here's a lil comic of my skk little prince au i made a while back to greet you all :)) I hope your new year wishes come to fruition and that your year would be a blessed one <3
Please avoid using long strings of characters as line breaks in your writing - these are not screen reader/TTS friendly!
Every ‘°’ will be read as ‘degree’ - can you imagine how long it takes to read out a string of 25? Let alone more complicated combinations of characters (eg. imagine listening to TTS read out ~*~ |°| ~*~ multiple times per line break)?
A good rule of thumb is to stick with short, 2-3 character line breaks (eg. I don’t find — or *** too egregious to listen to). Your readers can tell there’s been a scene change whether you use two or twenty em-dashes, but if you use twenty, some of us might have to listen for 30 seconds to read the next scene. If you’re more concerned about aesthetics, you can insert an image of your aesthetically pleasing line break with alt text simply reading ‘line break’ for accessibility.
Don’t feel bad if this is something you’ve never thought about before - now you know better and can make your writing more accessible moving forward!
I would like to invite any other screenreader users to add their own thoughts or preferences to this post. We’re not a monolith and there’s a variety to how different softwares interact with repeating character strings and images with alt text, so there’s bound to be some conflicting opinions on what I’ve suggested above. Let’s try to make the stories we share accessible for everyone :]
(Op also has a black cat named Yang Bubai/杨步百; "Bubai" is also a homophone for "Not white". When put with the surname in the western order, the name is a homophone for 不白养/Bubai yang ("Not raising for free/for nothing");
"Bumo" is a homophone for "not black/inky")
My art, The World at Its Beginning (Dustin Pearson), The Tyrant's Tomb (Rick Riordan), The Fall of the House of Usher (Steven Berkoff), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Leto and her Children (William Henry Rinehart), The Moon Had No Light of its Own (Imaginary Future), My Love Mine All Mine (Mitski), Untitled (Lyra Wren), The Tyrant's Tomb (Rick Riordan), Electra (Sophocles), To Forgive (The Smashing Pumpkins), Unknown, The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), The Sun is Also a Star (Nicola Yoon), Doomed From the Beginning (@/veniennes on tiktok), On learning to write professionally (Interview with Jazmine Hughes by The Creative Independent), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), My art
Saw some people were doing a Varian week? Didn’t even know about it ‘til day two so I’m playing catch up (working on day three atm) but I wanted to join in— hence why this is a little rushed (and has horribly off centre writing!)
its really fitting that bad's last good day was surrounded by dapper, pomme, richas, tallulah, and empanada.
dapper, his reason for living. bad loves dapper, wholehearted and unconditional, because he knows no one else will. and in return, dapper will be bad's sun: his bright, guiding light, the one that burns too quickly.
pomme, his adopted daughter. someone who chose him, for no other reason than love. who else will prepare his medicine or wait out his memory lapses? he raised her to be a soldier, and she will protect him, just as he did for her.
richas, the kid that's not his, but it's never really mattered anyway. richas has a family that's forever in the jaws of the federation, but his tio is always there for him when nights get too long. always.
tallulah, the first egg he became a regular caretaker for. he gave her support and guidance in her early days, when she needed it most. and whenever she comes back to him, older and changed, he still will always listen.
and em, who's only known bad as he's dying. who knows him as her favorite uncle, gentle with her despite any purgatory stories she may hear. she has spent the least amount of time with him, yet is desperate to make every remaining minute count. for now, all she can do is gift a flower, take a photo, and trust that he will return to them.