Inkstains of Gold

Though it may be hubris to play God, the Muses demand I do and thus, I bleed. May contain spoilers for works in progress.

[sweetoothgirl]

Frosted Brown Butter Snickerdoodle Blondies

[gildedink]

Alexandra and her 2nd tier Persona, Themis!

Essentially, Alexandra's version of the popular Persona 5 promo art with Akira (Joker) and Arsene~

[mousai-aesthetics]

The Archer’s 1000 Picspam —> 149: My Female Protagonists

Never send a man to do a woman’s job.

[gildedink]

Head portraits of Brian, Myra, Emily and Johnathan from my P5 fanfic, Weighing 0 and 21 on the Scales of 8 aka Weighing Justice.

[gildedink]

Legend of the Red Comet: The Gold Scrolls

"Choose wisely Tenshi. Or else you will burn us all..." Tasked with escorting the newest addition of his family's fleet of ships - the Red

I'm pleased to announce my debut, self-published novel - Legend of the Red Comet: The Gold Scrolls - is now available for purchase! Cover art was done by the talented @zandraz

[luluisweird]

The resulting daughter born from an incestous union between Oedipus and his mother, Jocosta. She's the main character of the very same play that was named after her by Sophocles. She risks everything going against her uncle to bring back the body of her recently slain brother for a proper burial. Her uncle however is enraged by this act of rebellion (since he decreed that no one should mourn for her brother) and seals her and the body of her brother in a cave. Later he has a change of heart and goes to unseal her, only to find her limp, lifeless body hanging from the ceiling.

This is another persona designed for a friend of mine for her oc. Her appearance is based off of her own specifications of what she wants, and I'm the artist who brought her ideas to life. This is also my first time drawing a lion so please go easy on me.

Antigone was also made to represent the World Arcana, which depicts an angels surrounded by animals: her steed ( lion), a bull (her sword) and an eagle (her gun)

[luluisweird]

One of my friends is writing a persona 5 fanfic that involves a lot of body switching and time travel. She told me that Sojiro was going to be getting a persona based off of Odysseus's wife Penelope from the Odyssey, and I was the one who suggested that she look like Wakaba Isshiki, the one woman he's ever loved.

Of course, since I was the one who suggested the idea, I naturally took responsibility for designing some concept art of her.

Now after Odysseus left to fight in the Trojan War, Penelope had men trying to force her into marrying them. And she spent the next 20 years fending off their advances not knowing whether or not her husband was dead or alive, hence why she's wearing a half black and half white dress. One of the ways she deterred them was saying that she'd only marry them once she finished making a funeral shroud for her father in law. What they didn't know that after she'd woven the cloth, she'd take it apart at night and start all over again the next day, hence the sewing needle rope dart she has.

And one more thing, she has angel wings both to make her look like a guardian angel and to bring forth the fact that well... she was saved and raised by ducks after she got thrown off a cliff by her father. There's even a species of duck named after her called the Eurasian Widgeon, which looks like this:

[gildedink]

Honestly, no one is ready for Punzo, Tokiko and Zenshou. So many layers... like a croissant.

me to myself, when thinking about my Dumb Children

[gildedink]

There were so many things he wanted to say, so many questions he wanted to ask, the biggest one of them all being; what happened to you? The Sasami he had known was not who was in front of him. The young noble woman that stood across from him on this chilly midday was polished, aloof, elegant. The baby fat from her face was gone, revealing sharp cheekbones that matched her father, her brother. She was tall, almost as tall as him. Her eyes were cold, reserved, sad. This melancholic woman had devoured the wild and expressive little girl as to not even leave the bones.

Legend of the Red Comet: The Silver Scrolls, Chapter 2

[gildedink]

i. Touch – the feeling of fine lace, of sopping-wet blood squelching between fingers. The hauntingly smooth and cold metal and glass of the world’s evolution, of it heated and burning fingertips after plasma beams were shot to kill another android, another human. The too-old and too-worn memory of heather in the summer, glass in the fall, furs in the winter.   Victor misses the touch of human skin the most in the now-world of inhumanity.   ii. Sight – the sun reflected off of the special forces badge, long golden hair and a handsome, human face grafted over wires and machine. Of limbs scattered like doll parts, electric sparks dancing like perverse fireflies. The darkness of a sleepless city spilling through the blackout curtains and threatening to steal another human thing from him. Seeing the smog and grease on the lamps, of the carnival’s bright gaudy colors as the gypsies came into town and for a while the poor peasants forget their troubles while being swindled blind.   Victor misses the sight of his wife’s beaming face when he came home from another day in the fields in the now-world of death.   iii. Scent – the burning of rubber as the tires scream and sear the asphalt and metal of the road, thick synthetic oil smelling of industry. The sterile, recycled air within the high-security prison he was once again in, but not for long never for long, with no smell but disinfectant and oil and sometimes there is no smell at all and no air because they all think he’s a machine like them. Of fresh stew that’s simmered over the fire all day from deer that his father had shot that morning when dew still touched the grass. The fetid-sweetness of a decaying body that hung itself in sorrow of his choice.   Victor misses the smell of fresh baking bread and drying lavender in the now-world of manufactures sterilization.   iv. Taste – the blandness of rehydrated rice, noodles, fish and dashi broth. Of numbing gel on your teeth, way too bitter way too sharp, because a tooth broke in the fight. The salt from your own sweat falling down your face in that hot metal suit you use to play machine because even now an immortal will be burned as a witch technology be damned. Sweet-saltiness of your wife on your wedding night, lavender tea from your mother, stolen halva shared with you by your best friend before he leaves for the season again with the rest of the caravan.   Victor misses the taste of real food and real spices and real cooking in the now-world of premade, re-hydrated and meal pills.   v. Sound – the constant hum of electricity, hover cars, “vintage” bikes and trains. Of a language you did not grow speaking but did now. The screams of agony and mercy as you rip them limb from limb, the barks of your favorite blond-haired, blue-eyed officer threatening you and telling you to stand down. Jarring crashes and explosions and then silence because you died again but the silence never lasts for long. The laughter of your father, mother, friend, wife throughout your life before it all became silent with time, the plague, death. The sound of your native tongue, like a babbling brook or a sweet murmur. Of pleasured moans and singing cicadas and chirping swallows. Of your own voice that isn’t twisted by a modulator or a scream or a curse or an unhinged laugh.   Victor misses the peaceful silence that came and went with the seasons in a now-world that never stopped buzzing and never stopped twisting echoes through metal and filters.

but sometimes you find through the unhinging of your own mind a missing piece from your life (and maybe it’s not so maddening when there’s a goddess as sad and empty as you by your side) aka ‘when a human eats a mermaid and becomes immortal, how long will it take before his humanity is dissolved by battery acid?’ [Prose from Mun to Muse: Victor Desjardins aka Jack the Ripper aka Violent Vile]

(inspired by @the-ichor-of-ruination ’s Salt and Fire series)

[toweringarts]

Aaaahh it’s done! It’s a smidge later than I planned, but here’s my rendition of Ruan Huifu, the main character of IceQueen975′s MDZS fanfic A Lotus Grows in a Field of Corpses, and her shijie and shimei, Chaorong and Damei! Both in uniform and in casual clothes. You all get exactly one try to guess what Sect they’re from.

[luluisweird]

Once upon a time, there was a skilled demonic cultivator who was loved by two men. They could never be separated from each other because they were soulmates, but alas, such happiness could never last. One day, they all died so suddenly and tragically young. The demonic cultivator came back as a ghost, but she was driven insane by grief by the deaths of her beloved lovers that her hair turned white from shock and blood began to run from her eyes in place of tears.

Legend has it late at night, you can hear the mournful cries of a woman crying for people that she'll never see again. She is known as The Wailing Spider lily that wanders because she's aimlessly wandering the countryside searching for them and leaving flowers of the dead behind her in her wake.

Her screams are said to be so horrifying that they drive anyone who hears them to near insanity. They say that she can be placated if she's reunited with them once more.

I drew a friend's OC as a devastation level ghost because she was having trouble coming up with a design for her. It's from a bad ending where her oc is reborn as a ghost. The writing on the side says "A Lotus Among Corpses". I hope she likes this.

[mousai-aesthetics]

The Archer’s 1000 Picspam —>236: Worlds of ‘Memories of a Goddess’ - ResiTerra

It took over 50 years for the wars to finally end. Now, we live atop one another in this hellscape. After all, there’s no where else we can go. Even the rich have to fight for what’s left. We live for centuries thanks to modern medicine and cybernetics. The government has made suicide a crime thanks to the low population; better to live longing for death then be forced into a breeding facility by them.

          Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to die when the plates collided…

Worlds of Memories of a Goddess

[luluisweird]

A girl I talk to on discord regularly exchange messages with other and we're both reading each other's stories. She reads mine and I read hers. To thank her for being one of my readers, I drew her oc Huifu with my other ocs Lihua and Ruomei. Huifu is from her story "A Lotus grows in a Field of Corpses" as found here

[gildedink]

[whump-whump-baby]

So your Fictional Universe has Horses in it

Alternatively: People Ride Horses in Your Fic, and you’re Not Sure What to Do About It

horse rider/owner and baby writer here, throwing you an infodump that will maybe help with the whole ‘There’s a Horse in the Background here but I Don’t Know What to Do With it’ thing I sometimes see in writing!

Inside this infodump: Horse riding, horse care, horse tack (equipment), falling off a horse (and what usually gets injured), horse lingo, and behaviour.

Keep reading

[thewritinggrindstone]

How to Format Your Finished Manuscript

as written by a perpetually flabbergasted editor

Congratulations, you’ve finished a manuscript! That monumental achievement alone deserves a reward. Please get yourself something delicious—don’t worry, I can wait.

Back? Awesome, because it’s time to talk about an important step of the prepublishing and/or pre-editing process, and that is how to format your manuscript.

When you’re writing your manuscript, it’s likely you have a unique setup. Fancy fonts, different text and document background colors, your preferred way of formatting the document—all elements work together to create a comfortable writing space where you can be your most creative.

As both a writer and editor, I have no problems with writers going wild with their documents’ technical aspects while they’re drafting—I do exactly the same thing when drafting. But when it comes time to share your project with other people—especially professionals in the publishing world—your snazzy setup is no longer going to be a benefit. I could share horror stories relating to document setup, from thousands of spaces used instead of the tab key to wacky file conversion issues.

Please don’t make your editor’s job any harder than it needs to be. Fancy formatting looks great, but it can be a nightmare to undo and wastes time that your editor could otherwise spend polishing the words themselves rather than what’s around them. It’s also significantly easier to work with a document that adheres to a standard format because it’s easier to catch mistakes that way—the editor isn’t distracted trying to wrangle extra spaces and text appearing in other languages.

Most publishing houses have what are called submission guidelines. Read them. Follow them. There’s little chance your manuscript is exempt from the rules, and believe me when I say authors who flaunt the guidelines don’t win the respect of the people who are working on their manuscripts.

If the publisher/editing service you’re submitting to doesn’t have obvious guidelines, first ask about them. They might have preferences. If not, as follows are some basic standard practices in North American publishing.

First off, if you can’t bear to give up your fancy writing setup, create a new copy of your document specifically for editing/submitting. Clearly label it as such. Make sure you implement any changes to this for-editing/submitting document, not just your fancy original.

Page and text setup:

Remove any document background images/page colors.

Change the entire document’s font to Times New Roman point 12. Make it black. Not dark gray, not dark brown—black.

Set the margins to one inch on all sides. This is Microsoft Word’s default document format, but not enough submitted manuscripts use it. Remember: layout for publishing comes after editing, not before. Editors are liable to completely change your document’s pretty formatting to industry standards anyway.

Set the document’s orientation to portrait, not landscape.

Center all section and chapter titles (e.g., Table of Contents, Chapter 1, Acknowledgements, About the Author, etc.).

Remove all double spaces from the file. Seriously. This is an incredibly easy step. Do not make your overworked, underpaid editor do this incredibly trivial and time-consuming task for you. Especially if you are using double spaces to indent or center content. If you, for some reason, are using the space bar to indent or center content, please stop what you are doing and follow these steps:

Use your word processor’s “center text” function. In programs like Word, this can be done by hitting Control + E. (Ctrl + L and Ctrl + R, respectively, align text left and right.) Do not justify your text unless the guidelines demand it.

Use the tab key to indent paragraphs.

But bear in mind that sometimes this can result in a “tab” character existing at the beginning of a paragraph. This is bad. Preferably, set the entire document to a 0.5-inch indent and delete all tab characters.

Seriously, though, you should be searching every document before you send it out or copy it to an online format for double spaces. Make this a good habit, and you’ll ensure you set yourself apart as a cut above the other writers out there.

Set the entire document’s line spacing to double.

Front matter, chapters, and back matter should be separated by page breaks, not by a series of blank lines.

If you really want to delight your editor or anyone else who needs to work on your manuscript, consider removing all leading and trailing spaces from the document (link embedded).

Style elements:

Run spell check. This sounds obvious, but trust me, I’ve received manuscripts riddled with obvious spelling errors. If you write with spell check off for one reason or another, turn it back on when you’re getting ready to send a document out. Make a full pass on the document, and pay attention to every instance of that red squiggle.

Make sure you’re spelling the names of your characters and places consistently. I’ve seen Matt become Mike in the next paragraph, and Donilo become Donillo. Editors’ trust in the author’s abilities to do anything with competence drop drastically when we find these kinds of careless errors.

Similarly, either use the American spellings or the British spellings. Be consistent.

Separate your scenes with fleuron breaks. Three centered asterisks (***) used without spaces is the most common method of creating a fleuron break and the one I recommend using, although sometimes three number signs/hashes (###) can be acceptable. Do not use fancy symbols or symbols created through special fonts. They will not carry through if your editor changes your entire document to Times New Roman.

Optional change: remove the indent from the first paragraph in a chapter or after a scene break.

Make a point of using punctuation consistently. If you’re going to use the oxford comma, use it every time. Use a single dash consistently. Punctuate dialogue properly.

Improperly punctuated dialogue is one of the most common errors editors fix. There are only a few basic rules, covered here (link embedded), so please make an effort to learn and use them.

Use paragraphs properly. New speaker = new paragraph. New subject = new paragraph.

Once again, if you really want to delight your editor, change all hyphens between number ranges to en dashes. 3-5 days will become 3–5 days.

Correctly title your document. The title isn’t somehow going to magically change from StupidProject.docx or afhuowjfoa;wijef.docx to TheHungerGames.docx between your submitting it and other people reading the title.

If possible, use the .docx file format.

I want to wrap this up by saying that yes, editors are here to catch the mistakes you’ve missed, and we invariably have obscure technical knowledge that most writers don’t know exists (in Greek, the question mark is represented by a semicolon), but it’s your job as the writer to put your best effort forward. Also bear in mind that not all editors get paid to handle formatting issues but are expected to resolve them anyway. Fixing these basic issues yourself or, better yet, not creating them at all will help both you and your editor(s) ensure the version of the book you put out is the best possible version.