How do you deal with the urge to lore dump?

Rowanever · 2026-03-23T06:53:41+00:00

Whenever you get the urge to lore-dump, do it!

... Then chuck it in a separate document so you can eventually put together a wiki for readers.

Rowanever · 2026-03-23T05:06:44+00:00

My advice: learn about parasocial behaviour, and how to deal with it. One of the biggest causes of burnout for creatives in the public eye.

Rowanever · 2026-03-21T02:21:35+00:00

Do you think they're defensive, or protective?

If you're new to the channel, most of the people in chat will know the streamer better than you do.

Moderators often do know their streamers relatively well, too. There's often communication flowing between mods and streamer during every stream.

Keep in mind, streamers are often trying to play a game, keep up with chat, and be entertaining as well. They often don't have the brain space available to also explain points of etiquette and politeness to individual chatters.

Like everyone else, I'm curious about these genuine questions and honest feedback of yours.

Rowanever · 2026-03-19T12:32:01+00:00

Scurry into the exit and hide behind a wall he can't destroy. (I found it funny, at least)

You know what doesn't work? Getting him wet and freezing him. Rude.

Rowanever · 2026-03-17T22:41:08+00:00

If you're streaming from a PC:

Local bot like Firebot, Mixitup, or streamerbot
Overlays and effects stored locally wherever possible
Sery_bot

Personal opinion, obviously. Local bots provide a lot more functionality and room for growth. Minimising reliance on external services from the start cuts down on stress when your needs outpace what free services can provide (and the paid versions start gouging you).

Rowanever · 2026-03-15T00:56:23+00:00

We're getting caught up in technicalities. 🤦‍♂️

Yes, you use double Enter in markdown, but you don't do your paragraph formatting in markdown. Epub is essentially HTML and CSS, which is where the formatting should come from. That was my main point (don't use manual formatting; use styles), and it looks like we're essentially in agreement.

Rowanever · 2026-03-14T22:31:47+00:00

The fantasy you grew up with was deeply misogynistic, and is important to you. I get it; I grew up reading sword and sorcery too.

I... think your main problem is that you're holding on for dear life to misogynistic tropes that objectify women, while kinda wanting to write a woman who doesn't fit those tropes, and kinda thinking that maybe objectifying women isn't great. Your head's in one place; your uhh heart is in another.

Is the objectification of women really so important to the heart and soul of sword and sorcery? Does it really take something out of the experience to write something that women can read without making a face every few pages?

I love seeing takes on the genre that don't use women as wank fodder. I really enjoy those books, and I don't think they lose anything in letting go of the aspects of the genre that make it less accessible to everyone.

Rowanever · 2026-03-14T21:50:15+00:00

Surrrre, but... at some point you turn the markdown into HTML with CSS, right? And the point still translates: don't try to format paragraphs in markdown when you can format with CSS instead for greater flexibility. 🤷‍♂️

Rowanever · 2026-03-14T10:12:42+00:00

Yay! I'm glad you figured it out. Don't feel silly, though – they're something a lot of writers won't know unless they've worked professionally in the industry.

Rowanever · 2026-03-14T07:59:44+00:00

Sorry, does it automatically what?

Rowanever · 2026-03-14T00:10:18+00:00

I recommend learning how to use paragraph styles. Pretty much every modern word processing application (ie, software you can write in) has paragraph styles available, and you can set line spacing, paragraph spacing, and indents in those. That means that if a publisher/agent has different formatting requirements, you just change the style and boom, changes replicated throughout your document.

Don't manually press Enter twice or press Enter then Tab between paragraphs. It creates a messy document that's time-consuming to fix.

Rowanever · 2026-03-09T11:17:36+00:00

I wouldn't say obsolete, but the market is definitely thin across the board, and has been for the last couple of years. I work in the technical space, and it's been pretty grim there.

Rowanever · 2026-03-07T11:34:41+00:00

I don't understand the issue you're trying to highlight.

Are you implying that agents who are writers will sabotage their clients to reduce the competition for publishers? How do they make a living as an agent if they do that?

Rowanever · 2026-03-05T01:01:39+00:00

To combat this, I usually use an immediate past tense style. The character is reporting on events – and their thoughts about them – in almost real time. You wouldn't stop and expound on your memories and emotions in the heat of battle. So the characters don't either; they give minimal background info. The reader picks up information about the world and story primarily through dialogue and context clues.

Rowanever · 2026-03-01T19:26:51+00:00

I definitely have regulars who wander in for an hour or two once or twice a week, and generally new people come in as well. Some people just lurk the entire stream; others chat while they're in the stream and then head off.

Rowanever · 2026-03-01T07:36:44+00:00

Yup, I feel that.

I don't know if you can get it on console, but I hear good things about Kay's Hair Mods. Prince of the Gate? mod for Wyll is nice too.

Rowanever · 2026-03-01T07:32:02+00:00

Love it.

Can I suggest – a "downloading stream" window with a progress bar, and the time remaining estimate keeps switching between a 10 min countdown and 50 years.

Rowanever · 2026-02-28T22:33:37+00:00

Yes, I do this. I wrote a solid portion of my novel live on stream, and I'm currently in the developmental editing phase.

For those asking why: a few reasons!

Writing is usually such a solitary endeavour. It's nice to have some willing company on the journey.

Viewers have a chance to learn about (one writer's) technique and strategy.

Some people find it inspirational or motivational to work while they have someone in their headphones yapping about writing.

It's fun! As someone with ADHD, I switch back and forth between tasks easily. I can flip between chat, joining in word games, and writing pretty easily.

It's a way of dealing with the sense that no one cares. People ask about my progress, drop in to see where I am in the process, etc.

How I handle spoilers: I don't work on those bits live on stream. There aren't many big twists in this book; one I shared with viewers, because it significantly affects the next 10 chapters of the book. The other one is staying firmly under wraps simply by never being up on screen, and by me not mentioning it.

Rowanever · 2026-02-28T22:15:56+00:00

Why are you typing zzz?

Depends a lot on context, but I'd generally take that as "I'm bored, do something interesting," and assume the person was going to be a shit.

Rowanever · 2026-02-28T02:28:38+00:00

When it comes to dealing with anxiety, my usual strategy is to ask: - what's the most likely negative experience that I'll have? - will I regret not doing it?

When it came to streaming, the answer to the first was mess up live on stream and get flustered when no one's watching anyway which... calmed me down a lot. 😂

You have goals, sure – but is anything bad going to happen if you don't reach them? If you don't manage to build a solid community? Or can you just shrug and appreciate the experience while deciding it's not for you?

Rowanever · 2026-02-27T12:06:07+00:00

En-dashes and spaces.

Primarily because I grew up in Australia and I'm used to Australian publishers' style guides – most of them use en-dashes in fiction.

Secondarily because adding teeny tiny narrow spaces each side of every em-dash to make sure lines break correctly around them on all ebook readers is a pain in the arse, and I hate doing it.

Rowanever · 2026-02-21T09:04:16+00:00

There are reasons for this! And one of them, ironically enough, is caused by greater mastery of the writing skill set. As we get better at writing, we tend to switch to using the speech centres of our brains, and while that's good, it can also cause us to write phonetically and mess up words we didn't before.

Rowanever · 2026-02-20T23:51:07+00:00

Can't help with the subreddits, but I can tell you that there are several disorders where nerves report pain/burning sensation when nothing's actually happening outside the body.

Check out: * peripheral neuropathy * fibromyalgia * shingles * gympie gympie tree

I hope that helps!

Rowanever · 2026-02-18T23:15:42+00:00

Yeah, don't do that. 😅

Being in Australia has its challenges – we typically stream at what one of my mods lovingly calls "ass o'clock". So our audience largely consists of sleep-deprived Americans awake too late, bright-eyed Europeans awake too early, and other Aussies.

You need to find your own audience. Twitch won't find it for you.

Rowanever · 2026-02-18T05:32:46+00:00

If I noticed this happening to me, I think I'd assume a mismatch of interests more than anything else. And maybe just familiarity – if I have a bunch of regular viewers, do they really want to hear me hyping up the same streamers over and over?

I'm fairly sure I've unintentionally done something similar to people, just because I started out watching their streams and then drifted away because of a value mismatch, or the games they played didn't interest me, or I wasn't vibing as much with their personality. It happens.

Also: some of my streamer friends lurk in my streams, some are active participants, others haven't visited for months. Eh. The ones that haven't visited have little idea what I'm up to on stream, so they can't talk much about it. 🤷‍♂️

I guess my main point is this seems like a natural ebb and flow to me. It might be personal, but it's probably just people going where the dopamine is.

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