#&&. and no references have this particular angle that I can find so I am just ffFFFFFfffFF

[nientedal]

For specific ear plugs, Loop earplugs and the Flares Calmer earplugs are some of the best I've found as an AuDHD person. Flares in particular. They take the "edges" off sounds and are so subtle I regularly forget they're changing anything until I take them out, and then the world hits me in the ears and I quickly put them back in, lol. Loops are great for blocking heavy noise, and good for those of us with small or oddly-shaped ear canals. Their unique base shape allows me to turn them in a way that "braces" them against my ear and helps keep them in place. Also, they are the least obtrusive I've found as a side sleeper.

Neither will stay put very well if you're chewing or talking a lot, but that's been true of every earplug I've ever tried. Jostling loosens things, it's simply a fact. I wanted to at least mention it, in case "I need to block sound while chewing" is your need, but for anyone else, please don't let that deter you. They are a little bit pricy for a few grams of silicone that go in your ear, but I fucking love these things. You may be able to find them more cheaply as knock-offs elsewhere, too.

As far as studying goes...

Take Notes. Take as many notes as you can in class. Not after class!! IN CLASS. Take notes like your life depends on it, and doodle in the margins to stay focused until you realize there's a new slide you need to write down. Handwriting helps stuff stick.

Then, the night before the exam at the latest, get a new notebook. Copy your notes from class into the new notebook. All of them that will be on the test. By hand.

(Remember to shake out your hands periodically! Loose fingers, loose wrists, and wrist-twist while bouncing your elbows to shake your hands out! This is a pianist's trick to help stay limber, and it works just as well for handwriting. Do Not give yourself tendonitis. Learn from my mistake. If it hurts, stop. Your grade is not worth your health. Do NOT give yourself tendonitis in your hands; it will turn into carpal tunnel and you Do Not Want That. DO NOT.)

Copy all your notes by hand. If you are able to start a few nights before, great! This will show you what you're uncertain about, based on how much you're able to remember while copying. (You may remember bits and pieces from the lecture as you copy, because your brain made an association web while you were writing by hand the first time.) If not, THAT'S OKAY!!!! Every little bit counts! Copy as much as you can the night before the test. If you are rocky on some of it, try to copy those parts twice, but if you can't, OH WELL!

Go to sleep right after you finish writing. Shake out your hands, take a shower if you must, and GO TO SLEEP while your writing memories are still fresh. This sounds kinda like woo-woo nonsense, I know, but I never learned to study in high school and this is the best I've got. (It landed me two degrees in accounting, so...meh?)

If you cannot write by hand, type. If you cannot type, banish your roommate and speak out loud. Scan the chapters with your eyes and talk to an invisible audience as if you were trying to teach them. For me, writing was best, but speaking definitely also helped.

Important: If you have the "in one eye, out the other" inability to parse boring text, reading out loud like a newscaster (or Captain Kirk) is going to be your best friend. Example:

Snell's law is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air. In optics, the law is used in ray tracing to compute the angles of incidence or refraction, and in experimental optics to find the refractive index of a material.

Boring. I cannot read this. But, if I pretend I am an overly-chipper news anchor at 6:45AM on Good Morning America:

SNELL'S LAW is a formula used to describe the relationship BETWEEN the angles of incidence and refraction, WHEN referring to LIGHT or other waves PASSING THROUGH A BOUNDARY between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air. In OPTICS, the law is used in ray tracing to COMPUTE the angles of incidence or refraction, and in EXPERIMENTAL optics to FIND the refractive index of a material.

(that's not accounting, obviously, that's physics, but it's an example, don't @ me.)

It looks deranged, formatted that way, but hopefully you can see what I mean by using a newscaster voice. Speaking aloud and forcing strong emphasis drags your brain into line and helps break down concepts and clauses in complex sentences WAY BETTER than just staring at them.

...I think that's all I've got for you. Good luck out there, buddy. Please let me know if I should clarify anything, I'm really tired. Hopefully this is at least coherent.

Me: how do I study as a neurodivergent person?

Google: how to help your autistic child study

Me: how to study as an autistic adult/teen

Google: teachers guide to how to deal with autistic children

Me: how do I study as an autistic teen/adult

Google: study tips for autistic people(-written by this allistic man that will talk about autistic people like they're zoo animals)

Me: how to study as a neurodivergent adult, tips from neurodivergent person to neurodivergent students, on how to study independently as an autistic person, no reliant support needed

Google: high functioning autism and school

Me: fuck just. How do I focus during this test that I'm in rn as an AuDHD person

Google: ok, so, to focus on this thing that you currently are doing and need to get done TODAY; weeks before the test you'll need to eat healthy and exercise, meditate, study, set timers, take breaks, drink water, sleep, find the secrets to a happy life, adopt five children, sacrifice a goat, take short showers, brush your teeth

Executive dysfunction:

My fucking deadline:

[storybounded]

Drawing hands: New Best Friend Drawing arm holes, particularly in vest like clothing: New public enemy number 1 for Amber's drawing muse

[dandylovesturtles]

Made myself emotional over the “Leo and Donnie chose to be twins” headcanon.

———

“By the way, it’s Leo and Donnie’s birthday next Thursday. You’re coming, right?”

Draxum looked up from his work organizing next week’s lunch schedule to look at Michelangelo, sitting on the counter and swinging his feet. Celebrating individual birthdays wasn’t a thing that the yokai did, but Draxum had been forced to accept that the boys could not be dissuaded from this human tradition. He’d been to two birthday parties now, for Michelangelo and Raphael respectively, eating cake and presenting them with some small trinket he purchased.

He’d known that he would have to go to more birthday parties at some point. But he wasn’t expecting two at once.

“Why on the same day? I can’t imagine the blue one wanting to share.” Actually, he couldn’t imagine Donatello wanting to share, either.

“Oh,” said Michelangelo with a laugh. “That’s ‘cause they’re twins!”

Draxum stared at him. “Twins? What kind of nonsense is that?”

Mikey tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“They’re entirely different species, for starters,” Draxum pointed out.

“I mean, we all are, but we’re still brothers.”

“Yes, by virtue of your shared DNA donor and the circumstances of your raising.” Draxum waved that off. “But “twins” refers to a situation where two children are born at once, especially as the result of a split of a fertilized egg. Which is absolutely impossible in the case of Leonardo and Donatello. Even if I were to be charitable and simply consider them “twins” for having the same hatch day, I can tell you they do not.”

“Uh, okay,” said Michelangelo, unimpressed. “But they’ve always been twins, so I don’t think it matters to them.”

“Why not? I would think it would matter to Donatello especially, since he claims to be scientifically minded.”

Michelangelo laughed. “Not everything is about science, Barry. Not even to Donnie.”

“Then his decisions about when to apply science and when not to are inconsistent and confusing.”

“Well, it’s their birthday, so they get to pick.”

“I am certain that is not how birthdays work.”

“It’s how it works for us!” Michelangelo slipped off the counter. “We’ll see you on Thursday, right? It’ll mean a lot to them if you come!”

Draxum was fairly sure Leonardo in particular would prefer he didn’t, but that didn’t matter. Now he had a mission: he had to correct this strange incongruence.

“Yes, I will be there.”

“Yay!” cheered Michelangelo. “Okay, see ya Dad!”

He squeezed Draxum around the waist on his way out. Draxum was finding he didn’t mind that as much as he used to.

———

Leonardo and Donatello’s party was just as loud and obnoxious as the other two. Blue and purple decorations covered every inch of the old subway station, strange music blared from unseen speakers, and a horrendous amount of junk food was spread out over a table. It was the same group of people present today as there ever was, the eclectic mix of humans and yokai that the boys considered family, but it felt like a crowd three times the size with the amount of noise being made.

Draxum stood off on his own for most of it, his slim birthday present already delivered to the table stacked with gifts. He’d been a little shocked when Donatello and then Leonardo came by to say hello, since he’d been prepared to be ignored by both of them. It was… nice, maybe, that they did that. Even if Leonardo just wanted to make jokes at his expense.

For most of the party, the two birthday boys seemed to be competing with each other for attention. In fact, the longer he took it all in, the whole affair seemed like a clash of ideas. The purple decorations were neat and tidy, geometric patterns and hard angles. The blue decorations were whimsical, uncoordinated, and haphazard, and there were places it seemed someone had deliberately covered up some of the purple with the blue. Leonardo wanted to play rock music and Donatello wanted to play techno. The cake was a mess because they’d both requested different themes for the decorations. There were arguments between the two of them every few minutes, and according to the human girl April this was “typical behavior.”

But why? They weren’t really twins. They didn’t have to share this day.

Hopefully Draxum’s plan would fix all this nonsense.

When it was time for gifts, Leonardo loudly declared that he was going first, sparking an argument. They squabbled for a bit before agreeing to play rock-paper-scissors, which was apparently what they did every year.

Leonardo won the game and celebrated obnoxiously while Donatello scowled at him. Then he gestured at the gift table - which Draxum, in his efforts to stay out of the main throng, was closest to.

“Hey, Barry! Grab me a gift! Make it a good one.”

Draxum sighed but reached over to take one of the blue packages, checking the tag to make sure it was for Leonardo. “This one is… to Leo from Donnie,” he read.

“Oh no, not that one. Our presents to each other are always last.”

“Because they always get sappy about it,” said April with a laugh.

“Do not!” yelled Leonardo at the same time Donatello hissed, “You take that back!”

“Uh, yeah you do, and you know I’m right.”

Draxum ignored the petty argument to look back at the gift table. If they weren’t going to be satisfied with his choice, he might as well give them his own gift.

He lifted it, in its sensible brown packaging, off the table and handed it over.

“Why not start with this? It’s to both of you from me.”

“Both of us at once?” asked Leonardo. “Oh man, you’re throwing off our whole system, Barry.”

“Yes, but he’s giving it to you,” Donatello pointed out, “which means my turn is still next.”

“Uh, no, if it’s for both of us then it counts for both of us, which means it comes back around to me!”

“Ooooh no, you do not get to loophole your way into opening two presents in a row-“

“Ahem!” Draxum loudly cleared his throat, getting their attention. “Would you please just open it?”

“Yikes,” said Leonardo. “Touchy.”

“Some people just don’t understand the sanctity of opening birthday gifts,” said Donatello with a sniff. But he leaned in to watch as Leonardo tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box.

They were both silent for a moment, staring at it. Then Leonardo said, “Uh, no offense, Barry, but what is this?”

“It’s a… scientific study on how twins are formed during the gestational period,” said Donatello, pulling the paper clipped thesis from the box. “Oh, there are more in here… Also about twins.”

“Uh…” Leonardo blinked at it, clearly bewildered. Well, he was always a bit slow. “Thanks…? I think?”

“Not that I don’t appreciate the scientific literature,” said Donatello, “but this isn’t really my area of study and Leo does better with training manuals and textbooks than research papers.” He looked up at Draxum. “Is there something about this we aren’t getting?”

“Yes there is,” said Draxum, sweeping his hand around at the entire party. “I am here to correct your mistaken assumption that you are twins.”

The room fell silent. Donatello set the paper back in the box, staring at him. Leonardo’s brow creased in anger.

“We are twins, though,” he said, setting the box aside like it was burning him.

“No, you are not. There is simply no way that the two of you could be twins. It is biologically impossible.”

“You think that I’m so stupid I don’t know that?” Donatello demanded, getting up from the chair he was sitting in. “Are you doubting my intelligence?”

“Yes, if you honestly think you are twins with him, then I am.”

“Uhhh, Draxum,” said Michelangelo quickly, stepping between him and the now furious Donatello, “this was a… funny joke, but you can stop now-“

“This is not a joke. I am simply explaining the facts.”

“Yeah, well,” now Leonardo was on his feet, too, “the facts are that me and Donnie are twins. Always have been, always will be.”

“You are not,” Draxum insisted. “And given what I have seen here today, I’d think you’d both be relieved, since you clearly don’t enjoy being twins!”

Both boys looked like they’d just been slapped in the face. The rest of the room had gone completely silent, like everyone was collectively holding their breath.

Donatello broke first, turning on his heel and marching out of the room, his hands balled into fists and his shoulders hunched up as high as they could go. “Dee!” called Leonardo, and then he was scurrying off after him. There was the sound of a heavy door slamming, then silence.

It didn’t last long.

“Draxum!” roared the rat, actually getting up from his chair to get in Draxum’s face. “You come in here and upset my boys on their own birthday!?”

“Seriously not cool, Drax,” said the human April. Cassandra shook her head in shared disappointment behind her.

Draxum pushed Lou Jitsu back, scowling at his accusers. “I was only explaining reality! This is really the rat’s fault for letting their delusion go on so long.”

“Delusion!?”

“Barry!”

“Rat!?”

“Ooookay,” said Raphael suddenly, stepping his way into the middle of the fray and starting to herd Draxum back toward the exit. “That’s enough of that for now.”

“I am simply trying to explain-“

“Trust me, hoss, you wanna step away from this one,” said Raphael, and his tone was angry but surprisingly measured. “Come on.”

They retreated to the sewer tunnels outside the subway station. The smell was much worse out here, and Draxum wrinkled his nose.

“Alright.” Raphael heaved a sigh, folding his arms. “So here’s the deal. Mikey likes you, and I guess I kinda do too, so I’m gonna try to help you before you completely torpedo your chances with the rest of the guys. Which, you kinda did already, but maybe we can turn it around.”

“I still don’t understand why they’re so upset,” said Draxum. “Surely it was obvious they aren’t twins.”

“Uh, yeah, they know they aren’t twins by bio-whatever,” agreed Raphael. “They ain’t stupid.”

“Hmm.” Draxum turned up his nose. “Donatello isn’t stupid, maybe.”

“Leo ain’t stupid, either, he just pretends like it.” Raphael pinched his brow. “Listen, that isn’t the point - the point is they already know they didn’t come from the same egg or hatch the same day or whatever. They’re just twins anyway.”

“But how? That doesn’t make sense!”

Raphael sighed again. “Alright, look. Dad didn’t know when we hatched, right? But we all wanted birthday parties like we saw on TV, so he let us pick.”

“Yes. And for some reason Leonardo and Donatello chose the same day.” Draxum could figure that much out on his own.

Raphael nodded. “I was the biggest and oldest, and Mikey was the littlest and youngest, and Leo and Donnie were just kinda sandwiched in the middle. I think at first they just wanted a thing. Somethin’ that set them apart from me and Mikey, ya know?”

“Not really,” said Draxum. Raphael glared at him, and he sighed. “But go on.”

“So they picked the same birthday and called themselves twins. I think Pops just so glad they were actually getting along that he agreed to it. And I think he thought once we got to the day, and they realized they were really gonna have to share it, they’d both demand their own day instead. I know I thought that was gonna happen.” He smiled at the memory. “But the day came, and… they fussed the whole time just like they do now. Arguing about what kind of cake they wanted and who got to open their present first. But they didn’t ask to split. They kept it the same day, and they kept calling each other twins and it just stuck, until we didn’t question it anymore.”

“…They are both stubborn,” Draxum pointed out, and Raphael laughed once.

“Yeah, guess they are. But that’s not what this is.” Raphael shrugged. “They chose each other back then. Maybe at first it was just to have a thing, but then it became real. And every single year they keep choosing each other. That’s why they’re twins.”

Choosing each other as twins… Draxum furrowed his brow. “It’s not normally a choice,” he pointed out finally.

“Yeah, well, our family doesn’t get a lot of choices, so just let ‘em have this one, okay?”

“…Fine,” Draxum finally relented. “As long as it’s noted that this is purely a social designation, and not a biological one.”

“Uh, sure, whatever.” Raphael rolled his eyes. “Glad we got that cleared up, though. Think you can come back to the party and behave?”

Draxum wrinkled his nose at that phrasing, but nodded. “Yes. I will not bring it up again.”

“Good!” Raphael’s smile abruptly transitioned into something much more dangerous. “Because if you make my little brothers upset on their birthday again, I’ll remind you what it was like when we were enemies.”

Then the smile was back. “Now let’s go in!”

He walked back to the subway station, leaving Draxum to follow on his own. Draxum couldn’t help but sigh wistfully.

Raphael would have made a great general for his army.

———

The boys had already returned by the time Draxum got back. They were opening more gifts, and he noted they were wearing hoodies now - though they had apparently decided to swap their signature colors. They were smiling and chattering, and any hint of their earlier upset was gone.

Until Draxum stepped into their line of sight, and both of them went rigid, wary of him.

Apparently just talking to the red one was not enough. Draxum would have to do more. What a pain.

But he didn’t want the boys to hate him. So he sighed and launched into it.

“I… am sorry. I shouldn’t have said you aren’t twins.”

The boys looked surprised at that; slowly, their posture loosened back up.

“And… to make up for my present, I will… take the two of you wherever you want to go in the Hidden City.” The next words were painful, and he ground them out. “My treat.”

Leonardo and Donatello shifted their gaze from him to each other. They were silent, but it didn’t seem like they needed to talk to have a conversation.

Then they finally looked back at Draxum, slow grins growing over both their faces.

Eerily matching, very evil grins.

“Oh,” said Leonardo, happily menacing. “I think we can think of something.”

“I concur,” said Donatello in the exact same tone.

Oh, thought Draxum. Maybe they really are twins.

[shorthaltsjester]

if i keep seeing so many people refer to ayden as an indication of an unknown softness in pelor i will start setting things on fire. just because YOU cannot handle nuance does not mean the story of exandria has not contained it and done so consistently. in fact the first in depth interaction that any party had with pelor (vex becoming his champion) was a portrayal of him that was explicit in his complexity. taken straight from the transcript for 1x104 elysium, “[vex you] spin and look, whereas there once was a burning star-- and to the rest of [vox machina], you see the painful, endless light that averts your gaze-- it doesn't hurt your eyes as much, and you can see the faint features, the soft cheeks, the hairless head, and the bright warm eyes of he who brings the dawn. And you can see the smile there, behind the light. “there is hope.”” sunlight can warm you and burn you in equal measure.

that burning image of the sun has much in common with a teenage boy who steps into a dark room, and reminds the dm that it’s not dark. the same way that a teenage boy who stands by as a woman who will not give up her worship of pelor is punished because he has more important responsibilities he must honour has much in common with a seemingly benevolent lord of the dawn might respond harshly to a cleric who asks if he is worth saving while he is trying to find a way to survive so he might keep helping to provide light. the gods aren’t simple and they never have been. i am as psyched about the particular angle that downfall is taking as anybody but it is already frustrating watching people act like the gods are suddenly more nuanced because they’re in literally mortal bodies when the entire Point of the gods in exandria in the various stories we’ve seen so far is that the only difference they have with mortals is the bounds of their power. they carry all the same flaws and the same profundity. just because so much of the fandom has reduced that to black and white flatness or faulty mapping onto real world religions (or the various traumas those might have caused individuals) doesn’t mean that complexity has been missing at all from the story.

[tainbocuailnge]

I think there is a difference between the comic as a sequence of images with text and the comic as a comic. it's a subtle difference that an untrained eye might not see but the more one as artist draws comics the clearer this difference becomes, because one who first aspires to draw comics will soon find they are merely drawing sequences of images with text.

when people say an artist is clearly inspired by anime they often use "anime" to refer to japanese pop culture in general, but if you look more closely you can often tell it really is specifically anime rather than manga that inspired them, because the paneling and camera angles in their comics will read like a series of anime screenshots rather than a manga page. similarly, when I was a teenager really popular manga that had anime adaptions would sometimes get "animanga" reprints where they replaced the panels with the equivalent anime screenshots of the scene, and they often looked like dogshit because the very premise showed blatant disregard for why the original comic worked in the first place. these two examples are both about anime because i am a weeb but it applies outside that context too. a cartoon storyboard can be read as if it were a comic, but what it really is is a sequence of images with text that has yet to be refined into its actual intended format.

there are many artists who only employ the medium of comic because what they actually want to draw is a video, or a video game cutscene, but the only tool actually at their disposal is the ability to draw a series of images and add text to them so that is what they use. there is no shame or mistake in doing this, you have to make your art with the tools that you have available, and if the sequence of images with text is enough to convey the idea then it was the right tool for the job. but these are different mediums with different visual languages, languages which have a lot of overlap and can occasionally be used in each other's stead to achieve similar results (especially when drawing a fanart comic of a video game for example), but which are still ultimately different. the comic and the video and the cutscene are all different forms that a sequence of images with text can take but they are far from completely interchangeable.

there is a key difference in approach to the comic as a series of images roughly interchangeable with other forms of series of images like the video and the cutscene, and the comic as specifically the comic. this difference in approach is not always necessary to achieve results, an artist who wants to convey a scenario they came up with needs only the sequence of images with text to achieve this. but the difference between a comic with good writing and art, and a comic that is a good comic, is in whether it was treated as a comic rather than a sequence of images with text. I say this as an artist whose nearly every comic has been simply a sequence of images, because I just don't have the patience to refine it into a comic when I merely want to convey my idea rather than draw a comic. it takes a particular skill and insight that have to be developed and practised separately from the ability to draw well and the ability to write well in order to become good at making "the comic" as synthesis of the two.

it's hard to specifically point out the essence of this difference between the sequence of images and the comic because it's kind of a vibes thing honestly, and it depends on where and how the comic was meant to be published too. comics meant to have paper print editions have different constraints and requirements and frameworks to work with than webtoons meant to be read on slim mobile screens in a continuous scrolling format. a good traditional comic will consider not just how each individual panel looks but also the way each page as a whole looks, and how the pages look next to each other in a spread, and how it feels to turn the page towards the next spread. a good webtoon will consider the movement of scrolling down and how this affects the transition from one moment to another in its composition. time is time in videos and cutscenes but space is time in comics, and the space your have available determines how you can divide time across it. when you make a webcomic on your own website you have no constraints but the ones you set for yourself, and sometimes this leads to things like homestuck, which would not work in any other format than the one it created for itself.

the best comics are good because they tell their story and present their images specifically in the form of a comic, in a way that would not be possible if it were not specifically a comic. I think this is true for basically every medium, I'm just thinking about comics specifically lately, because even though I don't really consider myself a comic artist - because I usually draw sequences of images rather than comics - the thing my clients want to pay for is often still "a comic", and they don't know or care to tell the difference. it's a difference that, as established, is often fairly moot anyway, because as long as it successfully conveys your idea it's good enough. but it's precisely because the sequence of images is often good enough that the specific skill of the comic artist is often overlooked.

[sgiandubh]

Chain of fools

Promo season seems to always reactivate #BestOfFans' predatory instincts. Today, one of the people I was mildly 'following' on X, knowing she was a very decent, half-clandestine shipper had the naivete to share a pic taken today with C. Lo and behold, the KGB across the street immediately started the screeching. I would have granted them a pass, were it not for the very curious angle they chose to present things, this time:

Most, if not ALL of the women involved in that conversation were born and lived their entire lives in a country where democracy was never completely obliterated. They have no idea, nor direct experience of what a dictatorship looks and sounds and feels like and yet they look and sound and feel exactly like The Pravda, circa 1951, where enemies of the people (including Americans, so basically... themselves?!) were currently called 'reactionary/ imperialist vipers'. Replace shipper by 'enemy of the people' and voilà:

'Because she's a known shipper enemy of the people and has been one for a long time. All smiles around Cait and on SM and her tumblr page she's a snake like the rest of her ilk.'

Most, if not ALL of the women involved in that revolting conversation can recite by heart The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag:

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance]

'With liberty and justice for all'. This includes the freedom of speech, set into stone by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads:

[Source: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-1/]

You think I am overreacting? In that case, I wouldn't be the only one. It took me exactly three minutes to find on Google a short, but very interesting blog post about the metaphor of the snake being used as a dehumanizing tool in many totalitarian regimes' official rhetoric and media. I will quote it briefly, leaving the rather ironic references to current US politics aside. I find it very interesting and enlightening, for a certain pervasive mentality, in some regions of this fandom:

[Source: https://www.dangerousspeech.org/libraries/beware-of-snakes-a-common-dehumanization-trope]

I have written it before and I probably will write it again, but the Eastern European I am feels unsettled and worried about this. It is not only unsavory, it is violent and denotes a totalitarian way of thinking I am very surprised to find in the minds of these mature women, who lived in complete freedom for all of their lives.

Oh, and by the way. Given that particular 'enemy of the people''s active and very public commitment to charities supported by C (you know, as in raising money for WCC and so on...), I am absolutely sure C knows very well who she is. And I wonder what were they expecting from her, in a work-related context nonetheless, even if (the premise is perfectly absurd, as C does not give a fuck about fandom wars) C would not stand shippers.

By the same token, why would C offer anything more than a vague, borderline formulaic birthday reference while talking to the press, knowing fully well each and every word she utters would be immediately dissected to death and weaponized by the factions of this fandom?

Ironically, their knowledge about Eastern Europe is about zero. I just had to LOL (not really), reading this very serious and concerned dialogue between Marple and The Vulgar Canadian Journo. The Canadian was pissed off about Maril showing up, as she is supposed to, for promo, in NYC:

It's not STAZI, madams, but STASI - short for Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, or Ministry for the State Security. Each and every USSR satellite state had one, but both of these arrogant and superficial Westerners make it sound like a harmless gossip and propaganda machine. In reality, the STASI, along with its sister institutions, was a supremely powerful, merciless apparatus that crushed tens and tens of thousands of lives, encouraged hatred and denouncement (for money, political protection and social climbing) even within the same family. And I personally remember the day where an agent of the local STASI, the Securitate, picked me up from school, walked with me for almost one hour until he left me on my doorstep, in a cruel attempt to make me denounce Shipper Mom. I was nine years old. I will never forget, nor forgive. I felt raped. You don't care and you could never understand, of course, but for the love of God, keep off such complicated tropes you have no idea about.

[remidiy]

We Don't Gatekeep Art Resources | A Comprehensive List

Here's a list of some of the tools/sites I currently use or have used previously for works/studies. I'll separate it into Software/Utility, Reference, and 'Other' which will be just general things that could help you map out things for your experience with art. **[Free highlighted in pink, paid highlighted in green. Blue is variable/both. Prices Listed in USD]**

Software/Utility:

2D

Krita Painting app (PC) (my main digital art software on PC for 5+ yrs)

Clip Studio Paint [PC] [CSP 2.0+ allows for 3d modelling within the painting app and a lot of other cool features] [apparently allows up to 6 months free trial]

Procreate (12.99) [iPad/iPad Pro] (the GOAT)

Artstudio Pro [iPad/iPad Pro] (An alternative to Procreate if you enjoy the more traditional art app layout) -- I find this app handy when Procreate is lacking a feature I need, or vice versa. (you can easily transfer files between the two, but keep in mind Procreate's layer limit)

2D "Collaborative Painting/Drawing apps"

Magma Studio

Drawpile

Discord Whiteboard

Gartic Phone (Pretty decent for 2d animation practice, but has a hard limit on frames)

3D

Blender [3D Modelling, Sculpting + Layout] (PC)

Sculptris [PC] (it's an old unsupported version of Zbrush, but can help to get ideas out, and functions better than browser sculpting apps

Nomad Sculpt [iPad/iPad Pro] ($20) Works pretty well if you prefer a mobile setup, but it is a bit intense on the battery life and takes some getting used to

References + Study

Magic Poser [ PC and Mobile ] Has both free and paid versions, I've made do with just the lite version before

Artpose ($9.99) [Iphone + Steam]

Head Model Studio [IPhone] A 3D head, with both a basic blockout version for angles, and a paid version with more detail

Cubebrush [simply search "[keyword] pose reference pack"], they usually have good results + they frequently have sales!

Line of Action [Good for Gesture practice + daily sketching], also has other resources built in.

Quickposes Similar to Line of action, more geared toward anatomy

Drawabox | Perspective Fundamentals Improvement modules (Suggested by @taffingspy )

Sketchfab, this skull in particular is useful, but there is other models that can help you study anatomy as well.

Pinterest can be good, you just have to be careful, usually you're better off just finding reference pack if you have the money, sometimes certain creators have freebies as well

Artstation Marketplace can be decent [make sure to turn on the Aye-Eye filter so it doesn't feed you trash], a colleague of mine recommended this head model for practicing facial blocking, there is also this free version without lighting.

Local Art Museums [Unironically good for studying old "master work" if you're into that, or even just getting some inspiration]

Brushes + Other Useful software:

I personally have used both of these brush packs before making my own

(I actually don't know how to share my daily brush set because I frequently switch between Krita, Procreate, and ASP, but once I figure that out I'll be sure to do that lol)

Marc Brunet's Starter brush pack [Technically free but supporting him for this if you like it is ideal, there's some good brushes]

Dave Greco Brush Pack [$3]

Gumroad in general is a good place to find brushes and art resources. *Note; for Krita specifically, brush packs are a bit weird, so it may require you to find different packs, or import them in a particular way

PureRef [PC] - Reference Compiler/Moodboarding

VizRef ($3.99) [iPad] - Moodboarding/Reference Compiler

Artist Youtubers/Creators that helped me improve/guide me along as a self-taught artist from when I first started digital art to where I am today:

Proko

Marco Bucci

Sinix Design

Sycra

Hardy Fowler

Lighting Mentor

Winged Canvas

Moderndayjames

Swatches

Chommang_drawing

Marc Brunet (YTartschool)

+ Observing a lot of speedpaint art by people whose work I enjoy on social media/youtube, trying to dissect their processes

If you've gotten this far, first of all, congrats, you can read a lot, and second of all, thank you for reading and I hope this helps! I'll continue to come back and update this if I find any new resources in the future, or if my processes change :)

Much Love,

-Remidiy

[thereweredragonshere]

Any tips for getting better at drawing?

Oooooh that is a very broad topic.

If I’m being honest I find it hard to put my art journey (that I am still pretty young in) into words. It all depends on so many things- experience, medium, your ability to understand anatomy, objects in a 3D space, colour theory, how joints work, lineart, comprehensive understanding of form etc etc. There is a lot of stuff involved with art and it would be hard to just compile it all into one topic. But I’m gonna assume you mean drawing as in pencil, paper (or the digital equivalent) and an idea.

My main tip, which you’ve probably seen over and over and over again is just practice. It’s disheartening to hear the same thing repeated until your ears are bleeding but from personal experience, it’s how I improved my understanding of form/linework. But don’t just practice the same thing. Go on Google or Pinterest, find reference photos of real people, trace over the human skeleton, divide complicated structures into easy to understand shapes. There is no wrong way to study art, do whatever works for you!

Another one is to look at other people’s art, see what about it you like and you dislike, and how you can apply that to your own work. Someone use a particular brush for outlines that you like? Try it out! Do you like the fluidity/connectedness of colours within a particular piece? Have a go at it!

And not everything you draw will be amazing, or even good. I’ve been sat feeling frustrated with myself because I couldn’t get a face right, or the way I was drawing a hand looked weird a squiggly, and that’s completely normal! No one posts the fucked up looking pieces of warmup art that they abandoned because they couldn’t find the right angle to draw a character’s cheek bones at (Cough cough). Trust me, everyone that draws has art they will never post.

Finally, progress takes time. It’s a long, frustrating, gruelling process that has massive highs and lows where you feel like the worst artist in the world or the fucking reincarnation of Picasso. It depends on the weather.

For example, my art at the start of 2023 looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

It took my two years to get that far, and fuck knows what my art will look like at the end of 2025.

Your art journey never stops, it only becomes less confusing and frustrating as time goes by. To everyone that feels like they’re in the art trenches right now, you got this, I believe in you and I promise that one day you will crawl out from the mud and filth with a clear understanding of the colour wheel (because fuck me I do hope I get out of that trench soon)

[sonkitty]

The Sideburns Scheme Post #4 v2

(For reference: The Sideburns Scheme)

Crowley, Good Omens 2, Episode 1, The Arrival, The Perfect Entrance Trick

The entrance is part of the coffee shop scene, but it is so special, I am giving it its own post.

Sideburns Check

This show has treated us to something. Crowley does a full spin so that we can get a really good look at the hair from multiple angles. It's not that close up but still good. Thank you show and Crowley!

The sideburns are short. They are the intended shortness after driving. In turn, they are the shortest they have been up to this point in the present day storyline.

Short sideburns happen around human spaces most of the time, at this point in the story.

...

Brighter Red Streak Check

It's easy to think the brighter red streak is not there because of its position. The above image is brightened and more saturated with white rectangles to indicate where I see the streak.

I often find the streak above the center of his left eye and going up from his forehead. Here, the streak actually starts from his part on the top.

...

Hairstyle Changes

In both the Bentley and here, the top hair flared upward. Just outside the coffee shop, the flare has shifted further to his right instead of straight upward and lining up with his nose as it did in the Bentley. There is no extra saturation streak on the right side of his forehead.

Earthly Objects: The Perfect Entrance Trick

(For reference: Earthly Objects)

We have arrived at our first Threshold Trick!

This part is going to be very detailed because of pockets and thresholds.

Here are some GIFs to start us off:

This sequence is The Perfect Entrance Trick. Way, way back before I thought there might be an Earthly Objects game and was just exploring the sideburns, trying to figure them out, I remarked on my appreciation for the camera work and music for this segment. I always compliment those parts because they are so good. They contribute beautifully to the idea here.

While setting aside the Sideburns Scheme and trying to figure out Earthly Objects, I made a "Bonus Round" part of my main post because this sequence had me so amazed. It looked like threshold-only touches and avoiding earthly object touches, but I couldn't be sure due to some specific questionable things I will explore further down eventually. Nonetheless, it sure seemed to me like Crowley knows how to play the game as an expert, so if he is aiming for threshold-only touches, there must be something to his methods that gets the job done. These Threshold Tricks might even be special supernatural bonus points he's earning in the game.

My understanding of the game at this point in time is like so: In this sequence, they are threshold-only touches, but how are they threshold-only touches with this game's mechanics? That's what an audience player is supposed to figure out in the puzzle.

The Perfect Entrance Trick is actually the third Threshold Trick I found without realizing it because I did not have the words, "Threshold Tricks" for myself then. It felt like the first one I found when I was trying to understand Earthly Objects. I had already found The Bigger Thresholds Trick and The Door Trick without realizing they were Threshold Tricks too. I didn't have names for them then. I just knew there was something special about sideburns and thresholds so caught onto those parts. It took something more than weeks to put these ideas together because I spent a lot of time just thinking and making pictures while readying myself for making posts about sideburns.

Before we go over this particular sequence in more detail, here's something I think the game is putting forth as a challenge. The Pocket Trick is a hidden giant with a giant impact on many things. While I am at a point that I do not think I will ever solve The Pocket Trick to my satisfaction, I believe a significant one of its hidden messages is, "Pay attention to the pockets."

As stated in my main post for The Sideburns Scheme, pockets are a big, little thing in GO2. They are easy to miss and to dismiss. One should also pay attention to doors and windows, but because the pockets are so easy to overlook—even more than windows, it's a good idea to mind that message on pockets specifically all the same. Between doors, windows, and pockets, pockets are the hardest to see and to understand.

In Earthly Objects, a pocket can be a hole created by a character's body between their own self, part of the screen, part of an earthly object, or even part of a threshold. A pocket can be two or more characters surrounding something or someone on the screen in the framing. A pocket can be a character surrounded by things in the framing. A pocket can be the actual literal pockets characters can have on their clothing. That includes the ones we understand are actual pockets and even little holes the clothing can make on itself. Pockets are everywhere, but making sense of them for how they count, when they count, and what they count for, is another story. It is overwhelming—as if "think outside the pocket" wasn't hard enough in The Pocket Trick to begin with!

I think chances are good that pockets are somehow related to every Threshold Trick, and a big part of this challenge I do not expect to pass is to figure out how. That means I won't ever fully solve every Threshold Trick. So, I will pay attention to the pockets, tell you about the pockets, and admit freely, once again, my understanding of them is limited.

Okay, so here's the sequence in more detailed text form with paying attention to the pockets. It is very quick and heavily based on movement. Parts are also blurry. I won't swear everything below is correct because to play, I mainly have to guess based on clues.

With the car on screen before it is parked, I can find multiple different humans using pockets. However, one in particular catches my interest because he put his left hand in a pocket near where Crowley will park, and I recognize this human:

That guy shows up three different times in episode 6 during The Door Trick and The Door Catch. He is responsible or the Purple in the Rainbow Connection on Aziraphale's part.

Nonetheless, Crowley parks the car. The camera work is doing amazing things by going under the car, then around a wheel, focusing in on the shoes of the nearby humans before Crowley himself starts.

The door to the car opens, and Crowley touches the edge of the sidewalk with only one shoe. The heel is touching nothing behind it. The front tip is avoiding the rest of the sidewalk. That is the Single. The edge of the sidewalk is one threshold, and it was touched by only one shoe.

The camera pans up.

Crowley touches two different thresholds with his right hand. They are the window frame and the door panel for the door to his car. The fingertips avoid the window pane. That is the Double.

One of the tie strands becomes visible, including a clasp and a tassel. That's a thumb and thumb joint of one of the Tied Hands. Crowley's left hand moves forward such that the tie strand is visually in front of that hand. The left hand is important because it's the one that's going to do the Triple part of this Threshold Trick. I don't know the watch's role in pocket mechanics. It generally likes to be seen and seems to also watch things, like it's some kind of "lookout," but something more too.

Getting back to the left hand's movement with the tie strand, at the exact frame that thing happened, I can find a human visually behind Crowley's right elbow using a pants pocket with their left hand. They are wearing a white shirt over a darker one.

This part is a clue that this tie strand is going to be tied to the left hand and that it is the longer tie strand when both are seen together shortly.

Instead of moving ahead to get to what is going to be the Triple, Crowley has his back to the camera. He takes some steps and moves his arms around. I don't have it in me to log every pocket they make and close and what they might frame, but they do such things.

A light briefly pops out in one of the trees trying to communicate something, and I'm going with saying it's a little overhead light for Crowley since it's above his ear and to the left of his head.

There is a nearby car with red rear lights. These types of lights are often used to alert about a color switch in the Rainbow Connection when they light up a bit more. So, the main thing I see it to be an alert for is that pocket user already mentioned and knowing what we'll see soon for switching without an active Rainbow Connection. The pocket user is even pocketed briefly between these red lights. In fact, that overhead light mentioned above lights up at the start of when this human starts to pass the first of the two red rear lights. If those red lights mean anything else, I don't know what it would be.

When that human pocket user that was visually behind Crowley is finally completely off-screen, Crowley's left hand and the watch also go off-screen.

Crowley spins.

As he spins, both tie strands become visible. The longer tie strand is on Crowley's right. That means it is mirrored for now. The left hand becomes visible again too. During the spin, the tie strands switch. The longer tie strand becomes aligned with Crowley's left side. Generally, these things have a special mirror that flips through a Rainbow Connection Reflection, or whatever that Connection allows, in the Pocket Chain of The Pocket Trick. However, The Pocket Trick hasn't started yet, and this Trick is not linked to the Pocket Chain.

Well, without the initiating power of The Pocket Trick or a Rainbow Connection, it looks like a little spin switch is allowed this time.

The belt—which is Crowley's Belt Head—also became visible, and Crowley has his mouth open during this spin. The vest tips are surrounding the Belt Head to have it pocketed between them. Additionally, the longer tassel tip just so happens to brush along the belt during the switch. There is even another self-made pocket of hair like there was for the newspaper door. With the movement, the vest tips and their pocket over the belt shift further towards Crowley's left as well.

The left hand and the watch hide behind Crowley's jacket. This action is part of closing pockets between Crowley's torso and both arms.

Crowley finally starts moving toward the door.

The right arm opens a pocket between his torso again, this time by itself instead of with the left arm.

The left arm forms a pocket between Crowley and the main part of the jacket.

The pocket between the right arm and jacket closes.

Soon after, the pocket between the left and jacket closes.

Then the left arm hides behind Crowley. In the blurred movement, that longer tie strand connected to the left hand pushes off the vest temporarily and becomes visible in the air. This action creates yet another temporary pocket.

In motion, all of these pockets amount to looking like pocket-to-pocket passes in the animated GIF shown further below.

Once the tie strand has presumably returned to where it belongs, the left arm is finally ready to make its move on the incoming threshold.

Crowley's left arm reaches out for the door panel. There is a lock that is extremely hard to see in the blurred movement, but it is there above the push plate. Crowley's palm of his left hand covers it completely. He pushes the door on the lock instead of the push plate.

Some video frames reach a nice, stronger clarity. Here is the one that strikes my own interest most:

There are three digits touching the door panel. That's what makes this part the Triple. The index finger and middle finger are touching the front. Most of the thumb is touching the side. However, the ever so vital and important thumb tip is on the edge of where the door panel meets the window pane. Edges are thresholds, and pocket trickery loves edges.

The reflection of Crowley's left hand has pocketed the lock on the other side within the palm that is covering the covered lock. In other words, the palm has the locks covered.

The Tied Hands are making this acceptable because of their link to reflections. Plus, all those words I just had to write out because word play is a key mechanic for pocket trickery.

And there's more!

With the palm being busy with the locks, the thumb tip touches its own reflection while doing its edge touching. All of the digits, the real ones and the reflected ones are pocketing the door panel and its reflection because of their framing. Any issues with that window pane have been neutralized. There is a small bit of Crowley's right sunglasses lens past the door frame but not much.

The watch takes over in the next video frame to keep everything in order because that real covered lock becomes slightly visible. The watch's reflective surface lights up to say that everything's still as it should be. Parts of Crowley's face—and more of the sunglasses themselves—visually passed through the door frame at the same time that real lock became slightly visible, so this threshold has been effectively tricked. We must recall the Belt Head had a role to play in the matter.

The Perfect Entrance Trick is the easy one! But the pockets have increased its difficulty immensely.

Something that is missing in this first Threshold Trick is a rainbow. Four of the others have one. The Sunglasses Trick does not, but it does have a notable white light reflected on the watch in its last touch. Rainbows can take shape through refraction in white light. The lighting on the watch here is not as white as what appears in The Sunglasses Trick. It has a tinge of yellow.

Well, Earthly Objects is a game with puzzles—and some silly puzzles at that, so I'm going to say that this Threshold Trick is excused because the Rainbow Connection within The Pocket Trick has not started yet. The Rainbow Connection starts in episode 2. In fact, the way it goes is that The Pocket Trick gets its official rainbow first. It and the other Threshold Tricks finish in episode 6. In episode 6 is where all of the other rainbows appear for the other Threshold Tricks.

The Perfect Entrance Trick is the only one that both starts and finishes in the first episode. It is the first of three Simple tricks. The Simple tricks are the ones that start and finish in the same episode.

Another way I like to play this game is that these Threshold Tricks are based on simple ideas even though they get so complicated—especially once pockets are known to be so important. I call these simple ideas "core concepts" because these things are indeed conceptual. While I don't like word play as much as The Pocket Trick does, I do like it some. So, let's toss some alliteration in here too.

My best guess for this one's core concept is, "Make a Perfect Entrance while making an entrance." The idea is also to introduce the Threshold Tricks. Each one is required to have a primary Single, a primary Double, and a primary Triple. A single is 1. A double is 2. A triple is 3. Add up 1, 2, and 3, and you get the number 6. That equation of 1 + 2 + 3 is what makes the number 6 a perfect number.

A standard set in Earthly Objects is 3 points. A Threshold Trick has a minimum of 6 points for its theoretical bonus rewards and must be done in this special format.

I had to look that up that part on "perfect" because that was the word I wanted to use to describe The Sunglasses Trick when I put those pieces together. I am familiar with the Tekken franchise due to a past stronger obsession with Devil Jin. In Tekken, a PERFECT is when a player wins a round without taking any damage.

So, once I grasped that 6 is a perfect number, for me, it was like "Oh! That's what the first one is! It has a name! It's a Perfect Entrance!" I had described it as a "beautiful entrance" in my Bonus Round section. Again, that took something more than weeks to figure out.

Also, David Tennant is perfect for the role of Crowley. I love this actor-character combination so much.

...

When Crowley enters and sits down, Aziraphale is sitting down, but there is no actual visible back of a chair for Aziraphale. I am reminded of Crowley's remark in episode 5 of "Looking where the furniture isn't." In one of my posts on Earthly Objects, I note this type of thing as a mysterious vendetta Aziraphale has with chairs. A lot of times, the back of one cannot be seen for Aziraphale. When he's in the bookshop and a back of a chair can be seen, his back will still not touch the back of the chair.

...

Story Commentary

Setting aside the threshold trickery at play in Earthly Objects, Crowley's open mouth could also be interpreted as him using his snake demon senses to find Aziraphale's precise location.

After the Threshold Trick itself is done, Crowley's body is briefly fully obscured, and suddenly the door's moving for him without his hands doing anything. The left hand that was on it is gone. He may as well be using telekinesis on the thing.

Crowley continues onward until he passes Aziraphale on Aziraphale's right. Aziraphale himself glances to his own left first, as that's generally where Crowley is expected for him. This movement also allows Crowley's body to be obscured briefly. He could even mouth something to Aziraphale without us seeing it.

The red on the back of the collar on Crowley's jacket is briefly visible before Crowley himself finally sits down and says, "Right, what's the problem?"

The car transformed a little. There's an extra part of a window frame on the window pane that wasn't there before.

...

Muriel

(For reference: Bookend Buddies - Crowley and Muriel (Part 2))

Muriel's first scene preceded this one. That makes their first scene the front bookend to the first Threshold Trick. Their last scene will act as the back bookend to the last Threshold Trick (The Window Trick).

In turn, Crowley's first Threshold Trick is the back bookend to Muriel's first scene.

...

That's it for this post. Way back when I started to track these things, I did have a tendency to update even these posts, so that could happen again, just FYI.

...

Main post:

The Sideburns Scheme

...

Past version of this post:

Post #4 (entering the coffee shop)

[front-facing-pokemon]

I want to apologise for bombing your notifications with eevee reblogs

Though eevee does very much deserve it :3

i turned off notifications loooong, long ago on this blog. so they all got grouped together on one line when scrolling through the activity pane! but yes, eevee absolutely deserves it

hello, everyone! it's time for my basically-bi-monthly-at-this-point round of asks! i said i'd get better about answering these more often, but. well! here we are. maybe i'll do it this time! here we go:

for the most part, the models resource! there are a few other associated websites like this one, such as the spriters resource and the sounds resource, which are all incredibly good for all of your random-game-resource needs!

iii'm not sure entirely what you mean! for a lot of them, i do prefer to have the angles close-up and taking up the whole frame (as i just find this funnier), and it does depend on the angle in question. for the record, angles are voted upon in the front-facing pokémon discord server, meaning if you join there, you'll get to see multiple more angles for any given pokémon (and you don't have to say anything—or even vote, technically!). however, if what you're looking for is more head-on angles (as i've been told these were good for art references in the past), then you can reference the first round of the pokédex on this blog, which you can find by just searching any given pokémon's name! (e.g., searching the #rayquaza tag on the blog should give you a result you may be looking for, although looking at that angle now [and toucannon as well] i can see how these in particular may not be very helpful for art references) given the state of the original rayquaza and toucannon posts, i'll see what i can do right here:

toucannon, unfortunately, just genuinely does look like that from the front, no matter how much i zoom it out:

so here's a 45º-ish angle:

hopefully these serve your needs!

a concept i've talked about many times before! perhaps you need to read my tags more often! in short, i took up shiny hunting in scarlet/violet earlier this year, and in my efforts shiny hunting, i found that the game didn't like me very much, and would often spawn shinies for Literally Everything Except The Pokémon I Was Hunting. my flygon hunt was an especially notorious one, creating that clip that i believe i posted where i ended up with two shiny exeggutor spawning on the same screen while i was in the midst of shiny hunting the trapinch line. quite awful! i've come to call these shinies that spawn while i am hunting any other pokémon "evil shinies," as it's happened to me enough times to have a name of its own. i have maaany video clips of this very same thing happening to me multiple times, but lucky for me eventually i got all the shinies i wanted and just. stopped shiny hunting. now it's just something i do on rare occasions to pass time

this is… an interesting perspective! i guess looking at its older 2d sprites and its official art, the way that it's posed could… suggest this if you never really looked at it close enough. like that one post where the artist thought blaziken had big baby eyes because of the sprite. it's interesting how many different interpretations can arise due to the medium of pixel art!

sorry! that was a little issue with rearranging the queue– wait mamoswine is a retrofi—

oh! yeah, it was! that's… the only reason you didn't see it after piloswine, surely… no other reason…

anyway! that's all for now. my inbox is still lying to me about the number of asks in it, in case you were wondering..!

[alymccart]

Hello! Could you possibly give a humble peasant like me some anatomy advice? The way you draw bodies and hands is just *chef's kiss* ;w;

I wish I had an easy answer for this... but for me what helped a ton was drawing A LOT. I've been working on this skill seriously for probably 25 years at this point. I am my own worst critic and know I have so much I can improve upon. VERY IMPORTANT, drawing from life (or photographs/video stills/screenshots/etc, *not tracing, photography distorts shapes*) has got to be my number 1 suggestion for how to get better with anatomy and drawing in general. Since it's hard to get out and do that a lot, my back up is photos. I particularly like finding photos and videos of athletes mid-motion because they are far more dynamic than staged photography). The studio classes I attended in college where we spent 6 hours just drawing models over and over again were a slog to get through, but the skills honed in them were invaluable.

I've gotten to the point where I can sorta fake it and come up with anatomy from my head, but I always try to find some kind of reference to back up my mental creation. REFERENCE is KEY. It is so so so important. There is no shame in using it, and I don't see the point in making a huge deal about *not* using it. That was a pervasive thing floating around back when I was active on deviantART a long time ago and it was not good.

Another thing to consider paying close attention to with regards to reference is drawing what you see, not what you THINK you see. Brains form biases that will interfere with what you're trying to draw. I've flipped references upside down to force my brain to recalculate as I go for this reason.

Any step, no matter how tiny, is a step toward improvement. Even just going out to a park or something and sketching whatever crosses your path is great. Or you could do the same thing on the computer while you watch videos or look at photos. Animals, people, trees, plants, whatever. It'll all help you improve. And don't worry about accuracy at first! Just draw whatever gestures come to mind. Like 99% of it will look like scribbly garbage (it did for me and a lot of my peers) but it does help. Hands, in particular, are really hard. Very early on in my artistic path I realized this and kind of became obsessive about drawing them properly, so I drew a *lot* of hands. Whole sketch pages of just hands. The great thing about hands is that you've got your own! You can just draw the hand in front of you, or take a picture of the gesture you need and use that as reference. Many places will have studios open to the public where you can do model/life drawings (some nude, so if that's a concern, be sure to check first). Some will be free, or you'll have to pay some kind of fee (they need to pay the models). One free online resource that's good is Posemaniacs.com. I highly recommend the 30 second drawing tool, wherein you only have 30 seconds to sketch out the reference before it cycles to a new, random one. The extreme time limit forces your brain into overdrive and it is shocking how quickly you can improve as a result. We did this in school, as well, with live models. They'd just switch up poses every time a timer rang. I could probably go on for hours about this, there's a lot of jumbled thoughts coming to mind, but I think this is a good starting point. Persevere, don't seek perfection, and treat yourself kindly because this is a skill that requires a lot (mentally and physically) to hone and it isn't easy. Every artist has their ups and downs, but I think it's worth the struggle to be able to create. I really hope this helps! Thanks for the ask! A little bonus snippet: Back in high school I was *terrified* of drawing people because I sucked ass at it. I was garbage. Absolutely refused to do it. I drew animals and dragons and gryphons and stuff and when I started angling toward my career I had assumed I would continue in that direction. Nope! Now I'm drawing pretty much nothing but people/humanoids and I love it.

[charles-leclerc-official]

I know you don't do hate on here and I really respect you for it - you're one of the very few accounts, that, despite avidly supporting one particular driver/team, does not go out of their way to shit on the other ones. This makes your race analyses all the more enjoyable, as I can always use them for reference, even against people that try to start fights on the topic of driver vs driver - I know you will always be taken seriously because your takes are as objective as possible (the only subjectivity being a sprinkle of extra praise for Charles here and there, but hey, he deserves it!)

All of this being said, however, I need to ask your personal opinion of the McLaren boys as drivers and as personalities - since as another die-hard Ferrari fan I cannot stand McLaren as a team but have found myself being fond of Oscar on occasion and ugh I just wanted to see if you get the rare flashes of affection too, because it feels almost sacrilegious to say that about a McLaren driver.

Anyhow, love your account, keep up the great work <3

Ah thank you so much, I have my opinions etc, but unless it becomes relevant to what's happening on track there's no point in just trying to knock other drivers, I'd rather spend my time enjoying my team and my drivers than anything else.

On the Mclaren line up, I do very much like Oscar, he's a good driver and I find him extremely relatable to me personally, it's just a shame he's in that orange team. But I get it, he wants to be in a good car and Mclaren are currently the ones able to give him that.

Lando isn't my favorite, I just don't vibe much with his humor.

As a duo they seem fun, I enjoy them on the rpf side of things, for those unaware I am a fic author (pretend to be shocked)

But yeah I can separate them just as people from the team. But I can not and will not cheer for a Mclaren driver to win or be on the podium

I like a lot of drivers. I respect good race craft, if you are good on track chances are I am compelled by you.

You can like a lot of drivers, but there is a difference between liking a driver and who you actively support during races. I like Oscar, I like Max, but on track I am cheering for one man to win and that is Charles, and if not Charles then Carlos because he is in red. I want red on the top step before anything else.

Also with objectivity. I don't post the most objective things, what I try to do is look at what actually happened and figure things out from there, with the goal not being to post my first emotional response but rather to take a step back and see it from there. I don't like the way a lot of narratives get spun about races. And I think a problem in F1 journalism is a lack of transparency when it comes to bias. I try to combat that by being abundantly clear where my bias stands, and where analysis crosses more into opinion. That way a reader can take or leave what I say and have no real doubts about what my angle is on a topic. There are a lot of journalistic outlets that have a clear bias, but because they will never admit it, what they say can be very misleading to a lot of people.

I am very much of the belief that no driver is above critique, and I want when I critique someone to matter. That doesn't work if I am bashing them weekly over nothing. Yes even Charles, if he makes a mistake I will point it out (not my fault he's just had a stellar season with no glaring errors yet. There are few things that maybe could have been better, but my man has yet to stumble) Does that make sense? Like when I do point out an issue with a driver I hope that the words will carry real meaningful weight.

Thank you so much anon, the support truly means a lot <3

[alwaysspeakshermind]

Who was the worst in The Hunger Games, snow or coin?

Why?

Thank you. @curiousnonny

Oh, man.

I have a *lot* of feelings on this particular subject (one of my favorite things about THG trilogy is that it places in the antagonist role two good examples of my most loathed types of villains: politicians kidding but not really), so thanks for the ask!

Coin:

While I personally despise her subtle, lay-low/don't-strike-until-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes approach, I respect her commitment to winning, and I love that she was the one who got to unseat Snow.

That being said...I can't forgive her for the win-at-all-costs mindset that led her to use some of the most morally-reprehensible tactics I can think of when it comes to fighting (torturing citizens, trying to send a possible political rival to their death, sending the family member of said possible rival to an all but certain doom simply to eliminate the rival's will to live, treating The Other Side's children as expendable, etc.). I think she represents one of the most dangerous types of villains you see (both in fiction and in real life) because she presents herself as the sane, moderate, People's Champion type of leader who stands in opposition to oppression and brutality, but the regime she presents is simply severe and restrictive in different ways she's not advertising, and she is every bit as willing to sit back and watch people die as long as they are not her people...also, she truly doesn't care who she steps on, kicks aside, or ruins in her (quiet) quest for power.

[I also have this theory that she's named Coin because she and Snow have this two-sides-to-the-same-coin duality and we're meant to understand that while she's coming at things from a different angle than Snow, she has the same hunger for power and ruthless desire to maintain stability no matter the human cost.]

Snow:

[Another quick side note: I am a huge proponent of TBOSAS. It's my favorite villain origin story (Marissa Meyer's Fairest is probably the only other book that comes close for me), and I personally think it's Suzanne's Collins' best work and everyone should read it because it shows the fine line/slippery slope between a mindset of understandable self-preservation and the sort of arrogance-driven inhumanity that leads people into committing atrocities against each other or standing back and allowing the atrocities to happen. I will literally never NOT recommend this book but, that being said, I'm not going to reference Snow's actions in this book as they occur outside the realm of THG trilogy.]

While I allow a grudging respect for his logic, strategic efficiency, and commitment to being straightforward/open with Katniss about his dislike for her, I hate Snow's cruelty with a burning passion, and his utter contempt for people he deems "lesser" makes my blood absolutely boil. Yes, pragmatism is a thing. Yes, it is difficult being a leader. Yes, leaders do sometimes face a choice between saving the lives of many at the cost of a few.

But the thing about Snow is that he is simply intent on maintaining power whatever the (human) cost and to me, that crosses a line. No, he isn't the creator of the Games, but he does hold the power to end them. Does he end them? No. Instead, he not only chooses to keep them going, but deliberately finds ways to change the rules in his own favor, thus making an already-unfair, practically hopeless situation that much more unfair and hopeless. To intimidate the districts/instill fear in all citizens outside the Capitol, he makes sure they remember that they are only allowed to exist because of the Capitol's mercy, and that if they want to be allowed to keep that existence, they will have to abide by the Capitol's terms. Sending children into the Games as a form of punishment would be barbaric enough if it were just after the districts' uprising but, as we know from the books, that's not even the case...the children who are being killed in the games are the descendants of the original rebel districts, so forcing them to pay for the supposed sins of their grandparents/possible great-grandparents is beyond evil.

Also, there's this other thing his actions ultimately engineer/shape, and that's the twisted Capitol reality. Like all smart-but-evil dictators, he doesn't just rely on the weeding out of his enemies/the intimidation of the group he has declared "lesser." He also uses the Capitol citizens and their (very natural, very human) desire for peace and prosperity to create allies for himself by reinforcing this idea of Us vs Them, by drawing a distinction between Capitol children (precious, must be protected at all costs) and District children (expendable, animalistic, Other™ ). It's not a new tactic; it's one all kinds of groups/armies/organizations/governments use to engender hate and distrust, but it's a highly effective one in a world like the Capitol, where everyday life is so shiny and fun and distracting that it's easy for people to detach themselves from the reality that they're watching 24 children murder each other every year. And the thing about that, even if the Capitol citizens don't know it (or pretend not to know it), is that Snow encouraging them to celebrate the Games and view the districts as less than human is also costing the Capitol citizens their humanity in return (aka, panem et circenses, where you shelve or hand over your morality in exchange for food/comfort/entertainment etc.). So, altogether, while Snow is not actively getting his hands dirty by killing people himself (excluding those poison deaths, possibly), he is routinely arranging the murders of innocents, recruiting and corrupting (or destroying) everyone he possibly can, and he's doing it all in the name of peace.

All of those things combined pretty much enrages me, so ultimately, my opinion boils down to this:

Both Coin and Snow are effective leaders and terrible people whose desire for power and control push them into crossing lines that should not be crossed. But out of the two, Snow is the worst.

[psi-hate]

diana, this might sound like a weird question, but how do you draw boobs/gock/vaginas and anatomy in general? i wanna improve my art and you seem to have a lot of experience with it

-alice in anon because im embarrassed lol

hmm good question! im gonna be honest i don't really use references most the time, and i recommend you absolutely use references very often when drawing something you're not the most confident in.

for anatomy, it sorta comes down to me focusing on how other artists draw specific parts of anatomy and getting a good feel of how they generally look enough to know what looks wrong in my own attempt so i can continue adjusting it. it's a shitty bruteforce method but for me i sorta just osmosis it from exposure. in general i have a decently trained eye in 3d space on account of my 3D modeling experience, so coming up with shapes at particular angles is a little less of a headache i imagine some others would deal with at my skill level. i still struggle with posing which is something i really gotta practice more. i know it'd be faster if i used references for practice but my art process is a bit too casual out of stubborness... but i will do what i can to improve my workflow at some point!

regarding stuff like sexual anatomy or what have you, i actually pull up a few different artist's works, specifically those who draw shapes i find most appealing, and apply their concepts to my own attempt. it's sorta hit or miss atm, i'm still very new to drawing sexual anatomy. at the very least, i try and draw bodies as they are. what i mean is, a chubbier body is going to have more pockets of fat pulling some parts down, and comparing with my own body and those whom i've been with, i just try and capture the practical "flaws" and do my best not to polish them out of the equation. sunken eyes, messy hair, folds of skin, muscle definition, wrinkles, hair, etc it's all very pretty and more than anything i want to appreciate those bodies.

use references, look at your own body and try and plan out angles and poses before you get too deep into the drawing! my biggest flaw at the moment is lack of forethought going into a piece which can make a lot of my art much more stiff because an idea i wanted occurs halfway through the drawing and retroactively adjusting things is just not gonna work and it'll look stilted. come up with your idea and sketch a very simple example so you know what you're aiming for the entire time instead of me who habitually draws heads and facial features long before deciding how i want the rest of the body, usually locking me into the same perspective and angle as always lol. i have been fixing this most of the time now and i hope that is more apparent in some of my recent works.

sorta just rambling, but yeah! the most simple way for me to tl;dr this is that i recommend using irl examples for references for poses or how particular pieces of the body are structured in 3D space, and looking at other's art for ideas or inspiration, reverse engineer their process and practice it until you feel satisfied it makes sense in the context of your drawing. take special attention of smaller details of the body and don't be afraid of making something look "unappealing" if you want to portray a specific feature. you might not draw something the way that looks good to you, but the most important thing is learning what it is that does look good in your opinion, and reviewing what you could do to help draw more like that.

i'm really sorry if this is far too convoluted and not great advice, i'm the literal embodiment of "fake it till you make it" and any skill i've learned is simply because i am stubborn and bruteforcing it till i accomplished whatever it is that i wanted. for someone who is more interested in learning and improving the "right way", i tried to offer some more rational strategies to what i do in hopes that it makes sense in helping better lol. hope this helps!

[rayfollowsfromhere]

Tagged by the lovely @thiamsxbitch for this game!

what is your DOH (drink outfit hyperfixation) or DOB (drink outfit book) of the day? i also accept DOHBF (drink outfit hyperfixation book fanfic/fanwork). the F can be something you’re working on yourself or that you’re reading/engaging with.

Drink: For the first time in many years, it's not Mountain Dew. (Though I'm certainly keeping my local grocery store's numbers up there too.) Been basically obsessed with a pineapple mango juice I bought on a whim recently. My counter has so many empty bottles... I need to figure out a good way to recycle them ngl. ^^"

Outfit: I pretty much wear some combo of cargo shorts/jeans and a graphic tshirt every day. The only thing that differentiates me from a cartoon character is my ever changing hair. I rarely wear it the same way twice in a row.

Hyperfixation/Book: Generally speaking? Omegaverse. I have a bunch of of WIPs I've been bouncing between and they're highly distracting given I have fics I'm trying to finish. I think I shared a snippet of one WIP (Wynrich Brothers) a few weeks back, so here's the other big one. I am referring to this particular short story with them as 'A Knotty Birthday' in my head and that title may just stick because I like puns. Nothing nsfw in the snippet though, just suggestion.

A sharp click from the living room signaled his front door opening. Will didn't look up from his book, merely calling a quick "Bedroom!" to tell his boyfriend where to find him. Only three people had keys to his apartment besides him after all, and his parents consistently knocked first now. One too many embarrassing moments would do that. Seth, however, had no problem with walking in on him in compromising positions. Sometimes Will thought the other man timed his visits a little too well. But Will wasn't in the shower this time. "Spending your birthday in bed?" Seth asked with a chuckle. Settled back against his headboard, Will hummed. "Not my birthday yet," Will answered on reflex and turned the page. He clicked his tongue, taking a breath. His own question freezing in his chest as he inhaled. Seth laughed again. Voice dipping low as he drawled, "Yeah, I know, but I thought I'd give you your present early."

The book dropped from his hand as Will looked up. His eyes widened, nostrils flaring. A soft groan escaped his lips.

Leaning against the doorframe, Seth stood, smirking. His head tilted to the side so one of the primary scent glands on his neck was fully exposed. The air drifting over the red skin of Seth's throat and dragging his scent inward.

"You smell amazing~" Will whined, head falling back as he breathed in the thick musk of an omega's arousal. He cursed, biting at his bottom lip, "Did you seriously walk around the city like that?"

Omegas always had the strongest scents. A consequence of their mating reflexes. Bodies built to signal when their heats were coming, when their tempers flared.

Their scents a warning, setting off alarm bells for every alpha that caught a whiff.

"I wore a scarf," Seth shrugged, still lingering the doorway. His head ducked forward to hide a grin as Will groused.

Dark hair fell forward, short strands tickling at Seth's face, at the tops of his eyebrows. Will's gaze dragged over his boyfriend's features. The sharp angles of his chin, his square jaw. Those deep set eyes. Loose strands cast shadows over them all, emphasizing them.

"You're teasing me," Will huffed, throat bobbing as he narrowed his eyes on the omega. His messy hair. "You never wear it loose like that..."

"But you like it loose?" Seth quirked a brow, head tilting the opposite direction. A fresh wave of his scent pouring out from the opposite gland. Will choked, hands fisting in the sheets. "And I wanted to please you today..." A short pause, a drop in his voice, "...alpha."

No Pressure Tags: @idontevenknowhowtolife @rhyslahey @aadmelioraa @xtarmanderx @strangerfandomfiascos @byrdsofthenyte

[yaboisorzoi]

"Your Choices Don't Matter"

There is a screed that I see come up in discussions of certain games, predominantly (though not exclusively) within the RPG genre. What do Mass Effect, Deus Ex Human Revolution, and Life is Strange have in common?

If you guessed “your choices don’t matter”—or at least, guessed people saying that about the games—then that was the angle I was going for.

This is a statement that I take particular issue with on a fundamental level. Less so for the statement itself—there is nuanced discussion to be had there, and to be discussed below—but for how judiciously it gets thrown around and the sweeping judgments it makes on the games it castigates.

The crux of my problem with this statement is in the contrapositive: detractors say that your choices don’t matter. I ask, what does it mean to have your choices matter? What makes anything matter? What does it mean to matter in the first place?

When you say “your choices don’t matter,” you’re implying that you wish your choices did matter. What does that look like?

This is the topic I want to delve into today. Strap yourselves in, it’s going to be a long one.

What Is A Choice?

This may seem like a pretentious and self-masturbatory question to ask, but bear with me for a moment. I’m just laying down some groundwork and declaring some definitions. At the broadest level, a choice in a game is any time the game expects mutually-exclusive input from the player. If you are given one skill point, and you have two skills you can place that point into, then in its broadest form, this is a choice.

This isn’t a very interesting choice, though. In fact, I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would consider something as mundane as leveling up a character as a “choice.” You could make the argument for games with complex leveling systems, like Mass Effect’s infamous column of skill points, or Anarchy Online’s truly Goliathan 65+ independent skills you can place points into every time you level up—games where the number of skills available to you far outstrip the number of points you will ever have available to put into them all, and where specialization is a genuine decision to be made and committed to.

When talking about choices, people are almost always referring to narrative choices. These primarily take the form of either dialogue or setpiece actions (or sometimes one serving the function of the other). I am among those people when it comes to this discussion.

With that out of the way, let’s move onto the more interesting conversation.

Choices? Consequences.

When talking about choices in games, just as often people are talking about their unspoken counterpart: consequences. And when saying “choices don’t matter”, people often mean to say “choices don’t have consequences.” So let’s talk consequences.

I personally like to split consequences into two categories. The first of those categories is what I refer to as mechanical consequences.

When I say a consequence is mechanical, I mean that there is some measurable, quantifiable change within the core game systems that reflects that choice. The most obvious mechanical consequence is a stat change: I make the change of increasing my character’s strength, there is the mechanical consequence that my attacks now do more damage.

Much like how character-leveling is widely considered an uninteresting choice, though, I don’t think it is particularly controversial to say that stat-changing is considered a particularly uninteresting consequence. So let’s jettison them from the discussion now.

There are far more interesting ways to engage consequences mechanically. Possibly the most immediate execution of mechanical consequences is the classic “who lives and who dies” decision. This is a classic and a fan favorite, from Kaidan or Ashley on Mass Effect’s Virmire, to Doug or Carley in Telltale’s Walking Dead. A stark binary decision, the consequences of which are immediate: of the two choices, one of them is going to die. They will go poof. They will be written out of the story. And their absence will be imminent and persistent.

Choose to feed Kaidan to the nuke gods, and you will never get to talk to him about his rough time growing up as a biotic, about his conspiracy theories regarding the intentional exposure of expecting mothers to Eezo, or about his classmates and instructors in the academy. Toss Ashley’s pragmatic ass out the atomic airlock, and you’ll never learn about her feeling persecuted for her grandfather’s failures, about her dad’s one-sided fight in raising four daughters, or her surprising love of poetry.

No matter what decision you make, you’re getting entire slabs of content cut out of your playthrough, never to be accessed again. Every time you look at your roster of surviving characters, there will be a hole there in the shape of the one who died—as a consequence of your choice.

Next up, let’s talk roleplay consequences. As one might expect given the name, a roleplay consequence is one that has no mechanical significance, but instead plays into the immersive fantasy of roleplaying. This is most common in, perhaps unsurprisingly, roleplaying games. Though you can find them really in any game, since you could argue any game has you literally playing a role, from Quake 2’s role of being a stranded space marine, to Civilization’s role of being the deathless immortal leader of a historical society.

What makes a roleplay decision a roleplay decision is that it, in some way, informs the personality of the character you are playing as. Is your Shepard serious or jokey? Is your Lee protective or dismissive?

These choices tend to have little to no mechanical significance, beyond changing the flow of the immediate conversation. The most obvious and immediate example of this is the dialogue wheel in Fallout 4, which is often humorously referred to as “Yes, Sarcastic Yes, Yes With More Information, and Yes But Later.”

Of these four options, the last two have some mechanical benefit. “Yes With More Information” is mechanical in the sense that it provides the player with more context with which to engage with the world, which I’d argue has some mechanical merit. The last is clearly mechanical, in that it delays the quest being entered in the player’s log and consequently stalls any triggers that only activate if that quest has been accepted by the player.

The first two options though, “Yes” and “Sarcastic Yes”, I think are far more interesting within the context of discussing roleplay consequences.

Choosing either “Yes” or “Sarcastic Yes” have the same mechanical consequences: the quest is accepted. There is no functional difference between them. So then, one may rightly asked, why the distinction? If saying “Yeah sure I’ll do it” with a straight face and “Yeah sure I’ll do it” while rolling your character’s eyes both result in the same outcome, why would you ever choose one over the other?

If one is only concerned about the mechanical consequences of a choice, then there is no reason to ever choose one over the other. But the choice exists. Surely there must be a reason for it?

Two Choices and a Cosmetic Walk Into a Game Development Studio...

And this is where we start getting into the crux of my problem with the “your choices don’t matter” argument. I put it on equal footing with the “cosmetics don’t matter” argument in defense of being apathetic toward aggressive microtransactions in games. I’m sure you’ve all witnessed that argument unfold—someone begins complaining about how a given game has character skins, vanity items, or other cosmetics objects locked being a paywall or behind lootboxes or behind battlepasses, and someone else chips in with “cosmetics don’t matter, so why are you complaining?”

The argument there of course falls apart once someone puts an iota of thought into it—if cosmetics didn’t matter, then why are they there? Why do artists spend time making them? Why do engineers consume resources implementing them? Why do publishers insist games have them?

And, perhaps most importantly of all, why do people buy them? If cosmetics didn’t matter, then people wouldn’t buy them, right?

The simple answer to it all is that cosmetics do matter. They just don’t matter mechanically. It turns out, people play games for more reasons than just pushing buttons to make the fancy calculator machine crunch a bunch of numbers. In the case of cosmetics, online gaming especially is as much a social affair as it is an interactive one. People buy cosmetics because they want to express themselves to other plays. They want other players to think they’re cool.

Why do people spend money on cosmetics? Because having that dank hat with a huge feather on it makes them look cool.

Why do people pick Sarcastic Yes over Yes? Because delivering witty one-liners, cracking dad jokes, and rolling one’s eyes plays into a personality that the player is pursuing. If they are roleplaying as a badass pirate, then they don’t want their badass pirate saying “Okay I’ll give the starving children bread.” They want their badass pirate to say “I’m not a charity—you best have money in hand, or starving children will be the least of your problems.” They don’t want their heroic paladin saying “Okay I’ll fight the demon.” They want their heroic paladin saying “My holy quest to rid this world of taint and evil shan’t rest until this foul creature’s head lays before my feet.”

Just as cosmetics are important to players in social games, fitting into a particular role is important to players in roleplaying games. It’s really that simple.

So now, let’s finally get back to that statement which started this whole discussion: “your choices don’t matter.”

What choices are these people talking about? What do they mean when they say they don’t matter?

If by “choices” they mean “choices with mechanical consequences,” and by “don’t matter” they mean “have no measurable consequences”, then that is just patently wrong. Mechanical consequences are definitionally measurable. That’s what makes them mechanical.

If instead they mean “choices with roleplay consequences,” then one could make an argument that they “have no measurable consequences”. By the same token, one could argue that they do—and indeed, that is what I just spent the past several paragraphs arguing, in a clever ploy of exposition where I answered the question before the reader even knew the question being asked: the consequences contribute to the role being played, and as such, with necessity matter to the roleplayer.

And yet, people still bang this drum. Are they just wrong? Or is there something that we are missing? Perhaps we should take a different approach here, and see what it is that these people are referring to specifically.

It’s All About the Destination

This is a spoiler warning for Bioware’s Mass Effect trilogy, Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and dontnod’s Life is Strange. I will be discussing these three games’ endings explicitly and in detail.

When people level the argument “your choices don’t matter”, I almost always see them being thrown specifically against a game’s ending. The Mass Effect trilogy is an epic 60-hour-journey spanning three games, wherein you are tasked to make countless decisions, both mechanical and roleplay, all throughout its runtime.

In the closing moments of the game, you are tasked with making one final decision: do you destroy the Reapers that threaten the galaxy, do you take control of them and use them for your own purposes, do you use poorly-explained space magic to inseparably combine the Reapers with the sentient life they are so determined to exterminate, or do you tell the annoying space kid to go fuck himself and damn the galaxy to death and destruction?

It’s an epic decision fit for capping an epic journey. And yet people use it as a quintessential example of “your choices don’t matter.” The options laid before the player are fixed. No matter what choices you made throughout the game, you will always be presented the same options. Save Ashley or Kaidan, same four options. Kill or spare the Rannoch queen, same four options. Punch or don’t punch reporter al-Jilani, same four options.

The consequences of the choices vary a bit more than the choices themselves, with one of several different montages playing for each option, depending on the major choices and overall “war assets” score the player has at the end. But each of them all broadly speaking hit the same beats: the Reapers are destroyed, the Reapers are controlled, the Reapers are synthesized, the galaxy is fucked.

In Deus Ex Human Revolution, you are given a similar decision at the end: you can choose to reveal the truth of the Illuminati conspiracy to the masses, blame the extremists so that cybernetic technology can continue unimpeded, cover up the involvement of the Illuminati so they can continue pulling their strings in the shadows, or be an enlightened centrist prick and take no measurable action at all. These choices are mostly static, with two of them depending only on a single decision to rescue a different major character. And again, the consequences are slightly altered montages that all hit the same major plot points.

In Life is Strange, you are given an even simpler binary choice: save Max’s best friend, whom she has literally torn reality itself apart several times over in several bids to prevent her from dying, and in doing so let an entire town of people be killed; or let said best friend die, preventing the catastrophe that is looming from occurring and allowing the townspeople to live without ever knowing they were in peril. These choices are both static, always available to the player regardless of the decisions they made, and their consequences are similarly static.

In all three cases, the accusation that “your choices don’t matter” is levied against them. And from a mechanical standpoint, seeing how these are the endings of these stories and there is no continuation beyond them? I’d say that’s fair. There are no mechanical consequences of these choices.

But from a roleplay perspective? I’d argue there are no more important choices to be had in these games. As stated before, Mass Effect is an epic 60-hour journey where the player is set upon with a singular mission: destroy the Reapers and save the galaxy. Throughout their journey, however, they are presented with two alternative solutions. The Illusive Man suggests that throwing away the sheer power of the Reapers in blind eradication is foolhardy and short-sighted, that by controlling the Reapers and redirecting their powers for the good of the galaxy, so much more could be accomplished. And the Catalyst suggests that the Reapers’ programmed mission of exterminating all sentient life before it can become a threat to itself could be short-circuited by infusing the Reapers with sentient life, providing an out to an otherwise seemingly-endless cycle.

It is up to the player, then, to decide whether their Shepard has remained undeterred in their original mission to destroy the Reapers; if the Illusive Man’s argument of harnesses the power of the Reapers to help the galaxy was able to sway their opinion; or if the Catalyst’s suggestion of a way to perpetually and permanently break the cycle is the best option. Or if they just really hate the Starchild and are willing to destroy the galaxy all to give it one final middle finger.

It is up to the player to decide if their Adam Jensen has become disillusioned with the march of technology and the damage it has wrought; if they are blindly devoted to the vision of men like David Sarif and their plans for a cybernetic future; if they believe that humanity is best served with the shadowy Illuminati guiding its technological evolution; or if he is a filthy centrist.

It is up to the player to decide if their heartwrenching journey of trying and trying to stop Max’s best friend from dying, only to not only be met with failure every time, but to actively make things worse for everyone with each attempt, has led to her finally learning that she has to let go and let Chloe die, or if the constant string of catastrophizing failures has only hardened and resolved her unrequited and undeterred love for her best friend, and she is willing to let an entire town of people die so that she can finally be with the one person for whom she’s literally unraveled reality in her attempts to save.

All these endings are the absolute culminations of their stories, and the roles the player has been sitting in throughout their recounting. They are the final exam of the class that has been the last 10, 20, 60 hours of playtime that has been committed to them. They are the ultimate test of what kind of person their character is.

I can’t think of how these choices could possibly matter more. They are, by all accounts, the single most important choices in their respective games. They are what these games have been building up to since their beginning.

To say that these decisions don’t matter isn’t just wrong. It’s patently absurd. It’s staring reality in the eye, and rejecting it outright. If you accept the thesis that roleplay decisions hold any merit at all, then you cannot in good conscience say that these final decisions, these literal ultimate decisions, have no meaning.

So then, if it’s not the choices themselves that people are saying don’t matter… what, exactly, are they talking about? When people say your choices don’t matter in Mass Effect, or Deus Ex Human Revolution, or Life is Strange, what exactly do they mean?

The Illusion of Choice, But Not the Illusion You’re Thinking Of.

They are talking about a small facet that I glossed over in my previous descriptions of these endings. They aren’t talking about the choices themselves, but the conditions behind the options—or more specifically, the lack of conditions.

When someone says “your choices don’t matter in Mass Effect,” they mean that no matter what you do in the 60 hours of gametime up to that point, you are always offered the same four choices: destroy, control, synthesis, rejection. When someone says “your choices don’t matter in Deus Ex Human Revolution”, assuming you did all the side-quests and so saved both Sarif and Taggart, they mean that you are always offered the same four choices: reveal, deflect, obscure, be a spineless coward. When someone says “your choices don’t matter in Life is Strange”, they mean that you are always presented with the binary choice of Save Arcadia Bay or Save Chloe.

When these people say “your choices don’t matter”, they’re talking about how the choices you make either have exactly zero, or effectively zero, impact on the choices that are given to you in your final decision, in the ultimate choice of the entire game.

Don’t they, though?

Mechanically, no, they don’t. We’ve established that definitionally: we just plainly stated that these games have no systems in place to take in as input your previous decisions and use them to change the options available to you.

But as we’ve discussed at length, there are more than just mechanical consequences to choices. Roleplay consequences are just as significant, especially in developing and expressing the type of person your character is. A dogged Shepard will destroy the Reapers, as per their original mission. A greedy Shepard will take control of the Reapers for themselves, to shape the galaxy as they see fit. A gentle Shepard will synthesize sentient life and artificial intelligence in a bid to craft a better galaxy for both. And a truly badass Shepard will tell the Starchild to go fuck itself and damn the galaxy in the process.

It doesn’t matter that the game has no mechanical systems that gate off the available options to these final decisions, based on some metrics that the programmers deemed important enough to influence the ability to even entertain the idea.

For the player who has been truly engaged in the story, who has truly fallen into the role of their character, the options honestly don’t even matter at all. After 60 hours of trudging through Hell to get to the Catalyst, you’ve already decided what your Shepard is going to do. By the time you’re on Panchea station, you’ve already made up your mind what Jensen thinks of the Illuminati, David Sarif, and William Taggart. By the time you’re on that cliff with the storm raging below, you already know whether Max’s heart or her brain dictates the choices she makes.

In truth, the final choice having options at all is irrelevant. The game isn’t suggesting that your choices don’t matter. If anything, it’s asking you exactly the opposite: do you think your choices matter? If you do, if you truly and sincerely believe in the choices you made, in the journey you crafted, in the personality you sculpted for your character, then there is only one right option. The others may as well not even exist.

If you have to stop and think about the decision you’re making, by the time you come to the end of your character’s journey, then it’s not the game whose saying your choices didn’t matter.

It’s you.