#2009 was just a simpler time

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

so... this is what the email looked like

just reading that my username was 'idhunita' plus the fact that it was a quiz taking website just made my heart race so much. i knew what it was from the start.

so, for the few of you who don't already know, when i was a kid i was obsessed with this fantasy series called memorias de idhún (it was translated to english but i don't know the name). anyways, it became my whole personality, i was that one annoying kid who wouldn't shut up about one specific thing. anyways, among my frenzy, i logged onto the internet (i didn't have full access to it by then, i could only do it either in computers class or in my grandpa's computer) and made quizzes about memorias de idhún (there wasn't much else to do tbh). i remember making some myself, but i could never go back to them cause i forgot the websites' names. UNTIL TODAY.

i was 10 (9 days before turning 11!) when i made this test; if i am not mixing grades up, i believe this was before starting 6th grade? which is verery interesting cause i became obsessed with the books in the summer camp i went to in my school that same summer, i think i finished the third and final book there and started my delusion. that means, i was in full frenzy mode here.

anyways, it only has six questions, here they are (btw i took this test while taking the screenshots and i got 5 out of 6 correct <3)

the funniest one is that last one lol. i was such a little hater:

anyways, i'm gonna leave the english translations below just in case, and also you can see the test here if you want to take it for shits and giggles.

question 1. what is jack?

() a shek

(x) a dragon

question 2. what whas the name of the human mother of christian?

[this was the only question i got wrong. i literally couldn't tell you. apparently it's maula???]

question 3. who does shail love?

(x) zaisei

() kimara

() victoria

() gerde

[my two favourite characters as of today <3. also like technically he also loves victoria, but i'm sure i was referring to romantic love only]

question 4. who loves who?

you had to match the two columns!

shail no one

christian victoria

alsan zaisei

jack

[the answers are shail - zaisei; christian and jack - victoria; and alsan - no one. again only romantic love. you can tell i had a crush at that time lol, it was a girl from my class i went to the summer camp with.]

question 5. match every race with its god

celestians kevanion

shizs wina

humans neliam

fae irial

giants aldun

varus yohavir

yan the seventh

[the answers are celestians - yohavir, shizs - the seventh, humans - irial, fae - wina, giants - kevanion, varus - neliam, and yan - aldun. the way i still remember all of this by heart after more than a decade is a bit troubling ngl.]

question 6. who should victoria have ended up with?

this is a trick question cause she chooses both jack and christian but i was a scummy little rat and only had jack as the correct answer <3

i can't believe the email i just opened

[milkneutrality]

Marble hornets not having much of a visually distinctive cast can be really frustrating, especially when ur first watching it. Then multiply that frustration 10x because of all the visual distortion/glitching. But nowadays I'm p thankful bcs wanting to make mh fanart is what pushed me to put more effort into drawing faces and making faces look distinctive from each other.

[crownmemes]

Life Sentences, Vol. 1

(Sentences from Life (2007-2009). Adjust phrasing where needed)

"It's bad in there. It's your first day back. If you don't think you can handle it, I can do it myself."

"Why exactly would the universe make fun of us all?"

"When exactly was the last time you actually met a normal person?"

"Shouldn't innocent until proven guilty be a thing with all of us?"

"Hey, you're that guy, aren't you?"

"I think I might go up into space. You can pay the Russians to take you up there now."

"Do you think it's smart of you to let a convicted felon handle your money?"

"Why would you say something like that? What kind of person says something like that?"

"It's juvenile what you're doing."

"I want to be the un-wobbling pivot at the centre of an ever-revolving universe. I want to be still."

"You pulled a knife on the suspect?"

"They only look like angels, but they're not. They're aliens."

"May I ask when you lost your faith?"

"Just because her wings were fake doesn't mean she can't be a real angel."

"I can tell that you have money. I can tell that it's new money, and I can tell that you don't know what to do with their money."

"My faith has been gone for so long I can't remember when it was that I lost it, or if I ever even had it."

"You have no idea how the real world works, do you?"

"Focus on the words I'm actually saying, okay?"

"If you saw a crime about to happen, what would you do?"

"Conspiracies are how bored people pass the time."

"You're stepping over a line here. You might want to step back."

"Be careful about having expectations - they only lead to disappointment."

"Of course I'm awake; sleep is for babies."

"How come you only call me when someone's dead?"

"Don't all husbands lie to their wives?"

"Knowing what you went through, it would be crazy if you didn't go crazy."

"If you keep going where you're going, you're going to find trouble - whether it was there to begin with or not."

"I spent my childhood trying to work out if my dad was only mean or just plain bad."

"How come you're not on a beach somewhere?"

"Do I look like I tan?"

"Dating was simpler when I was younger."

[josebarrmageddon]

9(2009) 15th Anniversary

My hype for this movie was through the roof. On top of it already looking unique compared to other movies coming out at the time, I saw it was produced by Tim Burton, who I was obsessed with growing up. I was 12 and my best friend, Kal, and I went to see it after school on opening day. It was also the first time I went to the movies without an adult, which my Parents were hesitant about before agreeing to let me see it. Kal and I walked out really liking it, but I became obsessed with it. I loved the characters, voice acting, backstory, visual designs, and world building.

Over the years, I’ve heard some complaints, like the plot being too simple and having little to no character depth, but I think because I saw it at the right time, I was able to fill in those blanks and just appreciated the things it did right. While now, its kind of quaint, I do remember feeling it was more mature and creepy and I liked it. I categorized it under gateway horror, as around the same time, I started delving more into classic horror and monster movies. It’s not necessarily aimed at mature adults, it’s aimed at the kids who are ready to see something a little bit more scary. That’s why the plot is easy to follow and the visuals and tone are intense. Director Shane Acker has talked about making more dark animated movies like this, but nothing’s happened. I know he’s still around working on visual effects for movies and making shorts, but I’d really love to see another feature from him. Hard to believe it’s been 15 years, but It’s still nice to see the 9 fandom occasionally pop up and remind me of simpler times.

- Jose Barr (9/9/24)

[legendthatexists]

Sebastian Vettel and the Mystery of Randy Mandy...

i.e. Would anyone like some utterly pointless but mildly intriguing information? Because here it is. It started with this photo and its caption sending me down a distinctly 2010-shaped rabbit hole.

↪ "ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - NOVEMBER 13: A detail view of the name 'Divine' of the car of Sebastian Vettel of Germany and Red Bull Racing team is pictured during qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix at the Yas Marina Circuit on November 13, 2010 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates."

Hang on... 'Divine'? The 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix? But Sebastian's winning RB6 was called Randy Mandy - he even said so himself. What is happening here?

Well, as it turns out, the story goes something like this...

Heartened by the achievements of 2009, Red Bull brought their RB6 to winter testing in Spain with high hopes. Their optimism was not unwarranted. The car, equipped with chassis 01 for the tests, looked to be a promising challenger, and the team came away from the sessions satisfied and ready to get things underway at the first race of the 2010 World Championship - calendar for reference throughout.

(This is a tale of many chassis, so to avoid using the word a thousand times, I'm mostly referring to them just by number.)

Before the season began, Sebastian Vettel announced to the world that he would be continuing his tradition of naming his cars, and turned up to the first round in Bahrain to race in Luscious Liz, chassis 03. Mark Webber's sadly unnamed counterpart carried 02.

The race came and went with minimal drama for the team. But at the next round in Australia, Webber had been switched to 04, formally intended to be the spare, as it was slightly lighter.

The team continued like this, with Webber driving 04, and Vettel 03, for the next several rounds, up until the Turkish Grand Prix. Vettel had been unhappy with the car in Spain and in Monaco, and upon inspection the team discovered some hairline fractures in 03, so assigned him 02, used only once by Webber in the opening round, for the race in Turkey.

Although he dropped the habit from 2011 onwards, Vettel had previously been known to rename his car after a chassis change, doing so when one occurred after the first race of the season in 2009. Following this tradition, he quickly dubbed his updated RB6 Randy Mandy. All of this information was reported by the relevant racing media when it occurred. News articles are still easily found online.

↪ Vettel's Randy Mandy, pictured at her outing during the European Grand Prix in Valencia.

Once again, this chassis allocation remained for several rounds, until Silverstone. Here, Webber was given Vettel's used, faulty, but now patched up 03, as Webber had... somewhat damaged his 04 upon descending from the Valencian skies. A quick aside, but his Silverstone win therefore came in that 03 chassis, which Red Bull let him keep as a memento after the season was done. Ergo Mark Webber technically owns Luscious Liz?

But I digress. To recap so far: Both drivers tested 01. Vettel drove 03 up to and including Monaco, after which he received 02 due to small defects in 03. Webber ran his opening weekend in 02, switched to the lighter 04, then damaged it in Valencia and had to drive Vettel's fixed-up 03. Got it?

Chassis-tracking becomes a lot simpler after the summer break: Webber changed to the new 06 for the weekend in Japan, and Vettel to the equivalent 05 immediately after the summer break. His updated car was pictured in Spa with that intriguing new name: Divine. Although this information was available in the usual technical documents and FIA releases, the chassis changes were not covered by the media, and the new name was never mentioned, and isn't listed on Vettel's website. There are a lot of well-documented discussions about the changes that took place from online in 2010, with reference to the technical info. Still, the only confirmation of the name change is in photos, or squinting at 2010 onboard quality. And yet, there are several photos and onboards, and it's stated plain as day in the caption I quoted at the beginning...

Save for Webber using and promptly crashing 03 in Korea, the two drivers saw out their seasons with their new chassis. Meaning that Vettel, it appears, drove to Red Bull's maiden championship, and indeed to his very own, in a car christened Divine.

↪ Her nameplate was pictured in the garage at Spa. It can also be seen in this photo, on the grid just before the deciding final Grand Prix of 2010.

↪ Vettel's chassis label at Yas Marina. (Apologies for the quality - it's a photo I took of a photo in this book).

TL;DR In 2010, Sebastian Vettel not only switched chassis after Monaco, but also after Hungary. Given his then-tradition of giving each new chassis a new name and as told by photographs, he won his first championship in a car that was called Divine; not Randy Mandy as we all thought..

This is relevant to absolutely nothing and nobody in real life but I found it somewhere between slightly and mildly interesting, and thought others might too :)

photos 1 & 2 by Vladimir Rys, photo 3 by Mark Thompson. Via Getty.

[20dollarlolita]

An absurdly and unnecessarily over-the-top and thorough breakdown of using my embroidery machine for a cosplay piece.

Part 1) The piece:

Many iterations of Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda series has this tapestry front piece. I've looked for a technical name for this piece as well as extant examples of it from our history, and my research is indicating that it's just a fantasy piece and doesn't have a name.

So we're calling it an apron. IDK. "Heraldic apron," sounds fancy enough.

One of the things that's been a bitch through all cosplay of all time is custom textiles. Since the early days of cosplay, we've been looking for ways to handle this at home. Back when I got into cosplay and took it really seriously, Worbla hadn't been invented, there was no Friendly Plastic, Wonderflex had to be purchased in 15-yard lots, the Glowforge and home 3D printing was just a fantasy, and Cricut machines ran off cartridges and couldn't design from your computer. Also, when I was cosplaying seriously, I was a college student with no job and a $100/month allowance for food (which I spent on cosplay, mostly). We didn't do fancy shit. You know what we did?

We had fuckin' hand-traced and hand-cut stencils. Mother fuckin' freezer. Paper. Stencils. Now, this version of Zelda that 2009 Me is cosplaying up there does have a much simpler heraldic apron than Ocarina of Time Zelda does. However, since I've gotten access to embroidery machines, I've had this great need to remake this sort of concept with adult me's current budget and skill set.

Now, there's a few issues from the start about making this. The notable one is that the in-game textures for the apron do not completely line up with the official artwork. When you start looking at the 3DS remakes, they re-textured the apron, giving us yet a third canonical way that this thing might be laid out.

Obviously, the easiest thing to do is to get several references, and then to slap them next to each other and compare. I've got GIMP pulled up here, and have several versions here. I adjusted color levels until the pattern in the garment was as clear as I could make it. There's horizontal guide lines going across to divide the apron into sections. We'll call those sections thusly, top to bottom: Triforce, Eyeball, Bird, 8 Rectangles, and V.

***

This is going to be long and boring. I have my reasons for writing a long and boring post, but sadly, I'm not able to share them without becoming un-boring, thus defeating the purpose of this work.

***

I forgot to label them, so that reference image is, from left to right: N64 screenshot, 3DS screenshot, N64 character model, small inset at the bottom is 3DS, official artwork that was released alongside the N64 game, a heraldic tabard, some official rendering of the Hylian crest, and another 3DS screenshot.

Some are pretty self-explanatory, and some are more open to interpretation. Notably, let's take a look at the Bird section. The official artwork and the 3DS remake both distinctly have the Hylian Family Crest there. The N64 version has a very distinctly different bird thing.

So, I had to decide, which one do I put on my apron? I had to consider several things, but one of them was the process of how game textures from the N64 era were made. Textures for this game were very small image files, smaller than your 2009 cosplay.com forum avatar. The reference art would be made and then other people would be in charge of turning that art into a usable texture file, so there was artistic license involved in adapting that. This game was released before the Hylian crest had been used in multiple places across several games. Therefore, we can justify making the assumption that the texture artists didn't have an understanding of how important it was to keep this part the exact shape it was, and turned "stylized bird" into "stylized bird" in a way that would read clearly on screen at 45x100 pixels. We can assume this to be the case, because, when Grezzo did the 3DS remake, their texture artist used the Hylian crest instead of the OoT bird thing.

***

Sorry for all the embroidery stuff in the past few days. I've attracted the attention of a couple people online and embroidery seems to bore them, so we're doing that for a little bit until I stop being interesting.

,***

Cosplay has a spectrum of screen-accuracy to full-nonsense. In some things, you can do screen accuracy very well. Screen-Accurate Princess Leia from EpIV is pretty easy to make look good. Sometimes, you can do full nonsense pretty well, too. Princess Leia, but in if Star Wars was steampunk, also pretty easy to make look good.

Some things aren't as easy to make look good when you're doing screen-accurate. Sephiroth's hair in most of the Final Fantasy games stands up off his head by like 30% the height of his face. If you math that out, you have a wig with 5" antennas swooping up in the front. When you put that on a head, it looks silly. Do you want your Sephiroth to look silly? No? Then you need to do something about that hair.

My cosplay rule that I try to stick with is this: If you need to make a decision between what is "accurate" and what looks good, you pick what looks good. As long as the character reads as the character when you're done, it's better to look good than to be accurate.

And this is why, instead of just tracing any of these aprons in my embroidery software, I broke out a pen and drew the whole thing out.

Actually, I drew half of it out. The left half to be specific. I know that I'm going to mess with this later on my computer, and I know that I want the thing to be symmetrical, so let's save everyone (mostly me) some trouble and just do half of it.

Why was it important to me to draw it full size? Remember, that texture we're referencing is less than 100 pixel wide. The final piece is going to be full size, so there's a lot of things that just don't scale up easily. We're basically going from a texture the size of my thumb nail to something that has to be more high-def than 8K. This basically meant that I needed to redraw it from scratch to get that resolution. Lots of little details are going to have to be added, and I'm much better at adding them with a pen than I am just guessing while I'm digitizing the file to embroider.

So, I took it, pulled it into GIMP, and made some adjusting. I mirrored it so that I have both a left and a right side to work with. I changed the contrast so that I could see the lines better. I didn't like the Hylian crest that I drew so I just plopped the official SVG onto it and dragged it around until it fit.

And then, and this is kind of important, I cropped the image so that it's the exact proportions that I want the final thing to be. My whole design is in this file, and there's no outside image. This is important, because I'm going to use this as a template to trace in MySewnet, and the easiest way to get the background to behave properly is to pre-set it to the exact size you need in another program. Good thing this software isn't stupid absurdly expensive, or else the fact that you needed to do that would be really annoying.

The digitizing process:

Okay, so the first thing that I do is to make a custom hoop the size of the finished project. There's no way that I can actually stitch this out this big, because a 25" long hoop doesn't exist anywhere, but it's way easier to design all of it and then split it up than it is to design in pieces and then fit them together. I open the hoop in the digitizing software and load my template as the background.

Digitizing from a technical viewpoint is really simple: you click points all around the area you want to make a shape, and then you hit "make this thing", and then it renders the thing. You can then give that thing a different kind of fill or line. Easy.

So instead, I'm going to go into the art part. Because yes, I've already drawn this whole template, but I haven't figured out how to fill each of those shapes. This isn't like a coloring book where I can just fill a shape with color. Embroidery means that I have to pick how exactly I fill all those areas.

First up, I have the legendary Golden Triumph Forks. The Magical Eating Utensils. I wasn't super sold on how this was rendered in the official art. We can vaguely see how, in the game art, it looks a little more like a red outline with corner flourishes, rather than what we got in the artwork. I probably should have looked up some historical flourishes from time periods in world history where technology matched the apparent technology of the world of the Legend of Zelda, but I just kind of picked a random frilly shape.

The Triforce is one of the most important symbols in Zelda, so I knew that I wanted it to be a bright shape. This meant that I wanted to fill the shape with stitches in such a way that none of the purple backing is showing through. In embroidery terms, this usually means either a full pattern fill, or an applique. I picked applique, because this is an easy shape to applique. I knew from the start that I was going to use metallic tissue lamé. Lamé's great for a lot of things, but it's weak and shows creases. To avoid that, I wanted to put in a fill stitch to support the fabric and prevent damage, as well as hiding any big creases. I picked a big and open motif fill that will still show a lot of the applique fabric.

Eyeball:

So this is, specifically, the Sheikah Eye. It's an important symbol in the series. The Sheikah stick this eye on pretty much everything. However, it's not a fancy, gaudy, ostentatious symbol.

I grabbed a motif line at random from the list of motif lines, and happened to like it. It's a very heavy stem stitch that goes over each stitch 4-6 times, making a big, raised area. To make sure the eye was visible, I filled in the iris, teardrop, and eyelashes. I picked an opaque spiral fill, because it's a circle and these general shapes are circles. A while back, I bought some metallic white "iris" thread, and thought that a subtly-iridescent white would fit nicely.

Those little eyelashes at the bottom that aren't there in the art? Well, there's there in the game render juuuuust a little bit, and also they fall into "if it looks better that way, it's the correct way" mentality.

The Hylian Crest.

Fuck this thing.

All you need to know about this is two things: 1) I just traced the SVG that I found on the Zelda wiki, and 2) I didn't plan on stitching it out with black outlining. That black outline is just there to confuse my software into doing what I want.

Since this is as important as the triforce, I knew I wanted to do it in silver lamé. That means all of this is an applique. Quick tip: if you're going to be breaking a design into smaller segments, don't do any applique so big that it has to be spread over two segments.

Ask me how I know.

I originally had this filled with the same chain stitch that I used on the Triforce, but it made things look very samey and very mushy. I later switched it to a triangle-shaped spaced fill. I selected the triangle as the correct shape by clicking every shape one at a time and seeing what they looked like. Since this was going to be a running stitch on a shiny applique background, the fine details don't really matter. You actually can't see them normally, which is why I had to change the color here.

The outline there is the same stem motif that I used in the Sheikah eye. I found that it's wide enough to cover an applique edge without having to look like a satin stitch.

Squares, Triangles, and the Face Thing.

I have no idea what that face thing is supposed to be and apparently neither did anyone else on the internet. Since it just kind of looked like a scribble, I just rendered it as a scribble. I used a satin column so that it could have line weight similar to a drawing with a paint brush, and the shiny satin line would look like wet ink. Also known as phoning it in.

The triangles are filled with a contour fill that just traces the edges of the shape. I left some space between the lines so that the purple background can show through. This gives is sort of an optical illusion of movement. The outside of this was originally that same stem motif line from before, but after I stitched it out, I realized ti was too heavy. The final version had the same motif, but smaller, and with fewer repeats of the stitch.

I'm so damn proud of those fucking gold boxes. Okay, so, let's look at the design. Why are there gold boxes? What do they do? What do they mean? Do they represent the eight dungenons in the original game? Nope, because there were nine dungeons in the original game. Are they the eight sages? No, because there's seven sages. Is it what happens when you average the number of dungeons and sages out? I don't know. Anyway, they looked stupid just being little gold boxes, so I gave them blunted corners. I did another contour fill because I wanted them to lie flat on the finished apron and not draw any attention to themselves. As for the little tail, folks, I discovered a technique and I'm FULLY READY to abuse the heck out of it. So, I traced the lines with a satin column, ready to try to mess with the spacing to see if it'd lie flat with enough work. I hit "convert to tapered motif" by complete accident, and it was kind of cool. So, then, I went through the various motif options, found some cool looking scrolls, hit "fit to line" and slapped those in there. And I think that the little tails being written in some weird language I can't understand is SO COOL. I love how this part looks and I will not be taking other opinions on it at this time.

The V.

I didn't like how either of them looked in the original, so I just kind of winged it. I was getting bored at this point so I took a pattern fill that was supposed to be linked chains, and then I twisted it around until I was the least bored I could be with it. Again, I went with the smaller stem stitching on the outside.

Those little tails on the circles there are also filled with the scroll as tapered motif thing. If you go for this, don't forget to run the "delete short stitches" filter or else there'll be like 1100 unnecessary tiny stitches in your motifs. Ask me how I know.

Now, we learn by making mistakes, and the best way to make mistakes is to just jump in and wing it. On the left, we have the first version of this that I tried. On the right, we have the second version, which is the one I'm going to use. I've made a couple of adjustments to the file since that final version, so if I make it again, that'll be just a hair better.

So, for starters: backing fabric. I liked the movement and texture on this subtle dot tonal better than a solid purple, so i used that for both my test and my final project. The main drawback with using a printed tonal instead of a dyed solid is that the back of the printed fabric is still white. On some things, specifically the area around the satin stitching on the ink face thing, you can see subtle white haloing where the stitching's displaced the background. I don't like it. No one else seemed to notice or care.

I knew that I'd be doing this in my endless repositionable hoop, but I hadn't taken into account that I'd be doing it in the endless hoop sideways. The endless hoop expects you to go from top to bottom, and my design goes left to right. This means that I have to fight the fabric around the clamp of the hoop. The endless hoop also doesn't hold things as tightly as a regular hoop does. Because of the way the fabric is moved through the hoop, a fusible or sticky stabilizer has to be applied to the fabric before, instead of being hooped with the fabric. All of this meant that I just didn't get the support that I needed on the first go around. You can see this in the way that the fabric has bunched up around the 8 boxes. For the first round, I used some fusible no-show mesh stabilizer. It wasn't wide enough, so I had to cut it in chunks and apply it sideways. For the second round, I used two layers of Power Mesh (same stuff but different brand) as well as a layer of light+tacky paperless sticky tear-away. I really hate that light+tacky stuff so ti's exciting to finally use it up.

My first trial was mostly to see if I could make the endless hoop work like I wanted it to. In this trial, I learned a lot of things. I kept the computer nearby to make changes as I noticed them. When I was done, I looked at what I'd made. I didn't like all the proportions in all of the design, so I dragged some stuff around in the file. This was when I realized that the heavy stem stitch motif everywhere was looking clunky, and reduced or removed it from several places. I changed the fill of the Hylian crest to the triangular fill. shout out to anyone from That One Anonymous Message Board who made it this far in this post to try to prove how deranged I am. You've got a lot of time on your hands, don't you? I completely changed all of the instructions to tell the computer how to do the applique on the Hylian crest (which I STILL got wrong), and added some aligment stitches to help with the applique process. This was when I changed the color of the outline in the software. Ideally, you should now be able to lay the applique down as one fabric, let the machine sew the whole thing, and then trim it. This is important, because that applique spreads out over two hoopings, so it's kind of a mess. The secret to making this work is for hooping #2 (eye and top half of crest) to stitch out the eye BEFORE the applique, so that the whole fabric can be placed over the completed eye. We learn.

Once it was all combined and digitized, it's important to render all the digitized elements as stitches, and then do a bit of cleaning up.

Notably, I really needed to take those tapered motifs and run the stitch optimizer program. The stitch optimizer's job is to remove stitches that are too short to stitch out nicely. When looking at the 3d views in the software, I can't tell which of the samples is the before and which is the after. If I zoom up really close in illustration mode, I can see it, but remember that this is like a 1" wide strip of stitching. The basic rule is that any time the software wants to remove 3300 stitches and you can't see the difference in the stitch-out, you REALLY WANTED to remove those 3300 stitches. That's not 3100 stitches from all over the design, BTW. That's just 3100 stitches from that one section.

I go over my test swatch, section by section, and make sure there's nothing that I forgot to put into the software. I also just delete every jump cut and then make the software add them all back in. The program that adds cuts automatically tends to be more judicious wit them than the digitizing program is when you make the design, so it's a way to make a design stitch out a lot smoother with just two clicks.

So, once all of that is done, we can just run the design splitter program. The design splitter says it has "intelligent splitting" settings, which is an absolute joke, but I use inteligent setting anyway. It's not necessarily any better at picking where to split than a straight line is, but our eyes are trained to see straight lines. The allegedly-intelligent splitting does at least split at random points, making it harder for your eyes to pick out what's a splice and what's a continuous line.

So, in addition to "intelligently" splitting the design apart, the program adds two color blocks to each split piece. One is before the stitches, and it's four stitches long. This just does one stitch at each corner of the design area.

The second block it adds is at the end. This block stitches a corner marker at each corner in the design. In this picture, the before line is green and the after line is red. I offset them by a little bit so that you can see what's going on, but they do happen directly on top of each other.

This is important, because you're trying to lay your design out so that every section of the split design lies perfectly next to the other ones. When you re-hoop your fabric, you can step through the first four stitches. If you've placed your fabric correctly, then those stitches should perfectly touch the markers that were sewn in the previous blocks. If they don't line up, you can just re-hoop over and over and over and over until it lines up.

In theory, you can line up an entire design just using these markers and the alignment stitches. You can just keep rehooping forever until it lines up. It's great. On the other hand, if your embroidery machine has literally ANY KIND of design placement setting onboard, that can help a whole lot. The astute observer will note that, on that picture way up at the top, that machine isn't my Topaz 50. That's because the T50 has some nice basic design positioning that will let you place within a certain range, but it won't let you tilt the design if you hooped it crooked. I did the first attempt at this on my Topaz, and it was fine, but there was a lot of re-hooping. So I might have taken this to work, to do this on the machine that's a step up from mine. (While I was there, I used a sit-down Bernina longarm to "hand"-baste the stabilizer on. That's not the intended use of the machine, but if you set stitch regulation to like 1 stitch per inch, and then you just pull the fabric straight through from the side, you get perfectly straight basting lines. If you're not feeling like dedicating an entire room in your house to having a free-motion machine just to baste straight lines, most mid-tier sewing machines have a fake hand-basting setting in them somewhere). Anyway, if you don't already have a bunch of hoops from HV, you can get that kind of positioning setup on Brother and Baby Lock for much less than the cost of the machine I was working on. If doing big multi-hoop projects like this is a priority for you, ask your salespeople about machines that make this really easy.

You now also have the great trade-off: the smaller the hoop, the tighter the design will hoop, and the less stabilizer you'll need. However, the bigger the hoop, the more you can shift the design around in the machine without hitting the edge. The tighter the hoop grabs, the less stabilizer you need, but the harder it is to shift the fabric that's already being held in the hoop to get it where you need it to go.

I handled this by just fucking throwing a shit ton of fucking stabilizer at it like there was no tomorrow. There's three layers on this bad boy.

You might be saying "Why didn't you just use a heavier cut-away?" and you'd be right, except for two things. 1) if I use two lighter layers, then I can trim the stabilizer away in layers, avoiding the stabilizer showing through and 2) my store didn't have any wide fusible cut-away in stock so

Anyway, here it is, time to make it into the actual apron. I'm very excited for this project. I'll probably break out the repositionable hoop again to do a border on the outside of the completed project, but I don't know for sure exactly what that'll look like.

[slugdragoon]

Dungeon Appreciation Post #4 - Womb of Grief (Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux)

I mean, just look at this thing. The scale of the optional extra dungeon in SMT: SJR is something I aspire to. I mean, the original game came out for Nintendo DS in 2009, the remake (and thus this dungeon) in 2017, but the design here is truly old school.

While the dungeon itself is super recent, it follows the general design of dungeons in the main game, which is to fill just about as much of the map grid as possible on each floor, except this one has seven, and you return to it, going deeper each time as you go through the main story. Typically, you go to a lower floor and eventually open a shortcut to the one above so that you can return more easily.

The Womb of Grief makes heavy use of conveyor floor tiles and teleporter tiles with unclear destinations, classic but controversial elements in DRPGs, some say outdated. Strange Journey was notable for throwing back to these designs that have in some ways fell out of fashion, but they are classic confusion tactics. My first experience with both of these was Pokemon Blue, with conveyor tiles in the Celadon Game Corner and teleporters in Sabrina's Gym. It also has some invisible floors, and pit traps that can take you to an unfamiliar part of a lower floor. It's main characteristic is that it's huge and very difficult to traverse, and is so despite having the map fill in as you go.

In a simpler game like Pokemon, similar traps present no real problem, but are a nod to the games that inspired them both, but in the Womb of Grief, though you map the dungeon out and can try paths you haven't yet tried, the complexity is cranked to such a level that you can have a hard time keeping track of where teleporters lead that you definitely have already been through, just because there are so many to keep track of. There's also a floor where teleporters have multiple destinations depending on the order you used them in. Both enemy encounters and poison and sleep tiles will drag and punish your failures of memory and mapping, which you might need to do on paper.

Takeaways for my own game: The Womb of Grief upsets players. It's beautiful. Strange Journey directly inspired my decision to make a dungeon crawler. But, I don't want my own game to feel as oppressive, necessarily, that requires trust from the players that I as an unknown will not have. However, I do love a sprawling dungeon that feels dangerous and uncharted. I'm not necessarily as interested in having a dungeon fill literally all available space to the point it loses a readable form, but mine will have verticality, so there's a ton of space to play with layout. I don't have to use traditional conveyor tiles, but what about a slide? It's already possible to fall off ledges, so why not have pitfalls and leaps of faith? I do want the spaces to feel real and take advantage of three dimensions, which is where the intertwined maps of Dark Souls (the first) might guide me. I'm considering having the bulk of the game take place in one mega-dungeon, so I'm looking for ways to add variety within it. In that sense shortcuts to different sectors as a progression mechanic will be a must.

[remembertheplunge]

2007 Murder Trial

October 1, 2007 journal entry in a new journal notebook

The journal begins it’s 31st year.

Jim went to bed at 9pm or so.

I was excited about the trial beginning until I got to court and the client was being difficult. He was charged with killing his wife. Her body was found between the back fence of a motel and a canal bank maybe a quarter mile from our house. The body had been there for about a week before being discovered, so there were issues with time of death. Was my client even in the area at the time his wife died? 

October 2, 2007.  5:47pm

Oh my God. Jury picked  One day!  Stress. FULL!

The client was in a much better mood today and worked with me. Thank God.

I’m exhausted! Wow! My brain needs a break.

8;24 pm

Jim’s being a grump.

I just don’t feel like trialing, my brain is on break.

Trial is tuff.

You’re stuck. Trapped. Vulnerable.

But, it’s interesting. Fun.

Thursday. 10/4/2007. 9:48pm

Got beat up a little by the judge  re: E mail. I’m not proficient with it. Oh well. I’m just a 70’s man..One of the experts I hired to assist in the defense of our case complained about the same thing “You have got to use e mails”.

10/5/2007. 8:19pm

Thank God. 3 days off.

Trial is hard work.

Gruleing

Intense.

9:38pm Jim heads to bed.

It’s amazing how intense trial is. Huge pressure.

10/8/2007. Monday. 9:14pm

Today went well. Best part was, I saw the client. He was happy. I’m getting ready for the closing argument.

I think at this point, the less said, the better in the case. Make your points, or try to, and move on.. Main thing tomorrow: have fun. Concentrate. Le-go. (Let go)

I think that you’ve given it your best shot. You tried.

10/11/2007.  7:31pm

Well. Guess what. I’m the biggest loser. God. All that for the big public hope dashing. Loss (The jury convicted my client of murder)

I love the information, though.

Beyond the emotion is the information.

I actually asked jurors “ How do you think I did?” “What did you think of the case?”

What I learned , I shouldn’t have made an opening statement. 

Sometimes I think that this is pretty lonely work.

Just me and b.

End of entry

Notes:

“B”  was my nick name for my partner Jim. It was short for Honey Bunny. We called each other “b”. Jim and I were together from 1997 until his death from liver failure in 2009. He helped me investigate the above murder case. We walked from our house down to the canal bank where the client’s wife’s body was found to check out the scene.. Jim and I discussed trial tactics. He was in court when the verdict was read.  He lived the experience to a degree just like I did. 

The information I got from the trial experience include trial technique, expert contacts and apparently, in this case, introduction tp e mails in a case! Apparently, e mail s were new to me in Octiober 2007 and I was not to interested in communicating that way. But, the new world of e mails was calling and it was time to jump in. Now I am flooded with e mails. Wish we could return to phone calls and letters. A simpler, quieter life.

[cerealsensei]

One of my goals this years was to start blogging again but i didn't want to go back to my old wordpress blog. So I started up a fresh new blog that you can find on Medium where I mainly talk about music.

I've written four pieces so far but my favorite one is about the Youtube beat making pioneer Boonie Mayfield. Boonie was one of the first hip hop beat makers who I had ever seen create content on Youtube. Now a days you can find hundreds if not thousands of people going crazy on their beat machines but this man was one of the first on Youtube's platform to create that kind of content and he helped birth what's basically an entire sub genre on Youtube.

I've been a fan of his work for years and I never felt like he got his just due or credit. So I decided to write a piece about his career and give him some long overdue flowers.

[nymphrasis]

Now that I have caught up on your jaw-dropping art I missed, I have an important question.

*Holds out Bowl*

Please may I have some of your AMAZING SKILL AT ART. Even but a drop would be a blessing. Your art is so cute and pretty. You even can do animations and such so well. Nymph you are Godly!!! 😊

VALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL HIHI >w<! This is me when you made such a request!

I 100% WOULD BE WILLING TO DONATE ANY ART SKILL THAT I COULD, HAD IT BEEN POSSIBLE TT0TT!!! Thank you so much, ahhhhhh. Your words are super kind and has already made my day <3!!! I really try the best I could! As for animation, they are still practice but I am happy with how they've turned out nwn! I have already admitted this to a few people, where I have stated for mouth movements I use the example of my own mouth ( See what words cause what direction of openness my mouth goes, see how far the chin goes down depending on how short or long I open my jaws, ect. The thing I did forgot is cheeks being pushed slightly during certain speeches. But that is fine for next time! ). With the Kuruna lemon meme, when her paws was going up, I had to use my own hands to see how to make the paw be folded up and moved back to make it seem like it makes sense xd. I am not aiming for crazier movements yet! I do still need to continue to practice more with simpler stuff first! I do plan to watch animation tutorials to learn other movements! Like something I do want to do is a simple ear flick for Kuruna! But I admittedly am struggling on how to make that look ( Esp considering I have not seen an animated ear that has large inner ear fluff. This case being her soot ear fluff! ). I do want to make the eye on the ear fluff change expression, as a sort of reaction to the ear it is in being flicked! Animation is something I am not super consistent in! It is on and off, here and there. It really just stuck with me because I grew up with Flipnotes ( Like the old 2008/ 2009 DS flipnote release era ) ;w;

I have never been the greatest but I have done practices and used others flipnotes as a teaching system for myself :D! Hence why mouth movement is something I feel best at, but do still need practice on!

That and there was a point and time where I've wanted to animate cartoon! Doesnt matter what type of cartoon ( As long as it isnt incite hatefulness towards a particular group or encourage irl harm. Those sort of stuff. Oh and I dont want to do cartoons that gives out a heavy religion message because, well, I dont believe in those things xd. Funny considering my main story has angels and demons, heaven and hell existing. While I may not believe in them, I dont mind using them in just fun fiction x3 )

But, ah, I am rambling again--

Thank you for the ask, as I just woke up ( Real late ) and it has plastered the biggest of smiles on my face ;;w;; As mentioned earlier, I would love to donate a piece of my art skill, if it were possible ;3;

[oodlyenough]

fic 20 questions

1. how many works do you have on Ao3? 127...! I have had the account since 2009, lol.

2. what's your total Ao3 word count? 707,519

3. what fandoms do you write for? Generally I only write for one at a time, which is currently Ace Attorney. Not counting the odd one-offs for ask memes over the years, the other big ones were Arcane, Borderlands, Doctor Who and the wizard books.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

Commutative Law (Arcane)

Window of Opportunity (Arcane)

Where the Air is Rarefied (HP)

Prestidigitation (Arcane)

Contingency Planning (Arcane)

Lmao, 4 of 5 written in 2022. You can see the power of writing m/m in a popular new fandom VS my entire other library at the time. Admittedly at some point I made a concerted effort to try and knock HP down from top spot, which was successful. For now. Jayvik fandom has quieted down a lot.

5. do you respond to comments? Yes. Sometimes it takes a while because if it's a particularly thoughtful comment I try to give a particularly thoughtful reply, and it can take time to gather my thoughts.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I'm going to discount oneshots because the tone in one-shots tends to be more consistent throughout the piece rather than being about the "ending" yknow.

So probably King and Country, a Doctor Who fic cowritten with @go-ldy way back when. Technically a happy ending if you factor in immense amounts of off-screen couples therapy lmao. But we had originally written something much simpler and happier, and it didn't fit the story at all, so we went back and wrote something heavier for the closing chapter, which is why it sticks in my mind.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I think probably Anachronism, the 95k Borderlands epic. I had always had a rough image of the four main characters happy together by the end, and it was also my swansong in Borderlands fandom, so I wanted it to be an optimistic, happy ending (especially in contrast to whatever the hell is going on in the canon there now lmfaoooo). Plus the rest of the fic was quite angsty, and the ending was hopeful and happy.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not in recent memory. Once upon a time I got a couple disgruntled comments in Doctor Who fandom, and perhaps funniest of all found people complaining about my fic on LJ in French, unaware I read French.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Nope I'm a big baby who gets too embarrassed. I've written some pretty soft-focus M rated stuff but nothing I think could rightly be called smut.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I wrote a short joke crossover between Doctor Who and Inspector Spacetime, the Doctor Who parody from Community. I don't think that one made the leap from Teaspoon to AO3 actually.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes, a number of times. It's very flattering. Mostly Borderlands fics and mostly into Russian iirc, but there's been a few over the years. Sometimes people ask, and I say "sure, drop me a link!" and I never hear back, so I'm not sure if they forgot to link or just never finished translating to begin with.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? My longest and best DW fics with @go-ldy way back when! Not so much since.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? I'm gonna be real it always just feels like whatever I'm into at the moment. And, actually, not necessarily something I write fic for -- like Pricefield is an all-timer for me, easy, but I have never written fic and I haven't read all that much either. If I were narrowing to tree, one of "each" lol, probably Doctor/Rose, Pricefield and Narumitsu.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Don't have any. I know I will never finish them (RIP Fixer-Upper and Silly Love Songs) as I've lost interest in those fandoms.

16. What are your writing strengths? I'd like to think I am good at packing emotional and/or character beats into a concise scene or story. Adding missing scenes or elaborating on canon scenes to give some additional depth or meaning without really deviating from the source.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Definitely plot. I will get stumped on the technicalities of things for ages -- I might know an emotional scene I'd like to write, but hell if I know how to get them there. It's why I primarily write one-shots. Also I struggle with any kind of scenery or set description.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I avoid it as much as I can. (Which so far has been entirely, lol.) I don't speak any other languages well enough to write dialogue in them and feel awkward relying on Google translate or hitting up random friends to do that work for me. I am more likely to use the "said something in [language]" approach.

19. First fandom you wrote for? I actually can't be sure but I think it was 101 Dalmatians. The animated one. When I was like, 7.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? I'm gonna cheat and do one per fandom:

Anachronism (Borderlands) -> biggest, most complicated, plotty fic I have ever written, with four main characters and every combination of relationship between them as the focus. Took 3 damn years. Very proud of it.

Unravel (Ace Attorney) -> total recency bias here but I'm very happy with it and it scratched a very particular itch for me, fleshing out a relationship and characters that exist mostly in the fringes of canon, something I used to do lots of but haven't in recent years

Contingency Planning (Arcane) -> an emotional sucker punch fic in my humble opinion, happiest with it

Out of the Howling (Doctor Who, with @go-ldy) -> actually I had a hard time picking a DW fic. But this was our last together and most complex, so it wins. Also the Master is fun as hell to write.

I am supposed to tag people! I am not sure who else has already been tagged. Do it or don't, I'm not your boss, happy new year 🎊 @annalyticall @heavybreathingcatt @sandboxer @mutxnts @tinsnip @tlonista @themirokai

[tenaciouschronicler]

June 7 2024 2009

...

.....

.......

um...

...

Did we just witness John die??

We got a sound page and... there was so little but so much and the music was great but we are left guessing so many things...

The incorporation of a metronome at the beginning to mimic a clock ticking that carries on throughout is a great touch combined with the timer on the top of the page. The rising cresendo as the meteor hits (and that we ARE certain of) lends itself to the anticipation we feel for John to just bite the freaking apple already!

The scale of impact is hard to make out, we only see the mushroom cloud but nothing else so theres no telling who all has been impacted.

After John slowly looks up at the oncoming meteor we get nearly 20 seconds following its path. In those 20s we get aerial shots zooming out on Johns neighborhood. So many of the same house in what looks to be the most convoluted housing layout ever. I had to screenshot the animation to see if there was anything interesting. Aside from Johns theres one other house with a car but no driveways anywhere. The fences are pretty all over. Im sure its probably to make everything simpler to animate but in universe houses are just on the green?? Sorry for the bad editing and quality.

Starting at 8s there are several cuts. In order they are:

A Time to Kill poster

Confused Dad mixing cake batter

Armageddon poster

Clown picture at the bottom of the stairs

Nana's picture and toppled urn

Johns Slimer shirt logo

I dont know if this anything but Im noting it just in case.

The last shot we get as the timer ends and fades away is John (Still just Holding the Stupid Apple!) as the meteor heads directly for him.

And with that the curtain closes on Act One.

...

....

...which leads to more questions on the nature of this comic and how we should be extrapolating information if everything is playing out like a play but I am not That much of a theatre nerd so I'll file this for later.

[cherry-bomb-ships]

Ruby's F/o Tournament - Round 2 - Match 4

Vote based on whatever criteria you see fit; the ship of mine you prefer, or whichever character you prefer, or - if you don't know either - whoever you like the vibe of more! Propaganda below the cut. May the best f/o win! 💙💜❤️

Skipper

This f/o has received no propaganda.

Notes from Ruby: Skipper is the oldest f/o on my list, being with me since 2009. I didn't even really know it could be called self shipping back then, I just really loved him and wanted to go on adventures with him! And to be honest, I don't think much has changed nowadays! More than anything, he just reminds me of the simpler fun times of my childhood and he feels nostalgic to go back to. While he may not always be the most politically correct (yes really), he takes his role as a leader very seriously and is always looking out for his brothers, and that's something I think should be admired. 💙💙💙

Wrecker

From @rexscanonwife : Wrecker is a REAL man, he's strong, caring, funny, great with kids, and he's HUGE. he's essentially a star wars junkrat who is your main and he deserves MORE love. >:/ your ship w him holds a special place in my heart (I'm sure you know why 💗) and u don't talk about him much but he deserves to have some time to shine

Notes from Ruby: It still astounds me to this day how quickly I fell for Wrecker; I agreed to watch the first episode he and his brothers appear in with my girlfriend (who made that lovely propaganda right up there), and I am not exaggerating when I say it took minutes. LITERAL MINUTES. And I knew that I loved him. His chaotic and wild energy was what first made me fall for him, but now that I was invested, I got to watch through and find more and more things to love about him. ❤️❤️❤️

It's not too late! Click here to submit propaganda for any f/o(s)!

[cvm-jpfilm]

Ozu - I Was Born But...

Ozu's I Was Born But... was a surprisingly fun film to watch despite it being my first real silent movie experience. I was initially confused on the plot, but the film's screenplay was really easy to follow thanks to the simplicity of each scene's actions and shots.

I found myself rooting for the kids to beat the bullies, and at the same time, cringe at their antics and misbehavior. The low to nonexistent stakes of the movie reminded me of my own childhood and of simpler times. I would always question the things my parents did, much like the brothers. Now watching them, I realize that sometimes you are put into situations that you cannot do anything about, or where it would be better to continue doing something, despite not liking it. Though just because there was no real tension does not mean the conflict fell flat. In fact, the conflict between the brothers and the parents made me ponder some of the sacrifices and limitations of the adult world. The commitment to reality in a lack of change in the status quo of the adults was saddening yet inescapable; it reminds me that many of life's problems, although profound, are not the ends of the world.

It's in this depiction that I think the movie shines at portraying globally ordinary human troubles. Ozu's focus is certainly at a humorous, yet realistic portrayal of an ordinary Japanese family's circumstances. Still, none of the events of the movie are specific to this family or Japanese society. Accomplishments, societal importance, monetary value, bullying, and a parent-child disconnect are things anyone might have experienced. Seemingly, the beginning of these worries in the children and the struggles of the adults alike are like just another day in the film. Even if the father, mother, and brothers acknowledge their struggles between accomplishment and money, the very next day the father must still greet his boss the same way. I think the film is trying to say through the brothers' growth that it is fine to continue like that, because that is just how life is.

I think this film's contrast to other genres and the faithfulness to demonstrating contemporary struggles is what made this film interesting for audiences at the time. As far as genres go, shomin-geki might be as ordinary and true to life as it gets, barring comedic undertones. It is starkly different from the popular action-filled jidai-geki and it is a much more niche form of gendai-geki. Additionally, I think audiences might have empathized if not seen themselves in the movie's family due to the economic state of Japan at the time. 9 years before the movie's release, the Great Kanto earthquake hit Japan, totaling casualties over 100,000 people. The Showa financial crisis would arrive 4 years later as a result of government bailouts to banks and businesses, along with the Showa depression from 1930-1931 due to the Great Depression (Shizume, 2009). Under that premise, it wouldn't be uncommon for many families to be in a similar situation than that of the movie: moving away from the big Tokyo cities and in dubious economic circumstances. In such a low point in the nation's country, I think audiences would have found the simple and realistic depiction of a sub-urban family comforting.

Ozu's shots are pretty interesting looking back at the film. Most shots are low to the ground or level to the actors' chest and long shots. The perspective it creates makes it seem as if we are children ourselves. I think this accomplishes in making the children's antics real and serious. By themselves, you might mistake a children scene with an adult, since the framing is the same for either, but bring them together and you get a towering effect from the adults. Speaking of a difference, another quirk that I like about shot composition in this film is how actors are grouped. Take the movie night scene, for example:

These three shots have to be my favorite by far because it exemplifies exactly what the movie is about. Many shots in this film are broken down into group shots where actors are in there respective social groups. Sometimes a single group is on screen before switching over, and other times the groups are separated spatially using the foreground and background. For example, the bullies vs. the brothers or father and mother vs. brothers. In this case, the shots separate the groups into boss and his wife, boss' employees, and the kids. The reason why the shot separates them is for the comedic effect of each group's reaction to the movie's accidental recording of the boss' adultery. The boss and his wife are upset and disappointed, the employees pretend they didn't see anything, and the kids stare indifferently. This was such an incredibly funny scene to me and by far the best shots because it highlighted a technique I didn't realize was being used in the film and exemplified how each social group should act. Throughout the film, the social group shot composition changes particularly with the kids, going from bullies and brothers, to brothers and kids without the bully, to all kids hanging out. That's an amazing way to tell a story without having to even watch the entire film, you can observe character dynamics by simply looking at who is on the screen and if they are far from each other.

P.S. Apologies if the structure is a bit by the book, but I actually started picking up towards the end about what I really liked in the film. If anyone agrees with my social group shot composition, let me know. I could certainly be overthinking it, but I found that to really elevate the film once I found it. Additionally, here's the source for my information on the economic state of Japan around 1931.

Shizume, M. (2009). The Japanese economy during the Interwar period: Instability in the financial system and the impact of the World Depression. Bank of Japan, 2009-E-2, 1-10. https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/rev_2009/rev09e02.htm

[eldraftsman]

(Archive) Animated movie of the day: Up (2009)

Originally posted: January 15th, 2023 What makes life worth living? Is it the accumulated experiences we gain? The dreams and aspirations we set out to accomplish? Or maybe… something simpler? Can those dreams get in the way of what truly matters?

One of the most critically lauded Pixar films, the opening is so powerful most people would agree it's already a narratively satisfying experience, if a heartbreaking one. A sentiment I agree with: an entire married life of good and bad times, unfulfilled dreams intertwined with lovely everyday experiences, and the void that comes when one half of that whole parts. All in just seven minutes, it could have been a masterpiece of a short film on it's own merits.

Which provides an interesting contention point: some claim the movie peaks at that point and is followed by an underwhelming wacky adventure, which is kind of missing the point of the story. While you can discuss whether or not the execution was on part with such a striking opening(and I can see the decidedly sillier comedy clashing a bit with the surprisingly down to Earth drama of set up), the contrast is needed for the core of the film to shine. And shine it did: this was nominated by the Academy for Best Film when it came out. Even with their contempt for animation they couldn't deny it's greatness.

You need to feel how deep the loss of Carl is, and how ingrained his sense of failure to Ellie's dream is for it to dawn the stronger he is missing on the other things life still has to offer or have already offered him. How that grand dream never coming for her didn't stop her life being worth living by his side, as it's those small experiences that made it valuable. How to move on, keep going and meeting new people was the most meaningful way to embrace the true spirit of said dreamed voyage: an adventure to share with others you care for.

In the words of Doctor Seuss:

"Don't cry because it's over, be happy because it happened"

Oh, fuck it. I wasn't planning on bleeding into another day but there's a LOT this movie does that makes it a masterful showcase of visual design and storytelling. From the different, subtle shifts in color grading that can completely change how the same space feels, to it's almost religious commitment to shape language and how that communicates character.

Sure, it's unsubtle but tells SO much about the contrast of personalities that it gets the point across without words. The fact Russel is round the same way Ellie's furniture is designed isn't a coincidence. Both in the general(his friendly nature) and in the specifics of the movie's conflict (his role being a new person for Carl to share his life with), the decision is pretty deliberate and pays off big time

Also explains why Charles Muntz is so triangular. Specifically triangles pointing downwards. Unstable, passionate. Dangerous. Tragic. The perfect foil for Carl, but arguably more so for Ellie. She could treasure the little things even if some of her wildest dreams couldn't be achieved, which made her life fulfilling. He couldn't move on from his own, so he gave everything away for a fool's errand.

And of course, shape language gets reinforced with body language. One frame. You can really tell the kind of characters they are with just that.

In case it's not obvious I love this movie. Some of it's comedy is a little too goofy for my taste, sure, but the overall package just hits the right way. Sure, it's romantic and it's central plot device doesn't lack a sense of the absurd, but those emotional peaks render any complaint I could have otherwise completely void.

[darksaiyangoku]

Getting into Dragon Ball

If you're a new shonen fan who's gotten into anime and manga like My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, etc, then the chances are that you've heard of Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama.

Dragon Ball is a classic battle shonen, responsible for popularising many of the common elements you see in the genre today and I'd absolutely recommend checking it out.

So where do you start? The answer is quite simple:

This is the beginning of the series, Dragon Ball. It tells the story of a young boy named Son Goku and his ragtag friends aa they journey around the world in search of the mystical wish geanting treasures, the Dragon Balls. Starting off as a simple adventure story, Dragon Ball would later evolve into an action packed saga where the motivation shifts from finding the Dragon Balls to protecting them from evil.

Dragon Ball is admittedly not the deepest shonen and can be a little silly at times. But there is still fun to be had here. Like I said, it's responsible for popularising many shonen tropes and elements, the action still holds up, Toriyama's artwork is iconic and without it, many of the shonen works we have today wouldn't exist.

Now some DB fans are probably wondering why I'm emphasising that newcomers should start with Dragon Ball? That's because it's been overshadowed and sometimes even ignored by Dragon Ball Z.

I LOVE DBZ. It's been a big part of my childhood, it was one of the first fandoms I joined and it's what led me into becoming an animr fan in the first place. For a lot of people, this was their first step into anime.

However, many fans seem to overlook the fact that Dragon Ball Z is part 2 of the story, to the point that many tell newcomers or casual fans to straight up skip Dragon Ball altogether. To me, this is a bad idea. For any newcomer looking to start a new story, it's best to start at the beginning.

A lot of the groundwork for the overall story begins with Dragon Ball and missing out on it means that you miss out on essential character moments, storylines and development. Some of the best moments in DBZ happen because they're payoffs from what came before in Dragon Ball. Not only that, but I'd imagine it'd be simpler to just start at the beginning rather than to start at the middle and then try and work your way backwards.

The point is, if you want to get into Dragon Ball, then start at the beginning of the series which is Dragon Ball, not Dragon Ball Z. Also, and this is important, but don't feel pressured to rush yourself to get to DBZ. It's a long series, so go at your own pace. It's not a speedrun, don't treat it like one. If you do want to get to Z, there two versions you can check out.

There's Dragon Ball Z, which aired in 1989 and Dragon Ball Z Kai, which aired in 2009. Personally, I recommend Kai, as it removes a lot of the filler and allows for a smoother experience along with better voice acting. But if you do want watch the original Z, you can do that.

I hope this has been helpful to the newcomers of Dragon Ball. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask away.