mechanismatic

joined 4 months ago
 

One of my neighbors has a massive amount of very large mushrooms circling a tree.

 
 
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38887250

One of my neighbors has a massive amount of very large mushrooms circling a tree.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

It's especially nice to eliminate machine issues so you know that subsequent print issues are due to modeling problems or orientation while slicing or something else.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 32 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That one depends on the job. Some managers will love to exploit your inclination to hyper focus on solving problems and following the rules. They won't ask you to work unpaid after hours but if you want to they won't protest... Doing a third of the work for a team of six people? That's great, but your next performance review will include the criticism that you're not as social as your coworkers because you're too busy doing the job.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

The fragments can be a stylistic choice. Ultimately all writing "rules" are arbitrary and often decided by consensus, often based on "what we've always done" as much as based on a specific reason for better communication or possibly a reason that is moot now. It's good to know what your potential readers are likely to prefer and it's good to know what an editor or agent will want if you're hoping to get published in a traditional manner.

That being said, I'm a fan of breaking "rules" when you have a good reason to and know why you're doing it. If the narrative is reflecting the fragmented thoughts of a character, fragments might thematically work really well.

That said there are also ways of rephrasing the fragments to make them flow better. Some readers might find them abrupt because they're looking for the noun and the verb with some kind of active action.

For the heavy chain, some readers won't think of it as a grade or gauge of chains. Sometimes technically accurate isn't better than stylistically smooth. But it isn't a significant difference, so definitely keep it if you like it. You should write for yourself first of all.

I liked it in general. It was an interesting glimpse into a world where there are implications of greater detail I'd be curious to know more about, such as how the main character's age and knowledge of magic works. Some of the characters are necessarily one dimensional in such a short peic of writing. Scared and concerned victims of witch trials and puritanical patriarchal male authoritarians is what I'd expect because that's what's been depicted before, in the Crucible, in the Sleepy Hollow movie, and other fictional depictions.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago (3 children)

If you share a Google doc link instead of a PDF, people can make comments in the document itself, so it's easier to provide direct feedback to specific text.

You have some tense issues. "Behind him, sat a woman." (past tense) then "...she stares down..." (present tense).

Some of the sentences are incomplete sentences. "Her posture, in direct contrast to that of the Good Reverend."

"A red mark wraps around her neck, and a heavy chains secure her delicate wrists." Wraps is odd as an active verb unless the mark is appearing in the moment. Usually an inanimate thing is wrapped around rather than wraps. I'd suggest something like "stretches around." "Heavy" is redundant with chains. Chains are rarely light. "a heavy chains" has an agreement problem. A is singular, chains is plural.

"and the Reverend’s clearly dire distress," It hasn't seemed like he's in dire distress prior to this descriptor. Earlier he was described as having a "posture proud with authority..." "full of fire and fury, but steady and deliberate."

Some of the narration seems to be Colette's internal monologue and should probably be in italics to distinguish it from just third person omniscient narration.

For example: "This poor girl has not a speck of magic in her – And the vegetables from Reinette’s garden aside, neither does anyone else within a thousand kilometers."

But then the next paragraph mentions Colette in the third person again.

 
 
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38684536

Found this cluster as I was blowing leaves this afternoon.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can get a new Sovol SV06 for less than $200. That worked very well out of the box compared to my older Ender 3. Prusaslicer also has a good profile for it. I don't care for Cura slicer as much. Enders are of an older generation of printers that I will personally avoid just because of the legacy of having to tinker with them just to get them to work. The opposite end is the Bambu where "it just works" except it doesn't always and it's not as easy to fix and it doesn't play well with third parties. Sovol is a good starter printer that I'd had even better bed adhesion with over Prusa MK4Ss at work.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There are too many to mention since there's so much out there.

You can go to a font website like dafont and perform a search for a font or browse different themes/styles and specify in the results that you want Public domain / GPL / OFL fonts.

Almost all of my fonts are released under an attribution license, so they're free for commercial use and remixing.

https://michaelwmoss.com/typefaces

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago

All the good dungeon real estate got bought up by early adventurers with their collected loot, so now they are located in gated communities or expensive adventuring resorts. Everyone else gets the roadside discount dungeon experience with plastic monster chotchkes for loot drops and pugs and chihuahuas dressed up in skeleton and dragon costumes.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

But which one? Zombie killer, scifi vampire, perfect alien, blood queen, monster hunter?

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

You throw water on the fiery plane when you land at the airport.

But seriously, I would imagine the hangar would need to be constructed of a material that was neutral or resistant to the elements, maybe even composed of them altogether to have immunity to destruction by them. So a prismatic hangar that has all elemental resistances. Or you could go with a fifth element like aether. Or heart if you're playing the Captain Planet RPG. Or Milla Jovovich.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I feel like you'd need to be specific about what kind of pirate existed in the late 19th century. It's not the stereotype of the Caribbean pirate from the Golden Age. There were regional pirates near China and India. But pirates in the west in the late 19th century were mostly suppressed. You might have a former privateer from the Civil War still alive in the 1890s and he might be in his mid 40s at the youngest.

[–] mechanismatic@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

It's not new, but the current hot trend is for companies to outsource their costs as much as possible but pretend they're providing "creators" with a service. Gig economy jobs, social media jobs, Etsy stores, etc. all involve "employees" who can't call themselves employees for the purposes of insurance or full time hours or salaries taking on the equipment and material costs and labor costs in hopes that the company will pay out more than they invest. It's the new MLM Avon calling, Tupperware party, essential oils scam. It's not to say that some people won't beat the house some of the time and make a decent living, but the odds aren't in your favor and the house is still making a bunch off of you even when you are being "successful."

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