#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

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

i realized they had the same birthday (dec 21st) so i was like "yoooo i should draw them together"

silly bonus:

[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."

[merulanoir]

Ghost's backstory

Ok so, I have wanted to write about this for months but my brain has been fighting a war called the end of the fiscal year, so I haven't had the time. But I desperately want to talk about the OG Ghost backstory. You know the one, with the hook and the cartel and the. Yeah, the coffin, and everything.

(For those lucky enough to remain in the dark uninitiated, the original 2009 Call of Duty character Simon "Ghost" Riley had a separate awfully bad comic that claimed to be his backstory.

The reboot version of Ghost (which is probably better known to most people by now) has a sweet fuck-all in his bio, but even so it sort of implies that the original backstory never happened to that guy. The fandom ranges from taking the full original backstory into the reboot dynamic to just ignoring it completely. It varies.)

Also, to be clear: I'm not saying my interpretation is in any way better or worse than anyone else's. It's just going to go against the grain of what the fandom has chosen to treat as canon.

Anyway, to summarize: the comics are a straight guy power fantasy framed interestingly: We meet Ghost when he's being held hostage in Ukraine. We later learn he let himself be captured to stall the terrorists.

We have the gist of it here, already! He's going to tell a story! He even claims it's not about himself, but an "old friend of his" "the baddest motherfucker on the planet" (I wish I was making this up.)

Now, here's where things get actually interesting. I'm going to claim that the Mexico/torture/brainwashing/whatever the fuck that was probably didn't happen like that. Hear me out.

Who does the framing of being held captive and telling a story remind me of?

Ghost is pulling a Varric! He's buying time. I have discussed this extensively with a friend (hi @sorrelchestnut) and the, erm, in-house expert we have on hand verified our theory: for special forces guys, creating a fabricated backstory is the norm. They train to do that. They keep names, dates, anything that can be fact-checked, and the rest is probably more or less lies.

Ghost tells the terrorists about the mission in Mexico, where he (allegedly) first met Roba and where he got captured. Then the comic's style changes completely and it cuts to him going back to beat up his abusive dad, then back to Ghost in Mexico. It keeps going back and forth between his time in Mexico (which is clearly Ghost telling the story to his captors, drawn in the same style as the panel up there) and his traumatic childhood (drawn in a completely different style):

All the parts about his family are drawn in that same, more classic comic-y style (Ghost beating up his dad, him helping Tommy get back on his feet, Tommy and Beth getting married, etc.) UNTIL we get to the part where Ghost comes back from Mexico (after being buried alive in that fucking coffin, yes).

Then, everything about him going to therapy (truly the most unbelievable aspect of the story, I agree), Sparks returning, his family getting killed on Christmas? Back to this style:

So, to recap: If we want to go this route, we could say that the family parts of the story, told in the simpler comic style, could be true. Those could be Simon's memories about his admittedly fucked up childhood (and which probably aren't included in the story being told to the terrorists and the other hostages). Everything that's in the more realistic, shaded style? His made-up story he's telling the bad guys in Ukraine.

But Meru, you say, what about the bit where Simon is bringing Tommy to rehab and his junkie friends attack him? Simon is imagining (?) them as having skullfaces! Your theory doesn't hold water!

Well, as the comics tell us later, there might be a good reason for Simon to have some...feelings about the skull motif.

That's his father speaking with their mother in the first speech bubble. The boy in the skull mask is Tommy, his little brother. What follows is the gnarly piece of story where Simon's father takes him to a punk concert and makes him laugh at a dead prostitute. The whole thing with the skullface ties pretty neatly into itself, if you ask me.

So, if Ghost telling the terrorists a story about Mexico and the cartel and his family getting killed by brainwashed American soldiers isn't all true, which parts are?

I don't think we're meant to know, at least in the way the story is told in the comics. So in a way, even though the comics are so fucking bad, I'm glad I read them (more than once, y'all can thank me later) because OG Ghost is fascinating.

So, is his family really dead? I'd say it's likely (see the part about keeping verifiable facts when lying to bad guys), but we can't know for sure. If we want to treat the comic-style parts as true within this mini essay, then the last verifiable thing about Simon's family is that Tommy and Beth got married. I can't be arsed to check if her name is actually ever mentioned in these parts of the story. Ghost certainly refers to his nephew as both Joseph and Jacob during the story-parts, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Was he held hostage in Mexico? Who the hell knows. Judging by what the original MW games included in their storylines, I'd say it's possible. But we don't really know.

[homestuckreplay]

Gushers Tasting Notes

(page 974-979)

John is, once again, coming along in leaps and bounds with his sylladex activities. His array of queuestacks (great band name) looks like a circus tent in the panel overlay. Perhaps John is recalling the embarrassing memory of Cirque du Soleil filing a restraining order against his dad (p.253).

But mostly this update is Gushers themed, so let’s get some important historical context. Gushers were created and marketed by Betty Crocker in 1991, a subsidiary of General Mills. Betty Crocker is a fictional character crafted by the company to be relatable to 1920s housewives, and she also makes Fruit Roll-Ups and Fruit by the Foot, so John needs to be careful.

Gushers were originally made in strawberry and grape flavors, but tropical and watermelon have since become popular. Since the start they’ve been made in the famous hexagonal bipyramid (‘grist’) shape. They’ve always been marketed to kids, as focus group testing showed that younger people liked the product far more, and are known for their weird commercials. From 2005-2009 they’ve run the ‘Gushers Re-Do Your Room’ flash game, where players can rearrange furniture and paint walls in a digital bedroom, and get extra items through codes on Gushers packs . The gushers-grist connection and this game being a simpler Sburb makes this a very unexpected, but possibly intentional, Homestuck intertext. In 2009 Gushers are also running the ‘Beware the Gush’ promotion. They’ve created thirteen pieces of web content, accessed by codes on Gushers packaging and ranging from a fake German TV commercial to a Google Maps tie-in, intended for kids to “gush their friends” – the multimedia aspects of this are also very Homestuck, and I bet John is gushing his friends.

I found a mini packet of Gushers in my craft box, so have done a taste test right now instead of relying on memory. Now my favorite candy is Welch’s fruit snacks blue variety bag, so to me Gushers are a pale imitation of the king, but even so I will taste these Gushers like they are a fine wine.

Appearance. Mass manufacturing takes its toll on the Gushers shape. The barest hint of the bipyramid is visible, but these candies have been squashed and battered into near-unrecognizable blobs.

Flavor diversity. The Gushers packet still includes nine candies, the same as in 1991, although the size of the actual candies has shrunk. I got all four flavors, but four blues and only one orange.

Smell. Gushers of all flavors carry a gentle aroma of wax, reminiscent of a basic candle, which makes me wonder how one would behave if set on fire.

Texture. The outside of a Gusher is a homogeneous squeaking silicone with just enough resistance to provide enrichment. The inside liquid is surprisingly cool, resulting in a pleasant contrast in temperature as well as consistency.

Taste. A lick of the Gusher’s smooth outside reveals The green Gushers are fairly sour, with notes of sherbet, while the red have the overt, juicy sweetness of a maraschino cherry. The common blue Gusher’s notes of pineapple and mango conjure ideas of ‘island time’, and the rare orange Gusher dares to suggest bright, ripe clementine.

After effects. Having recently consumed Gushers, I can feel a faint film of sugar clinging to my tongue. I have not begun tripping or suffered any adverse health effects as of (13.4 minutes post consumption) but I will update this post if this changes.

Overall opinion. As the ancient truism states, ‘Gushers don’t gush, they ooze.’ I found that the oozing center of the Gusher best revealed itself when eating the Gusher in two halves, otherwise, the liquid was too engulfed in its prison to come to the forefront. With this in mind, I award Gushers a 7.5/10. I would be cool with getting these for my birthday.

For a moment John considers taking an extended candy break, and honestly he’s earned it. Unfortunately it seems like John may never eat a Gusher again, because he’s realized for the first time that his arch nemesis the ‘heinous batterwitch’ is the mastermind behind them.

In [S] John: Mental breakdown (p.979), John, looking very smart in his new suit actually, is surrounded by pulsing Gushers and definitely-real flavors: Cool Fructose Monsoon, Kiwi Mango Colonic Rush, Wicked Watermelon Groin Injury, Mixed Berry Social Anxiety Disorder, Neon Green Ecto-Facial Blast, Jammin Sour Diabetic Coma, Wild Cherry Apeshit Apocalypse and Ranch Dressing Rampage. (His new box is Massive Tropical Brain Hemorrhage). He looks concerned, then afeared, then terrified and near-screaming, and eventually comes to the conclusion that ‘this is stupid’, accompanied by record scratch.

I do not think this is stupid. I do think it’s notable that John’s had similar breakdowns before when WV has been commanding him, and John doesn’t respond to anything besides the voice shouting in his head. Watching this I wonder if this is a problem John has dealt with more generally – I think there’s a solid argument that John has depression and/or autism, and freezing in the face of a difficult situation could be linked to either of these.

In terms of this specific trauma, John has had food pushed on him to the point of pain or sickness, I find it very believable that he’d physically struggle to eat anything made by the brand he associates that with, even if he knows it’s irrational. Betty Crocker also represents the ideal of the American housewife, someone who devotes her life to cooking and caring for the house and kids. Someone who, due to the expectations on her, might be considered stuck at home. Or something. Dad is filling that role in John’s life so it’s not quite so gendered in their house, and Betty Crocker the cultural idea could be another reminder of a suburban nuclear-family future that John wants to avoid.

On another note, I’ve noticed a few instances of color in the narrative text recently, which has previously always been black. This first showed up on page 919 where Jade takes over the narrative with her speech, finishing with a red ‘<3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’. It happens again on page 934 with the green word ‘ectobiology’, and it’s here on page 978 with John’s ‘WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY???????????’ in Betty Crocker red. The only earlier examples are page 640 (an embedded image reading ‘SWEET CATCH!’ in green) and page 663 (a link to Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff using red Comic Sans). Based on all this, I wonder if color enters the narrative text when one of the main characters ‘takes over’ and wants to add something. Although these uses don’t correspond to Pesterchum colors, they all seem intended as things the kids are saying or writing, except for ‘ectobiology’, which is so closely associated with John that it’s practically his name.

> John: Search house for non-Crocker branded candy.

[it-happened-one-fic]

Dancing With Visions - Until Next Time - Dottore - Argentine Tango

Author Notes: Apologies, this one ended up long. I was having too much fun writing it, though. Plus, the dance I watched to inspire this fic's dance was really, really good. So that didn't help matters either. The dance in this fic was inspired by the Argentine Tango performance by Miriam Larici & Leonardo Barrionuevo to “Tanguera” by Forever Tango on So You Think You Can Dance (2009). The fic was also written while I listed to “Tanguera” by Forever Tango. I hope you enjoy!

If you would like to read more of this series, the fics can be found here: Dancing with Visions Masterlist

Type: Female reader/ rivalry/ enemies to something but they're still foes/ sfw/ NOT yandere

Word count: 2843

Infiltrating a masquerade ball at the Zapolyarny Palace had to be one of the worst jobs I’d ever gotten. And that was even with the fact that I’d gotten the fancy dress, jewels, and masquerade mask for free.

My job was, overall, simple though. I just had to see if you could find any weaknesses within the upper crust of Fatui ranks. 

All of the harbingers were going to be present for the ball being held by the Tsaritsa herself, who, despite never participating in the grandiose affairs, was well known for her love of masquerade balls. Especially the ones involving cross-dressing.

I wasn’t at one of the cross-dressing balls, though. Instead, this one was simpler, though still perfectly grand.

All told, it should have been incredibly simple to infiltrate the ball and get some sort of information before slipping out without anyone noticing.

But, that was not the case tonight, considering there was someone who was already onto my little plot. And it wasn’t just anyone. No, it was a Harbinger.

I was just lucky that I’d realized that he knew what I was up to already before I could make some sort of blunder resulting in my death.

I stared at the masked face of the second of the harbingers, Dottore, forcing myself to keep the polite smile on my face.

I’d dealt with him before, and that was how he knew what I was here for. Though I hadn’t known who was at our first meeting.

“Well, what are you up to this time? Petty theft, or something else?” The words rolled off his tongue easily as he held out his hand. To most, it probably looked like a polite request to dance, but I knew what it really was.

A demand. If I refused, he’d out me immediately. Why he hadn’t done so already, I didn’t know. But I was currently surviving on his little mercies, which was hardly a good place to be.

I let my hand slide into his, the careful smile remaining on my face as I whispered back, “Hardly. But how, pray tell, did you recognize me?”

His smile didn’t waver as he led me through the crowd despite the murmurs of people around us. Apparently the mad scientist didn’t usually dance.

“You were wearing a mask last time we met too. You look remarkably similar,” My smile almost dropped at his words. 

Last time I’d encountered him I had indeed been wearing a mask. But I’d also be in an outfit more like what a ninja from Inazuma might wear. Not a glistening gown that befit a glittering atmosphere like this one.

Drums began softly as lights lowered and I watched other dancers began fleeing the floor and I felt myself tense slightly at the realization of what sort of beat was being laid out.

I spun and wrapped an arm around his shoulders so that my hand rested against his back. Letting him continue to hold my hand while his other hand rested against my waist.

Somehow, it was only fitting that I was going to be dancing the Argentine tango, a dance so notably capable of being coldly aggressive, with this man.

Slinky string notes that cut themselves off short had us launching into motion until we abruptly froze as the string music halted. We held our pose, with me leaning forward on one leg while the other draped across his body and over his bent leg while he supported me.

“So you were chosen for this job because you can dance,” His voice was soft enough that only I could hear it, but it seemed to roll out and fill the space.

“What makes you think I was hired? Perhaps I just came here to see if I could get in,” I matched his low volume when I answered. Keeping my face turned away from him, as if I was in no way uncomfortable with having to dance with him.

But this was a good opportunity. If I were lucky, I could get information out of him. If not, I would be heading home without any because I certainly wasn’t staying after having been discovered. 

No amount of pay was worth that.

The next note had him swinging me up as I extended one leg and kicked lightly before he swung me back down so that I was once again on two feet and spinning out from him in time for the next note that signaled our pause.

This time we stopped with only one of my hands in his as we stood side by side, with our arms outstretched between us.

“Get in and get some sort of information to be used against us,” He looked towards me, still not outing me even though he knew precisely what my plan was.

I refused to meet his gaze though, instead opting to look towards the floor with careful disinterest. 

That was the secret to dealing with this man. To not let him know when he had you. And that was an art in and of itself considering how he toyed with others.

“Would challenging myself be so odd? I’ve already successfully gotten away once,” My voice stayed level as I responded. And my words were true; I’d already gotten away once.

But I’d been beyond lucky then, and now I was beyond unlucky to be having to deal with him yet again.

The next note signaled our motions once more. Him spinning over and wrapping his arm back around me so we could rotate together with careful footsteps until he dipped me. 

I grasped his elbows as I leaned backwards almost limply, perfectly aware of the perilous position I’d found myself in as I relied solely on him for support as the next note rang out through the room, and he lowered me still lower so that he was holding me only by my hands. My head mere inches from the ground before he pulled me back up, and I spun out to the other side.

Once more, we were side by side, linked only by our hands as he looked my way and I determinedly avoided eye contact.

The entire room was staring at us, and I realized that the two of us were the only dancers on the floor. I almost gritted my teeth as I realized exactly what he was playing at.

He was making sure everyone here saw me so that there was no way my job could go as smoothly as I’d initially hoped.

I was no longer just another masked face in the crowd. I was now Dottore’s strangely talented dance partner as we danced with an unspoken tension between us that probably left the other partygoers curious.

We walked across the floor to the slinky beat, as if there were nothing amiss, though we no longer spoke. 

Our footwork aligned closely, each step barely missing the other's foot before he retreated. His hand holding mine once again was the only thing linking us as he eyed me. Waiting for a reaction.

I almost grimaced as I realized what move came next. A lift. 

At long last, I lifted my gaze to barely meet his, just to make sure he was ready to catch me. 

The smooth smile on his face that told me nothing other than the fact that he was indeed prepared was answer enough, and I spun towards him. Letting my motions carry me up and into his arms as I arched my back so that I was looking up at the ceiling.

There were soft murmurs from the crowd as we paused to hold the position, his arms not even trembling as he held me there before slowly letting me down so that we were walking across the floor once more. Hand in hand with my back to his chest.

A few steps forward, and I spun so that we were once more chest to chest, with only a slight amount of space between us as we moved languidly around the floor. Our motions smooth despite the intricacy of the footwork.

One wrong step, and we would kick or step on the other. But we matched each other step for step. Almost as if we’d been made to dance with one another as each motion flowed easily into the next.

And despite myself, I was impressed. He was a frustratingly good dancer.

“Did you learn to dance for your master’s balls, or is it some sort of hobby for you outside of your experiments?” My voice was still steady even though I was having to focus closely on our steps.

I could hear the amusement, perfectly villainous, in his voice as he responded with an equally stable voice despite the fact he’d already exhibited impressive strength with the lift he’d pulled off mere moments ago, “The Tsaritsa is not my master. She is merely an employer, much like the one who sent you here. As for the tango, it is a bit of a study to measure people’s reactions to close, intimate proximity.”

I chose to ignore his assertion that I was indeed sent by an employer. Denying any further would just prove him right. Instead, I focused on his other words, and they weren’t untrue. Many people did get embarrassed or uncomfortable when dancing the tango. And the Argentine variety was particularly bad. 

It was, after all, a dance that required you to remain pressed to one another like you were in the throes of some passionate experience.

I shifted my gaze to barely look his way and immediately recognized my mistake. He was looking towards me despite the fact our heads were turned so that we weren’t facing each other. Measuring me for a reaction in the interest of his study.

I allowed myself a half-mocking smile, “And what are you finding in this round of your experiment?” As I spoke, I spun, my back pressing itself to his chest once more as I kicked one leg back and between his legs as he grasped my hips, and we paused to match the beat.

He remained silent until we moved once more. Me spinning to once again enter a closed hold with him as he led me across the floor. But this time, my eyes stayed looking ahead, in the direction we were headed in, while he faced me. Almost as if he refused to look away from me anymore.

And perhaps that was part of his experiment. A subtle manipulation to increase the intensity of the dance and see how I reacted.

“You, are an outlier,” He all but breathed the words into my ear, and I swallowed. Suppressing the urge to swallow thickly at exactly how pleased he sounded with his findings.

He lifted me once more, with little warning, but I struck a pose easily as he held me aloft. My hands in his as he continued to swing me around until I touched down once more. 

I briefly glanced his way, finding that I too was measuring his behavior. But the intimate way in which he spoke paired with the dance we were doing was confusing at best. I knew he was a master manipulator, but I’d hardly been prepared for this type of manipulation.

“You’re quite the confident dancer yourself,” I breathed back before twisting as I walked away from him, only for him to grasp my arms with surprisingly gentleness and wrap both his and my own arms around me in some form of embrace.

I sighed before spinning back towards him, knowing perfectly well exactly what move he wanted to do next. All the signs were there, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. Unable to avoid looking at him as he leaned me backwards so that my body slid between his legs in a mockery of an embrace before he spun me where I lay in his hold and I released his neck.

 Whipping around with only his support until he stopped me, and I arched my head back, looking at our audience with one outstretched arms, only to find that they were perfectly enraptured by our performance.

But a good tango told a story. An intimate one of either scornful rage or intense passion. And I knew exactly the sort of tale he was weaving as he pulled me up and slowly moved. Forcing me to turn my head to look at him as I exhaled slowly. Recovering from our sudden rapid motions.

I stepped back, kneeling in front of him and praying he’d accept my surrender, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped forward and knelt with me. His hand cradling the back of my head as he inclined his own head. Putting us nose to nose and causing the audience to sigh as he guided me back to a standing position.

My motions became slightly more vehement as frustration began to kick in at his behavior. There had to be a reason he wouldn’t let this dance end, “You do like to push your luck, don’t you, Dottore. A good experiment should’ve ended a long time ago.”

He continued to match my motions perfectly, in no way backing down, “But neither of us have gotten what we want. You don’t have any information for your employer, and I…”

He paused briefly as he whipped me around, and I knew what he was waiting for. What he wanted.

I almost gritted my teeth before looking his way. This time, unabashedly. And he grinned at the unfiltered annoyance that I knew danced through my eyes as he finished, “I haven’t gotten your name yet.” 

My eye twitched.

Giving an enemy your name during an infiltration would be tantamount to suicide. Especially when that enemy was Dottore. It would be obvious that whatever name I gave him would be fake. So I had only one option.

To give him my real name and watch as the frustration kicked in for the mad genius. Besides, I had figured out something already.

“It seems you’re on the losing end this time, Dottore. I have gotten what I wanted,” His eyebrows rose at my words, and, if possible, he appeared even more amused as he lifted me into the air.

But it was an interesting position. I somehow had the upper hand in the conversation while he was in full control of our motions. Dropping me now would doubtless result in injury to my person, but I wasn’t worried as I looked down at him, grinning triumphantly, “Something’s going on that you don’t want me to find out about.”

He lowered me, forcing me to pause as I had to concentrate on our motions before he did something unexpected. Showing exactly how much control he had over the situation as he lifted me. Placing me on my shoulder and forcing me to strike a pose once more to maintain appearance as he spun. Seemingly unbothered by my weight and subtly letting me know that, if I didn’t watch it, it could end very poorly for me.

He pushed up with one arm, and I spun. Rolling across his shoulders and down into his arms as our dance ended with finality. Him holding me aloft with my legs swung back so that I had no control as we looked towards each other. Finally holding eye contact for a lengthy period.

I panted slightly from exertion as applause rang out around us and he sat me down. I spun away from him reflexively, but he caught my hand.

I didn’t kick up a fuss though, as I bowed carefully before I let him lead me off the floor like some sort of demented gentleman.

I smiled slightly as I slipped from his grasp, turning to face him at the doorway. We both knew I was leaving, but I had one final part to play.

If he wanted my name, he would have it. But he would assume it was fake, and I would revel in watching him try to figure out what code was used.

“Thank you for the dance; I expect we’ll meet again?” At my faux-polite words, his lips quirked up into a smile. 

“I expect so,” He grasped my hand once more, bending and pressing a kiss to it even though I could feel his eyes, behind his mask, staying on me.

“Then I’ll let you have this. You can call me Y/n.” He straightened as I spoke, the smile on his face as smooth as ever.

“Then til next, Y/n,” My name rolled off his tongue in the most unhurried manner possible. Like honey dripping from a bottle. You couldn’t control its speed, just like how I knew I couldn’t fully control or manipulate this man. Instead, it would always be a dance as we moved around each other. Gauging each other each time we met. I could only hope that this time I really did have the upper hand as I turned away from him with a smile.

“Until next time.”

If you would like to read more:

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[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.