and the code at large.

Within Earshot of Paper and Pencil

My goal is not to elaborate on the use of specific technologies, but more-so the process itself. however, I will briefly touch on Figma and Photoshop…

Using Figma helped me focus on each element and understand how they more literally fit together in the puzzle. I was able to name every piece such that it would show me what my HTML element should be in code and how each need be named. Also, I took those separate entities and grouped them such that I could postion everything exactly as I wished. My next goal with Figma will be to utilize the ‘component’ feature and truly unroll some strong functionality of the software.

Regarding Photoshop, I made a logo for my survey and spun it into a favicon with relative ease. In an attempt to create animations and advertisements for my affiliate site, I have better come to understand Photoshop’s effectiveness. Thereby, building my icon was fairly straightforward. I simply pieced it together with a couple of layers and exported the PNG. I still want to be able to employ SVGs for this application; but until now, I haven’t perfected the craft. I will leave that for the coming FCC challenge. Onward!

Coding the Beast

The first topic to address here is quite obvious for me… SUITE TESTING.

When I began coding this project, I wrote my HTML boilerplate and immediately tied in the FCC testing script so I could begin verifying my code at every turn. I’ll elaborate…

I ran into a few issues with debugging throughout my last project; those were problems which resulted in code errors piling up on me simultaneously. And, while an error (for which you don’t know the remedy) is frustrating…several of those errors (all at once) becomes infuriating. Luckily, I ran into a great solution. Unit testing.

By instantiating the FCC test suite before I began coding the bulk of my project, I was then gifted the opportunity of verifying each of the sixteen goal posts.

In more detail, nearly no problems snuck up on me while coding the breadth of this project because I was adamant on addressing them in real time (as they appeared). What a true life-saver...

Input Text (element, attribute)

I found it repetitive and annoying at first, when the 10th goal of this challenge asked me to give both the input and label elements their own respective and corresponding ids. This was because I (very simply) did not understand the request. Along with that, I definitely didn’t understand why it was being asked (to begin with.)

That said, I now realize that the goal was to identify the label for the text field, in addition to the field itself. In understanding this distinction, I have now been able to find value in this very feature.

By giving ids to both my labels and input texts, I was then able to style each distinctly and find them with more ease (while peering though my HTML.) Now here’s real solid tip which I will not soon forget.

Don’t Pick More Than One Option!

So, I was writing the code for my radio buttons and what happened next is certainly a rookie mistake. When I navigated to my browser (in order to test the options,) I found that EVERY one of my buttons was clickable. And this, for obvious reasons, is not ideal.

This solution was super easy. All I needed to do was unify (or make each value the same for) the input-radio buttons. After I placed cloned values for each radio button, only one option could then be chosen. Success!

Nitpick the Name and Ids

This is something which should possibly be glossed over. But, when working with various input fields, I was asked to employ many names and ids for each.

While I’m not entirely certain (even now) whether there is a standard for which comes first, I have come to realize that name attributes should possibly supercede id attributes.

Using Visual Studio Code, it seems to like placing names before ids. And in a real life estimation, using name over id seems to be old-fashioned, but admirable.

More seriously, I understand in code, name will be less subjective (while more actionable) and ids will more far more particular and prone to alteration.

Dropdown

I was in a position to use dropdown boxes twice in this project. The problem I came across was that my options continued to begin with the default option as selectable. While I learned the solution quickly and with ease, I believe it should be recorded as vital.

When inserting a placeholder option in a dropdown box, in order to keep it from being a clickable entity, you have to style it as such.

I called the id of the option in my CSS sheet and set its display as none. That easy.

Pseudo Class and Element Selectors

Very little of my experience with this challenge dealt with pseudo class or pseudo element selectors. But, I will cover (in short) what I did learn (with these topics in mind.)

Using a pseudo element selector is the best (or maybe only) way to call an attribute from an HTML element and style with CSS.

This is how I was able to change the appearance of my placeholder text in each input-text.

I know pseudo class selectors are the way to alter elements (in a certain state) like ‘hover’ or ‘before’, but I haven’t used them enough to expand this monologue. That said, I’ll press on…

Attribute Selectors

In confluence with my previous words, I may have provided a misnomer to exactly what was being modified with pseudo-elements. But, I digress (and hopefully you see what I mean).

Using attribute selectors is quite different from other selectors, because you will be placing true brackets in as your selector which house your attribute, followed by an equal sign and a set of quotations (housing your value.)

Looks like this [attribute=“value”]. And that’s that!

Media Queries

While I employed media queries for this project, I have yet to fully grasp exactly how to use them (in reference to appropriation and context.) Therefore, I will not go into detail; but, only mention that I used them to alter my CTA button across pixel-widths. Also, I realized that setting a new media query works better when starting with the immediate values from your last screen size.

A Bit of JavaScript

The big task I pushed for in this project was this: change the client-side font family for a text area as the user types. And by big, I mean, it took me about as long as the rest of the whole challenge to learn this functionality with JavaScript. That said, I now understand much better how JS semantics are employed. And, that’s pretty priceless…

For this goal, I inserted a script with an event listener. First, I started with DOMContentLoaded, which allows for firing without the images or styling need be loaded.

The next bit lets my document be called by its (element) id.

Then, it states that my id will be triggered by any input (via an eventListener) and will force my later instantiated function.

The function declared will let the charCode number equal a string which will be console.log(ed) out as my target.value (of Nunito, sans-serif) with proper style.fontFamily.

Conclusion

Attempting to wrap this project up in a nice bow is difficult, as I have onboarded a great deal of information (from one simple survey page.) After completing this task, I am left with a split-brain. While I have learned so much from something, seemingly straightforward, now I am thrilled to make it to the next project and take on those new expectations.

I suppose my takeaway is that I should fine-tune my HTML and CSS understanding and seriously crack open all that is JavaScript. All which, can wait until tomorrow. Cheers!

#freecodecamp #html5 #css3 #javascript #design #coding

7 notes · View notes

prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 4 years

Note

Hi! Your dialogue has always been amazing, but it stood out to me even more in the latest chapter -- I think because we got to see Alice, and Eliot, AND Quentin, and new characters Luisa and the Selkie... If you feel like talking about it (no pressure), what's your process for this like? How do you nail characters' voices so well? They all come off as having different patterns of dialogue, tone, HOW they say whatever they're going to say.... I love it :D

omg anon this is such a flattering ask!!! i feel like this is an annoying thing to say but it does feel like i should mention up front that dialogue is probably the aspect of writing i do least consciously - like there are lines i could probably peel back and determine why i felt like writing them that way was right for a particular character, but i likely didn’t put any of that into words at the time. this is extra the case when doing something like writing fic for a television show - if there’s dialogue i’m basically always hearing the voices of the actors performing it, and that kind of steers what comes out. (one of the reasons the magicians is a lot of fun to write for is that the characters all have very distinct and well-defined voices; also i am lucky in that, as i have mentioned before, quentin and julia in particular are like the most demographically similar characters i’ve ever seen on screen to me and my oldest friends, so they especially feel very intuitive for me, haha.)

in terms of process, honestly a lot of scenes/fics start basically as more grown up versions of the daydreams i would have on long car rides as a kid where i’d make up a new episode of sailor moon in my head or whatever, and the narrative etc. fills in around that. one thing i’ve done differently in this series which particularly in the first part is so dialogue-heavy is that when i’ve had a scene really stuck in my head i’ve gone ahead and jotted it down as just a transcription of lines back and forth until i run out of steam, and then when i came to it in the actual drafting process i sort of tidied it up/built from there (a bunch of julia & quentin’s exchanges on the road, and most of the phone calls with eliot, started out that way). so that has been fun and part of a general effort to remind myself that you get to the good stuff by writing down whatever you think of on the way, and that part of it is really like playing, or daydreaming. and then for actually writing out a dialogue scene, my focus will be on like, getting everyone to say what i want them to say, more than on how it sounds, which kind of arises organically.

a couple other dialogue thoughts...

—my high school theater teacher told us once that actors doing an accent will sometimes ground themselves by picking key words/sounds to really get right, which is a principle that you can kind of apply to dialogue, too, either in terms of particular verbal tics, phrasings or constructions they tend to favor, the types of comparisons they make, etc.

—a weird amount of how i think about the world comes from high school theater, lmao... anyway my high school PLAYWRITING teacher once gave me some feedback on a scene which was that you can establish characters as people who swear a lot by having them swear a lot at the beginning, and then backing off and being more selective so your audience doesn’t get tired of/numb to it - the audience will still feel like the characters are swearing a lot, because they’ve decided the characters swear a lot so they sort of fill that in subconsciously, but the actual swearing can have more of an impact/be less cluttered. that’s not a universal rule ofc and for swearing in particular i don’t rly follow it for the magicians because the writers of the show clearly don’t either lmao, BUT - i think you can generalize this to, “if you’re clever about how you establish that something is normal, you can use way less of it than you might initially think you need to get the same effect.” i will for example sometimes go back if i’ve had a character say something paragraph length and take out a couple “likes” and other kind of naturalism-markers, because you don’t need to use them as much as people do in real life for the reader to feel like it’s realistic.

—kind of related to that, a while ago @yeats-infection said something like, “you’ll never be able to capture the full complexities of human speech on a page, so it’s better to choose how you’re stylizing and commit to it!” which is IMO great advice that i have been trying to really internalize. damage control in particular absolutely does not have “realistic” dialogue but it (hopefully at least! haha) scans as authentic / doesn’t pop as non-realistic because it’s all taking place in a story with a particular heightened, exaggerated, go-for-broke tone, so it feels real *within* the fabric of that universe. (wreck my days is kind of the opposite - a story with very sparse, almost colorless dialogue, where the characters say pretty much as little as i could get away with to tell the story, which works because it’s a story about silences papering over this churn of emotions behind them.)

—also related from that, i think a LOT, like a LOOOOT, about rob thomas once describing the dialogue on veronica mars as “how teenagers would talk if they had 24 hours to think about it”... first of all that’s a great description of the great dialogue on that great show... but second of all i feel like it points both to how much fun and liberty you can actually have while still being believable, AND what you need to do to make it work, which is the same thing you have to do for every other thing, namely: keep it rooted in character. this is to me the difference between rob thomas and someone like aaron sorkin or joss whedon — all three of them have created work with dialogue you could say is “artificially clever,” but in something like veronica mars, the dialogue all feels like the smartest and cleverest version of the specific character who is saying it, as opposed to the other dudes’ stuff, which often (to me at least!) feels like... generically clever, interchangeably clever, like any of a number of characters could say it. so like a huge part of my M. O. in writing damage control was absolutely like, “what is the meanest/funniest/most fucked up thing quentin could say in this moment,” and like, that works as an M. O. for that story because going to those extremes is, i mean, to be clear, extremely entertaining to me personally which is always my #1 reason for writing fanfiction and should be yours also, BUT, also, because leaning into those extremes is a way of illustrating how wildly disconnected quentin is from his own interiority, as well as being (particularly with eliot) one of the things he’s doing to try to feel slightly less dead inside. and also, it works because none of the things he says would really make sense or have the same effect coming from anyone else.... specificity is always the name of the game!

—related to that, it helps to listen closely to e.g. canon if you’re writing fic for a show, but it also helps to pay attention to authors whose dialogue you like to expand your toolbox for “tricking” the reader into feeling like what they’re reading is “natural.”

—two fic-specific things that are sort of peeves of mine, which, if they are not peeves if yours ignore this!!!! fic is for fun!!!! but: (1) no one on earth and no characters on the magicians use pet names with anywhere near the frequency of characters in fic especially not when they have such perfectly good affectionate and non-cheesy nicknames for each other in canon (2) i have read many a fic in my time (truly like across years and fandoms, this is not remotely magicians specific at all and in fact might even be less prominent here than i’ve usually seen) that was good and fun and well-written and well-characterized and the dialogue felt like the made-up people i knew and liked..... UNTIL it got to the sex scene and absolutely everything they said could have come from a porn dialogue generator. bonerkiller! obvs if you’re writing something where like the whole point is to write erotic content about [throws dart] quentin coldwater getting off on sucking dick while dressed as a french maid or whatever, i mean, ultimately as always do what serves the story! but if the sex scene is PART of a story rather than the whole point, imo it is sexier to have characters sound like themselves even if that means saying fewer very explicit things, or saying them more awkwardly or less “sexily,” than to go from zero to “want your huge cock in me baby, gonna fuck me so good” etc etc regardless of who’s boning. (i feel like this trend has died down a bit but there was a while where i felt like every sex scene in fic showed extreme arousal by having the characters too turned on to use the pronoun “i”... like a lot of “wanna suck your dick” “want you inside me” etc... possibly all of you are doing this in bed all the time and i am embarrassing myself by acting like it is not a universal symptom of acute horniness, but like really it struck me so odd to act like this happens every time people have sex that it started taking me out of the scene whenever i read it...)

#thank u for this anon it was an extremely fun way to procrastinate on writing this sleepy saturday afternoon #and also i feel like trying to actually think through this more than i usually do was helpful!#also i always feel like talking about this kind of thing #bc i like all writers am insanely narcissistic about writing and love getting permission to do so #askbox

12 notes · View notes

brynwrites · 5 years

Text

Let’s Talk about Querying!

(And why I stopped querying my novel.)

As some of you know, I was querying Iron From Fire on and off from March through May, and I recently decided to quit, despite it being overall a good story written in what one editor described as ‘on par’ for the genre.

And I think it’s important to talk about the process I went through, because my ill preparation hurt my mental health a lot, and you all deserve to know how to avoid the same fate.

First, this is the general process of querying, in case anyone is unfamiliar:

You finish the manuscript. And I mean finish it. Beta rounds, line edits, formatting, the whole nine yards.

You write the query letter. This includes a blurb meant to draw the agent in, a paragraph with stats and the names of a couple contemporary books that resemble yours, and a short bio about your previous book-related experience.

You send the query letter to a bunch of agents. A positive request rate right now is somewhere around 6 or 7%, which means if you have a stellar manuscript then 7% of the agents you query will want to read more of it to see if they’re willing to represent you.

You receive a mixture of rejections and requests, with a lot of silence in between. Most rejections are form rejections so you have no idea why they didn’t like your manuscript. Some requests turn into delayed form rejections. Everything hurts.

You either get an agent who signs you or you decide to quit. If you have a book you think will sell and are having positive responses from agents, the general rule of thumb is to keep querying until you’ve sent a letter to every agent you’d be interested in working with. This can mean anywhere from 30 to 130 agents.

Putting the rest under the cut.

Keep reading for:

Why I quit.

The things I learned from querying.

What I would have done differently if I’d known better.

[While this has some rather personal mental health things, please feel free to reblog it so other writers can learn from my experience!]

Why I quit querying.

This is going to get personal for a hot second so bare with me.

I was querying the first novel in an adult fantasy trilogy I had worked on for over seven years. All the work from the first five years had been trashed three years before, and the rough draft I built the final manuscript on was rewritten three times after, so the actual story itself was only a couple years old, but I had the emotional attachment of seven years of love and heartache.

This being a trilogy, I had already written the second book and poured a lot of energy into the third book’s brainstorming by the time I fully finished the first manuscript. So not only was there over seven years of emotional attachment, but nearly 300k words of fairly decent story written in the series.

I hit a bunch of road blocks right when I first began querying:

My story, while it had all the things a query needs like stakes and conflict, was very hard to break down to a 200 word blurb.

The blurb I did end up with, no matter how I wrote it, sounded like a rather traditional fantasy plot, despite the story itself going places I’ve yet to read about in any other book.

I could not find contemporaries (books published recently which have elements similar to mine) to save my life, to the point where I was scrambling to read new books in hopes something would appear.

Most agents ask for the first five or ten pages, and I have fifteen pages of status quo before I got to the real plot, so that meant most agents would never even see the story I had outlined in my blurb.

On top of all that, I had a book which went a little over the word count most agents seek for a debut novel in its genre and it wasn’t even a standalone.

Those things compiled were a mess, and they should have clued me in that this wasn’t a book that would be worth the effort of selling as a debut. But this wasn’t what did me in. These things alone I might have been overcome by sheer determination. So why did I quit, then?

I stopped querying my manuscript because I realized I wasn’t just querying a manuscript, I was querying my baby.

I had put all seven years and many rewrites and an entire sequel I loved more than life on the line for this sale, and it fucked me over like a moon-sized meteor fucks over a planet.

My mental health, which I’d finally gotten under control after almost a decade of chronic depression and anxiety, plummeted back to levels it hadn’t reached in years. I hated everything I wrote. I cried over my writing. I cried over things that had nothing to do with writing. I became very negative and angry with my friends. Everyone else’s success felt like my personal failure. I began tipping into the realm of suicidal idealization.

That was what finally broke me; the knowledge that I’d been happy with my life, exactly as it was before I started querying, and now I suddenly didn’t find it worth living despite the query process being the only thing I’d added.

I adored and despised my manuscript in equal parts. I’d thought the mounds of critique I’d gotten for it in the past would make it easier for me to handle the rejections because I’d handled them all before from beta readers, and that the time between writing it and querying it would provide distance. It didn’t.

It turned this manuscript into the single part of my life I’d poured the most love and attention and frustration into, more then college degrees and individual relationships and work; even more than the book I’d already indie published. And setting that out for agents to reject at their whims was not healthy for me.

Once I looked that in the face, I realized something else as well: I didn’t want this book to be my debut.

The story was publishable, yes, but it had a funky structure I had reworked countless times just to make bearable, and the second book was the real gem of the series.

The writing was adequate, but it was also kind of bland compared to the style it’d developed since I’d written it. I preferred the style I was currently writing in and I wanted to sell that instead.

I really, really didn’t want to edit this book again for an agent or an editor. I’d poured so much energy into it already and I was sick: sick with love, sick with hate. Every edit I had made through the querying process had been wrapped in a mixture of forced disinterest and panicky dependence, and that was not the way I wanted to feel when I edited my debut for traditional publishing.

And this is not to say that Iron From Fire and its trilogy will never sell, or that no one would want to read it if it did. I’m shelving it, not throwing it out. But sometimes we have to admit to ourselves that it’s not the right time, and let a project go for a while, especially when its the one project we don’t want to let go.

Things I’ve Learned.

I’m prefacing this with the note that there are exceptions to every rule. None of these things will stop you from getting an agent or selling a manuscript, it’ll just make it harder to do so. And querying is hard enough without stacking the cards against yourself.

These are a mixture of experience and things I’ve seen agents talk about at length.

1. Word count is important.

It’s common knowledge that there are word count guidelines, but when most of the books on your shelf vary (sometimes drastically) from those guidelines, do they really matter? The fucking do. Agents will see too high word count and assume straight off that you don’t know how to create a streamline story and have wandering plot threads or useless scenes, and they’ll see a too low word count and assume you didn’t explore your world building and character development properly.

It you want to increase your chances of selling a manuscript, write it within the suggested word count guidelines.

2. Make your manuscript a solid, wonderful standalone.

You’ll hear ‘standalone with series potential’ thrown around a lot. This means you should have a first book which ends in a place that readers can feel satisfied permanently walking away from, but which doesn’t tie up so many threads that another story can’t come after it.

Less brought up but equally important is this: if you do have series potential, the rest of your series can’t be the better part of it. You aren’t selling a series, you’re selling a first book, so that first book must be able to stand for itself and say that it’s fantastic and more than worth reading on its own. It’s can’t be a gateway to a better book. It must already be the best book you can write.

3. If you have potential sequels, don’t write them yet.

From a writer’s perspective this is bad because it puts more of your soul into the series, and when it comes time to offer that part of your soul up to agents and editors, you want it to be as small as possible. Having six months of work rejected hurts. Having six years of work rejected kills. Be kind to yourself.

This is also bad from an agent’s perspective! Agents are looking for career oriented writers (even if that career is part time), who will write other books, with other plots and other characters, so if they sell your first book and its sales are mediocre they know they’ll have another chance with you on a different project. If you seem to be stuck in one world or series, that hinders their ability to market you as a writer.

3. Your first five pages are everything.

Five to ten pages is all most agents will ever see of your book. This is a lot less than many readers will read before putting a book down. Even if you’ve structured your opening to attract readers, it may not be fit enough to attract agents.

The first 2500 words of your manuscript should:

Display a clear narrative voice.

Introduce the world building and setting you described in your query with little to no exposition.

Introduce the main character’s personality and goals as described in your query with no exposition.

Show the main character doing the things you said they do in your query.

Show the inciting event you described in your query.

Show or at least hint at how the conflicts you described in your query will come to pass.

This is not always something you can edit into your manuscript at the last minute, so structuring your project this way up front is very helpful. If you can’t hit all these points with your story no matter how you rework it, you might want to consider querying a different project instead.

4. Young Adult is a harder sell.

The market is drenched in YA manuscripts. This doesn’t mean no one should write them, but if you don’t have a good reason why the story works best a YA (ie, it has themes targeted toward teenagers) then it might be worthwhile to adjust it to be MG and or adult (but not New Adult! NA is also a hard sell, because there are few editors actually buying it.)

5. The market matters.

On that note, it’s incredibly important to know what’s going on in the publishing market before you query.

What types of books are selling?

Is your manuscript a good twist on ideas, themes, or tones present in popular books from the last few years?

Does your manuscript align with what agents are asking for in their manuscript wishlists?

Is your writing style on par with the books what made decent sales in the last few years in your genre and target audience?

When you condense your story down to a few sentences, do you have a pitch that’s both unique and references popular contemporary stories?

In order to sell a book through traditional publishing, you have to first find an agent who falls in love with the book and has an immediate idea of how to sell it, and then have them find an editor who also falls in love with it and knows they and their marketing team can market it well.

Good writing makes a good book, but it’s the marketing which sells the book. If you don’t have a way to market your book in the current market, it’s not likely anyone else will.

What I would have done differently.

The top three things I would have changed if I had known what I know now.

1. Wrote the query letter earlier.

Writing the query letter as I wrote the manuscript would’ve helped me reformat the structure of the story up front. It would also have eliminated the desperate rewrites I did to both the query and the manuscript in an attempt to produce something concise enough to actually sell.

2. Followed agents well in advance.

There are tons of agents on twitter who routinely post tips, talk about what they want to see in future books, and boost resent publishing deals. Keeping tabs on them is incredibly helpful when it comes to figuring out where your manuscript fits in the current market and whether/how you should be querying it.

3. Let my baby go in favor of a new, shorter standalone.

A standalone within the word count guidelines might have persuaded undecided agents to take a chance on reading more, but the important thing here is that I should not have tried to query the work I’d put my soul into.

My mental health is more important than making my baby a best seller, firstly because there’s more to my life than just writing, and secondly because there are other great books left in my soul, and without stable mental health, I won’t be able to write and query them.

So, what am I doing now?

I’m writing a book with a strong contemporary I know agents are interested in, but with enough of a spin that it’ll feel fresh.

I’ve structured the story so that the opening engulfs the reader with the conflicts and world building that’ll be important throughout the whole story and the inciting event happens immediately.

I wrote the blurb after only having written 20k words on the rough draft, and the blurb both contains all the necessary plot threads I need to describe the compelling heart of the story and reads as a unique and engaging manuscript.

I’m writing a standalone novel with series potential that fits perfectly within the genre’s word count guidelines.

I’m writing something that’s fresh for me and I’m madly in love with, but not dependent on. It’s a puppy I want to lather with attention, not a disappointing spouse I’ve been married to for eight years and now half loath but also can’t live without.

Annnd that is all the things I have to say! If you learned something here maybe support me by buying my fun, cheap indie book? It has sirens and a soft freckly pirate and lots of diversity, and comes in both ebook and paperback. Click here for links and things.

#writeblr #querying #mental health #writing help #writing advice #writing resources #writers on writing #creative writing #writers on tumblr #authors on tumblr #writing tag: publishing

870 notes · View notes

lonelyandlovelorn · 5 years

Text

Flirty

A/N: I’m not sure what this is, I found a draft with a couple paragraphs on it and kept going.

Genre: fluff

Warning: a few curses, a suggestive joke or two

Word count: 1800

Pairing: Steve Rogers x fem reader

Summary: You flirted with everyone but Steve and he wanted to know why.

Masterlist

“Howdy soldiers,” you greeted as you walked into the kitchen, sending a wink at the super soldiers eating breakfast. You didn’t bother putting on actual clothes in the morning with people who had seen you at your worst, so you were just wearing a big t-shirt and some jogging shorts.

“Hey Y/N,” they responded, Bucky laughing at your exaggerated wink.

“What’s on the agenda for today, boys?” you questioned as you reached up into a cupboard for your cereal. When there was a silence in return, you turned around in time to see Bucky looking at Steve in what looked like a teasing manner as Steve cleared his throat. You looked between them, waiting for one of them to either answer your question or explain what was going on.

“Training,” Steve blurted, scratching the back of his neck, “as usual.”

You looked at them both suspiciously before deciding it wasn’t nearly as important as getting yourself fed. You went back to getting your bowl of cereal, humming something offkey, not even sure what song it was. For some reason, you were feeling pretty good for a morning.

“Something got you in a good mood today, Y/N?” Bucky asked, noticing your chipper demeanor.

You shook your head. “Nothing in particular,” you answered, smiling in Steve’s direction, seeing as he hadn’t really contributed to the conversation so far. You sat next to him with your bowl and started eating, scrolling through your timeline and pretending not to notice that you didn’t need to be sitting as close to the Captain as you were. Oh well. Life’s too short to worry about that.

Once you finished your bowl, you set it in the sink and headed towards your room to get ready for training. You slipped into some leggings and a shirt that wasn’t too loose so you could spar. When you arrived, you saw you had beat a few of your teammates, so you wandered over to the group of people already waiting in the gym.

“Sup, Robin?” you greeted as you leaned on Sam’s shoulder and smirked. He just shrugged you off and returned your greeting.

“Hey, Donatello, what’s shakin’?” All you could do was roll your eyes. As if to back him up, though, you pulled the compact bo staff out of your clothes and pressed the button to make it expand. It wasn’t your favorite, but it was good for training or in a pinch.

The sudden expansion of the staff startled Sam as he backed up. “Damn, Y/N, no need to get so excited,” he joked.

You simply shrugged and replied with the usual, “What can I say? I’m more of a grower than a shower.” You smirked at the slightly uncomfortable expression on Clint’s face behind Sam.

You kept up your banter with your teammates until everyone arrived. Steve stepped in front of the team and your smirk softened into a smile directed at him. You didn’t notice you did it, but everyone else certainly did. None of them would ever call you inconsiderate, but it was even nicer than usual for you to be so sweet instead of suggestive. It was a nice change, for sure, if a bit odd.

You paired off to practice sparring, first with weapons and then without. Your first partner was poor Clint. He was about as good with a staff as you were, but you were good at throwing off his rhythm. Maybe you made a dirty joke or maybe you just got too close, you were good at messing him up enough to win. You then got to spar with Bucky, who got to use blunt knives as stand-ins for weapons. He was better at not letting you get in his head, but you were still pretty good at fighting him, even with his strength and speed. Your skills depended on exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses instead of brute force, seeing as you weren’t actually enhanced in any way.

The next partner switch was to no weapons sparring. You were matched with Natasha, which was always interesting. You were fairly evenly matched in skills, but she was slightly more lithe, graceful. You had similar fighting styles, she was usually just a little bit better. When she got you on your back, her legs on either side of your chest, holding your arms down, you couldn’t help but comment, “This would be a great place to die.” You wiggled your eyebrows suggestively as she rolled her eyes and huffed a small laugh at your antics.

What? Nat was hot.

Your final sparring partner was Steve. Without your staff, you had to rely much more on agility and dodging than simple blocking. You greeted him kindly when you walked up and smiled, settling into a fighting stance. No matter how many times he pinned you, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to comment on it like you had with Natasha. For one, you knew he would be more uncomfortable with it than anyone else, and you didn’t joke and flirt to make anyone upset. Second, it was a lot easier to flirt with the people you didn’t like than the one you actually did, in case it backfired.

When training was finally over, you were sweaty and tired. You lifted your shirt to wipe the sweat from your face, when you heard a whistle.

“Damn, Y/N, no need to strip,” Sam called out. You dropped your shirt to see him and Bucky laughing while Steve looked away, a little red in his cheeks. You raised your middle finger in a salute at the two idiots

“In your dreams, Wilson.” You winked at him and walked away, towards your room.

After you left, Steve eyes followed you for a moment with a furrowed brow. “Does Y/N not like me?” he asked his best friends.

Bucky had just taken a sip of water and spit it out in surprise. “What?”

“Dude, why would you think she doesn’t like you?” Sam asked in confusion.

Steve reached up to rub the back of his neck awkwardly. “It’s just… she doesn’t joke with me the same way she does all of you. Sure she’s nice to me, but it’s different.”

“Steve. She jokingly flirts with all of us. Smirks and winks and all of that. The girl smiles at you.” Sam assured, patting him on the shoulder.

“Why doesn’t she flirt with me?” Steve blurted, sounding petulant.

“Wait a second, are you jealous?” Bucky asked, smiling at his best friend. “I knew you wanted her Stevie, I didn’t realize you were dumb enough not to realize that she wants you.”

It was Steve’s turn to be surprised. “What? No she doesn’t.”

“Captain, with all due respect, you’re kind of an idiot with women,” Sam said sympathetically. “She’s way sweeter to you than to any of us and I bet she doesn’t flirt with you because she thinks it would make you uncomfortable.”

Steve was shaking his head before Sam was even finished. “There’s no way that’s true.”

“Then prove it,” Sam responded. “Ask her about it. I bet you ten bucks she likes you more than the rest of us.”

“Deal,” Steve said before he realized the implications of what he agreed to. This meant he had to have an uncomfortable conversation with the girl he fancied about whether she liked him.

You stepped out of the shower, happy to be clean from all of the sweat and grossness from earlier. You slipped into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt you had stolen from an unknown male in this tower. Well, unknown as in Steve didn’t know you had stolen his shirt. You sat down on your bed with a crochet hook and picked up where you had left off on your most recent project. No one on the team knew you liked to crochet because you know Bird Brain and the Ice Princess would laugh at you. Everyone had a vice or a way of relaxing. Tony liked to drink, Steve liked to break punching bags, and you liked to crochet like an old lady.

You heard a knock at your door and set your hook aside to answer it. You opened it to see a recently showered Steve on the other side, certainly not an unwelcome sight.

“Can I come in?” he asked. You nodded and gestured him inside, closing the door behind him. He walked towards her bed before pausing, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Were you knitting?”

“Crocheting, thank you very much. What of it?” you huffed, trying to cover your embarrassment.

He just chuckled and said, “Nothing, nothing. It’s just not what I would have expected, that’s all.”

“So what did you need, Cap?” you inquired, wondering why he had come to your door.

“I- uh… I just wanted to know if…. Do you not like me, Y/N?” he finally got out after stumbling around.

“Of course I like you Steve, what made you think I didn’t?” you felt really bad, you never meant for him to think you disliked him.

“It’s just that you joke and flirt with everyone else and you don’t with me, and I was worried it was because you hated me or something.”

“Oh no, Steve, of course I don’t hate you,” you rushed to assure. Then you backtracked a moment. “Did you want me to flirt with you?” you quietly asked, unsure of yourself.

He suddenly became very red before muttering, “I wouldn’t mind.”

You smiled kindly at him. “I don’t flirt with you because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Steve stared at you for a moment. “Wait, really?” You nodded at him. “I’m perfectly capable of handling your flirting.” He didn’t realize until after he said it that it came across as a challenge.

A smirk spread across your lips as you looked up at him. You walked closer to him, a little extra sway to your hips. “I don’t know if you could handle me if I really flirted with you Captain,” you purred. He looked immediately flustered by your forwardness, but didn’t back down. You got a little closer to him before you felt compelled to check on him. “Is this okay?” you asked, a small amount of nerves showing through in your voice.

“More than okay,” Steve murmured. You beamed up at him. You held eye contact for a moment before he glanced down. “Is that my shirt?”

“Why? Do you want it back?” You jokingly reached for the hem of the shirt, but he grabbed your wrists to stop you from actually lifting it.

“No, it looks good on you.” It was your turn to blush. “I was just curious as to why you were wearing my shirt.”

You shrugged nonchalantly. “Who knows Rogers, maybe I’ve been flirting with you this whole time, you’re just special.”

Steve asked you out to dinner that night, and you could swear that when you walked towards the elevator to meet him, you saw him slip Sam some money.

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x y/n #captain america x reader #reader insert #fanfic #fanfiction #marvel #imagine #fem reader #lonelyandlovelorn

282 notes · View notes

dvp95 · 5 years

Text

quiet on widow’s peak (2)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, youtuber phil lester, dan howell is not a youtuber, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, trans character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 3.2k (this chapter), 6.4k (total) summary: Phil’s got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

"Do you remember the Wilkins place?"

"I'm well, thanks." Martyn's voice is dry, and Phil finds himself grinning at the wall despite himself. "How are you?"

"Good," says Phil. It's mostly true, although he could do without the piles of clothes he's sorting through. He holds his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he picks up a top of Sophie's and starts a whole new pile that he's calling delicates, aka things he's absolutely going to screw up somehow. "People think the Wilkins place is haunted."

There's a beat. Presumably, Phil's brother is trying to fit the name into adolescent memories to see where it slots in. "Oh, that wreck in Rusholme? It hasn't been condemned yet?"

"Apparently it's still a hot spot for binge-drinking teenagers," Phil says.

"Well, sure. But haunted? Really?"

"That's what I said!"

Phil feels a little vindicated by the skepticism in Martyn's voice, to be honest. His friends hadn't taken his weird feeling seriously at all.

"I mean, it's a dump," says Martyn. "More likely to be haunted by a bunch of rats than anything else. Why haven't we heard this before?"

"According to my sources," Phil says, only feeling a bit ridiculous about referring to a bunch of strangers on the internet as 'sources', "the activity only recently started. Which makes me think that someone's lying, or maybe one incident kickstarted everyone else's imaginations?"

"Both could be true. Why don't you ask Ian to go check it out?"

It's not exactly a sore spot, but something inside of Phil still twinges at the question. "He's a little busy, isn't he."

"So am I," Martyn says in that same dry, familiar tone that makes Phil feel as comforted as his mum's fretting or his dad's bad jokes do. "And yet here you are, on my phone."

"You don't have a toddler," Phil points out.

"I don't? Yet here you are..."

Phil snorts a laugh and drops all of the socks he's gathered into an empty basket. It's as good a place to start as any. "Shut up, Mar. I'm at least six."

There are, literally, enough dirty socks and pants between the four of them that Phil has a whole load of just underthings. He spares a moment to be grateful to Sophie for not including her bras, because he'd have no idea where to begin with those. He sighs and picks up the basket, fitting it against his hip with one hand so he can hold his phone with the other.

"Well, I can ask around," says Martyn. "I think my friends might be past the point of sneaking into abandoned houses to party, but maybe they've heard something from their annoying little brothers."

"Ha, ha," Phil says dryly. "Think I should contact some of the people making these claims?"

"Deffo," says Martyn. "If you can record them, it'd be best."

"Yeah, that way I can use them in the video," Phil hums, setting his basket on the washer and opening every cupboard to try to find the detergent. "I mean, if they're okay with that, obviously."

"I actually meant because your bullshit detector is dysfunctional, so me or Peej will have to tell you if someone's lying."

"Wow, rude. Whose fault is that?"

"Yours," Martyn informs him dryly. "Just because I told you Santa would pull you up through the chimney doesn't mean you had to believe me."

Phil rolls his eyes, but he's grinning. Maybe it's just a big brother thing, or maybe it's their personalities, but Martyn isn't wrong - Phil has a hard time telling when someone is lying to him. Martyn was always good at lying with a straight face and seeing right through Phil's outlandish stories.

"I still blame you," says Phil.

"Alright," says Martyn. "When are you coming to visit?"

"Probably not ‘til after this one," Phil says slowly, glancing at the kitten calendar on the fridge. They'd let one of their milder housemates pick this year's after everyone got tired of looking at Chris' previous choice of nude knitted puppets.

"Yeah? You gonna head up north for this one?"

In the very last cupboard he checks, Phil finds the detergent. He wants to be annoyed about it, but the truth is that Holly's habit of switching around the kitchen when she's anxious has saved many a pack of biscuits from expiring behind some flour. Phil has never once been useful to anybody when he's having a meltdown, so.

Phil absentmindedly loads the washer while he considers Martyn's question. Maybe it would be best to check the place out for himself, see if anything's really going on. He likes being on-site best, trusts his own gut more than he trusts strangers' eyes.

The problem, of course, is that Phil's childhood home is up for sale, he has no money for a hotel, and Ian's gone and got himself a child. The last thing Phil wants to do is impose or, like, get roped into babysitting. A trip to Manchester might be out of the question for him right now.

"Maybe," Phil says, noncommittal.

Martyn sees through him in an instant, like always. "Want me to ask Mum if they've got any viewings next weekend? I'm sure you know not to trash the place."

"Have I ever once trashed the place? Don't answer that," Phil adds, remembering the shaving cream incident.

A huff comes down the line, and Phil feels the same pride at making his brother laugh as he had when he was seven and making weird noises out the car window. Yeah, he definitely needs to go to London soon, the Isle afterwards - he hasn't seen his family in way too long.

"I'll let you know what's buzzing, if anything," says Martyn. "And I'll call Mum for you and all. I know you get weird about asking them for favours."

"I get weird about asking anyone for favours," Phil says instead of a thank you, because if he gets weird about asking for help, then Martyn gets twice as weird about reacting to gratitude.

"Except me."

Phil smiles, watching the rainbow of socks and pants spin. "Yeah. Except you."

Laundry does end up taking Phil most of the day, but he doesn't mind much. It's the least he can do when Chris always does the first draft edit for him, PJ reminds him to take his EMF meter and his meds when he's packing for an overnight, and Sophie sends him pages upon pages of research while she's at work. He's so fond of these people, and he appreciates all they do for him, but being in debt to them - and not in sole control of his projects - makes Phil feel like he's got ants crawling up his arms.

While he waits out the machine cycles, Phil starts putting feelers out into this story. He checks the sources linked to him again and shoots off a couple of direct messages and emails to see if any of the people posting about the Wilkins place are eager to chat one on one.

He's got his laptop set up at the kitchen table and he's on his third coffee of the day when it occurs to him that he's not out of the woods of owing favours just yet. He clicks back into the Tumblr submission that started this spiral.

He decides that he needs to thank this person, at the very least, and maybe offer to buy them a coffee or something when he's in town. They did so much of Phil's grunt work that it feels weird not to pay them back somehow.

"Well, I can't exactly do your laundry," Phil murmurs to the screen. He hopes none of his other housemates are milling around to hear him.

Another click, and he's on the blog. It's minimalist and monochrome in a way that makes things easy to read, but not very interesting to look at. Phil's eyes start to glaze over as he scrolls through, because it's entertaining enough but - well. It's a typical Tumblr blog. That familiar mixture of memes and rants about social issues and some gifs from shows that Phil doesn't have time to watch. There are a lot of familiar walls of text tagged as personal posts, but Phil still can't parse them without really trying.

They do reblog Phil's video posts, though. That makes him grin.

He scrolls back up to the top of the page to shoot them a message and immediately gets distracted by the bio.

winnie. 21. any pronouns.

For someone who sent Phil a wall of text that could be mistaken for copypasta at first glance, it's surprisingly succinct. Phil takes another swig of his coffee and tries not to get caught up on the last part of it.

Any pronouns? What does that mean, any pronouns? What if Phil uses the wrong ones? He isn't exactly a queer theory student, and as much as he supports everybody under his little rainbow umbrella, he's got to admit that a lot of things still go over his head.

He dithers for so long that his laptop screen goes black, and he makes a face at himself in its reflection. Surely he's overthinking this.

Hi!, Phil types, and then accidentally hits enter. He was just trying not to send the fan a paragraph back, but, fine. Oops. So I'm looking into the things you sent me on the Wilkins place and I'm really impressed by the amount of time you put into this? Like it makes MY job a lot easier haha. Is he a triple-texter? He's a triple-texter. The first one didn't count anyway. So thanks!!!!! I'll def give you credit in the video, but is there anything else I can do to pay you back?

Not literally, he wants to add right after he's sent it. Oh, well. He can't just keep spamming this poor person's chat. He hopes it's obvious that he'd offer monetary compensation if he had it.

Phil leaves the Tumblr tab open and works on editing for a little while. It's almost frustrating how bad this video is, how little effort and energy Phil has started putting into these, and he doesn't know how to fix it short of rethinking his entire career.

He could easily keep churning these out for as long as people watch them, but. He's not having fun anymore.

The Phil on his laptop screen is asking questions, wandering around a cemetery just to see if anything will happen, and Phil can't help comparing it to things he did last year, the year before that, the year before that - it feels like his content is declining as his enthusiasm for the topic does, or maybe vice versa.

Phil zones out for so long that the dryer chime goes off from the hallway, echoing through the old, creaky house. He'd given up on sorting the loads after the fifth shirt that could belong to any of them, so he just takes his own things out and folds his housemates' clothes into one basket.

They can figure it out, he's sure. There's only two bedrooms between the three of them, so there's only two closets, and Phil has gone so long without knowing who's officially sharing that it would be awkward to ask now.

Phil swaps the load over and goes back to his laptop, even though the very last thing he wants to do is continue editing and uploading this mediocre video.

The thing is, Phil doesn't need his content to be perfect. He's happy to post things that just make him laugh or have a nicely spooky vibe or whatever, he doesn't need to solve mysteries every month or two. It's just that. He can hear how little he cares about it, lately. It won't be long before people notice, if they haven't already.

Phil sighs and exits the project. Maybe this video is best left unposted. He's not happy with it at all.

Maybe, if this Wilkins place video doesn't pan out, Phil can start redirecting his energy into a different type of creative output. He's got so many stories bouncing around in his mind, he just needs to figure out how he wants to tell them.

It sounds like his father's voice inside his head, telling him you can't chase ghosts forever. He wishes he still had the gumption to disagree with it.

His laptop makes a little noise, and Phil blinks back to reality. He has to click on a few different tabs to figure out where it came from, but then he realises that he's gotten a response on Tumblr.

Phil smiles despite himself and gets ready for another difficult-to-read message.

Sure enough: UHHHHHH hi hello what the fuck i didnt expect you to say anything this is so weird i am being so weird right now um like no problem? i was procrastinating an essay and this was more fun to research so you dont have to thank me or pay me back whatever that means like i was just fucking around its fine but thank you?????

Phil thinks about the four word Tumblr bio again and snorts. Maybe Winnie wanted to seem as cool and minimalist as their theme itself was.

Procrastination or not, I appreciate it!, Phil replies. Would it be ok if I use you as a reference?

?????????????? i mean yeah but what the fuck, he gets back almost immediately.

It's nice to see you know some punctuation! Sorry if it's weird to reach out like this, I just wanted to like acknowledge the work you put in. I don't have to mention you in the video if you'd prefer!

The sound of the front door creaking open and slamming shut interrupts Phil's nervous typing. He freezes for a moment, fingers still on the keyboard, but then PJ comes in the kitchen with a little salute and several bags of craft supplies, and Phil can breathe again.

It isn't that the other people who live in this house are bad people. Far from it. It's just that, of the people Phil has opted to share this large space with for nearly two years, only three of them have made any kind of effort to understand Phil. The others are nice enough, he supposes, but sometimes they come and go and new people replace them and - Phil isn't exactly good with change, is the thing.

So he relaxes when he can talk to PJ instead of making small talk with someone who thinks he's weird and too messy. "Hey! How's your day?"

"Better than yours," PJ laughs. He drops all the bags on the table and starts puttering around the kitchen. "Hungry?"

"Please. And it wasn't so bad, I got some work done."

"Yeah? Any new info on the new haunt?"

It's incredible how genuinely interested PJ always is in Phil's work. Phil grins down at his keyboard and shrugs a bit. "Some. Mostly just poking around right now, though. Mar's asking his friends too. Oh, and I thanked the person who sent it in."

"That's good," PJ says. He's putting the kettle on, because that's what PJ does when he comes home. "How'd they react?"

"Mostly confusion," Phil laughs. He glances at his screen to see if Winnie has responded - they haven't - and chews on his lip a little bit. "Hey, Peej? If someone says any pronouns are fine, what does that mean?"

"Generally," PJ hums, "it seems like it would mean any pronouns are fine."

"Oh, shut up." Phil runs a hand through his hair, always anxious about getting stuff like this wrong.

"I'm not joking," PJ says, although his tone is still light.

"Oh. So it just... doesn't matter?"

"Not to some people, I guess." PJ leans against the counter as he waits for the water to boil. At least he's smiling, although Phil can't help but notice that it's a little patronizing. "You do know that I'm not a gender guru, right? I'm barely a gender novice. I failed gender out the gate, buddy."

Phil knows his cheeks are pinking up a bit, but he rolls his eyes. "Shut up," he repeats. "You still know way more than me."

The shrug he gets in response makes Phil huff a laugh. This isn't something they talk about, but Phil has been present for enough of Chris and PJ's conversations that he'd gotten the idea.

He wonders if PJ cares that he's bringing it up. Is he making PJ uncomfortable? They don't talk about this.

"Stop spiralling," PJ says easily. His smile is warmer, now. "I don't hate you, nobody hates you, and the fan who doesn't care about pronouns certainly doesn't hate you. If you're that worried about upsetting them, though, you can always ask."

Maybe he's known PJ too long. He's grateful for it, still, so relieved that he doesn't have to voice the swirling anxiety of doing something wrong when he only has the best intentions.

"I guess I could do that," Phil mutters, embarrassed by how easily he's been read.

Winnie's responded by the time Phil looks back at the chat window, a lmao yeah ofc thats fine i just cant believe you want to, im not trying to b weird ive just been a fan for a really long time?? (used a comma for you too) (and brackets) (youre welcome) that makes Phil smile.

Awesome! And are the name Winnie & they/them pronouns fine to talk about you with, or do you prefer something else for this?

no yeah thats good idc how you refer to me, is Winnie's immediate response. It's stupid how much of a load feels like it's been lifted off of Phil's shoulders at that easy reassurance.

"You were right," Phil informs PJ.

PJ nods, solemn, as he stirs his noodles. "I often am."

"You're annoying, also," says Phil. "Hey. D'you wanna come up north with me?"

"Phil," says PJ dramatically, holding the wooden spoon up to his heart. "Are you asking me to run away with you?"

"No, absolutely not, stop making that joke." There's no way in hell Phil is going to keep putting up with this from both of them, and PJ is more likely to listen to him than Chris is.

PJ laughs. "Yeah, yeah. You going to see the haunt?"

"If my parents are okay with us hanging out for the weekend, yeah."

"Oh, okay," says PJ. "We're just waiting on confirmation that Kath and Nigel want to spend time with you? Might as well pack now."

"Your stuff's folded," Phil says helpfully. PJ throws a noodle in his general direction. It flops onto the floor between them, a sad, wet spiral of a thing, and Phil touches his nose at the same time PJ does.

"Well, one of us has to pick it up," PJ says in his Reasonable Adult voice, as if he hadn't thrown it in the first place.

Phil looks at his laptop, valiantly pretending not to see the floor noodle, and blinks.

and i mean i havent seen any of this shit firsthand but if you need to ask me anything about the stuff thats gone down im always free. like literally always.

#phanfic #phanfiction #dnp fic #phan #words words words #quiet on widow's peak

34 notes · View notes

buffintruder · 4 years

Text

fic writer tag game!

thank you for tagging me @arofili!

AO3 name: also Buffintruder

Fandoms: in the past, mostly Les Mis. There was a brief TAZ-heavy period, now it’s more Fullmetal Alchemist and Bartimaeus. I am one of those writers who write for many, many fandoms though (about 33 according to my ao3 dashboard, excluding overlaps)

Number of fics: 61

Fic I spent the most time on: Probably Angus McDonald and the Case of the Soul Stealers when counting hours put into it, though I am not sure about this. In terms of how time between starting and posting it, definitely my Les Mis au The World Ain’t Sherwood Forest which took over two years because there were some parts I was unsatisfied with and also I started it right before I started getting out of the fandom

Fic I spent the least time on: Probably the Bartimaeus amnesty/cryptid au Footprints. Other than the first draft of the first two paragraphs, I finished it all in one day, so probably about 5 total hours worth of work?

Longest fic: For published fic, A Tale of Two Kravitzes at 54k, though the Angus McDonald Boy Detective series goes over that by a couple thousand words.

Shortest fic: Technically it’s a les mis poem at 25 words, but I don’t feel like counting that, so the shortest story is a Skulduggery Pleasant crack fic called Skeletons in the Closet at 646 wo

So the next four things were all separate categories, but I collapsed them into one because the answer is the same for all of them. Angus McDonald and the Case of the Soul Stealer has the highest hits (2771) kudos (227), comment threads (37), and bookmarks (56). Honestly, I’m pretty happy with this. I worked hard on it, discovered that I could, in fact, write and finish a story that has both actual plot and is over 15k words. This is one of the fics I’m really proud of

Total word count: This one was added by arofili, but eh, I’m keeping it. 371,826 words worth of fanfiction, oof

Favourite fic I wrote: can i say angus mcdonald and the case of the soul stealer. This is hard because I have many favorites, but I think I have to say my post-canon Greedling fic Friends of the Soul. I think I did a good job of writing it and had fun doing so, but more than that, it was the direct cause of a friendship with one person that I’m super glad to know (and possibly an indirect cause of another?), and none of my other fics can beat that

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: There aren’t any fics I want to rewrite, and as for fics that I want to expand on, there are a few, but I feel like that doesn’t count because I have actual plans. I want to write a sequel for the Angus McDonald one from Kravitz’s pov (i started writing one over a year ago and just... haven’t finished it rip). I also want to add more to my discworld/harry potter crossover/fusion thing, and I have vague plans for another work in my platonic fake dating Greedling au (also possibly prequel) though who knows if that will ever happen

Share a bit of a WIP or a story idea you’re planning on:

This is a bit from the canon era Greedling fic that I’m getting pretty close to finishing,

“Huh,” Greed said thoughtfully. “Well, carbon does make up a lot of stuff. Like diamonds. Hey, make my hands into diamonds!”

Ed rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”

“What, me?” Greed tilted his head slightly.

“You can already manipulate the carbon to create your Shield, so you should be able to do other stuff with it too,” Ed said, and Ling could feel Greed light up at the realization.

“You’re totally right, I can do that!” Greed said. There was a beat. “...How do I do that?”

“I’m not showing you how to make your Shield into a diamond,” Ed said flatly. “It won’t be good protection, and you already use your Shield irresponsibly for the sake of aesthetic.”

Like Ed can talk, Ling scoffed, though he did admit that Ed had a point.

“You’re one to talk, Mr. ‘all my weapons have skulls on them just because’,” Greed said.

“Well, it’s not like it hinders me in any way!” Ed snapped.

“But it is tacky as hell,” Greed said. “There’s gotta be something else you can show me.”

Ed’s eyes glinted. “I could teach you how to turn your claws into pencils.”

I don’t know who would want to be tagged in this, but if you see it and want to go for it, please do!! I’d love to see what people have been writing

#my writing

5 notes · View notes

menswearmusings · 5 years

Text

Free Product Review—Spier & Mackay Custom Shirt (+Giveaway Announcement)

Spier & Mackay is best known to my readers for their excellent-for-the-price Neapolitan-style jacket cut. But actually, their roots are in custom shirt making. The tailoring, the accessories, the trousers, that all came later. Founder Rikky Khanna (who goes by Rick) asked me if I wanted to give an honest review of their custom shirt program. Intrigued by their multitude of collar styles and what I’d heard was nearly infinite flexibility, I said yes (for my policy on free products and reviews, see my disclaimer page here). With that said, let me dive straight into my thoughts on the shirt and the process.

Pattern is key

I’ve got several online custom shirts from other companies, which I usually make by measuring a shirt I like the fit of and copying the measurements. Over time, I’ve tweaked the measurements here or there to dial it in, and I’ve been happy with the results. But this shirt has changed my perspective a little bit. While none of those shirts fit poorly, something about the cut of this shirt makes it feel like it fits better—using nearly identical measurements. I can only assume it has to do with how the pattern is drafted. I asked Rick about this, and he said that they have a third-generation tailor whose entire career has been in making custom shirts drafting each pattern. He is also apprenticing two younger tailors to take over for him when he retires. Considering the price of these shirts (as low as $80), that’s remarkable.

Collar designs for everyone

While they can make any collar you want based on specifications, their standardized collar designs cover almost all the bases. From point collars to super tall Italian wide spreads, there’s something for everyone (though someone recently did ask in their Styleforum thread for short collars for casual use—a blind spot of mine, since I never wear those). I opted for the large wide Italian spread (“C21” on the website), and then specified a slight increase in front collar band height. It is identical to my favorite dress shirt collar, the Eidos Marcus collar (which is why I chose it of course).

By default, the collars all come with a stiff, fused interlining. Instead of that, I asked about un-fused collar linings. They have four stiffness options: 1) Light (a single layer of un-fused interlining); 2) Unfused lining bonded to a fused lining (which is sewn in; there is no fusing to the shirt fabric); 3) Unfused bonded to a medium fused; 4) Unfused bonded to a stiff fusing. I opted for the second-lightest option and am happy with it. Given that the fabric I chose is a dressy, business-appropriate fabric, it does very well with a tie as well as without a tie, standing up under a jacket. I’m considering doing a super light fused on future shirts (which is how my Eidos dress shirts are made), and will likely also try the lightest unfused option. For sport shirts, such as a washed denim I intend to do at some point, I’ll go completely unlined.

Unlimited possibilities

For customization and even designs, the sky is the limit. For instance, as mentioned above, I requested a small increase in the front collar band height and about doing an un-fused collar lining. But I also talked to Rick about other details like the shirt sleeve attachment angle (a detail Ratio exposed to me as a possibility) or pleated shoulders (a detail found on Neapolitan shirtmakers’ goods, like G. Inglese), and he said it’s all posible. I even asked if I could send him a shirt to just copy all the design details on, and he said this was doable.

I am not a fan of secret menus, so this would be kind of a turn-off for me if I were new to the style game—I wouldn’t know what I don’t know, and would be afraid I wouldn’t think of some critical detail that would take my shirt to the next level. However, the options that Spier does offer by default in their step by step process are enough to make an excellent shirt for most people. And in my opinion, besides a good fit and fabric, most of what makes a shirt special is the collar shape, where they’ve got most bases covered. So, I say if you’re worried about missing out on some secret knowledge, don’t. Just design a shirt with the tools available and you’ll be able to make something special. (I’ve listed exactly what I requested below if you’re interested).

Fast turn-around

The high water mark for quick custom shirt turnaround is Proper Cloth, who has shaved it down to 2-3 weeks. However, I was glad to find out that Spier’s turnaround was only about 4 weeks from the time of my order to delivery.

Some negatives

Not that it’s all roses with the Spier & Mackay online custom shirt program. My biggest gripe is that the fabric selection and descriptions are pretty lame. Their images can sometimes make it hard to know exactly what you’re getting. Maybe I’m just spoiled by Proper Cloth—which has gratuitous fabric images, a full paragraph of copy written about each one, and consistent information like opacity, weave, origin and more—but it feels to me like somewhat of a leap of faith to select a fabric. On top of this, they do not offer the ability to order a swatch (which again, Proper Cloth does). Rick says that’s something they might do in the future, but since their fabrics are all stored overseas in their factory, it is not currently feasible.

I asked Rick what their remake policy is if the shirt fits incorrectly, or you end up hating the fabric. In the event of an issue like that, they will remake the shirt for 50% off, which he feels is fair given the already low prices they’re offering. Compared with Proper Cloth or Ratio, which do free remakes, this makes for a higher barrier to entry for those hesitant to try it out.

As for my shirt in particular, one detail came out wrong: it came to me with the collar cut with curved collar leafs, instead of straight-cut. Some of Spier’s off the rack shirts come cut this way, and other companies do them as well, but I’ve never liked it. I assumed that’s how it was designed, and told Rick I wish I had thought to request it with straight leafs. He told me actually the collar is supposed to have straight leafs, and this was a mistake by the factory. To rectify that, I sent the shirt back, he had a new collar made at their factory in the same fabric, and their in-house tailor attached the new collar to the body of the shirt. It was back to me within two weeks. So, my advice is: if you get a shirt and you don’t like something, definitely ask about it, in case it was an error on their part.

Shop the Outfit: Brown tweed Eidos jacket (similar); Spier & Mackay custom shirt (see details below for fabric and design); Spier & Mackay charcoal flannel trousers (other options from Berg & Berg; SuitSupply; Brooks Brothers; Drake’s).

A couple of things I’d change about the design of my shirt: 1) I’d make it with a one-piece yoke (I didn’t think to ask, and their design tool didn’t offer either. Can someone tell me why the split yoke even exists?). 2) A wider forearm/more pleats at the cuff. They have you measure the bicep and arm hole size, and then you specify the cuff. I copied my favorite shirt for all three measurements, but there are only two darts in the sleeve at the cuff, which means the pattern of the sleeve decreases in width more dramatically than the shirt I measured. It’s a bit tight in the elbow (I’ve never had a shirt blow out the elbow, but this could easily be the first one that will). I’d probably just request they make my shirt with four pleats at the cuff to rectify this.

Overall, however. I’m very pleased with the shirt. I give Spier & Mackay high praise for their superior pattern making, great selection of collar shapes and extreme flexibility in customization. They need a major facelift on their website, and need to make options like collar linings, cuff linings and forearm fit more accessible in the typical step-by-step design process (instead of being special requests in the comments box). But, all in all, I highly recommend giving Spier & Mackay’s custom shirts a try.

My custom shirt specs

Fabric: “BLUE PENCIL STRIPE – TESSITURA MONTI – 2 PLY 160’S”

Collar: C21 “Large Italian Full Spread Collar”, with the following special instructions specified in the comments box:

Specified with front collar band height increased to 1-7/16”

Specified with unfused lining at the 2nd level of stiffness (unfused lining bonded to a fused lining, sewn in)

Cuffs: Round, conical cuff, which tapers toward the end (a custom option requested in the comments box)

No placket

No back pleats

No front pocket

Mother of pearl buttons with crow’s foot stitching

(Help support this site by buying stuff through my links; your clicks and purchases earn me a commission from many of the retailers I feature, and it helps me sustain this site—as well as my menswear habit! Thanks!)

Giveaway

I’m pleased to announce a partnership with Spier & Mackay to give away a FREE custom shirt, plus two other bonus prizes. To enter the giveaway, see the instructions below.

To Enter:

1- Make sure you’re following @SpierMackay, and @MenswearMusings on Instagram

2- Like this post on Instagram

3- Tag at least 3 friends in separate comments on the Instagram post; more tags = more entries

4- For an extra 5 entries, share the Instagram post to your stories with tags of both @menswearmusings and @spiermackay

Here are the prizes:

GRAND PRIZE: a FREE Spier & Mackay custom shirt

SECOND PRIZE: $50USD off a custom shirt

THIRD PRIZE: $25USD off a custom shirt

The entry period for the giveaway ends Sept. 2 at 11:59 p.m. Central Daylight Time. We will announce winners, who will be chosen at random out of all the entries, within one week after the end of the entry period.

Rules and regulations

Per Instagram rules, we must mention this is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram’s term of use.

The give-away is open to people from anywhere that DHL or FedEx will ship.