Zagaroth

@Zagaroth@beehaw.org

Electronics Technician, geek, happily married, and an aspiring author. Come check out my serial, “No Need For A Core?”

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Zagaroth,

Normally I err on the side of ‘art’ being separated from actual pictures/recordings of abuse. It falls under the “I don’t like what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it” idea.

Photorealistic images of CP? I think that crosses the line, and needs to be treated as if it was actual CP as it essentially enables real CP to proliferate.

Zagaroth,

The issue here is that it enables those who would make the actual CP to hide their work easier in the flood of generated content.

Animesque art is one thing, photorealistic is another. Neither actually harms an underaged person by existing, but photorealistic enables actual abusers to hide themselves easily. So IMO, photorealistic ‘art’ of this sort needs to be criminalized so that it can not be used as a mask for actual CP.

Zagaroth,

I wish I knew what to tell you. I am on Chrome with uBlock Origin, and I don’t see YouTube ads. I’m logged into both Chrome and Google/YouTube

Zagaroth,

I think it’s a good thing for me that I don’t start from the flesh-out story end. I start out with 1+ characters and a scenario. Everything builds from there as I write. I don’t know where it’s going, so I don’t feel as much pressure to get there.

That, and I am writing a Serial over on Royal Road, and have a handful of Patreons. This applies just enough ‘expectations’ pressure to help push me forward when I would otherwise slack more. :)

Zagaroth,

Doing Okay. I’ve gotten through my hyperfocus on leveling a new-to-me class in Final Fantasy XIV, so I am able to pull my brain back to writing more. I want to get two more chapters up on my Patreon before my next public chapter is released on Thursday.

Zagaroth,

Well, for the story itself, it might just be easiest to quote my blurb:

An ancient, dreadfully powerful dungeon core that had once been sealed away to slowly fade into oblivion is revived by a chance encounter, though in a much-reduced state.

A temple monk on her way home for a vacation is distracted into exploring a newly born dungeon due to the cuteness of its rabbit monsters, leading to an entirely unexpected chain of events.

A kitsune whose death caused a goddess to pity her fate and revive her as a reincarnated dungeon.

These three quickly form bonds of necessity and convenience, but then have to navigate a complex relationship and build their own rules to live by.

And for my particular world-building, Living Dungeons have avatars, which is very important to the core story.

I’m writing over on Royal Road (And cross-posting to Ream right now, I may add scribblehub), so each chapter is being published on the website. This is not a direct income maker, the website is free, but Patreon for early chapters is getting me a small monthly amount and there is the possibility of getting a deal with something like Amazon Unlimited (I would prefer to avoid that specific publisher, but we will see what the future holds).

Anyway, I got drawn to RR thanks to a Reddit serial that linked there, and that was my introduction to the Living Dungeon concept. And after a few months of reading various stories on Royal Road, I felt the itch to write my own. :) I had at one point been intending for it to also be a trope-subverting ‘harem’ story where everyone had good cause to be involved in the relationship and were well-fleshed-out people, but the core relationship stabilized at a triad, and I dropped the harem idea. I would have had to force it in, it no longer fit.

Bonus though: That meant I got to drop the age of one of the future characters, which felt better for her general concept, and that in turn generated the opportunity to touch on another aspect of the world that I hadn’t had reason to describe yet. And I get to have another woman get involved in a romance with interesting dynamics, though I am not quite there yet.

And I might as well link it:

www.royalroad.com/fiction/…/no-need-for-a-core

I also have several more ideas waiting in the wings, but I am trying to get my backlog a bit more robust before I divert some of my attention to building those up.

Zagaroth,

From the same character’s speech (as opposed to switching talkers)? Well, supposedly that’s against the rules, but it generally feels better to insert a bit of minor movement anyway :)

Zagaroth,

The views are cumulative across all chapters, so 1k readers x 100 chapters would be 100k views, before getting into things like my editor-in-wife and I revisiting pages as we slowly clean up my early chapters.

But overall, I do feel very good about my story, and most of my other story ideas take place in the same world (if mostly on different continents), so each time I work on any of these ideas, I am fleshing out the world as a whole.

Zagaroth,

facepalm

Well, we have a horror movie intro right in the article.

Mi first realized that the experiment had been successful when he saw the silkworm’s eyes turning red under the microscope.

Zagaroth,

Allow me to introduce my wife’s ice cream recipe. Obviously, your base is going to be different, but I’ll post the whole recipe here to make sure I don’t miss anything.

Strawberry Ice Cream with Lemon and Mint Note: This is more than one batch worth of ice cream (approximately 1 ½ batch for the size ice cream maker I have at home). Fill your ice cream maker to the level recommended by your machine’s instructions. Don’t worry about your mix sitting in the fridge while waiting for your bowl to re-freeze, it just allows the flavors to meld more. Don’t worry about the berries getting too soft. It is ice cream, they will be slightly more firm than everything else, no matter how long it sits. Since my household likes lemon and mint, the below listed amounts are minimum, we tend to use more. Once your ice cream is ready, it finishes beautifully with a bit of huckleberry balsamic vinegar poured over the top when served.

Ingredients: Approximately 32 ounces by volume of fresh strawberries, washed and stems removed
3 tablespoons of lemon juice, more if lower quality(or to taste)
1 cup sugar, divided (into 0.25 cup and 0.75 cup)
1.5 cup heavy cream
0.5 cup whole milk
2 tablespoon fresh mint, minced (or to taste)
Pinch salt
3 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
approximately 1 lemon’s worth of zest, finely grated (or to taste)

Directions:

  1. In mixing bowl, blend approximately half the strawberries with a stick blender. Chop remaining strawberries (to slightly larger than chocolate chip, so that it does not clog the ice cream machine) and add to same mixing bowl. Add 0.25 cup sugar and lemon juice. Stir together. Set aside in fridge for at least an hour to macerate.
  1. In a small saucepan, warm the dairy, 0.75 cup sugar, salt and mint. Warm the milk mixture, whisking to incorporate flavors.
  1. Whisk egg yolks together with vanilla extract; then temper: when the milk mixture is warm, slowly spoon into the egg yolks, whisking to keep from cooking eggs. Repeat several times until eggs and milk mixture are approximately the same temperature, then whisk yolks into the mixture. On medium to medium-low heat, thicken mixture until it coats the back of a spoon. Let cool.
  1. Combine milk mixture with strawberry mixture and lemon zest and mix well. Chill in fridge until cold enough for your ice cream maker (at least an hour).
  1. Pour into ice cream maker and follow manufacturer instructions.
  1. Serve immediately for soft serve, or place in Freezer for firmer texture.

(extremely loosely based off of “Strawberry Ice Cream Like Ben and Jerry’s”, and “Homemade Ice Cream: Perfect Custard Base”)

Zagaroth,

Nuclear Radiation almost killing people is probably the most problematic, there will be all sorts of long-term damage.

The sci-fi disease at least has the exact properties you want it to have, and the Alien Creature option simply gives you physical damage which comes in your choice of severity. I’d lean toward that over all, but it really depends on what fits the story best.

And might I recommend Royal Road as one of your publishing platforms? Pure fantasy tends to do better than Sci-fi, but at least it is a point of traction. I know a lot of people post across multiple platforms.

Zagaroth,

I have three MCs in my current work. One of them has two bits of art, one of which is the cover art I am using on Royal Road.

royalroadcdn.com/…/57517-no-need-for-a-core.jpg

My other art is on Night Cafe:

…nightcafe.studio/…/KPK3NDl5Jc3N7evZ5b1K--1--928g…

…nightcafe.studio/…/DEE7CrQ6xXndVy4MZmOq--1--co4m…

…nightcafe.studio/…/k9TMQToJO5PDWpRJGuXi--1--qkrz…

All of these are AI art, including the cover art (which was done and edited by someone else for me).

I consider these placeholders until such a time as I get properly commissioned art, but that costs money that I do not have.

What do you do when trying to describe something very specific?

Many times when writing, I get a very specific image in my head of the way I want something to look, or the way I want something to move. Particularly with actions where objects are moving in a very specific way, I want to describe them accurately so that most readers would see the same thing that I’m seeing in my head. The...

Zagaroth,

Outside of combat, I have very little that needs to be described in that much detail. I do have one specific mechanism in my Living Dungeon story that I felt needed that level of detail, and the description went through a few edits to fine-tune it to communicate the idea accurately but keep the writing clean enough to not be jarring to the reader. I am fortunate enough to be able to get some feedback to help me in that process. I felt that this mechanism needed to be accurate because it is relevant at several points in the story.

The less relevant it is to story beats, the less I am worried about specific details. I have a second mechanism involving large colored, glowing crystals in a ceiling. I described the basic layout and the colors, because they were relevant to events in that room, I did not describe the shape of the crystals, because it doesn’t matter.

In combat, how much detail I go into depends on the fight. Less important/low-stakes fights get more of an overview. A duel or spar with setup and some emotional charge? I am getting down to blow-by-blow, especially if I want to show the progression of a character’s skill or power, and when getting that detailed I often need to specify which hand a person is using to do what, so that I can line up the action properly.

A right-handed person has a shield in her left hand, and therefore deflects a creature’s charge to her left, and is thus spinning left to slash her axe across the back of its leg. I could have described it as her spinning counter-clockwise, which would be more technically accurate but would pull the reader out of the story more to think about. ‘spinning left’ suffices.

So, I would mostly just try to be sure that it needs to be described in detail.

Zagaroth,

Bingo, you’ve described my experience exactly. My computer is almost never off.

Zagaroth,

If it wasn’t usually running something and was idling, it would be more so. But generally speaking, I have something occupying it.

Zagaroth,

shrug I play mostly single-player RPGs and similarly story-heavy games, so while the mechanics are different and the graphics much prettier, the structure is the same as it's been for the past 30+ years: Follow the story to get anywhere, or just wander around in your current area if you want to grind.

Zagaroth,

Well, that's all the more reason to not try to monetize through Amazon. But Patreons seem to only be about 0.5% of the people who Follow a story on Royal Road. Well, I'll have to keep working on more incentives I guess.

Zagaroth,

Assuming you mean the sub-genres popular on Royal Road, sufficient Patreon support helps keep authors off of Amazon.

But that gets expensive fast if you support multiple authors, so that's hard to do too.

Zagaroth,

Seconding Royal Road.

Fair disclaimer: I am an author on there. :) Stories are free (generally), but lots of authors have Patreons going.

Zagaroth,

I tried DuckDuckGo for quite a while, but I consistently failed to find things that I knew existed, so would switch back to Google anyway.

example: I am publishing a serial over on Royal Road, and one of the things an author there with any amount of traction does is search for links and possibly re-hosts of their materials. Links are fine, but re-hosts are obviously a no-go and you want to report sites that do that and/or take other measures. Google would find sites tracking and linking when I searched, but DuckDuckGo did not find any of them.

Heck, DDG didn't even find most of the tech sites that my title happens to overlap phrases with. ("No Need For A Core?" manages to trip over conversations with server cores, which is hilarious for a high magic fantasy series). I just can't trust that it finds enough stuff.

Zagaroth,

technically any MMO (or other RPG) that lets you build a female character, but I would say FFXIV as there are a lot of interesting female secondary protags.

Hmm, by that standard, Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous both qualify, though opinions on the NPC companions vary.

Nier: Automata

Immortals: Fenyx Rising

A couple of the Star Ocean games let you choose between a Male or Female protag.

Zagaroth,

Meh, my wife and I are 48 and are both playing the same JRPG phone game (Another Eden. It's a Gatcha, but plays more like a traditional single-player JRPG). And she loves to watch me play FFXIV and other story-heavy games that she has trouble playing herself. And we are in a D&D game Saturday nights.

So I wouldn't worry about it too much, you just gotta find the right woman.

#2 Weekly Bad Writing Prompts, Xx_The Worsening_xX

What's crackalacking! Yeah, I'm actually sticking to this, since it seems like a lot of people had a lot of fun with it last week, and I'm still having fun forcing my horrible ideas onto the unsuspecting populace of beehaw. And then you lot, entirely forgetting the point of all this take the bad ideas and actually make them...

Zagaroth,

Elves… As wise as they are old. And of course they all old, right? I mean, it’d be unthinkable for the wandering Elf spouting wisdom of the ancients for the low low price of $699.99 (plus gratuity) to not be old. R-Right?

points at my wife's Pathfinder character, a 16-year-old kitsune pretending to be a 116-year-old elf girl

Check it out! Fashion revolution, new styles and the hottest new designs to wear in the post-apocalypse world!

So, Post-apocalypse JoJo's Bizarre Adventures?

A deep intrigue story filled with deep plots where everyone has their own interests. It’s for a baking competition.

But we already have The Great British Bake Off. ;P

Zagaroth,

I love his books, and I have 110% stolen the name "Bionanonics" for use with a sci-fi character in RP forums, and if I ever write a sci-fi story I am going to probably use it there too. I am currently wrapped up in writing a fantasy serial instead though, so no idea if that will ever happen.

I have not read Light Chaser though. I should look that up.

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