#if you want better quality check my actual page!

[roosterforme]

Yours Truly, Bradley Bradshaw Part 2 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: The collection of letters that Bradley received from the fourth grade class provides him with entertainment while deployed. He takes the time to answer their questions and send a package back to the United States via air mail. But he has your email address. He also has a bit of a crush and some questions himself.

Warnings: Fluff, language

Length: 4100 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female teacher!Reader

Check out my masterlist for more! Yours Truly, Bradley Bradshaw masterlist

A few days later, when Bradley was done with his training protocols for the day, he returned to his bunk with a different mission in mind. While he unzipped his flight suit, he eyed the box which was taking up most of his nightstand, and a smile found its way to his lips. He managed to find a notebook that nobody wanted along with a thick, padded envelope, and he was going to take the time to respond to the fourth graders who wrote to him. 

He'd spent hours poring over the letters, laughing at some of the questions from the kids and frequently picking up that one photo. He couldn't stop going back for more. For another look at you. Just one more look. Okay, this really was the last one. He had to toss it across the small room toward his duffel so he could focus on something other than your smile and the fact that he might have a tiny crush on a fourth grade teacher who knew absolutely nothing about him. Yet.

The note from Jayden was on the top, and Bradley opened it up and started to jot down a response.

Jayden,

It was so nice to hear from you and the rest of your class. To answer your pertinent questions, I am currently stationed on the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The most disgusting food in the mess hall is easily the cabbage rolls (which taste nothing like cabbage... or rolls). The best food in the mess hall is surprisingly the meatloaf. And yes, I would love to see a photo of your Cocker Spaniel. Please send one next time. I hope you're studying and doing your best in school.

Lt Bradley Bradshaw

The next note he decided to tackle was the one from Violet who had the tiniest handwriting he'd ever seen. The page had at least fifteen questions written out, but he decided to answer just a few for her. He had to squint as he skimmed through them again.

Violet,

You seem very inquisitive. That's a great quality to have, especially if you want to be a pilot someday. No, I did not attend the Naval Academy. I went to the University of Virginia. Yes, the Navy is way better than the Air Force. Yes, I can hold my breath underwater for three minutes. Yes, they actually made me do it. No, I don't think I could make it as a Navy SEAL. Yes, I have been staying hydrated and getting enough sun, thanks so much for asking. Keep studying hard, because you have a lot of school ahead of you before officer training.

Lt Bradley Bradshaw

Okay, so this was actually a lot of fun. Up next was a response to the note from Oliver, which made Bradley laugh every time he looked at it. 

Oliver,

Thank you so much for drawing the different Naval aircrafts for me. I hate to break it to you, but I actually do not fly the F-35 Lightning II. Yes, I know they look 'sickeningly cool'. Yes, I know it would be like 'slam dunking off the back of a dragon'. I guess I never knew I was jealous of those pilots until right now.... But I fly the equally cool if not quite as sickening looking F/A-18 Super Hornet. And yes, I would be more than happy to draw my own version of one for you. See below.

Lt. Bradley Bradshaw

The ten minutes he spent replicating his own aircraft to the best of his ability for Oliver churned out a pretty damn good result. He fished his phone out of the nightstand and took a picture to email to Nat when he had time, because she would find this whole thing amusing. Then he reached for the letters from Harrison, Nia and Jackie. He wrote his responses, and after a bit, he had a decent sized stack of letters all ready to go back to the fourth graders.

After a few more days, he worked his way through the entire class, and each kid would soon have a handwritten response on the way. He just needed to figure out what he wanted to say to you. The pretty teacher from the class photo that he now kept tucked in with his personal items. He worked on that one last, writing your full name at the top of the page and wishing you didn't go by the very non-specific Ms. which gave him zero clue as to whether or not you were married.

The package you sent was the nicest piece of deployment mail I have ever received. Thank you. I'm lucky it ended up in my hands. I'm impressed by how much all of your students have learned about aviation this year. I just hope I did them justice in regards to the questions they had for me.

I also hope you don't mind that I replied to each kid individually. They had some very amusing stories and questions, and I wanted to acknowledge all of them. But there was one question in particular that I was asked so many times, I thought I'd answer it here instead. My call sign is kind of a silly one, so it's okay if you all laugh. I go by Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, and my helmet is mostly red, yellow and black.

Your kids seem like a fun bunch, but I bet they keep you on your toes. Feel free to let them know they can write back to me again, but please include my name on the package this time. I don't know that I'd be lucky enough to have it fall into my hands again by chance. I'll just be here somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a few more months, ready to answer any questions you throw at me. Hope to hear back from you soon.

Yours Truly,

Lt Bradley Bradshaw

The following day, he packed everything up and dropped it off with the rest of the ship's outgoing mail. There was a rumor that a helicopter would be coming to pick it up in the next day or two, and he wanted to make sure it got back to California and those fourth graders as soon as possible. On his way back to his bunk, Bradley stopped by the lounge to see if there was an iPad free, hoping to send a quick email or two. He was in luck. He also happened to have your email address memorized.

--------------------------

You yawned at your desk and checked the time on your computer. Within the next ten minutes, your classroom would go from silent solitude to mass chaos, so you took a minute to clear out your email inbox. You had a few messages from some parents and a reminder about Spirit Week from the superintendent. And a random piece of junk mail that must have slipped through the spam filters. You didn't know anyone with a US Navy email address, and you didn't know anyone named Bradley Bradshaw.

As you closed your laptop, you gasped and tried to pry it back open again as quickly as you could. The Navy! The package you sent a few weeks ago! Maybe it was someone writing back to your class! Of course it could just be someone saying they were sorry that they didn't have time to engage with your students, but you figured even that was better than nothing. 

"Come on," you whispered, entering your credentials again before your inbox reappeared on your screen. The email was just a few lines long, but it was addressed to you by name. You were smiling immediately as you read it.

I just wanted to let you know that I got the mail you sent to a deployed Naval Aviator. There's a package on its way to your school for your class. It should arrive in about a week or two. Your fourth graders provided me with several hours of entertainment, and I hope they find my answers to their many (and amusing) questions useful. Thanks for the laughs, and thanks for the photos, too. Can't tell you how much I've been enjoying them. Hope to hear from all of you again.

Yours Truly,

Lt Bradley Bradshaw

You squealed and pumped your fists in the air. Someone actually got the box! And he actually responded! The other, older teachers thought you were just wasting your time when you deviated from the lesson plans a bit. Literally all of them said there was no way anyone would write back, even though you took the time to go through the proper channels at Top Gun on North Island. But now you could rub it in their faces, all thanks to Bradley Bradshaw who sounded like he'd had as much fun with this whole thing as your class had.

Then your day really started as Violet and Oliver burst into your classroom, calling out your name with excitement in their voices. The rest of your kids followed behind them, already asking about the plans for the day and what kind of adventure you'd be taking them on in each subject. 

When you clapped your hands twice and said, "Good morning," they all clapped and replied with their own greeting, and then they sat quietly with their gazes fixed on you. "Guess who I just got an email from!"

"The president!" 

"My grandma!"

"My Cocker Spaniel!"

"Oliver's grandma!"

You just shook your head and tried not to laugh as you said, "None of the above. But do you remember when we wrote and packed up those letters for a real aviator in the military to read?" Most of the kids nodded, so you added, "Well, he emailed us! And he sent us some mail that should arrive in about a week!"

And telling them that was a mistake. Because you didn't know a moment of peace after that. Every morning, you had kids rushing into the room to see if the promised piece of mail arrived yet. Every day you had to disappoint them, but you were finding yourself a little disappointed, too. You wanted to know what this Bradley Bradshaw guy sent back. 

You'd responded to his initial email letting him know you and the kids in your class were delighted to hear from him and that you would let him know when the mail he sent arrived at your school. He didn't respond, but you figured he was busy. Too busy to constantly muck about with your class while he was thousands of miles away on a deployment. 

And that was what left you standing at your desk with your mouth hanging open in awe when the padded envelope did finally arrive one morning. Because when you carefully cut it open, you found not just one letter to the class but individual handwritten notes, one for each child.

"Wow," you whispered, pulling the note with your name written on the top out of the stack. This man seemed humble and sweet, and his letter made you laugh in more than one spot as you read through it. Then you read it again. He sounded apologetic about responding to each individual kid, but you felt like your insides were melting. Who would do that? Who would take the time to give individual attention to a bunch of nine and ten year olds besides you? And you were technically getting paid to do it. 

Bradley Bradshaw seemed willing to continue to engage with your kids, and you weren't going to stop him. Because starting that morning, he became something of a legend to your class. A celebrity. A real lieutenant in the Navy replied to all of their silly questions, and their love of aviation just grew from there. You figured you were going to have to keep your lesson plans going a bit longer while their faces lit up as you walked around the room and handed them each their notes. You had taken the time to skim them beforehand, often laughing at his sense of humor which seemed to jump off the pages.

"Can we write back to him?" Jayden asked as everyone read their notes from Lieutenant Bradshaw. "I have more questions."

You smiled and nodded. "Yes, you may write back to him." Then you postponed your geology lesson until the next day and let them spend the next forty minutes writing some followup letters. You took some pictures of them diligently toiling away at their desks, excitement on their faces. Then you bit your lip and sat down at your own desk.

As you started to construct an email letting him know the envelope had arrived, your thoughts drifted to what he might be like. Humble and sweet, for sure. But he also made it a point to tell you that the box from your class was the best piece of mail he'd ever received while deployed. Maybe he was a little bit lonely. Maybe he was single. Maybe he was stationed on the west coast. Your thoughts started to get ahead of you, and it was hard to reel them in when you imagined him excited to see another email from you. Smiling when he was handed another box from your class during mail call.

Dear Lt Bradley Bradshaw,

We got the envelope from you today, and my kids are absolutely thrilled! I'm not sure if you know how hard it can be to wrangle eighteen fourth graders all at one time, but they are currently sitting quietly and working on new letters for you to read. Once again, please don't feel obligated to continue correspondence if you're too busy. I'm sure you have other people you could be writing to who want your attention as well. I just wanted you to know they are overjoyed that a Naval officer took the time to answer their questions about aviation.

I have attached some photos as proof that they are sitting still. Thanks again for making their day.

You signed your name at the bottom the way you always would from your work email account, and then you attached the photos. After a brief debate about adding the selfie you took with Violet where most of your face was visible, you decided to just go for it. Adding it to the mix wouldn't hurt anything. It wasn't like this semi mystery man would be up all night thinking about you. 

But you found that you were still thinking about him when you went home to your silent house and made dinner that evening. Maybe he was a little bit lonely, but maybe you were, too.

-------------------------

It was amazing how infrequently Bradley found himself thinking about Vanessa. He was busier now with his duties picking up a bit more as his deployment wore on, but even when he was tired and in his bunk at night, his thoughts seldom settled on her like he was afraid they might. He didn't miss her or her half-hearted emails, and he wasn't craving the connection of reunion sex with her. 

Instead, he was thinking about what a group of fourth graders were learning about this week and what their cute teacher was up to. It had been a few days since you emailed him, letting him know that his package was delivered to your school. You made it sound like the kids were excited that he sent it in the first place, and when he really thought about it, he supposed some officers would have just eaten the snacks and tossed the notes in the trash.

He didn't reply to the email yet, still thrown off a bit by the pictures you attached. Your classroom was vibrant, and the kids were absorbed as they worked on more notes for him to read whenever they happened to be delivered to the carrier. But the photo with you in it held his attention longer than it should have. The fact that you were working at a school that was just a handful of miles from his damn house made him feel warm.

But what would he do about it? What could he do about it? Nothing. He didn't want you to think he was creepy. He still knew essentially nothing else about you. The only thing he could do was keep it friendly if not professional. Unless of course you did something to push the boundaries of conversation into a more personal realm. God, if you did....he didn't think he would be able to handle it. 

The next day, when he was heading out on deck to talk to the mechanics who were doing regular maintenance on the aircrafts, he took his phone. "Hey, you mind if I take a few photos of some of the engine parts? I want to send them to a class of fourth graders who will think it's cool."

"Go ahead, Lieutenant," the head mechanic replied. Then he smiled and asked, "You dating a teacher?"

Well. Wouldn't that be something? Bradley would never run out of curious pen pals. He would always have some fourth graders to take interesting photos for and to send notes to. He'd always have a classroom to visit as soon as he got home from a deployment.

He couldn't help but picture you as the teacher.

"Nothing like that," he replied, his voice a little gravelly. "Just writing to some kids who are learning about aviation."

After dinner, when he had a chance to use an iPad in the lounge, he did his best to put together a response to your email that would at least hint at the curiosity he felt. 

If all it takes is mail from three thousand miles away to get your class to sit quietly, then I should probably be writing to you every day. But I'm sure you're a great teacher. That's a given considering how much your students learned and shared with me. And I can assure you that I'm more than happy to take the time to write to your class. And you. Please don't think I feel obligated, because I do not. I want to.

I have attached a few pictures of some F/A-18 engine components as well as some of my cockpit controls. Each photo is labeled, but please let me know if you have any questions.

It was nice hearing from you.

Yours Truly,

Lt Bradley Bradshaw 

As soon as he hit send, he wanted to kick himself. Should he have included a photo of his face like you had twice now? Or did he already sound too desperate to hear from you and your class again?

"Shit," he muttered, looking around the lounge as if there was going to be someone here proficient in the art of getting to know a fourth grade teacher without sounding stupid. But it was too late now. All he could do was wait for the next mail call or hope you decided to write back to his ramblings by the next time he checked his email. 

-----------------------------

You were going to have to scrape your jaw off the floor. You had no idea what this man's face even looked like, but his hands were... something else. And his thighs... well, they were pretty great, too. It must have been too long since you got laid, because you were sitting at your desk in your classroom staring at the set of photos in your inbox, currently unable to look away from his right hand. It was wrapped around the throttle of his aircraft. It was elegant with attractive veins and rough calluses. You were sure that you were supposed to be focusing on the cockpit controls, but all you could see was that hand and his thick, muscular thighs below.

The next photo was no better for you. He was holding up his helmet with his call sign Rooster emblazoned across the front, and you were able to see his left ring finger. There was no wedding band. There was no evidence of an outline where a wedding band would belong. There was just his big, strong hand.

You whimpered softly while your students worked on their math tests. You couldn't help it as you took one last look before logging out of your email account. And now you needed to know if his face matched the very attractive image you had in your mind. 

When Jayden called your name, you rocketed to your feet like you'd been caught red handed. "Yes?" you squeaked, your voice sounding higher pitched than usual.

"I'm done with my test. May I have the hall pass and use the restroom?"

You handed it to him as the rest of your class finished working through the math problems. A few minutes later, when you collected the papers from them, Violet asked, "When is Lieutenant Bradshaw going to write back to us?"

It had only been a few days since you mailed him the second box of notes and some more snacks, but it made you happy that they were all so invested in learning more from him. 

"It will probably be a few weeks before we get anything in the mail. However... he did email me some pictures of engine and cockpit parts from the aircraft carrier for me to share with you guys." When you looked around the room, the kids were on the edges of their seats, excited expressions on their faces. With a laugh you added, "I was going to wait until tomorrow and use the projector to show them all to you, but if you're very well behaved for the rest of the afternoon, maybe I could pull them up on my computer for you to see them today."

Not two hours later, you were just as excited as the kids were to look at the photos... again. As they crowded around your desk, you opened up the first one of the cockpit to a barrage of questions. 

"Is that really his jet?"

"Is that the throttle?"

"What do all the buttons do?"

"Was this right before he flew it?"

Once again you were distracted, but you managed to click over to the next photo, and the kids gasped in delight. 

"His helmet is so cool!"

"It says Rooster!"

"That's his call sign!"

"Red is my favorite color!"

You just smiled softly and laughed. "Should we go ahead and start working on another list of questions for him?" you asked as you slowly scrolled through the rest of the pictures. "He said we can write back to him as much as we want to." When everyone cheered, you handed Oliver a marker and pointed to the board at the front of the classroom. "Let's start making a list."

You listened to all of your students call out questions for Bradley while Oliver wrote them down. Then Violet asked, "Can he send us a picture of his whole jet? From the outside of it?"

You cleared your throat and added, "Maybe he could get someone else to take the picture so he could stand in front of it. For size comparison."

Violet nodded, but you knew you were a fraud. Sure, it would be great for the kids to understand just how massive the F/A-18s were compared to an actual person, but you were the one who wanted to see all of Bradley. You were itching for it now. 

Later that night, you drank most of a bottle of wine and did something you promised yourself you'd never do. You logged into your work email account after nine o'clock. You skipped over the handful of unread emails from parents and clicked on the icon to compose a new message. With your liquid courage goading you on, you typed up a response to Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw and hit send before you could think twice.

Thank you for the photos. They were very enlightening. We especially liked the ones where you were showing off your cockpit. Or I did, anyway. The kids liked all of them and started on another list of questions for you. Good luck getting rid of us now. 

We were wondering if you could have someone take a picture of you standing in front of your jet. For size comparison purposes. And also because my students would like to know what you look like. Hearing from you makes our day even better.

You couldn't believe how forward you were being with this man who you'd never even met in person, but you fell asleep thinking about his hands and what they might be capable of.

-------------------------

This Bradley makes me swoon. I've never wanted to be a fourth grade teacher so badly in my life. There is something that's starting to blossom between them even though they haven't even met in person. Thanks @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 3

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#bradley bradshaw x reader #rooster fanfiction #rooster imagine #rooster x reader #rooster x you #bradley rooster bradshaw imagine #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw fanfiction #bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley bradshaw imagine #bradley bradshaw x you #bradley bradshaw x female reader #bradley bradshaw fic #bradley bradshaw fanfiction #top gun imagine #top gun maverick imagine #top gun fanfiction #top gun maverick fanfiction #roosterforme #yours truly bradley bradshaw

[the-overthinktank]

in what way is it a doomed investment? I've seen a lot of artist lose their jobs to it already, it has had a greater impact than nft's and right now they're going on to make ai video's. I'm sure the bubble will break eventually but, yea share your thoughts.

Here's an article I recommend reading.

We're at the peak of a tech hype cycle. People are absolutely getting hurt and laid off from billions of dollars being poured into the latest money hole that the developers double pinkie prommy will actually work the way they're advertising... at some later date; but I suspect the main staying power for this tech is going to be spam/advertisement generation and disinformation. If you want to provide a quality chat service or make art worth looking at, human intervention is necessary even if you use generative AI as a starting point. While none of this is... good, in the same way NFTs and useless dotcom sites were not good, I am skeptical of a lot of the panic around generative AI replacing humans long term because I think it lends legitimacy to the people claiming it can competently do that.

I also think a lot of the panic around tumblr specifically is kind of redundant. I don't appreciate the site fucking condoning it, but all major social media sites have already been getting fed into these things. There is (currently) no real way to stop these companies from throwing whatever they want off of google into the machine and claiming they totally only use non-copyrighted goods, because they're drawing from billions of images and source texts and there's (currently) no easy way to check besides combing through those massive databases.

Besides, if you publicly post art online, there's already dozens of other websites scraping income off of your work. The social media you use hosts ads, and your art and presence on social media is what draws in new ad viewers and revenue. And there's aggregator sites that draw from and repost stuff from other social media sites, and they host ads. Listacle "news" sites put their top ten favorite web finds on a page covered in ads. Web searches that show your art in a pile of other images host ads. If your art is popular, the number of sites scraping income off of your work grows proportionately. This is my personal opinion, but I'd say AI is a new hat on a commons-exploitation problem that's as almost as old as the internet.

#politics #i also think free social media is going to die in the future so the scraping chain of ad servers may also be doomed but lmao

[theman-and-themachine]

*COMMISSIONS ON HOLD. UNTIL I FINISH THE ONES I HAVE*

':3 thank yall so much. I just wanna make sure i get these ones done.

After these ones i will likely change up pricing and maybe add a seperate, cheaper commission. Making it geniunely QUICK doodles instead of me actually trying to make them properly good hwbhshajsnehdd

Feel free to still donate tho. At kofi bongothebear

Heres daisy encased in a blanket from right now. Vet check up in like.... an hour.

Old text below..no changes and stuff still applies for now. Just ya know.

5 BUCK DOODLES

Get 'em hot and ready. At this ko-fi. bongothebear

You get a quick doodle, I get money to help my cat and her cancer situation.

You get to choose if you want the art Traditional or Digital.

(Art is colored digitally, even with traditional images. All traditional images will be on lined paper. All art will be doodle-level quality, not rendered)

Please don't screw me over with weird disputes or refunds. If you really want something for free, send me an Ask and I'll get to it when I actually have money saved to help my cat's cancer(and the free-time).

This is a glorified donation page. Please don't screw me over, because you'd also be screwing over my cat. She's turning 10 this May.

Most recent photo of her. She is home now and everything's going a lot better this time around.

[breannasfluff]

Quick question, how do you write so much? I fight the words for an hour and have maybe 2 paragraphs of garbage but you pump out really nice work almost every day??? I have so many ideas but I can’t write them for love nor money

I write almost every day, or I take a break and switch it out for drawing. I generally can write a chapter in one go, so usually stock up some backlog to cover days I’m busy. Having multiple stories now means I don’t have that backlog of some, so updates are a bit slower.

As for writing tips:

1. Remove distractions. Shut discord, exit out of tumblr, mute your phone. When you are stuck, don’t go scroll social media. When writing, the only thing I touch the internet for is if I need to check a story item, like a character name, item history, etc. I cannot overstate how important this is. If you are talking to your friends, you won’t have a writing flow.

2. Do not edit as you write. Writing and editing are two different tasks. You switch between creative and critical thinking and it breaks flow. This is a scientific process and you can read more about it here.

Research electroencephalogram (EEG) suggests both heightened electrical brain wave activity and elevated dopamine levels during flow. In other words, your brain experiences both electrical and chemical changes when you’re “in the zone.”

But once you switch to self-editing mode, you move to the critical thinking side of your brain. You halt all of freewriting’s creative electrical impulses and pleasure-sensing dopamine levels. Your mind flips off one switch and turns on another.

3. Set a time, then be done. Give yourself 20 minutes and write as much as you can. Doesn’t matter if it’s garbage. You can edit garbage into something useful or you can chuck it in a bin. Just try to write, then take a break. Staring at a blank document for two hours isn’t going to make words appear and it just stressed out your brain.

4. Have an outline. Sometimes a magical idea just flows when you sit down to write, but generally not. Have an outline of what you want to have happen in your story or chapter. It doesn’t need to be in depth; for most of my oneshots I literally have a sentence or two at the top of the page. The story needs to have a goal. For example: Wild tries to teach Hyrule cooking. It doesn’t go well. Bouncing ideas off friends can be a big help! It’s why you’ve probably seen me post about prompts and suggestions, and sometimes stories are gifted to people. Talking through plot ideas can help you get a better outline or idea of action.

Misc notes:

Hate to say, but some of it is just practice. I’ve been actively writing for a little over a year with some breaks on and off. Making it a habit is a big thing for making it easy. It’s harder to restart after a break.

When I first started writing I tried to pick one aspect to improve for each story. Filter words, pacing, varying sentence starters, story arcs, etc. Fixing multiple things at once was too much work, but one item at a time was doable.

Filter words make such a huge difference in writing; I encourage you to look them up. It’s a PAIN to remove them in post, but it also taught me to cut them out. Now it’s unconscious and while some still show up, I tend to write them out automatically.

You can learn to write quickly, but if you don’t also work on quality you’ll just…write a lot. That said, it’s fanfic. Sometimes it’s just for fun and quality doesn’t matter. I’ve got plenty of stories that will never be posted because they are just for fun.

Some of it could be writing speed, too? I use a bot a lot of times for timing and tracking and generally average 30-35 words/min. Harder story topics are slower to write, like angst and emotional scenes.

I’m actually writing less this year than last, but I don’t put as much time into it. It also keeps it sustainable as a hobby, although I definitely hit periods of frustration. It can get overwhelming.

If you search my blog for the tag #writing advice or #writing tips, you should fine some other things as well.

This was rather frank, but hopefully helpful! Feel free to drop further questions and I’ll do my best to answer 💜

#asks #writing advice #writing tips #writing #creative writing #fanfic writing

[sysakiddo]

I am so insane about this AU I made a moodboard for it. If anyone knows how to make the quality unfucked, hit me up please. Èze bit is already halfway cooked. first part second part

"Do you usually take all of your interns here?" Daniel asks doubtfully. He is wearing a silk shirt under the blazer. On his hands, he is not only wearing the usual wedding band but four other diamond rings. The Harry Winston one, sapphire set in diamonds on his right ring finger, is his favourite. A gift from Max for their third anniversary. He wears it only for special occasions. 

Max furrows his eyebrows when he sees it shining brightly in the restaurant's lights. A dinner with an intern is not a special occasion. 

"Marais is the place for youngsters." Max shrugs. Daniel's answering laugh is too loud. It makes him cringe a little. 

"Youngsters, oh my god, Maxy," he shakes his head disapprovingly. "You're too young to talk like this." 

"Not again with the age talk." Max snaps, can't help but remember how Daniel looked in the dim light of their bedroom when he said China might be his last chance. "Besides, what's wrong with Marais? I thought you liked it." 

Daniel looks like he belongs here, anyway, with his tanned skin and designer clothes. 

Before he can answer, Max's phone beeps, and he stands up to find their guest in front of the restaurant. When they arrive at the table, she is shocked to see Daniel already sitting there. 

"Your excellency," she says, her voice rough with nervousness. "I did not know you would be here." 

Daniel smiles broadly, shaking her hand. "Please call me Daniel. I hope I won't be interrupting." 

She blushes a bit, amazed. "No, of course not, your exce- Daniel, I mean." She sits down when Max pulls the chair for her. "I am Anne; it's a pleasure to meet you." 

"Let's switch to English," Max proposes, even though Anne's French is immaculate. He doesn't like talking to Daniel in French, only connects it to work in his head. 

Daniel knows this, but it doesn't stop him from smirking at Anne. "It's because he thinks my French sucks," he tells her, this time in English. 

Max flips a page of the menu, not taking his eyes off it. "Don't take him too seriously," he tells Anne in Dutch. She keeps looking at them with wide eyes like she can't believe she had the luck to see this. She has heard many stories about them in the office and back home at uni, the rockstars of Parisian diplomatic life. Now, a bantering couple having dinner on a busy Friday night. 

Daniel knows enough Dutch by now not to be sidetracked. "Oh, yes, Anne, please do not take me seriously at all! I am here only for the oysters and gossip." 

Anne laughs lightly, closing the menu. "I fear I won't be very helpful in the gossip area." 

"Oh no, I'd like to hear everything! Is he quite dreadful? Does he make you triple-check the daily update for the ministry? Do you still have to send him the media digest every morning? Did you know he subscribes to four different types of newspaper and refuses to go to bed without finishing the crossword in each of them?" 

Max scoffs while Anne shakes her head. "No - I enjoy my tasks," she says, sneaking a look at Max. She doesn't want to seem like she is trying to kiss his ass. "I like that we actually get to do the real work. I mean, it's great to see that someone thinks I am able to do more than just take the minutes."

Daniel sees the soft blush coating her cheeks and looks at Max, who is smiling at her. He is shocked to see it's his genuine smile, not the one he uses at work. 

"I heard those stories, yeah." he nods. Daniel doesn't like managing his interns, makes the chef of the protocol do it. Max, however, likes being close to his staff. Daniel privately thinks it's just a way to control them better. 

"It's even worse as a woman, I think," she continues, more confidently now that they seem interested in what she has to say. "In Cairo, they wouldn't let us do anything else than make coffee and filter the mail. The ambassador told us only the men had access to the conference rooms." 

Max furrows his brows, leaning closer to her subconsciously. "What?" he barks out. 

The unexpected reaction makes her freeze. Daniel sees the moment when it dawns on her, a shadow setting on her face. She has never connected the dots, and it got away. She did not realize that the ambassador in Egypt shares a surname with her current boss. 

Daniel clears his throat. "I wouldn't let my interns make me coffee, Anne, that's for sure. Nobody knows how to make it properly for me, not even my husband," he says with a big smile, kicking Max's foot under the table. 

Max blinks, still waiting for more words to come out of Anne's mouth. The distraction doesn't work; both of them awkwardly quiet. The waiter comes out of nowhere as if he felt they needed something to save them from the sticky situation. 

Daniel orders twelve oysters and only then Max snaps out of it. "You can't be fucking serious-" he mutters, kicking him back. 

"I bet Anne will split with me, right?" he winks at her and she smiles thankfully, nodding. Thank you, she mouths while Max is ordering for himself. 

Max can feel Daniel's phone vibrating in his pocket, the constant buzz audible even over the loud chatter in the background. Daniel makes no move to answer it. Instead, he moves to top up their glasses with more wine, smiling broadly at Anne. When he sits back down, he squeezes Max's knee, waiting until Max squeezes his hand back before moving it away. 

Max insists they walk home after dinner. They are quiet for a while, the sounds of the streets distracting enough. 

"You really like the kid," Daniel says eventually. 

Max nods. "She asked me to be her mentor, actually." Daniel hums. The request is nothing extraordinary. Everyone wants to get mentored by the best. "I think I'm going to say yes." 

Daniel raises an eyebrow at him, tonight full of surprises. He has never agreed to do that before. 

"I also thought I would invite her to Èze with us. What do you think?" 

"Èze?" he stutters, shocked. Èze is for the closest friends. And Charles, Max would always add begrudgingly. He would rather eat an oyster than count  Charles into his 'closest friends circle'. 

Max furrows his brows in confusion. "You don't like her?" 

Daniel shakes his head. "You've never done this, that's all." 

Max is walking a bit faster now, shrugging his shoulders. "I thought it would give me something to do, y'know. In Beijing or whatever. I was thinking about it and - yeah, I could mentor the kids and write a memoir. That way, I wouldn't be so bored." 

This is not the first time Max has mentioned wanting to write a biography. Daniel tried to persuade him that writing a memoir at 25 is a bit too cocky, even for someone like Max. 

This is, however, the first time Max mentioned Beijing since Daniel's big revelation. 

He is not ready to have that conversation yet, so instead, he asks him what's been bothering him throughout the night. 

"Your father-" 

"Don't." Max stops him before he can breathe in, holding his palm up. Max's father has been a taboo in their household since The Catastrophe. And because The Catastrophe was the reason why Max moved out of their flat for two months, the only time when Daniel used the word 'divorce' and Max couldn't stop talking about jealousy and holding grudges, he lets it go.

Daniel rolls his eyes but takes Max's hand in his. "Invite her to Èze. Pierre is also bringing an intern, so she won't be alone." 

Max hums, squeezing his palm as a silent thank you. 

At home, Max is brushing his teeth when the DHoM calls. He spits out the foam and rolls his eyes. A call on a Friday night has never been a good sign. 

"The President cancelled the visit of the Netherlands, I am afraid," she says, straight to the subject, just as Max has urged her to do every time. 

"What? Why?" He spent weeks trying to negotiate the visit. The preparations started five weeks ago. 

"They did not give me an official reason. But David told me, in confidence, of course, that they've added Australia to his Pacific tour. The submarines are long forgotten."

Max paces in the bathroom for a few minutes after hanging up. 

When he finally enters the bedroom, Daniel doesn't even have the decency to look guilty. 

"You've seen the dates of the visit in my diary." he accuses him, a thunderstorm in his eyes. 

Daniel knows what he is talking about. Of course he does. He is just glad Max did not get the call while they were still in the restaurant. "How was I supposed to know they would cancel instead of postponing?" Max is breathing fire by now, but Daniel isn’t wearing his glasses so all he sees is a figure that could be his husband but also could be a very handsome burglar.

Max waves a finger in his face, looking menacing, even when wearing nothing but his sleeping shorts. He knows Daniel is full of shit. "You should have had the decency to inform my office." 

Daniel has the nerve to roll away from him. "No work talk in the bedroom." 

Max grinds his teeth together and grabs the duvet, rolling it up into a ball and throwing it at shocked Daniel. "Then get the fuck out." He also throws the pillow, his finger pointing to the living room. Daniel huffs but stands up and gets out of the bedroom nevertheless.  

In the morning, Daniel's back is fucked from sleeping on the couch, and he spits a few harsh words in the general direction of Max's still-sleeping figure. When he returns from the market, Max is sitting at the kitchen table with a tea in his hands. He blinks a few times to make the morning fog disappear and is only partly successful. Daniel is sheepishly holding ten teddy bear sunflowers in his hands. 

Max lets Daniel kiss him with a soft apology, standing up to get the vase. "Your coffee is next to the toaster!" he says before turning around. He misses how Daniel's face glows up, smile small and real and only for Max. 

fourth part

#maxiel #daniel ricciardo #max verstappen #max/daniel #diplomacy au #f1 rpf #f1 fic #my ficlets

[babacontainsmultitudes]

So you wanna sell your art on Redbubble but you don't know how?

(Or, I meant to write this months ago but better late than never lol)

OKAY okay. I have a bunch of friends as well as mutuals who have lovely lovely art and have considered selling it online (specifically on Redbubble lol that's what's being covered today anyways) but don't really have any clue how RB works, if it's right for them, or what to expect. SO I'M HERE TO GUIDE Y'ALL THROUGH ALL THE BASICS and hopefully, if I've done my job right, this tutorial will help you set up your RB shop and start selling your art online (or help you decide that RB isn't for you lol).

Table of Contents:

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

How to make your account and set up payment

How to add a new work

Pricing? Markup?

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

Extra: Taxes and copyright, in case that scares you.

Extra: The Partner Program (or how to make "officially licensed" fanart)

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

>> RedBubble is a site that allows you to upload your artwork and sell it on quite a variety of different products.

>> The main benefit of using RedBubble, aside from reach and visibility, is that RB handles *everything* when it comes to the manufacturing and shipment of your product. You are literally not responsible for anything other than making the art, uploading it, and deciding how you want it to look on different products. If there is any kind of problem with material quality or delivery (though in my experience they're pretty good with both of those things), it's not your responsibility to correct!

>> RedBubble does not charge you to sell on their site, but they do set a base price for all products to cover manufacturing and to ensure that they make some level of profit for each sale. We'll look into the specifics of this in a later section when discussing pricing and markup, but it would be considered pretty standard, for example, for an item to cost $20 and you to make $4-$5 upon making a sale.

>> At the end of the day, whether or not RB is right for you largely depends on whether or not you feel their pricing and payment is fair, and whether their available products correspond to what you wish to sell.

Okay, so how do I get started?

Well first you're gonna need an account!

>> Head over to the RedBubble main page and click "Sign Up"

>> Select "Artist Signup"

>> Fill in your email, shop name (this is your username also), and password

>> Click "Sign Up"

>> You will be brought to this dashboard page:

>> We will discuss creating products in the next section. Everything under "Set Up Shop" is optional and I'll let you explore that on your own so we can focus on the essentials. That just leaves... Getting paid!

>> First, check the email you used to confirm your email address. If you didn't receive an email to confirm your email address, don't worry, we can resend the form- keep going with the steps for now.

>> Then, under "Get Paid", click "Add your name & address". Note that all of the options in the "Get Paid" section actually lead to the same form, but selecting this option starts us near the top.

>> Fill out all the fields on this page. If you didn't receive the email to confirm your email address, click on this button:

Then check your email again.

>> Note when choosing your payment method: if you are from Canada, like me, then paypal is your only option. Same for parts of Europe that aren't in the UK. Otherwise, you also have bank transfer options:

>> Once you've finished filling in everything on this page, click "Save Changes" at the bottom and... That's it! Now you can get paid :)

**Note: I believe RB still requires you to make a minimum amount of money before they do a transfer (for me in Canada I believe it's $20 CAD?), so do keep that in mind!

>> Payments are made to your account monthly, generally on the same day every month (assuming you've made profits!).

How to add a new work

So you've made your account, fantastic. Now you're ready to actually add your works to RB and make them available for purchase to the wider public! To demonstrate the process, we're gonna use our pal Nicky here (who was a gift from my lovely friend @llumimoon) and pretend that we want to upload him:

Ain't he a doll? Anyways, let's begin.

>> Hover your mouse over your pfp in the top right corner to make this drop down menu appear:

>> Click on "Add New Work"

**On a new account with nothing uploaded, this will look a bit different. instead choose "Sell Your Art" from this dropdown menu, then "Add New Work" from the top right corner of the same dashboard page from earlier.

>> Click on "Upload New Work" (and note the file type and resolution requirements at the bottom. I always stick with PNGs, but in theory JPEG or GIF works as well.)

>> Select the file of the image you want to upload. In our case, that's Nicky.

>> Now write a title for your work, tags, and a description if you want. The tagging system is how people will actually find your work, it works a lot like Tumblr's! Try to choose things that are relevant to whatever your piece is. If you're uploading fandom-related art and aren't sure what tags are used for your fandom on RB, try looking some up and seeing what generates the most relevant results!

>> You may have noticed the "background color" section right below Nicky. This sets the default background color for your piece on different products. We're gonna keep this as the default white here, and I'll show you how to adjust this for individual products very soon.

>> Scroll down. This is where we decide what products we want this design to be available on and how we want Nicky to look on each thing we've enabled.

For example, if I were actually selling Nicky here (if that wasn't clear obviously I'm not actually selling my friend's art lol don't do that ofc) I would definitely want people to be able to buy him as a little sticker :]

>> In this case, "Stickers & Magnets" have been enabled by default. If you wanted to disable them, you would simply click that little "Enabled" button. Similarly, if we want to enable a product type that is disabled, just click that same button (which will be grey rather than green and say "disabled").

>> If a product is disabled and you are being prevented from enabling it, that's because the dimensions of your image are too small for the product in question! You'll wanna resize your image (preferably in a manner that retains its resolution of course) and come back.

>> Hm. Let's use the hats here as an example of how we might make edits to the layout of a specific product.

He's kind of cut off, as you can see actually that's pretty in-character, and I think I want this hat to be pink rather than this default beige-looking color.

>> Click on "Edit"

So, the first thing I'm gonna do here is use that "Scale Image" slider to scale him down a bit. I'm also gonna click the image and drag him up a bit to re-center him.

Next, I'm gonna pick from one of the default colors and choose the pink one.

>> Notice the two arrows beside the words "Bucket Hat"? This lets me go through the different types of hats available and change the background/base color for each of those, like the dad hat:

>> Before we apply our changes, click that little gear icon right under the pencil icon

>> This lets us adjust the markup price for each individual hat. It is 20% by default. Changing the markup percentage affects how much you will make off of a sale, as well as how much your product will cost. More on that in the next section!

>> Click "Apply Changes"

The "dad hat" was the last hat I had selected (when setting its color), so the display has changed to show that one in the preview. Here's our bucket hat from before:

Nice!

>> The specifics of how you can adjust your design will vary depending on the product. With pillows & totes, for example, the editing menu looks like this:

Using the "Choose pattern" option, I can make the Nicky image repeat as a pattern like so:

(note that I also scaled the image down a bit here too).

>> One last thing. See that "Replace Image" button near the top?

You can use this when you want to use a different version of your image altogether for a specific product.

>> That's the gist! Play around with the settings for each item as you see fit. You can always edit them again later.

>> Scroll down. Select up to 2 relevant media types.

I'm pretty sure this affects search results when users choose specific filters, but tbh otherwise I don't think it's all too important.

>> Let's look at what remains.

>> I have the "Who can view this work?" section set to "Only You"- THIS IS SO I CAN FINISH THE STEPS HERE AND SAVE THE WORK WITHOUT ACTUALLY MAKING IT AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC. In practice, you'd only use this option if you wanted to buy your own work on something but didn't want other people to be able to see or buy it. Otherwise, you're always gonna choose "Anybody (public)".

>> Collections can be created to organize the pieces in your shop (for example, by fandom), but we won't cover the specifics of how to do that here.

>> Set whether or not your work contains "mature content".

>> If you want, you can set which product shows up in the preview for your work when people view your shop. If you think your piece looks especially nice on a mug, for example, you can make sure that's what people see first.

>> Finally, agree to RedBubble's User Agreement (read that little blurble, since that's basically all you generally need to care about when it comes to what you can and can't sell on RB, but more on that later).

>> Click "Save Work" and voila! Your piece is now available in your shop, and can be found in the search results of whatever tags you left on it (this may take a few minutes to take effect).

>> If you want to check out your design in your shop, navigate to your pfp and click "View shop"

>> Don't fret if the design doesn't appear in your shop right away! Again, this can take several minutes.

>> To edit your design again (and to view/purchase privately uploaded designs like Nicky here), click the "Manage Portfolio" option instead:

>> Here is Nicky as he appears in my portfolio (again, your portfolio and your shop are different things- Nicky will not appear in my shop at all because he is set to "private")

>> You can click that little gear icon to do a variety of things, like return to the editing menu from earlier. The three icons below Nicky refer to the amount of comments, sales, and likes your design has received in total.

>> Click on your design either from your shop page or your portfolio page. Wow! Your cool art is now available on all the products you enabled. Be sure to look through them and make sure that everything is to your liking!

Pricing? Markup? What's that about?

Well good tumblr user, RB handles everything regarding the production (and shipping) of your product, which means that they set a base (minimum) price for every kind of product to account for materials and production, and of course make some amount of profit themselves. The *markup* is a percentage that you the artist set (see the previous section on how to do so), and will determine how much you actually make off of a sale. Note that increasing the markup price means that your product will increase in price as well!

>> An Example (using hypothetical but more or less realistic numbers):

Let's say that the base price (0% markup, i.e. no profit for you) of a phone case on RB is $15. You set the markup to 30%. 30% of 15 is 4.5, so the public price is increased to $19.5, and if anyone purchases this phone case with your design on it, you will make $4.5.

And that's really the gist! Ultimately the markup price is up to you and what you feel is reasonable, though RB sets it to 20% by default.

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

Eheh, unfortunately I've reached the image limit for this post but:

To check your sales:

>> Click on your pfp

>> Click "Account Settings"

>> Under "Artist Tools" (on the left side), click "Sales History"

To check your payment history:

>> From the same "Artist Tools" menu (see above), click "Payment History"

Extra: Taxes and copyright, in case that scares you.

>> Do I need to report the income I make on RB when I do my taxes?

Yup! But dw, it isn't anything special. I mean, I'm not here to do your taxes for you, but money you make on Redbubble counts as "Self-Employment Income", same as if you sold your art just about anywhere else really!

>> So what am I actually allowed to sell on Redbubble? Is fanart okay?

Generally speaking... Yes! Obviously work should be your own, and it should not contain any company logos or names that you don't have the right to, nor photos of actual people unless you have their explicit permission.

>> Hm, okay, but what if I *do* accidentally sell something that isn't allowed?

In most cases, it'll just get taken down 👍. And no, you won't be asked to pay back any profits you made off the work in the meantime.

**A more extreme case: Story time. So, years ago a friend of mine uploaded some official Rick and Morty art that he forgot to set to "private". Overnight he made... Let's just say he made quite a bit of money. RB responded by taking down the work and banning his IP address, effectively preventing him from ever selling on the site again. But they still let him keep the money he made, and he didn't get into any actual trouble outside of that. What I'm saying is, even if you really fuck up, it'll be alright. And again, this was a pretty extreme scenario.

***Note: if your work falls under one of the brands in Redbubble's "Partner Program" (see the next section), it will be temporarily removed from the search results and your shop while it undergoes review. So don't panic if you see your fanart suddenly disappear from your shop!

Extra: The Partner Program (or how to make "officially licensed" fanart)

Very briefly, Redbubble has their partner program, which I won't explain in full detail here, but basically it means that if you upload a work and tag it as one of these brands, it will be inspected for review and, upon passing that brand's guidelines, will be considered "officially licensed" merch for that brand. Just felt worth mentioning!

So that's really the gist folks! There's certainly much more to play around with when it comes to RB, but that's all you need to know to get started! Hopefully this was useful? Hopefully lol. In any case, good luck out there!

#*breathes* OKAY #gee I sure do hope this is actually useful lol #artists on tumblr #redbubble #selling art #idk what to tag this as lmao #baba's tutorials #<- new tag ig lmao #if y'all have other questions (especially friends and mutuals and followers) feel free to reach out and I'll answer what I can! #so if you're wondering. yes I've sold on the site before. no you don't get to know what haha. #bought a lot from RB too- their shit's good quality! #but to be completely clear ofc I don't speak on their behalf haha this tutorial exists so that I can buy more of my friends' cool art lmao

[snek-panini]

It's Friday the 13th! Here, have a book completely unrelated to that:

It looks fairly straightforward from here, but this is a bind of @dietraumerei's wonderful Good Omens series, The Sprawl of Life. It's a canon universe, pre-season-2 South Downs Cottage fic, and I typeset it when I did because I'd just watched season 2 and wanted the fluffiest, sweetest, most slice-of-life thing I could think of and this was it. Seriously, if you have been personally victimized by the season 2 finale this might be the antidote you're looking for. Though admittedly some of the lines do hit a lot more bittersweetly now than they did when I first read it in 2019.

More pics under the cut! This one's got an unusual format, go have a look!

It's a dos-a-dos! My first one! Before I started making books I'd never even heard of this format, but I've been wanting to try it ever since I found it. It's hard to find stories that suit the format, though--they've got to be within a certain word count, about the same length, and related to one another, and they have to be a pair, not a three or four part story. They look super complicated without (I've found, anyway) actually being that hard to make. If you want to impress a non-bookbinder make one of these to show them; all my family were fascinated by it.

For materials, the floral cover is scapbook paper from Joann's (the fancy stuff that's very flexible and feels handmade) and the spine is Allure book cloth from Hollander's in the wisteria color. It's a perfect match for the lavender in the paper. I've only previously used the Lineco/Books By Hand book cloth and gotten good results, but my experience with that brand in general was that it's a cheap, readily available base for starting out, but there are wider and better quality options out there once you get away from chain craft stores. Working with this cloth was proof of that. It's stiffer than the Lineco stuff, which made it a little harder to glue down but not enough to cause problems, and it took HTV better than any other surface I've used it on. Here, check out the spines:

Images of the spines. In case the photos are a little blurry, that's Demolishing Proofs We Never Believed In on the left and The World and its Beautiful Particle Logic on the right. The titles gave me some worries. I didn't want to obscure more of the florals by putting them on the front, but was worried they wouldn't fit on the spines since they're so long. I got them on, but it took a lot of careful measurements. Still, though, I couldn't be more pleased by them, and I barely had any of my usual trouble getting the HTV to stick.

Handmade end bands on both sides, in colors matched to the cover paper. I was a little worried about making my own for this project since the text blocks are only about 100 pages each. I was worried they'd be too short. But they're not, and I got a really nice front bead on them. I wanted to do three colors but that proved too challenging for my current skill level. Maybe next time. The second image is the endpaper. Specifically it's the back endpaper, so you can see how the second spine fits into the case. When you read a dos-a-dos, you read the first part, then flip it over like you're going to read the back blurb and there's the second part ready to go. I only explain this because, having never made one, I thought you flipped it over top-to-bottom until I did the case fitting for this one. The top-to-bottom one it called a tete-beche and I think does not have the shared cover board in the center; the pages are connected upside-down. (This is all from my limited research; pro bookbinders please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Couple of interior images. All the graphics came from rawpixel and they are the same in both halves. I kept the typeset really simple on this one, without any extra graphics. Partly that was to keep the page count down (images can take up extra space) and partly it's a reflection of the text. It's a happily ever after story, mostly. Their lives are so much easier here than in canon, and the focus is on communicating without barriers or frills and on building their relationship without other things getting in the way. So it's got a fancy title page, because it matches the cover, but the rest is straightforward with just some simple swirls around the chapter numbers.

I couldn't be more pleased with how this turned out. I was worried it would be very complicated since it's a new-to-me build, but I was exaggerating the difficulty and that made for an easy bind. I hope the author likes it too.

#bookbinding #fanbinding #snek makes books #good omens #fic rec #dos-a-dos #did i forget to tag something? #it feels like i forgot to tag something #oh well

[magnoliaroad]

Magnolia Road is Moving + Exciting Projects!

Hi there - Rizu here! It's been about a year since I last posted an update here. Life got really busy and pulled me away from Petz. As life calmed down I had the itch to return to some unfinished petz projects! Here's a look at some of the things I've been working on. The major one being the launch of my new home - Magnolia Road on Neocities! Keep reading for more details!

When I first launched this tumblr blog, I wanted a platform that didn't require a whole lot of set-up to get started. While it has served its usefulness as my first home in the Petz community, I need more room for the amount of content that I'm planning on making.

So I've been quietly working on a complete website overhaul and it's been such a blast. I think it will serve me better as a home for my crew and petz content. For the foreseeable future I am planning on keeping this tumblr for long-form write-ups on Petz things.

Without further ado, check it out here.

Not everything on the website is finished but I've put the 'good enough' stamp on it for now. I'm looking forward to fleshing out the pages more with some exciting content.

On that note...

Projects!

Something that I've wanted to do for a while is to create more custom content for Petz 5. Though Petz 4 is the community favorite, I feel Petz 5 has a lot of nostalgic charm and a lot of potential for quality of life upgrades. Despite Petz 5's glitches and bugs, I've by and large have learned to live around them without too much trouble and largely prefer some aspects of Petz 5 over Petz 4, such as the expanded color palette for playscenes, weather, day/night cycles, being able to carry all the toyz with you, etc.

With the new content that I am working on, I hope to inspire some more love for Petz 5 and make it a more welcoming home for your Petz!

So what am I working on? I've been working on a MASSIVE rework of the Petz 5 playscenes. They are quite dated and an eye-store in some instances.

So here's a sneak peek of what I've got going so far. These are not finished yet so these may change a bit!

I'm going for a Luxury Living theme based off of neutral beiges, greys, and gold, with a touch of rococo. I've painstakingly fixed the window sprites (they're a pixelized mess in the original), replaced the garden backdrop with my renovated back yard (see below), and gave the night scene some gentle spot lighting. No more ugly orange floor and yellow fridge.

Continuing on the Luxury Living theme, the family room gets an upgrade.

This one definitely needs more work before it is done but here's my Cozy Cabin themed room.

I've always disliked the original snow scene in that all the trees look like lifeless lumpy snow blobs. I wanted to bring back some greenery and make the scene look more vibrant. I replaced the really bland skyboxes with more realistic skies, with the night scene featuring an aurora borealis.

Inspired by my love for Lilly Pulitzer prints, this beach remodel is a more colorful upgrade over the original. I've recolored the sand to look more like....sand and less like this weird ugly yellow sand the original had. I'm planning to make a daytime one as well.

Salon upgrade. This one is very incomplete, so expect this one to change a bit. The original dresser is so hideous that it's hard to make it look "better".

And finally, perhaps my pièce de résistance and my most time consuming overhaul was the backyard. The original looks so junky with its broken fence, muted colors, and lack of landscaping. It definitely needed some more life to it. I hope I achieved that with my 4 seasons remake of the back yard. To say it was a challenge is an understatement. I had to make 3 versions for EACH season. Day, night, and stormy versions. So 12 BMPs along with the edited leaf sprites. The fall leaves are not stills - they are recolors of the original animated sprites and move in the actual playscene! I was excited to be able to pull this one off and I'm happy with how it turned out.

And lastly I've reworked the Petz 5 carrying case skin with a template that makes it easy to come up with new carrying case skins quickly.

Here's just one of the many carrying case skins that I have planned. This one matches the pattern featured in the beach remodel.

And there you have it! These are all works in progress and I can't wait to share more updates with you all. As always, thank you for stopping by!

#petz #petz 5

[sunsafewriting]

AU. Chapter 4

Ava starts a dumb YouTube channel where she makes complicated recipes badly. Maybe people show up for that, but they kind of stick around for her conversations with her roommate — who stays off-screen. Mostly.

chapter 4 excerpt:

The new camera is so fucking shiny. Ava holds it, enjoys the newness of it, the sleekness, while Beatrice flips through the manual. This is how it goes, whenever they get a new thing; Ava wants to touch it, and Beatrice wants to read about it. 

Ava, as she does every time, takes the opportunity to say, "It’s probably super intuitive. We don’t need instructions."

Deriding guides, lists, textbooks, and other itemised sets of information is always a worthwhile investment: Beatrice, very predictably, gets this expression that suggests they may as well walk into traffic if all the structure of the world can be so easily jettisoned. 

"This is a very precise and multifunctional piece of equipment," Beatrice replies. "A thorough understanding of —"

Ava just lets the rest of it wash over her. The essence of the speech is more or less that Beatrice would like Ava to get the absolute most out of her camera, which necessitates an inventory of every single function and feature, so that she fully appreciates her options. 

Ava, by contrast, is of the opinion that the knobs and dials are things she can fuck around with and figure out as she goes, and that the way to get the absolute most of out of her camera is to point it at Beatrice. 

She appreciates her options just fine. 

Beatrice reads the manual in English and then in German; every time, for every appliance, Beatrice checks a minimum of two languages, to account for any lapses in translation. 

While she's doing that, Ava has managed to pop the batteries in and figure out the memory card.

She spins off the lens cap and brings the camera up to her eye, peering through the viewfinder. It's the first camera she's ever owned in her life, and she likes the feeling of it much better than her phone: the weight of it, how the zoom requires twisting and fiddling rather than swiping her fingers, the delightful tactility of the button under her finger.

And yes, it’s supposed to be for her channel, for making better quality videos, but there’s a reason she got this model instead of a lameass camcorder. She also wants to take four hundred million photographs of literally everything in existence — okay, some things more than others — and conveniently, she wants to push this button four hundred million times, so everything is going to work out terrifically. 

"This is going to consume my entire life and brain, I can just feel it," Ava murmurs, adjusting the zoom again, listening to the faint whirring sound it makes. 

She pans the camera across to the actual expert in consuming Ava's life and brain for comment, but Beatrice is frowning down at the warranty information and has very likely not noticed that Ava is talking at all.

"Bea?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I take a photograph of you?"

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"How about we go for a walk?" Beatrice suggests. "I'm sure there are plenty of photographable things outside that you’ll be able to experiment on."

The opportunity to make an experimenting joke is right there, but if Ava goes down that road, they'll never make it back. 

"Just a super quick snap of you, and then we can go on a walk," she bargains. 

Beatrice makes a vague gesture that Ava recognises as a yes before her gaze drops back to the instruction booklet, her finger curling the edge of one of the pages. "I suppose. What do you —"

"Got it!"

It took Ava an age to get Beatrice to smile in photographs without looking somewhat wary and pained — the pictures she has from the first few months of their friendship seem to suggest that Beatrice had a mild headache for all of it — but now, Beatrice smiles like Beatrice, even when there's a camera. 

[cont. on ao3]

#more nonsense from the nonsense conference #but at this point i feel like you all know what you're getting from me #avatrice #ava x beatrice #avatrice fic #avatrice fanfic #sunsafewriting

[ellesliterarycorner]

Tips for NaNoWriMo 2022

NaNoWriMo 2022 is 12 hours away! I will not be staying up to midnight to start writing cause your girl needs her sleep, but I am still so excited to write tomorrow! Last year, NaNoWriMo went extremely well for me, and I’m trying not to hold myself to the same standards this year cause I’m in the middle of college apps now. Still, I am so in love with the story I’m going to be writing, and I cannot wait to dive into this new world with all these new characters. NaNoWriMo can be extremely intimidating, especially if it’s your first time trying it out. 50,000 words in 30 days is a whole lot of words in not a whole lot of days. Don’t worry! Here are a few tips to keep NaNo 2022 as stress free and fun as possible.

Word Vomit and Writing Sprints 

My biggest problem when doing NaNo in past years is that I let my perfectionism get in the way of just writing! I never believe in editing as you write, but it’s especially bad when you’re writing for NaNo. December is for editing whatever mess you wrote; November is for actually getting it all down. Normally, I don’t do word writing sprints, but writing sprints during NaNo are the most helpful things on the planet. Challenging yourself to sit still and write as many words as possible for 5 minutes is so helpful in reaching your daily writing goal! I often call the product of those little writing sprints ‘word vomit.’ It’s messy, probably makes no sense, and will definitely end up getting deleted later, but it’s words and they’re on the page. That’s the most important part! I talk about this more later, but NaNo is not about writing pretty; it’s about writing fast. My favorite thing to do during NaNo is employ the trusty bracket method: if I have absolutely no clue what to write next I simply write a short description of what I want to happen in brackets and move on to the next thing that I know I can write. This is one of the times when quantity is far better than quality. You’ll have time to make it pretty later. For now, just do a writing sprint, and word vomit!

Winning Isn’t Everything!

It’s the only thing! Jk jk. I have a complicated relationship with the “winning” and “losing” aspect of NaNoWriMo. On one hand, it is kinda a competition, but on the other hand, saying you either win or lose something puts a whole lot of pressure and stress on it, especially for young writers. I used to get so upset when I ‘lost’ NaNo even though I had written thousands of words and completely exhausted myself in the process. Now, I tend to take a much more lax approach to it, and I think that comes from having been on both sides of it. 'Winning’ and ‘losing’ Nano has been pretty much equally beneficial to me as writer and as a person. It helps you grow and learn what works for you and what doesn’t work! Now, I’m not saying all this to say that I’m just going to relax and not even going to try to write 50,000 words in November. I definitely am going to try, but at the same time, writing something is better than writing nothing, so I count that as a win either way. If you are completely committed to doing whatever you can to reach your NaNo goal, though, make sure to be kind to yourself. We’re only human!

Playlist? Check! Tea? Check! Chocolate? Check!

Some people jump straight into NaNo without an outline and with only a vague idea of what they’re writing. Some people (me included) have a full detailed outline ready to go at 12AM. It doesn’t matter which side you’re on. But, I do recommend no matter what, take at least five minutes to decide where you're going to write! It doesn’t have to be the same place every time even though I do love me a good little routine. Maybe you carve out a little space in your room, or you have your favorite writing nook in your local library! Whatever works for you and your writing process! I also recommend having a little writer bag. I take mine with me to school every day. It has my headphones, my planning notebook, my laptop charger, a bottle of CrystalLite iced tea, and some Hershey Kisses: all the things that bring me joy and prepare me to get in my writing headspace. Having all those things nearby and easily accessible helps cut down on prep time and decreases procrastination or my worst enemy. 

NaNo Your Way!

This is probably my biggest tip. I didn’t start actually winning and enjoying myself until I realized that it really didn’t matter what anyone else was doing. It was me against me. My own self-doubt was my own worst enemy. That means that during NaNo do whatever you want! If you want to write 50,000 words of poetry instead of a novel, do that! That is still 50,000 words of writing, and that is a major accomplishment, and tbh, slightly more impressive. The beauty of NaNo is how every person does it differently, but we all come together to create something at the end of it! Don’t worry about finding the perfect word or filling all of those plot hole! Like I said earlier, all of that will come later! Take full advantage of the absolute messiness of NaNo! You don't have to write anything to please anybody but yourself. If you do happen to be writing something that you want to edit later and publish, then whatever you write in a first draft is for those future versions of you to edit and rewrite. Right now, it’s worthy just as it is, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  

#nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2022 #writing #writers on tumblr #writers of ig #writers of instagram #writers of insta #writing tip #writing tips #writing advice #writing reference #writing references #writing resource #writing resources

[one-coming-is-enough]

Hey Jesus. Any advice for writing a resume? I'm trying to get a new job so I want to have a good one.

Actually, yeah. I do have some advice. I've been looking over resumes for a minute because, uh, Heaven always needs new employees.

Be specific about numbers and achievements. "I collected and processed a total of 700,000 damned souls during all 7 years of the Black Plague project in Europe" is a lot better than "I followed up on deliverables to produce a quality product."

Jargon is super obnoxious, but it shows people that you can communicate in the preferred terms of your field. Brush up on industry terms and know how to use them, and be able to define them in your own words. I know what people mean when they say "The white light at the center of the universe that is the Source of all love, knowledge, and energy," but if you can just say "Pleroma" I know that I don't have to waste my breath explaining basic concepts to you. We can use three syllables instead of struggling to communicate.

Don't be shy about your personal skills or hobbies or volunteer projects, but put them in their own section as certifications or special projects or skills or something. If you can translate "Dungeons and Dragons" to "Weekly team strategy and problem-solving training exercise meetings" you can figure this part out.

Have a cover letter template that you can tailor to an individual company's needs. Work on a few paragraphs that you can plug stuff into, then put where you need to add details in brackets. Always include one if there's space. Writing a cover letter from scratch every time you apply to something is a giant pain if you're doing mass applications.

Err on the side of professionalism whenever possible. Proofread exhaustively and check with a style guide. Have an email that's basically your name for work. Keep it to one page. Make it look a little snappy, but only a little. Put things in their own section in ways that show you know how to use a word processing program for more than just typing (well-justified columns, for example). Extremely professional font. Different industries and companies might have slightly different standards for things, but whatever you do don't skimp on the effort and small details. Do NOT put in the random stuff you like unless you're sure it will increase your potential value to the company.

Good luck! You're going to need it if you're asking Jesus Christ for help with your resume, frankly. I had one job, carpenter, and as I believe you know I was not very good at it. I have never had to apply for a single job in my life.

(I'm always happy to help with whatever I can, but frankly I've been expecting a lot more theological questions.)

#good omens rp #resume #jobsearch #jobseekers

[niinnyu]

A little rant about leaks because I'm lowkey dreading them. And I'd appreciate it if you'd read it (and if not... 👁👁).

I find the jjk fandom's (though it's true for others too) reliance on leaks very off-putting. I know people want to look forward to something in the middle of the week and talk about it, but this just feels disrespectful, while also being at the cost of other people getting to enjoy it as they want to whether you care about getting spoiled or not.

So many people just don't tag leaks and spoilers properly (forget places where tagging doesn't even make a difference). Seeing things trending with the context of previous chapters explains everything. Not to mention people mis-tagging spoilers and leaks interchangeably (you can remove leak tags after the chapter is officially published but not spoiler tags!!) And no, you're not subtle with your 'out of context spoilers' to someone who has all previous context.

But what boggles my mind is why would you want someone to shout the punchline of a joke in your face before any of the setup has been done. You'll have a bunch of deepfried 2 pixel screenshot of screenshot quality manga panels of crucial moments with none of the build up and pacing. Paired with the most lacklustre explainations of what's happening (the phrasing of which can be biased to the leaker's opinions). Translating isn't easy. To convey what exactly something means from one language to another in an effective and in the intended way isn't easy (shoutout to fan translators tho y'all are amazing thank you for your time and effort)

And whether you care about the story or not, heck even if you think the mangaka themself doesn't care about it, it is just so disrespectful to the content that you're consuming. Making comics and manga isn't easy (churning them weakly is insane imo esp when a lot of mangaka aren't even full time artists) so why wouldn't you allow yourself to consume their story the way they've themself laid it out. Where one panel comes after the other. Where one expression has context in the next page. Where a dialogue has weight only when placed with another dialogue. Give the creator(s) this little grace too, because whether you like a story or not, there is still a huge amount of effort and skill, by multiple people, going into it.

And I personally love interacting with the fandoms I'm in, literally sometimes the only source of joy I have (yes ik leave me alone) is interacting with other fans and having my mind blown over their art and writing and theories. And I'd rather not be spoiled unless I'm myself seeking them out or just reading the actual chapter. So this involves me either spoiling it for myself before someone else does it, or spoiler dodging for 5 OUT OF 7 DAYS A WEEK EVERY WEEK.

I'm not even saying you should only look for official sources or whatever because I know not everyone has access to legal places to read (tho the shounen jump app is there for those interested, but yeah i get it for other publications), but there are better ways to read/hate-readyour fav/least fav manga out there without ruining it for someone else. The wait is juuust a couple of days more. There is absolutely no dearth of fan made content that can't help you last another few days, maybe your new fav fan creator is right around a little wait (ahem check my bs out if you'd like ahem ahem).

I just want to be able to interact with the fandom for more than just 2 days a week, and I don't like my accounts dying because i dissapear 5 days either, and is that a such a bad thing? I come online to have fun, not run an obstacle race y'know?

#i know nothing i've said hasn't been said by someone else but i felt like it too #i was lucky enough to be so down in the dumps the last week that i missed a lot of the leek stuff because i wasnt online much #still got spoiled tho mind you #and like i get it i feel like im making a bigger issue out of this than necessary #and ik for many peoplw its not that deep #but i do really believe this and I'd like you too see what i mean #anyway #jjk #fandom #fandoms #manga #damn this rant ended up being much longer than i intended #if you read through it thanks! #whether you agree or not i hope you at least get what i mean and what im sure many people feel #fandom rants #i do appreciate all the fan creators who do wait till the chapter drops to put out their content even when they've seen leaks tho!! #y'all rule #man ok. #no nickel for niinnyu's thoughts

[advisinghat56]

okay i spent about 30 hours on this motherfucker i am going to tell you about him now.

This is Christophe.

Everything on him is completely removable (except for his hair/face)(I didn't take off his clothes because then I would have to put them back on).

Any little black button that you see is a completely functional snap. I didn't want to give myself parkinson's doing and undoing tens of tiny buttons, not to mention the fact that i don't even own any buttons small enough for this project.

He’s even got the little details on his face, although they aren’t as noticeable as I thought they were. I made a little dogtag necklace for him to wear, because it's a really strong personal headcannon of mine and you can pry it from my cold dead hands. You can only see it if his shirt is unbuttoned though. He also has a dog toy squeaker. (Yes my dog has already tried to eat him.)

In all, I am very happy with him, even though I need to finish and fix some things, (notably the shirt, with its missing pockets and unfinished edges. (Side note- Christophe’s shirt doesn't actually have any buttons or even an opening along the front, but i decided that it would function better if I added those.)) I'll add the pockets later. I think the fleece is thin enough that I can get away with it.

If you look hard enough, you might be able to tell that one arm is a slightly different shade of tan because I didn't realize that the fleece that I had and the fleece that I bought was TWO SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT COLORS.

I actually had a really hard time with the sash because I couldn't find a good reference. I admit I didn't look very hard (but i DID look at an unhealthy amount of fanart), but I still couldn't find much. The fandom page only had front views, and searching google images didn't help much either. The front was fine, but the back was barely shown. I noted ONE scene (where at the very end) it was on screen for maybe half a second, so I had a vague idea of what it looked like.

I could’ve just left it there. I didn't need to double check. Nobody sees the back anyways. It doesn't matter. There is no point.

But i am nothing if not stubborn.

I don't actually have HBO max. So I went for the second best thing- Ze mole all scenes compilations on youtube. However, the only one I found was from 12 years ago. It's mirrored. The quality is shit. There's a fade transition between every scene. But I got it. I got the back shot I'd wanted. Here it is, in all its pixely glory.

I'd gotten it.

And I had absolutely no clue what I was looking at. (still don't)

But I didn’t want to wait anymore, I was almost done.

So I made a guess.

And all went well.

Until I saw a post.

No. It can't be.

The truth is right in front of me, all i have to do is slow it down.

goddamnit.

#also christophe holds one shoulder higher than the other awwww #he has so much detail for a man that appears twice #HAHAHAHAHAHAHA i was laughing so hard writing that last part holy shit #most of this is just the sash chronicles tbh. #it turned from me talking about making him to me dramatically retelling the story of the most miniscule part of his outfit. #and his boots arent even right because i thought his canon ones were ugly #also i was totally right in giving him a slight mullet #south park bigger longer and uncut #south park #sp christophe #ze mole #christophe delorne

[jeannereames]

Hello Dr. Reames! When you decide to read a history book on your free time - and a book completely unrelated to your area of expertise - but you know nothing about said topic, you're only interested in learning about it. How do you choose which book you'll read?

FANTASTIC question. Thank you for asking it.

Let’s Talk How to Evaluate the Quality of a Book NOT on/in Your Specialization or Field

I’m going to start with some general bullet points of advice with discussion. Then I’ll give a concrete example of a book (or set of them) that I decided not to buy after a little rummaging.

The Basics

(These may seem obvious, but a lot of folks ignore them, like they skip over reading the introduction. Always read the book’s introduction!)

Who’s the author?

Most books have, on the back cover or inside, a note about the author. Also, google the person. Do they have a professional degree or some form of special training/ experience (e.g., say, they worked on a dig)? If they’re a professor, where do they teach? (But don’t put too much on that; the state of academia today means highly respected scholars could end up in Podunk Mississippi just to find a job.)

What type of book is it and who’s the intended audience?

Is it an academic book meant for other specialists? A book intended for use as a textbook? Something marketed to general audiences: “pop” history, or creative non-fiction? These may all be well-done. Yet if I’m wanting to learn about a topic I’m not familiar with, I specifically seek out a textbook, as they're geared to teach the topic to non-specialists. They won’t go down a research rabbit hole. Specifically in ancient history, those “Companion to…” collections are great, as you get multiple experts weighing in on what they know the most about. And they're intended for interested readers but not specialists in that particular topic. Also they’re curated by an editor who IS a specialist, so you know the chosen authors are respected in the field.

When was it written?

If the publication date is 50 years ago, it’s been superseded. It might be out of date even if it’s 20 years ago—or 10. But newer is not necessarily better.

What press published it?

Princeton, Cambridge, Brill/DeGruyter, Berkeley, Peeters, Harvard, Chicago. Any would be a good sign. But the University of Oklahoma does not mean it’s a bad book. (Beth Carney’s important first monograph on Macedonian women came from UOk.) University presses can corner the market on a particular topic: Univ. of Nebraska does a LOT of native history. Also, it may not be a university press at all. Routledge is perfectly respectable, as are Bloomsbury and Penguin. For local histories or something niche, you may get publication by a historical society, not a major press at all. (I picked up a perfectly fine book about ghost stories in the city of Savannah done by the local historical society.) BUT IF IT’S SELF-PUBLISHED, that’s a big ol’ Red Flag.

Going a Little Deeper

Ask somebody you know, who IS a specialist in the field, if they’ve read the book and what they think

Depending on your personal circle, this may not be possible.

Find a review (or three)

I regularly teach my undergrads (and grad students) to look for reviews.

Look at the bibliography

Probably more important for academic books, but how long is the biblio? Yes, topics can have more or fewer publications, but it should go on for some pages. Also, is it all in just one language? Some fields may tend that way (much American history), but a well-done monograph in, say, Greek or Roman history should not be monolingual in the research.

Actually check (don’t ignore) footnotes

They tell stories. Again, this largely pertains to academic books, but you can find fun (and occasionally catty) scholarly quarrels in them. Very early in my reading on Alexander, I became fascinated by the back-and-forth in footnotes between the “Three Bs” (Badian, Borza, and Bosworth) plus Green and Hammond. BUT some red flags: 1) the author disproportionately citing themself, especially if it’s because 2) the author seems to have quarrels with a large number of colleagues. Maybe the author is just original! But sometimes that tells you their conclusions are questionable. Use your common sense.

Now, for a concrete example … as some of you know, I have American indigenous ancestry, specifically Peoria-Miami (Myaamia). While I know some things about our tribe, I’m far from an expert. On our Facebook page, one of the other members recently dropped mention of a series on the early history of Indiana, and the conflicts between settlers and natives during the French-Indian Wars—including St. Clare’s Defeat, effected by the Myaamia and led by Little Turtle (Mihshihkinaahkwa), the worst defeat [proportionally] ever suffered by American troops.

I thought, Oh, cool, maybe I should pick these up and read them in my “copious” spare time. E.g., probably years from now.

I followed the provided link, and immediately thought, This doesn’t look good. Page ran on forever, not well organized, and I had to hunt for info about the author. Although he was a retired schoolteacher, he didn’t seem to have any specific training in doing historical research; I don’t think he was even a history major in college (probably did education). Additionally, the book-covers and purchasing info made it clear all the books were self-published, and the provided text snippets contained grammar errors.

Yeah, I left that page bookless. Maybe the info in them was perfectly fine and he just couldn’t find a publisher who wanted creative non-fiction about an event most people have never heard of led by a chief with a name most can’t pronounce…. But I’m going to bet the research matched the grammar: slap-dash.

Now, that was a relatively easy one to figure out; I spent all of 10 minutes on the page. (And no, I’m not naming the author nor linking to the books, as this is an example, not an attempt to humiliate the person.) But it gives you some idea how I evaluate books in a field very far from my own specialty.

———————

* Although that said, they’re starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with new topics for Yet Another “Companion to….” Some I’ve seen would be better just sold as a collection on X topic, not “Companion to….”

#asks #how to judge a history book when you're not an expert in that topic #history #reading about history #historiography

[oraclekleo]

Kleo is a published author now!

Yes, you are reading it right.

Kleo's special journals are now available on Amazon!

(.com, .de, .co.uk,.fr and other mutations)

Isn't that just sweet?

Yes, it is.

I have made the design and Amazon will print the journal and send it to you. I will receive a small portion of the price. So if you want to both support me AND have a practical journal in your hands, you can go shopping. 😁

Let's see what you can order:

Tarot Journal - Daily Card Pull Tarot tracker for 365 (+1) days in a year, 7.44 inches x 9.69 inches

This is a journal where you can note down your daily one card pulls the whole year round. It's very simple, no beating around the bush, just a straightforward way to record your daily journey with tarot. It's got 365 + 1 (in case of 29-day long February) structured pages as seen above.

Check the journal out!

Daily Card Pull Tarot tracker for 365 (+1) days

The link will lead you to Amazon.com. If you order through Amazon.de or Amazon.co.uk or any other of the variation, check the list of links below!

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.de

Amazon.fr

Amazon.es

Amazon.it

Amazon.nl

Amazon.pl

Amazon.se

Amazon.jp

Amazon.ca

Amazon.com.au

@divinefeminine-card - I promised to let you know when the daily pull journal is out. I keep my promisses!

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Tarot Notebook, Tarot Journal, 120 pages, 6 inches x 9 inches

This is a 120 pages journal, smaller in size, even simpler for your notes regarding tarot readings. This was my first try. 😁

Check it out!

Tarot Notebook by Kleo

Again, you can find it available on all the Amazon variations of the site.

I'm not going to note them again here, if you need help finding the journal, just ask me, I have all the links. 😊

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Blank Recipe Book - Cookbook for Kitchen Witches, 121 Pages, A5 (5.8'' x 8.3'') format

One last item I have successfully published through Amazon KDP is a blank recipe cookbook for you to notedown all the kitchen witch recipes you can think of.

I'm personally an avid and enthusiastic cook and baker myself. I love to learn new recipes and amend them so they suit my taste better. However, I have one ugly habit - I don't cook by recipe and I never note down how exactly I have cooked or baked something. I follow my instincts and experience in the kitchen. Why is it an ugly habit? Because people naturally want to know how I did this or that when they like it and they ask me for a recipe and I'm like: 'Uhhh... *giving them a list of ingredients* and you kinda mix it together, you know... I don't follow recipes...' And leaves people frustrated... and confused...

Anyway! This is a nice notebook to start noting recipes down so when you are asked how exactly you baked that apple pie from blue glowing apples, you can show them the recipe in your kitchen witch notebook so they know what kind of poison is about to kill them in 5 minutes. LOL! Just joking... It usually takes about an hour to properly spread through the system... 😂

Cookbook for Kitchen Witches

Again, you can find it available on all the Amazon variations of the site.

I'm not going to note them again here, if you need help finding the journal, just ask me, I have all the links. 😊

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These are the three journals / notebooks I have published so far.

I hope at least one of you find any of them useful.

I'll probably order all of them myself, simply to check the quality so if you want, you can wait for them to be delivered to me so I can show you the actual real life photos.

Also!

Let me know if there's some other kind of journal you would love to see online but you weren't able to find one so far.

Tarot journal with affirmations? Some more spicy or kinky tarot journal? K-pop journal to note down the idol of the day or the song or MV of the day? I mean, the possibilities are truly endless and now when I know how to do this, I can literally make anything come true. Just like the unicorn I truly am in my heart. 🦄😂😂😂

Okay! Enough of my self-promotion!

Please check the journals out! Order if you like any of them! Be part of my dream coming true. 😊

Thank you all for staying around.

Kleo

#oracle kleo #tarot journal #tarot journey #tarot #tarotblr #tarot business #tarot cards #tarot notes #tarot blog #tarot beginner #tarot book #journaling #journal #notebook #kitchen witch #cooking #recipe #recipe book

[dreamcatcher-roulette]

Since I enjoy collecting things (big surprise) this year I've been working on collecting every Dreamcatcher music show performance in a quality that doesn't suck ass (aka not the seven pixels that YouTube compresses the official uploads down to). It went pretty well!

Pseudo research report under the cut (because I'm a massive nerd).

Scope

I started this project with the goal of collecting a full set of "music show performances". I didn't realise quite how ambiguous that definition is. After some deliberation I settled on the following as constituting "regular" performances:

Show Music Core

Inkigayo

The Show

Show Champion

M! Countdown

Music Bank

Simply K-Pop

Everything else I classified as misc. Most notably I left K-Force Special Show in the misc category despite there being quite a few performances on that show in the early days. This mostly came down to how I'm storing the files — I've organised the regular ones by era, but the K-Force Special Show performances frequently happened in between comebacks making them difficult to sort in that fashion. That and difficulties in ascertaining whether I do actually have all of them.

Methodology

The first step in collecting anything is finding out what you need to collect. I was surprised at how difficult it actually is to get a complete list of all of a group's music show performances. There are some fan sites which do a good job of presenting a lot of well categorised individual links to Dreamcatcher's appearances but I was hoping for something more "from the source" (aka the music shows themselves) and ideally machine readable to cross check that nothing is missing, since, for example, a collection of links to all official Inkigayo performance uploads is not a list of all Inkigayo performances (some never got official uploads). I ended up finding /r/kpop's music shows wiki fit my needs the most. The information is all in tables and sorted by music show and date which what I wanted.

Unfortunately, the main tables of /r/kpop's music show wikis only list debuts and comebacks, so I had to index and search all the individual pages to find what I was looking for. This involved spending a couple of afternoons opening up nearly 2,000 tabs of Reddit* and then downloading them using the SingleFile browser extension (Reddit rate limits you quite harshly and so I had to open a bunch of tabs, check they loaded, wait, and then repeat, which slowed it down a lot). While maybe a little overkill I did this for multiple reasons. Firstly, Reddit's search sucks, and I didn't trust it to find all instances of what I was looking for over so many pages. In contrast Everything's in-memory file content index beta is really good. But secondly, this is much more extensible, and now I can find any other group's performances as well (between 2017** and 2023).

*Reddit does not archive Simply K-Pop well at all (which caused some initial confusion), but the official Arirang website works fine as an alternative (albeit one that is somehow even slower than Reddit at opening new pages).

**Reddit's music show wiki pages start right before 2017. This is very convenient for a Dreamcatcher archivist, but, unfortunately for me, curiosity got the better of me and I did venture further out into the unknown. For 2014-2017 I have some scattered archives from various official websites, Twitter accounts, and Korean catch up services. I'm less confident in my music show data for this period in the general case but because the rough start and end dates for the two Minx promotion cycles are known I am confident enough that all the gaps I have in there are genuine gaps and that I'm not missing a performance date.

Once I had my wishlist I then had to go out and, you know, find them. And figure out what "best quality" actually means. I learned a lot about video encoding against my will. I also learned that HEVC is fucking haunted. When multiple sources were available I ranked them as follows:

2160p HEVC > 2160p h264 > 1080p HEVC (one weird edge case I didn't know what to do with) > 1080i h264 > 1080i MPEG2 > WEBDL (usually some kind of web livestream or online catch up service recording) > YouTube

Which I represented in my spreadsheet as:

This should be mostly uncontroversial, however, there is a slight complication in that the 4k broadcast copies are not all native 4k but often upscaled from the 1080 source (I can't find specifics on this as the information, if publicly accessible, would be in Korean, and there is only so much Google Translate can do, but the technical broadcasting details probably aren't public to the extend I am interested in regardless so I'm mostly basing this off information gleaned from secondary sources). As far as I can tell there exist two "grades" of upscales: one of which is upscaled by the network before being pushed out to a UHD channel, and one of which is upscaled by the end user by either recording a HD channel in 4k or running an existing recording through an upscaler. Traditionally upscales aren't very desirable due to providing no real material benefit you couldn't get from playing the 1080 copy on a 4k display yourself. Or, for people with an archival mindset like myself, because ones that actually look a bit crisper introduce "magic" pixels which may or may not have ever existed. See below for an example of this taken to the extreme (note the faces):

No one wants that, right? AND YET SOMEONE THOUGHT THAT WAS SUCH A BIG IMPROVEMENT THEY DELETED EVERYTHING ELSE, AND NOW IT REMAINS THE ONLY COPY I CAN FIND. Monsters!!! Anyway.

While upscales usually aren't desirable, I did come around to the idea that the network upscales deserve their place at the top of the list. There are a couple of points working in their favour: one is that they are, presumably, upscaled much more directly from the source, allowing them to avoid some of the data loss that being encoded into 1080i h264 and then upscaled would cause. The second is that quite a lot of them are encoded directly into HEVC, which makes the confetti and flashing lights look noticably smoother than the regular deinterlaced 1080i copies. Also, finally, as a touch of personal preference (especially in the case of 4k h264 where the second point doesn't apply), these do come pre-deinterlaced which is nicer for my chosen method of playback. Although some of those points apply to non network upscales too, the "impurity" of them far outweighs any benefit in my eyes, as I have more faith in whatever the network standard is than some random person on the internet trying to "fix" a file.

So how did I tell the difference? Also a frustratingly difficult problem, one which applies not just to spotting fake upscales but also to finding real TV recordings instead of lower quality catch up service clips. For the 1080 copies one of the biggest things was that the TV broadcast copies (unfortunately) always come through in 1080i. 1080p is suspicious. It means something has been touched (although sometimes in a way that is forgivable when nothing cleaner exists). File sizes are also a good sanity check. A single song in h264 should be in the 200-400MiB range, MPEG2 is 400MiB+. (For reference YouTube, and other inferior WEBDLs, usually come in at under 100MiB). This is a good reminder of why size does not always equal quality, because, in this scenario, worst to best is 100MiB < 450MiB < 250MiB.

On the 4k side: Music Bank, Show Music Core and Inkigayo are currently broadcast on UHD channels with a UHD variant of their channel names in the top right, which is a good indicator that something was recorded from a UHD source. (Although I've found 1080p copies recorded from UHD channels, so the presence of the logo doesn't mean no downscaling has occurred). Recent "4k" M! Countdown, Show Champion and The Show recordings, in comparison, appear identical in channel watermark to the 1080 copies. This and the fact that the only 4k copies I've found are from a source known to dabble in AI upscales means that I'm not going to trust these are genuine without further proof, and this was the main category of files which I decided against adding to my collection. (Note that The Show was in the past the only show that was broadcast in 4k, first on UMAX UHD and then on SBS F!L UHD, it is only recently that that seems to have stopped (or, no one has been recording it)). I paid less attention to the 4k file sizes than for 1080. 4k HEVC seems to come in pretty reliably at just under 1GiB, but 4k h264 is all over the place due to I think some differing quality profiles between uploaders (a range of 1GiB to nearly 3GiB). The latter is annoying because it means I can't figure out what the "true" recording should be, but I did develop an internal ranking of the trustworthiness of sources which was the tiebreaker when two differently sized 4k h264 recordings existed.

I prioritised collecting existing cuts where applicable (although many were not cut nearly as meticulously frame perfectly as I would like) but there were quite a few where I had to cut them out of full broadcast recordings myself. There were also instances where only the main performance was saved in 4k leaving interviews behind. In those cases I decided to keep the highest quality available for the bits in which it was and store the other segments separately.

Results

Alright, the fun stuff! I have successfully catalogued:

317 Dreamcatcher music show performances

34 Dreamcatcher miscellaneous appearances

46 Minx music show performances

16 Minx miscellaneous appearances

Those links go to mostly complete YouTube representations of what I found with exceptions listed in the descriptions of the playlists. You can also of course find a published version of my beautiful spreadsheet here. Finally, if you've made it this deep I would like to just quietly tell you I'm more than happy to share the originals, but please message me privately as I don't want to publicly host questionably copyrighted content on my good and morally upstanding posting images of dreamcatcher photobooks blog (for legal reasons the entire existence of this collection is a joke).

Honestly I'm pretty happy with the completeness of the collection after my first pass. The list of ones I would consider "missing" (aka not good enough quality) is:

It's almost all Simply K-Pop, which makes sense as it seems to not be archived with the same enthusiasm as the others. The missing M! Countdown, meanwhile, does kind of hurt, since it's ruining an otherwise perfect run. I'm out of ideas for now but am not going to give up on it forever, I have seen evidence that proper recordings exist, so I'm sure they have got to resurface eventually.

As can be seen in the breakdown for this section the percentage of MPEG2 recordings is also a pretty major victory, with the vast majority being h264:

For Minx things look a bit worse:

But then again I hadn't been expecting much to begin with. To be honest, watching all of these to check quality did drive me a little insane. There is a reason I don't own Love Shake and Why Did You Come To My Home, and it's not purely the irresponsible financial decision, it's the thought of spending that much money on something I actually really don't like. Watching Minx performances is amusing for a little while, but man, am I glad Dreamcatcher exists instead.

It's also evident that people were holding to completely different standards even just a few years earlier, as this is where all those MPEG2s in the overall numbers are hiding:

Future Work

While I'm confident I've successfully catalogued the "music show performances" as defined in the scope, I know there is still much more to be discovered under Misc Appearances, as those were filled in not via a predefined wish list but just by what other recordings I happened across in my search for the original goal. The obvious next step would to be a little more systematic about finding out what I'm missing in that category by scouring some Dreamcatcher specific archives, but because I've already exhausted the full collections of my two main sources of recordings I'm not confident I would uncover many more performances outside of YouTube in that way, which isn't really that appealing.

I'm probably more likely going to do something about my performance outfit images collection which has been slowly but steadily increasing over the years. I'd like to put them into a proper searchable database alongside performance dates, which would have a similar effect of cataloguing the missing performances, but with the visual element that the spreadsheet lacks.

But then again, I also might not :)

#not roulette