u/Lufthansa138

I'm a tattoo artist, and starting out I never expected to enjoy drawing flowers and mushrooms so much. People come to me for them all the time, and while the most common requests are birth month flowers sometimes people ask for recommendations based on their specific experiences and I've got nothing.

I'm looking for a book with a large variety of plants, with lots of photographs or illustrations for reference, but also something that leans more into the symbolism and cultural significance of the plants rather than focusing more on biology and the hard sciences.

I don't care about price, I would rather have one cohesive chonker of a book vs needing several shorter books on the same topic.

TLDR: My entire family pushed me to go into premed, and since I had no money and was a huge nerd I did it. I was in my third year and dropped out to become a tattoo artist. Now I'm completely independent, no longer living with my parents (hallelujah!) and I've been thinking of getting my bachelor's, but definitely not in premed! I know a lot of my STEM classes will most likely go waste, but I really have no desire to major in anything that needs graduate school.

Here's the thing, I love tattooing. It's given me a lot of freedom and it's a fun atmosphere where I get to do what I love all day but it's very inconsistent. Some weeks I make thousands some weeks I make next to nothing. But as the economy waivers so does the tattoo industry. I'm doing alright for now, but I'm looking into a more stable "back up" and since I already finished my general classes I figured it's only 2 years to get a bachelor's. I'm still researching what kind of major I want, unfortunately I can't log into myUCF anymore so I don't remember exactly what credits I got.

Just wondering if anyone's done something like this? Any advice on the process? Is it worth it to go back to UCF or just get a different 2 year certification or something.

For context I'm a 32f tattoo artist and she's a 17f who works afternoons at the boba tea shop in the plaza. I've gone religiously to that shop nearly everyday for the last two years and as long as neither one of us are busy we love to chat and just hangout. We don't hang out outside of work hours, but I do consider her a friend.

She's been drawing since before I knew her and when she got an iPad I helped her get started with the switch to digital. She regularly asks me for advice on her drawings and I know she can handle genuine constructive criticism.

I told her I used to write fanfiction for years, and it was such a uniquely rewarding (and stressful) experience. I decided to get back into writing after years of being out of the game and would give her little updates, and now she's excited to start writing for the very first time! I'm excited for her, and it'll be nice to have an in person friend to go back and forth with our writing ideas.

Which brings me to my conundrum... She sent me the first two chapters to beta and it's bad. It's her first non-academic writing project ever, so I'm not surprised it's a little amateurish. Literally nothing you don't see I'm everyone's first fic. I'm no expert in writing, I'll be the first one to admit it! I truly believe the only way to get better is to just do it, learn your lessons, rinse and repeat, and try to have fun along the way. I wrote some absolutely cringy garbage when I was a teenager, but there's always at least a couple people who like it and give you that initial confidence to keep going.

I wrote fic consistently for 10 years before life got in the way, I also majored in English before becoming a tattoo artist, so I know not everyone is as traditional as I am when writing fan fiction. I basically treat it like a novel, outlining, drafting, editing, all before releasing. I am basically the complete opposite of a pantser. That doesn't mean she should follow the same process, nor is it beneficial for every writer.

At first I was thinking of just sticking to grammar and spelling mistakes and just encouraging her to have fun and keep going. But we do have a back and forth when it comes to art, and I know she's the kind of person who is always eager to learn and put her all into every project. By no means do I plan on eviscerating her work, but I do think a little advice about structure, planning/outlining, and maybe even character arcs could go a long long way for her. However, I don't want her to feel discouraged or like it takes a bunch of additional homework to be able to write fanfiction. Personally the more people that get into the hobby the better!

Her dream is to make Webnovels in the future, and I'm confident she's got the art down. While this fanfic is just for fun, I wonder if staying too silent on the matter would just set her up for disappointment in the future. There's also the very real possibility that she'll just get better naturally over time, I'm sure that's a lot of our experience. Also, it may just not be any of business 🤷‍♀️

Maybe I'm just overthinking this, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask others who might have experienced something similar. If you were in her shoes, how would you like me to handle this?

I got my first emulator console a year ago and I've got a bunch of little goals for myself (like playing all the Pokemon games, all the Zelda games, all the fire emblem games, etc.) One thing I've realized is that these games were no cake walk, and that's part of the fun. I love to just focus on them entirely and sink a couple hours in and see how long I last without caving and looking up the wiki 😂

That being said, between clients I sometimes have some downtime at work and I've quickly found that I hate having to stop when I'm in the zone. So I'm looking for some games that are light on the story and heavy on the fun! Some games like this I've enjoyed so far are: Magical Chase, Mr Driller, and Shantae. I'm also currently getting my ass whooped in Castlevania so that's fun. I don't mind homebrew either, I really enjoyed Pokemon Emerald Rogue and Good dog galaxy. As far as genre I'm open to pretty much anything, part of the fun of getting into emulation is playing things I didn't get to try the first time around.

He's like a little dive bomber, he just swoops and comes at me beak wide open. 😂 I'm not really looking for advice. We went through this already when my friend shaved his beard. He's calmed down a little bit after we sung his favorite song on repeat for a while. I just find it funny (and painful where he bit me) that you make one change and he's like "STRANGER DANGER!"

Wondering if anyone else has any stories like this?

Preferably something that's free or a one time payment. I've been playing Life in Adventure and while I enjoyed it at first but after several runs it became clear that it's a bit too simple for me. I've played Roadwarden before and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'm looking for a good immersive text based rpg for android that I can play during off time at work. I've also played Bit Life briefly but it was too silly for me and it felt like your choices didn't really matter.

I'm kind of new to text-rpgs so I'm open to all sorts of genres.

For the record, I'm in my mid-30s, and horror is one of my favorite genres-- to read. Film and tv is another story. I'm looking for horror movies with good story first and foremost. I've watched a lot of movies that are cheap jump scares or gore for the shock factor, but frankly I don't find that scary at all and without a good story I just don't see the point. I blame my friends for the crap recommendations, so here I am.

I've seen a lot of the major franchises, things like Friday 13th, Elms Street, Scream, Chucky, Final Destination, Saw, Terrifier etc, with mixed reactions. Even the ones I liked I wouldn't consider scary. I would give you a list of horror movies I've loved, but that is short (possibly nonexistent list). To be honest as a teen and young adult when I was really exploring the horror genre I was just not finding anything that truly inspired fear, so I just stopped watching unless friends or family wanted to watch something together.

Now I'm wondering about the genre as whole. It's a huge industry, and like most things what's popular is not always what best. I've just always personally thought books were better in this regard, because they're immersive in a way that movies can never be. A good author triggers the darkest parts of your imagination, and even if you want to look away you can't because reading is an active process, so it keeps you locked in no matter what. I've recently been on a horror game kick recently, and video games are truly an excellent medium for horror, riding that line between the immersion of books and visual/audio stimuli of film and tv.

So to all horror fans, which films truly exemplify the genre? What movies linger with you even hours (or days) after watching? Prove me wrong, show me that I'm just being elitist and that movies really can be just as terrifying (or more so) than books. I'm begging you.

Essentially which show do you think is the best snapshot of normal 21st century life.

Basically this was a random topic that quickly spiraled into a rather spirited debate among my friends and now I'm curious. I feel like there's some obvious recommendations, but I wouldn't mind something new to add to my watchlist.