#i've edited this like 50 times since i first posted it help

[melverie]

- OBEY ME NIGHTBRINGER GUIDE -

I think I've pretty much covered everything important now, but I'll probably still edit this entire thing from time to time. I'm linking this post back to itself so those of you that'd rather reblog can check for updates every once in a while (last updated: September 25th 2023)

-> guide for Obey Me Shall We Date? -> intimacy raising guide

Things discussed on here currently include:

card building

leveling vs Devil's Tree

skill level & Joker

Ravens

Ruri☆Tunes

Azuki-tan Wallet & Magical Score

other

- CARD BUILDING -

basically, most of the stuff from the first game still applies

the smartest thing you can do is to actually focus on building the UR+ demon cards you get card pieces for in hard lessons and/or both memory and demon UR cards that are in the main summoning pool, since you'll always be able to raise those cards' skill level without having to use jokers, meaning you'll also have an easier time to max out the entire Devil's Tree completely

if possible, build at least one UR(+) demon card of each sin, I'd recommend two minimum tho

if you don't have any UR(+) demon cards for a specific sin, use SSRs

for early game, you can also use SR cards if you don't have anything better, but make sure to swap them out as soon as possible

get your UR(+) demon cards to level 70 minimum and your SSR ones to 60 minimum

check your cards secondary sin. For example the following card is a UR wrath card with lust as its secondary sin, meaning for lust stages, it'll act like an SSR card

the above also holds true for memory cards

only build SSR or UR(+) memory cards; but again, for early game SR and even R memory cards are perfectly fine

get your memory cards to level 50 minimum and try having at least one memory card per sin

focus on your demon cards first and your memory cards second

unlike in the original, it doesn't matter much which characters you choose since sin-specific glow sticks don't exist in nightbringer. That being said, you should still level cards of multiple characters since you can only use one demon card of a specific character in battle

if you want to use them, prioritzie giving your Jokers to event cards instead of the ones from the regular summoning pool

max out you card's Devil's Tree asap. You don't need to get the last 'sin up's if you don't want to (though I'd definitely recommend getting them), but make sure to get the very last 'rank up'!

to unlock Max Level Caps, your cards need to have Skill Level 3 or higher

- LEVELING VS DEVIL'S TREE -

DISCLAIMER: I'm probably not 100% correct on this but from how I understand it, this is the main difference between the two:

Leveling raises a card's strenght for ALL sins, which is more helpful for using that card in stages boosting a different sin than its own and is generally more useful in the long-run

Maxing out a card's Devil's Tree does also help in raising the card's strenght for all sins, but since it focuses mainly on the main and secondary sins, it's more useful for stages that correspond with their sin

Whichever one you decide to focus on first is up to you. Personally, I'd go with leveling tho

- SKILL LEVEL & JOKER -

generally speaking, I'd advise you to focus on the cards you can get card pieces for in hard lessons, as well as the ones in Chapter A and M. Since you can get them anytime, you can raise their skill level more easily than that of an event card

Devil's Trees of certain UR(+) and SSR cards can give you Jokers, with UR(+) Devil's Trees giving you either one UR or one SSR Joker per tree (afaik) and SSR Devil's Trees only giving you one SSR Joker per tree (again, afaik), though they usually require skill level 3 or higher just to unlock that reward. If you happen to have a card that's already at that skill level and has a Joker as an unlockable reward more power to ya, but otherwise it just kind of defeats the purpose

Pop Quiz rewards include a total of 5 UR Jokers, as well as 5 SSR ones. Out of them, f2p players will most likely only really get 1 UR and 2 SSR ones as long as they play every stage daily

The ranking prizes also include SSR and UR Jokers. Realistically speaking however, f2p players will unfortunately never place high enough to receive them unless they have done nothing but safe resources for several months

your To Do List also gives you SSR Jokers for reaching 100% in a certain amount of Devil's Trees. It might also give you UR and even UR+ Jokers later down the line, though I haven't done those yet so no guarantee. You can 100% the Devil's Tree of N cards if you want to go after those, but tbh I think there are better ways to spend your resources

this one's for VIP members only, but apparently the VIP-exclusive job has a chance of dropping two SSR Jokers per shift

lastly, you can get the ones from Akuzon once you have enough Ravens

- RAVENS -

there are five main ways to get Ravens (as far as I know, at least): daily surprise guest gifts, :D jobs, Devil's Trees, events & summoning. Let's go through them one by one

DAILY SURPRISE GUEST GIFTS You'll be able to get up to 2 Ravens a day from your surprise guests, which, yes, isn't a lot (it'd take you about 3.5 years to have enough Ravens to raise the skill level of one UR+ card just once), but you should definitely get them every day regardless since they're super easy to get

:D JOBS After finishing a shift at the Clock Tower, there's a chance you'll get 2 Ravens as a reward (up to 4 if you have two characters working). Item drop rates actually increase if you choose a prefered character, so make sure you always have a shift with two prefered workers running to maximize your chances

DEVIL'S TREES Some cards actually have Ravens as an unlockable reward in their Devil's Tree. UR(+) and SSR cards give you 10 Ravens for 20k Grimm though they usually require skill level 2 and up. Meanwhile, SR, R and N cards give 2 Ravens for 6k and do not need a higher skill level Whether you want to use your Grimm and materials just for unlocking Ravens is up to you, though I'd advise against it

EVENTS For Pop Quiz events, you'll be able to receive 10 Ravens per part, meaning 50 in total. However, most f2p players will probably only get up to 20 Ravens as long as they clear all stages every day during the given time frame. Celestial Blessings can give you up to 63 Ravens, though how many you actually end up getting is entirely down to luck and your resources Either way, events are definitely useful for getting more Ravens, but they definitely shouldn't be your only method of getting them

SUMMONING If you pull a card that already has its skill level maxed out, the game gives you a Raven instead. The best way to go about this would be to summon a bunch in Chapter G since you only need Grimm there. It definitely is an incredibly hefty investment considering the number of cards in that pool, but totally worth it in the long run and most likely also the best way to farm for Ravens. I'd definitely start working on it as soon as possible, even if that means sidelining building your cards a little. You can also use the Azuki-tan Wallets to get more Grimm quicker and speed things up

- RURI☆TUNES -

not 100% sure on this but fever time seems to run slightly faster. If you have trouble with the faster speed, you might consider not collecting the fever tokens in the first place. However, you'll also lose the combo by not collecting them. This has been a PSA

if you prefer, you can hit the little edit button right next to the skip/start button(s) and switch the controls to up/down. The advantage of up/down is that you can hit the actual items as they hit the line

personally I have it set to left/right with my fingers positioned as seen in the pic below, since it helps keep in mind which side does what + sometimes during a song my thumbs wander to the middle of the screen, meaning I'd mess up with up/right controls. It all comes down to personal preference, of course, but maybe tapping like that'll work best for you, too

you can also dim the background and turn of the extra stuff that pops up once in a while if you find it too distracting

notes you have to hold actually end automatically and give you a 'perfect' if you keep your finger on the screen. Here's a video to demonstrate

if you have trouble with hitting the screen at the right time, mash the screen on both sides as seen here. You just need to pay attention to long notes and obstacles

something that helps me every once in a while is turning the sound of entirely. I also sometimes just put on an entirely different song. It certainly won't help everyone but it might be worth a try

you can still win battles even if your estimated rank is D. It depends a bit on how well you do in the rhythm game, so it's best to compare the estimate with your actual result and decide based on that. If you usually finish with a perfect combo and almost all hits as perfect, than it should look something like this

if for whatever reason you want to restart a battle but don't want to lose your AP or items, you can fully close the game and start it back up again. If you used items you'll still be using them if you restart this way. Just make sure that you close the game before the loading symbol shows up, otherwise it'll save your result. The game starts loading shortly after the stage's boss disappears. If you did everything correctly, this screen should pop up after you tap the start button:

if you're stuck because your cards are too weak, use the Flower Staffs. It's probably best to save them for later seasons tho, but I also used them to get to lesson 10 on day 1, so do what makes you happy

save your resources; don’t use the Blossom Flower Staff if you can win with a Bud one

buy the defeat flash sales if you need more Flower Staffs. It's also the cheapest option for getting more Blossom Flower Staffs. As long as you do your daily missions you'll be able to buy it almost every day. Keep in mind that you actually need to get a D-Rank for this flash sale to pop up! Depleting your health bar does not work!

- AZUKI-TAN WALLET & MAGICAL SCORE -

keep in mind that you can use both items when sweeping. You just need to hit the little 'Support' button before sweeping

the Azuki-tan Wallet is a GODSEND. Use it if you need Grimm; it'll give you about 15k per win in an S-Rank stage

the Magical Score is also a godsend. Only use it on lessons in hard mode that give you UR+ card pieces though! It'll give you 3 card pieces per sweep, making farming for new UR+ cards so much easier. You'll need 9 Magical Scores to get the card, 17 if you want to raise it to skill level 2 and a total of 54 if you want to bring it to skill level 5

keep in mind that you can use both items when sweeping. You just need to hit the little 'Support' button before sweeping

the Azuki-tan Wallet is a GODSEND. Use it if you need Grimm; it'll give you about 15k per win in an S-Rank stage

the Magical Score is also a godsend. Only use it on lessons in hard mode that give you UR+ card pieces though! It'll give you 1 to 3 card pieces per sweep, making farming for new UR+ cards so much easier

- OTHER -

skip battles instead of sweeping. You'll level your cards and have a chance to meet with Surprise Guests. Every 50 times you use a character in battle or every 50 time you meet with a (specific) character, you'll get 50 AP, which let's you skip more battles and meet more Surprise Guests, which gives you more AP, which let's you skip more battles and meet more Surprise Guests, which gives you more AP, which le--

Surprise Guest interactions seem to be the same as in the old game, except for Satan's for some reason? Anyway, here's all his interactions: - B to S-Rank - high five -> hair rub -> chest tap chest tap -> chest tap -> face tap - C-Rank and lower - arm tap -> arm tap -> chest tap - home screen - "I want to talk to you" chest rub -> face rub -> hair rub "*yawn* Time really flew by as..." chest rub -> hair rub -> hair rub "Did a cat come through here?" face tap -> face rub -> chest tap

send out friend requests! You can get up to 50 AP a day from friends, so always make sure that your friend list is full My main account's ID is 2342023493 if you'd like to send me a friend request! As long as my friend list isn't full, I'll accept! Just a fair warning though, I regularly check if the people in my friend list are still playing actively

Feel free to add more or ask questions in the comments or in asks (or shoot me a dm if you prefer)! Also if there's anything else about the game you'd like me to mention in this guide, let me know!

Also please tell me if any of the links shouldn't work

Best of luck to all of you!

#obey me #obey me nightbringer #obey me guide #mel's starry musings

[danggirlronpa]

Palestine Charity Stream

Edit: Due to router issues, the stream will take place Wednesday, not Tuesday! Sorry for the inconvenience!

Through this upcoming Tuesday Wednesday, to celebrate DanganWLWeek and make a small difference in the current humanitarian crisis, I'll be hosting a fundraiser in support of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund! The fundraiser is up and running right now, so you can donate it to it whenever you please - the earlier, the better! You can follow the link to donate directly to this fundraiser and have an impact on both the stream and the lives of kids suffering in Gaza.

The stream will be hosted on twitch.tv/pechebeche. It's been a long time since I've run a stream instead of just watching one, so it's still being set up! Please have patience if we run into any technological mishaps.

On this stream, I will be ranking and discussing F/F ships and characters in Danganronpa from the perspective of That One Lesbian Who Majored In Literary Analysis And Won't Shut Up About It. We'll talking about themes within the games, rare or often-forgotten content, and just plain ol' headcanons. We'll make sure to hit every single ship through this excellent tierlist by @catgirlchihiro!

At minimum, I'll be discussing every single F/F ship between THH characters and responding to any notes from donations. For each $50 we'll raise, we'll tack on another section! The following is the full list of stretch goals up to the current goal:

Base - THH F/F ships and everyone gets to hear what my voice sounds like! (It's not that impressive)

$50 - SDR2 F/F ships

$100 - NDRV3 F/F ships (and postcards giveaway!)

$150 - Komaru F/F ships, DR3 and spinoff F/F ships

$200 (Goal reached!) - Cross-game F/F ships (and Rantaro clearfile holder giveaway!)

$250+ - ???

$300 - Tsumioda keychain & stiff Kaemaki mini-print giveaways!

These donations don't have to be completed Sunday - you can donate at any time, including right now, and they'll still count towards the final amount! I'll also respond directly on stream to any notes you leave in the donations.

In addition, every time we hit $100, I'll do a giveaway of some merch from the recent Mochizuki Kei collaboration on this tumblr!:

Depending on how much we raise, the stretch goals themselves may take multiple streams so I don't lose my voice talking about girls for eight hours straight. However, any goal we reach WILL be completed by the end of the week, even if I have to stream a couple times! In addition, all stream VODs will remain on Twitch, and hopefully be posted to YouTube. Any donations after the first stream ends will still count towards the giveaways, but not the stream goals.

If you have any questions or offers to help, you are welcome to drop an ask in the inbox or to message through tumblr DMs! You can also e-mail me directly at [email protected].

Even if you can't donate yourself, please do your best to boost this post! Regardless of the stream itself, if even one person sees this post and notices they can donate to the relief fund as a result, that's a win! (:

And if you came looking for my pinned post to find WLWeek rules and found this instead: the WLWeek information can be found here!

#charity stream #danganronpa #danganwlweek2023 #danganwlwcharitystream #< this will be the tag from now on for people who may need to block it! #i would greatly appreciate reblogs to spread the word!! especially since its such a quick turnaround #the regular wlweek will still also run! this is just happening On Top Of It #i'll be scheduling this to repost itself a couple times over the next few days so please make sure to block the tag if you dont want to see

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ofmd s2e4 rewatch where i pause to jot down my thoughts and other random shit

it's been a busy week since last thursday and shit's only gonna get busier for me after tomorrow so hopefully i can get through these two episodes out before i go to bed lol!!! anyway once again these posts are just me rambling so i can process the insane amount of information in these episodes and if u want to read them too that's fine.

s2e1, s2e2, s2e3, s2e4, s2e5, s2e6, s2e7, s2e8

rip everyone who wanted homoerotic sword fighting in the gentebeard reunion. have a headbutt as a consolation prize.

obsessed with stede holding raw room-temperature meat against his bruised face bc that's not even a little bit how that works. i love this show.

ok so jim saying "he'll probably get around to killing you after he's rested" in response to stede saying ed needs to regain his strength actually gives some pretty good context to why they want ed of the ship so bad. bc they DID fully try to kill ed and now he's here and alive and like. if i were jim i would be pretty worried abt ed holding a grudge abt that.

wont lie stede being like "we dont just banish people, that's not us!" makes me thinkg abt how they fully banished izzy from the ship in e6. i mean technically izzy banished himself on accident but. lol.

also izzy's absence in this scene indicating he is not yet considered part of the entire crew

roach: i need that steak back, it's dinner stede: (pulling the steak away) oh, right fang: maybe let's put the banishment to a vote? stede: (steak back on his face, apparently having forgotten he was literally just about to give the meat to roach) aw do we have to :(

ed chained to the ship is doing. a lot for me. i wont lie.

buttons saying he's been to the gravy basket a few times... how many times has this man almost died??????

it is deeply funny to me that they edit the split second flashback of the drowning and mermaid hallucination to look all creepy as if that whole scene wasn't set to an incredibly sappy 80's love song (said with immense affection)

OBSESSED with stede trying to be like. encouraging to izzy. and being like "he cant hear you he's got no head" about izzy yelling at the ruined figurehead. this fucking dork.

so ive seen ppl talking abt how the crew's in a deadlock abt banishing ed and which ppl they think were pro-banishment and which were against, but the scenes with the crew make it look like everyone's voting for ed to get kicked out. so tbh i think like either of the following interpretations are pretty valid: the crew is split 50/50 on if they should banish ed OR the crew 100% wants to banish ed and stede was gonna try and leverage izzy's vote to try and get more ppl to change their mind. doesnt rlly matter either way tho

also the fact that izzy was the one to keep ed's body is. interesting. the others must've known abt it and helped izzy hide the body in the secret room. but izzy being the one to be like "no we're not throwing him overboard" is. something. no conclusions abt this atm im just rotating this fact in my brain.

i also just have a lot of thoughts abt the mutiny and the fact that like, jim's a trained assassin and the others are also pretty experienced killers and they probably knew they hadn't completely finished the job. and there was plenty of opportunity for them to do something about that. but instead they hid his body and waited for ed to succumb to his injuries. it feels kinda like ed's "technically i outsource the big job" rule. idk. thoughtssss.

frenchie in this scene is so funny bc he seems both actually apologetic abt kicking ed off the ship but also very relieved/vindicated to see him go.

didnt realize olu almost said smthng to ed lol i thought ed was just saying "fuck you" to him for no reason ghfjkghjkfh

"first time i've ever been on this side of a walk of shame" wee john i have so many questions. how many times have you been banished from a ship.

obsessed with archie just being like "way to make this awkward brah." her shitty boss put her life at risk in an attempt to make her and her coworkers kill him in a weird roundabout suicide attempt and her summary of the situation is "well, this is awkward :/"

"shitty sailing with you" sick burn, jim

"you're making it really hard to look up to you, man" LOVE how black pete is still a blackbeard stan. despite everything.

just ONCE i want someone to appreciate roach's sandwiches :(

"dont you want your sammy" STEDE I WOULD DIE FOR YOU

also i disagree with the subtitles here im like 99% sure says "you're no fuckin mermaid" not "you're not a fuckin mermaid" but that's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

stede looks SO sad abt not being a mermaid

love how everyone in this episode just sort of nods and is like "yeah okay" every time buttons tells them he's turning into a bird

altho with stede in this scene specifically im convinced that he's just jumping at the chance to follow ed to the island. he was absolutely gonna come up with some shitty excuse to go ashore anyway but it's nice of buttons to give him plausible deniability

i love how much ed hates nature

why do the subtitles say "gyp-" this has been bothering me all week. the line is "like a drifter"

i also love ed's line delivery of "a wolf?"

anyway dumb posts abt the spider tattoo backstory: 1, 2, 3

i love to see ed getting hugs... wish i could give him a hug :(

ok also buttons talking abt the gravy basket made me think ed needed like some sort of spell or smthng to snap out of it but instead it just kinda wore off by the end of the episode (maybe, depends on how you read the whole buttons turning into a bird scene). this is very funny to me for some reason

anne rubbing the cup she's holding against her tit. queen.

stede bonnet idiot dumbfuck moments

i LOVE anne's line delivery of "eddie motherfuckin teeeeach" like yeah that's cj's girl alright. or was cj's girl. who knows.

SECRET HANDSHAKE im cryinggggg. i love them.

stede's voice sounds so weird when he says "i wasn't looking for you" and that's because he's fucking lying through his teeth

LOVE how anne and mary look at each other after the "shipmates" "former" interaction like they are immediately on the same wavelength. and that wavelength is fucking with ed and his ex. they sniffed out a messy relationship dynamic and were like "oh hell yeah we need more of this in our lives"

ed is SO bitchy this whole scene i fucking love it. ed's face when he says "him?" fdhjksgfjhdgkj

ed: whatever 🙄 anne: whatever? 👀 mary: whatever! 😈

wee john getting more goth is so good

drunk izzy rambling at the ship's figurehead is so funny to me tho i miss drunk izzy

ed's crew lady macbeth "out damned spot" moments

i like how there's a goat in the background of this scene in anne and mary's house and it is unexplained and also never seen again.

ed's face after stede says "that's romance" is soooo good this bitch is so pissed. like oh would you have met me at the docs if i peeled the guard's face off instead of just paying him off? is that what fuckin does it for you???? not that it matters bc i dont care. but. cunt.

yeah im just focusing in on all of ed's faces in this scene. "quite the shift going from wearing people's faces to antique collectors" gets ed to freeze in the middle of bringing his drink up to his lips and just kinda stare off into the distance.

"how did you meet" has ed kind of frowning for a split second before stede starts answering and then he rolls his eyes very dramatically and sighs deeply

ed immediately being like "actually i was gonna kill him myself!" trying to undermine stede's meet-cute story. also anne and mary nodding along in complete unison bc this is just normal pirate conversation to them.

~~~

also as someone who has been team "no ed was dead serious abt the plan to steal stede's identity" this was very vindicating for me. it's a bad plan and it doesn't make any sense but logistics literally dont matter in this show. what matters is giving this story the "falling for the mark" trope makes ed's character arc in season 1 that much tastier!!!!

ed and stede going back and forth telling their story i cant fucking wait until theyre happily together telling this story and instead of ed trying to downplay it and ruin the meet-cute-iness of it they're just building on each other and being sappy and adorable

"more like i relented" one of the biggest lies i've ever heard this man say fjhkgjkfdhk

"until he completely boned it" SAY IT. FUCKING SAY IT. SOOOOO TRUE ED.

auauhghgh the beard bit......... crying

THE!!!!! QUIETEST LITTLE "thank you" OF ALL TIME. TIED MAYBE WITH ED SAYING "thank you" AFTER "i think you're very sophisticated" IN 1.05

i dont blame stede for trying to get ed to open up right after that bc that was the first bone ed's thrown stede's way since he woke up. unfortunately ed is not in the mood to talk abt his near-death experience and mermaid hallucination sequence.

LOVE anne's little gesture when she says "rabbit" and the little hip cocking

stede being like "uhhhh we could leave" during the knifeplay exhibitionism moment

i giggle every time at the way the crew is instantly like "fuck closing our eyes we're doing any fucking surprises"

ngl idgw the crew yelled abt the piñata reveal. but ok

loooove stede's half of the crew just blowing past all the screaming and tension from ed's half. jim screams "STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!!" abt the blindfold and roach is like "you won't want to stay the fuck away from this caaaake!" like roach fdhsjfgdhfjkghkj read the room?????

i love how much stede just. completely misses all of annie's flirting

ed coughing during the blunt session i love himmmmm

ok but ed's trying to be like "im totally over stede i dont even like him" and then ed reminiscing fondly with a distant smile abt the 1.06 stabbing scene

"and that was the... second time you left your wife?" underrated line

love how annie's been all quiet and seductive and then when she goes to make her move she's just like "WOUND THIS" and aggressively sits in stede's lap

also ok. "they're gonna be so jealous" is that annie talking abt ed and mary or is that annie using they/them pronouns for mary.

BUTTONS JUMPSCARE

also i love how they have that one medusa painting just. in their kitchen. im obsessed with the interior decor of this lesbian antique store that annie and mary live in

the way she's so touched by the poisoning attempt hjfgfjksghskjhgjkh

buttons being like "aahhhhhh do i give her... this bowl......????" fhjkghkfsjhk

"yeah, babe" TEALORANGES WIN

im honestly sad izzy's pathetic wet beast moment only really went for like three tiny scenes in one episode bc this shit was so funny to me. crawling away saying "you're born alone you die alone" over and over again. sir what are you even doing.

god buttons in this episode is so fucking funny bc i keep forgetting he's there. also why is he even there. like was he even invited to dinner or did he just sit down and annie and mary were like "oh ok i uh. guess we'll go make another plate??"

ed's face after buttons says the bit abt "i can tell this rabbit was intelligent" is soooo funny why is he so fucking pissed fdhsjkgyjdfkghjk

NO WAIT HE'S PISSED BC THAT WAS HIS FRIEND. THAT WAS HIS FRIEND THE WOLF HE WAS TELLING HIS SECRETS. NOW IM KINDA SAD :(:(:(

stede talking abt the sea when what he's actually talking abt is ed part 2 electric boogaloo

ed very calmly. standing up. and smashing the chair. im obsessed with him.

stede bonnet stupid dumbass moments

IMPROMPTU BLANKET FORT TIME

ed's voice is so quiet at the start of this scene he's not even yelling at stede until stede says "it's not fair" ohhhhhh my babygirl is so fucking sad........

"you ditching me without a note or anything" ed's literacy confirmed

"expecting me to just melt back into your arms" eddie my man. stede has not given literally any indication that he expected this at all. you are telling on yourself fhdjskghfkjshd

this scene is so fucking good i barely have anything to say abt it. just. u can rlly tell david jenkins wrote this ep himself lolll

"i was all in, mate. i was all in." IM SOBBING

oh nooooo i forgot that ed's line delivery of "im sorry my horrible naked chin disgusts you so much" isnt actually as sarcastic as the words itself make it seem. like it feels like ed wanted to say that all angrily and bitter but instead he just sounds sadddddd

ok ok but the way stede says "i love your chin naked or otherwise" and then after a pause (during which ed is keeping INCREDIBLY still bc u know otherwise he's just gonna burst into tearssss) stede whispers "ed" and ed is immediately like "don't" and then. stede going in for the "i love you" but like the way he's so slow with it?? he's literally like "i. love." and idk if it's bc he's trying to make this as clear as possible or if he's giving ed enough time to cut him off if he doesn't want to hear it

and ed DOES he DOES cut him off with "you don't get to say that to me" and he like. keeps glancing at stede out of the corner of his eye but not quite looking at him directly bc he knowwwwws it's like staring into the sun baby and ed knows if he looks at stede's face it's literally all over.

but also ed's face after stede pivots to "i love everything about you" he's SO pissed. he quietly groans and rolls his eyes bc this bitch. finding stupid loopholes to not being allowed to say "i love you." fuck this guy ed hates him so fucking much (lying)

oooooh when stede says "you don't have to say it back to me" ed's mouth opens and closes a bit before "not about to" bc this man is trying. SO hard not to cry (so am i but it's not working sorry there are tears on my face right now)

idk idk idk smthng abt "it's nice. feels good." makes me hurt so fucking bad bc the entire time since ed's woken up stede's been getting headbutted and snarked at passive-aggressively but stede's still like "i love being near you it makes me happy :)" brb i need. a fucking moment.

honestly tho how did annie and mary even overhear that bit bc they were on the other side of the room and stede was whispering SO quietly. opposite of when ppl in this show dont hear things despite the things being said like two feet away from them (1.03 geraldo and jackie talking abt how blackbeard was looking for stede, 2.01 zheng saying the indigo was worth way more than she spent on it)

LOVE how anne being like "stede likes the ladies" is how ed figures out "ohhhh wait ok theyre just fucking with us, got it" bc this guy??? liking women????? lmao

this also HAS to be why he gets over mary like his brain mustve gone "wait hang on why the fuck would he go back to her he doesn't even like women. guess maybe he really did panic huh" hdjksghfckghkjsh

obsessed with these TINY tiny details abt the ed/jack/annie/mary polycule dynamics we're given. ed would've expected as much from annie bc she's a fucking psycho. mary apparently used to not be like this. im putting the pieces together im connecting the dots.

ed and stede's knowing smug looks at each other. im obsessed.

annie being rlly sensitive to the word "bitch" im considering that more hints abt the polycule backstory

yayy fanny newspaper

"really? i mean she stabbed you, you poisoned her, and then she jumped on my face" stede this is all part of their very elaborate and deeply toxic sex life ok stop kinkshaming them

~~~

curious if ed and stede are too distracted by mary spelling out their worst fears to comment on all the smoke coming into the room

"everything must go" like a fucking clearance sale. this is such a silly line. this is a silly show. i love it here.

WHY DONT THEY MAKE OUT SLOPPY STYLE HERE THO

wait are they crying while they hug??? bro these girls are so fucking messy i love them

ed saying "see you guys" before he leaves them in their burning house. i would die for him

ok team arts and craft time while making a prosthetic for izzy. obsessed with how the b plot of this episode is literally "the crew struggles to get along but they eventually set aside their differences and work together when they realize there's someone even more cringe and pathetic than any of them"

"YOU ARE!!! HARASSING A CRIPPLE!!!!!!" is suchhhh a funny line im sorry im gonna miss izzy at his lowest fhsjkhjksf. literally they just knocked on the door my dude calm downnnn

obsessed with izzy being genuinelly touched and expressing it by saying "fucking cocksuckers." this man is allergic to having feelings.

stede and ed painfully talking over each other bc everything is awkward and difficult. i love them.

ed's face when stede offers to let ed stay. his very quiet "yis." the way he says "might be nice" and then VERY QUICKLY looks away

stede yelling GREAT at the top of his lungs fhdsjkguydfgfjkhl

i love when these guys try to play it cool bc theyre so fucking bad at it hgdfgvjfxdkgjjdkkgjhfdkh

stede bonnet dumb idiot moron moments

ed staring off lovinglyyyyyy

buttons jumpscare

also is that fucking sage. are we doing cultural appropriation here

buttons saying "Earth Wind and Fire i wanna go higher" hfjkhgfdjkhgjkh

i love how ed. does not question this "fuck yeah, brother. fly."

ed teach lovesick fool moments

i love how happy ed sounds telling stede abt buttons he sounds like his old goofy self for the first time all season.... im gonna cry

also i like how the crew adopts izzy as their new creature. 10/10

post credits scene is annie and mary at dinner with buttons. i guess it's after stede goes to comfort ed but before they go eavesdrop on that convo.

buttons enjoying his last meal as a human. and also he's like "there's too much fucking on that ship i need to get away from it all." and his way of doing this is becoming a bird. love that.

#ofmd s2 spoilers #our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2 #edward teach #stede bonnet #crew of the revenge #anne bonny #mary read #izzy hands #gentlebeard #s2e04 #txt #mine #og #ofmds2rwwiptjdmtaors

[anger-ey]

What year does NSR take place in, anyway? (theory)

I've had this question for a bit, and I came up with a theory, like, nearly 2 years ago by now, so I figured I'd share it here......

There are MULTIPLE OPTIONS I came up with.... here goes,,,

For starters: how do we even start? There's no indication of a year anywhere in the game! Nuh uh... there is!

Let's start by process of elimination: in one of the AMAs, one of the devs (I think it was Haz?) said that NSR does not take place in 2020, and in not in a post-pandemic world. So the maximum year is 2019. (They've also refused to actually answer on another occasion, though, so I'm not sure which is accurate.)

And, in one of the areas near the Mamak, Zuke notes how there hasn't been a specific music award since the 90s

So we know for certain (ish) that the game takes place between 2000 (if Zuke was referring to the early 90s) and 2019.

There's also a canonical date that the audition took place:

Monday, on the 7th of August. Because 2023 also has this date, we can see the previous years this specific day and date fell on.

The only years this date falls on are 2000, 2006, and 2017. (Now, I know that this is probably some random date, but I'll do what I can bro!!)

There's another clue to the setting: Neon J. He specifically mentions having served in the military in "'67", which can be from any century or millennium, but if we assume he meant 1967, we have to possible outcomes: 2000 or 2017.

We have little to no information about Neon J, but we do have some facts that can help us: the minimum age for serving in the military in Malaysia is 17. Let's say that Neon J was referring to his first serious mission when ranting to b2j about the azkar faction. That would mean he was 17 in 1967, making him 50 in 2000. Now, I know the devs said he was around his 40s, so we can use birthday logic and cay that maybe he is 49 now, and turning 50 later in the year. Kind of shaky, but I do like how it reflects the rise of EDM over Rock in the 2000s, and it fits with the fact the game is based on lots of early/mid 2000s media. As for the technology being so advanced for 2000, they have a giant nuclear reactor that turns sound into power in the middle of the city. I'm pretty sure they're much more technologically advanced than we were back then. As for the 2017 theory, we can also say that maybe Neon J died or was comatose for a very long time starting in his 20s, and was resurrected as a cyborg shortly before NSR was founded. That means he'd have been born over 40 years ago, but wasn't alive for a lot of it, so he was frozen in time for bit, like Aang in the iceberg. That, or he died in his 40s and it stuck in that mentality. Who knows!

There's also the possibility that Neon J meant, like 2264 or something and NSR takes place in the very far future, but idk I don't like that as much for some reason.

(p.s., just remembered that this is on those toy frame thingies in sayu's boss fight. this either means sayu was made in-universe in 2018, or this was simply when the modellers/painters worked on this specific model)

TAKE WHAT YOU WILL FROM THIS..... THANK YOU FOR READING MY THEORIES....

(Edit: thinking it over, I could see it being 2006, as a compromise between 2000 and 2017)

#no straight roads #nsr #angerey talks

[victoriacoffee]

Hey guys! Uh I felt like I should say something about the fandom

// mentions of self harm, suicidal ideation

This is gonna be long, sorry!

Heyyyy, sorry I've been so uhhh hardly active online...I've been trying to come back to posting online and stuff just idk it's been a pretty rough several months and every time I think my motivation is back enough it disappears. I'm currently tryna work things out in therapy as a result of how bad certain things have gotten in the last few months, I'm not gonna say what it was but based on my writing with a lot of focus on self harm and suicidal ideation, you can probably guess.

At this point I think I'm about to just not even bother logging into twitter anymore and pretty much use this and ao3 and pinterest and stuff (maybe occasionally instagram idk tho that place kinda sucks). It would probably help me be more active on here tbh since yall seem not really do a lot of the things that make my mh worst XD

Alright, anyway I'm currently editing a few different fics I've been working on for a while, several of them decided to be in the 50-100 page on google docs range whether I liked it or not, so that and my current disasterous working situation is why it's taking a ridiculous amount of time. If I had a functional posting schedule, ig I wouldn't be an ao3 user. I was gonna include a statement in one of them about this, but I decided this needed to be said here first

So I don't think I plan on leaving the dsmp fandom no matter what happens at this point. The average length of interest in a fandom is like what 10 years? Idk I heard that from some yt. If so, I'm approaching the halfway mark with the dsmp, which is insane to think about, and I don't plan on jumping off that train any time soon. The stories were intriguing and the cc's and their characters and music and stuff have gotten me through the lowest points of my life, so it's very hard to forget that.

Even if the cc's turn out to not be great, I still have their characters, and I'm not willing to give up this coping mechanism just yet because I feel like not having one when everything else in my life seems to be going to shit wouldn't be that great

I see it like if you liked a character in a movie and the actor that played them turned out to be bad, would you still like the character? I would.

cc!Wilbur turned out to be a shitty person. His song about being a wanker and a fucking waste of time was in fact spot on. Fuck that guy. I'm done with his stuff but I'm still gonna write his character

There are a lot of things erupting on twitter right now, I'm not sure what's going on and I do Not have the mental fortitude to find out at this point. I can't say I believe everything because after the Dream situation last fall...I'm just holding off my judgement for now. I'll probably go looking once the dust starts to settle but right now it's all a huge mess and everything is up in the air

I can't guarantee anything at this point, but I will most likely continue to write c! stagedduo and most likely draw and crochet them. I do not have another coping mechanism and the brainrot over the story of the dsmp will likely not go away

Uhhh really sorry I keep falling off the face of the earth, but I think I'm back now. I don't know what the future holds, but this is probably gonna become about the only social media i use now and I think i might just make an alt account or something for my other art so i can stop posting on instagram all together hopefully. Everytime i open that app it makes me more sad and then I never get around to opening this

Due to the severity of what I mentioned earlier, I'm just going to say that I'm not feeling like *that* right now, I feel like I'm actually very gradually starting to get out of the not great mental state I've been in for basically since high school, but I'm not gonna let twitter and the potential of social media harassment fuck that up, so from now on y'all are gonna be like 90% of my social media interactions most likely and I'm not gonna let whatever the hell twitter does in the next few weeks take my favorite characters from me.

I love c!Dream and c!Punz. Their dynamic is excellent be it drunz or stageduo. I'm gonna keep writing them.

They look like the cc's but they still very much exist separately of them (irl Dream isn't getting tortured by irl Quackity and Sam or anything lol).

So whatever ends up happening, imma be here most likely. So for those of you who'd like to join me, hey! For those of you who can't take it anymore, I understand.

Oh and for those of you who've been drawing/writing/whatever any cc's who are currently accused or exposed or anything, I encourage you not to delete or destroy your work, you worked hard on it! If you don't wanna look at it rn, put it away for now. If it's character based especially! Don't let the actions of others or the vitriol of twitter take away your favorite characters!

#dsmp #staged duo #wilbur soot #wilbur situation #georgenotfound #dreamwastaken #punz #technoblade #quackity #hannahxxrose #awesamdude #characters are not cc's #im not trying to accuse any of these ppl or take a side btw #well other than wilbur #that one ik he fucking sucks #i have not been on twitter and do not want to hear about it right now #just tagging names from notifications at this point #i will not open them #dammit i really need a stiff drink right now #drunz

[monstrousproductions]

hi! hope you're having a good week. i absolutely love your podcast, it's one of my all time favourites of all time :) feel free to disregard this question, but are you comfortable disclosing, however vaguely, how much money the podcast made you? if it made you money at all, i have no idea about the costs involved in running a podcast. but yeah i love our presenter so much, i already know i'm going to miss new monstrous agonies drop day once it's over!

Thank you so much, I hope you're having a lovely week as well! And thanks for your kind words about the podcast - don't tell anyone but it's one of my all-time favourite too 😉

Your question got away from me a little, so my apologies if this is way more detail than you were looking for! But I think in audio drama in particular, and in creative industries in general, we really don't talk about money enough! If any other creators want to chime in, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

The cost of running a podcast like MA is very low in terms of actual cash. Aside from the first lot of equipment I bought - a mic, an audio interface, a mic stand and some cables, all coming in at about £180 total - any money I've spent has been on nice-to-haves rather than absolutely necessary outlays, like upgrading my mic set-up and building a little IKEA-hack recording booth over the summer, or paying for a domain name and email.

All this to say, my costs are a little higher than they need to be because I'm bougie 💅😌 If you're wondering what the hard, necessary costs of running a show like MA would be without those choices, it's really very low once you've got a semi-decent mic and built your recording booth blanket fort.

As for how much money it's made me, accounting for those expenses which off the top of my head I'd round up to about £1000, then MA has made me approximately £3000 since November 2020 - obviously with fewer people on the Patreon etc at the start, and more now. I'm sitting at about £250 a month from Patreon right now, which is absoutely incredible to me, and makes up a decent chunk of my actual living expenses. Thank you, everyone who pledges! 💖

However, the main thing I think people forget when they're thinking about money and podcasting is that old adage, time is money. I'm a freelancer and I work from home, so I can be very flexible about when I do MA work and when I do paid work. But the time I spend in the booth recording, or editing episodes, or even on social media (hello!) is all time that I'm not spending on actual billable hours.

Personally, that works out fine for me. I'm outrageously, stupendously lucky in terms of my financial stability, and am in a position where I can say, yeah, I'll work part-time for money and spend the other hours in the week making a podcast, knowing that the vast, vast majority of my audience isn't going to be able to/want to support me financially. (For context, MA is sitting at around 350,000 total downloads right now. If everyone gave me £1 every time they listened to an episode..... 😅)

Also, MA is a relatively time-cheap show to make. I spend about a day writing, and then the actual recording, editing and posting might take another 6hrs total? So two "lost" paid working days a week, basically.

But like... have a wee think about how bare bones MA is. Up to 50% of each episode could be written by submitters, and the rest is very formulaic and easily repeatable. It's a single voice production, with a couple of scraps of music and no sound design whatsoever, if I can help it! And the episodes themselves are only 15 minutes long, cutting all your recording and editing times right the way down.

So, let's say you're a podcaster who doesn't have the freedom and flexibility that I do with regards to your day job, and you don't have the comfy cushion of savings to cover upfront costs, and you don't live somewhere with a low a cost of living as Belfast, and you want to make a show that isn't so (intentionally!) stripped back and minimal... 😬

People like to say that podcasting has a really low barrier for entry and that's true to an extent - "all you need is a mic". But I think we do everyone a disservice if we don't look seriously and honestly about the financial costs involved - including time spent on unpaid work!

All this to say, I am so enormously grateful to everyone who is able to support MA financially, whether that's with the occasional fiver on ko-fi or a regular pledge on Patreon. It really does all add up, and it makes a real, genuine difference to my daily life. £250 a month is more than I hoped to make, and I'm really thankful for everyone who has contributed.

And if you do have an extra couple of quid burning a hole in your pocket, do consider supporting the creators you love 💖🥰

#monstrous askbox #necessary disclaimer that i KNOW not everyone can support creators in this way! #supporting them by sharing your love of their art is really really important and helps a lot #monstrous agonies #podcasting #audio drama #toss a coin to your podcaster etc etc

[cielpansyhive]

I haven't checked my stats on AO3 in a year or more. I know people rank things different ways. Some people go by hits, others kudos, some by comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, ect. You get the picture. Hits are tricky, I've heard of people getting hits by bots. Which throws everything off, you see 50 hits and zero kudos, like, "fuck, these people read and hated it?" Maybe, but also it could have been a bot. For me hits can be more discouraging than helpful. I go by everything other than hits. So, with that in mind, I want to talk about my most successful works. (This is in no way meant to be me boasting. I'm a small-time writer. My point is, if I can do it, YOU can do it.)

-

I believe my most popular work is Revamp, it has the most subscriptions and comments. It's the work I'm known for. It's a little on the lower end for kudos and bookmarks, but it's not finished. The very fic people know me for is also my first work. (Because of this I'm working on revising what I have before updating another chapter. No worries, it's not abandoned and never will be.) That said, I was terrified to post it originally. Not only was it my first but there were maybe ten other fics at the time with trans Ciel and that was it. I didn't know if there was a reason for that. Lack of interest? People getting hate? I was clueless. But I had a story to tell so I sucked it up and posted and I'm glad I did! I've talked to so many people and befriended some because of that fic. I take forever to update and people still get excited over it when I do update. It really means a lot! My life changed because of posting it and it gave me the courage to pursue writing and share my stuff.

My highest bookmarked and work with the 3rd most kudos is a smut one-shot (That Butler, Sensitive) that I was worried would be "too weird" for people. I know way more people who think hand kinks are weird than ones that are neutral or into it. It was another I was reluctant to post and bam people loved it. I'm still shocked by the feedback.

My highest kudo work, the first couple chapters were awful. They were quick little things I wrote for tumblr, I got enough feedback I decided to post them on AO3. Chapter 1 I wrote drunk, I'm not even joking. Did I have fun with it? Yes. Was it to my standard? Fuck no. I have since revised the first two chapters. The third chapter, Sebastian is so OOC, but once again I did have fun with it. The last chapter has figging, a kink I don't know anyone of really having...at least in my personal life. The work as a whole (Canon Divergent SebaCiel) is just fun debauchery. In the beginning it was difficult for me to post smut. It was difficult to write too, I'd get stuck in my own head. But if you write whatever thoughts flow out, it's so simple! Because I became more comfortable, I was able to write my second highest kudo work (Clathrus Archeri) that was inspired by a fungus. Yep, we get that freaky with it. My readers enjoy it, it's all good.

My fourth highest bookmarked and fifth highest kudo work (Relax) is one that I stated was "the worst smut I've ever written." It was extremely self-indulgent but at the same time I spent so long editing it that at the end I hated it. I thought in comparison to my other smut it was low level. It also had trans Ciel, so I'm glad one of my works with him made it in the top 5. Yet, I wouldn't have that had I not posted.

While most of my works are obviously Kuroshitsuji, I do have works for Voltron too. I have almost zero interactions with the Voltron fandom. I will reblog things and read (kudo, bookmark, subscribe), but besides comments on my own fics I haven't talked to anyone. A big part is that I'm shy. Another is that I'm too old for fandom drama, ship wars, and what have you. If someone wants to chat with me, I'm glad and I will talk, but I'm not putting myself out there. The same will go when I start posting Vanitas no Carte fics. I'm very ship and let ship and that will piss off some people. It's easier for people to approach me rather than me trying to figure out if someone will hate me for my ships or not. Okay, very long intro for my next point. My third highest subscribed work (Atlas Ocean Rescue) is for the Voltron fandom. They don't know me from anywhere, exception the kuro people that also like Voltron, but apparently my work has readers. This fic is super self-indulgent, I love mermen okay? I'd say overall my Voltron works aren't doing too bad considering I basically just post and run. As anxious as I get to post anything, posting for another fandom was really hard. There wasn't the pressure of people knowing my work, but there's the very real feeling of, "oh fuck, this could flop terribly." A few Voltron works have already surpassed my "worst" Kuro works...so success? I think so!

-

For anyone who read all my nonsense, you get a gold star. I hope you also noticed the patterns here. That is, write for yourself and your audience will find you. Don't censor yourself, be true to you and go with the flow, have fun! Write characters how you want to write and read them. Indulge in your kinks, I swear you aren't the only one that has them. Step out of your comfort zone every once and a while. If you post a fic and it flops, so what? It's not the end of the world. What if the fic you think will fail ends up being your best one? You'll never know what will happen unless you post it, it might surprise you. As your skills improve it's okay to go back and revise and edit. But don't let your skill level hold you back from posting in the first place, we all have to start somewhere. You can engage with fandoms as much or as little as you want. (I do encourage reblogs, kudos, bookmarks, ect.) But if you are too shy to talk or don't know anyone in a fandom, don't let that stop you from creating for that fandom. If you only have one work in you for a fandom, do it! If you have multiple? Do it! Rarepair? Go for it! Someone else will probably thank you for it! Vent writing? Dead dove? Extremely therapeutic for you and for others that are more so readers than writers. (Note writing dark stuff just for exploration and entertainment is fine too!! Horror is a well-loved genre for a reason. Fiction is fiction.) Bottom line: don't let you get in the way of yourself.

Will you get hate? You might, I won't lie. That said, people troll everything, any hate you get just shake it off. Odds are it's nothing personal or about your writing, it's they don't like the ship, or any AU, or the dynamics with smut, or the kink, or they're phobic, or if you write intense stuff it's too dark of content for them. If you tag things, it's on the reader if they ignore the tags or they purposely expose themselves to content they know will upset them. I highly recommend if you are concerned about hate, only let registered users leave comments. That's what I do with all my fics and I have had zero negative comments. People are less likely to leave nasty comments if they have to show their face, it's so much easier for them on anon. Some hate I've got on here (tumblr) could be from AO3, but I honestly think it's mostly just other tumblr users that have never read anything of mine.

I'm not as active as I once was on here. It's been years since I updated or posted a kuro work on AO3. I don't have the spoons (energy) to do as much one-on-one as I used to, but know I am cheering on all the creators, new and old. I am here if anyone needs some extra encouragement. But honestly, just write. Even on the off chance you're the only one that likes your work, you have at least one fan. If you don't write for yourself, then who are you writing for? I swear readers can tell the difference when you write something you're into verses something you think will be good, but you don't care about as much. Your best writing is the writing that YOU would read. Don't focus on what you think others will think. Your people will find you.

We all start as that person that's afraid to post our works, it's natural. Tackling that fear was one of the most difficult but best thing I've done for myself. If you want to post, do it! 💖💖💖

#personal #AO3 stats #writing pep talk #fuck do I ramble or what #this is directed at writers but can be said for all creators #do what makes your heart happy

[manonamora-if]

November Check-In

As mentioned in my previous weekly update, monthly check-ins will be posted on the 1st of every month, recap'ing what's been done and what's the plan for next month.

Recap of last month's progress

IF Events in the Next Month

Plan for the next month

Still long post ahead. If you want a mini version, head over to itch.io!

October progress

The plan for last October was to:

Play and review more IF games ✅

Finish the La Petite Mort remaster: ✅

Either continue a WIP or fix another semi-completed game ❌

maybe try to add another block to the SugarCube Guide? ❌

The first was easily completed, since I reviewed about 40 games (out of the 75 entries) from this edition of the IFComp. This was more than last year in terms of quantity and time spent (more long entries this year), so while I did not play/review all entries, I'm happy with having done all that so far. Maybe I'll revisit the rest at a later point.

The second was a bit difficult. Working on the re-writes started pretty easy, but I ended up being completely short for words half-way through (even if I could visualise the scenes). Switching to translating the completed passaged helped pick up the pace, but I did this a bit too late, looking back. This meant I rushed through the last week, just before the EctoComp deadline, to complete a working state. This also means that while the game is complete, there are kinks that still need to be ironed out. This include the missing full passages (half-written or drafted, but not translated), missing translation (especially for the last passage), and taking care of the last UI friction. Another update is coming.

Having spent so much time on the first two, and IRL just swinging its bat at me, the last two points were not touched at all. Still, it's not bad, and other things came about:

The Bare-Bones Jam managed to get two dozen entries, which is pretty decent considering it happened at the same time as the EctoComp and the voting of the IFComp.

Lots of interesting discussion happened in the @neointeractives Discord server, especially covering the IFComp (moderation can't sleep).

I somehow managed to wing an entry for the inkJam, with In the Blink of an Eye. Don't know how I managed, I certainly wasn't in the right state of mind. Also turns out it was a 4-bird-1-stone, since I translated it in French.

Had an actual AMA on the blog, that was properly scheduled!

So still quite a bit considering life... (it's really been a lot, haven't processed most of it yet)

-_-

What's happening in November?

Nanowrimo for the writers, which can be a good incentive to progress the writing of a game.

The IFComp, EctoComp, and inkJam are always looking for players/voters. If you want to play a few short-ish games, take advantage of that!

The @seedcomp-if is always looking for inspiration (text, images, code, etc...) in this current first round. If you have half-baked ideas or anything, really, come submit something!

Over @neointeractives, we just wrapped up the Bare-Bones Jam and we have a new jam in the work... the ShuffleComp! Stay tuned ;)

-_-

The PLANtm for November

Still play more IF and maybe review. With the Bare-Bones Jam and the EctoComp over, that's a good 50 games to try out. (I've started with the inkJam already)

Finish the edits of Harcourt Ch5 (and get MelS to send me his Ch6 writing)

Fix one of the semi-completed games: either the Egg parser or TRNT (and make it a proper parser)

Finish that darn SugarCube Guide: there aren't much left in the guide to cover, but there are a few things to fix.

I would also like to compile the short drabbles from @crimsonroseandwhitelily into something more substantial. Either as a side page or within the game itself.

Taking the list of TO-DO from August…

To-Do not require much of new stuff:

translate Escape Goncharov! into French. ✅

fix the bugs in EDOC + overall the French version to match

fix the bugs of TRNT + find a way to add the missing pieces (mayyyybe translate into French?)

fix the formatting of DOL-OS + translate into English ✅

update LPM with the missing content + translate into English ✅

It's really been going down, which I am super happy about! I've made quite a bit of progress on that part since I made that To-DO (considering waves at life)

The rest of the To-Do pile was:

Finish The Rye in the Dark City (and maybe translate?)

Finish P-Rix - Space Trucker (and try to translate)

Finish Exquisite Cadaver (translation unlikely, current gameplay too complex to port for French)

Add a chapter to CRWL + fix/reopen the blog

Re-working TTTT to its originally planned state (lol, not likety)

Re-working SPS Iron Hammer (samesies)

Coding TTATEH (MelS dependent - shooting for end of year)

Emptying my inboxes (they are not all answered tho)

Honestly, this pile probably won't get done this year....

#dev log #monthly check-in #manonamora #interactive fiction #darn #didn't seem much yesterday #but I've really been doing a lot

[chaisshitposts]

thanks for reminding me i can manifest them to be chill- i way too used to my strict parents lmao

THE JOJO REFERENCES GOES HARD FR

i haven't catched up with hxh manga but i did finish the anime and basically killua split up to protect alluka and gon wanted to meet his father so they technically couldn't stay together, there's a possibility that they won't appear in the manga again :((

don't blame me😭 the first thing i saw about kny was that episode and nezuko (there was so many nezuko edits oml), but first episode was like a 50/50 for me?? i'm pretty sure it's because i used to watch like really dark magical girls animes when i was younger and my cousins always made me watch the final destination series with them🧍🏻

OML TOJI I REMEMBER READING THE MANGA AND WANTING HIM AND MEGUMI TO MEET SDCNKSDJFBS and yuta is the literal definition of looking like a cinnamon roll but can actually kill you

I DON'T BLAME YOU ABOUT THE PROMISED NEVERLAND CUz Isabella's jumpscare in the first episode was😭😭🖐🏻 and yES PLS GIVE BUNGO STAY DOGS A CHANCE!

KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN?? I HAVEN'T WATCHED IT YET BUT MY COUSIN WATCHES IT A LOT

there's something so scrumptiously delicious about main characters who are weak but are actually strong and just humbles the people who underestimates them, like, sLAY

my sister recommended me mashle! it's on to watch list since i'm planning on binge watching animes in my waiting room and PLS TELL ME THAT ZOM 100 IS FINALLY COMPLETED, I'VE BEEN WANTING TO BINGE WATCH IT SINCE LIKE LAST LAST MONTH

i'm currently watching the apothecary diaries! It's so refreshing because the female lead is so smart and pragmatic, like she doesn't give a sht about the male lead and just loves medicine and poison tasting so much😫 the only thing i dislike is how she's being forced to be the male lead's partner but the plot is still good heheh

🐧anon

no problemo 🕵️ gotta help the homies out. everything in life is a jojo reference, even jesus.

oml nO wait I watched the whole HXH manga and know they split up I was just acting delusional 😭 and uGh I hope the manga gets finished one day... The creator has bad health-- wait a damn minute I can just manifest his health back wtf am I sayin' 🧐

PFFFTTT what a wild read— and oh god no don't even talk about final destination to me, I cannot drive on the freeway normally sometimes bc of that shit, everytime I see a truck with like oversized loads (especially the fuckers with the big ass steel poles on the back of them) I always get chills, even though I know nothing is gonna happen to me cause I said so 🧍

toji didn't even remember he had son.... deadbeat dad type beat. yuta and rika deserve better ngl

isabella and that other maid... they are nightmare fuel. and yes!!!!!! I will absolutely give it another chance for the adorable tiger boy with the fruity little haircut!!! bingeing anime in yer waitin' room??? bruh that's literally so big brain wtf I low-key wanna shift to all my favorite animes one of these days 🕵️ but I have this underlying worry about the version of myself being left behind to do my dirty work lmfao

also- katekyo hitman reborn! is super good, but I will say that I have been rewatchin' it for a sense of nostalgia on and off whenever I have time and god the first like--- 20 episodes are fuckin' cringe but the main character's awakenin' is satisfying 😭 he's like the og deku

I have no idea if all the eps have been posted for zom 100 !!!! I will check for you today if I remember--- I haven't had time to check after watching like the first three episodes on crunchyroll—

OooOo an anime with a strong female lead!?!?! I would absolutely eat that shit up oml gobble gobble gobble— ew that plot sounds cringey. man, I really want an anime with a stoic, underestimated female lead whos like majorly asexual... wait 🧍 hold on, I basically just described saiki k... I NEED A FULL THIRD SEASON OF THE DISASTROUS LIFE OF SAIKI K.

#— chai's asks. !! ~ #— 🐧 anon. !!~

[nanowrimo]

Back to School: Interview with Mike Fillbrandt, Young Writers Program Educator

NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program helps over 85,000 kids, teens, teachers, and families set creative goals and tell stories they care about. We asked some of our amazing YWP educators to share how they take on the NaNoWriMo challenge in their classroom. Today’s advice comes from Mike Fillbrandt, who teaches 9th grade English at a charter school. 

Q: What grade/ age level do you work with? What type of NaNoWriMo group is it (whole class, club, homeschool, elective, etc.)?

A: 9th grade classes, 8-12 grade club

Q: How long have you been doing NaNoWriMo with your students?

A: 5 years

Q: How do you structure the entire project (for example, do you start prepping in October and write in November, do you have kids work on it all year, etc.)?

A: Prep in October (or March depending on the year), and write in November (or April).

Q: What does a normal NaNoWriMo day look like for your students?

A: Brief self-check questionnaire, then the rest of the period to work. Some days are set aside for students to discuss their projects in small groups, to share successes, struggles, and get suggestions. Some days I hold one-on-one conferences with students to give feedback on excerpts of their projects and make suggestions for improving their writing.

Q: How do you set and manage word-count goals?

A: Students need to complete 4500 words for full points. Students who exceed 10,000 can earn extra credit. For students with special needs, I coordinate with their case manager to determine an appropriate way to adjust word goal. Students who do not reach their word count goal receive a prorated portion of the word-count points.

Q: How do you manage grading? Do you grade?

A: Yes, I grade. Grades are based on two required excerpts submitted for feedback, along with their final word count. The first excerpt, students can choose to be graded either on setting descriptions or on character building. For the second excerpt, students can choose to be graded either on plot development or on their use of dialogue. Each excerpt is worth 30 points (60 total), and the word count is worth 40 points, with a possibility of earning 50 by meeting the extra credit goal.

Q: How do you approach revision/ publishing (if at all)?

A: In my most recent classes, I have only been able to give students post-writing suggestions/materials from the packet. In previous years, we were able to use an excerpt for practice with editing/revising skills.

Q: Any NaNoWriMo tips or tricks to share with other educators? Hard-won lessons? Ah-ha moments?

A: Don't try to read every word of every student story - you'll drive yourself crazy. Instead, find a way to get a snapshot of a student's work.

Begin the process of brainstorming ideas well in advance.

Be vigilant for signs of plagiarism and/or cheap tricks to pad out a word count without actually doing any work.

Q: Have you ever run into resistance from your administration about doing NaNoWriMo, and if so, how did you manage it? What do you say to people who don’t see the point of having students write novels? 

A: When I first began, there were concerns over word count goals, which I adjusted in later years.

Q: What are the most meaningful things you or your students take away from the project? What's your best NaNoWriMo memory?

A: Confidence, belief in their own abilities, a stronger sense of time management.

My best memory was the smile on a student's face during an excerpt grading, when I told them how wonderful I thought their writing was.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add?

A: I love this project. I've been doing NaNoWriMo longer than I've been a teacher.

Mike teaches 9th grade English at a charter school. He has participated in NaNoWriMo since 2005, and has had his students participate since he's been teaching. He enjoys reading, writing, video games, disc golf, and attending a weekly writing group. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, daughter, one snake, two cats, along with an imaginary dog and an imaginary raccoon.

#nanowrimo #ywp #nanowrimo ywp #back to school #by nano guest #mike fillbrandt

[kuleana--does-anyone-care]

capstone update #5

Hello! We're in the final stretch now... A lot has happened since my last post. Sorry, but I'm really not the blogging type.

So! Over the past two or three weeks, I've cut together my "extended trailer" for my doc. My goal was to have something between 3-5 minutes, and ended up with something around 4 minutes 40 seconds. I figured this was the way to go since there is so much information to share on the topic of Red Hill. If I'm making a trailer for something this complicated, I need to make sure that viewers are getting all of the context they need to understand why the issue is important.

The biggest struggle was figuring out what would make it into the trailer. I spent a lot of hours going through my footage, and collecting public domain clips from DVIDS, the "Defense Visual Information Distribution Service". (Anyone can use content from DVIDS: dvidshub.net is the URL. All of its content is produced by the US Military.)

After much hemming and hawing, one night it just came to me. I put together the first draft of my trailer, and it restored hope and light to my world. 😂

I got feedback from 9 people about it. Only two people had doubts, but I've been working to address the things they mentioned. Everyone else really liked it, which was very helpful to know. When you're editing something, you start to question whether it makes sense after viewing it 20 or 50 times over.

I have a corkboard that I used earlier this semester to help me wrap my mind around all of the different parties and topics involved in this Red Hill story. After making the first rough cut of my trailer, I decided to use the corkboard to visualize and rearrange my trailer's narrative. This was absolutely necessary, because of the sheer amount of sequences and clips I had prepared. Last weekend, I spent a lot of time standing in front of the board, trying to figure out what I could move, and where I could place new clips. It was well worth it, and I can't imagine trying to do this kind of work a different way. (Thanks Professor Farinella and Gabby Navalta for recommending this method!)

All in all, I'm really pleased with how my trailer is coming out. It has changed a lot over the past week! The storyline is mostly the same, but I managed to add in a lot more information at just the right moments. The narrative feels cohesive to me, and the people who have seen the new version agree. I did not, in fact, mess up the magic I had going in the original cut. Relief!

Until next time, please enjoy these photos which document my trusty corkboard's metamorphosis over the past week. I will treasure them always.

#hawaii #documentary #film #filmmaking #red hill #water pollution #environment #sustainability #nature #water #land use #land ownership #water rights #uhwo #uhwo acm #uhwoacm #capstone

[heartsyncproductions]

Hello hello, welcome to a look back at 2023 as well as a contemplation of 2024! Throwing the graphic together made me realize I released a lot more things then I thought I did (as well as do a lot of creative work privately since I really only share a fraction of what I make). At the same time, 2023 was pretty weird creatively, so let's talk about it!

First off, I thought I'd share some stats because I grew a lot this year if we're only talking about numbers. I wasn't really expecting it at all since I admittedly do zero marketing most days but here's some stats:

Memory Ghosts hit 100 downloads this year

PRETTYBOY Inc. is Hiring! ended the year at around 1.3k+ plays

Burning Academia [demo] ended the year at 7.2k+ plays

Disruptive Compassion hit 200+ plays (and it was only released in mid December)

Hit exactly 500 followers on my itch.io account

I don't really talk about my writing, but I did make my novella What the Trees Stole available outside of itch.io, and I released a short story collection We are Connected this year as well! In regards to my webnovel, I took a break from volume two to do edits on volume one and I'm hoping to have those done to release the first volume on itch as well as other places that allow you to have a novel available for free.

Anyways, just looking at the numbers I hit so much more growth then I was ever expecting. Anything that hit 100 feels like a win to me, and the way two of the games I released blew past that is wild. With that being said, I felt completely disconnected from most of what I made this year.

I lamented about this briefly when I wrote my post mortem for Disruptive Compassion, but DC felt like the monument to the feeling that a lot of what I made creatively I felt disconnected from. I was working 50 to 60 hour work weeks for the first half of the year (hooray healthcare), and I think I spent the rest of the year burnt out from it. 2023 was also hard in a lot of personal ways, so maybe all of that contributed to me not feeling close to anything I made creatively.

It isn't that I didn't like what I made, it just felt like someone else made it. In my DC post I said it was like being an observer looking at something through a glass screen instead of being it's creator, and that's really the only way I know how to describe it. It also makes it hard to celebrate any of the ways I've improved (especially how much I've improved in regards to my games), because it doesn't feel like I improved because nothing feels like my work. It's been really weird looking at pieces I've made and not seeing any of me in it, somehow.

Again, it's probably just what happens when you have a bad year. But as someone who's been into story telling since forever, it's not really a feeling I'm used to.

Moving away from that so I don't end up ranting for a million years, let's talk goals. I'm going to be honest, I didn't do a lot of what I set out to do LOL. Things I did do, to a degree:

Game Jams: I did Otome Jam (Spring Boy, though I have plans to overhaul it, more on that later), Velox Fabula (PRETTYBOY Inc. is Hiring!), and Velox Turbo (Disruptive Compassion)

Connect with the Community: I think my goal for this was a lot lower then the average persons. I have pretty severe paranoia, stemming from a long time battle with a Specific Mental Illness I don't feel like naming since it's so stigmatized aha. Because of this, I really just wanted to convince my brain that commenting on a post that I enjoyed someone's work isn't weird, or to exist a little more on social media and not exist in the perpetual hell that is assuming the minute I do I will be stalked and doxxed or something. This is also why Discord is the Worst Space in the world for me, because it's impossible to observe it from the outside and deem it safe. You just...join and have to see for yourself which makes it completely inaccessible to my brain. With that being said: I think I did ok! I think doing the Velox Jams really helped with this and even if it was just a little, I managed to leave comments and talk a little about things I enjoyed this year. It might seem like the bare minimum to others, but it felt like some pretty solid steps to me.

Release another game: I released two short, finished ones and two demos! This was a lot more then I was expecting, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Aaaand I'm pretty sure that's all I did that was on the list. Putting it like this, I did a lot more then I thought I did. So much of 2023 was feeling like I was in a rut, that I'm glad it wasn't actually true. With that, leaves the last part of this post: 2024 goals.

Rework Spring Boy: I was going to start this sooner, but unfortunately, I can be easily distracted. Fortunately, in my break I made two short games that taught me a lot about game design and writing that I can take and apply to this! I'm excited for my plans for this game!

Released up to chapter 4 of Burning Academia: I never talked about this here because I thought having my 17+ IF with my 13+ games and writing felt...weird lol. Anyways, I started a Twine IF called Burning Academia (@burning-academia-if is the blog for it if you're interested) which was supposed to just be me trying out Twine. However, I have had a lot of fun writing it so far! Only the prologue is out and chapter 1 should be out late January! I'm hoping to have up to chapter 4 out by the end of the year.

Velox Formido: 36 hours, 2 themes, one game. I'm ready to suffer-

Community Connection: Continue working on talking about the things I like more while interacting with more people in the community! I also realized this year during Velox Turbo I'd like to work in a team some time, but that's more something I'm using 2024 to work towards so I can do something like that in 2025!

Writing: I don't talk about my writing anywhere near as much as I should consider I'm a thousand percent more a writer then a game dev lol. I'm hoping to edit and release volume one of my webnovel How to Bury Fairytales and finish the online first draft of volume two. I also want to finish and publish my dark fantasy/asexual love story novella 'Mercy Dreams' this year as well!

I should probably add a 'try to actually market this year' goal as well, but I know myself. It's not going to happen lmfaO. Anyways! If you read all of this thank you! These are always more of a list for myself then anything, but I do hope anyone here has enjoyed what I've made this year, and honestly thank you to everyone who has played my games or gave me a follow!

Hopefully 2024 I start to feel connected to my work again, and may I continue to grow and improve creatively!

#happy new year #year in review #indie otome #visual novel #twine #interactive fiction #yearly goals #2024 goals #also didn't mention it but tbh PRETTYBOY Inc. was my beloved this year and for a game I made only to learn how to code GUI that's wild

[a-case-of-the-ace]

Fic writer interview :D

Thank you @eoinmcgonigal for the tag!!

Welp let's see how this goes. I've been doing the writing thing for a little over two years, I think? Time has flown and I have done... little.

How many works do you have on AO3? 21.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 57,611. None of which have reached over the 12,000 mark.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Something, Old, New, Broken and Blue at number 1, followed by Something Precious, a Bold Beginning, My Soul Says Ouch and Match Made in Vain. The top 3 are for Stranger Things, and the 4th and 5th are for Mafia: Definitive Edition. I reckon the top ones are at the top mainly because they're a bigger fandom.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I do, I'm always so happy when I get them, but I worry I sound like a broken record. there's only so many ways to thank someone for reading and commenting, even though I'm overjoyed every time it happens.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Possibly Ready for Table for Doctor Who's The Two Doctors, since that doesn't end in a good spot for the main character, but the canon story has a good ending, so you know it's going to be ok. Probably Bon Appetit, for Mafia: DE, since it's a dark yandere cannabilism fic.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? That's a tough one, most of mine have happy endings. Possibly My Soul Says Ouch, since the characters spend so long pining over each other before getting together? Also my only polyam fic, (or at least where it's not just implied) so 50% extra love?

7. Do you write crossovers? I haven't, none have really occurred to me. I don't usually read them either, but if it's done well, I'll read it.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic? Not hate per se, but I did have one commenter who didn't like some things, and told me I could change things, and didn't need to stick to the canon. I quite liked my choices, though, and so did other kinder commenters. I do the fic for me, first and foremost.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Not in anything I've posted, but I'm currently writing a Galavant fic that has some, for angst reasons. I did have a tad in A Bold Beginning, but I danced around the subject so much that I don't think it counts. I'm ace, which I don't think helps much, I'm basing most of it off of what I've read.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope. Wouldn't mind if someone did though.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Nope.

13. What’s your all-time favourite ship? Mega tough one. Good Omens got me into it, but I haven't read much of them. Stobotnik, since I only watched the films for them? Two/Jamie? I read a lot of Johnlock, but that was ages ago. Geraskier? I think I just binge a ship and return to it if I really liked it. Depends if the ship's small or big, I guess.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? I had a mermaid!Tommy au I tried to get going for a long while, but kept getting stuck on logistics. An omegaverse mafia fic, an angsty guilt fic, and even a fic for Forever (TV show from 2014). Plus a bunch of ideas that hit while I was writing something else, and I'd lost the fixation by the time I finished. There's still a few sticky notes with ideas in my phone, from inspo at work. I think I get a lot more ideas than I manage to write :(

15. What are your writing strengths? Beginnings. I love nothing more than going "Bang! Here's what's happening." Otherwise, I dunno what my strengths might be. Writing in full sentences for the first draft?

16. What are your writing weaknesses? Hanging on to the motivation to finish a fic. Not using a variation of the phrase "All they could do was hope." Nearly put that in thrice in three chapters by mistake, I'm sure it's getting old. Motivation for sure though, I miss the days when I was writing tropey one-shots, at least they were one and done.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I haven't really had a need to do it, and would worry about formatting if I did. Closest I've had to this was a heavily accented character, but I didn't really know how to write an accent and so I didn't write it in. Not sure if I'd do it that way again, but it made it easier.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for? Mafia: Definitive Edition. Wrote my first fic in one of my last year 12 math classes. Also the fandom that made me switch from looking at tumblr on Pinterest to actually being on tumblr. There wasn't enough content, so I had to go searching, and then make my own.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to? Really want to throw my hat into the ring on Wez/The Golden Youth, from Mad Max 2, but the only ideas I have for them are really long. Other ones I've considered writing include Forever, Red Dwarf, Sportarobbie from Lazytown, Johnny/Reg from SAS Rogue Heroes and Jude/Cardan from The Cruel Prince.

20. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? I'm really liking the Galavant fic I'm writing at the moment, mainly because it's shamelessly self-indulgent. Probably one of my Mafia fics, Chosen by the Life, Choking on my Love or Bring Me Home. It's been a while since I've read my own stuff, this has been a real trip down memory lane.

Desperately trying to remember people who write so I can tag them... I'm so bad at names, if I miss you I'm sorry. And I may not know you at all well so I apologise if you find this weird.

@feline-ranger @iiep-wop @lilies-in-a-vase @somethingaboutamagpie @ihni

#tag game

[simswamp]

Welcome to my very first post on Tumblr ever (help me I have no idea what I'm doing), and the opener for a new decades playthrough! I've been Simming since 2000, and this is by far my favorite way to play.

Some things to know:

I go by a different time table than the classic Decades challenge. I don't switch decades until the next generation is born, which is weird and doesn't make a lot of sense, but well same here so this is what we're doing. When playing the traditional way, I find that the game starts moving too fast, and the 18 collective hours I've spent downloading vintage CC seems like a much less effective use of my time. So my playthrough is starting with 1880 (founders), and will become 1890 with the YA birthday of their first child, and will STAY 1890 until the next generations heir has their YA birthday. If this sounds too confusing/dumb, please leave because I am the most confusing and dumb bitch you'll ever meet. But I've spent thousands of dollars on this franchise over the last 23 years and I owe it to myself to do the absolute most.

I'm really not a storyteller, I don't use poses, and I don't edit my screenshots, 50% because I'm lazy and 50% because I don't know how. There will be a paper-thin attempt at something resembling a plot, but that's about as deep as it gets. I love this game the most when it gets weird.

I fill the world with gallery Sims that are hashtagged with the appropriate time period, so that the background characters are still very appropriate without me having to actually make them. Again, lazy. So you may see some Sims you recognize, if you do the same or happened to have made those Sims. The same is true of some buildings, which may be lightly edited on occasion, and which I will never take credit for or pretend to have built. All Sims that see any playtime and all buildings that the legacy family live in will be 100% made by me.

I'm new please be gentle :3 I'm truly just here to dump screenshots and hopefully find people to interact who are also this into this game.

Once upon a Monday around 8pm, an imaginary, immortal cartoon based on a human loser, got extremely bored. Sure; she's immortal, with immortal versions of her partner and pets to keep her company, and also unlimited money and artificially perfect skin. But what's it all about?

And then, a brainstorm. Why not create imaginary people and control every aspect of their lives? But they can't enjoy the decadence that usually comes with being a pretend person, because that's just boring. The best part is when they're stressed out, right? So they'll have to be pretty damn quaint.

She built a church to the only deity she had ever fully believed in: Dibella. Of the Nine Divines, Goddess of beauty and love, from a video game series so 1) appropriate and 2) also very imaginary. From the pulpit, she could call her little sheep to flock, checking in on their lives and encouraging a meager lifestyle. Just because we KNOW the cheat codes, doesn't mean we should USE the cheat codes.

Three newlywed couples were created.

Imogene and Ambrose Merriment,

Mathilda and Vernon Revelry,

and Amina and Roger DeBauch.

After an afternoon spent around their adorable little gathering place, she decided on the Merriment family being her primary focus, receiving the most attention and the least control of their own fates. All three families will be largely controlled, but not to the same obsessive level as the Merriments.

They were given a farm, complete with a barn, cow, chickens, small garden plot with seed packets, and 100 Simoleons. Much more important, they were given a randomized mixed-breed puppy, Llewelyn, for protection and company.

Setup complete, let the great experiment begin!

#sims 4 decades challenge #sims 4 gameplay #ts4 decades challenge #ts4 decades of merriment #the sims 4 legacy #simblr #new simblr #ts4 screenshots #ts4 legacy

[marley-manson]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 🤍

Thank you!

lol I only have five fics posted so I'm gonna do this for vids instead.

Wreck

There's exactly one shot I might go back and change if I could now, but honestly this is probably my favourite of my vids. It accomplishes, imo, what I always want to accomplish with a vid, which is both being visually engaging and fitting the music in a satisfying way, and essentially being a visual essay with a thesis statement. I feel like the essay part works on multiple layers too, where the basic point (Guts' violence is self-destructive) should come across pretty clearly, but there are a lot of little nuances that reasonably only I will ever know lol.

Like for example there's a set of three shots towards the end: a monstrous arm reaching out, a sword-strike, and a monstrous arm falling severed to the ground. Those three shots form a coherent whole, but they're taken from three very different scenes, which, put together, draw a throughline between Guts' rapist, Guts' abusive father figure, and Guts' urge to fight monsters.

Ultimately I made this vid for me, and my intended audience is happy with it.

The Moon Will Sing

I feel like this one was very successful on an emotional level. Every time I watch it there are several moments that give me shivers, and it never wears off. It's a love letter to Casca, and you can feel that imo. Plus I'm very proud of just being able to make a Casca vid that's about her life and her accomplishments and disappointments, and not romance lol.

Long Black Coat

This is the earliest completed vid I still have and yk what it holds up. The song edit is smooth enough that I completely forgot I edited the song until someone mentioned how cut up it was lmao, since it's one I never listen to outside of rewatching this vid; the music is illustrated by the visuals very well imo, it has a good sense of rhythm; and while it's still pretty linear it's not completely linear lol, which was an accomplishment for me when I was like 18.

Tropic Morning News

The fugue state I went into while making this was ridiculous, and then I spent the next few days rewatching it like 50 times. The hypomanic obsession has worn off and it's not quite as perfect as I thought during that week of making it lol, but it still holds up pretty well imo, and it was a memorable experience. It's the only vid I've ever made with a constructed reality element so it's a successful experiment too. I think it comes together overall, and it's a good portrait of Hawkeye/BJ as a ship.

Waltzing Along

I'm saying this vid instead of my most recent pretty much solely because it was my first Mash vid, I feel like they're ultimately pretty equivalent. But yeah like, going in I was extremely skeptical that Mash would work as a source for me, because it lacks a certain cinematographic polish lol. It's not super visually interesting and a lot of significant moments are portrayed almost solely through dialogue. But then I started this and I was like oh okay I can work with this, nice. So I have this vid to thank for all future Mash vids, and for helping expand my resourcefulness as a vidder.

Plus I'm pretty proud of it in general, like the death verse came together so well, I love my choice to show Tommy and Henry before the lyric reaches 'death row,' to add that little retroactive realization of why they're here. And intercutting Hawkeye getting out of the bus with Hawkeye helping the North Korean dig a grave, leading into Hawkeye supporting all his friends... Hawkeye.mp4. It also has a slightly stronger emotional core than my most recent one, probably.

Also I showed it to my dad and it made him tear up lol so I consider that a win.

#jump they say was a close runner up but i think the balance between the visual essay aspect and the satisfying vid aspect was #slightly off - leaned a little too heavily into trying to make a nuanced point at the expense of some clarity of vision #my vids #thanks for sending this! #text post #ask meme

[duhragonball]

Nanwum Schemin'

I finished my August writing challenge tonight, and I'm pleased to say that I managed to hit 20,000 words and that's actually enough to cover this year's Christmas special. I tried this last year, but I only wrote 15k in September, and Red Christmas ended up being 32k long, so I wound up writing more than half of it in December anyway. This time, I took that into account, which is why I used August instead. I figured if Blue Christmas ran long, I'd be able to use September to finish it off, but it looks like I managed to fit the entire plot in 20k, so that's satisfying. I need a little more to finish the ending, and there's some stuff I'll want to add and take out, but overall, I have a working first draft that I can have ready for AO3 without much trouble.

I still have to figure out what the hell Yellow Christmas will be about. I saved that one for last, since yellow is the Luffa color, but I think I've used up all the good fanfic AU tropes by now, so I'm gonna have to get creative. But that's a problem for 2024, and I'm here to talk about the fall of 2023.

Concerning the Apocrypha Liveblog, I plan on wrapping up some loose ends in September. Super Dragon Ball Heroes episode 50 came out last week, so I can write about how the Aeos arc (we won!). I also want to knock out the DBS movies, and I think the DBS Manga will probably be done with their Super Hero adaptation, so I'm penciling that in as well. Whatever's left over I can deal with in October or later.

November is NanoWriMo season, and this will be my 7th entry in the event. I don't count my ill-fated attempt in 2003, since I never logged it with the website, and I had no idea what I was doing and flamed out by the second or third day. But I've been doing these since 2017 and I've been racking up wins ever since. I'm feeling confident at the moment, so I'm going to try to set some goals for myself, which I'll put under the cut.

Looking back at my past runs, I've had some good years and some difficult ones where I didn't reach the 50k goal until Day 29 or 30. I always find it more satisfying to finish early if I can. My preference is to have things wrapped up by Day 20, so I can write more stuff in the overrun, or start editing and posting, or just slack off for the next ten days. It's always enjoyable, so I think I need to make this a priority.

For a number of years, my objective was to boost word count and reach certain milestones in the Luffa storyline, but I passed one million words last year, and this year I've nearly finished the Xenoverse 1 adaptation, so things are a little different. I think I can afford to think about how to improve productivity, rather than how to hit certain plot points. So we'll aim for that.

Currently, my earliest win date is Day 17, which I pulled off back in 2021. So I'm going to try to hit 50k on or before Day 16. Here's how.

This month, I learned I can get more done by breaking up my large word goals in to 500 word chunks. To finish by Day 16, I'll need to average about 3000 words a day, which is something I've always struggled to do consistently, but now, I think I can make that work. The idea is to devote six hours across a day, where I write 500 words in each of those hours. It really seemed to help me out this month, so it's time to see if that technique can push me further.

One other thing I want to try is to break my personal record for one-day writing totals. Currently, that stands at 7023 words. So I've chosen three days where I can attempt to do that. I'd like to do more than jut hit 7024, though. 9001 would be pretty sweet for the meme value, but it sounds really daunting.

The important thing here is that I give myself permission to fail. If I can't maintain 3k per day, that's fine, because even falling short of that goal still makes good progress. If I can't make it to 7k or beyond, that's fine too, because wherever I land, it's still a lot of progress. And if I'm not done by Day 16 it's fine, because I'll have two weeks left.

But I think I can do this. The rewards would be sweet. AEW Full Gear is on the 18th, and it'd be pretty great to just have a lazy Saturday where I watch that instead of writing. NJPW will probably run their World Tag League shows between November 15 and December 15, so I'd have the whole second half of November freed up. And mostly, I like the precedent it would set if I could consistently land 3k in six hours or less. I feel like that's something I need to prove to myself.

If this is going to work, I need to do some solid plotting in October so I'm ready. I do reasonably well with "they fight" as a prompt, but if I have a list of spots and story beats to work with, that would cut down on the indecision that usually holds me back.

#nanwum vii #never too early to be thinking about it