Latest Posts by literature-and-screaming-blog - Page 6
i saw the women one and i have another idea
also bonus points if you tell me what song đ
reblog to teleport your mutuals to a massive party when jkr dies
HOW TO DO NEOGRAPHY WELL
Step 1: Base lines.
Aka guidelines. Just do an unfilled rectangle and stack it on itself twice.
Step 2: Basic calligraphy
Choose your brush. Different brush shapes have different dynamics, and different dynamics will wield different results on paper.
Best experienced on actual paper, for digital programs cannot give you the exact right feel of drag when you try to do wrong strokes. Usually, if you write by hand on paper, and it's feeling effortless, then you're doing it right.
Cheat sheet for brush tips of different kinds:
Step 3: The execution
You might want to try asemic writing at first, or take inspiration from other writing systems that already exist. Know that it is nigh impossible to create something that never existed before, for your writing system will always bear similarity to at least a dozen others.
There are multiple methods of making scripts,
Engineered
You set up a goal and plan things up before setting up the canons. Usually used for featural scripts.
Post-asemic
Make an asemic array of symbols and assign them Latin equivalents.
Monogramic
Make a monogram - some complex symbol with lots of strokes - and break it into lesser shapes erasing some of the original strokes. Similar to the Combinatorics method. Example below:
Combinatoric
Make particles, combine in different ways. See below:
Natural evolution simulation
Following the pipeline "pictogram" -> "letter". As seen below:
Other useful tips:
Omniglot.com: go there and take a look at how many writing systems are there in the world. This site stores lots of conscripts as well, and you can submit yours if you want to!
r/neography is a huge subreddit that has everything about neography (aka the art of creating new writing systems).
Learn about what kinds of writing systems there are. Basically they are categorized by how much information a symbol carries. It could be one sound, a syllable, or whole words. Though there are nuances, explained on r/neography's wiki, by the way.
Practice. Doodle a lot. You will get the grip of it eventually.
There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. The middle is between M and N, as M is letter #13. If you include numerals, that's 36 symbols. If you include punctuation, that's about 48 symbols depending on how much punctuation you want.
I have a sideblog called @thecrazyneographist meant just for neography, and all the scripts posted there are free to use per request!
Have fun :D
looking for fics about your favorite character on ao3 be like:
dont care
dont care
dont care
what the actual fuck
dont care
ooh that sounds- what the fuck
unfinished
don't care
the best fic ive ever read in my life. this absolutely ruined me and ill never be the same ever again
dont care
I've made a new conlang Grambank entry for Trigedasleng! Jessie Peterson created a Google Sheets spreadsheet that conlangers can copy and fill out in order to share their work. I did one previously on High Valyrian, and now the Trigedasleng one is finished.. This won't tell you everything about the language, but it'll tell you a LOT in a very small space. If you'd like to do something like this for your conlang, the blank one can be found here.
My 11th graders canât do either.
Reblog with your age and location in the tags if you want.
Reblog to bonk your mutuals on the head every time they start thinking negatively about themselves
masks and helmets that hides someone's face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved
these are all creatures to me
People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually âaboutâ Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielpostingâit was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.
The two biggest Youtubers Iâve seen try to dissect âwhat happened that November 5thâ in video essays both werenât Americanâ- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting pointsâ I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that âoh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldnât be canonâ or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.
But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a âpositive â piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.
The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblrâs userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.
This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trumpâs presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between âcentrist democratâ and âapocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,â in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improveâ and it seemed like a close election.
Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriouslyâ so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the leadâ only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.
So youâre just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if youâre going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and thereâs more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despairâ-
And then itâs been days and weâre right at the crucial tipping point where itâs anyoneâs game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire lifeâ
And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!
If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldnât have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.
The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says âI love youâ and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.
Itâs about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosisâ it couldâve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)
I think itâs true that people who werenât paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons â but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.
I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial âtipping pointâ of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.
The tl,dr is that itâs so important to Remember the Fifth of November âŠ..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally Iâm rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win
Fun fact I never got to share on stream: Tucker Carlson's most recent book did not make the NYT bestseller list. Do you know what book beat it out? Baking Yesteryear by that tiktok cooking twink.
........hey
If you're fifteen or older an still sleep with a stuffed animal please reblog this.
Getting called out by mine own girlfriend :( nothing is safe anymore so sad
My partner is such a Nerd they're literally looking through pretty magic cards, just the land though
if you are a dungeon master (or even a fantasy author/worldbuilder of any kind) and you donât know about donjon let me make your life a million times easier
want to make a fantasy calendar with your own year-lengths, weeks, months, and lunar cycles? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/calendar/
need to come up with some medieval town demographics? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/demographics/
want to make a map and layout of a city/town? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/town/
want a fleshed-out tavern complete with menu, innkeeper, patrons, rumors, and secrets? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/inn/
leading your players through a dungeon and want to customize the size, treasure, layout, theme, etc? https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/
tired of creating lists of magic items for different shops to sell, or hoards to be looted? https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/magic/shop.html and https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/treasure/
even a customizable initiative tracker! https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/initiative/
and thatâs only scratching the surface! I really recommend all dms check this out. oh, and itâs completely free!
Dumb NPC ideas to use when your players decide to explore that town you didn't prepare anything for
A scholar that is clearly lost, however you're not sure how he is someone important at all. It even looks like he's glad that he didn't manage to arrive at the event on time.
An old lady (of a race that has a long lifespan), that knows a little way to much about the party's adventure... She doesn't spends much time talking about it though, do you want to buy her pots?
A kid. Just a kid. Make them annoying.
A knight that is very proud about their job and duty, but they just want their shift to end so they can go home to their wife.
A merchant that has a cart in the middle of the fair, however everytime the party goes to another shop or stand he pops up from behind the counter. Turns out the town doesn't receive many merchants so he has to supply all of their needs. He's stressed.
A teen dragon that discovered how to transform into a human, problem is they definitely look 30 but they still are just a teenager, and a moody one.
A shop owner that fucking hates commerce. She's in it because of her family, so she tries to sell the goodies pratically for free and she really wants you to take all of her items. The catch? It's a feather shop. Not magic feathers, not pens, just normal feathers. Probably from a bird that died that morning.
A janitor from a library or big shop that is just too aware of everything. Like, they point out the players class or race without barely batting an eye. They comment on how they "had never seen a chaotic good one in real life". And indirectly disses the players choices they made 2 sessions ago? (Basically a character for the dm to rant a little while not completely breaking the 4th wall)
A woman in her mid-40s (or the equivalent) that is just really excited to meet the party? Her dream was to be an adventurer when she was little so she is definitely asking some weird questions.
A blacksmith that makes weapons purely for the aesthetic. He really doesn't care if it's functional or not, he's just doing cause it looks cool.
A bard that got kicked out of their band or caravan. At first you don't know why but after their 3rd performance of a one-person musical you get it. He wants to stick with the party though. Good luck.
A doggie!! It's cute!! And fluffy!! And it talks!! And it talks? A DOG THAT TALKS!!!!
The most ripped person the party has ever met, they have tons of skulls of big animals on their shoulder. They polish them. They hang them on a wall and start to take notes. They are an archeologist.
A magician that is really not magic at all, he's just so good at card tricks that the town thinks he's a sorcerer. He's freaking out.
A girl that is immune to all kinds of poison, however that is making a little bit hard for her to pursue her cooking career. Apparently poison ivy is not a good seasoning for most people.
An artist that is just really calm and friendly but everyone's afraid of them. The party has no idea why.
Hey all, This is my first Tumblr post ever! I'm pretty new here, but I'm hoping to share some DM techniques, tools and tips and to make some new friends as well! Feel free to send a chat request (an ask[?]) if you're interested!
With that aside, on with the post!
Better and More Meaningful Random Encounters!
Random encounters are a staple of DnD, they are expected to be there during exploration as a way to make the world feel alive, to have it have an aura of adventure and danger, to eat up party resources and put pressure on the PCs to make interesting and important choices, and also as a way for a DM to reasonably 'stall' the party with a quick and easy situation.
Usually, it ends up something like this:
There's just one problem with most random encounter tables though, it's so easy for them to be GOSHDARN BORING! Especially for a newer DM.
Making them interesting becomes gambled improv on the DM's part if they're not used to it, and it's hard to keep track of the important factors that need to be kept in mind
Luckily, I ended up finding a great source for random encounters from 'Dungeon Masterpiece' on YouTube, and I integrated it into my own DMing. I figured that I'd share it here for any that want to work it into their own sessions as well!
After adjustment, a single table can account for multiple entire sessions of in-depth worldbuilding and fun without getting dull!
Sources:
Source 1 (Creating interesting Random Encounter Tables):
Source 2 (Making Random Encounters reflect your Worldbuilding):
There's 4 major methods we can use to improve the Random Encounter table
1. Make the table a straight 1dx roll.
2. Adding 'depth'.
3. Adding meaningful encounters.
4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling.
You can also check out the "Where to Start?" section for some direction to make getting it down and prepped all easy peasy!
1. Straight Roll:
Its enticing to go for 2d6 or the such in order to add non-linearity to the rolls, but these sorts of adjustments only end up making one or two encounters extremely likely and leave all others in the dust, it often ends up defeating it's own purpose of interesting randomness.
In the previous example, it was extremely likely to only get Wolves, Barbarians, Orcs, or Spiders, from a table of 12! A straight roll would serve us much better. The rare rolls are already rare enough as is!
Simply enough, adjusting the original example by replacing the 2d6 with 1d12, it'd become something more like this:
#2. Adding Depth:
We can add more columns in the encounter tables. These columns will represent different aspects about the encounters that we can roll on separately!
Usually it can be difficult as a DM to naturally come up with motives for the encounters, showcase the worldbuilding and have it all come together.
This setup can give you a solid guideline on how the creatures/people think (if any), and also sets up the overall area so that you get an idea of what events tend to occur there as a result of its occupants.Â
We want to add 3 more columns to the tables to convey different aspects of the encounter. Fill in these new columns corresponding to the expectations of each encounter.
We'll roll each of these and combine them, then we'll interpret them to make a robust, in-depth random encounter with truly unexpected results!
I recommend rolling alot of complete encounters at once and interpreting the context to the vast general area the party is travelling in.
i. Behaviour: How the creatures act. Are they friendly, scared, aggressive, curious, mischievous?
ii. Complication: Something behind the scenes in the encounter. Do they have sick young? Broken equipment? Are they starving?
iii. Significant Impact: This is a tick box, and will only be present under ONE of the rows. It will be rolled like the other columns, but ONLY once. It signifies which encounter is the Significant Encounter
The Significant Encounter will have its encounter's presence prominent amongst all the other random encounters in the area. There could be burn marks and carcasses from a rampant dragon, or a goblin raid leaving tracks moving through the area. Which is the most impactful of the different encounters?
Adding this to our previous example would expand it to:
Rolling this would give us things like:
Significant encounter: Owlbears
Note that the significant impact shows that the Owlbears are a massive problem in the area. Perhaps the Owlbears are agitated for an unknown reason, and are unnecessarily aggressive.
The significance of Owlbears gives us context to the second one as well! Perhaps the hunters raided an Owlbear den, and adopted an Owlbear cub from there as well.
There could be uneaten carcasses, ravaged trees, less wildlife, etc around these parts.
Note how much sheer CONTEXT these columns add to our encounters. It's invaluable!
3. Adding Meaningful Encounters
Usually random encounters tend to be rather mundane and very one-note.
There's usually some general wildlife and monsters, different disparate factions without any rhyme or reason, and maybe a general non-combat encounter or two, but these don't really tell us about the area or its surroundings at all by themselves.
Instead, we can add in wildlife and monster encounters specific to the biome, non-combat encounters, and encounters of nearby factions and/or settlements to the table, and we can even add environmental encounters in there as well.
Note that we're not tied down to 12 encounters, and can expand it ad infinitum according to our need of diversity in our encounters.
Just add in specification and connection, and suddenly the dominos all fall into place.
Lastly, we'll also be adding in 'DOUBLE TIME' which will let us roll on everything twice, and make it so it's a double encounter!
Thus, the table can instead be adjusted to:
Note how each and everything has its relation in one way or another, but through the sheer variance, they remain truly random and novel.
4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling
Lastly and this is just something that I do, but that I found gamechanging. Be sure to pre-roll 5-7 encounters for each session, for the general area the players are going to be headed in.
Note that you don't need to really prep anything at all, just interpret all of them on a surface level as a buffer.
Also note that you don't need to use all of them if they're not needed. The foreshadowing and signs are worldbuilding and having secrets that the players don't unravel is just as useful as the ones that they do, perhaps even moreso. It adds depth and detail beyond the scope of what the party will encounter
It simply let's you get an idea of the connections between encounters, allows for foreshadowing, and acts as a deterrent to getting caught off guard.
Even if you roll mid-session, I recommend calling for a 5 minute break, rolling 5-7 encounters at the same time and interpreting them and their connections before resuming the session.
It WILL make a difference, trust me
Where to start?
It can be difficult getting inspiration or direction to get started in creating these random encounters, and sometimes you don't want to go through the hassle of thinking them up from nothing
For some great conceptual headstarts and examples for these tables, you can check out 'Worlds Without Number' and it's:
- Page 205 (Great general templates for encounters differentiated by broad creature types such as Beasts and Monsters, Sapient Monsters, and Humans)
- Pages 206-219 (For inspired locations to occasionally run rare encounters or groups of encounters in. This works best with flexible/discovered worldbuilding given the significance of some of these, and you also want to add these in sparingly to keep them significant)
- Pages 246-247 (These pages have great templates for the kinds of encounters and situation to be included in the tables, and it can be expanded vastly, and certain options can be selectively and repeatedly chosen to meet our needs. Mood works well as a complication.)
There might be other pages that are useful as well for these sorts of random encounters in the wilderness that I haven't come across yet. If so, give them a shout out and I'll be sure to add them in. It's worth checking it out in its entirety for some great tips!
Conclusion
Again, credit goes to Dungeon Masterpiece and Worlds Without Number for excellent adjustments. This has been quite long, but I hope you stuck around till the end.
Many a session have been made easy but complex ever since this was introduced and I hope that this helps you out as much as it helped me in my prep and improv!
Feel free to give any advice in formatting on Tumblr, or any feedback on the post itself. It really means a lot to me, thanks!
Aight gonna out myself but why the fuck doesn't wotc have any easy way to order magic cards from Canada? every official retailer on their site either doesn't go to Canada or has the most limited bs options that cost so much more than they should accounting for exchange rates. There's one store near where I live but I don't have a car and I hate trying to deal with game store dudes I'm just miserable :(
Your personal triggers and squicks do not get to determine what kind of art other people make.
People make shit. It's what we do. We make shit to explore, to inspire, to explain, to understand, but also to cope, to process, to educate, to warn, to go, "hey, wouldn't that be fucked up? Wild, right?"
Yes, sure, there are things that should be handled with care if they are used at all. But plenty more things are subjective. Some things are just not going to be to your tastes. So go find something that is to your tastes and stop worrying so much about what other people are doing and trying to dictate universal moral precepts about art based on your personal triggers and squicks.
I find possession stories super fucking triggering if I encounter them without warning, especially if they function as a sexual abuse metaphor. I'm not over here campaigning for every horror artist to stop writing possession stories because they make me feel shaky and dissociated. I just check Does The Dog Die before watching certain genres, and I have my husband or roommate preview anything I think might upset me so they can give me more detail. And if I genuinely don't think I can't handle it, I don't watch it. It's that simple.
Grace Chasity and Max Jaegerman are what Harley Quinn and the Joker wish they could be
max wanting to cuddle for a bit makes me to think, maybe he could be a little into her actually. like i think they could be a fun murder couple who are slightly toxic but also are ride-or-die.
No one is fuck8kg talking about Joey's low register at the end of cool as I think I am reprise, that shit took my breath away
@baristabastard
my main requirement in a partner is someone who's willing to "yes, and" me. if i say something completely insane i need them to just pick that up and run with it and commit to the bit until we wind up with a conversation that's funny to us but completely incoherent to everyone within earshot. actually now that i'm typing this out i've realised my ideal relationship might just be "shitty improv comedy duo"
reblog to give warm bread to your mutuals
the notes are broken đ
If I could blaze this picture of my cat I would
fun things to do in hyrule:
- pull the four sword from its pedestal
- kick the corpse underneath hyrule castle
- steal the spiritual stones and open the door of time and just leave it like that
- steal that funny heart-shaped mask from that creepy mask salesman and put it on
- dig underneath death mountain
- durability test: triforce pieces
- bottle a bunch of malice or gloom or whatever and start dumping it on the master sword
- enter a dungeon, get a small key, and just leave and never come back
- become a castle chef and sneak a secret stone into a royal meal
- explain the concept of a gun or a thermonuclear bomb to an ancient shiekah researcher
- challenge the hero to find a thousand stupid trinkets hidden across all of hyrule, but only actually hide like a hundred and watch him go insane
In general I believe in the supernatural but I still approach things with a healthy degree of skepticism. However if you tell me you saw something paranormal at sea I will 100% believe you no matter what. If someone tells me they saw ghosts on land I would need some proof before Iâm onboard but if someone tells me they saw ghosts in the ocean Iâd be like yeah man we all do
I made Gary (my gecko) a tiny Tallis and yarmulke for Rosh Hashanah and he wished u all happy new year
the âpleasure to have in classâ to overly active tumblr user pipeline
Kopikon is coming!!! Kopikon is a conlang conference to be held at Georgetown University on September 23rd, 2023. It's a live in person event, but I'm now happy to report WE WILL BE LIVE STREAMING! The link above is your live stream link! Save it, and come check it out on September 23rd! The schedule is below:
10:00 a.m. Opening remarks by Jessie & David
10:15 a.m. Sally Caves
10:45 a.m. Carl Buck
11:15 a.m. Break (20 minutes)
11:35 a.m. Sylvia Sotomayor
12:00 p.m. David Peterson
12:30 p.m. Lunch (90 minutes)
2:00 p.m. Paul Frommer
2:30 p.m. John Quijada
3:15 p.m. Break (30 minutes)
3:45 p.m. Music (Jillian and Andrew Aversa)
4:15 p.m. Jessie Sams
4:45 p.m. Break (15 minutes)
5:00 p.m. Biblaridion
5:45 p.m. Marc Okrand
6:30 p.m. Closing remarks by David & Jessie
Thanks for your patience! We look forward to you tuning in!
Oh my goodness it blocked out so well! Leaves, leaves everywhere. :-D
(Mallorn Shawl, in Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud Fingering, Daisy colorway)
The pattern has the option to work a number of repeats to give a half-circle, or a crescent. I went for the crescent and highly recommend it: this thing stays put on my shoulders better than any shawl I have yet made.