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︶︶ ➴✦OTHERWORLDLY✦.ᐟ ︵︵

@starmonsterrr / starmonsterrr.tumblr.com

names ; io 、aurum 、eureka ✦ it 〳 its ✦ UTMV fanartist intro poststrawpage
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Anonymous asked:

Advice for background: Don't worry about making it look realistic, just try and make it look colorful and fun. In my opinion, doing clouds is more fun when you don't compare how it would look in reality.

(Sorry if my english is bad.)

[ * Thanks this is good to know ]

[ * For future reference though I don't exactly enjoy unsolicited art advice (95% of the time it only frustrates me and you're lucky to be the 5% left) ]

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connanro

quick reference post for artists because i'm a violinist and Suffer Every Day

the bow:

the bow hold:

there are two main schools of violin bow holding--this article goes into more detail if you're interested--but the general shape is pretty consistent. the thumb and middle finger oppose each other and are where the main weight of the bow is held; other fingers are for balance and direction. the wrist is generally above the bow itself when playing closer to the frog, level in the middle, and lowered near the tip. note the lines below:

(pictured: nicola benedetti, midori, gil shaham, and nicola benedetti) the angle of the arm changes depending on how the violin is positioned and what string is being played.

the violin:

adult performers all use full-sized violins, which have 36 cm (14 inch) bodies.

the violin hold:

the violin is ALWAYS held on the LEFT SIDE. it doesn't matter what your dominant hand is, it still goes ON THE LEFT. this is because the violinist's natural habitat is the orchestra, where they must sit close to other violinists while playing. it prevents stabbing accidents. trust me.

the instrument is held underneath the chin--sometimes with the additional support of a shoulder pad, as you can see in the fourth picture--and away from the centre of the body. note that the instrument looks bigger in the first two pictures (with midori) than it does in the third and fourth (with augustin hadelich and gil shaham). the instrument is the same size; the performers are not. note also that the position of the left hand varies radically in all the pictures i've shown.

you'll sometimes see performers who have a cloth under their chin, like the second midori picture. this has been more common in the past six or so years--i don't use one myself, but it can help prevent irritating the skin on your neck (because when you spend 4+ hours a day rubbing your delicate neck skin on wood, it adds up). whether or not a performer uses a shoulder pad depends both on the length of their neck and personal preference. i have a long neck and consequently have a custom chinrest AND a tall shoulder rest; my professor, who is built similarly to me, uses an extra tall custom chinrest and no shoulder pad.

most importantly: violinists traditionally make really weird faces when we play.

(ray chen and gil shaham)

if you need more reference photos, look up A SPECIFIC VIOLINIST and use those. you can also find SO many live performances on youtube if video is helpful!

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archaeren

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

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insertdisc5

📚 A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG 📚

My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".

This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE

Writing (Names)

Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!

Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME

City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA

Writing (Words)

Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!

Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!

Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.

In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.

ASSETS

Visual Assets (General)

Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT

Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts

Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.

Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!

Visual Assets (Game Focused)

Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!

Game UI Database - Same as above!

Sound Assets

Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!

Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.

Other

CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV

EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit

Marketing

Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!

presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.

Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.

MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.

Game Design (General)

Game Design (RPGs)

Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!

Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.

How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.

Game Design (Visual Novels)

Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.

I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[ * THANK YOU ]

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sycamorality

okay i need everyone to see the fucking sunset i just took two pictures of

i think i should collect all the pride flags everyone's colorpicked from these because they're all scattered in different reblog chains, so! master-reblog of all the flags people have colorpicked :]

trans and lesbian flags colorpicked by @dessa-banks

bi and nonbinary from @aheeheemwhimper

aroace flag from. me

aroace, nonbinary and asexual from @dreemurrsightings

asexual and pansexual from @thebogiscoming

genderfluid from @ramicorn

bigender flags from @partyswirl

biromantic, demiromantic and genderfluid from @lux1fer

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sp1resong

heres a mildly scuffed attempt at the xenogender flag

This is so beautiful, I love all these colors. Time to make art based on it asap

[ * ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS PICTURES I need to make art with it ..... ]

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So many anti friend groups are just straight up cults and it’s genuinely terrifying to see and be part of.

If you’re scared of your friends for whatever reason, it you’re scared of liking being in a specific fandom or liking a specific ship because you think you’ll lose all your friends over it, if your friend group is essentially built on the idea that you’re all good and everyone else is bad, if your friends use social ostracization and online stalking and harassment campaigns as threats and weapons, if your friends use fear and moral panic to keep people in line… . .

Please get out of there. This isn’t even about shipping or fandom or whatever, it’s about staying safe and not getting sucked into a literal cult. Cut them off, block them on all your social media, remake accounts if you need to, and make new friends who don’t leave you feeling like you’re walking on eggshells around them. Just stay safe.

Having to reblog the right call outs, memes, and discourse at the right time,  or come under suspicion or attack yourself? Getting scolded or called out for delay in responding to messages, even if you were away from your computer? New friends must be vetted by powerful members of the group? Private discussions may be screenshotted and shared at any time? Behavior control.

Extensive block lists with social consequences if your friends find you still follow any of those people? Mainstream books or news sources with conflicting opinions dismissed as “problematic” or out of touch? Information control.

Being expected to adopt the newest language, positions and targets without explanation even if they rapidly change? Any concerns or objections dismissed as evidence of incurable stupidity at best, unforgivable moral corruption at worst? Lumping wide varieties of info and theory together in simple good and evil categories? Thought control.

Effusive praise for complying with group demands, including and especially behavior that may make you uncomfortable, like bullying others? Seeing your friends send dissenters death threats? “Hot and cold” treatment, favoritism, competition for attention by powerful or BNF members of the group? Guilt trips about spending time and attention elsewhere? Emotion control.

This is an amazing breakdown, thank you so much.

If you don’t recognize all of these things but recognize some of them, still take it seriously. Not every abusive relationship will look the same. Start with the question “Am I afraid to express that I disagree with this person or people in anyway?” and if the answer is ‘yes’, something is wrong and it’s worth examining that further.

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fl00mie

something i did when i saw a post of joku talking about this topic: it's an interesting concept but practically impossible because nothing stops artists from continuing to create (this is convenient for ink), based on this i tried to adjust the words of the creator of dreamtale herself to her characters under an objective truth— there is no limit to the multiverse

ok it's been a while but if you really want to attach to canon please consider this, my bad for not thinking that people might think differently over time

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tamberella

Here is a round-up of all eight of the free digital brush packs that I’ve released so far for Photoshop CC, Clip Studio Paint, and Procreate!

You can download them on this page (click) Type in “0″ for a free download or tip any amount you so desire!

All my brush packs are totally free (tips optional but always very appreciated!) and can be used freely in any work, including commercial work that you profit off of, with no license or credit required. My goal with these brush packs is to make digital painting feel more achievable and accessible - especially painting environments, something I now LOVE but that used to intimidate me, & felt much more approachable with the right tools! Many of the packs also come with tutorial video content. I hope you enjoy!

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Theory: Nobody who writes a physics textbook gives any fucks

Evidence:

Update: Legolas’ pupils are about 3.5 cm wide each. Now drawing kawaii Legolas on physics assignment.

And they told you science was no fun.

Science!

I’m going to do it. I’m going to hand it in.

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glumshoe

Legolas’s pupil size isn’t the problem here, though. 5 leagues is 17.262 miles. The curvature of the Earth means that for a person of average height, the visual horizon is less than three miles away. Even if your vision is telescopic and the atmosphere is perfectly clear, you can’t see around the planet. If they were standing on a hill, it would have to be at LEAST 198 feet above sea level in order to see the horizon at 17.2 miles away, with nothing tall in between. Which, knowing Rohan, isn’t impossible.

But consider: Elven satellite eyeballs.

you mean like

@sidereanuncia it’s back, the post that I can only imagine haunts your nightmares 

I shall never find peace.

Also, for what it’s worth, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the curvature of Middle Earth is the same as that of Earth.

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sindri42

There’s no evidence that Middle Earth curves.

Yeah there is.  The Silmarillion states that the world was curved after the fall of Numenor (I believe), preventing access to Valinor.  But Elves (among others) can travel the straight path across it.

So middle earth is round, but not for Elves because magic.

So wait, the reason he can see that far is because Elves just have the ability to ignore the curve of the earth? That’s awesome. It also means that no matter how good your optics got, you would always want elf eyes manning the spyglass because they can see arbitrarily far while everybody else is limited by this ‘horizon’ bullshit.

Oh thank God, my poor elf prince has seen too much in this post

Elves are flat-earthers

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cheattoe

This post went from amusing to horrifying, to be brought back down to amusing, sprinkled in with some cannon explanation, and then you leave me here in fucking outrage

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itsladykit

What I’m hearing is JRRT realized that the curvature of the Earth would make Legolas’ far-sight impossible, and retroactively reconciled that inconsistency by making elves flat-earthers.

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Treat anything on Discord as media that will be lost

Do not use Discord to host your files. Do not rely on Discord to preserve your text. DO NOT RELY ON DISCORD FOR ANY KIND OF PRESERVATION OR HOSTING!!

It CAN be lost, it WILL be lost! You must consider Discord as a part of the Core Internet, controlled by one company that hosts the servers.

I thought it was impressive at first that it replaced IRC, but now I am horrified. If the company behind Discord went under today, how many friends would you lose?

How many relationships? How much writing?

You may think this won't happen, but I remember when AIM went down and along with it, entire novels worth of interaction with my oldest friend.

IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. NO COMPANY IS INFALLIBLE.

Back up your files! Download anything you've saved to Discord NOW, before the API changes go into effect! And DO NOT RELY ON THEM FOR HOLDING IMPORTANT FILES!

Here is a program that lets you download any and all of your discord DMs, your servers, everything. You can set the format (raw text, html (dark and light), and others. You can even download the uploaded files not just the text, though that may be just for the command-line version not the GUI window version.

Please back up your conversations, your stories. I have a backup of everything I care about that runs once a week, with full attachment backups every several months. I write stories on discord, and would be devastated if someone happened to them. You have to have your own local copies of every file you care about.

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In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

  • insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box
  • add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box
  • delete -> self explanatory
  • on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.

Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.

HERE'S THAT BITCH IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR

FOR ANYONE THAT USES MOBILE SAFARI

install UserScripts from the app store, follow the steps to add it as an extension to safari, open the code in a tab on safari, open the userscripts extension, select the option to add the script, then go back to your ao3 tab and refresh. et voila. I did find that the “insert selection” part didn’t really work? but the floating minimize-able comment box part? yes it doooo

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