Going by this HC thread, there are no M/F works yet, and I plan to buck that trend.
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Iāve spent a ridiculous amount of time on this, so have an unscheduled snippet. (Contains some description of burn scars, so if thatās something youāll want to avoid, donāt read. Or at least jump over the paragraphs that start āSparkgap has let his hair looseā and āFor the first time, you can see his full faceā. Thereās some mentions of āscarsā elsewhere, but theyāre not described more than that.)
There's a dog now. Or a cat. Or a dragon.
Following the music, you find your way to a section of the level you havenāt seen before. It doesnāt look any different; apart from the color coding, the corridors are the same, and while you can tell the words in the signs form different shapes, itās all in some ancient language you donāt understand.
In front of a row of nigh-identical doors (the only identifying feature a row of symbols you canāt read, but presume are room numbers or somesuch), you stop to listen, unsure for a moment where the music is coming from, then take a guess about the direction.
Under your touch, the door opens with a soft click, offering no resistance, and you step in.
After the gray concrete and the sterile fluorescent (sometimes flickering) lights of the tunnel network, the room you enter seems to belong to an entirely different world. With dark wooden furniture, heavy carpets, soft, dim, yellow light, and a cozy reading nook nestled in front of a fireplace cut from actual stone (and yes, thereās the music!), it carries the air of a private library from a bygone era. Bookshelves line up the walls, filled to the brim but still unable to contain the absolute flood of the books. Books piled everywhere. Side tables, chairs, floor, on top of the lonely grand piano in the corner.
Youāve never seen so many books.
At the other end of the room, a large armchair stands by the fireplace, flanked by a cheery-looking reading lamp and a side table with a gramophone producing the haunting tune you were following. (Well, thereās that mystery solved.) In the chair sprawls Sparkgap, barely visible among the pillows that seem to swallow him whole. A shadow creature, half dog and halfā¦ snake? Dragon? Mermaid? Something that has forsaken hind legs in favor of a muscular tail, has wrapped its long body around the chair and is resting its canine head in his lap.
They donāt notice you, so you inch closer, the thick carpet muffling the sound of your footsteps. (Some carpet! Really, it feels more like wading through forest moss, although without the wet or dry sounds you could expect from that.)
Sparkgap has let his hair loose, and heās ditched the uniform and respirator in favor ofā¦ black-rimmed glasses, sweatpants, and a way too big hoodie. His left elbowās splayed over the armrest where heās holding an open book, fingers idly playing with the pages, the reading light highlighting the rough skin of old burns on his hand. On his other hand heās holding a glass of some thick, dark red liquid, swinging it to the beat of the music.
The shadow creature barks.
Sparkgap turns with a start, eyes widening as he notices you. The glass slips from his fingers splashing the shadow creature, who jumps like a sprayed cat. That makes Sparkgap jump, half-turning back and dropping the book, which hits the shadow creature, who recoils and, trying to back up, gets stuck between the legs of the side table. In an attempt to struggle free from this trap, the creature knocks the table over. Sparkgap lunges forward and catches the gramophone a moment before it topples.
For the first time, you can see his full face. What you had thought was the tail end of the scarring running under the respirator, is instead the main chunk of it. The whole left cheek of his appears as a crumpled burn scar pulling his mouth to a permanent sneer, accompanied by a branded row of magical symbols running down on his neck.
Hugging the gramophone to his chest Sparkgap turns, hiding the scars from your view, avoiding to look at you in a movement a bit too deliberate to not be self-conscious. āSascha,ā he says, pleading with the trashing creature instead. āSascha. Bitte.ā
āIām sorry,ā you say. "I didnāt mean to - " (Cause a chaos? Stare? Make him uncomfortable? Youāre not sure. Youāre not sure it matters.)
āItās fine,ā he cuts you off, still avoiding eye contact with you. He puts the gramophone down on another armchair, and kneels on the floor in front of the shadow creature; it stares back, body tense, but lets him scratch the underside of its jaw. āJust surprised me, is all.ā
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teeny tiny gripe.
GOSH I keep stepping on the exact same rake of starting to write characters emoting and then remembering that theyāre wearing masks!
Devastating. Unconscionable. Iām going to go sulk.
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That is why comics have masks that are capable of facial expressions. Maybe the characters have those?
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Characters can emote behind masks ā¦ their mind-eyes see all, even if the world remains oblivious to the reality! 
Or perhaps they are projecting what they imagine are emoting under their masks?
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I would reccomend looking into Body Language. the way a person stands and what they do with their hands and shoulders can tell you a lot, even when faces arenāt available.
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Iāve done this dozens of times. Each time I get angry at the mask
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Appreciate the suggestions/advice! I tend to mix body language and tone of voice, and let MC emote with their face covered.
Iām really just being a baby that I instinctively start writing smiles or catches of the eye and have to pause and change it to something else.
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In other news, my fav line for today:
Exasperated: Ancestors preserve us, your translator provides, the phrase familiar enough to the linguistic model by now.
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If that helps, Iām having similar problems when writing scenes with my robot spider RO. Except even body language doesnāt really work in this case, so Iām always faced with the choice between simply describing the emotion or getting really creative with my body language descriptions.
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I feel a little stupid to admit that I donāt see any reason to find difficult to describe emotional reactions of masking people. Eye movement, the voice, the way hands move the way a nervous tic touching the mask while stomping the feet.
In fact the mask enchances the dramatism of certain emotions. like a mask shivering due the maniac laughter of the villain.
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Iām working on chapter seven of Ink today, but also making notes to connect the various world building of my other story ideas so the magic systems can co-exist. Like how does this rule work in this story, but is broken in this other story? What has to happen to take their magic to this next step? I love it when I can fit all the puzzle pieces into place. Writing a series of standalone games (or books for that matter) means planting seeds and weaving threads of connection, and Iām having fun with it.
Found this meme on a scroll through Twitter today. Nails it.
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I finished the coding for my next chapter yesterday, and today I did my first full writing day Iāve done in a little while. After doing a whole lot of sorting-out and coding for some time, itās really nice to get back to drafting!
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Was just bug hunting for an issue with Season Two of UnNatural. Started deleting code with the intention of rewriting the bit that caused the issues then spotted the cause so I reverted to my unedited version but now I cant find the cause again sigh the joys of coding.
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Since April 4th, Iāve written over 10,000 words for that story I mentioned earlier. Iām really proud of it, but god am I exhausted. Iāve checked out books from libraries, Iāve combed wikipedia, and Iām practically thinking in Greek mythology, now, lol.
Whatās everyoneās preferred method for keeping things straight whilst doing research for written works?
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Hey man, at least youāre not working with Norse mythology. That shit is so goddamn contradictory. Like 90% of it is based off a few poems from a guy who contradicts himself all the time. Itās a massive clusterfuck.
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This first week, I have completed the first half (in terms of file review) of my glossary content, so I hope to finish the glossary part of my UX experience by this time next week.
I have not yet written anything creatively ā eventually Iād like to take a day and just write, but the glossary and the save system for the UX need to be completed first.
I think this type of productivity in word-count is on the high end for me. My normal pace is 1/5th in the same time period, so your speed of writing is impressive to me.
With beginning research, I have a multilayer system I started developing in high school ā basically a core dump with salient reference points, so I can quickly locate what I am in need of.
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When I run into this problem, I tend to reinvent the myths. I mean, if the mythology is already chaotic, why not make it up the way I want to? (You know you write fantasy whenā¦)
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I do the same, honestly. I came up with an entire reimagining of Norse mythology for a dnd character I madeā¦ who was promptly curb-stomped like a bitch, but the story surrounding him was super fun to write though. 
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Couldnāt sleep much last night and ended up revising the concept for my potential future Witch game. Including a new name āTales of a Hedge Witchā which I thought sounded cool and I chose āHedge Witchā as I was familiar with the concept of a Hedge Knight and though a story about a witch without a coven would be interesting.
I have now learned that āHedge Witchā is a real term and means exactly what I intended it to mean when I thought of the name.
I love learning new things even when it reveals something I thought was original wasnāt.
Now, time to find this bug I found yesterday in UnNatural season two then continue working on Daemonglass.
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