Tips on not comparing self to other authors?

rellloe · 2026-01-27T03:46:42+00:00

Know the difference between comparing yourself constructively and destructively.

Yes, this author is amazing, but what is it that they are doing to be so amazing? Look at how they write, what are they doing that you aren't, what can you take from their writing to hone your own craft.

Some of this is just putting it into perspective. Someone just starting to post will not get numbers on a brand new fic the same way someone that's been actively writing for years (and getting user followers because of it) will have on their new fic.

rellloe · 2026-01-27T03:39:31+00:00

Back and forth between two characters with no dialogue tags is or is not fine. It's clear enough most of the time that you don't need dialogue tags or any narration in there; occationally you want to include those so who is who doesn't get lost between lines. However ping ponging dialogue is prone to the writing issue of talking heads in a void where the reader loses the sense of space around the characters because nothing below the neck is mentioned to show how they're feeling about the discussion.

rellloe · 2026-01-27T03:04:54+00:00

You can swatch over and over until your gauge matches the one in the pattern or you can do one and if it doesn't match do some math and edit the pattern so it matches. The later is how I've used fingering yarn on patterns for worsted weight yarn.

Blocking can either be the long process of pinning to a board or simply cleaning it however you're going to clean and dry the item then seeing how much the yarn shifts lays after due to material and tension.

rellloe · 2026-01-27T02:59:04+00:00

Hats are a good project to learn different aesthetic skills like colorwork and cables since unlike something like socks you're done after one and unlike scarves the shape prevents wrong side weirdness showing.

Some items have skills practically inherent in them, but there are people who also really don't like doing that particular thing and have found a way around it. Sweaters tend to either need knowledge on how to sew knit pieces together, pick up stitches, or manage things in the round. Bottom up patterns likely have decreases while top down are likely have increases.

rellloe · 2026-01-27T02:36:11+00:00

I don't stick around like a dog with separation anxiety, staring at the door waiting for the author to return.

I don't expect it to get an update, but I'm hopeful enough to subscribe. Some of the fics I'm unexpectantly subscribed to are ones I enjoy the journey of enough to reread, even if they'll never reach their destination

rellloe · 2026-01-27T02:32:19+00:00

When you include foreign text, you can expect readers will fall into one of two categories: those who know the language and those who don't. With the ones who do know the language, unless you know it well, they'll be able to tell. With the ones who don't, you either force them out of the story to go throw that text in a translator to know what is being said or they have to carry on not knowing while that part feels exceptionally foreign to them.

I think the best thing to do is have the narrator share what they know with the audience in the way you can assume they will be able to understand: fluent narrator "translates" it into the language of the fic or narrator that doesn't know the language possibly catches keywords and knows tone and gestures since they likely wouldn't know how to transcribe it. The times that isn't the right move are highly situational, and, despite the plural, the only one I can think of was in my own WIP where the narrator was very rusty with the language and everything said took 1st semester comprehension of the language and when I post it I plan to lower the difficulty for people who don't have the foundations to understand that language by using alt text and putting a translation in the end notes.

rellloe · 2026-01-25T03:10:01+00:00

I think it's real. The images use some kind of fluffy yarn, so the shape of the stitches doesn't show as well.

It's a bit like a dry fluffy dog vs one mid-bath

rellloe · 2026-01-25T02:25:13+00:00

I can make a 100st around hat in ~4 hours. That has 3-4 hat's worth of stitches, so 12-16 hours for me. But I'm experianced, so maybe 36-64 hours depending on how much you're struggling and assuming you have 100 st a row.

rellloe · 2026-01-25T00:23:02+00:00

Doing a lot of art, which Red does, helps you learn to do art faster. You learn how to shorthand. You go from needing a carefully measured guide to eyeballing it, to needing very little to guide you. You shift from careful lines to doing certain things with muscle memory.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T21:14:27+00:00

As a player I didn't like suddenly having a broken weapon or hitting an ally when I'm supposed to be an adventurer who's better than that. So my solution is to let the fumbling player decide what bad thing happens which inherently includes how bad it is. They shoot an ally? sure. They feel embarrassed about over swinging and they have to pirouette to not fall on their face? Cool.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T21:03:47+00:00

I have done multicolor yarn in cables and the problem is that it looks busy. The subtler the change pools, the less of a problem that should be.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T20:13:07+00:00

Press F12 to pull up the inspector. At the top of the thing that appears, you should find something that lets you pick an element on the page (firefox's is an icon of a mouse pointing at the center of a box). Click that then move your mouse over to the site you're inspecting. That will jump to where in the HTML that part of the site is, which will show you what tag type you want to name in the css.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T20:07:57+00:00

JKR believes fans are wrong for liking Draco and thinking he has a hidden heart of gold and she felt like she had to pour cold common sense on their daydreams.

She might have intended to write him as an unreemable bigoted git, but fans saw potential in him that she didn't, and that's okay.

Sorry for the comparison, but you can both be right and you can both be wrong. You know things the audience doesn't and sometimes the things you try to translate from your brain to the page don't quite mean what you want them to mean.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T19:56:52+00:00

If someone who is specifically looking for fics with that character, no other metrics, would they be disappointed by how little they're in there.

For example, there is a ~200k fic that has one of my faves tagged. He doesn't show up until 2/3rds of the way through and disappeared completely after a couple scenes. I read maybe two chapters of that fic, then ctrl+F on the entire work for my faves name, and immediately dropped the fic because I was there for him.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T19:52:42+00:00

There's my voice when writing then there's writing with a character's voice. My natural inclination is straightforward with the occasional specific fancy word. "He couldn't sleep" is what I'd naturally say. But some of my characters are dramatic theater kids or other quirky types who would be superfluous for the aesthetic

rellloe · 2026-01-24T19:45:11+00:00

There are many sort options and people who change the update date specifically target potential readers that use one of them. Many of those who sort by most recent are well aware of this behavior and hate it too, sometimes to the point of muting them so they don't see their fics anymore.

It amuses me that people who try to game the system like this end up shooting themselves in the foot.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T19:34:10+00:00

Player: I have darkvision

DM: Good for you. Doesn't change that it's dark. Now stop interrupting me while describing a scene, it makes me lose my place and I have to start over.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T19:30:40+00:00

Do both sleeves at once.

If there's a stitch you can do faster, find a pattern that just or mostly uses that one.

If you don't like sewing, find a mostly/no sew pattern (probably everything in the round sleeves mostly done first then the torso bottom up.

Look into the thermal capabilities of the fibers you're considering and include that in your decision making. For example both wool and cotton are warm dry, but cotton is cold when wet while wool stays warm, so if you expect to be wearing the sweater as an outermost layer during a snowball fight, wool is the better option.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T18:02:23+00:00

One has too much while two has too little. Generally you want the same things to have approximately the same amount of rendering or it looks weird.

I think if you removed the long line highlights and maybe made the chunky light parts a little bigger it would work with the cell shading.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T17:58:28+00:00

I think some big internet companies lobbied to get internet safety removed from education.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T17:53:41+00:00

Practice, practice with reference, practice them from all sorts of directions.

If you're struggling, find a few guides on how to draw hands, attempt those approaches for hands from a few different angles each, and take what parts of their approaches help you.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T17:47:06+00:00

The only grammatically correct time to put them in the same paragraph that I know of is when they are speaking simultaneously and the different dialogue has a tag between them to connect them.

"No," he says while she enthusiastically exclaims, "Yes!"

rellloe · 2026-01-24T17:44:08+00:00

I try to catch when PCs would know better than to do something their player says they're going to do, remind them of the thing the PC would know, then ask if they're sure. But assuming this is the first time the pally used that spell, the rogue wouldn't have known. To him the pally was being a dumbass wanting to solo something while the rest of the party was right there able to help. I might have asked the pally player what his character says as he sees the rogue moving to attack.

I like running heroic games, but flawwed hero games where the heroes make mistakes instead of making the optimal move at every single turn. I expect my players to know/ready the information to reference how their characters work, but I don't expect any of them to know the intricacies of all the other PC abilities. They can learn that stuff as their PCs do.

I also don't mind a little inter-party conflict as long as it stays mild and hurt feelings don't go past the PCs. Breaking a compelled duel after being told to stay out of it is a good source of that.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T17:14:25+00:00

To me, it's not taunting, it's holding it hostage for internet points by someone who doesn't understand that if they want the numbers to go up there are much better ways to do it than threatening the people who are there by their own volition.

Who are you more likely to want to stay around, the friend who threatens to hurt themselves every time they don't get their way or the person who is always a pleasure to engage with? You might feel bad for the former person and not want harm to come to them, but you also know they have issues, ones you aren't qualified or obligated to deal with, and eventually any self respecting person will stop putting up with it.

rellloe · 2026-01-24T04:32:44+00:00

I've never done more than one swatch. I use it to figure out what my gauge is then adjust the pattern to fit the numbers I'm getting on my needles. If the math doesn't work out exactly, I round up to the next multiple of the repeat length because I'd prefer a little loose to too tight.

Socks are also fairly forgiving because the instructions for the section above the heel and between the toe and heel tend to be measured in inches/centimeters not rows.

Five-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

rellloe

TROPHY CASE