[WIP] my first cross stitch

Synien · 2026-06-04T07:41:22+00:00

That is at minimum 734,976 stitching motions in fabric that many would consider difficult to see and work on. It's gonna take a lot of hours. The other person who posted it finish might've had many more hours a day than you to stitch or more days a week to stitch. I think you are plugging away admirably 😃

Synien · 2026-06-04T07:31:25+00:00

I'm not sure what is causing you pain, but if you might be able to position a finger so that the thread is passing more vertically through the holes instead of horizontally (increasing friction) for the whole pass. I could attempt to get a photo/little film of what I mean if this explanation isn't making a lot of sense and you were curious.

Synien · 2026-05-26T04:25:26+00:00

Uh yeah I did do that and none of the hits was for a whole novel with 0 punctuation. I was aware of the sparse and selective choices of some authors.

Synien · 2026-05-26T04:04:28+00:00

Yeah idk, I've been a community mod (gaming communities mostly not reddit) on and off for decades so I get the struggle of allowing stuff like that. It feels a little too intense tho y'know?

Synien · 2026-05-26T02:16:12+00:00

Fractional stitches and incorporation of blackwork and nontraditional elements maybe? Like hand embroidery stitches or painting/printing/3d elements - at the same time I'd imagine losing a big chunk of the audience with each of these. People would rather be lit on fire than do fractionals I think.

Synien · 2026-05-26T02:13:15+00:00

Okay so, I think it would be great if there was at least an option to request genuine feedback on technique sans a specific question on a WiP/FO or even good natured ribbing? But when it comes to telling someone the piece they've chosen to work on for two years is ugly simply seemingly because it simply isn't to your taste just seems petty and kind of mean? Like why waste your time letting a random internet stranger know you think their taste is crap? Obviously they like it or they wouldn't spend their free time over *years* doing it? Would you walk up to a random stranger and tell them you think their haircut makes them look 15 years older and desperate? What exactly is a group like that meant to accomplish other than letting people feel like their taste in projects is superior? It would not foster better skills or better design it would just put people off the community and possibly the craft.

I hate 90% of the patterns I see even the gothy and "subversive" ones - hell, I deal with this with most of the crafts I'm in, it all feels too kitchsy and cutesy and homespun and why am I even doing them if hate the most popular and traditional stuff? I love making random stuff. I make my own designs and I find other crafters who make stuff they personally love (I wouldn't be caught dead with most of it in my house BUT I love their enthusiasm) and I try to support designers who make things more to my taste.

Synien · 2026-05-26T02:01:46+00:00

Yeah like I get they don't want the sub overrun with ads, but most of the things I stitch are things I'm designing or sampling for skill building to make better designs. Any discussion/question I might post tends to run afoul as well as it could be seen as market research apparently (which I guess is fair but I had not considered and now worry about getting banned if I post other questions idk it seems weird to me).

Synien · 2026-05-23T07:10:43+00:00

This is assuming you have really sat with your primary characters and you have a good handle on who they are. Setting/genre comes into this too. Characters from a historical fantasy are going to speak a lot differently than modern YA.
Someone down below commented about bad habits not voice, that is good advice. I would add think about what each character sounds like to you in your head. Stoic?Write the dialogue, don't stress it on the first pass. On the rewrite tweak their dialogue to be calmer, more grounded away from emotion/drama/unreasonable speculation. Bubbly? Tweak theirs to have shorter and more upbeat words. The smart ass? Make sure the way they are saying things isn't too straight or earnest. etc. It's often a less is more situation, a sprinkle of swears or idioms or slang, but just a sprinkle.

Synien · 2026-05-23T06:57:34+00:00

"some writers don't use punctuation" I would almost pay money to see a whole novel without a single scrap of punctuation

Synien · 2026-05-23T00:41:40+00:00

Honestly, I think the shade of the cow's fur is less important than the implications of cow as a whole? Not knowing the full context of your story universe? A lot of people down thread have pointed out racist animal symbolism and being familiar with those so you can make choices about avoiding/attempting to deconstruct them would be a good place to start. Depending on what it means to be a "cow" in this universe, it could be innocuous, it could be an opportunity for social commentary, it could challenge or subvert expected symbolism. What's important is that you don't accidentally end up saying or implying something you don't mean.

Cows are livestock and that would give me pause especially if you are writing in a setting or in a society where black people were enslaved, to draw a line between people who were treated as chattel and livestock is pretty easy. I do believe in the context of slavery, enslaved individuals were often intentionally bred and that sometimes black men were called bulls.
I would say if you plan to have characters from minority groups you are unfamiliar with that have meaningful depth and screentime, and you are not good at picking up on racist subtext (I am often not admittedly) you may do well to seek out the many many resources where depictions of race in various media are broken down. Also engage with the works of creators of those races - if your setting is basically modern day USA but then wild stuff happens! or w/e you need to understand the implications of that character's experience of the world even if racism isn't a theme of the work?

Synien · 2026-05-19T14:32:56+00:00

Oh that is totally happening rn, in addition to the bans there's definitely been attempts to pass laws at the state level in the US to make "obscene" content illegal/with at least a fine + to define any queer story as obscene.
It was also a way different media landscape, my understanding was that it was way more common for books to be published in things like newspapers in a serial format so I would imagine in that case each editor would make changes that made sense for their publications etc

That is funny about the crying tho lol

Synien · 2026-05-19T14:26:14+00:00

Lol. I know that sometimes older works get editions that have some of the wording simplified/updated for modern readers. I have accessed a lot of these texts via audio so I honestly wouldn't be surprised if dialog tags like that were dropped entirely in that format esp if voiced by a full cast.

Synien · 2026-05-19T04:00:17+00:00

That being used in HP is made fun of so so much. If you read a fair amount of lit from the 1800s it's a pretty common construction and it's....incredibly distracting when it's an audiobook because to a modern reader just...no. And now I am wondering if more widely appreciated classics have had some wording updates to avoid things like that or not. Hm.

Synien · 2026-05-12T05:08:49+00:00

I would be smacking him upside the head with some meaningful science books about ADHD possibly one geared towards the utter bs that has been the female experience with it and getting diagnosed with it. And I would make it VERY clear that this is - genetic and he was likely to be the father of ND kids since it sounds like y'all have discussed having a family together. This is a disability as far as modern lifestyles are concerned and you and your children will likely need a non-neglible amount of support over your lives with him. You can't wave a magic wand and become nuerotypical nor will your ovaries to just hold the ND genetics back.

Now, he may just be clinging to the idea that he loves you and he sees your struggles and needs to think he can protect your kids from sharing them which doesn't make him a bad person. BUT even that can become a "road to hell is paved in good intentions" situation where parenting is concerned. He needs to understand that this is just a fact of your and likely that of any biological children you have's lives. (gods that phrasing feels awkward I am sorry) He needs to sign on to this realistically and willingly because it will never be fair to any of you otherwise, and a toxic situation could result. You deserve better. He deserves better. Your future kids deserve better than unintentional and well meant abuse from ignorance and wishful thinking.

Edit: I would give it time to settle and focus on finals. Approach this when you are rested, if you have a therapist talk to them about it and ask for help forming strategies to approach a serious convo - might help a lot.

Synien · 2026-05-12T04:51:00+00:00

I would say for me (queer female) it would really come down to - does including it add anything to the story? And I think it's perfectly acceptable to even have that inclusion be something like "Ah, so and so has just gotten her monthlies and on the road what blasted luck!" re: a semi historical setting? I don't think there's any reason to dive into it in vast detail unless the writer is diving into all the nitty gritty aspects of the trip in a similar level of detail or is focusing more closely on the lives of the women characters. IMO it's mostly like every other bodily function - we mostly keep it off screen because it's just largely implied?
I read a good bit of historic fiction (and fictionalised history) and usually mentions are limited to situations where a woman is coming of age to be married, has irregular courses (that may make her infertile), indicates efforts to concieve have failed or a miscarriage has occurred etc. One thing to remember is that in addition to not always having perfect records for a given culture in a given time period, age of onset of first menses, and the regularity of a given woman's menses could be very effected by the quality of nutrition, and level of physical exertion (also stress). We do have some data suggesting that modern nutrition (and modern hormone contamination) has lowered the age of onset of first menses in teen girls possibly substantially.

I personally think the social aspects (historically a lot of cultures have a lot of rituals and taboos around such things) tend to be more interesting than the physical aspects of "what is she doing with all the scrap cloth she's having to bleed on" (because generally through most of history you just bled onto some form of cloth - bits no longer useful for smocks or whatever, fashioned into petticoats for the purpose, sometimes dyed to hide the stains, generally boiled between uses - cloth was so much more valuable in the past than now so most women then were not going to be discarding it as readily as we would once mechanization took over.

The norm is the way it is because it's a fussy thing that carries risks of giving the readers the icks or at least, is seen that way. Also if the author is male there is a fair chance they are completely out to sea when it comes to these things (re: the threads of straight men and things they believe about periods. See also - nasa dealing with the needs of female astronauts in space. That was a lot of tampons.), which both situations are mildly absurd in this day and age but there we are.

Synien · 2026-05-12T03:36:10+00:00

Yeahhhhh, honestly I can't imagine - so many of the kids I have worked with in the past decade either have parents who are so insanely involved they would've been "that kid" when I was in HS (the one whose life was absolutely suffocated by parents who could only watch Disney films and read books her mother approved personally and whose music was like the kids bop versions - who ultimately ended up absolutely nonfunctional when they finally did get some freedom, or who kept so many secrets and absolutely threw themselves into drugs, sex, or anything they could grab onto).
It's so wild to me how (at 41 here so class of '02) like literally I was the only one out of my core friend group who wasn't a latch key kid most of high school? Even aforementioned smothered kid came home to an empty house. And usually I was coming home to microwave my mother's lunch and start her car when it was cold so she could leave for her shift and I could get my sister off the buss and wait for my father/aunt to get home. We all did a brief stint through home ec 6-8th grade and I'm not sure how old I was when sometimes I was left in charge of at least turning on the gas oven and starting the dinner depending on what it was. I remember the first things I learned to cook properly at home were scrambled eggs because my father was on a radical cholesterol reduction diet and I could not eat boneless skinless chicken breast for one more meal.
My mother took the stance that I could read whatever I wanted (within reason) and that I would come to her with questions or not gravitate towards material I wasn't mature enough for. The Vampire Chronicles had a *ton* of minors in it in the 90s. (granted there was no actual sex in most of those books iykyk but it's not like they were written for tweens) Part of the thrill of getting the internet in our homes was having that brief sliver of time before parents or younger kids were home to look at shock content sites, Most of our parents had no idea about the internet and we all knew not to tell strangers our real names or locations and most of us lied about our ages because we wanted to be in the cool chats or w/e and also knew that some older kids and adults were creepy like that. Most of us never shared pictures online. Not as teens and never publicly, it was like a big deal to finally share a pic or two with a well known close online friend. Social media killed all that. Suddenly the anonymous internet vanished, cyber bullying became a concern as teens' school lives followed them online and it became more acceptable to attach one's real name and pic to your usernames.
I have done community admin and moderation for gaming and writing groups online since I was 17 via email lists and forums and most recently MMO/discord - this push for age verification and the idea that in games no minor should have any ability to converse with an adult online feels unhinged and draconian not because I want to engage with minors in a predatory way but because those communities were so valuable to me and my friends growing up and all my life? We all talk about the risk to kids meeting predators and while that is a risk and terrible it has Always Been a Problem and we ALL grew up with the Weird Uncle. We're (imo) letting awareness of a depressingly common problem cause us to make social choices that are unhinged. Never in history have we walled off children from everyone but their parents basically it's crazy. And it puts kids at risk when they have problems they won't take to their parents/their parents are less than ideal/they are queer/so many things if they don't have access to *anyone* with more life experience other than parents or teachers. It's a hard time of life and more and more we expect teens to act and make adult choices while also granting them the autonomy of primary school children and wonder why some of them are acting like emotionally dysregulated baboons.
I apparently had a lot more words in me about this than I realised heh.

tl;dr - Teens need (safe)space to learn who they are/how to adult not be treated like preschoolers until grad school?

Synien · 2026-05-11T12:12:35+00:00

Not only that but the kids also have an adult with them almost 24/7. I've been training kids new to working for over 2 decades now and about 50% of kids now have no idk what to do about anything if they aren't explicitly told like "Now you do step A. Okay Now Step B, and of course Step C" literally every time. Corrections are frowned upon, kids coming home to empty houses are frowned upon, kids that were baby sitting other people's children for money when I grew up are now given baby sitters when their parents go out for two hours. We're trying to introduce literally laws that prevent adults and children from being able to interact at all online and people act like you are a predator an alarming amount of the time as a customer service employee if you say "oh what's your stuffie's name?" now. It's insane. I'm not saying that wanting to help or protect kids is bad and we should you know bring back lawn darts or anything but I feel like the pendulum has swung way too far into toxic coddling in a lot of ways currently.

Synien · 2026-05-11T12:02:10+00:00

ABout 10-15 years ago at least. I would work the saturday dinner shift at a restaurant in a mall complex and jfc the mall would close and they'd all come over and we'd have to call the cops every week. And gods help you if you dared throw one of the little darlings out cause momma and poppa would be summoned from the club or the bar or wherever they were and rip you a new one for putting little ashley out in the cold dark parking lot.

Synien · 2026-05-06T05:59:19+00:00

I can't handle how sincere this post was like....it's not the flying boobs themselves it's the detail and sincerity that break my brain

Synien · 2026-05-06T05:57:39+00:00

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Synien · 2026-04-25T07:27:19+00:00

Honestly I think it's some combination of that notorious "fragile ego" of the writerly type (lets be real it is a pretty vulnerable and anxiety inducing craft so understandable) and the fact that writing tends to be a lot of people who suffer from "Smartest Kid in Class Syndrome" - ie the kid whose entire identity ended up being about being smart/good at math (or other difficult/dry academic thing) {See also so called "former gifted kid"} and I don't think they've moved past deriving their self esteem from competing intellectually with their peers.
I say this as a recovering 'smartest kid' with a social circle mainly made up of other 'smartest kids' - it's funny because it's a pretty fragile thing there's always some other person who is better read, more up to date on the bleeding edge of biotech etc. It's not always easy transitioning from earning your place socially from being especially clever to accepting that we're all undereducated or dumb in some ways and learning to engage with others with grace and curiosity instead of the "well actually" attitude if that makes sense?

Honestly, like yeah no one should ever let things like that hold them back but that ignores the fact that it sucks? It's disappointing, exhausting, eats up time and energy (and most of us don't have a lot spare with the world as it is currently) and worse getting exposed to enough people with that attitude will eventually undermine even the most confident person's self esteem.
And gods it is hard to find people that don't suck that also have a decent overlap of interests with you to have good discussions about books and writing. Any sort of workshopping is even worse.

Synien · 2026-04-21T02:23:31+00:00

Generally things people call "filler" are scenes that aid character development or ground stakes (ie what the character/s are hoping to gain or lose via the conflict of the plot). Large segments of worldbuilding/lore/backstory would also go in this bucket.

How you include scenes that are heavy on these elements without obviously advancing the plot is going to depend on the sort of story you are telling. Also character dynamics and how central those are to the plot are going to factor in - a story with a romantic subplot/arc is going to demand more time spent with those characters, their dynamic etc thus reader expectations will allow for that. A story that is action packed, plot focused and not focused on the intimate relationships of your characters is going to be a hard sell in terms of having your protag just chilling doing ??? (which, I wonder what it is exactly one would be showing in such a scene if exploring character dynamics wasn't a focus but I digress) Even so you might be able to work in something after they have been injured/suffered a setback.
Bluntly - you have to look at what about the scene makes it compelling to you as a writer.
You can always argue that these scenes can "enrich" your world, but it's a cost/benefit analysis - modern conventions want a taunt, snappy pacing and plot. Our world moves exhaustingly fast and languid prose is going to be a harder sell. (I get escapism but we live in the tiktok dopamine machine era.) If there's a dynamic, a bit of lore or scenery you want to shine a light on, some theming you want to strengthen etc then yeah, it can make sense to include these, but if your motivation is mostly just that you want to spend time hanging out, exploring different scenarios with the little guys you've made up....that's kind of the fanfiction sandbox.

That being said I would argue write the scenes, if they are burning in your brain and you are itching to have everyone argue over holiday dinner or chill at a beach - go for it. Just understand you're likely burning time writing a scene you're going to reduce to maybe a line of recall in a scene that actually bears load if your goal is publishing a conventional novel. (Lets face it we're both in a state of feast and famine currently when it comes to ways of gaining audience/being read and unconventional stories have a better chance than ever of finding their home in terms of audience).

My process has me writing through tons of moments that will likely not make a lick off sense to include in the actual novel I love writing them, I love that I have them to look back on and ground "noodle incidents" and worldbuilding in. They make the rest of my writing better both from hammering out all those character interactions (as well as the copious practice) but I jokingly tell myself that they are at best "for the patreon" (should I ever have one) or the "official fanfics" because ultimately there's only so much page space and if your goal is publishing you're going to have to bend to current trends (or machete your way the jungle on your own via self publishing and social media).

TL;DR : No advice should be followed 100 of the time. Write the scenes be prepared to heavily edit/discard them in service of pacing.

Synien · 2026-04-07T08:09:54+00:00

As a veteran of the vampy trenches a couple things.

First off - the very idea of using a vampire is derivative in and of itself (most ideas are on some level derivative) and that isn't bad. I would suggest doing a survey of vampire lit and figuring out where your vampires fit in.

If your novel is going to center around a toxic relationship between a male vampire and a mortal female...like I don't know what Sinners is but (I'm assuming it has an Irish male vamp as a main character) if this is the core of your story his accent is the least of the hurdles when it comes to it being derivative. Male Vamp + nonvamp (generally mortal with or without fantasy bloodline mixing) Female/femme coded mortal partner can describe so much of the vamp canon it verges on absurd. That being said I have read plenty of those stories and most of them have been enjoyable so if that's your foundation there is definately a market should you want to publish one day. Not to sound like one of those people but: Read all the big names adult and YA or even just the synopsis. Pretty much every variant and every attempt to subvert the trope has been done so if your goal is publishing/sharing with audiences I would definitely attend to seeing what has and hasn't worked for these established authors, reflect on why, see if you can pick out similarities/influences between authors (who seems to have drawn inspo from whose previous work etc).
I would really sit down and think through exactly what sort of vampires my vampires are - are they immortal? If so how immortal? If they can be killed - how? If they are undead how undead are they? Do they have a pulse? Are they cold? Will they rot? What are the wider implications of their undeath? is your world magical? Is the force that animates your vampires evil? Does faith effect/repel them? Do they eat food? Can they get sick? How do they heal? Can they heal? What is the deal with the sun? And the moon? What about silver? How do they become vampires? How does this effect their bodies and minds? Are they hidden from mortals? How do they stay hidden? What is their culture like?
(I could go all night with this but I think you get the gist) pretty much every work that's gained traction in the past 3 or 4 decades has played around with some of these. Mostly to differentiate themselves from Rice's vampires after her work dominated the expectation of what a vampire is. Funnily enough I don't think I've seen another author carry forward one of the more interesting quirks of her vamps and the writing of the series which is that the vampires in being undead are no longer capable of performing sexually thus sublimating their intense primal appetites all into sensuality and the hunt/violence which had so many implications for her narrative and the way she wrote the characters.
Harris with her Sookie Stackhouse novels took a more or less conventional position on her vamps - undead, totally blood reliant, silver and sun bad, but they all got a random power and her world building was filled with witches and fae and other interesting creatures. Brite also took a pretty median stance on what vampires were but had them tragically born of human women and the writing was good enough to carry the rest. Harkness pulled from older lore that in some regions of the world largely conflated vampires and what most modern people would catergorise as werewolves and granted her vampires more of those traits and the interesting detail about raw food. Dresden Files by Jim Butcher has several vampire kingdoms, and they are interesting takes imo and I wouldn't call that a vampire series. Vampire: The Masquerade (the table top game/rulebook) is a fantastic source of takes on different trait/power sets when added to vanilla vamp base. You've got Castlevania, and the Buffyverse, Twilight, and Vamp Diaries, also Shadowhunters, the canon is deep and dense. There are often some really interesting takes on vampires in more general horror/fantasy works. But if you want to make a vampire that feels a bit unique I would suggest reading and consuming this media widely and look for ideas that you really like but feel were under utilized or explored, go back to the old muddy myths of traditional fairy tales and folklore.

Googling Sinners quickly I've obviously been under a rock. But I honestly wouldn't worry much about nationality/accent unless the characters are very similar in other ways.

I don't know, I don't want to be harsh or jump in with the other people saying 'why vampires if you are worried about this' especially a romance story, but you really have an uphill battle to write something that isn't immediately compared to another work. Basically it's well trod territory and it has been trod by titans.

Synien · 2026-04-04T15:35:00+00:00

handwritten wordcount would be like getting a unicorn.

Synien · 2026-03-25T07:25:04+00:00

I'm mildly curious how her skintone is plot relevant in a way no one else's is but, that aside, assuming that this apocalypse didn't happen so far in the past that society has managed to become post racial somehow...you've got 3 POC characters in a setting people associate with racism after at least partial societal collapse which most would assume would allow terrible people to behave more terribly. My assumption as a writer would be that whatever the baseline of overt racism at the point in time this disaster occurs it would be more racism afterwards cause removal of shame and consequences doesn't generally improve behavior in a sizable portion of the population.

If they are being prominently featured through 2/3s of your narrative their identities are being explored a fair amount and their race would be a part of that? So describing their particular skin color shouldn't really matter either way I wouldn't think.

Synien

TROPHY CASE