#// also apologies on the lack of DoC info

[frangiturastrum]

FF7 Compilation Verses Info - Kayden

Name: Kayden Undāre

Birthday & Age: October 18th, 1981. 21 (crisis core) / 28 (FF7) / 30 (AC) / 31 (DoC)

About:

Born in Junon Harbor to loving but busy parents, Kayden was no strange to the influence of Shinra, especially with her father working with the branch of Shinra in Junon. While her childhood was rather common, she grew up around many who wished to join the new SOLDIER program once it became known, and even was encouraged by her father to find a job with Shinra when she got older. Though, how she would eventually work for Shinra for a time would lead to her cutting off all contact with her parents, a tumultuous choice, but one she felt she had to do.

With many of her friends and classmates excited to work for Shinra, with the boys in particular wanting to join SOLDIER, she eventually felt similarly and decided that she would join the company. However, she wasn't interested in working for Shinra as a fighter initially. At 16, she joined Shinra to be an on field medic, wanting rather to help heal and keep others alive than take lives herself. Rather good at keeping up with infantry, once her training was (mostly) complete, she soon was deployed as a field medic during the War with Wutai. Any thoughts and feelings she had on Shinra would, over time, grow sour as she watched the destruction they caused, along with the mental turmoil and pain that those she called friends suffered due to being thrust into war so young.

On one mission through Wutai territory, she was sent along with the troops, including a few SOLDIER 3rds, as well as trio of researchers. The goal was, of course, to find mako rich territory that Shinra could possibly start using, even as the war continued. However, 3/4ths of the way through the trip to the first site, they stumbled into an ambush. The troops, particularly the SOLDIERS, made a formidable defense for Kayden and the researchers to hide behind, with Kayden casting Cures and Restores anytime someone suffered damaged. However, so focused on keeping her allies alive, she missed the bomb that was thrown their way, from behind, until the last moment.

As the SOLDIERS won the fight, the bomb from behind them destroyed Kaydens' legs with shrapnel embedding into her back and tearing open the skin when she collapsed. As the only dedicated medic in the group, the infantrymen held a perimeter while one of the SOLDIERS and the three researchers did what they could to keep her alive through materia use, a somewhat hastily done cauterization to one leg, emergency surgery and removal of shrapnel, one of the researchers eventually fell onto their last resort - mako injections. With the unit having worked together to keep her stable, multiple mako injections were given in quick succession before they were met up by another unit that took her back to the base camp. Not knowing if she would survive but not having the ability to return her to Shinra headquarters for nearly a week, the researcher continued to give her mako injections, which were supposed to be given to the SOLDIER 3rds as part of one of Hojo's many experiments, in an attempt to keep her alive.

When she was returned to Shinra headquarters, she was moved from Medical to Science, and joined, subtly, and without her knowledge, into a separate test. While she did not official join SOLDIER, Science continued to give her injections, enough to the point where she contained a similar concentration of mako to SOLDIER 2nds, but without the combat training. That wouldn't last long though, as, once her injuries were healed and two prosthetic legs were attached, she stayed in her role as field medic. This, too, changed rapidly, as a sudden order from the Turks removed her from her position and she, again without knowledge being shared to her initially, became something of a Turk. While she was not fully on theirs, she was also not SOLDIER, and tended to stay out of the light as a result.

During the events of SOLDIER 1st Class Genesis Rhapsodos' desertion, she took advantage of the focus remaining on his actions, and used that as her chance to escape from her own predicament. Disappearing into the wind, she left one last message with her family before dropping all contact with them and doing everything she could to try and stay away from Shinra. Whether it was through their resources becoming more strained as more things started to fall apart in SOLDIER, or whether it was luck, she managed to find a place for herself in the Sector 5 Slums while waiting for the storm to blow over.

Over time, she stayed in the slums, figuring that if the Turks didn't come looking for her, she was alright to stay hidden under the plate. Though she preferred to stay in the Sector 5, she found work in all of the sectors' slums, particularly with the neighborhood watch as she used the chance to fight monsters as a way to keep herself trained with the skills she learned while fighting for Shinra and with the Turks. That, and she was able to help the doctor in making medicines for the kids, which is how she became acquainted with Aerith. She also, on occasion, would take a gig or two for the Honey Bee Inn.

When Avalanche made itself known through the reactor bombings, she decided to try and find them, hoping to join their cause. Being a known fighter in the Sector 5 slums, she was able to get into contact with Cloud, Tifa, and Barrett after the Sector 7 plate dropped. Joining them on their search for Aerith, she joined Avalanche unofficially in the process and aligned her goals with theirs, including in their plan to defy destiny's course for them.

Years later, when Geostigma started to show, she went back to the Sector 5 slums in the hopes of finding some way to help the kids who were sick. Relying on her own medical knowledge could only get her so far of course, and so, when the Remnants showed and Avalanche once again pulled together she joined in their cause. However, she knew at the time that degradation was starting to take root in her body, and though she did all she could to help, she knew she couldn't fight like she used to, and thus lended more support through materia than before. When the waters from the church came forth, she was cured of her degradation, and then went back to work, both as a merc, and as medic.

#about kayden undare. #soldier at the ready. leviathan hear my rage. crisis core verse. #lance at the ready. this world will not fall to the dark. ff7 / ff7 remake / advent children verse. #// as always when it comes to writing an oc's backstory and mentioning canon characters #// i am totally down for changing things up if that is preferred #// please feel free to let me know. I am very chill on this tbh #// this is her baseline story but im always for changes if rp partners are much more comfortable with creating our own meetings between #the characters #out of order || ooc #// also apologies on the lack of DoC info #// I am still in the process of researching that story and trying to figure out what she's doing during it #long post #// i did however want to still put her in contact / communication with avalanche as that funnels into her character #// especially once she's deserted from soldier #// but yeah. tried to keep the possible pre-established connections pretty vague to leave more room for rp options and plotting

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for yelling at my mom before she went away on an emotionally taxing trip to another country to take care of my hospitalized grandmother?

The town I'm in went through a mass shooting a couple weeks ago, you might have seen it on the news. I'm a college student and was staying on campus at the time, and everyone went through lockdown for a couple of days. I remember not being alerted there was a shooting going on until I had already been walking around outside for at least a hour while it was happening five blocks down, and then staying in my room while on a call with my friends until 7 am who were trapped in other buildings and had to sleep on the floor while listening to the police scanners and news stations for more info. The lockdown ended after a couple of days, but I still felt not Great, especially with all the lack of management from campus and the news reporters taking photos and videos of us during the lockdown. I had several panic attacks for days afterwards, and I'm still having them now.

I texted my parents a couple hours after it started confirming I was okay, and my dad basically texted back "I saw, you'll be fine, just stay away from the windows." This made me very upset because I thought he already knew about my situation and didn't even bother texting or calling first. But in a phone call later with my mom where I basically exploded at her for saying the same thing, I discovered he just looked up news articles 2 minutes after I sent the text and then texted that, and didn't know how close the incident was. She said that she'd be mad if what I thought was true, but in another phone call confirmed they had a talk and then told me my dad just has issues communicating sometimes and "you have a nervous personality" and so I should learn to accomodate him more. I also blew up at this and told her that he's not the one in a mass shooting right now so why do I have to accomodate for him (triggered by a pattern of this in the past) ((He still hasn't called or texted me since other than sending a quick apology for the misunderstanding).) We ended up having a very emotionally charged talk and my mom also stated her mom got hospitalized, it's all very stressful right now, and that's also why they didn't say anything about it in the family groupchat because they didn't want to stress out everyone with even more bad news and to please not tell anyone yet about it. She started ranting again about how bad her childhood was with her mom for like a half hour and I had to cut her off and redirect her. But in the end she said she now understood how serious my situation was and that I could talk to her anytime about it.

Well, I thought that was it. But after they found the shooter 72 hours later and lockdown ended, my mom called me and basically assumed that everything was fine now and I was feeling "normal" again. I was admittedly pretty cagey and told her I wasn't for several reasons and she seemed confused but didn't push it. Then a day afterward she texted me and said one of her friend's daughters had a college essay they had to submit tomorrow and asked me if I could help them and they'd buy me lunch later when I got back. I was annoyed but I ended up telling them to send it to me in a Google Doc and I made some comments, but then she called me again and asked me if I could get on a Zoom call with the daughter and fix the essay together with her. I told her no several times and asked her why I had to do this if she didn't even bother preparing this essay beforehand until the last minute, but my mom said "It's a nice thing to do", and "She really needs help", and wouldn't take my no as an answer after 10 minutes. Then I basically blew up at her one final time and told her that I just went through a mass shooting and I've been comforting my friend who saw some of the dead bodies and I'm having panic attacks and why can't she ever take no for an answer and that I hate her and then I hung up on her.

She basically texted me later and said she realized how inconsiderate her request was when I said that one of my friends saw the dead bodies. She said she's leaving to go to visit my grandma soon but I can call her any time if I want. It's been a couple weeks and there's been no communication from either of us.

I feel bad for blowing up at her since she didn't seem to know how bad it was and also her mom is hospitalized and it's very stressful. So, AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole #mass shooting cw

[cyncity2000]

heartbreakordeath's (unnecessarily long) Bastille Fic Masterlist

Hello! I decided to make a comprehensive (probably too comprehensive lol) list of all the bas fic I’ve posted to my ao3. I figured because some of them lack context due to inside jokes, etc, that it might be a fun way to waste some time and yell about my writing some more 🤪

Long post so everything is below the cut :)

Dan/Kyle

Series: wwcomms, soundtracked by hdyfn?

note: It’s hard to explain unless you’re familiar with the AU, so feel free to dm me for extra info if you’d like to get into it but are confused by the concept :)

1. every word i'm screaming is another going unreceived

The first in my WWCOMMS series! Inspired by “Bad Dreams” by Joywave. Introduces the universe of WWCOMMS and most of the characters involved.

Words: 3590, Oneshot, Status: Complete

Rating: T for swears & dark themes

Warnings: N/A

2. next to somebody new (don't wanna ever wake up)

The second installment in my WWCOMMS series, inspired by “Somebody New” by Joywave. Picks up right where the first left off, focusing less on the worldbuilding and more on Kyle’s Retuning and his complicated relationship with Dan.

Words: 3427, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: T for swears & dark themes

Warnings: N/A

3. now that the deed is done

Third installment in my WWCOMMS series, inspired by “Now” by Joywave. Bit of a time skip from the last fic, with a bit more of the canon-typical action & violence i’ve seen in most fics in this ‘verse! This one’s a bit more complicated so hopefully it’s easy enough to follow. Apologies for the cliffhanger 🤪 I promise I know where it’s going but not sure when I’ll be able to write it.

Words: 4214, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: T for swears, dark themes, and non-graphic violence

Warnings: TW: Blood

~~~

‘cause the devil’s got my arms

My attempt at a Bastille fic heavily inspired by Supernatural (aka Bastillenatural), which unfortunately has had me in a death grip for the past…4 years maybe? It’s based on the concept of the “demon deal” from spn, where a character trades their soul in exchange for whatever they desire. They have 10 years to live after they make the deal, and then the demon comes to kill them and drag their soul to hell <3 nice light stuff here. Inspired by the random thought I had: what if Bastille got so popular so quickly because they made a deal? It is a Very Strange mix of crack and angst. Gift for @goodlesson <3

Words: 3784, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: T for swears & dark themes

Warnings: very minor non-con moment in the 2nd section, also just like. demonic possession, dan facing his death, etc. i promise it isn’t as horrible as it sounds???

one more slide (and then we're back to real life)

the iconic (jkjk) magic tour bus fic! the summary has a link to the Distraction Tactics episode this was inspired by, but long story short, it’s a multi-chaptered fic based very loosely on Howl’s Moving Castle. Basically, the door to their tour bus is a magic portal. Dan finds out about this. Kyle also finds out about this. chaos ensues. Set vaguely in Wild World era. Unlike bastillenatural, it sounds like crack, but actually has a whole serious plot arc bc i do love some Drama every once in a while !

Words: 16274 (my doc is currently sitting at just above 30k words- roughly halfway done with this monster), Chaptered (posted: 13/?, written: 18/?), In Progress

Rating: T, this thing is pretty wholesome tbh

Warnings: N/A

Dan/Charlie

Series: like the world is watching

1. Like The World is Watching

My first ever bastille fic! This was written near the beginning of lockdown and took me less than a week to finish, which is the first and probably only time that has Ever happened to me with a fic. It’s the first Big fic I’ve ever finished, really?? which is Crazy to think about. Anyways, it’s a canon-compliant story about Charlie joining the band, complete with lots of drama as he navigates his role as a touring member and tries to figure out what the fuck is going on between him and Dan. Spans the time between the Wild World and Doom Days eras.

Words: 13215, Chaptered (16/16), Complete

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

2. fall into the night with you

Timestamp #1 for LTWIW. Takes place in 2017 after the events of the fic, written & posted literally a Day after I finished the og fic lol. Just some Very Soft fluff & minor drama related to Dan’s inability to work social media <3

Words: 440, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

3. 'cause even there in a room full of faces (all I saw was you and I)

Timestamp #2 for LTWIW. Also takes place in 2017 after the events of LTWIW, either before or after the first timestamp, idfk. Just more shameless fluff bc WHY NOT. Charlie has a solo gig. Dan tags along :)

Words: 1291, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

4. back into the easy days

Another timestamp written ages ago that I decided to finally stick on AO3. Just fills in a bit of the ending more since it felt a bit rushed when I wrote the original fic :)

Words: 1018, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

~~~

Inescapable You

The first of MANY uni AUs!! In which Charlie is a uni student, and obsessed with that one random mysterious guy he sees everywhere on campus. Just a (hopefully) fun, humorous & cute lil story featuring Charlie & Dan as Complete Disasters (but what else is new!). Don’t think I specified a time in this one, but I imagined them how they both looked circa 2011ish.

Words: 2363, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

so many frights I've known (it's hard to let them go)

A fun lil ficlet inspired by the Many photos of Dan and Charlie on amusement park rides together, and Charlie’s admission that he’s definitely held his friends’ hands on scary rides before :’)

Words: 650, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

Series: in your warmth I forget how cold it can be

1. a different chord, but the same refrain

Affectionately known (by like, Only me) as ‘hoodie fic', this is one of my personal favorites :) just some idiots getting drunk on tour, sharing clothes, and figuring out some Feelings. Decent mix of angst and Softness (and i’m not just talkin about the hoodie).

Words: 4509, Chaptered (3/3), Complete

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

2. easy to be, easy to breathe

Timestamp for “a different chord,” or an epilogue to the fic. Meant to be Soft and lighthearted, it’s a snapshot of their lives after they finally get their heads out of their asses <3

Words: 932, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

~~~

there's a fire in your eyes, it's true...

A gift fic for a friend who has since deactivated her ao3, this is a lowkey-abandoned WIP that I still hope to finish someday because I was actually a big fan of the concept :(( features Uber driver!Dan, a bit of a coffee shop and also uni AU, and a very sleepy & probably drunk Charlie who ends up in the backseat of an attractive stranger’s Uber. As usual, chaos ensues (or it would, if I ever finished this).

Words: 1882, Chaptered (1/?), In Progress

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

life in stop motion

Not gonna lie, this is another one of my favorites! I think it could’ve done with some changes, but I think it’s the fic I’m the most proud of :’) it’s an Immortal!Dan and Immortal! Ralph AU- they’re not vampires but more like…ancient gods who have, over the centuries, lost/forgotten their old power and slowly became more adjusted to life among humans. They decide in this story to spend some time at uni, making this Also a uni AU (can you tell I love those?) featuring clueless mortal uni student!Charlie.

Words: 4413, Oneshot, Complete (but always open to a sequel at some point)

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

say something (it's only a matter of time)

Another gift fic I wrote with the friend who has since deactivated- you can probably tell which parts are hers because they’re AMAZING <3333 I’d say the majority is her work, so if it seems very different from my other fics that’s why :) yet another uni AU, featuring some parts from Luna’s POV (yes, the dog,,, trust me on this okay) and the two of them being complete idiots as per usual. Sort of written backwards, if that makes sense? It begins at the end!

Words: 2229, Chaptered (1/?), In Progress/Abandoned

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

when it ends, don't wanna let you know

Another of my favorites!! just some shameless fluff inspired by Dan & Charlie’s iconic ~smiley stage shenanigans~ (very aptly coined by @goodlesson) during “Of the Night” in the Doom Days era. Pre-slash. Disclaimer: I unfortunately am not actually a Harry Styles fan, I just stole his lyrics for the gift fic bc its recipient @moonbeanm is a fan :p

Words: 1437, Oneshot, Complete

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

so i want to fall into your web

Bad news: this one’s abandoned :( it was a joint effort by me and two lovely friends, inspired by this video (because let’s be real, does the beginning not look exactly like a Youtuber’s video intro??)

Good news: we basically manifested Youtuber!Charlie, because with his Patreon updates he’s basically a vlogger now and i’m SO here for it <333 we made this a uni au (shocker!) that takes place in 2009, where Charlie is attempting to make it as a Youtuber and happens to attract the attention of a certain fan: a fellow uni student named (gasp) Dan Smith.

Words: 4236, Chaptered (3/?), In Progress/Abandoned

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

i said maybe...

a gift fic for written_you_down that was meant to be for last year! i got inspired again after mtv unplugged and decided to come back to this! it's kind of a 5+1 format, with snapshots of moments throughout dan & charlie's lives where they wanted to give up on their dreams of making it as a musician. there's a bit of a twist at the end that i'm Very excited for 👀 and yes. i titled it after wonderwall.

Words: 8907, Chaptered (5/7), In Progress

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

all your colours start to burn

welp. what can i say about this one. basically just further proof i can't write pwp fics without making them a million words long. based loosely around the summer 2021 festivals & dan and charlie's wygd shenanigans (remember when we thought THAT was a big deal ??? we had nooo idea what the uk tour was gonna bring) and is the first E rated fic i've written fully by myself so yay?

Words: 3817, Oneshot, Completed

Rating: E

Warnings: N/A

tell me you're a book that I misread

another pwp except it's kinda dark and angsty this time and it's basically just enemies AND lovers.

Words: 3,244, Oneshot, Completed

Rating: E

Warnings: mildly dubious consent that honestly has more to do with a power imbalance than anything

wonder if your therapist knows everything about me

dan keeps disappearing, and charlie's the only one who notices. not as angsty as it sounds, more hurt/comfort & fluff and the beginnings of what could be more than friendship.

Words: 1272, Oneshot, Completed

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

feel like.

my attempt at some sort of indie tour store fic (we're ignoring the fact that it was ages ago at this point). like i said in the ao3 tags, this shit just writes itself, man.

Words: 1630, Chaptered (2/?), In Progress

Rating: G

Warnings: N/A

Misc. (gen fics & other pairings)

we’ll be good in another life

Angst-fest inspired by “Another Place”- a series of alternate timelines. Features a mix of Dan/Charlie and Dan/Kyle depending on the version; there’s 7 in total! Even though it was written way before the show came out, it’s kinda my version of the Marvel show What if…? where every section answers a different question. My questions range anywhere from what if Charlie never joined Bastille? to what if Wild World was never finished?

Words: 3603, Oneshot, Completed (though a sequel at some point is Very likely 👀)

Pairings: Dan/Charlie, Dan/Kyle

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

'til the morning breaks

The obligatory Doom Days-inspired “end of the world” fic. It’s my fictionalized interpretation of the album’s story arc, I suppose? Stuffed with all the lyrical references I could manage, of course (if it’s not clear, the bit with Dan & two people implied to be Doing Things is inspired by the album cover bc why not). Not the most original of my work, but it was really interesting to write :) prettyyyy sure it’s Not what Dan had in mind while writing the album, though, but who knows 😅

Words: 1517, Oneshot, Complete

Pairings: Dan/Original Characters

Rating: T for drug use i guess (ooo scandalous /j) and implied sexual content

Warnings: N/A

i've got you on a loop, i've got you in my head

Another gift fic for the wonderful @goodlesson ! This one was a fun venture into real rarepair territory, ever since I discovered yet Another perfectly-named ship tag of Peyt’s and decided I Had to write about them at least once. Takes place during Reorchestrated era (2018), when Kyle suddenly and unexpectedly gains the ability to hear Charlie’s thoughts. What chaos will ensue???

Words: 1516, Chaptered (1/2), In Progress (NOT abandoned, I love this fic, I’ll get back to it at some point I promise)

Pairing: Kyle/Charlie

Rating: T

Warnings: N/A

falling.

Now THIS is rarepair territory, friends. This fic is one of only nine in the whole ship tag, can you believe it?? there’s SO much childhood/best-friends-to-lovers potential here, guys, c’mon. I started writing this because I adored Ralph & Dan’s platonic relationship in Who the Fuck is Keith (aka the best bastille fic Ever written, change my mind <3) and felt the urge to emulate/imitate the sort of writing style/general cozy vibe of that fic. I’m not quite sure if I’ve managed that, but in general I’m really happy with it :) I know it’s a strange pairing, but if you’re curious, give it a chance! Actual summary: Dan and Ralph are uni students (yes, again) and old friends, sharing a flat for the school year. Both of them are still recovering from an event that shattered the peace of their lives five years ago. Incredibly domestic, soft, and angsty all in one.

Words: 10305, Chaptered (15/15), Complete

Pairing: Dan/Ralph

Rating: T

Warnings: mentioned in author’s notes to avoid spoilers

you felt right to me

i'm not really sure how to describe this one?? it's my first ever E rated fic (ooo scandalous) and involves past dan/kyle, current dan/charlie, and a kyle who is Very Much not jealous of charlie for taking dan away from him :))))))))

Words: 11475, Chaptered (5/?), In Progress

Pairing: Past Dan/Kyle, Current Dan/Charlie, and (spoilers) eventual Dan/Kyle/Charlie

Rating: E

Warnings: tagged on ao3

[this will be updated whenever i remember to update it]

#my writing #my fics #writing shit #masterlist #magic tour bus adventures #a different chord but the same refrain #long post #jillian go to sleep

[lindstromm]

Simplified Bookbinding:  Font and Text Ornaments

In the first post in this series, How to Make a Cheap First Book, I set out the four steps of bookbinding:

1. Format the text and print it. (This post is all about this step.)

2. Create the text block.

3. Create the case.

4. Attach the case to the text block.

In this post, I’ll give some pointers to get your story from a word processor, or an AO3 story, to a printed page. There are two main formatting sections: (1) the intro pages like the title page and the “about this book” page:

And (2) the text of the book, which may include specialized chapter title font and text separators:

Formatting tips and pics under the cut.

I use Microsoft Word for formatting and printing. I know one method and I stick to that, and I use basically the same formatting process on every story. I get overwhelmed if I have to do something specialized every time or have too many choices. So look at this tutorial as your starter pack, and once you get comfortable, branch out and get as fancy and specialized as you want.

In the Simplified Bookbinding method, we print on A5 pages, which makes the pagination a whole lot easier than printing signature booklets. I have two separate files per book - the intro pages are one file; the text is a second file. This way I don’t have to figure out how to suppress page numbers on part of a file. The intro pages file does not have page numbers; the text file has page numbers.

Page Setup in Word

1. Open a new document.

2. Click “Layout” then “Size.” You need to tell Word that you’re printing on A5 size paper. If the dropdown menu doesn’t include A5, then click on “More Paper Sizes” at the bottom of the menu and fill in the A5 size manually. It’s 5.83 wide by 8.27 high:

Click ‘OK’ and let’s get started putting text on the page.

The Intro Pages

Go pull a professionally published book off your shelf and look at the title page. You’re going to format your title page basically the same way. It’s going to have the title, the author and maybe a text ornament. Center it on the page.

I googled the name of the fandom to get a text block that says “The Old Guard.” A recognizable symbol for that movie is the main character’s labrys, so I googled “labrys line drawing” and snipped it. I titled my story “The Next Job” because I lack the fanfiction ability to select beautiful lines of poetry for story titles. Not as lovely, I’ll grant you, but it fits better on the spine of a book. Anyway, play around with your formatting until you like how it looks. Print a test page.

This is a good time to find out how to print on A5 paper. My printer has a paper size option in the menu, in which I could select “A5″ and then just push the paper holder in the tray for the smaller paper. If you don’t have a printer or can’t connect it, then . . . um, problem. Some bookbinders send print jobs to Staples or other office supply shops. You would have to ask them about printing on custom sized paper and see what they charge. (If you’re going to have it printed at a shop, don’t use easily identifiable text ornaments unless you want to explain to the print shop employee why you aren’t violating copyright laws.)

Depending on your fandom, you may be able to find a fun text ornament that identifies your fandom, like the Avenger’s symbol, a Star Trek symbol, Star Wars, whatever fandom you’re in, I’m sure there’s a graphic you can use. Things like these:

Now we’re going to format the “about this book” page. Look at a professionally published book. This is where you have the copyright information and publisher information. I put in basic information in a list format. In most of my books, I put in a word count and which font I used, just so I can keep track of about how many pages a word count will be. You can put in different info.

On a third page, you can format the author summary and any author notes you want to include. I keep author notes that talk about what the story means to the author. I don’t keep author notes that are basically apologies for not updating often enough. That’s entirely up to you.

So those are your intro pages. It’s 2-4 sheets of paper. I always set 4 blank pages in front of the title page. You’ll notice that professionally published books have a few blank pages before the title page as well. I also put 4 blank pages at the end of the book.

Story Text Pages

Now we’re going to format the actual story. There is a page limit to how much you can bind into one book when using this Simplified Method. You’re limited by the size of the binder clips used in perfect binding. Yep, true, binder clips are your limiting factor. The most I can usually get into big binder clips is about 225 sheets of paper. It varies depending on your paper weight. Take out about 12 sheets for intro and end pages, and that leaves me about 210 printed pages, which double-sided is 420 pages of text. The max word count I’ve bound in one book is 140,000 words. You can bind lengthy works but you will have to play around with margins and font size to keep the number of pages to something that fits into the binder clips.

1. Open a new Word document.

2. Set the paper size to A5 the same way you did for the intro pages document.

3. I always set all four margins to 0.7 just to get more words on a page. I wouldn’t go much smaller than that. You can keep your margins at 1 inch if you want, and I would recommend it if you’re printing less than 50,000 words.

4. Insert page numbers.

5. Go to the story on AO3. Make sure you’re in the “Entire Work” view because it’s a pain to cut and paste chapter by chapter. Press Ctrl-A to “Select All.”

6. Navigate back to your document. Press Ctrl-V to paste the entire mess into your document.

7. Save the file. Save often. You don’t want to lose your formatting.

8. Delete all the stuff that isn’t story text. The “Select All” will have picked up all the buttons and the kudos list and comment box and everything. Just delete it all until you only have text left. The text will have spacing between paragraphs, no indents, chapter headings in the middle of pages, and so forth.

9. When you’ve got nothing but text, press Ctrl-A again to select all the text and we’re going to do some basic formatting. With all the text selected, make these changes:

     a. Change the font to Gentium Book Basic 12 pt. (There are hundreds of fonts to choose from. I stick to Gentium Book Basic 12 pt or Book Antiqua 12 pt for the text of the story.)

     b. Get into the paragraph format menu. Change the spacing Before and After to 0, and add a first line indent of 0.3. On an A5 page, the standard indent of 0.5 is too deep.

Click out and your page count should change drastically to something pretty close to what your finished page count will be.

10. Now we’re going to format the chapter headings. If you’re in a highly merchandised fandom, you’ll be able to find custom fonts that you can use for chapter headings. Some are free to download. I’ve got the font for Frozen and another one for Star Trek.

Fun, right? If you don’t have a fandom-specific font, I recommend using Narkisim or Baskerville Old Face for chapter heading text. Both are included with Word.

     a. If you have more than a couple chapters, it’s easier to set a Heading to auto-format your chapter titles than it is to select text, change font, and center for every single chapter. To do that, format Chapter One the way you want it. Select font, font size, center it on the page (you’ll have to turn off that 0.3 first line indent for just the chapter heading text). While you have your chapter heading text formatted and selected, go to the Home menu and right-click on Heading 2, then select the top option: “Update Heading 2 to Match Selection”. I couldn’t get a snip with the right-click, but this is what you want to right-click on:

Then for your next paragraph, just select the text of chapter number and title, click Heading 2, and it automatically applies all the formatting for you. Yay!

     b. With the copy and paste we did to get the text from AO3 into Word, the chapters may start in the middle of a page. Make sure you press Ctrl-Enter at the end of a chapter to start the next chapter on a new page.

     c. If you want to insert a text ornament at each chapter heading, that can be fun. If that’s too much right now, don’t worry about. I didn’t start using text ornaments until I had done about 15 books. You’ll have to work to get the text ornament the right size and positioned under the chapter heading text.

Are you done with chapter headings? Moving on!

11. Scene breaks. You know those places inside a chapter where there’s a scene break? Go look at a professionally published book. Many will just have a double space between paragraphs to mark a scene break. That’s probably the easiest way to mark a scene break. Go right ahead and do it that way.

12. Text separators at scene breaks. If you want, you can put in a text ornament to mark a scene break. There are full line text ornaments, or tiny text ornaments:

I found all my text separators by googling ‘images text ornaments’ or ‘text dividers’ and then snipping from the screen. Here are a few I haven’t used yet, which aren’t quite as blurry as everything I take a photo of (sucky camera phone):

To get a text ornament on the page of a Word doc, you go to “Insert” and click on “Pictures” and then select your image file. Then you have to resize it and position it, plus curse because it knocked all your text out of alignment, wonder what the purpose of image anchors are, drag, accidentally drop it in the middle of the paragraph, discover that Word has green guidelines that appear at random. I tell you what, text ornaments are a real treat. I just like them, okay? I like the way they look, I mean, they are annoying to work with. I did discover that once I have it resized, I copy that image, and then paste it into the next scene break rather than inserting the image from file again. That way I know all the text ornaments are the same size.

All done? Got it all formatted? Looks so great, doesn’t it?

Take a deep breath. Take a few days off. The hardest part is yet to come.

Printing

You’ll have to figure out how to print double-sided on A5 paper. I have very little advice here. It’s going to be you figuring out how to get your printer to cooperate. I’ve discovered that auto-double sided printing does not work on A5 paper. The print rollers just aren’t designed for little pieces of paper. My inkjet printer would auto-double-side on A5 paper, but it would offset the text on the front and back by a centimeter. My laser printer won’t auto-double-side at all on A5 paper. I manually double-side the pages. I can do it in batches of 20 pages at a time, so it’s not so bad.

If you are manually double-siding, make sure you know how to orient the pages when you stick them back in the printer. Instead of practicing on your actual book, just print pages that are blank other than the page number. Print pages 1-10 double-sided and see if you have to rotate the pages 180 degrees, or flip them over before putting them back in the paper tray.

Printing is a pain in the butt. Especially if you run out of toner partway through, or your printer starts printing a black line down the middle of every page. WHY??? It just does. It takes me about an hour to print about 80,000 words. I hope you will someday be more efficient than I am, but that’s how long it takes me.

Phew. Okay. Formatting and printing are done. Yay!! I’m very proud of you. That’s a huge job.

#simplified bookbinding #bookbinding #bookbinding for beginners #renegade publishers #renegade bookbinders #font and text ornaments #lindstrom2020 #op

[botwstoriesandsuch]

im loving the history lesson posts!!! what are you're thoughts on the ruins in Tabantha? based on the memory near the skywatchers and the shrine quests in the region, the stone ruins in tabantha existed about 10,000 years ago and were destroyed or vacated and left to crumble. but the stone structures contrast heavily with the wooden architecture of Rito Village? bUT if i'm remembering correctly the song lyrics go "pride of the rito/pillar to the sky" so the rito stone and tabantha itself has (1)

Ok first off, I AM SO SORRY! I read this ask months ago and I worked on it in my google docs and then I was going pure theory mode and then another person sent in another ask about ruins and I was getting all excited so basically long story short I got so caught up in making a masterlist of all the ruins that I completely forgot about this ask until now... So anon I apologize for the terrible wait but hopefully you’ll still enjoy what I have in planned. 

You’ve given me a lot to work with so I’m going to break this up into several posts based on your asks. I’m gonna post them on different days becauseeeee content management, schedules, things.....I’m lazy and also if I posted all my thoughts in one post it would be like a giant book with zero pacing so

[Today] Thoughts on the Ancient Columns and the Ruins of Tabantha

[Some time later idk when I post it I’ll shove the link here] The Effects of the Calamity on the Rito and People of Hyrule

The Relationship between Skywatcher Locations and the Cunning of Calamity Ganon

Buckled in ladies, lads, and gentlefolk? It’s time for a history lesson, Part 1 o’ Trois. So today here is

Ancient Ruins, Architectural Parallels, and the Probable Worship of the Fae

So! Let’s start with the ruins of Tabantha. Specifically, the Ancient Columns. 

Anon you’re correct in that these ruins are over 10,000 years old. We can not only gather this from the fact that their condition is the same even 100 years ago, meaning they have to be older than a century (see their crumbled state and similar moss patterns) but also from direct lines from the Creating a Champion (CaC) book itself. 

However, I’m inclined to believe (for several reasons that I’m going to get into) that these ruins have nothing to do with the “pillar in the sky” as mentioned in the Rito songs. For one, the pillar of Rito village is of an entirely different architectural style, given that it looks like the natural work of wind erosion. And for another, the existence of the Rito village pillar has to have been much younger, around 100 years old, in order to coincide with the Sheikah Shrine quest, as the Sheikah platform thingy has to correlate with the characteristics of the pillar’s shape. Ergo, ergo, ergo, the “pillar in the sky” isn’t 10,000 years old and has no correlation with the Ancient Columns.

Ok so! Back to the actual ruins themselves and what we can analyze from them. 

Circled above is every instance of ruins in the Tabantha region. Although I should specify that I’m talking about the Ancient Hylian ruins, as that is the type that is most notably scattered across this area. 

We know that all these ruins are off the same civilization because of their style and material. 

[Remember this picture for later^^]

In addition, we can also tell from ruin maps in the CaC book that these ruins are from the same Hylian civilization, as well as the important detail that these ruins were centered around the Goddess. 

Citing that other screenshot at the beginning on the Ancient Hylian Culture, these ruins were built around the same time as the Sacred Springs, so I think it’s safe to assume that these ruins had a religious purpose.  

But I can take this one step further! Up until now, all this information has been based on interpretations from the botw ruins and official info alone, but if we take into account the real life counterparts/parallels, I can prove the exact purpose to what these ruins are for!

Firstly, these ruins are obviously inspired by architecture in Ancient Greece, and other old Empires (like the Romans and Byzantines) across the Mediterranean. 

We also know that the ruins are constructed out of limestone. One, because moss is able to grow on it, so it is unlikely that it is marble. And two, we can see the actual limestone texture when seeing the broken parts of certain columns and walls. 

[and kinda quick side note here: but the existence of large limestone rich structures 10,000 years ago gives more credit to the theory that Botw takes place after a large flood, notably the events of Wind Waker. One, because limestone is a material mined near the sea, as seen with the Island of Paros and Naxos for the Ancient Greeks. And Two, this ancient sea was directly mentioned in the description for botw rock salt. And also Three, this explains the weird placement of certain structures, such as the buildings placed on suspended and isolated rocky plateaus like the ones I showed earlier by the Skywatchers. So there’s your mini theory which kinda proves that the Tanagar Canyon was probably an ocean trench at one point and it also still proves my connection of the Ancient Hylian ruins being parallels to the Ancient Greeks and all that because...ocean. Greece, peninsula, hundreds of islands, lots of quarries in Hyrule by the sea. Akkala is by the sea, there’s quarries, also the islands with mining equipment like Tingle Island. You get it by now right?]

Anyway. Greeks, Romans, polytheistic gods, temples for sacrifices, limestone, yadayadayada. Safe to assume that these Hylian ruins were of a civilization centered around a temple of some sort worshiping a powerful being, or beings, such Hylia. Hurray! Theory seems done.

BUT!

I can take it

A step FURTHER!!!

You see, I was originally gonna leave this post at that. The Ancient Columns are of an Ancient Hylian civilization 10,000 years ago that worshiped some higher powers. “Great!” I think to myself. “Time to get all my screenshots so that my ADHD followers wont die immediately” 

But but but! As I was spending an hour or so getting said screenshots, I took this picture right here and came across a revelation so bright you could have placed a light bulb over my head... 

A pretty enough capture, got a nice aerial view of the ruins, the suspended island thing in the middle of the path... nice view of Tanagar Canyon and the Ancient Columns, the sunset is all pretty and—Oh hey! The Great Fairy Fountain is there. Heh, that’s nice. You know it’s kinda weird that it’s just plopped right in the middle of all these Ancient ruin and temp—

BAadaBing, badaBoom, ladies, lads, and gentlefolk! I’m here to tell ya that these giant fae ladies were once worshiped by 10,000 year old Hylian civilizations. And not just this fairy mind you, but all four of them.

First piece of evidence? The proximity of 10,000 year old structures to every Great Fairy. Mind you, these are the most rare type of ruin in the game. 90% of the ruins are of settlements destroyed 100 years ago by the Calamity, and then the other 10% is still divide up between the Ancient Sheikah and Zonai. So I find it quite interesting that almost every case these special ruined civilizations are near a Great Fairy. [Uh, spoilers for all the Great Fairy locations btw]

First, of course, you got the Great Fairy in Tabantha. 

Then you got the one in Akkala, by the Torrin Wetlands (again, the highlights in yellow are of the canonical 10,000 year old Hylian ruins)

The Lanayru Promenade isn’t even up for debate at this point....I mean it was the parade ground for the ceremony up to the Spring of Wisdom. How much more “Ancient Hylian” can you get then that?

The only kinda iffy one is the Great Fairy in the Gerudo desert, but even THEN this fairy is by two out of the three only instances of 10,000 year old ruins in the entire desert, the third instance being the Zonai labyrinth. 

But, sure. Correlation might not equal causation. But I think the picture becomes all the more clear when you take a look at the timeline of events!

Note that no one in Hyrule really knows what the fairies are all about. Sure, you got that one researched in Tabantha that knew about one of them, and some of the elders in Kakariko had a sort of understanding that a fairy was their neighbor. However, their stance was that of wariness and caution, and they very much did not worship or give offerings to them. Dorian, for example explicitly shows suspicion towards the fairy, and thinks they might be dangerous. (Which, to be fair, is valid if you’ve ever read ANYTHING about the fae)

My point is, people don’t know what the Great Fairies are, or what their powers, motives, or *anything* really are. Sure, 100 years might have passed, but it would be pretty hard to forget something as eye catching as the fae. The people of Hyrule can remember century old white horses, cook books, treasure locations, ancient songs, and vague legends, but the majority of them don’t know about the Giant (seriously, it’s right in the name) Fairy Fountains?!

That is, of course, under the assumption that the Great Fairies existence was known 100 years ago. But what if it wasn’t?

You might be inclined to assume that the fairies lost their power because the Calamity prevented them from getting offerings 100 years ago, but in truth, there is no evidence whatsoever saying that their lack of power originated at the rise of Calamity. 

It’s entirely likely that they haven’t been sitting around for 100 years, but 10,000, or even more. It explains why no one knows anything about them, and also their proximity to the ruins. 

A beautiful spring you say? You power is directly correlated to offerings you say? 

Gee if only there was some ancient civilization that existed a long time ago, that has ties to old religious practices, temples, and polytheistic, which has parallels to the Ancient Greeks and Romans who build their civilizations centering around certain gods and offerings to said powers, and also if only these said civilizations were nearby to all of the fae oh WAIT!

Even when Link gives his offerings, the results are only that of the Great Fairy Fountain blooming, not an entire spring. Could an entire spring existed long ago, providing for the hundreds or thousands of people who worshiped the fae? Who’s to say that these old 10,000 year old civilizations gave offerings to the fae not only for the magic and all that, but for the vitality and life that they provide? Who’s to say that those earlier relief arts of warriors on chariots were of people with enhanced armour. Fairies that give you magic defense would be quit helpful for a civilization that liked to battle... the possibilities are endless....

TL;DR, the Ancient Columns, along with the other 10,000 year old Hylian structures, were constructed for religious purposes, centering around the Great Fairies, who accepted their offerings in exchange for the vitality of their springs, as well as their enchantments. 

So! That’s that. Can you believe this is just me tackling only one aspect of anon’s ask? I realize that the majority of the ask was about the Rito but...oops! That’s why I split it into parts. [When I post the other posts I’ll update the contents at the top to link to them]

A like and reblog is appreciated! I spent too long on this, including an extra week because tumblr deleted my original draft which was much longer... so if you liked it, let me know! It’d be nice to know that my time didn’t completely go to waste, :P Anyhow thanks for reading all this

#the only thing stopping me from outright making a theory channel is my lack of youtube skills #zeltik how do you dO IT #botw #breath of the wild #legend of zelda botw #loz botw #botw theory #botw ruins

[exosmutfactory]

Hi! I’ve been reading a lot of your works and supporting your writing endeavors! I just wanted to have a few questions because I’m a lil confused 🥺 is this blog run by two people? 🥺 just saw your aff post and I wasn’t suddenly sure whether this is one person running a blog 👀

And for the second question I just wanted to ask if you could maybe share how do you usually outline/plot your stories? Esp 6P since they are loooong and obviously you did sneaky stuff in each chapter that will now make it all crumble on us.. love it so much!! ❤️❤️

Hello, hello!~ 🥺 Thank you so much for the support, dear, I appreciate it a lot 💗💗💗 I'm Nisa and this is my tumblr blog. Jenny has her own @jenny-udinov but she doesn't use it often like I do with mine 😊💞 I’m the only one who runs this account~

We both post our stories under candyfizzbyun on aff, and she has her own account there as well. Aff has that cool co-author feature that allows us both to edit stories from our own accounts.

Plotting stories... this will be a bit long, I apologize in advance 💖

Plotting stories, for me, takes a long time in the present, but saves time in the future. In my earliest years of writing I had this “act first, ask questions later” routine that ended up with me losing sight of the plot halfway through from lack of planning. Now I plan every square inch of plot for my stories. It saves me time and future heartache from incomplete projects.

Stories are born from two (2) scenarios.

1) Music

I live for music. No matter if I understand the language or not, I can get a good feel for the mood and tone of music, which leads me into the second scenario

2) Emotions

More likely than not, I dream up a new story idea, whether awake or when I’m asleep, particularly when I’m in my most vulnerable moments. It always starts with emotion when it happens this way. I vividly dream through a scene, sometimes I’m the protagonist, sometimes I’m watching from a bird’s eye view. 

In either case, the emotions felt through those characters are fleeting. If I don’t write it down the second I wake up, it will be lost forever. So what do I do? At this point, (with 2 years of Six Phases under my belt... hi 12am-4am perfect writing time,) I’ve trained my subconscious to wake me up the moment a scene ends so I can type it into a doc - which leads to lack of sleep, but it’s always worth it.

Now on to what helps me not only plot a story and all its major events, but write the details.

(This applies to my chaptered fanfics more than my one-shots - but even those have their plots too):

Every story needs a playlist

The main characters must have a backstories

The side characters all need individual personalities

Got two main characters that hate each other? Great! Turn that into a bittersweet romance.

Need a fresh new type of OC? Okay! Play around with different traits. Make the readers love some, hate some, and not know what to do with others.

I always try to make my fictional stories contain “real” characters that all face their own hardships. Yes, I love to keep plots engaging and complex, which now leads me into talking about the story I adore with all my heart:

Six Phases

This story was supposed to be short. Just a little thing I wanted to write to show my gratitude to the masterpiece that is City Lights. 6 songs. I wasn’t even aiming for 10k back in July 2019. Yet I found myself making my first ever story playlist and pulling an all-nighter to write a 5k+ 1st chapter.

Phew... would you believe me if I said that it was love at first sight? Or more like listen?

“Betcha, we were destiny, I’m gonna getcha.” 

That album speaks to my soul. And thanks to it, Riley and Baekhyun were born.

I won’t go into full details in fear of writing 12 pages 😅 I plan to make a post about everything when I complete the story, (which is almost done!~ One more update to go!~) But here’s some “juicy” info...

Six Phases is inspired by:

Baekhyun’s City Lights

&

Ariana Grande’s discography

Riley is a free spirit just looking to get through college, and Baekhyun is that playboy millionaire that knocks her world off-center. But just as bad as he has tipped her out of scale, he’s now flying out of orbit too.

They come together, they clash; they kiss, they fight; they love, they hate. And the worst part is, if it wasn’t for Baekhyun’s past, they could be perfect together.

Honestly, the most direct answer is that the up & down complexity of their relationship is based on a bunch of true stories. :’D Relationships are not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes you love someone so much it hurts, and to hurt them is to hurt yourself too.

All the side characters have their importance in this, (painstakingly,) intertwined story, and, really, if you think this is a lot of details to pay attention to, just wait for what comes next 🤭🤭😇😇😇

Six Phases comes straight from the heart... I feel every scene. That’s why it takes forever to be updated. I’m so happy that I didn’t delete it as I wanted to a year ago and kept going, and I’m so happy that you love it so much 💗💗💗

Also... 🤭 did you hear the news? Six Phases is... becoming... a...

series.

#asks #Six Phases #I love this story with all my soft heart #🌸💗 #Hope this helps! #Thank you for stopping by lovely~

[kawaiikichi]

ANNOUNCEMENT

Hi guys and Happy New Year! I figured today would be a good time to post this as it is the beginning of 2021 and there’s some things I’d like to set straight after thinking about everything over the course of 2020.

⚠️ CW: Mentions about suicide attempts, mental health stuff ⚠️

So, first things first:

1. Game of Cat and Mouse

-I know. I know that it’s been a year since I’ve updated that fic. It’s been a year since I touched anything Saiouma or DR-related period (excluding that Goblin AU one-shot I did for Saiou Week). I’ve gotten asks, comments on said fic, and even a post tagging me on Twitter about when I’ll be posting the next chapter for Game of Cat and Mouse. The answer? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know when the next chapter will come. 2020 has been a total shitshow for me, just as it has been for everyone else. No matter how hard I have tried to get motivated to work on it (rereading my fic, talking about V3 with my friend Jhayde, etc), by the time I click on the word doc, all of my motivation just disappears and I go to work on something else instead. The fate of Game of Cat and Mouse along with my other Saiouma fic, requests, etc, will be stated below.

2. DR fandom + BNHA fandom

-So, I’m sure you all have noticed a shift in fandoms. I’ve been writing more for BNHA than I have been for DR (NDRV3, to be more specific). It’s because right now, I honestly don’t have any motivation to write for the DR fandom. It’s just not there anymore. Ever since what happened with me and my suicide attempt, it’s been a struggle to get back to the me that I know I am. And 2020 has honestly made it ten times worse. It’s a miracle that I’m still writing fics at all. I love Danganronpa, I really do. But right now, my heart’s just not into it. So, from here on out, I’m going to be leaving the fandom for some time. I do have intentions to return, since everyone’s been so nice to me and this might be the best fandom I’ve been a part of. I also want to finish Game of Cat and Mouse. But with how I am right now, it’s just not possible. So, Game of Cat and Mouse along with Love on Aisle Four will be put on hiatus until further notice. As for requests, they will be closed until further notice. For the ones that I’ve accepted: I don’t think I’ll be able to finish them. I really do apologize for having you wait so long only to hear me say that the requests will not be completed. Again, I really and sincerely apologize *bows*

In regards to BNHA: I find that writing Bakudeku is somewhat cathartic? When my depression started hitting me hard, I couldn’t write anything and it terrified me that I might potentially never be able to write again. The first thing I wrote after so long? Katsuki teaching Izuku how to cut an onion. It was so simple, so mundane, but it brought me joy for the first time in a while and I deadass cried in the facility I was at after my attempt. Ever since then, I’ve just...gravitated more to BNHA and Bakudeku. So, I’m going to stick with this fandom, even if it’s a huge one and I barely get noticed 😂

(I have spoken to some nice and encouraging people, though! So, I guess that’s a positive)

3. Other things to go over

-Like I mentioned before, 2020 was horrible from start to finish. It’s been horrible for me and for everyone else. My mental health has taken a huge hit and every day has been a struggle to keep myself from spiraling into self destructive thoughts and to stay positive. It’s hard. But, I want to try. I want to try and get better and feel happy. So I’m going to be focusing on the things that make me happy. I’m going to work on things and WIPs that I want to work on because it has felt like I’ve been doing things for the sake of others. I want to do things for me now, so I hope you understand.

I’m also going to be doing some pre-spring cleaning (I’m calling it that because it’s still winter) on my AO3! I’m going to take down some of my works that I haven’t touched in some time (I’m still thinking about what I wish to do with my ONS works like Seoul Lights and IASWASB, so those will stay up). I am also going to be changing my username once I get my fic for the Bakugou bang posted (I hope the name hasn’t been taken) and it will also be the last time I change my username since I’ve been tweaking it in the past. The username I have in mind is one I’ve really grown into over the past couple of years and I think that that’s the username for me. If I don’t get the one I want, I’ll either use something close to it or maybe my Twitter username, idk yet.

I...think this might be all I have to say? I’ll reblog this post with additional info if I need to, but otherwise, it’s a wrap! Again, I want to thank you all for the support and love you’ve given me in the DR fandom! It means so much to me. Like I said, I want to return eventually, but right now is just not that time. Hope you’ll looki forward to what I’ll be posting in the future, especially if you ship Bakudeku too :D

-kawaiikichi

(TL;DR I will be leaving the DR fandom for some time due to lack of motivation and fandom switches (I will return eventually), Game of Cat and Mouse along with my other Saiouma fic will be on hiatus, requests are closed until further notice, there will be some pre-spring cleaning done on my AO3 in the coming days)

#kawaiikichi #personal #announcement #very important announcement so please make sure to read it!

[creek-cryptid-deluxe]

So, It’s been awhile. There’s a reason. The last week or so has been... a week. jesus christ. I shall regale you of my tale, not in chronological order necessarily because that’s how I roll. BUT if you suffer through it, you shall be rewarded with an outdoor plant update post after. Bribery. 

So. Early last week, The Spawn sat down with me and presented a proposal, a well researched proposal, advocating for her starting her own residential cleaning business because she finds it incredibly satisfying and relaxing to clean stuff and she does quite well. So we sat and brainstormed, researched, and talked about how she planned to advertise. She needed a business gmail (and all the tools that come with that), logo, business social media, website, and flyers. 

Being her age, she doesn’t have the skill or knowledge to do these things. So, I volunteered to help with these things so that she didn’t have to spend money hiring someone. I created the email account, put all the brainstorm stuff into a google doc that saved to the biz drive, which included a to do list and the basic info needed. I created a logo. (At which point, she called me a wizard while watching me do so.) I helped her try to create a biz facebook account, but facebook immediately flagged it as breaking the rules. like literally as soon as I created it. So I appealed it & The Spawn wanted to wait to see what came of that before I went further. So she took me with her to shop for the things on her supply list, and we decided to go grab some of the smaller stuff still needed for J’s appt at the same time. This was Friday. 

Saturday, I got a text from J in the early afternoon saying that he needed me. I quickly packed a ‘just in case’ bag, since I didn’t know what to expect or how long I would be there. Now, you have to understand that in the 7 years we’ve been friends, while he has discussed things with me via phone or text, in person he is like me, incredibly stoic. Hell even via text or phone, he always insists that he’s fine and responds to my reminders that i’m here if he needs someone, and to just let me know, he responds “I appreciate it, but I won’t”. So him reaching out like that is a MASSIVE thing. I showed up, let myself in, and he just walked up to me, wrapped his arms around me and started sobbing. I stayed the night, alternating between being comforting and being distracting. It was extremely disarming to see such raw emotion from him repeatedly over the course of the night and to hear him say the things that he is usually uncomfortable articulating. 

The next morning he seemed better, thanked me for coming (to which I responded “Of course I came. I’ve not ever been lying when I’ve said that I’d come if you needed me, day or night, but you have to let me know.”) and apologized for ‘being a mess’. I told him every time he apologized (which happened quite a bit over the course of the night) that there was no need for an apology because this wasn’t something to be sorry for. He was struggling, as people do, and rather than embrace the darkness or fight it alone, he asked for help from someone he trusts and loves that he knows reciprocates. That i know how hard it is for him to do that and that I am proud of him. 

Sunday afternoon the kids (The Spawn and The Bf) picked me up because she needed to take him home but didn’t want to leave the dogs alone. I got in the car after The Bf got into the back, insisting I take the front seat. We hadn’t even gotten out of the parking lot of the apartment complex when The Spawn casually asked “So are ya’ll fucking?” 

that’s how I learned that I was the subject of a bet. Apparently, The Bf asked where I was when he came over and out of convenience, not wanting to really explain the relationship, The Spawn said I was at my boyfriend’s. I guess he went on about how how come I’m never hanging out with him, etc, so The Spawn explained the actual nature of our relationship. At the end The Bf said “Nah, they fuckin’ but your mom isn’t telling you.” The Spawn said, “No, she’d tell me because when I started high school I asked her about her past encounters and asked about what stuff was, if she’d done it, and if she enjoyed it, and she was always honest with me. That’s how I know she likes it up the butt.” He insisted that J and I were banging so The Spawn, knowing the truth, took advantage of this and made a bet. It was an easy win for her. SO...

I get asked this question & I look at her, eyebrows raised because she knows how our relationship is (granted if I were physically able and he was willing, I would definitely jump back up on that horse) and said, “No. Mom is no longer physically capable of fucking without risk of severe injury. Plus, despite having ridden that horse previously, I’m not into endangering our besties status. I would go into further detail and commentary but I don’t want to make The Bf uncomfortable. These are things you know, so why do you ask?” She told me of the bet, Then i promptly text J about it because I knew he’d get a laugh out of it. And I was right. 

By the end of Sunday, she recieved an email stating that facebook was upholding the ban, so she and I talked and decided to make a webpage via WIX and after getting a few clients, she could upgrade her account with them to get extras that are offered, including her own domain (rather than the name.wix address) and a lack of wix ads on her page.  And then it all went downhill from there.

Monday through Wednesday (yesterday) had The Spawn breathing down my neck more than any boss I’ve ever fucking had about when her business shit would be done. On top of what I’d already done, between Monday and Wednesday I:   set up her google voice account for a business number, wrote her a “first time client” script, created a google sheets quick reference client database, created a google forms for detailed client records (all in a folder together that is searchable by client name, which would be the title of the form), set up the calendar, downloaded and edited/collaged her before and after photos she took via cleaning some of our spaces, and built her a 7 page website including the photos, facts, and little blurbs that go along with it. It went live at the end of yesterday. 

Throughout this process, rather than just checking in and thanking me for doing it all to save her money, she asked me every couple hours what still needed to be done. When I was not as far along as she felt I should be, she got progressively more hostile. Yesterday morning she had the balls to text me “What all do we still need to do before I can get rolling?” I responded with “ ‘We’? hahahahaha *I* still need to [list].” 

I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “Am I missing something? Did you forget to list something in the list of stuff you did between Monday and Wednesday? You mentioned flyers....” You are correct. But yesterday while I was being driven to my 2nd vax appointment by my father, I basically told him that I’m fried. If a flyer just included facts, I’d be fine, but the part where I need the potential customers to be drawn in and want to learn more is not happening. The creative well has run dry to the point that it is reminiscent of the dust bowl. And I reminded him that there is a reason I no longer do this type of shit for a living. I mentioned that thinking about The Spawn’s company is making me stress puke and that any time The Spawn approaches me to talk about anything, I immediately feel incredibly nauseated. 

Now it should be noted that when I mentioned this in a multi paragraph text earlier, he responded with “Just take a step back from it for awhile, then go back to it.”    

and everyone wonders why on earth I don’t speak up when I hit my limits and why I just push onward despite the damage it does to me. THIS. THIS IS WHY. Everyone is all for me not pushing myself too hard... until it is inconvenient for them. So I basically screamed in the car. On the way back he said he’d help. Ok. cool. 

Except that every fucking idea he had legit just tripled the amount of work I was going to have to do. I mentioned being burned enough that I was considering just paying a freelancer to do it. This motherfucker chimes in with “Oh! [Cool Ex Employee Who Left to be a Stay at Home Mom with her First Baby] does stuff like that. Let me reach out to see if she’d be willing to.” BRUH. That should have been the first thing out of your mouth after my original texts! Jesus Christ. I agreed but with the caveat that HE had to tell The Spawn and say it was his idea because he sees me getting overly stressed and has put his foot down. And he had to do it that night because I knew that if he didn’t, the first thing I’d hear today was “So when are my flyers going to be done?” and I am absolutely not dealing with that shit. The only thing I am doing from this point forward is showing her how to use her database/client files/calendar and I will be happy to answer questions or give advice, but that’s it. This isn’t my company and I’m not employed by her, so I’ve already put in far more work than should have been expected of me, with very little thanks outside of after I finished her logo and a couple times she came down and watched, then told me I’m a fucking wizard. 

Really It was good in a way because I had been doing that thing lately where I wonder if I’m just being dramatic because admin type stuff isn’t that hard and if I could do it from home, I should be able to manage... but this put me back down on earth, where I absolutely am not being dramatic and I cannot fucking do that shit 40 hrs a week for some random asshole. Shit, this was for my own child and I was ready to give up, stab her, then tell her to go fuck herself.

so...that’s been my last week and a half for so. Also, my only side effects from Vax 2 (pfizer) is feeling more tired/run down than usual and a bit of extra joint pain... but those might actually be related to the stress and hell I just went through. who knows. 

as always, don’t steal my shitshow. get your own shitshow. suffer through your own crap. 

[raineydaywrites]

Nesting Chapter 14

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27904012/chapters/74325921

Captain Davenport had been committed to the interplanar expeditionary mission for decades now, and he was thrilled at how rapidly it was advancing now.

Even before he had been confirmed as the captain of the expedition, he had argued for the right of the captain to have the greatest say in who would be selected as crew.

Of course, for a project this significant, there were going to be a lot of voices in the mix, but the fact that the ship’s engine relied so much on bonds for power meant that the captain needed to be sure that they could form such bonds with their crew.

He had been grateful that the rest of the selection committee had agreed to that from the very beginning, and now that he was confirmed as the lead for the mission, he was even more grateful.

The first crew member he’d chosen to favor was easy. Dr. Bluejeans had been working on the bond engine project for decades, which was especially saying something for a human, with their significantly shorter lifespans than other species. It showed a dedication and commitment to the project that Davenport appreciated. Not only was he a brilliant scientist who had proved his ability to handle the work, he also enjoyed it.

It also helped that Davenport knew the man to be a well-mannered guy with a good personality- able to stand up for himself and others enough to not be considered completely dull or boring, but not the kind of person to go out of his way to cause problems either.

With the kinds of people who would be drawn to a mission like this- the adventurers, the explores, the ones with ambition- he would have his choice of troublemakers for this mission. He'd rather have at least a few people who were less likely to immediately jump into the fray just for the fun of it.

Selections for the chronicler were fairly simple too, in the end. At least, in comparison to selections for the rest of the crew. The chronicler needed to be able to keep good notes and write well, but there was less debate about what kinds of secondary skills would be needed in such an individual.

The selection board- mostly made up of scientists, arcanists and scientist-and-arcanist-adjacent administrators- had much stronger opinions on what scientific and magical skills could be useful on a mission like this than they did about the more clerical end of things.

In the end, choosing Lucretia McDonald was an easy choice- she was highly skilled in her field, especially for her age, well recommended, with a talent for note-taking that was rather astounding. She also seemed fairly easy to get along with, if a touch aloof. Still, another calm head would be a benefit on a mission like this. The only real concern was her youth and lack of experience, but truthfully, they didn't need the best chronicler possible, and Davenport personally thought that they should accept their luck in getting one this good instead of worrying that she could be better.

They still needed to make selections on security personnel, but they'd narrowed it down to a couple strong contenders. The other three spaces after that would be a bit more difficult to fill. They needed a healer of some sort, because they had no idea what they would run into out there, and being without the ability to heal themselves could easily be fatal. Personally, Davenport was angling for someone who had either faith or mental health expertise who might better be able to assist with any kind of existential concerns that they may run into. Going out past the planar system as they knew it was likely to be a lot on the crew's mental health, and a good cleric who could do more than just the traditional kinds of healing would be ideal.

The last two spots were for arcanists, or potentially an arcanist and another scientist, depending on the qualifications of the applicants. There weren't many people who had studied either the science or magic of bonds, and so they needed to be someone who was willing to learn on the job in order to assist Barry as needed.

There were two particular applicants that Davenport had taken special notice of for those roles. A pair of twins, graduating soon, top of their class, highly skilled and well recommended. Clearly, they had the skills and intelligence needed to fill the roles, and their relative youth made them more likely to be flexible enough to learn new skills.

Besides which, the fact that they were twins and had clearly spent a good portion of their lives together indicated that they probably had a very strong bond. The bond engine on the Starblaster was designed to be sustained even on less significant bonds that form between crewmates and coworkers, but the extra boost that bonds forged from genuine love offered could only be a positive in their situation.

He was set to interview the pair of them soon, to get a better handle on their abilities and personalities, but he already knew that he favored them over others. It wasn't just their twin bond, of course, but that was a major benefit.

Still, it wasn't fair to the other applicants to chose them on that basis alone, and so they needed to prove themselves to him and the selection committee just as much as any of the others.

When the twins arrived, they arrived together. Davenport intended to segment their interviews into a section together and a section apart. He needed to know both their individual skills and personalities as well as their combined skills and personalities after all.

He stepped out of his office to greet them and introduce himself, reaching a hand up for them to shake. And he immediately noticed something that might be a problem.

Well, he shouldn't say that, he supposed. He saw something that prompted a suspicion to rise in his mind, but he wasn't certain at first. After all, you can't simply assume these things. He didn't even know if Taako was physically capable of carrying a child, after all, let alone know enough about the man and his life to be certain that he was currently doing so, but he certainly had his suspicions.

There was a curve to the man's stomach that seemed different than simply being a matter of his build. The weight there did not appear to match the weight distribution on the rest of his body, in a way that suggested a potential pregnancy more than just fat.

Combine that with the appearance of his sister beside him, an identical twin sister as he knew from their files and the essays they had submitted with their applications. Of course it was possible for identical twins to have different builds due to differences in lifestyle or diet, but the sight of the two standing next to each other allowed him to compare their appearances in a way that reaffirmed his suspicions instead.

And the fact that they were identical twins with different gender identities pointed to the possibility that at least one of them could be capable of carrying a child. Elven biology meant that identical twins could be assigned different genders at birth, but it was a fairly rare occurrence. More likely to assume that one of them was trans.

If true, that could be a problem.

Still, there was no reason to be rude, so he took care to not let his eyes linger as he invited the two into his office.

"Please, sit," Davenport offered, gesturing to the chairs on the opposite side of his desk as he settled into his own chair. He noticed that Taako sat down with a particular heaviness, and set his hands to rest over his stomach.

Both Lup and Taako appeared to be eyeing him just as intensely as he was eyeing them, sizing each other up and disguising it under aloofness and professionalism. He could see the glint of intelligence in their eyes past the facade of distance, and he nodded approvingly in his mind.

The interview proceeded fairly normally from there, with Davenport taking some quick notes on the two for his own records. The conversation was being recorded as well, to ensure complete accuracy in relaying their words to the rest of the committee.

"I'd like to speak with you individually now," Davenport said, reaching for the recording device and turning it off briefly, before speaking again. "Apologies. There is one more question I have to ask the both of you. Do you have any medical conditions that might be relevant to discuss prior to departure?"

"We're allergic to peanuts," Lup offered, expression not moving in the slightest to indicate that she understood the question he was really asking. In fact, her expression only became more casual, clearly unwilling to let anything slip.

Taako looked to Lup, and they seemed to have a silent conversation before Taako turned back to Davenport and admitted, "Yes, I'm pregnant. And I totally get it if that disqualifies me. Figured it was worth a shot applying anyway."

"Thank you for your honesty," Davenport said, smiling warmly at him. It was good that he was acknowledging it instead of trying to downplay or deny the situation. "I admit, it may be disqualifying, but I wouldn't rule you out yet. The committee will have to discuss this more before making a decision on the matter. May I ask when you're due? It may be relevant."

"Doc says between 6-7 months or so," Taako offered. "Baby's half-human, so hard to be specific at this point. I'll keep you updated if I get any more info before you make the final call."

"I would appreciate that," Davenport said, handing Taako a card with his contact information. "Now, which of you would like to have your individual interview first?"

"Me," Taako said, immediately. "I refuse to stand up again until necessary. Lulu, get out."

Lup stood, maintaining eye contact with Taako as she left, saying, "The pregnancy card is gonna get real worn out if you keep abusing it Koko! Just sayin'!"

Davenport was practiced at not letting his amusement show on his face, but the exchange did prompt him to smile slightly.

Yes, he still favored the twins for this mission, even if it was now slightly against his better judgement.

-

As soon as they left their interviews, Taako found a bench and switched his dress shoes for a pair of comfier sandals that he’d brought along in his bag, letting out a noise of relief as he did so.

The sandals didn’t particularly match the rest of his outfit that well, and they weren’t particularly professional either, so Lup understood why he hadn’t worn them into the interview.

“Your feet really hurt that bad?” she asked, wincing in sympathy. “I didn’t think it would be so bad this early. Like, honestly, it’s still barely noticeable.”

“It’s still a lot different than what my legs are used to!” Taako insisted.

He stood up, holding onto Lup’s arm to keep him steady, and kept speaking. “It’s fine, mostly. These shoes just suck.”

Lup hummed in agreement, letting her brother vent. The dress shoes were an old pair that Taako had dragged out from the very back of the closet for the interview. He usually preferred to wear boots or heels, so he didn’t own very many flats. He hadn’t been able to find any boots that were both interview-appropriate and well-matched to his outfit, and he’s already learned that wearing heels nowadays was just asking for painful feet and ankles, and that he probably didn’t want to risk losing his balance when he was already so unsteady recently.

“We gotta find something better for graduation, then,” Lup said. “We’ve worked way too hard for it to let your day to be ruined by ugly, painful shoes.”

"No shit, Lulu, who do you think you're talking to? Already working on that," Taako assured.

Lup let her excitement wash over her for a second, laughing in delight. "Koko, we're about to fucking graduate! We made it!"

Taako met her outburst with a widening smile of his own. "Yeah, natch. Don't tell me you doubted it, Lu- it's us we're talking about. Course we fucking made it."

"We just interviewed to go into space! We didn't just make it- we made it," Lup said, eyes wild and delighted.

If someone had told them when they'd been kids that they'd be here someday, they'd have assumed they were being scammed- or, at best, politely lied to. All their confidence had been hard-won, over years and years of failures and let-downs, but here they were. The best of the best, graduating top of their class, possibly going to space- so much of the last few months had been stressful, trying to graduate while also helping Taako as he adjusted to his new situation, but they were in a good place. Finally.

There had been so many years where this would have devastated them. Years where an unplanned pregnancy would have set them back miles, where it wouldn't have been feasible for Taako to even consider keeping the kid if he wanted to. But now he could, and it had barely hurt them at all.

They'd gotten where they had dreamed of going. They'd really made it.

-

Lup's approval was fairly swift after the interview, with Davenport's continued firm approval and her excellent performance. But Davenport wasn't surprised when the selection committee seemed to immediately write off Taako as a candidate when they learned of his pregnancy. That didn't mean he agreed with them though.

They brought up good points- if a pregnant individual died or was lost on this mission, it would look far worse to the press than otherwise, they didn't know how interplanar travel would affect a fetus, and they could always simply offer the man a space in a later mission- assuming this one went well.

Truthfully, Davenport couldn't quite put his finger on why he was so insistent on the matter himself. But his instincts were telling him that he should fight for Taako's inclusion- that he was needed on this mission.

And so he fought for the inclusion of both twins. It seemed absurd not to take the offer of two highly skilled potential officers with as strong a bond as they twins had.

The committee finally agreed to speak with the science team about the potential affects on a fetus, and Davenport was glad to at least get a foot in the door to the idea.

Dr. Bluejeans spoke for the science team on the matter, and Davenport worked to hide his grin as the man explained that the team couldn't see any potential dangers for a fetus that were any worse than the dangers they would all be in simply due to the unknown nature of where they were going.

He got the feeling that a few of the committee members had been hoping that the team would give them an easy out, but at least a few of the members seemed more reassured by that knowledge.

"I understand your hesitance," Davenport addressed the committee. "But none of the other candidates that have been suggested for this position bring nearly as many advantages to this crew as Mr. Taako would. And that is without mentioning the advantages gained by having Ms. Lup on this crew as well. If we turn him down, I truly believe we will lose them both, and they will not be easy to replace. There are risks to this mission, but that has always been true. And as long as we have planned this, we have worked to mitigate those risks- and not only because we don't want to lose any of our people, but because we know that if we lose someone on this mission, it will be a long time- perhaps a lifetime- before we will be given the resources to try again. Regardless of who in particular we lose. We cannot afford to lose anyone on this mission, no matter who we send or don't send, and I fully believe that Mr. Taako and Ms. Lup are our best options to ensure that that doesn't happen in the first place."

And when the official letters of acceptance were sent out, there was one household that got two of them.

-

Taako was fiddling with his graduation outfit when Lup got home with the letters. The robes were issued through the school, and one of the workers had offered him some advice on making sure that the whole set would actually fit and look nice by the time he graduated, based from their own experience of graduating while pregnant. Taako had greatly appreciated it, and with graduation coming up soon, he was finally starting to put it in place, altering the clothing subtly.

Lup made sure he wasn't holding anything sharp before she announced that the letters had arrived.

Taako immediately dropped what he was working on to hurry to Lup's side. She handed him the letter and they both paused, neither willing to take the jump and open it. For this moment, they could still live in the reality where they might go on this mission together, and it was terrifying to think that it might fall apart in a minute.

Taako was the one who finally opened his letter. Lup didn't open her own, instead waiting and watching her brother's face as he pulled out the papers inside with shaking hands. He started to read-

-and his eyes lit up and he smiled wider than Lup had ever seen from him before, and it felt like everything inside of her settled immediately. He'd been accepted. And if he'd been accepted, even while pregnant, surely-

She ripped open her envelope, finally, and couldn't hold back her scream of excitement at what she saw inside.

Taako hugged her, immediately, and he was crying a little, but Lup wasn't going to judge since she was near tears herself without the mood swings.

"We're going to space!" she enthused, and Taako laughed, unable to do anything else with how happy he was.

"We're going to space!" he agreed.

Lup hugged her brother even tighter for a moment, before pulling back and addressing the bump.

"Ya hear that, nugget? Your dad and aunt about to be the coolest people on the planet."

"Coolest people in space, goofus," Taako corrected, laughing and shoving her shoulder lightly.

"In the universe!" Lup shouted, throwing her arms up in the air with joy.

They'd fucking made it.

#taz balance #taako adventurezone #Taako taaco #lup adventurezone #Lup taaco #my writing

[cvrnelivs]

— ( harry styles, cismale, he/him ) &. * — meet ( cornelius ‘ oliver ’ edwards ) ! ( he ) is ( twenty five ) years old and has lived in st. helens for ( two ) years . when they’re not helping the town prepare for halloween , they work as a ( baker ) . around here, they’re known to be ( idealistic ) & ( intuitive ) yet ( unpredictable ) & ( destructive ) and apparently their favorite fall activity is ( visiting the farmer’s market ) . safe to say it really wouldn’t be halloweentown without them !

hiya! i am kt &+ underneath the read more is a LOT of info about my bb, cornelius/oliver. ** insert clown emoji but make ‘em yee-haw ** if you’d like to plot you can reach me on here or at space cowboy#8536 on discord !! <33 v excited to interact with y’all and your bbs !!

( DISCLAIMER : THIS IS LONG - WOW !!! just felt a lot of muse !!! apologies !!  ) 

𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖘

name: cornelius oliver edwards.

nicknames: ollie, ol, lee !! literally whatever - “hey, you” dkjfgn

gender: cismale. pronouns: he, him.

age: twenty-five.

birthday: june 27th.

zodiac: cancer !!

orientation: pansexual / panromantic.

occupation: baker // aspiring filmmaker.

languages spoken: english & french.

𝖎𝖓𝖘𝖕𝖎𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

- PINTEREST - featuring his wardrobe, his home, his aesthetic, some character inspo and olive, his german shepard pup !!

- SPOTIFY PLAYLIST - what oliver is currently listening to !!

personality type: INFJ-T / THE ADVOCATE

moral alignment: chaotic good

style-wise: oliver is v stylish, but isn’t overly flashy by any means. he’s intuitive in the sense of what works and what doesn’t. willing to explore the latest wardrobe craze, but also just likes what he likes and likely won’t venture out unless pressed by another to do so. post coming soon for his wardrobe !!! they say that the cancer man’s clothing is selected to reflect “ sophistication over flash “ but kdgjn i’ll let ya’ll be the judge of that. he’s v much harry inspired clothing wardrobe, but also tones it down with some casual looks, especially with being in the bakery and getting his hands dirty in creative aspects !!

𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉

   oliver was born in kent, england. he’s the youngest in his family of three, having an older brother and sister w/ two loving parents. when he was nine, his family packed up and moved to southern california, where they resided until oliver left for college on the east coast - his family trading off between living back in england and on the west coast throughout the year. upon moving to a new country at a young age, oliver truly found himself via escaping into various books and movies. often attempting to write his own and would force encourage his siblings to act his skits/plays out for his parents enjoyment. growing up, oliver also enjoyed playing all types of sports ( his parents kind of threw him in hoping he’d make friends ), but when it came down to it, athletic abilities-wise, there truly wasn’t anything that he wasn’t ‘ good ‘ at, and that’s simply because he’s always been such a competitive individual / as well as a perfectionist. that competitive/perfectionist energy caused him to go home and practice a skill or trick for hours in order to be able to come back the next day and whoop everyone’s asses. throughout highschool ; oliver was a v dedicated student. although he’s a bit reckless and loved to goof off, he was always acing classes and applying himself. he genuinely cares for others, you could’ve seen his ass volunteering at a soup kitchen with his mom on sundays and what not, as well as take part in various clubs and sports ! just SOFT and sportythings.

   post-high school, oliver attended NYU double majoring in film & television and dramatic writing. despite his extensive and well received portfolio, oliver has always been a perfectionist and overcritical of his work, unwilling to share his projects with anyone until he deems them to be ~ perfect ~ himself. after graduating, he spent a year traveling, trying to find a bit of inspiration around him and taking up odd jobs to get some $$ of his own, dog walking, attempting his best at being a handy man, etc !! he moved back home to socal, and eventually made his way up to st.helen’s after he was sent a job posting for the bakery in town !! although he knows he doesn’t want to pursue a career in baking forever, he’s enjoying his time while trying to find a bit more muse for his future film&writing career.

   overall, oliver can come off as a bit reserved, and distant whether that be a result of his untrusting nature of others, or simply unfamiliarity. it takes a bit of time before he feels comfortable to share his true opinion / commentary / only doing so when he feels secure to do so. he’s not necessarily unfriendly, just a bit distant / lost in his thoughts. which varies, as with most ppl ofc, upon person to person and his level of comfortability among them. despite his often lack of conversation, he abhors an uncomfortable silence to settle and will fill it with nonsense to simply avoid the feeling altogether. so, if you ever want to catch him rambling, just making him uncomfortable dkjfngdf. he definitely approaches most things with a bit of ‘ tough love ‘ . he doesn’t mind getting into a quarrel or two if he knows its worth the outcome he’s envisioned. oliver will tell others when they are fucking up, and if they are throwing a punch as a result - catch him leaning into it, which explains his bout of reckless antics. he can come off as a know it all, when it comes to advice giving, but more so because he thinks he’s really good at analyzing others and situations they are in, not necessarily because he’s lived through them himself, he’s just rather intuitive and able to empathize quite easily with others despite his verbal admittance of it. when it comes down to this binches reckless bits, he just feels so intensely that he ends up numbing himself in the aftermath of it all ( especially bc he’s definitely not sharing those feelings with the people around him ), therefore he’s willing to put himself into harms way in order to get a bit of that - happiness / pain, it doesn’t matter to him as long as he no longer feels overwhelmed by numbness. so, if ya see him with some scrapes and stitches ~ mind ya business. but he’ll likely try to drag somebody else into it, and make it seem like it was their idea. but if he is truly comfortable with somebody, he walks a fine line of won’t stop talking, especially if it’s an interest of his, and comfortable silence.

𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖞 & 𝖍𝖆𝖇𝖎𝖙𝖘

he is a CANCER, therefore in this essay i will..... kidding but here’s some fun cancer info i saw that applies to my bb !! at first he appears to be wistful, sarcastic ( maybe a lil crabby ) , shy, distant and mysterious. this personality remains if he isn’t completely comfortable around somebody. but overall, that’s just his facade, his ‘smokescreen’ of sorts to scare off the world from his outwards persona. underneath that layer ( makes me think of shrek metaphor with onions // don’t mind me ), BUT he’s gentle, kind and affectionate ( if you manage to make it to that level * bell dings * ) !!! overall, oliver is a sensitive soul, a bit emotional although he’d rather d*e than show that to others. likely will internalize anything that can hurt his feelings / a low blow and will do something chaotic as a result later on bc of it. very polite, and a little worldly, he is truly the epitome of old-school gentlemanly manners. chivalry coming as a second nature to him !!

that was getting ramble-y, so continuing HERE. but when it comes to romance, as per the cancer man, the concept of love is a mystery, one that oliver is trying to attain. however, his shyness and innate distrust of others make it difficult for him to allow himself to fall in love. his guard is always up when it comes to his emotions, and it’ll take a bit of prodding before he’s willing to speak up on what’s desired from him. he’s v picky when it comes to finding the “ partner of his dreams “ - but he’s def willing to throw himself into the romance of the situation, i.e. buying flowers, riding white horses, and slaying metaphorical dragons. the traditional side means that he will shower his partner with thoughtful gifts, wine and dine them in the best restaurants, and try to grant their every wish. he will take the garbage out, fix that wobbly shelf, navigate on road trips, and kill more so trap and release bugs for his partner, and most important of all he will do it all without being asked. his loyalty and keen attention to the needs and wants of his potential partner. so basically, more so willing to showcase through actions than speak on it. it’s the little things, right ??!?!?! he def cherishes not just the act of being in a relationship, but what it means to become one with another person in mind, body, and soul.

prides himself on being able to make a mean cup of coffee, likely the worst person to watch a movie with bc he knows exactly how it’s going to end after only watching five minutes of it, he has a godawful sense of direction, will walk in circles for fifteen minutes before even raising a question about it/noticing ( but he refuses to acknowledge it. )

his house, car, workspace, junk drawer, closet….you name it - it’s organized, practically sparkling. often times arranged by color, and / or style. nothing is ever out of place, and if it is - there’s trouble brewing. but, more than anything, if he’s visiting somebody’s place and it’s messy, he will spend a solid thirty minutes picking everything up before doing whatever it is that was intended.

likes : reading, flowers, handwritten notes/letters, deep cleaning, baking, curating soundtracks for his film projects, watching the history channel and true crime docs and playing / watching hockey !!

dislikes : artichoke, clutter, sandals ( fkjgh ), unrealistic plotlines in movies &+ burnt coffee.

habits : smoking cigarettes - although he’s been meaning to quit. likely has a severe caffeine addiction, although he’s now normalized having six cups of coffee throughout his day. he’s an early riser, no matter how little the amount of sleep he’s received, he’s always the first to rise - for his early morning runs !!

strengths: creative, insightful, inspiring, convincing, determined and passionate, decisive, altruistic, intuitive !!

weaknesses: sensitive, extremely private, perfectionist, low-key always needs to have a cause / purpose, can burn out easily !! 

overall : oliver truly strives to be kind, and genuinely wants for everyone to get along. treat people with kindness and the like. he has the best of intentions, but often times that can get a bit muddled with the way he goes about things due to his bit of chaotic energy / as well as his often points of getting lost in his thoughts. he won’t realize he’s been quiet for the last three hours unless it’s mentioned to him. he will do anything to lighten a dark mood, and will sacrifice / throw himself under the bus if its needed. however, he also is the type to cause the dark mood depending on the day. wahoo! his more reckless antics increase when he’s feeling a bit emotional !! but he’ll likely try and convince somebody to propose the idea so it’s not on him. 

𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖔𝖒 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘

in an attempt to throw himself into the town’s traditions and what not, after moving to st. helen’s oliver decided it was upon himself to put on a very spooo0ooky haunted house! so, catch him converting his home into a haunted house for the month of october !!! nothing cheesy either !! it’s more a psychological scare dkjgn with some gore elements !! EnTeR iF yOu DaRe !!!

he bounced around playing sports growing up, but favored ice hockey and field lacrosse out of them all.

HE WANTS TO JOIN A BOOKCLUB PLEASE !!!!!!!! or at least have some casual moments of silence with another reading. plz and tysm.

he is a vegetarian ! he has been since his freshman year of high school and has no plans on eating seafood/meat ever again.

he loves fancy wine ~ he’s cultured. visits seb’s winery v often !!!

he can play the drums !!

he collects vintage matchbooks and the stickers off of various fruits ( he puts them in a little notebook - can be found on his bookshelf ).

saves handwritten notes and letters from pals.

he loves to garden !!!! he has a specified rose shearing hat.

to make things a bit simple, he has all of harry’s tattoos !!  might add more along the way !! stay tuned, folks !!

𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖓𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘

honestly, i am so up for anything !!! please accept this ramble of ideas thrown below.  if you have any other ideas, lmk !!!! <3333 :’-)

( 2 / 2 ) - BFFZ : the z for an added emphasis dkfjgnd. somebody who likely has a key to oliver’s house, they can enjoy one anothers company as well as the bouts of comfortable silence. you know how best friends are but kdjfngd still !! whether they are likeminded or polar opposites that just flow ~~ down for anything !! even a trio of sorts ?!

( 0 / ?? ) - MUSE(S) : somebody that he often strikes inspo from for his short films and what not !! or has starred/he plans to have them star in his future compilations of sorts !! can be simply from their own ideals, their look / ~vibe~ dkfjgn // whatever !!

( 1 / 1 ) - RIDE OR DIE / CHAOTIC COMPANION : it would be wrong to say one is the more likely the bad influence over the other, although oliver may just be. these two find themselves bounding into, well hell, ( i guess??? ) together. playing on one anothers impulsiveness and if one ends up in the back of a police car, the other is handcuffed to them. and yet despite the length of their potential injuries, they find themselves thinking of something crazier to subject them to the next time around.

( 1 / 1 ) - GUARDIAN ANGEL / GOOD INFLUENCE : with ollie being a bit chaotic in nature, he needs somebody that is likely going to steer him clear from all the ideas that’ll bring him to the brink of disaster. he’s impulsive and in that desperate attempt to feel again, he’s very likely to bring a bit of mayhem upon himself. so while they may be worrying and attempting to talk his ideas down, he’s trying to get them to go along with his plan. it may be rare that he actually takes their advice, but when he does it seems to be for the best.

( 0 / 1 ) - PARTY FRIEND : these two know how to have a good time together. despite the amount of alcohol they are throwing back and the shenanigans they find themselves in as a result, this is a time where they also find themselves confiding in one another. if you look at their camera rolls, it’s likely they have tons of embarrassing and unflattering videos and pics of one another, in between their sob-worthy confessionals and venting/rants. these two trust one another, and although they love getting wreckT together, they find themselves discussing very raw and personal details. likely the only person oliver confides in, simply bc he’s completely plastered.

( 1 / 1 ) - SIBLING-LIKE RELATIONSHIP : these two have a love/hate relationship, very sibling like filled with pranks, competition, teasing and playful banter. however, when it comes down to it they have so much love and respect for one another. they know that no matter what happens they will always have one anothers back and be supportive of the other. truly a pure content filled relationship.

okay quick mention, ENEMY PLOTS ?!?!?!?!?!? i would live for one. i can’t imagine oliver being hardcore nasty, but i’d like to see whatever version comes out for this. so let’s get it djfngjakdfg maybe they just hold different viewpoints on the world and what not and clash, anything really !!! v open !!

( 1 / 1 ) - MENTOR - oliver needs a bit of structured or unstructured guidance, all depending on what their deemed mentor is wanting to impart on him, a bit of wisdom or slight chaos. kdjfgn he’ll take anything !! life advice in any and all aspects. maybe they come into the bakery, or maybe they help him with his garden. who knows, i certainly don’t know how they met, but we’ll figure it out ?!?!

RANDOM LITTLE IDEAS : maybe they’ve heard of one another in town, but haven’t quite met yet! or maybe they see each other around all the time, but have yet to introduce themselves to one another but low-key maybe in some online forum for the town together ?! who knows some fun things kdjnfg i AM OPEN !

ooh maybe a slowburn of sorts ?! something spicy to wreck ollie’s and my life with.  dkfjgn we can base this off of chemistry !!! :’-) 

#( ❛ ᴏʟɪᴠᴇʀ ᴇᴅᴡᴀʀᴅꜱ | ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ . ) #htintro #excited to plot with y'all <3333 :)

[animorphs-mini-bang]

Hello! If writers have significant edits to make to our 1st drafts, is there a way we should communicate that to artists? I've been making all revisions on a separate doc because my revision process involves totally scrambling the document and I don't want to confuse the artist if they're trying to refer to the text as they draw. But at some point the artist will presumably want to know what's getting changed.

I apologize if I was unclear on my criteria for drafts. I am definitely learning a lot about making sure every single piece of information is presented, and trying to anticipate confusion and needs. 

What I had wanted was the writers to present a complete picture of what would be written, which is why I asked for scenes plus an outline or summary. The scenes and information that were presented in your first draft need to be in your final piece. You can rearrange stuff, absolutely. You can add stuff if you want- I actually just beta’d a fic that ended up with an extended ending. I also suggested major revisions to another fic that involves moving scenes around and adding more emotional grounding, but doesn’t change any scenes visually. In fact, someone has been sharing progress of their art for this very fic, and while it is getting overhauled the art still fits wonderfully, because, again, the visuals are intact.

The artist would have put your fic on their list if they read your first draft and was inspired by a scene or theme. The artist has been given contact info for their writer, providing the writer gave us the okay to share it. If the artist wanted updates on the piece, they will contact you. Otherwise they know what they want to draw.

Basically, if you’re just moving stuff around but keeping the scenes you presented and promised in your first draft, you’re fine, just do you. If you’re deleting scenes that were presented in the draft, that is an issue. In that case, e-mail me, and I’ll figure out contact and communication.

I hope this was clear, and I apologize for my lack of foresight and details.

#animorphs mini bang #animorphs #Anonymous #you know someone gave me permission to share their e-mail late and I forgot to tell their artist #uhhh my bad I'll do that now #maybe your artist will contact you after all!

[pgoeltz]

@blueshieldca  been begging for over a yr to get somtreatment for my back and health, its a nightmare, while CEO makes 42 million, i fight for hard worked benifits.  told to go to er???    my pain doctor told me yesterday he will buy the book of my death by bs of ca, as they dont care >>>>> 

all the notes they want me to go to a place that does not understand billing and i will be out of a 8 week program in 7 days

 paul goeltz 0aaaaa663 is social, and out of state, so special CS, heck they try, but i think i spend to much money and cutting cost to pay the ceo seem to be of more importance then helping ppl16 JAN 2019, 07:57btw i’m half dead from lack of case management, ur doctors that deny my back the right ops, meds, now i guess my pain meds is a no no so retire have to pay 30 its all profit so that fat white man can make 35 million dont worry the world will see it all, you all should be ashamed at your corupt industry money over health16 JAN 2019, 10:55Thank you for supplying your info, Paul. One of our Specialists will reach out shortly to assist. – SR18 JAN 2019, 07:10and thank for calling, but we had to hang up as i was waiting forBS of ca to call, she said she would call back yesterday was here all day, will be back here today, after pt so after10.30am MTand no call so maybe u can let them know here latter today..18 JAN 2019, 10:03I apologize for missing our call yesterday. I’ll call you after 10:30 today. – KristaTHURS 22:10well here we are 6 months later almost dead still zero@BlueShieldCA thanks claiming to #care #fastservice #CustomerService &blah blah blah, i have been trying 2get treetment 4almost a yr, ur #contractor doing #casemanagement has no clue, ur #phone reps dont call back, i dont think BS cares if i live or die its all #money and #F me.ask Esperanza Ramos RN she can explain how sick ur case mangement is and how mr goelts is stuck in the middle of hell and getting nothingwell i can start going to the er every 2 days that will cost about 100k real quickas ur call center says all the help is at the er they will help[ you and call us to figure out what to do with you, thats from ur call centerFRI 08:09anotherday waiting while BS and records and doctors try to figure out why or how paul can use benifits in both medical and mental, oh no, if we?BS keep hold off and FOOLING HIM WE WILL NOT HAVE TO PSAY AND CEO MAKES MILLIONS AND GETS GRT MEDICAL CARE, WELL STILL WAITINGI SHOULD BE TAKING PICTURES OF ME WITHERING AWAY 40 LBS ALREADY….FRI 09:58We’re sorry for your frustration. A Specialist will reach out to you shortly. – JessicaHi Paul. I’ve reviewed your policy and see that you’re trying to receive inpatient detox care. I also see that your case manager Esperanza is currently out of the office, which is why she hasn’t reached out to you. In some of your case notes I see that you stated the appeal filed on your behalf is incorrect. Can you please clarify if this is true? The appeal was assigned to a coordinator this morning, so if I need to remove the appeal I can. Also, if you could clarify exactly what you are wanting, I can work with your case manager to get you the required treatment. Please let me know as soon as possible. – Cortneymore than that if you want to talk call plsi dont have a case managerthey were fired as no brains4066423052FRI 11:45fyi Esperanza is not my case managedr she is trying to help after seeing the messing your case management co got me in, i have no case manager, and i need one to work both side of this medical and mental, So shortly is that longer than 3 hrs? yes the appeal that was filed is all wrong, meanwhile that much closer to death, hope everyone is getting a good laughno you dont need to remove tghe appeal it should have been filed a month ago as i called to file and the lady did nothing not even contact esEsperanza , and the grievence filed is wrong, i dont have time for this i needed help almost a yr ago when does this stopper doc kemple i need a level 4 detox or better, and admit in to a pain program such as siera tuscon, hohn hopkins miami jewish health this all are for pain ppeole not drug addicts, while i explain this for the 300th time why dont you ask sherly jones who screwed it all up and that case management cohello anyone calling so i can blab for 302 times to see if i can get helpFRI 16:33Hi Paul. Your case has been escalated to upper management. You should be receiving an answer from them by Tuesday. We have our very best working on your case. – Cortneyon Wed, May 1, 2019 at 10:00 AM paul goeltz <[email protected]> wrote:Attn: Carmen G.”/  Cortney W.So the grievance is all wrong, those are not my words. the program if opened1 per doc kemple i need a medical detox 4 or higher and inpatient pain rehab or best might end up back on a pump, reeading mjh, not sure they do detox and what levels?there is many pain clinics that are hooked to hospital, for ppl like me with medical conditions.the couple i gave was my research.i also want to complain about the company you hired to do case management, they did nothing and left this in a mess.that said i need case management or help with this.  are you saying in one week if  the codes are not right i will be in the first week of a 5-8 week in patient stay, as the detox is part one learning to try to live with out pain meds are reducing them takes learning, so i might as well shoot myself now, it took a year of begging to get this and now it being forced down my throat, i have talked to no one about any of these places!! Sheryl and that company was to help me decide and make a wise choice but what happened?  so ur saying the hell with Paul  after one week, it gives the hospital no faith in blue shield and they probably will not give me the care i need seeing BS want to still play games.Another part is why no case manager/ i don’t know how when I’m out of it both detoxing and with out pain meds, you can get me out and who will fight for me,  you tell ppl don’t should NOT! make decision when on opiates, well over 20 yrs so your asking me to make a life decision even though it bad a dangerous//??  why is this all messed up you ask us to make the bad decision even though you know your to help??if this is what there is, your blue shield doctors don’t talk, how do you sign them up, this is real said, messing with ppl life’s here, no case, you figure it out goeltz, i have been but now its all wrong, well the best is after a week when they boot me, i;ll go er to er.  so what about the case manager telling me to go to drug and booze detox, for 2 months she had me calling those places and listing to there lies you’ll be fine with the serenity bed etc, and Sheryl just said yes to everything, like she had to help another person with one place, does it not take 3-5 place to make an informed decision??  i wanted kemples medical necessity letter and records sent to 5 to make the right choice for me and bs so you get value.  you should be a part that what Sheryl was do do not just chicken out.miamijewishhealth.org/healthcare-services-programs/rosomoff-center/  maybe not best fit, but maybe lowball for you and no one has even compared them, does BS not want whats best??https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/pain/patient_information/inpatient.htmlhttps://www.sierratucson.com/programs/pain-management-recovery/https://lasvegasrecovery.com/pain/so it appears all the help for a week in a long program, is just insane? is the bottom line the only thing BS of ca cares about.DO I JUST NEED DETOX?It’s important to know that detox alone will not solve a drug use problem. Some individuals find that once they have successfully completed detox, they still need to enroll in a program to help them rebuild their life after prescription pain killers. Freedom Model Retreats offers a Cognitive Behavioral Learning program that uses self assessment and self change to teach guest to reevaluate their choices and decisions and to make choices that are more productive. Guests learn the importance of forming habits and behaviors that are positive and more purposeful and they realize that they have the power to take back control of their life and to have a life that is permanently free from substance use. see most detox is for abuser, they get to learn to cope and so do i it takes tiome 5-8 weeks to tryiong out different meds, drips, etc, we dont get this right i will be back, i will take this to the highest court.  the boozes and dopers dont have any issues but paul goeltz who omnly takes what is giving noting lost stolen etc, i been told your not hooked so no detox and you can go to any detox and blue shiled will get with the place to decide?? ok what is the plan after detox? is there detox what level, can i pay for higher like 5/anyway please dont leave me after one week if you want me to go to miami jewish is a program, they are layughing at BS all ready, your showing your card, they know you dont want to pay.  i can say if i dont get into a good programthis just seems like here toss paul a bone and we dont even know if this is right placepgso i spoke with a couple doctors< they all came to the same conclusion, BS could care less, and this will make a great best seller, why paul died while trying to get help/   kemple told me he spoke with higher ups there, and going into a program that is 5-8 weeks with just a week approved is a death sentence!  people detoxing from drugs or booze don’t have to deal with this?It sounds like MJH does not understand the codes and billing, which would mean me suffering, and having to appeal a program??  Not even sure if MJH does detox, i was told they do from that case management company you hired and relieved??    Did we get all of there case notes??What happened to https://lasvegasrecovery.com/pain/ orsierratucson.com/programs/pain-management-recovery/https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/pain/patient_information/inpatient.htmlmiamijewishhealth.org/healthcare-services-programs/rosomoff-center/http://med.stanford.edu/pain.html how can BS pay for drinkers at these places but not a rehab pain patient??also why cant that company that you hired to do case management help? yes they got tossed off, but that is there job i have the sheet in front of me, it does no say i can have case manger if just using medical or mental, as i had them with just medical, so i demand there help. and a nurse that will help me make informed thoughts ideas etc, this also is in the job description.  there number is 1 866 567 6195, i called them again week ago asking for help and was told they will be in touch this seems to be very common at BS, were laddies say oh we will call back or i will file a grievance and have not … i called 3 times about grievance and the last one went but not my words, 2 ladies did nothing, same with that company, they claim an inability to help.yes @blueshieldca is paying the ceo over 42 million, meanwhile my pain doctor is trying to get spinal rehab 5-8 weeks inpatient, yes it will cost, but no BS wants to pay there #nonprofits brass billions, and us the workers we get #Death sort of like living in #gaza @scvwdANONdaisypgöeltz added,Sauk River Review@OldSaukRiverReplying to @OldSaukRiver @pgoeltz and 10 othersHow can Uaccept it’s ok4 some 2die while others can live? This is the kind of choice Nazis offered -what our pol system in DC -overrun by insur & pharma interests turns them in2 w/this fully unacceptable form of bargaining.…WERLL HOPE YOU CAN SEE THE ISSUEShare this:

[rabidsquabbiteldewrito]

ElDewrito Dev Update (Mar 04, 2018) Part 1

It’s been about a month since our last post, and we apologize for the lack of dev blog updates. Many of our team members have been busy/away during parts of the last month (I just got back from a much-needed week long vacation, snowboarding in the Rockies). While we would have liked to have 0.6 released by now, please remember that we’re all doing this in our spare time for free, and sometimes we burn out, or simply aren’t able to work on it as much as we’d like.

That being said, we’re back at full force with refreshed minds and ready to hammer this thing out.

I’ve read many comments from many people, whether it be on reddit or discord or PMs, saying that our communication is too infrequent and needs to be improved. While I do not need to apologize for taking a vacation, I take these comments to heart. It was only a year and a half ago when I was in the same position you are in, on the outside looking in, asking the same thing from the devs. It’s why I made that first 0.6 update post and it’s why I have been writing these blog posts. I’ll honor your guys’ request and go into as much detail as possible.

I’ll discuss the progress we’ve made since our last post, what’s remaining to do, and also showcase some cool new stuff we’ve added. And as always, we’ll show you some new gameplay using the new features or new forge maps.

This blog post is two parts. If you don’t care about the technical jargon and just want to see cool stuff, skip to the bottom - there’s some cool new features to see. For the rest of you, sit down. This one’s a long read; you asked for it.

The ‘Dedi Connection Bug’

In our last blog post, I went into detail about the ‘dedi connection bug’. As you recall, this bug has two manifestations:

Player A can’t join a server because it conflicts with player B already in the server. The join request is actually rejected.

A player attempts to join a server, but the establishment process never completes, yet the player is able to join the voip server and can hear players in the server. This manifestation has multiple root causes.

One of our team members, unk_1, wrote a log parser to detect occurrences of the dedi bug. We turned on network logging on a few of the 0511 dedicated servers and left them running for a week at a time. After analyzing the logs, we’ve found that manifestation #1 accounts for about ¾ of the connection issues. As I mentioned last post, #1 has been completely fixed already.

A lot of work has gone into trying to fix number 2, and while some occurrences might be out of control for the time being (restricted NAT type for example: remember Xbox 360 NAT type issues?), we have made great progress and have fixed one of its causes. I’ll go into a bit of detail about that here.

MTU and Packet Fragmentation

The MTU (maximum transmission unit) is the size of the largest amount of data that can be sent in a single network transaction. If a packet is too big (larger than MTU), routers will fragment this packet into smaller ones and then the data gets reassembled. This fragmentation can lead to a much higher chance of packet loss. In addition, not all routers behave the same in regards to packet fragmentation, and many do not obey the ‘Don’t Fragment’ flag in the IP protocol header.

Why is this relevant? After lots of digging and research, we found that some of the packets that are exchanged during the establishment process were bigger than the MTU size. The solution? Shrink them down to a valid size so that they don’t get fragmented. After testing this in 0511, we saw the number of manifestation #2 occurrences decrease.

While this is great news, many #2 occurrences still were still present in the logs, and we believe many of them are related to NAT. We will provide a how-to doc when 0.6 releases on how to check/open your NAT type, as well as other useful info to ensure that other players can connect to your server without issue. As for the other #2 connection issues that may (we aren’t even sure if any remain) still exist that are within our control, we’re going to leave them to be fixed them in a later update. Debugging these issues are a slow, tedious, painful process. We can’t have this issue delay us any further, so we’re calling it a day. Note: So far, with the #1 and #2 fixes in, we haven’t had a single dedi bug re-occurrence in our testing sessions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t rare connection issues hiding somewhere that we haven’t been able to replicate.

The Updater

The usual question. We’ve made great progress on the updater, and it is pretty much finished. The updater will be a lightweight standalone exe that will allow you to update to the latest version, and even downgrade to previous versions. The updater will not need to be ran to start the game, nor will it act as a launcher like the 0511 updater does. It’s simply an updater. When a future update comes out, for example 0.7, a message will be displayed on the title screen when you boot up the game, telling you that you need to close the game and update. Open the updater -> click update -> done. There are a couple of very small bugs we’ve found during the testing of it, and those are being fixed.

Enough about the boring stuff, on to the fun stuff.

Misc/Small Bug Fixes since last post:

Settings - Fix for Alt binds

Added forge binding to deselect everything

Allow held forge object to be extended unconstrained

Fix transparent materials for reforge

Fix ‘default’ weapon offset preset doesn’t work in the in-game menu

Fix atmosphere toggle on map modifier

Fix weather effects not working on certain maps

Fix issues with custom fog not working well on certain maps

Discord UI - Fix the Ui showing breifly upon starting the game

Chat UI - Add warning alert for opening links that may be unsafe

Fix crash related to forge kill volumes

Fixed exe remaining running in background due to Discord rpc not shutting down

Fix duplicate requests for player info (rank, emblem, ect)

Jaron’s emblem editor that we showed a preview of in the last post has been added and touched up. 

Q: Has anything you’ve previously shown us not going to make it into 0.6?

A: Yes, unfortunately the doors and fans we showcased in the last blog post have too many issues and are not ready for prime time. We want them to be polished before adding it, and doing so right now would be time consuming and would delay release. Keeping the doors and fans as-is in 0.6 would break any maps using them we were to fix/polish them in a later update. For these reasons, we’ve decided to exclude these from 0.6 and add the doors/fans to a future update instead.

Q: Have any new cool features been added since the last post?

A: Absolutely. 

But before I go into detail on these, I want to make an important distinction about why things are still able to be added while we haven’t released yet. We often see comments like “Why are you still adding features when you could have released?”, or “just release the game and add stuff to it later”.

That’s not really how development for this game works. This team has quite a few active developers. If two people are working on a must-fix bug, say ‘the dedi-bug’ for example, there are other members of the team who are still available to work on other things. If devs A and B are developing the new updater, that doesn’t mean that devs C-G need to sit and twiddle their thumbs until the updater is finished. Some bugs are very complex, and only certain members of the team have the expertise to fix them. This produces opportunities for us to sneak in extra features without slowing down our 0.6 progress whatsoever. So to be clear, extra features that we’ve been showing off in the last few blog posts have not in any way slowed down or delayed the release of 0.6.

That being said, buckle up, because we’ve got some cool new shit for you.

Glass and Emissive Glass have been added as forge materials. Any reforge object can be given a glass or emissive glass material, and can have customized opacity and color. 

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40 New Materials have been added for forge objects. In addition, Forge Material textures can now be scaled, and the x and y offsets   can be adjusted.

Here is a video showing some of these new materials being used in forge, as well as how to adjust the scale and offsets.

Fog has been drastically improved to look more realistic. Here are a couple of examples:

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Directional lights have been added.  You can control the direction, intensity, fov radius, color, and near width of any light. Here is an example picture:

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Directional lights are great because you get much more control with bleeding (the light doesn’t go through the objects). you can set the FOV to something high like 180 and it’s like a point light but it won’t bleed above it through objects. In this example - here’s where the light is:

With a point light instead of directional light, it would be super bright up here:

Pulse and Flicker functions can also be applied and customized to any light source. You can control the minimum intensity, maximum intensity, as well as the frequency of the pulse or flicker. Here’s a video showing some of these lights being created/altered in forge.

Player size is now a gametype option/trait. Players can be scaled to be tiny, huge, or anywhere in-between. For example, you can create gametypes where the players become huge while in the hill or in the lead, or tiny while holding the ball or flag. A small map like the pit can suddenly turn into a BTB map. The sky is the limit. Players also animate between the two sizes, so they don’t just instantly magically appear large or small when transitioning from one size to another.

A full gameplay video where players are tiny, but become big and slow while inside the hill in a game of KOTH is posted in part 2 of this blog post, but here are a couple of pictures.

A huge spartan driving a Warthog:

Large Spartans as a hill trait:

Skyboxes can be swapped to/from any map. Yep, you can now choose any skybox you want when creating a forge map. There are options for inheriting the fog that comes with the skybox, or you can override it with your own custom fog.

These skyboxes open an whole new realm of creativity. Take a look at some simple examples of skyboxes being used on different maps.

Guardian Skybox on Narrows

Valhalla skybox on Sandtrap:

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Here is a video showing how to change/alter skyboxes: 

Here is a small album of 4k images. I will add additional images to this album throughout the day. 

Additional Weather Effects have been added. Heavy Snow, Rain, Falling Ash, Slipspace Fallout, and Flood Pollen can now be used as weather effects. While the rain effect is a little underwhelming and needs some work (it doesn’t look very realistic yet), some of the other effects are quite cool. Here’s a gif of the “Slipspace Fallout” effect.

Don’t forget to check out part 2 for some gameplay videos, but for now, let’s get back to business. 

Q: Now What?

A: We are at a state where we now consider the game to be ‘Feature Complete’. All of the major bugs that we’ve committed to fixing have been fixed. All of the features that we committed to adding, have been added. No more features will be added. We are going to enter a short, exhaustive, ‘Regression Testing’ cycle where we test every feature that we have added over the past two years. The only commits that will occur between now and release will be fixes for bugs found during the regression testing cycle. The reason this is necessary is because over time, parts of the code have changed, been refactored, moved, ect. We need to ensure that we haven’t broken anything along the way. One of our main devs, unk_1, once said “I can't overstate how much i just molested the engine over the last 2 weeks. It needs to be tested like a lot.” And that’s what we’ll be doing. 

When we’re finished, you’ll know. 

Until next time (or until we’re playing right along side you); Sincerely, 

RabidSquabbit

[awitchybee]

So here we are. We have recently reached the deadline of the Secret Santa event.

I’d like to thank everyone who participated and those who spread the word. Without you guys, this event wouldn’t have happened! ;) Also a huge thank you to @frithflay for offering to help out and taking half of the participants so that I could send out a gift to someone as well lol. 

I made a bit of a mistake when wording the rules. I said that the date to reveal yourself is December 18th. I should have added that it was OK to reveal yourself in the gift but that the purpose of the reveal date is in case the gift does not arrive by then. My mistake, my apologies, I will word this better for the next event!

And yes, there will be another SS event... considering the turnout and the fact that people have already said that they’d like to participate again. I am aiming for Ostara, but that may change. If the second event goes well, I will maybe try and organize a bi-yearly exchange.

Here’s some extra info for those of you who participated:

To those of you who have received your gifts already, feel free to post them! Brag about what you got!

It turned out that a portion of the participants likely didn’t receive my message about a Discord server. Well - I have opened up a server for those who participated but I’ll be keeping it open for future exchanges. I will update it soon but if you are interested in joining here is an invite link - https://discord.gg/eYAH5Qm - just remember to introduce yourself! Anyone can join if they have participated in this exchange or are interested in participating in future exchanges.

If you received two gifts, this happened because your original Secret Santa was removed from the exchange for lack of communication, so someone else was assigned to send you a new gift. Because of the lack of communication it’s unclear whether or not your original gift was sent to you, and in one case, I got a response eventually after the deadline that the gift was ready so the person was willing to send it still.

If you do not receive a gift by the 18th of December, please let us know, maybe we can look into it for you.

With that said some people may receive their gift a little bit later than others as a few extensions were given to have gifts sent out by the 1st of December.

And if there has been any inconvenience or confusion, I apologise! Please let me know if something did confuse you. I will try to clear it up. And last thing: Whether or not you have participated, I would appreciate it if you could fill out this form(google docs) with your suggestions for the next exchange. Thank you so much! Will post about the event again over time!

#witchy secret santa 2017 #witchy secret santa #wss #witchy ss #ss #secret santa #secret santa 2017

[scienceshir]

LAWD lol. The info from this book. I- .  @DDC @Bumblebee250

Okay first of all, Julie caught fucking CRABS from Bret because of his cheating at the start. Good thing thats a STD that can be cured but chile lol. Now, she thinks/though he caught it from the puertorican he had a whole affair with. But knowing Bret and how much he cheated I doubt it was from her specifically. He probably got it from a random. I guess this because Bret had a whole affair with that girl, Julie even found receipts of where he would buy her expensive shit (like he just didn't have two babies to provide for). He had a pretty long affair with her, so I doubt he got it from her and then just kept being with her. Especially since he spoke fondly about her in his book. But yeah,  

They actually had an abortion before their first child. When they did get pregnant with their first. They were married and everything but bret was basically ashamed to tell his parents. Basically, like he said in the A&E doc, they weren't the happiest with his choice of settling with Julie. If the woman didn't have a good job or some money or a name, they atleast wanted her to have an education. Julie did not. So as we know Bret just snuck them a letter that they were married and pregnant. LOL Stu, was one of THOSE dads that checked out Julie when he first met her lmao

Basically when they got pregnant for the second time, Bret wasn't happy. He felt like they weren't in the position to be expanding their family, and it was due to the fact that Julie wasn't keeping up with her birth control pills. The night his son was born, Bret was in town but missed the whole thing. Because Julie was in a bad mood the entire time. The pregnancy had her tired and she took it out on him, he was tired of it and decided he was gonna go out that night no matter what. She went into labor that same night and Bret wasn't there at all. She almost divorced him after that.  

What I noticed is when she was mad, she was mad and she would take it out on anybody. Like when she discovered that Bret cheated after finding those phone bills, the kids came into the room and she snapped and yelled at them. They couldn't have been no more than 5 years old. Speaking of her attitude, Bret said that time where she assumed he cheated and he didn't, and she punched him (she made it seem like she kinda attacked him lol), she said he told her that was the moment he never saw her the same way again. I think that was the moment he started to lack regard for her and started to cheat and letting his side pieces trick up off of him lol.  Bret really told her that she should be thankful he cheated instead of doing drugs or something LMAO. He always said that in his book, but I didn't think he would tell the same to his wife lol

CHILE they liked to fucking fight. Oh my goodness, its actually hard to imagine bret like that. But everytime she started yelling and insulting him or something, he was set all the way off. Throwing shit at each other, they would be in public sometimes too acting like that LOL. One time a fellow wrestler had to get inbetween them.  

So when Julie was away he slept with girls instead of doing drugs. But when Julie was there, after the affair reveal, they started to do drugs together when they were around each other. WOW. Not him thinking he had to drugs just to be around her but he can be around the other women without doing that lol. But Bret had to stop all together because of the drug tests.

Talked about meeting dean and how beautiful he was lol

So in the 90s, Julie was basically cheating too. Like while bret is literally home, he would be taking care of the kids while she went out and didn't come back til morning. He'd be up eating breakfast just asking how her night was and if she needed anything. That was it. She said, she knew he knew what she had been up to. Basically, he didn't care probably because he already had someone else himself anyway....This was after their last child was born...that was how their marriage went. They knew they were messing around with each other and accepted it lol. This was PRIME Bret, 91-96 chile. Julie had a very good looking guy friend she would spend alone time doing drugs and stuff with and Bret would know but never said anything even. She said she was surprised he didn't even bother to confront her. Girll he just didn't care.. She continued to drink alot and do hella coke for no reason. Even when she was with bret but he had a meeting to go to, she would drink everything in the minibar. I think that lead to their last blow out where Bret vowed that she wouldn't be able to have him back,  

Chile not him saying " Don't think you will ever be able to win me over again". Not him declaring that HE was the prize LOL. He kinda was out of the two, but still lmao.

Whew chile. I am glad that relationship is OVER. Its no wonder Bret talked about it the way he did. Its sad because at the start she talked like she was more in love than he did. I would say that SHE def loved him way more than HE loved her. Like image was everything to Bret, she knew this. She had to keep herself up and she did.  She loved trying to cater to him because she loved him. But he didn't write about her like that lol. But the 90s came and... we saw her in wrestling with shadows lol, add that along with drugs and alcohol problem she had- thats why bret acted like he didn't care about the possibility of her cheating and shit, he really did not care. They continued to just spend more and more time apart even tho they lived in the same house. She wanted to have a housekeeper on top of a live in nanny and handyman. Bret wasn't going for it because she was basically a house wife (no job) and already had a nanny to help. And then she was doing drugs and shit. He felt like she would be doing nothing but them damn drugs and shit, while he made all the money.  He refused and she was mad. After his vow, of course of her never being able to win him over he did ask for a divorce, and despite fucking her when he felt like it at times, he always told her afterwards he still was not gonna stay married to her and stopped messing with her completely after the divorce was final.

She actually never thought they were ever gonna divorce and told the oldest not to worry about that, because her and bret wouldn't put them through that. Chile the next time she saw bret he said he wanted one. Even though clearly they were useless to each other as a couple she was still very upset and low key offended. She didn't take it well. I think thats why all those times while the divorce was being finalized she let him sleep with her because she was hoping he was "coming to his senses", so she says and backtracked on wanting a divorce. But that never happened.

She should have known when he took her to the bathroom to have sex instead of on that bed she was sitting on lol.I guess said he didn't want her lingering around lol. She made a HUGE mistake  not bothering to get a strong lawyer for herself for the divorce, because she was still hoping that he would come back to her and cancel the divorce. So she didn't want a lawyer that would be tough on Bret and do her justice with the divorce. Because she said that would take away chances of him deciding to stay married to her... smh Bret still went through with it of course. I really want to know how did she manage to be so deceived by bret. He told her that time that she would never be able to win him over and clearly she didn't believe it. And she still hoping he would come back to her.. he also refused to give her alot of his money in the divorce. He also didn't want to pay much child support because as I told you all, he already had somebody else who was living in the US and as we learn, Bret side pieces were able to trick off him lol. He was trying hard to make sure Julie didn't know about the girl, because he knew if she found out (which he did) she would not easily settle for the child support because she wasn't gonna be worried about his trick lol

She said he told him everything about her his girlfriend didn't look like a stripper LOL. She made him laugh and smile. That she liked kids so she would be okay around theirs. And he reiterated why he wanted a divorce from her. Even saying she was getting heavier, she wasn't taking care of herself and he kinda didn't care for that. He even said her childhood actually made him uncomfortable (she went through ALOT) and I guess he could see how it affected her own personality. How she was quick to be mad, go off and take things out on him/the kids.

And then there was the infamous fight infront of the kids. Bret was late to pick them up for the fireworks. He came but late. Since he was late she falsey accused him of being with his girlfriend/trick (he actually wasn't) and told them every detail. Bret shows up, she tells him that she told the kids that and... Um I love Bret. I am still happy for him. But I am surprised his kids still talks to him and love him the way they do if he did what Julie said he did infront of those kids. Seems like Bret was ready to end her life that night after he heard what she told them. She said that was the first time she had seen him filled with so much hate and he never did anything like that before. He actually told her he hated her. It was actually BLADE, who was like only 8 who ran up and told Bret to stop. That surprises me because Blade is still a daddy's boy. Blade ended up leaving with Bret. Julie called the police to get Blade away from Bret. Turned out blade rejected that and wanted to stay with Bret for the night. He probably feared what his dad would do to himself at that point. Bret did come back and apologize to Julie for that.

Geez they were a MESS.

[yeyinshiya]

【The Association Condemns the Police's Use of Sexual Violence in Arrest of Protester】

【協會譴責警方以性暴力行徑拘捕示威者】

(Please scroll down for English)

協會留意到於周一凌晨警方多名警員於天水圍警署外拘捕一名女性示威者時暴力拉扯其衣服，導致持續走光。警方不但沒有讓當事人整理衣服，更在有大量現場人士觀察及攝錄下讓事件持續。警方的拘捕行動使用不必要的武力及剝奪當事人的身體自主權，協會認為有關行為牽涉性暴力行徑並作出最嚴厲譴責。

根據警察通例第44章，警務人員不得為不同性別人士進行快速搜身及伏牆式搜查。此通例反映出警員在執行職務時應有性別敏感度，在可行的情況下，不應向另一性別作出不必要的身體接觸。今晨警方發言人證實事發當時有女警員在場，唯聲稱三位女警員未能成功制服女示威者而需男警員介入，假設說法成立，我們認為在當事人被制服及有女警在場的情況下，男警員可將女示威者交由女警員處理，無需繼續以不恰當的身體接觸及敏感姿勢制服女示威者，並應即時協助當事人整理衣物。

協會期望警方嚴正交代其於行動中透過性暴力制服示威者的行為、對受害人及公衆作正式致歉並回應將如何跟進事件：

1. 是否未能安排更多女警協助才作出當時的安排？如是，可否交待當時有多少名女警在場？

2. 涉事警員是否違反警察通例？

3. 警方會否主動作出調查？

4. 為何在制服女示威者後不將她交由女警處理？

5. 被拘捕人士是否立刻失去整理衣物以免私處外露的基本人權？

風雨蘭已透過律師向當事人轉達我們的關注及可提供之協助，我們不希望再有同類事件發生，但假若有人遇到同類對待，可向警員要求尋求風雨蘭或社工（可轉介予我們）協助。風雨蘭可提供24小時危機支援服務。

協會會於今日（8月5日）於天水圍警署遞交有關要求跟進的信件，並在此呼籲大眾停止轉發未經影像處理的照片及影片以保障當事人。

警察通例第44章：http://www.police.gov.hk/info/doc/pgo/sc/Cpgo044.pdf

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【The Association Condemns the Police's Use of Sexual Violence in Arrest of Protester】

The Association has been made aware of a police arrest incident that involved sexual violence at the early morning on 5th August at the peripheral of Tin Shui Wai police station. Upon the arrest, the protester’s outer and inner garments was forcefully removed, the protester was then carried into the police station in a way that her private parts were exposed to the press and the public for an extended period of time. The Association considers the arrest was made with excessive force that resulted in damaging the dignity of the protester, depriving her right to bodily autonomy, and is an act of sexual violence. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the threat and use of sexual violence in any situation.

According to the Police General Order Chapter 44, an officer shall not conduct a frisk or a wall search of a member of the opposite sex. The Order is reflecting the gender sensitivity that should be upheld in the course of exercising Police duties. Whenever practicable, an officer should avoid any unnecessary bodily contact with persons of different gender.

As confirmed by a police spokesperson in today’s early morning, there were female officers presence at the scene, but it was claimed that the three female officers have not been able to subdue the female protester and thus intervened by male officers. We must point out that under the situation which the protester has been subdued and with the presence of female police officers, male officers must let the female officers to handle the rest of the procedures instead of allowing the inappropriate bodily contact and posture to be continued. The officers should also have assisted the protester to fix her clothing immediately when it was falling off to prevent the protester’s dignity to be damaged.

The Association would expect the police to give a clear account of the incident to the public, issue an apology to the female protester and the public, and respond to the following:

1. Was the arrangement happened at scene caused by the lack of female officers? Please provide the amount of female officers at that operation.

2. Did the officers violate the Police General Order?

3. Will the police conduct a proactive investigation into this incident?

4. Why was the female protester not handed over to the female officers after she was subdued

5. Does an arrested person’s fundamental human right to putting their clothes back on in prevention of exposing their private parts deprived automatically?

RainLily has initiated contact and expressed its concerns towards the involved protester through lawyers, we expect no similar incident should happen again. The Association would reiterate that if anyone is facing a similar situation, they can request for services from RainLily by making a request to the police (or through other social services’ referral). RainLily professional crisis intervention services are 24-hour available.

The Association will submit a letter requesting for the police to follow-up on the incident today (5th August 2019) at Tin Shui Wai Police Station. We would also call for the public to stop circulating the un-censored images and videos from the incident to prevent further traumatisation.

Police General Order Chapter 44: https://www.police.gov.hk/info/doc/pgo/en/Epgo044.pdf

#Hong Kong #police #riot police #police brutality #women #Protest