Some idioms for fantasy races and classes shared by u/nagonjin on reddit. Follow her on instagram (@lyresforhire) for more D&D idioms.

TAKEN FROM HERE: https://sites.google.com/site/houseotwisted/junk/20drawings

1. Draw the most common appearance for your character. This is your comfort zone. (Color)

2. Draw your character from the front, the side, and the back. This is something called a ‘turn sheet’. It’s a little boring to do, but will be very helpful to you in the future to have on hand.

3. Draw your character from the front, the side, and the back, but have them in nothing but their undies at most. This is to show off how your character is built. Drawing nothing but a straight pant-leg with no structure under it is no way to learn! (Skip this if your character doesn’t wear clothes)

4. Draw your character at three different ages than they currently are. (Must be noticeably different. No ages: 4, 5, and 6, etc.) Color one of them.

5. BANG! Your character just heard a loud noise right behind them. Draw their reaction!

6. Draw a bird’s eye view of your character.

7. Draw your character feeling very happy. Show body language.

8. Draw your character feeling very angry. Ditto.

9. Draw your character feeling very sad. You know the drill.

10. Draw your character with a different body type than they usually have. This helps you map distinguishing features onto different ‘templates’.

11. Draw your character if they were the opposite gender.

12. Draw your character as a different species than they normally are.

13. Somebody has just handed your character a live duck. Draw their reaction. Keep them in character.

14. Mary Sue the HELL out of your character. (Due to being asked “What is Mary Sue?” several times, I have included a link to the evil that is Sue: [Click if you dare.]

15. Draw your character lifting something heavy. (no magic allowed!)

16. Draw your character in an opposite role than they appear in your story/continuity.

17. Draw your character doing something they enjoy.

18. Draw your character doing something they do NOT enjoy.

19. Draw your character in a dynamic pose that is not a profile shot (from the side).

The pen stand that most Wacom products come with?

The spare nibs are on the back of the removable panel where you can change the pen loop colour. 

Also there’s a little hole in that compartment that looks like this

You see the little eject symbol? This guy is how you remove your worn down nibs.

Press the pen nib in on an angle like this and lift up.

So I opened it, not thinking much but GUYS.

Confusion what is…oh gosh it is!

These have been some of the best so far!

Bliss in the Garden: Doesn’t have many videos but is the sweetest lady ever and reminds me of sunshine if it were a person

Korean Gardener: They do a lot of “growing from the seed” and planting type videos and I don’t think they do any voice overs just nice music then gardening asmr sjhdshjsjs

California Gardening: Somebody’s dad who is very devoted to his garden I love him so much (I recommend his video “The Joy of Growing Pineapples”)

NatureNorth: insects, frogs, salamanders, every little dude they have a video about. what I like about them so much is that they do “larvae to adult” vids

Goblin culture doesn’t have a concept of “Property”. A stick on the ground and a tool in a locked shed are equally up for grabs if a thing needs doing. They casually take and leave things all over their communities, eat from communal pots, and genuinely Do Not Understand why the Core Races are so Angry and prone to Violence all the time.

Consequently Goblins who live near Core communities develop a reputation as “Thieves” despite not even having a *word* for that. (The closest word they have is more like “Greedy” and it means a person that hides things so nobody else can use them, and it’s a surefire fight-starter to call a Goblin that)

Common Orc Spiritual beliefs hold that a Soul can only grow stronger by overcoming Challenges in life, and see intruding on another person’s Challenge unasked for as not just Rude, but Deeply Harmful. You’re Stealing their chance to Grow. Asking for help is deeply personal and doing so can be both a way to grow closer with them or a too-personal intrusion, depending on your existing relationship with them. An exception is Children, as far as most Orcs are concerned, all Children are fundamentally the responsibility of the Whole Community, regardless of whose child they are, or even if said child is an Orc at *all*.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Beloved

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (this was the only free version I could find, and it’s a downloadable thing, so do so with caution)

The Call of the Wild

Catch-22 (it was either this version or one where the entire thing was in comic sans font)

The Catcher in the Rye

Fahrenheit 451

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Gone With the Wind

The Grapes of Wrath

The Great Gatsby

Howl

In Cold Blood

Invisible Man

The Jungle (personally I don’t like this formatting, but the site doesn’t look sketchy so…) - there’s also this which is the proper book format in a pdf, but it’s directly photocopied so it might be hard to read some of the print

Leaves of Grass

Moby Dick

Native Son

Our Bodies, Ourselves (we learned about this one in APUSH!)

The Red Badge of Courage

The Scarlet Letter

COULD NOT FIND Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (the ebook is 47 fucking dollars??? and i can’t even find sketchy websites that’ll let me download a pdf. if anyone manages to find a link, lmk please)

Stranger in a Strange Land

A Streetcar Named Desire

Their Eyes Were Watching God

To Kill a Mockingbird

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Where the Wild Things Are (this is a slideshow!!!! how fun)

You’ve asked me a lot for a centaur tutorial but I absolutely suck at doing stuff like that because I rely so much on my own eye measuring and I almost never do sketches like this, so bear with me. 1: The horse body!

I managed to break down the body into lots of triangles and lines and what have you, in a way that I find easy and accurate to use. This is the body of Dan, (an english full blood) but it’s really easy to alter between breeds! For example, I used this when doing the lineup, take two of the most altered ones:

2: Put some meat on it

Keep in mind that if you have no idea how to draw then you probably should just drop this because as you can see I’m skipping ahead assuming you know how to meat a stick figure, and also have a ground feeling of what a horse really should look like. But it’s starting to take shape, doesn’t it? The tip of the withers should be around the tip of the hip. 3: Legs and hooves

Make sure you don’t make the knees and hocks too defined (if you want to draw a full grown horse will say. It works on younger horses and foals though!) And also not like noodles. Watch out for making the hind legs too curved or too straight when standing properly.

You want your hooves to be balanced, keep that in mind! 4: Add the human body

You’ve got a nice red line there to keep track of the spine. Dan’s human part is slim and a bit smaller, which adds to his rather big but slender breed. Now of course I’m still assuming that you know how to draw humans as well. That’s what it’s about, draw loads of humans and loads of horses and mash them together in a way that you see fit!

when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”

“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME

they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.

and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS

 In Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy Dayes, everybody’s layer against skin (shirt tunic or shift) is gonna be linen. it’s almost never wool except stockings or hose (like pant legs). Say “undyed cloth” if you wanna make them sound simple and peasanty. Comment on how you can tell it wasn’t made for them (the fit is off) and has had probably eight owners before. 

Outer clothing is gonna be either wool, or a blend called Linsey-woolsey, and again you could say Undyed, but dyes are not only common they are CHEAP and relatively easy. (innerwear is often left undyed or bleached to white because it gets washed to heck- like beaten by a wooden stick on a stone by the river- and dye would just fade out a lot so why bother. Ths is also why innerwear has ties, rarely buttons, unless you are so rich you have people doing your washing delicately because they’re hired to do only that. Buttons would get broken in the washing)

Also, if you don’t have an SCA chapter to talk to, you could also try talking to your local spinners and weavers guild about natural dyes. I know someone involved in my city’s guild, and they run all kinds of workshops. Including a natural dye workshop in the past, which my friend took.

(I actually used my knowledge of natural dyes to push back on a textbook author who thought our illustrator had made a stack of Elizabethan cloth too brightly coloured.)

Heck, there’s lots of websites and blogs where you can find info about natural dyes, including pictures of the outcome; it’s what I used to convince the author. Even if you’re making up your own world’s flora, you might get an idea about how you want dyes to work. Different parts of the same plant will often produce different colours. And some plants will give different colours depending on the mordant (colour fixative) used.

Availability of colour and dye can also vary on geography. Indigo was difficult and expensive in Europe for a long time (including the Middle Ages), but ubiquitous in Japan (certainly during the Edo period, which is a little later). This is because plants that produce indigo best are native to Asia – Ancient Greece and Rome imported indigo from India. Mediæval dyers used woad to get the same colour, but apparently it’s less colourfast than true indigo.

And the reason why purple is associated with royalty is because extracting Tyrian purple dye from murex snails is difficult, labour intensive and involved thousands of the creatures. Thus it’s expensive and highly valued. So if you’re writing a fantasy world, you could choose a different colour for royalty.

from what i know from practice i’ll try to put it into a list of tips that i’ve gathered throughout the years. 

-First i would like to suggest learning how to gesture draw! Like movement and flow. There are plenty of videos out there that can help you learn how to do it and to explain it better than i did. I remember watching this video by proko which really helped me learn the basics of it!

-Then of course there are plenty and thousands of real life model references in all different poses that can help you practice drawing the human body/poses. Although where can you find these pictures well

https://www.deviantart.com/jademacalla

https://www.deviantart.com/null-entity/gallery

https://www.deviantart.com/senshistock (i love senshistock i’ve been using her photos for yeeeears!)

and this is the one i love THE most

http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en

it’s important to practice by doing gesture drawing different poses in under a few seconds or even minutes before going on to the next one this is where this website can be very helpful with that! It’s not just helpful but customizable too! I’ve used it a lot so i can say that it’s been very very helpful!

- I guess with creating more diverse body types it comes with having to draw from life but not centering it around the same body type if you know what i mean? Always seek out refs of people that are of different body types. 

-SHAPES ARE ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT. Like there are people who’re Apple shaped pear shaped hourglass square rectangle. There are other ways to classify bodys like fat/petite/tall/short and this important because everyone is proportioned differently. I would highly suggest looking up character design tips because most videos and written pieces will go into more depth on shapes and what they convey and how to use them when drawing the human body. 

-when drawing fat people focus on rolls/marks/cellulite. Also not every fat person’s body looks the same you know? I swear to GOD i hate seeing people draw fat characters and all they can do is draw the same shape every time for each character like Fat is not just curvy in the waist and it’s not just being round and soft there are so many different ways to draw fat people not every fat person has huge hips never heard of a hip dip? Just like drawing any body you have to know what makes them different and how they can look different from each other. Don’t draw the same body type multiple times and expect to call it body diversity. I understand in some circumstances the person is just young (or older) and new at drawing i get that but when you’re much older and you’ve been drawing for years and maybe even been to an art college there is absolutely NO excuse for your laziness. That is all.

Or, an attempted quasi-masterpost/crash course of content for the gay mythical dieselpunk space pirate band we all deserve in our lives.

The Story

A spacefaring vampire mad scientist and aspiring musican known as Dr. Carmilla once created a group of quasi-mechanical immortals to serve as her backing band. The doc has since has an “accident” with an airlock, but her creations, the Mechanisms, are still driven to perform. So, in their living starship Aurora, they travel the universe, looking for fun if possible, violence when necessary, and hopefully both at once; and performing the stories of what they’ve seen over their long lives.

These stories don’t tend to end happily.

OR, the Mechanisms were a musical cabaret act who performed scifi-genre-mashups which combined spoken-word storytelling and music in queer retellings of myths and fairy tales, in character as a band of morally questionable space pirates. And it’s great.

Crew members included:

Jonny D’Ville, captain first mate and storyteller, former murderous gunslinger with a cold mechanical heart

Ashes O’Reilly, quartermaster and firestarter from the mobster planet Mallone with a pair of mechanical lungs

Drumbot Brian, pilot, launched into space by an uncomprehending world, entirely mechanical except his heart (which now comes with “ends justify means” and “means justify ends” settings)

Gunpowder Tim, master-at-arms, who destroyed the Earth’s moon in the war against the Moon Kaiser three hundred years in the future ago and was given new eyes by the crew

Nastya Rasputina, engineer and last surviving princess (after the Revolution) of the Cyberian empire, dating the ship

Ivy Alexandria, archivist and navigator, with a mechanical brain that remembers everything except her own former life,

Baron Marius von Raum, doctor, not a baron, not a doctor

Raphaella la Cognizi, science officer, has wings, plays piano

The Toy Soldier. Exactly what it says on the tin.

The octokittens.

There may have also been a ninja at some point? I’m honestly not sure?

In late 2019, the Mechs announced that the band would be calling it quits, and they played their final two shows in January of 2020, resulting in the bittersweet and ignoble deaths of the once-immortal crew of the starship Aurora.

Music: aka, Where Can I Listen?

There are 4 main Mechanisms albums, 2 Tales To Be Told collections, and one single. You can buy the whole discography for £5+ pay-what-you-want on their Bandcamp here, which I thoroughly recommend. You can also listen to them on Spotify and on their official Youtube channel!

Tales to be Told and Tales to be Told Vol. II include the backstory songs of many of the crewmembers, as well as some of their other standalone adventures and tales, and a couple of songs tied to the other albums.

Once Upon a Time in Outer Space is Grimmsian fairy tales and nursery rhymes reinterpreted as a sci-fi tragedy about the rebellion against cruel tyrant Old King Cole, lead by Cole’s former general Snow White. Snow’s sister, the warrior Rose, was kidnapped by Cole to be cloned into his unstoppable army, and both Snow and Rose’s bride-to-be Cinders are desperate to free her and overthrow Cole. And then the Mechanisms show up… I often use Our Boy Jack as a song to introduce people to the band.

Ulysses Dies at Dawn is a cyberpunk noir retelling of the Odyssey and assorted Greek myth. In a city that covers a world, where the minds of the dead are imprisoned by the ruling Olympians to run the vast Acheron computer network, bitter war veteran Ulysses is the only one who may have found a way to escape. So, a quartet of menacing Suits have been sent to get the secret out of them – and out of their strange underground vault – by any means necessary.

High Noon Over Camelot, an Arthurian space western featuring trans Mordred, polyamorous and morally questionable gunslingers Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere, Drumbot Brian as a decaying metal Merlin, slightly mad preacher-man Galahad, many good intentions, and few good results; all trapped within an abandoned space station in failing orbit around a star, all hoping to find the mysterious GRAIL in time.

The Bifrost Incident is their cosmic-horror locked-room-mystery take on Norse myth. After leaving for its three-day maiden voyage with all the high and mighty of Asgard onboard and then vanishing for 80 years, Old Lady Odin’s Ratatosk Express has finally arrived, and it’s up to Inspector Lyfrassir Edda to pick apart the black box recordings and discover what really happened. (Notably includes space revolutionary wives Loki and Sigyn, as well as a track where Jonny makes an invocation to Yog-Sothoth sound good somehow.)

and Frankenstein, a single telling the story of Victoria Frankenstein and the AI she built, and how it goes wrong.

In addition, the livestream of their final concert, Death to the Mechanisms, is viewable on their YouTube channel. Said concert also features the amazing Reesha Dyer, whose music can be found here. (As of Feb. 6, 2020, the available version of the livestream cuts out much of the second half of the show; apparently there are alternate versions coming soon.)

More Content Please?

The band’s official site contains profiles of crew members, lyrics for many of their songs, original fiction set in the Mechanisms universe, and other assorted goodies.

If you never had the chance to see them live, the TV Tropes page actually explains a lot of their live show content, as well as more about the crew and the stories.

And if that’s not enough, here’s a YT playlist of many live videos of their shows, including full performances! There’s a lot that doesn’t go on the albums (although I recommend listening to the proper recordings first). Well worth watching to see their antics in-character. (There is not, as far as I know, any full video of High Noon Over Camelot; there is a video of The Bifrost Incident, but as of writing this I don’t have a good link to it.)

& of course there’s the band’s official Twitter and Tumblr, the latter of which in particular contains many delicious and exclusive tidbits.

Related Media & Other Projects By The Crew

Having apparently survived her airlock accident, Dr. Carmilla also has her own music (and describes her musical style as “Retrospective Futuristic Visual Kei”).

The Toy Soldier (Jessica Law) has her own Bandcamp and a mailing list here!

Raphaella (R. L. Hughes) has her own Bandcamp.

Drumbot Brian releases music as Ben Below and Phonovoltaic.

Gunpowder Tim and Brian make music with the company Softwire.

Marius has his own Bandcamp.

Raphaella and the Drumbot have released some music about sad robots under the name Overclockwork.

you paste the direct link to the product into the search bar and it analyzes the reviews to determine whether reviews are accurate and how many positive vs negative reviews there are

i found a thing that had a lot of reviews and a 4 star rating and fakespot caught me before i bought it

Image is screenshot of fakespot's analysis:

Overview

How are reviewers describing this item?

easy, great, counter, organized and sturdy.

Our engine has detected that Amazon has altered, modified or removed reviews from this listing. We approximate total reviews altered up to 213.

Previous analysis of this listing was an D grade.

Our engine has profiled the reviewer patterns and has determined that there is high deception involved.

Our engine has analyzed and discovered that 37.7% of the reviews are reliable.

This product had a total of 1,884 reviews as of our last analysis date on Jan 23 2020.

Good evening, friends, let me tell you some Secrets on how to argue like (and with) assholes. I’m writing this because I keep running into a particular asshole, and I need to stop engaging with them, and so this is an instruction sheet for myself as well as you guys. 

First, try to avoid assholes; they don’t deserve your time and energy. But, if an Argument is unavoidable, here are a few tips on how to emerge unscathed. 

Let go of the idea that you’re going to win. 

You’re not gonna win. Nobody wins in an argument with an asshole. But, on the other hand, you can make them lose. You can deprive them of their entertainment and their triumph. 

How??? 

Do not present your side of this debate. 

This is so counter-intuitive for most of us who believe in things like, oh, science, or real facts, or the idea that real facts can be determined by science. Here’s a cool terrible thing about humans: certainty has nothing to do with facts. And when people are certain, that is when they become assholes. 

When someone’s only goal is to win an argument, any real evidence or facts you give them is just ammunition for them to turn against you. 

You will not convince them. So what should you be doing? 

Destroy their arguments.

This is a thing of joy, because it’s what assholes are used to doing. They are, at heart, morons who don’t know how to construct, only how to destroy. 

I used to be super emotional about arguments like this. I couldn’t think of anything to say while the other person ranted on about their horrifying bigotry. Now I’m a lawyer, and I’ve learned to weaponize my essentially nitpicky nature. For money. 

So here are some easy tactics you can remember and deploy: 

- Make them define the words they use. Nitpick the definitions. 

- Turn questions back on them. If they ask you “why do you believe x”, ask them why they believe y. If they pull some “I asked first” shit, ask them why they’re afraid to defend their beliefs. 

- Call them emotional.  If possible, pick out specific emotions. This is especially devastating when you’re debating a man, as he will get more emotional as a result. 

- “Why is that funny? I don’t get it.” Making people explain mean jokes can be a delight; they just wilt the more you question them about the underlying assumptions. 

- Laugh at any especially dumb shit. Like they use some slogan or catchphrase that’s obviously untrue, due to science, or essentially ridiculous, like “we’ve made America great again,” and you just blurt out laughing. If they get mad, tell them – oh, so sorry, I’ll shut up, I’m giving you the floor to talk about your beliefs. I’m respecting you. This is a goddamn power move. It gives you the high ground, and also the implied control over the situation. The floor belongs to you, but you are yielding it to someone because you can. 

- If they make an awkward exit, let them. Especially if they call the discussion “political.” It means they’re feeling attacked. Graciously allow them to retreat with their tail between their legs. If they storm off, allow them to do that too. Congratulations; you’ve ended the argument and you don’t have to deal with it anymore. 

Basically: hand the asshole a shovel, and let ‘em dig. Relieve yourself of the burden to convince them they are wrong, and just sour their fun instead. 

–

Additionally, these are the tactics that assholes use, consciously or subconsciously, all the time. Recognize them. Once you know what they are, you can become immune to the intimidation and belittling tactics. 

heyy! with school starting again, I decided to combine a lot of helpful post, so you can rock the new school year! I’ve spent quite some time going through different masterposts and the ones i included here are very helpful resources. good luck for the new school year! <3

STUDYING

study effectively

revise method

take a break

study journal

planning the perfect study schedule

all the things that got me studying after one year of living through tv-show characters and wasting time on youtube (be honest, we all need this)

how to memorize

flashcards

preparing for exams

how to pull an all-nighter (but pls only do this in extreme situations)

how i study

SCHOOL

how to wear what you want to school

first day of class

emergency kit

list of tips (this is super helpful)

test taking tips

help! i hate my teacher

how to annotate

NOTE TAKING

how to take notes from a textbook

tips

what to do when you ruined your notes

upgrade your notes

ESSAYS

five paragraph essay

how to  write 20 pages

battling essays

STATIONERY

essentials

backpack buying guide

cute and cheap stationery

LANGUAGES

tips + resources

different ways to learn a language

how to learn a language by doing nothing

SELF CARE / PERSONAL

self care

some advice

back to school glow up

morning routine

night routine

skin care

stress route

mental health tips

school and heartbreak

tests for when you don’t know what to  do with your life

burnout - a guide for students

FOOD

study foods

ideas

easy recipes for students

ORGANIZATION

organize & refresh your phone and laptop https://youtu.be/3b00aqUqoZI

staying organized

guide to bullet journals

bujo for students

PRODUCTIVITY

beat procrastination 

how to increase productivity

sort out tasks

self-discipline

MOTIVATION

study moods

motivation

gentle reminder

how to motivate yourself to start studying

MUSIC

mildliner inspired study playlists

best spotify playlists and albums for your study session

playlists for different moods

study music

PRINTABLES

binder covers

grade tracker

study pack (task tracker, formula list, habit tracker, task tracker)

go to sleep

back to school kit (class data, study group sheet, supplies list)

APPS

google chrome extensions

my favorite study apps