#✧.* all follows & likes are from main!

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[bixels]

Be honest, what are your thoughts on appledash? Do you hate it or its more of not a big deal

Not a big deal to me. I like it, I see all the appeals, I just personally like Rarijack more.

[freezebobs]

DBFZ Yamcha and Ten cookies...done!!!

Soo I've been on a mission to recreate the Yamcha and Ten cookies from dragon ball fighterz because they're adorable...and they're finally real!! :'D process and info below! (kind of long lol)

I saw someone share these screencaps from the game a while ago and as someone who never played DBFZ I was so charmed at how cute these things are. I wondered if anyone had ever made cookie cutters for them, did a quick search and didn't really find anything, so just kind of moved on.

A few months later I remembered them again and was like, man, I really would love to see these brought to life lol. And I searched again and actually found someone who made them!!... But they weren't selling them anymore. 😭💔

^Reddit post from user ShadowLord898.

So in the next few days I went into the DBFZ game files, figured out how to navigate them and locate/open the proprietary file types (took...a lot of googling), and eventually found the cookie textures!!! Which I then painstakingly traced over to create vectors.

I thought once I had the vectors, it would be easy to drop them into a 3D program and extrude them to make the cookie cutters. BOY WAS I WRONG!!! It's probably just my inexperience working with vectors in 3D programs, but I tried Blender, Fusion 360, and Tinkercad and had problems in each one before finally figuring out the right approach. (I really almost gave up 🤧 but I hadn't realized that your geometry/topology don't need to be perfect when 3D modeling for print as opposed to, like, something you plan to create a texture for.)

Tinkercad and its extremely user friendly interface, plus SVG import functionality, saved me.

Oh then I realized I forgot to reverse the design, which you have to do for a cookie cutter because of how they work. I thought I would need to flip all the vectors and re-import them, recreate the models... but thankfully there's a "flip" button in Tinkercad. Fixed.

I sent the files over to my friend @.theprocrastinatingengineer on Instagram, who has a 3D printing service, and he was able to print them out for me!

While I was waiting for them to ship I downloaded Cura ("slicer" program for preparing 3D files for print) just for fun. (I was really eager...)

And here's when I finally got them!!!

Despite choosing all the dimensions carefully, I was still surprised how dainty they were when I actually held them in my hand. I wasn't sure if they would work...

So I made the dough and everything, used some 5mm thick chopsticks as guides to roll out the dough to the thickness I wanted. I put plastic wrap over the dough to prevent the cutters from directly touching the dough due to food safety concerns. Here is my first attempt to use them:

After this my mindset quickly shifted from caring about food safety to "what's a little more plastic in my system?" / "I'm here for a good time, not a long time!!" / "welll the dough gets baked anyway so that kills the germs it should be fiiine" **I Do Not recommend others to be so careless... also important note: I was the only one eating these so I didn't have to worry about others' safety 🥴

^The difference between using the cutters with and without the plastic wrap.

This first rolling out of the dough was actually a little too thick; in my design I hadn't accounted for the way the dough squishes up when you press the cutter into it. There wasn't enough vertical space at all, and the dough kept getting stuck in the cutter. It was a bad time!!! (didn't get a lot of photos of the failures here because my hands were covered in flour)

After lots of broken cookie cutouts, re-flouring the surface/cutters/rolling pin, and re-rolling the dough to be a bit thinner, I managed to get these out. I had to support Ten's head like a newborn when moving the dough onto the cookie sheet because the connection to the body was so delicate 😢

AND HERE THEY ARE...fully baked and ready 🥹

For the most part I was going to leave them undecorated like how they are in the game. But @.lamichicuenta made this really cute drawing of the cookies where Yamcha had chocolate decorations and Ten was a salty cracker, and I really wanted to try decorating some to resemble those!! Here are the photos of both versions of the cookies the next day once I was able to get some natural light for nicer pics.

(I meant to poke some holes in Ten's cookie to look more like a cracker but I forgot about it until they were already baking.)

They tasted fine...yamcha was better thanks to the chocolate. 🤭

If you read all this, thank you for following my cookie cutter journey... 😌🙏💖

Oh yeah and I made the vectors, 3D print files, and specs/info all available in a google drive folder here for anyone to use if they want! https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hQ7uq3leYPK64pGgt3LhFw-70IZnkYzh?usp=drive_link

OH and one last thing, i ended up revising the 3D models to hopefully fix the issue of not enough vertical space. ...turns out I hit the maximum for photos and videos in this post, but you can see it on my twitter here! https://twitter.com/freezebobs/status/1875720926840680678

I didn't get to try these revised models, but they are the ones I put in the drive folder. 😊👍

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Something that’s always missing whenever people talk about Lyanna and the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy is that these things should always circle back to Jon Snow. He’s our main character here. Rhaegar and Lyanna, as well as the Kingsguard, are all dead. They were dead before this story began. This tiny section of text is meant to give color to Jon — who is alive, and whose story is currently unfolding. The events at the Tower of Joy, told entirely through Ned’s fever dream for a reason, essentially serve as one thing: fantasy protagonist myth building 101. Three wise men, a legendary magical sword, some of the greatest knights of an era, a dying queen lady, the end of an age, a dead prince, a dead king, and then here comes a soon to be completely orphaned prince whose life hangs on the balance and whose survival depends on the compassion of one lord and his wizard friend. GRRM is literally retelling King Arthur’s backstory through Jon. This whole thing is one giant literary allusion to Uther and Igraine and the boy king Arthur, to Lancelot and his Joyous Guard, to Guinevere, and to tragic romances. It reads as an ode to Arthurian fantasy and is meant to backdrop the main protagonist’s fantastical origins. The Kingsguard are there to play into that. Their presence at the Tower, in that moment, was never about Lyanna; not solely, anyway. Their presence is tied to Rhaegar’s last surviving male child, and the language used suggests that they had chosen their king, for better or worse. Any discussion surrounding the Kingsguard’s presence at the Tower that focuses on anyone but Jon completely misses the point imo.

[sabotourist]

You see there's a crucial difference between Spartans and Freelancers. Between their fucking insanity.

Spartans were indoctrinated as children. They are finely curated artisan crazy.

Freelancers are the results of some people looking around for the most fucked up individuals they could find and cherry picking the most batshit headcases possible.

See, it's artisanal insanity versus fully organic insanity.

Both results in people willing to jump out of airplanes or whatever.

[khihi]

if you dislike rpf and think a normal response to someone just having fun with rpf is to steal their hard work and paste it on a more public platform where the real people in question are more likely to see it then i don't think there's much help for you, i think you're probably just addicted to performative morality and are more of an asshole than you realise

[tae-shimura-is-my-wife]

At first this was going to be about the hipocrisy of fandom regarding ichiruki and the sacracity of m/f friendship rep, but then I perceveid it would be stupid since most of them could ship two doors if it was a man and woman, they just are doing mental olympics to disprove it being read as romantic.

But there's a part of this that's really annoying and it's the warriors of m/f friendship being mad at every IR shipper, but never at the people who erases Rukia infuence and importance from Ichigo's life.

Look a lot of giant Bleach accounts try to minimize Ichigo and Rukia relationship, they're the reason as to why Bleach even exist their relationship is the pillar of the entire story, they're soulmates and destined to be together (yes even in a platonic sense), but most of them don't even recognize that, most would say they're besties or share one braincell and that's it... not even having the nerve of saying Ichigo and Rukia are most important person in each other life.

It's really funny how IRs are the horrible ones for shipping two friends, but then get real quiet to the ones who literally ignore Rukia importance/presence, say Renji is actually Ichigo bestie, barely even post official art with these two, never complained about how Rukia and Ichigo bond was dimished in the last arc and in the post ending novel, like? Are you really a fan of their friendship or you are just mad bc people ship them instead of something else? Be serious for a moment! 90% of times folks say they're friends are because they find romantic IR an absurd idea, so many of "their friendship is so precious, such a shame a bunch of freaks ship them 🥺" Is it necessary? Everytime someone say Ichigo and Rukia are friends a whole ass crowd reunites to hate on the ship, I'm sorry but I thought you guys were there to celebrate their friendship? I will never take these people seriously.

[icharchivist]

it still makes me genuinely offended that DAVG opens on Varric narrating about Solas and going "Solas is very against slavery, one of the only thing we agree on", because i've seen people say "well yeah i hope so it's the bare minimum" and like

Literally half the cast of DAI for example, yknow, the game Solas and Varric met on, were pro-slavery in one shape or form. The one thing DAVG doesn't tell you is what Solas considers to be Slavery to start with, because it is how some companions will tell you "yeah i'm against slavery" and then will talk about somehow removing someone's freedom completely in one shape or form. Look at DAI's Solas' banters with Dorian (who's in DAVG and is a slavery abolitionist SPECIFICALLY, as said in the books, because Solas changed his mind in DAI) or with Iron Bull and you'll learn a lot.

"the one thing we agreed on" is super fucking funny from the character who has always famously been a Centrist, who genuinely didn't want to listen to Anders in da2 when Anders was talking about the inherent slavery of the Circles, and, if Hawke sides with the System rather than the oppressed in da2, Varric will disapprove of Mage Freedom in DAI, which is one of the type of slavery Solas is fighting against for example. Just because the game doesn't allow you to import Varric's past doesn't erase that Varric is a centrist as fuck.

Like sorry it's not our fault DAVG have the most innoffensive companion cast in the whole franchise that you don't know how it's like to have companions with actual offensive opinions that exists to challenge your point of view but that doesn't mean you know exactly how DA companions usually work and why it's an important part of Solas' character.

And sorry also that the game talks so little about Slavery and the multiple ways it manifest in Thedas but that doesn't mean you should just take that at face value.

"gngngn Solas being anti-slavery is the bare minimum" tell that to Varric the Centrist for fuck's sake you DONT KNOW HIM.

[starrysharks]

i want to delete my twitter account so fucking bad

[nouveaumoon]

happy foghorn friday

[mohntilyet]

not to mention the entire antaam fleet like 😭 that was the PERFECT moment to show off what the lords could do!!! The antaam fucked over rivain, theyve been a thorn in the whole nations side for a long time now, they would not pass up a chance for payback via full scale naval warfare so that the veilguard can do what they need to!! Sure dreadnoughts are dangerous but at this point they probably have tricks up their sleeve, thats one of the few things they have!

also wouldn't it be personal because does solas not try to blow up kont-aar because he's trying to 5d chess tevinter and the qunari into destroying each other. like. i know technically this would not be incredible widespread news because the attack was stopped, but i don't think the wonderful citizens of kont-aar would have missed the tsunami that nearly hit them and the shockwave that actually hit them. rumors go around. and i assume irian/vadis tell varric. who i think would tell isabela. who would tell the group she leads. who would care because ofc, they LIVE IN RIVAIN, and now know that solas and his followers thinks they can trade rivaini lives* to further his plans.

*while i also think there's probably a divide between kont-aar and the rest of the nation, it's one that the rivaini love to jump across and back over. an interesting comparison to be made here with most of rivain having similar sentiments towards dairsmuid and the chantry. like this is the country specifically mentioned to have a lot of citizens who follow the qun/are non-andrastian + it being MUCH more multicultural and accepting than other nations. any attack on rivain, even if it's a qunari settlement, would fan a lot of flames that solas cannot put out so the idea of trying to him taking multiple steps back because he didn't realise how intensely the qun/rivaini/lords would react is very fun for me. it would have been soo interesting for rivain to be a hub for efforts against solas because of how it's not influenced by andrastianism, how he (or his agents) specifically fucked them over, and (maddeningly for solas) also part of this resistance has spirits who willingly guide them against him. this could have even been a plot device where the door goes both ways and solas finds out rook's plans because he manages to eavesdrop through a seer or something.

and on the spirits. all the stuff where the mourn watch regularly communicates with spirits could have been done with rivain as well, and with different takes on being 'friendly' with spirits. iirc there's a spirit in the hall of valor which is so interesting but it's literally just there for flavour text. THERE'S A SPIRIT IN THE HALL OF VALOR THAT DOES NOTHING BESIDES LIKE. SAY HI. ??? bioware i would have liked to see more spirits and seers and the matriarchal pantheists you have talked about please. and also the idea of the peaceful qunari settlement being pushed to protect the country they are part of and what that means for them as qunari vs. rivaini. taash's storyline could have contributed to this . so A LOT less about choosing a side, more about how kont-aar has developed, changed, how rivain has influenced it and what it means to be qunari. not the qunari agents and fighters that we have seen, but their 'civillian' way of life in kont-aar.

complete waste not seeing any of established lore reflected in the lords of fortune or rivain because i stupidly actually thought we were going to see some kind of settlement and be introduced to a very different cultural norms.. in my beautiful mind i like to think taash is a little taken aback by how badly mages/elves/etc are treated. like they understood it was different outside of rivain (they would have been young when the dairsmuid circle annulment happened right? so they don't 'remember' it themself, they likely heard others talking about it when they're old enough to understand) but until they actually saw what was happening first hand, they had a weird dissonance about it. but what we got was a deserted beach, ties to another faction (wardens are fine!! they are great !!!! the fourth blight is interesting!!!! yet they are not the faction with a lack of info about them!!!!!) and also the hall of valor that exists as flavor text with nothing meaningful behind it besides a pub used in a few cutscenes and a minigame.

[fluxweeed]

Hii, I just discovered your fics and am reading my way through them. Love, love, love the ones I’ve read so far.😊 I was just wondering what your favourite Draco is you’ve written, and what your fave Draco is in fics written by others? ☺️

ACK thank you!! what a question!! i've considered this v carefully and it turns out i have………a lot of thoughts. i will keep them under a cut so nobody is accosted with a full 700 words of my Draco Opinions 😂 so my quick answer is:

my fave draco i've written: the taste of țuică my fave draco ever: rookie moves by peu_a_peu

draco is an interesting one for me bc i don't really LIKE him? but i have sooo many feelings about him. really not sure i could summon the same fervour for harry, for example, who is my number one boy forever and always.

(i saw a thing once that said a pairing becomes ur otp when u relate to one of the characters and want to fuck the other one, and 🙈 i mean, i think you're supposed to relate to the gryffindor, aren't you. whoops.)

OKAY SO HERE'S THE UNHINGED DRACO MALFOY ESSAY BY FLUX W. EED.

listen. i love and respect people who are Refined Draco enjoyers. connoisseurs of redemption arcs. appreciators of majestic malfoy bone structure and ethereal grey eyes and soft windswept hair. fans of dracos who insult harry (with hidden affection) and who are a bit snobbish (in a rich, sexy way) but ultimately have realised the error of their teenage years and have become a better person. perhaps this draco has built a potions business and helps the aurors. perhaps he IS an auror. either way, he has a biting sense of humour, maybe, but he's a good guy.

unfortunately, the draco of my heart is a horrid mean little rat man.

i've never actually managed to write him the way i love him. i tried to aim for immoral bastardy in what's mine is yours but i got so caught up in trying to nail the feelsforbreakfast-style humour in the narrative that i ended up focusing much more on that and much less on writing genuine bastardhood.

i've written him as reserved and clever (in the four doors – this draco was written entirely for @jovialobservationanchor, who had a weak spot for closed-off academics with soft centres) and as a traumatised self-loathing mess (in two to lie and to some extent for lack of wanting and say no to this) and hopelessly sexually/emotionally horny for one harry james potter (in, um, most things) but i've never managed to capture the genuine cruel streak and flawed personality that is sooo so important to me.

WHICH IS WHY i picked țuică!draco for my favourite of the ones i've written. he's still a bit too emotionally intelligent to be Just Right, imo, but i think he's maybe the closest? he's unrepentantly rude to people. he's not attractive. and he has a streak of self-destructive fucked-upedness that is some form of wartime guilt, but certainly not a pretty one.

HOWEVER. rookie moves?? NAILED it. i adooored how genuinely fuckin MEAN he is, even tho he's an auror. i love love LOVED that he's kind of bad at his job in a way that's in complete opposition to how drarry!draco is often written these days:

The look on Malfoy’s face was not only troubling, Harry realized, but familiar. At once activated and dead behind the eyes, like an invasive species in an ecosystem that could not check it. It was the look of the meanest fucking teenager Harry had ever known, giving in to his urge to bully.

-

What Malfoy wasn’t good with was people. Despite his repeated insistences that his upbringing had equipped him with impeccable manners and a facility with society intrigue, the truth was that he rubbed almost everyone the wrong way. He was, undeniably, annoying. Witnesses were put off by his snide, dismissive tone, and he didn’t know how to coax out information with curiosity, warmth, or strategic silence.

that's not to say unrepentant cunt draco is the only one for me!! i DO enjoy the classic redeemed drarry draco!! i love a quirky draco, à la wwpwcs or maya's drop dead gorgeous. gallaplacidia's draco is sooo painful for me to read (complimentary) that even though i adore her fics, i still haven't read them all bc i have to space them out, for my health. and i'm sure there are dozens more dracos that i'm forgetting how much i like – basically, as long as he isn't super suave, absolutely gorgeous and/or obviously tom felton, i'm on board.

[cnl0400]

Idk I feel like I live in another dimension than most of the OBM fandom on twt. There has never been free pulls on half anniversary besides the permanent gachas, like my god we know Solmare Is greedy but you're inventing stuff to get mad to

[icewindandboringhorror]

boy in silly sitting positions compilation

[batsplat]

NEW CASEY INTERVIEW NEW CASEY INTERVIEW

"Valentino Rossi and I were enemies, now we have overcome the past"

https://www.gazzetta.it/motori/la-mia-moto/27-11-2024/casey-stoner-al-ranch-di-valentino-rossi-gli-inizi-con-nolan-il-ritorno-alle-corse.shtml

(link) anon you are my hero and I love you. I was about to say I also love gazzetta for being my most reliable allies in getting fun interview quotes from casey, but I'm feeling somewhat less well-disposed towards them after having had to fight their website to even see what he said, let alone actually clip it. as ever, obviously go read the whole thing (might need arm surgery??) - does read a bit like paid content by the helmet company but still interesting. here, however, we shall be focusing just on the casey/vale stuff. the clip in question + transcript:

No, it's good, Valentino and I've put the past behind us many years ago now... I never stopped respecting anything Valentino did, but we certainly had our time where we were very very fierce rivals, almost "enemies" I would say on the track. And, you know, this is something that when you step away from racing and you have a different perspective, you can see things in a different light. So... I think for both of us, we stepped away, we have families. It's a very very different way of life for us now. And to get to share the track with him in an enjoyable way - something that I would have wanted to do in my early career, before we became let's say enemies - it's been a real real pleasure to spend some time with him, to see everything, this program that he's built... It's more or less a dream of mine to do what he's done, to have this opportunity to work with young riders like he is. He has the teams which he can implement and bring the riders through, and all of his riders now are at such a high level - it's a testament to what he's done. And I think it's such an amazing opportunity for anybody that gets to work with him.

crazy how I simply never lose

first off, this is something he's hinted at before, but there's just something really... you know. about casey talking about it being his dream to do what valentino's done training young riders :( and what he says about what an "amazing opportunity" it is for anyone who gets to work with valentino... can't help but think about that ask I answered recently about how much good it would have done casey to have a vr46-esque structure looking out for him. and maybe... just maybe... a thought he's had too...? read the answer as a whole and, come on - you can kind of see where I'm coming from, right. just this slight edge of wistfulness

second of all, again, it is just so extremely true to this rivalry that casey says they'd put the past behind them "many years ago now" when you just keep in mind what he's actually been saying about valentino in the last few years. "a different perspective", "you can see things in a different light"... well, sure, but not THAT different going by your interview output I would say. which isn't necessarily going to be completely reflective of casey's thinking over this time period - he's telling a story about that rivalry in the press, after all, and it's one that has increasingly become accepted in the mainstream consciousness. there have also been some gentle hints of him reassessing a few specific valentino-related elements of his career, like for instance his speculation that yamaha had strung him along to use as a negotiating tactic against their preferred pick (from late 2023). which (whether true or not) is ofc a different line from the *wink wink nudge nudge* approach deployed in his autobiography and elsewhere to heavily imply valentino blocked him from that seat

now, look, I STILL think he's going to go back to some of the old hits in future interviews... he's never going to stop having complicated feelings about valentino, and he does want the public to understand his grievances. BUT, as last stated on the 2k24 feud round-up, that internal conflict does not always survive actual direct exposure to valentino. casey does have a little bit of form where 'contact with valentino temporarily softening his rhetoric' is concerned. portimao 2021 was ofc when they did that helmet swap thing, casey gave some nice quotes about valentino at his presser there - including "but over time, there is no resentment and a lot of respect"... which obviously feels like it's quite detached from how people think casey feels, in large part due to what he's said since that presser!! and it took him as long as an entire month before he got a few more digs in (memorably that was when casey said valentino couldn't be fast without a tow, which again is factually questionably but undoubtedly extremely amusing). and surely we'll get at least a little bit of a relapse, but who cares: "real real pleasure" to spend time with valentino!! real 2 me

incidentally, casey has used the 'enemy' word previously in relation to valentino - generally when discussing his belief that valentino deliberately made an enemy out of him. he also said about laguna '08 a few years ago, "before we were rivals, after that we were not enemies but we were a lot stronger rivals". (discussed here.) obviously there's no way to objectively distinguish between 'rivals' and 'enemies' - and I'd agree with casey in that 'enemies' would be quite a strong word for post-laguna but maybe a bit more accurate by 2011-12 - but as ever it's interesting how he himself characterises their dynamic. "very very fierce rivals" indeed lol. and they're no longer enemies :) peace and friendship wins the day

thirdly. third of all. number three.

And to get to share the track with him in an enjoyable way - something that I would have wanted to do in my early career, before we became let's say enemies...

HUH. huh! huh

well, I mean. obviously. but, you know. thanks for saying it? oh man, casey... his wry little smile... lonely young casey, who looked at valentino and saw an attitude towards the sport he was never going to be able to adopt as his own. who would have liked some of that joy for himself - maybe dreamed that one day he too could have fun like that - only for those emotions to remain mostly foreign to him. ofc casey's complicated feelings towards valentino and why that early idolisation turned sour has been discussed in a fair bit of depth on this blog, but well, here's another piece of the puzzle. he would have liked to share the track with valentino in an enjoyable way!! unfortunately, given the circumstances in which the two of them got to know each other, casey was never going to get what he wanted out of valentino. beyond any specific crimes committed by valentino... the more you study that rivalry, the more you come to the conclusion that casey's disillusionment was unavoidable. valentino never could have been what casey needed him to be - not as long as he was casey's rival, rather than his mentor and friend. maybe in another life

[flying-cat]

What is writing random bullshit on your ballot doing to save Palestinians. You are literally doing nothing except handing another vote to Trump who cannot be reasoned with. He is a selfish, senile fuck. You're fucking over all the women and minorities in your own country to do LITERALLY NOTHING for Palestine because what you're doing for them isn't worth the dry dogshit stuck to someone's shoe. You want to help Palestine? Keep donating, buying eSIMs and spreading awareness. Refusing to vote, voting third party knowing it won't work as a worthless form of protest, or incorrectly voting won't do anything except hurt the vulnerable people in your own country.