#i tend to shove stuff into my drafts for weeks/months and will go through and add tags when i have some downtime.

[starflungwaddledee]

do you have any tips for leaving compliments on other people's art ?? your tags are always so well phrased !

oooo oooooooooooooo uuhhhhhhhh hmmm!

firstly, thank you!! i'm rather glad to hear that! i try quite hard to leave meaningful comments so it's nice when folks notice or appreciate it!

outside of commenting on the work, i first consider the tone of what i'm saying and who i'm saying it to.

i always try to make sure that what i'm saying will be appreciated by the person! that's the point. for the most part i leave comments to bring joy to the op, and thank them for their hard work, for being here and sharing art that made me happy! if i'm speaking to a mutual or friend, there's gonna be inside jokes and probably an amount of casual yelling. possibly even a little friendly roast, if i know them well enough. if i'm speaking with someone i don't know as well i try to keep it a little more professional, but i keep in mind that this is a fandom so an amount of yelling and screaming is expected. i tend to think about what i would like from someone else.

also if i notice that a caption or a blogs about is not in english i double check. if english is not the first language of the artist i make sure to construct tags that are easily translated and i use only and exclusively positive phrases. saying things like "delete this!!!! /pos" or "eating my own hands" can be totally lost in translation. i also keep in mind the age of the OP. don't tag as though you're Looking Disrespectfully at the art of a minor, even if that's your favourite blorbo.

as for how to comment on art or storytelling itself, this is indeed a learned skill, and it can be helped by training your eye to understand different things in artwork. but it's easy to start practicing! this is intuitive to me now, but an easy way to begin is to pick out one or two things that really stand out to you on a piece. (examples could be line quality; is it smooth? neat? textured? full of emotion?, shading: is it crisp? atmospheric? realistically rendered?, or colour choice: is it vibrant? is it moody? is it perfectly on model?) and draw attention to them and how the artist successfully used them to make the piece work.

if the piece includes design-work, pick something of that which you like as well. (clothes, colour choices, abilities, parallels to other characters, totally new or unique concepts that you haven't seen before. if you see your favourite colour combos or notions, let them know, but if it's a stranger remember they made the design for themselves, and you just share (good) tastes!) if you really want to make an artist/designer/storyteller's day, try to find the Little Thing that they've snuck into their art or design that ties into the story or lore that they are telling. even guesses to this end tend to be appreciated!

generally useful things you can also comment on are how well an artist has utilised a medium for its strengths, especially if the medium is a little unusual. if someone @'d me in particular i make sure to acknowledge that too because they probably read me for something and i should acknowledge the effort!

another thing i also always, always encourage, is to try to periodically share and comment on the work of people who are either less experienced or who have less visibility than you. especially if you have more of a platform! if you want to keep your blog clean of too many reblogs for aesthetic or professional reasons you can even go through and remove them later, but sharing the work of smaller accounts- even temporarily- makes such a huge difference! and encouraging + supporting younger or beginner artists is something we should be endeavouring to do as much as possible!

at the end of the day, i always just try to be very earnest in my tags.

there is generally no reason to withhold any praises i can think of, because it's usually nice to have your work perceived and appreciated! i personally loooovvve long rambling tags, screaming tags, stuff like "AAHH NOOOOOOO (THE BLORBO)" and so on. i try to leave the kind of thoughtful comments that i like (and am lucky enough) to receive, and i try to share artwork from a wide variety of people!

#asks #it's something you can get better at with practice and with training your eye to see Little Things in artwork #at understanding the components that an artwork is made up of; and picking the bits that are actually Popping Out to you in the moment! #i hope this helps?? it just takes a bit of Time. moreso than just hitting the reblog button! so i understand why not everyone can do it #i tend to shove stuff into my drafts for weeks/months and will go through and add tags when i have some downtime. #but all my stuff is also queued for the most part. #also if i ever tag something an OP is uncomfortable with; i am trusting they would reach out to me!! #sorry to all the folks who's pictures of galacta knight i have reblogged just going like UHHHHHHH because my brain short circuited #starflungs personal tag #<- sorta?

[petrichoravellichor]

Warmth (a Gabriel x Meg ficlet)

Tags: AU, Oh my god they were roommates, established friends(?) with benefits, cuddling

Rating: T

Wordcount: ~1.4k

*****

Come Monday, Meg decided, she was going to kill Sam Winchester.

It was only fair when you thought about it, and she’d had all last night to think about it as she’d coughed and sneezed and not fucking slept due to being unable to breathe through her nose, all thanks to Sam “I-Come-to-Work-All-Week-Even-When-I’m-Sick” Winchester. The fact that he’d shown up at the office on Friday smiling and looking ninety-five percent back to normal just added insult to injury: while she spent her Saturday bundled miserably on the couch watching reruns of CSI Miami, Winchester was probably out enjoying himself, running six marathons or whatever the fuck someone who ate a kale salad for lunch every day did for fun on their days off. Bastard.

It didn’t help that it was the middle of winter and the building’s heat was out, and Meg had lived there long enough to know that it wasn’t getting fixed any time soon. Chuck wasn’t an asshole the way some of Meg’s previous landlords had been, but he was flaky as hell and seemed more interested in drafting his weekly newsletter than actually managing the property. The only plus side was that he often forgot to collect rent until mid-way through the month, a notable perk when you were living paycheck to paycheck.

Snatching a tissue from the box at her side, Meg blew her nose for what felt like the hundredth time and tugged her blanket closer. The living room got a bit more direct sunlight than the rest of the apartment and was therefore slightly warmer than her bedroom, but even so, she was practically shivering. For a moment, she actually contemplated relocating to Gabriel’s room, which was usually the warmest in the apartment, before ultimately deciding she was better off staying on the couch.

Gabriel had been her roommate for the past four months, ever since Meg had broken things off with her cheating ex and subsequently found herself unable to afford rent on her own. After interviewing what felt like half the city’s psych ward, she’d settled on Gabriel Milton, who was new to the neighborhood and looking for a place close to the soul food restaurant he’d just gotten a job at. Meg’s first impression of Gabriel was that his perpetual lopsided smile would get real old real fast, but he’d been the first person she’d met with who had both a steady job and no police record, so she’d figured what the hell and told him to move in his stuff.

And if they had hooked up since then, well, that was neither here nor there.

It was a one-time thing, she’d said; of course, he’d agreed. That it had been a one-time thing three times now was something Meg refused to think too much about and which Gabriel thankfully never seemed to feel the need to remind her.

Her stomach rumbled, and she was just contemplating dragging herself to the kitchen to see what she might be able to scrape together this late in the month when the front door unlocked with a click and Gabriel entered, a few errant snowflakes still clinging to his clothes. He took one look at her, wrapped up from head to toe in her bed’s thickest blanket and surrounded by a nest of used tissues, and grinned.

“Well hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” he said, turning to hang his beanie and scarf on the rack by the door, “finally managed to slay that dragon you were fighting last night?”

Meg gave him a withering glare. “Yeah, and I’m still in a killing mood, so go ahead, keep talking.”

“Fine, fine, have it your way,” replied Gabriel, still smiling as he set down his messenger bag to strip off his coat. “I mean, I was going to tell you that I brought us dinner, but if you’d rather I keep that bit of information to myself…”

Damn it. Well, no point in giving in easy. She gave a dismissive shrug. “Depends what you brought.”

“Fried chicken, mac and cheese, and enough cornbread to use as a pillow.” Gabriel held up a finger in a gesture of “but wait, there’s more!” and pulled a small plastic container out of his messenger bag. “Even whipped up some peach cobbler for dessert.”

Meg arched a brow, grudgingly impressed. “Aren’t you worried they’re gonna fire you one of these days for all the free food you take?”

“Eh, not really,” said Gabriel, picking up his bag and moving to the kitchen. “Missouri loves me, says I’m the best cook she’s ever had. Besides, she’s the one who tells me to take it.”

“Really.”

“Swear to God! Apparently, I look ‘underfed’.”

Meg scoffed, twisting to look over the back of the couch as Gabriel bustled about the kitchen. “Well, you are kinda short.”

“I prefer ‘fun sized’,” said Gabriel, throwing her a wink as he spooned food onto two plates. “And anyhoo, you try saying no to her. Pretty sure she’d just stash food in my bag when I wasn’t looking.”

They ate on the couch, Meg doing her best to appear indifferent about how good the food tasted even as Gabriel gave her that annoying pleased look that made her feel like saw right through her. He told her about some of the more interesting customers he’d seen at work that day, such as the mother-son combo who had bickered like an old married couple (“But man, she was a looker! Had an accent, too.”) and the friend of Missouri’s who had stopped by for lunch (“A blind palm reader, believe it or not.”) and the two men in suits who had apparently spent more time looking at each other than eating their food (“I swear, I was this close to sticking my head through the food window and telling them to just kiss already: that was some serious eye-fucking they had going on.”). Meg rolled her eyes at the last one, wondering how anyone could be that oblivious to something right in front of them.

“So how’re you feeling?” Gabriel asked as they finished their cobbler. “Heard you coughing lots last night. You actually get any sleep?”

Meg sighed and shook her head. “Couldn’t get comfortable.”

“Make up for it today, at least?”

“No, but I did come up with about fifty ways to kill the idiot who got me sick.”

“Fun!” said Gabriel, standing and collecting their empty plates. “Care to share the highlights?”

“Current favorite involves shoving him into a giant salad spinner and cranking it until the Gs get him.”

Gabriel nodded in approval as he disappeared into the kitchen. “Creative, I like it.” Meg heard the sound of plates being put into the sink and soaked; a moment later, Gabriel emerged and resumed his seat on the couch. “What else you got?”

Meg shrugged, tugging her blanket tighter. “Could just stick him in here and let him freeze. Maybe that’ll be enough to make Chuck fix the fucking heat.”

Gabriel peered over at her. “You cold?”

“No, genius, I’m shivering from murderous excitement,” she deadpanned, but Gabriel just laughed.

“‘Genius’, huh? You know, I think that might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever called me,” he said wistfully, and before Meg could respond, he’d shifted to sit with his back against the arm of the couch and was extending a hand in her direction. “All right, Murder Queen, bring it in.”

“What for?”

“Because the murderous excitement part might have been a lie, but the shivering part wasn’t, and you know I tend to run hot. Probably due to my sunny disposition.”

“That, or you’re just full of hot air.”

“It’s charm, actually, but hey, points for trying,” quipped Gabriel, before tilting his head to regard her with a more earnest expression. “Seriously, though, come ’ere.” He waggled his eyebrows and added, “Promise I won’t bite unless you ask me to.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She crawled forward, shifting with Gabriel until she was lying between his legs with her head tucked under his chin, the blanket now wrapped snugly over them both. Gabriel wrapped his arms loosely around her waist, and Meg closed her eyes, suppressing a contented sigh at how good the warmth felt.

“There, see?” came Gabriel’s voice, and she knew without looking that he was wearing that damned pleased-with-himself smile. “This is nice.”

Meg gave a sleepy, noncommittal grunt. “Yeah, well don’t get used to it,” she mumbled, feeling herself start to drift off. “This is a—” yawn “—a one-time thing.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Of course,” he said, and if she felt a little extra warmth at the soft kiss he pressed to the top of her head, well, that was neither here nor there.

#megriel #megbriel #gabriel x meg #meg x gabriel #spn rare pairs #gabriel #meg masters #supernatural #spn #warmth #fanfiction #my writing #trickster tuesday #megriel fic #megriel fluff

[mad-madam-m]

So I'm just curious, how do you get yourself to write? And do you use prompts and if you do where do you get them? I meant to use NaNo to get me to write but it took 4 days into November for me to realize November started so I failed lol. I've been meaning to start this original thing and it's just not...working.

First of all, anon, you could start writing RIGHT NOW (yes, with 10 days left in the month) and you would not fail NaNo. You might not hit 50k (although I know people who have hit 50k in that amount of time, or less), but you won’t fail. NaNoWriMo isn’t about hitting 50,000 words so much as it is about putting a stake in the ground and saying, “Here. Today. I will start writing the project I’ve always wanted to.” And doing it. Doesn’t matter what that project is—original novel, short stories, fic, poetry, revising something, a series of blog posts—NaNo is about just. Fucking. Doing it. And you still have time to Do It.

To answer your questions:

Do you use prompts and if you do, where do you get them?

For original stories, particularly novels, I usually don’t. For fic, particularly short fic I’m writing for events, I do. Tumblr has a wealth of writing prompts that range from “here’s a situation” to “here’s a line of dialogue GO,” and I tend to reblog them under the tags “fic prompts” or “writing prompts.” Honestly, most of them would work for either original fic or fanfic, so if you are a writer who likes to work from prompts, go forth and enjoy!

How do you get yourself to write?

That’s kind of a big question, and uh, the answer to it got long. Very long. (I said once that if you give me half a chance, I’ll talk about writing all the live-long day, and this answer is no exception.)

Different things motivate me for different projects, and as with all writing-related advice, YMMV, but here’s a few things that really help for getting myself to write:

1) Develop your story.

The current original story I’m working on, for example, I have not really had to struggle to get myself to write at all because 1) I’m stupid excited about it and 2) I have developed the hell out of it.

I’ve talked before about outlining my stuff here, so I won’t go too much into it again; suffice it to say that I have done about the same amount of development on my current original story that I had on ADA by the time I started writing. I started around the very end of September developing my characters and spent a good chunk of October working on setting, worldbuilding, plot, and finally my notecards.

Shockingly, having some idea of what’s happening and where I’m going is making this story easier to write.

Right? Like WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT.

Because of that, I’ve been excited about writing my story, so getting myself to write on it has been (comparatively) a cakewalk.

That’s not to say any of the writing is good (oh God no) or that there aren’t parts that need fixing, or that I haven’t been stuck. But it’s been stuck like “how do I describe seeing a tree-covered mountain in the middle of fall from the POV of someone who has never seen something like this” rather than “I have no fucking clue what happens next uh…”

The stories I struggle the most with writing are the ones that I’ve worked the least on developing. The stories that have been the easiest to write have been the ones I’ve spent at least a month doing prep work on before I ever start drafting.

2) Love your story.

Being in love with a story makes it a lot easier to write, at least for me. Because here’s the thing, ideas are easy.

If you’re a creative person, you’re going to end up with a file of story ideas—maybe prompts you liked, dialogue that stuck with you, one of those “humans are space orcs” tumblr posts that’s just really clicking in your brain—that will be longer than you could conceivably write if you had a hundred lifetimes. That’s okay! That’s great. But it means a lot of them are never going to get past the idea stage.

For me, the stories that get finished—the ones that not only get started but actually make it through the first draft and then three rounds of editing and revisions—are the ideas that I’ve been percolating on for months, if not longer. They’ve been cooking in the back of my brain while I’ve been doing other things, sorting themselves out, and most importantly: they will not let me go.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Finding an idea that will last and sustain a story and my interest for at least a year, if not longer? That’s harder.

Y’all know how much I’ve been talking about Tiger & Bunny over the past year? We’re talking that level of obsession with a story that I want to write, whether it’s fic or original. Sometimes it takes months or years for all the puzzle pieces to come together. Sometimes the whole thing will congeal within a few weeks, or there will be one crucial piece of story that will just make EVERYTHING come together, I will literally shout “OH MY FUCKING GOD” and that’s it, I’m off to the races. (In this particular case, it wasn’t anything I’d done in the first two weeks of poking at steampunk-y ideas; it was the realization that I could put a circus on an airship. The whole story just went WHOOSH after that.)

BUT. But. Sometimes you don’t have that. These stories are great and I love them and they remind me why I love writing so much (and if you’re writing something that’s gonna be 90k+, like I have a tendency to do, you need to be in love with it, IMO), but sometimes you’re in situations where you just have to get it done. In those cases:

3) Resort to bribery.

I’ve been poking at the third part of Alpha & Emissary, oh, basically since I posted the second part. My problem is that my fandom focus has been, shall we say, split for the past year. *coughs delicately, shoves Tiger & Bunny fics under the bed*

But here’s the thing: I hate having a published WIP on AO3 (it’s why I don’t publish long!fics until they’re completely drafted and mostly edited). I hate—HATE—having an unfinished series on AO3.

So that’s the rub: I have an unfinished series that I want to finish because I hate that it’s not finished. I also have a new fandom that is wresting my attention and inspiration away from said series. What’s a girl to do?

A girl tells herself she can’t write any more Tiger & Bunny fic until she finishes this one WIP, that’s what she does.

And it’s motivated me to sit my ass down and work on that WIP, because goddammit, I have a “but there was only one bed” TaiBani fic that I would really like to have up by New Year’s.

Your bribery will be different. Maybe you get to watch 1 episode of your favorite show per every 1k you write, or you get to try a new knitting project when you finish this short story. Maybe you binge-watch an entire season of your favorite anime if you exceed your NaNo goal. Or you write 50 words and get a cookie. The point is, find what works for you to get it done.

4) Figure out a minimum daily goal and stick with it.

For me, this was 500 words a day. 500 words. That’s it. That’s one 30-minute word sprint for me. That’s something I can do without stressing myself out.

Because of this point and point 3, I wrote more than 7000 words on a story I’d been stuck on for the better part of a year before I had to stop to work on NaNo stuff. Another 7k, and I’ll probably have it finished.

Your minimum word count will almost certainly be different. Maybe it’s 300 words a day, maybe it’s 1000. Hell, maybe it’s 100 words. Again, find what works for you, what you can write regularly without stressing yourself out.

Another important thing: If I didn’t hit 500 words, I didn’t beat myself up about it. Maybe I wrote 350. Or 220. Or just 93. The point is, did I write? Yes? Then I did good. I got myself a sentence or a paragraph closer to finishing. And it all adds up.

(And hey, you don’t have to write every day. I do, or I try to, because that’s what works for me. If it stresses you out to do so, then find another way to make it work.)

5) Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.

This one’s hard because I can rarely keep a deadline that’s not set by an external source. If you tell me on December 20 that you need a story by December 22? Then on December 22, you’ll have a story, edited and ready to post. But when it comes to something I set for myself, the chances of a deadline working are 50/50.

That being said, it is something that helps me keep on track and even if I don’t finish something by a self-imposed deadline, it does get me writing.

6) Sprint with friends!

NaNo is really great for this because all your writer friends are coming out of the woodwork going I need to hit 5k by the end of today, will you sprint with me? Sometimes it just helps to have that kind of accountability. You all get together (I’ve used Discord, Google Hangouts, IRC, and Twitter DMs for this), set a timer, and write for 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Then, when the time’s up, you post your word count, everybody congratulates everybody else, and then you take a break before doing the next one.

Sprints are the reason I’ve been able to make some pretty significant headway on my word counts, and few things get me writing like knowing I’m going to have to tell everybody in my group what my word count is in 30 minutes or less. >.>

Like I said earlier, YMMV on all of these. What works for me may work for you, or it might not. But if you aren’t sure, it’s worth giving it a shot.

Happy writing!

#Anonymous #M answers #long post #M talks writing #can I count this toward my NaNo count for the day or nah

[yaldev]

As of today, we’re celebrating: 365 Yaldev posts, 4 years of this nonsense, and being exactly 7 years behind Beeple!

CELEBRATION:

365 posts! That’s one year of Yaldev! Well, if I had been writing one every day, which I absolutely haven’t.

It continues to be the case that looking back on posts even from less than a year ago, I think “man this sucks,” and I either know how to improve it at least a little bit while I’m there, or I can’t stand to even look at it and I just have to escape from it. I don’t feel too much pressure to fix the bad posts at this point; as of today, Yaldev’s been going for exactly four years now (if you skip leap days :thonk:), and in a sense it’s chronicled my progress as a writer during that time. Some entries have been modified since them, some changed entirely except for the name and art chosen. I think it only makes sense that reading through it in storyline order will be like traveling through different points of my creative skill, in much the same way as it means traveling through different points of Beeple’s art quality.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL UPDATES:

People I know in real life are bugging me to start a Patreon. It’d certainly be reasonable to start one now that I’m four years in, but I can’t justify setting one up without:

A more consistent creative output than I’m currently hammering out, so I’m not taking your money for less utility than I’m giving you

Something to offer patrons without compromising the project for non-patrons

Existing interest from some of my audience in throwing cash at me (dance, monkey!)

A possible solution to the first one is setting myself a bar: if I don’t write at least X words by the end of the month, I don’t receive anyone’s money for that month. Hopefully that makes people feel more comfortable backing someone inconsistent, since they’ll still receive their benefits during the down periods but not have to spend anything. For the second, I have ideas for what to offer, but they’d have to be on top of my current output rather than replacing it, so at present I can’t really work ahead on them without detracting from the main project. It’s hard juggling part-time school, full-time job, getting enough sleep, Yaldev, another creative project I have a stronger obligation to, a paper I’m writing for a conference, relaxation, and generic life stuff. That said, I could be happily coerced into making a Yaldev a higher priority if I have a financial obligation to a couple supporters. The real question is whether there’s any interest in that. I worry that when the project has gone on as long as it has, interest actually decreases over time if it’s seen as old news. On the other hand, maybe older followers have a sense of being with me since the early days, like they’re invested in this ride as well. I have little clue.

In any event, if a Patreon goes up, I absolutely won’t be shoving it in people’s faces at every opportunity, since I’m not in a position of financial need and money was never the point of this. The main project would continue to be 100% free, and benefits would only be for additional goodies; nothing you can currently see would be moved behind a paywall.

STATISTICS:

This is the fun part, lads! Get ready for some stats and some commentary!

Total Stories: 365

As should be obvious, all numbers are only for the point at which I'm writing this post. These only include the posts that are canon and which I wrote.

Project Age: 1460 Days

Exactly four years! I think it’s a fun coincidence that it lined up with the 365th entry.

How Long You Have to Wait, on Average, For the Next Post: Approximately 4 Days

My output has slowed down since the last update. Feelsbad, but I don’t hear much complaining and I hope that higher quality makes up for lower quantity. Even still, I’m trying to blitz through my to-do list and speedrun my coursework to make more time for this. I hope to eventually bring that down to 3.5, for an average of two posts per week across the project's history.

Readers Across All Platforms: 536 (107 on Tumblr, 135 on Facebook, 140 on Instagram, 154 on Reddit)

Howdy y'all! Thanks for being here and reading my steadily-improving crap. I really struggle with talking about my creative projects in real life, including Yaldev, primarily out of a self-trained instinct to shut myself up about it on the understanding that nobody cares—especially not other creative types, since we're all too invested in our own creation to pay much attention to others. I've been trying to overcome that, and you're helping me just by being here to read. That tells me there's potential in this and that it's something that at least some people genuinely want to see. Artists shouldn't attach their sense of self to their creations, but I can't help but feel validated through that.

At the same time, I do often fear that mine is the sort of content that just gets a like tossed at it for the pretty visuals on the way down the endless content scroll, without having made a real impression on anyone or created a lasting memory. I'll probably always have that worry, which comes as much from a disdain for general Internet culture as anything else. Late in 2020 I took a step away from social media, and I’ve only partially returned, with the result that scrolling through newsfeeds takes up much less of my time than it used to. Feels good. I’d encourage you to do the same, but then you wouldn’t be seeing my own crap as often. :^)

Stories Per Reader: Approximately 0.68

Makes it sound like a decent growth rate, if on average I'm getting one new follower per story half the time, and two new followers the other half of the time. I guess "good growth rate" is somewhat subjective and depends on your goal, but for me, having a tangible unit of increase for each feels good.

It’s actually a lot more variable than that, of course. Usually a given entry will either attract no new followers because I only put it up in my own spaces, or it’ll draw in a few if I post it to a space for content like mine.

Total Word Count: 89,721

I typically operate under the assumption that most novels are about 75k, while sci-fi and fantasy novels tend to be longer since their authors are physically incapable of shutting up, putting them at around 100k. We’ll definitely reach that, and it probably won’t even take that long.

Average Story Length: Approximately 246 words

The 245-255 range is what feels good to me. Part of Yaldev’s appeal compared to books, in theory, is that if you’re consuming it the normal way, you’re getting it in bite-sized chunks as part of your scrolling experience. So I theoretically prefer to keep them on the short side, even if in practice I actually go ham and write stuff that’s quite long. The average here is really being dragged by 100-word posts previously being a lot more common than they are now.

STORY PLANS GOING FORWARD:

So the most recent entry, Gemstones as Mana Sources, was Beeple’s art from February 15, 2014. Today’s exactly 7 years from then, so I actually have an easy bar now for whether I’m catching up to the dude or not. 

When I started this project, I began with his art from July of 2014 and then started moving forward. I got to about September 2015 before I decided that I wanted to go hardcore and go through all his art from the very beginning, at which point I warped back to his art from the very beginning in 2008, and started going through it in chronological order. I think I made that shift back in 2019, and now we’re getting back to the era of his art that I actually started this project with. All of this is to say that soon you’re probably going to notice an uptick in the art quality, either to something new if you’re new, or to what it was like in the Good Ol’ Days™ if you’ve been following this for a long time. As mentioned earlier, I no longer feel super bound to what I’ve written before: I prefer maintaining consistency, but some threads not being tied up and some contradictions are fine. I think the biggest one is that the state of magic’s legality in the Ascended Empire has never been made super clear, but I’m actually okay with that. I know that in the Imperiomancy entry I mentioned how its use by officials varied depending on who held power in government, and magic as a whole could be an even more complex issue that varies by time as well as region. I unironically think that Yaldev is the kind of world that has room for headcanon, so while I’ll try to fix egregious errors, you’re also quite justified in having your own handwaves for my screwups.

I don’t have any updates for any of the storylines really, except for the stuff with Inzohm and the Lone Traveller, for anyone keeping up with that: consider all of it to be in rough-draft at the moment. It’s the kind of long-con story that I really can’t coherently tell the way I do with the rest of Yaldev, so everything I write for it is more like notes that I can later on collect, shuffle, remix and rewrite until it’s semi-coherent. Turns out that Yaldev has helped me develop a number of skills as a writer, but telling better character-driven narratives isn’t one of them—partially because my chosen process, medium and inspiration-artist doesn’t lend itself too well to such stories.

Thanks for being here. What I always wanted as a kid was for other people to be as excited about my worldbuilding as I was, and while I doubt I've hit that extent with Yaldev, I hope my work's had some impact on you, or that it has parts you remember and enjoy. If you have any questions or comments you’ve been too shy to put elsewhere, feel free to drop them here! If not, just stick around and I’ll see you again at post number 400!