#Also so far there's 3 pages done for the next batch ;3

[dragons-and-art]

I have managed to thumbnail all pages of the comic

Prepare ya'll EoM fans for 19 pages! of Jericho and Virgil and A SPECIAL GUEST?? shenanigans.

[drawloverlala]

December Status Update

(December 02 of 2022)

Here’s a status update about the progress of my commissions (and a bit of Brotherhood’s twist fan comic progress)

🌸 Commissions without Background:

All finished! 🎉🎉🎉✨

🌸 Commissions with background:

4 left to finish in total!

1 is halfway done, only characters and details are left to work on.

2 are already on sketch phase

1 I haven’t still started

there’s other 1 more left actually, but has been delayed for next year ^^ 

🌸 For future commission related things:

I want to open them again next year, I would like the prices to stay the same for the first batch of that year, but I think I want to find other ways to put this info out there again and also I need to update some stuff like my terms of service. 😄

that’s for the commission related topic for now... but as a side commentary:

Ah I hoped I could have finished them all last month, but I just couldn’t, I feel like progress in drawing has been slow for me in general, and I think I’ve been feeling a bit burned out, so I’m trying my best to set a limit to at what time I should stop working and has been working alright, so far. 

I’m it’s not easy to find free time for myself and to get personal art done, sometimes I can’t even draw a thing from the things I like 😅 which is frustrating because I have the mood to draw fan art by example, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

In the meanwhile I’ve been trying to ink more pages of Brotherhood’s twist. I think I’ll also give some update about the progress of that comic

🌸 Brotherhood Twist fan comic progress:

5 new pages finished- I have been waiting for a review from a friend, but I’m planning on soon releasing them and then edit if there is any gramatical error.

3 new pages in the process of inking. still finishing the inking process

5 fully sketched pages. 

I’m really want to end this comic soon, the story so far it’s almost, ALMOST at the final part, so I’m super eager to get to that part, finishing this comic would be like closing a big page in my life, so yeah 😄

Also I am planning on starting to work on an original idea after I’m done with this fan comic, I still have the mood to draw some fan comics here and there, but I want to start focusing more on my own stories for once 😆

and yeah that’s all for now, thank you very much for your support! and I hope you have a nice and safe December! 👋

[ot3]

first of all, i am violently in love your ace attorney fancomic. that one panel of mia in the elevator and edgeworth on the stairs sitting back to back lives rent free in my head, i think abt it every 3-5 business days and go feral. tysm <3 second, would you ever consider showing us ur process behind it? like how you plan it, the dialog + composition, etc? id personally love to get that insight !!

thank you so much!!!

i actually do have a TON of behind the scenes/process stuff up on my patreon for $2. every thumbnail/color rough/scrapped page comp i've done is up there, and i've been writing detailed commentary on the comic as a whole because it's something people expressed an interest in reading. there's a decent amount of it right now and ill have a new batch of commentary up sometime in the next few days

as for more generalized stuff about process ill stick that here under the cut but unfortunately it is going to be EXTREMELY unhelpful because my process habits are very bad.

so as for prewriting/pre-planning i do almost none of it. i've been trying to get better at doing that but i get so so so bored of that so fast. here's a screenshot of my first outline, cropped to just show everything i've drawn so far.

as you can see this all means pretty much nothing and i also didnt quite follow it. we didn't get the mia and greg postmortem and swiss rolls stuff for turnabout samurai because i later decided to scrap it. later down in this document there are slightly more detailed notes about some specific scenes, but really its all super lose.

Recently i tried to write a more detailed outline for the upcoming parts of the comic, and the stuff that happened in this most recent batch of pages was documented there pretty well

but already the stuff i wrote in this outline for later batches is not accurate to what i want anymore so to be honest the outlines are kind of a wash for me. what's really the meat of my pre-planning process is i just have a private discord server where i dump notes.

the reason i use a discord server for this is because its super easily accessible from every device i have, and doesnt require backing up between locations. i also just dump chunks of canon text in there that i want to pull exact dialogue from when i'm doing my transcript rereads.

a lot of these notes are completely useless and redundant

most of them are snippets of dialogue i want to put in on later pages. almost none of this dialogue will ever be used. for starters, a lot of it is different takes on the exact same handful of scenes and so by default are mutually exclusive bits of content. i like to just dump as many ideas as i have in there even if theyre contradictory, and then just read back through and pick my favorite/most appropriate ones as i get to actually drawing whats coming up.

every now and then ill dump all this in a google doc and arrange it roughly chronologically so related takes go together, but i havent done that in like six months so its all just a huge mess right now.

the reason i can get away with such bare bones planning is because i have a very strong mechanical understanding of how this story is supposed to function. in the two and a half years that has gone by since i came up with the idea and started working on it, almost nothing has fundamentally changed in my big picture narrative goals. knowing the exact shape of what i'm building towards makes it really easy to let the more minute details come to me in the moment. they either are congruent with that end goal, in which case they can stay, or they're more extraneous/irrelevant in which case they get cut.

when i get stuck, more often than not i just slide into mia @demonkix's dms and make her hear out my rambling. thanks mia. shoutout to mia.

now, here's probably one of my biggest sins: i do not script anything. there is no finalized dialogue until i am writing it directly onto the page. unless i'm directly lifting from the text, that is. ill have a rough idea of what needs to be said in each page when im drafting, and sometimes i'll write in rough dialogue on the draft. but most of the time ill just sketch out the approximation of the speech bubble andd either leave it fully blank or jot in one or two keywords in to remind me of what the dialogue should be. then the actual dialogue gets written in once the art is finished

do not do this. i can not stress how frustrating this is for myself. i do this every time and i always hate it.

the reason i dont bother with any proper scripting is because the dialogue bends to the art. not the other way around. a massive amount of my process is dictated by what im in the mood to draw, and by keeping the actual character interactions as flexible as possible until the art is done, i can ensure i dont get stuck at key points because the thing that has to happen is something i dont feel like drawing.

in general, my process for drafting pages is just rough thumbnail -> color rough -> go actually draw the damn thing

however there ill be times when i just do not bother drafting at all and jump immediately into drawing a page. if you go look at the stuff on patreon youll see that in the beginning i pretty much just drew everything after the first batch straight through.

this comic is a lot of work so the most important thing is that hte process is fun for me. i really hate granular planning and itd just slow me down a ton so the process is really just vibes from point a to point b. hope this somewhat answers your question

i talk about my general approach to comic composition in my big composition writeup too, which is pinned, if thats something youre interested in.

[haymanners]

Week 4 Blog Post #1

In my opinion, the most valuable qualities that a social media consultant can possess are creativity and organization. It’s a true skill to be able to create, manage, and develop a strategy for multiple different platforms for a brand. Each social media has its own unique format, meaning that the same content across different platforms would look quite different. Having the ability to come up with viral video ideas, use trending sounds, and continuously come up with content that aligns with the brand's missions is very difficult. A social media consultant not only has to create and produce all this content, but they must keep it organized and have a schedule for when they are to post each picture, video, or tweet.

If I was a social media consultant, I would make sure to take advantage of days when I’m feeling extra creative. The reality of this position is you’re not going to have ideas flowing every day, so if that means making a bunch of content (batch creating) one day and not making any the next, that may be favorable. I would also ensure that I use an application like Notion or Google Calendar to keep track of my posts and schedule them to be posted automatically. An approach I would take to improve my professional social media presence would be to ensure that all my social pages have the same @ or tag name. This way, people can easily find me and have my profiles look the same across all social media. This is something that I have done so far, as well as making the profile picture the same on all pages so people know it’s me. Something I would do in the future is to dive deeper into figuring out the algorithm on popular platforms. For instance, TikTok used to push short, less than 15-second videos because that’s what originally made them stand out. However, now that they are trying to compete with YouTube, they are favoring the longer, 3–5-minute videos. It’s a lot of work to keep up with the trend of the algorithm, but your knowledge of it could be the determining factor of whether your content is viral or not.

[manonamora-if]

Three update in one this week.

Word Count: 47.536 (+1.640)

Ended up barely writing this week. Pretty much haven't wrote since last Saturday. Finished only one other round (7/30) and am half-way through the next one. I got distracted and was little in the mood to write as well. So rather than putting out mediocre content, I took a break.

I am not sure if I'll end up managing finishing all 30 rounds by the end of the Summer. I think I was too optimistic about it. We'll see. I might end up updating the game with what I have so far and add the next batch of rounds when they are ready.

In any case, I'll release the basic template by the end of the summer.

So I made quite a bit of progress on the UI on that front. See that post. There will be some tweaking needed in that design (icon choice, text/link placement, etc...) but I am pretty happy with what I have done so far. There is a bit more I have done for the bar page too.

I have started making a list of drinks names to have on the menu too! It's kinda hard but pretty fun ☺

I've been mulling over how to build the game itself. I would love to just have my first idea just as is, but that was part of the issue to why I got stuck pretty hard last time. So I changed it a little.

I will build the game in 3 stages:

The basic create/serve drinks with no interaction with customers.

The NPCs you only meet once, with choices that have litte repercussion on that NPC and story overall.

The Big NPCs that come back multiple times (4/5 times) with choices that impact both the player and the NPC. And you build a bit of relationship with those.

If the first one is finished, I move on to the next one, etc... And whatever is ready for the Comp will be uploaded.

The first stage is easy because it only revolves around coding and UI Design. As in, I need to finish the bar and the menu. Also, I can reuse 95% of it for the other stages.

The second one requires some actual writing on my part. I already have a list of NPC. They will appear randomly and only once. You'll have an introduction, the drink making and the NPC's reaction. Fairly straightforward. I hope little details are needed, but knowing me...

The last one is a bit more complicated, because it requires more variation and also because I don't have everything planed yet. Even if I would want it in the game, if it is not ready for the Comp, it will be an after add-on. (I hope I can squeeze it in)

Been proofreading MelS's writing. About 1/3rd through Chapter 1 already. I have 2/3rd of Chapter 1 left and most of Chapter 2 to do. We are only missing 2 location for Chapter 2 to be completely done.

Most edits needed are very minor (some typo, some missing variation). Very little is really glaring or needs to be re-written. Which infuriates me a little because that document is only his first draft. And it is so good. Really been jelly. And excited to share it.

My plan is to finish that proofreading this weekend and wait for his updated version to finish the coding for those 2 chapters.

As of now, we stand at 40k-ish words all parts included. Hopefully more will be added before October, but it might also not. Don't want to pressure MelS either.

I think I'll open an itch page at some point during the summer just to get the ball rolling some more.

AND THAT's IT. Was busy but not really. And all over the place. yay

[mallowstep]

i literally havent been able to stop thinking about the wbcd thing, its so needed in the series. how do you decide which cats die when? do you weigh eventual offspring when deciding, like thornkit/claw eventually having four kits while lynxkit obviously having none? will "important" canonical deaths like swiftpaw, brindleface, etc count towards the death count for the season, or will those types of things be bonus deaths?

figured i'd answer this b4 i went to bed!

i need to scrub the wbcd posts from my queue and rewrite them up to a higher standard, but i'm going to keep the outcomes the same. i've gotten the hang of things now.

anyway, this is all done in one notebook, and the way i do it for wbcd is a little Special. (i've done similar things for fan-ish clans to make sure the numbers work out. they do, generally. sometimes you have bad luck.)

but wbcd doesn't account for moving to the elders' den, increased death rates because of moving to the elders' den, and i don't think i was doing double rolls (i'll explain) last time i queued the posts.

(it's a bit of a mess rn is why i need to scrub and rewrite. or maybe start a(nother) sideblog for it? just for my own sanity?)

anyway.

i've done this out a few times, and i've decided writing shit out by hand is best. maybe i just have no restraint and overcomplicate shit when i start typing, and someone else could make it work.

so first up, determining leader lives: i literally knock off 2/book. if i'm doing something for a fanclan, i generate numbers the same way i do for litters, a normal distribution with mean 2 and standard deviation 4. N(2, 16) if you want to be fancy. i've considered lowering the standard deviation, but i like the swingy-ness of it. (i also permit "gaining" lives to account for this. it's a little hokey, but it makes leaders live for the Right amount of time.)

deputies have a 1/10 chance of dying every season. all of my numbers, here, are estimations based on my initial calculations, then smoothed out to a number that easily goes into 100. again, i do wbcd in batches, and my methodology has changed slightly, so it's possible i was still not rolling for deputies.

seers/medicine cats (seer = 4 letters, and i'm writing by hand, also it fits the Aesthetics of the idea) have a 1/20 chance in dying. i don't usually bother rolling for them, though, because their deaths uh. don't matter? bc wbcd follows canon timeline, i can kill them for drama as needed.

as for warriors, they have a 1/25 chance in dying every season. i believe i calculated the odds for 1/10 living to 40 seasons and 1/3 living to 40 seasons, and then found a number that was easy to remember in between. because i don't track elders in wbcd, no one ever actually retires, but when i do this for other things, i give elders 1/10 chance of dying. just to make sure they don't stack up.

but! wbcd is special because i don't just roll and move on. what i do is, i roll for every warrior, and then i shuffle deaths. did whitestorm die, but i need him to live long enough to be firestar's deputy? well, XYZ is right there not doing anything, why not kill them instead?

and so on.

there's certainly a bit of favouritism going on: when i decided to kill barley, it Hurt me a Lot. but it needed to be done.

the factors that go into my decision are about what their death does to the future. killing whitestorm before he becomes firestar's deputy is frustrating to the plot in ways i didn't want to deal with. killing darkstripe early does nothing.

so non-canon characters (i don't want to say ocs, bc it's more lynxkit, ravenpaw & barley, etc) have a higher risk of dying, because their deaths, well, by their nature their deaths Cannot change the plot.

but that's not the same as offspring. see, blossomfall and thornclaw's kits are very, very, very minor. stemleaf is the only one who matters, and i can easily work around that.

so important canonical deaths do count in the seasonal tally, because the numbers are supposed to be high for drama. the only exception to this is that i rolled really well for the season of the great battle, so i ended up using my litter size generator for an extra number of deaths. i'd do this again for a time when there was that kind of Big Event Death if i rolled "too well."

now, you didn't ask about this, but i want to be thorough: how do i do kits and apprentices?

okay, apprentices are my favourite part, because they're the only group that has dynamic odds. uh, i'm going to say seasons, but what i mean is, when i'm on my leafbare page, i then roll to see who lives through newleaf, and i call that the newleaf roll. i know it's confusing, that's just the convention i started with.

so anyway, seasonal odds of death for apprentices

newleaf: 0/1 greenleaf: 1/10 leaffall: 1/5 leafbare: 1/10

if you recall my overall apprentice odds, this might seem odd, but you have to remember that "leaffall" really means "1 out of 5 apprentices dies every greenleaf."

i've considered flipping this, but for reasons i'll explain in kits, having the newleaf "palette cleanser" means that the warmer months aren't as brutal as they seem.

so for kits: when there's a litter born in a season, i don't do anything. if there are multiple, i try to space them out. there's not like. a reason for this, other than helping me keep the numbers straight.

for seasons with no litters, i generate a litter size and pick a queen who's "free."

the litter size generated is N(3, 9), or mean 3, standard deviation 3. negative numbers mean nothing here, and there's a fair amount of Large Litters. it would be realistic to split those up, but that takes a Lot of time and bookkeeping.

anyway, generated litters usually have no father, because you know. keeping things moving here. i pick a free queen, which basically means:

the queen whose next canon litter and last litter in wbcd are furthest away.

this is a balancing act, and i usually favour not giving a couple an early litter before their first canon litter. but if, say, willowpelt needs to have a litter in two seasons, even if she could have two litters back to back, i don't like doing that.

so i might find someone who has had their last canon litter and give them an extra one, or someone who's a while away from their next litter.

for generated litters, i give them an extra roll. because i disregard negatives, litter sizes trend larger than intended, so an extra first roll keeps them down. all rolls for kits are 1/5 odds of death.

but if i roll a 5, i circle the bullet point, and roll twice next season. this is because 4/5 * 4/5 is 0.64, which is more than my ideal survival rate of 0.50. add in another 4/5, for the bonus roll, and you drop to 0.512. the occasional extra rolls sends some kits down to 0.40 survival rating.

one day, i will figure out what those odds are to see if my numbers are still accurate, but having played this scenario out pretty far, i think it works.

i also employ the double roll for apprentices. hence having no rolls in leafbare means i can sort of. stop anything from cycling over.

if u have more questions about the mechanics/my process behind this, let me know. i hope i explained everything clearly, but it's all basically scribbled in a single notebook that i actually need to dig out so i can fix things.

thanks for asking! i'll be out with more wbcd content soon.

[hoekaashi]

3 am Talks - hq pt 1

a/n: time for the hq series! these ones are shorter since there are more people. next is seijoh and nekoma! pairings: hinata x reader, kageyama x reader, sugawara x reader, daichi x reader, noya x reader warnings: post time-skip spoilers, a bit suggestive (daichi) taglist: @babydabi, @suckersuki, @bakugoustanaccount​, @animoozies part 1 | part 2

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

⇾ he would probably be jumping all over the place at first, not knowing which topic to settle on ⇾ but he would end up settling on a “meaning of life” type of conversation ⇾ more specifically, what’s his purpose in this world ⇾ when he saw the Little Giant play, it inspired him to become a volleyball player but why was HE put on this earth ⇾ I feel like he would get deep without even realizing it ⇾ like you would just be staring at him and he would be like ???

“I don’t know why I’m here. I want to know my purpose.” You stared at Hinata, surprised at how the conversation took a turn. He merely stared at you with those big, curious eyes. “...what?” you asked. “Watching the Little Giant play, it felt like everything made sense. He was put here to inspire others and show them the greatness of volleyball. But why was I put here? It couldn’t possibly be just to follow in someone else’s footsteps. What am I leaving behind once I’m gone?” You hummed. “Well, I mean, you made it as a wing spiker on a national team. You played for the country at the Olympics. I think you’ve done a lot more than just ‘follow in someone else’s footsteps’. You paved your own way, and who knows, maybe you inspired a little Shoyo out there to play volleyball too.” Hinata perked up hearing that. “You really think I inspired someone?” That sent him off on another tangent and you listened to him speak with a soft smile on your face.

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ he would talk about milk, all kinds of milk, the different flavors ⇾ why is it called almond milk if you aren’t milking the almonds? Shouldn’t it be called almond juice? ⇾ jk jk ⇾ he would talk about his goals beating hinata ⇾ delve into his insecurities being on a national team with other pro players who have been doing this for a much longer time than him ⇾ even as an adult, I feel like the fear he had from his first year of high school lingers in the back of his mind ⇾ if he’s moved on and it doesn’t bother him anymore, it’s still there as an after-thought

“Are you still keeping track of your wins and losses?” you asked, rolling over in bed, looking at your boyfriend who was writing furiously in a notebook. “I will beat him, no matter what.” “You’re on a national team, you already have.” Kageyama didn’t say anything for a while and you began to drift off to sleep. “I still think back to when I was at my lowest. The person who pulled me out of that was Hinata. If it weren’t for his annoying, dumb ass, I wouldn’t be where I am today. The only thing I can do is to keep growing, to never become complacent with where I am. The moment I do that, he’ll win and I’ll never be able to catch up to him.” Kageyama continued to speak to himself, knowing that you had fallen asleep. It was his fault you woke up to begin with.

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ sugamama would talk about the future ⇾ like getting married and settling down, how many kids he wants, even the names he had picked out so far ⇾ he would talk about what he wants for the wedding ⇾ which is funny because he hasn’t even proposed yet ⇾ but he’s not really talking about all this because he wants to see your reaction of if yall are on the same page ⇾ it’s just genuinely what would be on his mind

“I want a vineyard wedding. Something small and intimate. Only immediate family and closest friends.” You looked up at him from where you were sitting in his arms. “Maybe a bigger reception where all the other people can come!” “You just want to go to a vineyard to have a reason to get drunk.” He pouted. “You would too if you were surrounded by a fresh batch of seven year olds every year that never listen.” “You love them though.” “I do,” he said with a smile. “Oh! That reminds me. I want maybe like three or four kids. A big family! And I want them to be around the same age so they can be friends with each other.” You mock saluted. “Anything else?” “I had some names saved too…” The act of him reaching over for his phone caused you to fall over with him. He helped you back up and snuggled you close to him while he searched for the list. “Where is it… Found it! Okay so…”

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ he would be similar to Sugawara ⇾ he would be talking about the future but with you ⇾ it would be like The Talk yall have while trying to figure out if you have similar views on the future you want ⇾ but at the same time, he would also talk about his friends ⇾ how important it is for them to be in his life as they grow older ⇾ how he wants their children to be friends with his to carry their friendship on to the next generation

“Okay so what about kids?” you asked as you turned on your side to face him. Daichi moved your hair behind your ear. “Two?” You smiled. “Two sounds perfect.” “But I think I want to stay here in Miyagi. I want my kids to be friends with Suga and Asahi’s kids -” “If they have kids,” you interrupted. He chuckled. “If they have kids,” he agreed. “And maybe a medium sized wedding? Nothing is set in stone though.” You hesitated. “What?” “You have your thoughts on your kids, I have my thoughts on my wedding.” “You want a big wedding?” he asked, a little surprised. “I’m only getting married once! I deserve to have a big one.” Daichi smirked. “A big one, huh?” He moved so he was hovering on top of you. “Stop! I have class in the morning!” you groaned, knowing exactly what he was thinking and that you were going to cave in a few minutes.

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ he would be the person who is up until 5 am just on tiktok ⇾ and you couldn’t get any sleep because he kept showing you a new one every few minutes ⇾ his laughing would also keep you up, but if you were really bothered by it, he would stop ⇾ once he’s done with tiktok though, he would start talking about the world and getting deep ⇾ but once you thought you were having a real heart to heart and getting to know how his brain works more, he would start talking about like government secrets and he would start goofing off again

“Wait, look at this one,” Noya said, nudging you awake again for the fifth time that night. “I’m trying to sleep,” you whined. “But watch it!” You rolled over and watched the tiktok, the smile on your face betraying you. “See, I knew you would like it.” You watched as he laughed to himself as he watched some more videos when all of a sudden he closed his phone and stared at the ceiling. “Ya know… I want to keep traveling and seeing the world. I want to learn more about other people and cultures. It’s so enlightening seeing how different the world is compared to the small city where we’re from.” He glanced down at you, smiling at how you were trying to stay awake for him. “I also want to find out the secrets the governments are hiding. Are pigeons real birds? How are there so many of them if they are?” At that, you turned around and told him you were going to sleep.

[echonidae]

let’s talk commission stuff!

hey folks !!  so i’ve been reorganizing myself to get commissions back on track, and i’ve got some things i’d like to get your input on, if it isn't too much trouble !! ;v;

it’s a long one, so under the cut it goes sdfghghj

a slightly too long tl;dr because apparently this is a 10min read (i'm so sorry): commission revamp on the works! no date for it yet. gonna be easing myself back with just icons for a while at first (no date for that either thoug, not yet), then the revamp will be in full swing with all the other commission options, and the pricetable for them will be changed in the future as well. 

some questions: 

1) i’m rethinking commission types, is there anything you’d like to see as a new option?  2) considering i tend to open only a handful slots every batch, i'm thinking about implementing a waitlist (with a bit of a twist: it's split between Current Batch and Next Batch; a little more complicated than a regular ol' waitlist, allows me to get through some of the waitlist queue as work gets done). would that interest you or is it too much of a headache? 100% open to suggestions! 3) i’m organizing a board on trello for commission stuffs !! any suggestions or specific things you’d like to see there?

so! it’s already been over a year since i last opened commissions and i’d very much like to get back to them ;o; it’s been way too long! i miss working with you folks aaa

i don’t have a reopening date yet, but i’m planning on opening only icons for a while to ease back into the process. later on, i'll open the other commission options too. you see, i’m working on a full revamp of the whole thing, including the terms of service and that info image with the examples (because looking back, i think it no longer really represents my current style and how i really do commissions in terms of just... plain old rendering and polishing), so i’ll be working on new drawings and a new layout too, and all that good jazz :D

for full disclosure, along with this overhaul of the terms and such, i will be updating prices too c: i’m still working on the new values though, since i need to figure out what commission types/options the overhaul will have. which brings me to the first question here: what would you like to see as a commission option? for reference, here’s the og options:

(hoo i need to redo those examples *sweats*)

also, one more thing i’d like to note about this revamp situation: there isn’t a whole lot that’s changing really haha it’s just been a long, long time since i last did commissions, so i’m reviewing terms and i might change stuff that’s become outdated, or that needs clarification. if you’ve commissioned me before, the process itself is still the same so no worries! once the revamp is out, i’ll point out anything that has changed too c:

in regards to price changes, those first icon-only batches will be in their original price, and the new prices will only take effect once the revamp with the other options is out. it will be quite a while before until that, but if you have any concerns, feel free to message me any time ! either way, i’ll keep you folks posted !! i guess i also could post the new prices before implementing them, if that helps!

so, moving on! now to the waitlist situation <:3c as in, i’ve never had one, a while back someone asked if i did, and now that i’m reorganizing things, i’m wondering if it would be good to implement one :3c feel free to send any questions !! or suggestions!! i'm all ears!!!

usually i only open a handful of slots for each batch, right, and once they're all claimed, the commissions are closed until all the slots are finished. folks who missed the slots have to wait until the next batch, and sometimes those batches take a while to come back, and i usually just message those who missed the opening once the new batch is announced.

what i'm thinking for the waitlist is, i'll open it along with the batch of commissions, and limit it to a specific number of spots or close it by a specific date, whichever comes first. to apply for it, people would just need to send the form and i can tell them immediately whether or not i can draw their request, and then they'll be placed on the waitlist in the order they’ve been accepted c: pretty standard stuff.

here’s the important bit: that list is basically split in two. the first handful of people on the list, corresponding to the amount of slots for the current batch, will be reached out to as i finish working on the claimed slots, and then anyone else on the waitlist will be contacted shortly before the next batch. if, by the time the list closes, not all the opened slots have been claimed, folks on the list will simply be moved up the queue accordingly c: all of it would be discussed individually, of course, and very well disclosed in the commission info!

there are other points to it as well: anyone would be able to request a spot on the next batch's waitlist instead of the current one, and anyone can leave either list at any point. folks who had already claimed a slot when it first opened would only be able to apply for the next batch's waitlist (to give everyone a chance of getting one), and people on the list, either for the current or the next round of commissions, can be skipped up to a limit if they're unable to continue the order once i get to them.

oh and, before i forget, with the waitlist in place, i think i’d no longer be able to put slots on hold as i used to (as in, before paying the first invoice), as it’d be unfair to folks on the list. in that case, the person would be placed on the list as well if they want to, and contacted as soon as possible : )

also the "up to 2 slots per person" thing would be on thin ice too haha

anyway, this is kind of what i intended to do back then, with reopening slots as work gets finished, but never got around to. i want to make sure i don’t swamp myself with work, but also have it so that folks who want slots have a good chance of getting them, whether for the current batch or the next, as there's only so many slots i can open and work on at once, and time zones and irl things are to be considered too for anyone interested c:

it also makes it easier for me to keep track of messaging folks about new slots and such, and the list would be made public and easily available for consulting too : D more on this later!

so how's this looking? i've never done waitlists before and barely knew how they're supposed to work before starting to reorganize things, so please do feel free to voice your thoughts !! i’m 100% open to suggestions !!! do you think this system would work out for you? any concerns? if anything is unclear feel free to point it out, i'll do my best to explain the process or change stuff that doesn't quite work!!

so!!! now to the very last thing i wanted to talk about ! trello! 

i’m making a little trello board for updates on commission stuff! my commission info page here on tumblr and on deviantart both have this little section for updates on each slot’s progress, but i admittedly didn't do a good job keeping them updated (and constantly updating two things in different places just. kinda sucks.), so i’ve been diving into trello to unify that update section in one place and keep things nice and organized and transparent : ) it would be super useful for keeping track of the waitlist too, if that becomes a thing, or for updates on commission status and such!

so far i’m only testing things out, so it’s looking like this right now (sorry for the tiny image!):

(the board is lying btw, commissions are very much closed haha) (also if it’s basically unreadable, here’s the upload on sta.sh)

with all those little lists, the “available slots” and “sketch” and “lineart” and whatnot, i would be moving the card along the process : D and adding the appropriate labels, of course

this way i can have those halfsteps labelled too (working on/halfway through/finishing), since there’s only so many colors i can use without making it confusing (and tbh i’m already not too thrilled about color labels as it is, but it beats typing each individual status, and i’d imagine it’s more readable for folks consulting the list as well)

i really like how this looks so far in terms of organization but i’m unsure if the horizontal scrolling is anything but annoying, specially to folks on mobile (with the way i divide my screen on desktop, it certainly isn’t ideal either), so if you have any experience with that, feel free to let me know your thoughts!! there are a thousand different ways to organize this, and this is all a work in progress too c:

so! anything specific you folks would like to see on trello? i know this is a fairly common tool for commission queues and info and such but i’m super new to this platform, so please feel free to send suggestions! ♥

anyway yeah! that’s it! ;0; !

i’m sorry for the super long post, i’ve just been thinking about a lotta stuff haha i feel like i don’t interact a whole lot as it is, and since commissions are very much a team effort, i do want to get input from you folks on it c: it’s good to get a fresh perspective as well!

thank you so much for reading this far !! let me know your thoughts !!! :D ♥

[chatxkilluaxnoir]

My Online To Do List:

I’m legit so busy in both real life (kind of) and esp. for online stuff.  The stuff I am busy with is mostly fun stuff.  Including the more time-consuming stuff.  Still it does cause me a bit busy.  Like, he is my list of stuff of to do.  I might add more this list, as I think of more stuff and more stuff comes up.  

A long post and to-do list under the read more cut.  I was gonna put the cut further down, but I didn’t really know where would be a good place to put one.  So I am just going to put one here, since it makes sense, and it is a good place to put one.  And that is just what I am going to do.

                                                         Legend:

So this is a legend type thing I have decided to for this to-do list, and I am going to do it for all or most of the sections/parts of this ‘Legend’.  This is to help track my progress of the stuff on this list.

For the Game Section, the ‘Legend’ is:  Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.  Maybe some other ones in the future and some Section/Part specific ones.

For the Fics/Writings Section, the ‘Legend’ is:  Out of the Planning Stages/In the Planning Stages.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Writing/Not Currently Writing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Hasn’t been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Currently being edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Has been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed.

Whatever is bolded, is what is applicable to that section/thing.  So for example if Haven’t Started is bolded, and not Started, that means I haven’t started it yet. And etc.  Alright, that is all there is to the ‘Legend’ for now.  Now on to actually adding this/these to the parts/sections of this list, and on to the actual to-do list itself.                                                             

                           PC Games I Want to Play and/or Finish:

1.  DATING START!  Undertale Sans Dating Sim Visual Novel/Game:  Been meaning to play this, since the demo was so good and it just looked so good in general.  I even was following the countdown to full release super closely, because I wanted to play it right when it came out.  Which I did dip up opening up, just to see if everything was good boot up wise, and I saw the intro.  But then I ended up not playing it, even though I wanted to play it right when it came out, lol.  I got busy with the HxH Big Bang and other stuff.  And I wanted to make sure once I started playing the game, I really got through a lot of it.  

Basically, I wanted to have a decent amount to actually play it once.  But I just couldn’t set aside a lot of time.  However, I am less busy now, and also a bit less busy with my HxH BB.  So I am finally going to get to playing this game, and I am very excited to play it.  I may or may not post stuff about while I play or/& after I finish it.  Will tag spoilers if so.

Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

2.  Your Turn To Die and  Your Time To Shine: Island Existence!  Visual Novel/Sprite Game/Game/etc.:  I am still in Ch2.  So I got the rest of Ch2 and part of Ch3 to play.  Been meaning to do finish what is released of this currently for awhile, since it is really good.  But my break from it ended up being longer than I thought.  

Anyway, I am going to get back to it and play and finish this soon.  I also just need to outright play ‘Your Time To Shine: Island Existence!’, since I haven’t started that game at all.  Will tag spoilers if I post anything about them.

Your Turn to Die:  Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

Your Turn to Shine:   Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

3.  The Witch’s Heart/Witch’s Heart Game/Sprite Game/etc.:  Haven’t even started this yet, and from what I have seen and heard of it on YouTube I am really missing out by doing so.  And honestly, if I don’t play it soon, I am probably going to get even more spoiled about it, hahaha.  So yeah, gotta play this game.  Will tag spoilers if I post anything about it.

Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

4.  Undertale:  Act to Flirt:  I am about halfway through this.  I kind of what to wait until 0.4 comes out to get more through it, but we will see.  I might not be able to resist finishing up what is already out for this VN.

Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

5.  TS! Underswap Demo:  I both need to download AND play this.  From stuff I have seen of it, some let’s plays thumbnails, character designs, and etc., it just looks really good, and I should really get to playing it.  From what I have seen of character portrayals in this too, I am also liking them, and I think this is probably one of my favorite versions of Underswap of a/the Swap AU.  I am looking forward to more of it too, whenever that ended up being.

Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

6.  UT MV (Undertale Multiverse) Bonely Hearts Club VN Demo:  Currently not finished, and is just a Demo. still want to play the demo though.  Which is what is out of the actual game/VN so far.  There will be ? routes and ? dates.  They already say how many of these things, but I forget.  So I will add the number(s) later after I remember them, or look it up.

Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

7.  Shattered Hope F:  Cabin Confiding (Events):  Haven’t started yet.  But I what to soon, because they say people should watch/play this and the Social Butterfly events, before watching the new batch of episodes; which have started to come out.  Also, it just looks fun, so yeah.

Haven’t Downloaded/Have Downloaded.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Playing/Not Playing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Not Replaying/Replaying.

8.  Some other visual novels, games, demos/chapters, and etc. that I will add later.  Since the games above, are the ones I want to play the most currently.

                         My Planning and Writing of my Fics and etc.:

1.  The Meeting of a God and a Demon:  Just need to do some slight edits.  Nothing major to the story, just fixing some typos/grammar errors I missed, maybe removing/adding some tags, and adding some page dividers (Since I now it is a good idea to add these, and because I also now how to them kind of on AO3) to make reading a bit easier.  So yeah, just some minor edits for this.

Out of the Planning Stages/In the Planning Stages.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Writing/Not Currently Writing. Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Hasn’t been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Currently being edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Has been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed.

2.  Secret Upcoming Fic:  The fic is basically completely beta’ed, just some stuff earlier on in the fic we need to get back to, and just some more beta’ing and editing.  But we have already gone over the whole fic, it just needs a bit more editing, beta’ing, and polishing it up.  

I said I will probably will release this fic this month (or next one), but it looks like releasing it at least this month (February) might not super likely for a couple of reasons.  1.  My beta has been bit busy lately, and so I am just waiting when there less busy and for them to reach out to me again when they are less busy and ready.  And 2.  This fic (or at least a snippet of it.  I am going to release the whole fic after the zine with the snippet of it is released) was originally meant for a TAU Zine.  More specially, TAU Zine ED2:  Demonology and the Occult.  

I thought since I had taken so long to get this fic done and beta’ed, that I was too late to enter it in the zine, but I was wrong, and I was able to sign up for it.  Now I am just waiting for the deadline date(s) for the zine to be posted on the transcendence-zine tumblr.  And because I am waiting for the deadline date, I actually don’t know when the zine itself will release.  And I can’t release the fic until the zine gets released which I don’t know if that will be February or March.  Pretty unlikely to be February though.  So those are the reasons why I am not sure if this fic will be released in March and esp. February.  

I will try for both release of this fic for both months, but like I said, due to needing it be finished beta’ing and due to not knowing when the deadline for this and zine release dates are, I am not sure it will be in February or March and might end up being later.  So like, maybe April or May instead.  Still trying for February or March though, so let’s just *cross our fingers* that I will be able to.

Out of the Planning Stages/In the Planning Stages.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Writing/Not Currently Writing. Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Hasn’t been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Currently being edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Has been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed.

3.  Hunter x Hunter Big Bang 2021 Fic:  I have already started planning this fic out, but I got a lot to do.  I have a few months until when the draft is due, but I have a lot to do for it, and I want to make sure this fic is good as my 1st HxH fic posted online and because this my first time actually entering the HxH BB.  I have read and seen a lot of HxH BB stuff in the past, but I haven’t entered myself, until this year!  So yeah, pretty busy with this.

Out of the Planning Stages/In the Planning Stages.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Writing/Not Currently Writing. Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Hasn’t been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Currently being edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Has been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed.

4.  Planning for and a another TAU (TAU meaning the Gravity Falls AU called Transcendence-AU) Fic:  Got some ideas for a fic, but before I can really get started planning and writing this fic and stuff about it, I am waiting for the transcendence-au tumblr to answer a question/submission of mine.  Depending on the answer, this fic might either need more or less behind-the-scenes stuff and planning.  This fic probably won’t be able for awhile.

Out of the Planning Stages/In the Planning Stages.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Writing/Not Currently Writing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Hasn’t been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Currently being edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Has been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed.

5.  Planning for and another yet again another TAU (TAU meaning the Gravity Falls AU called Transcendence-AU) Fic:  Most likely another God/Goddess/Deity Fic like my Gaia one.  And while I have other stuff planned for Gaia, this fic probably won’t be focused on her, though she might get mentioned.  This fic is much more likely to release before that other fic am planning and talking about for the previous numbered point, 4.  And while I don’t have an estimate date for when this will be released, hopefully it won’t be TOO far off in the future.  This fic should definitely be interesting.

Out of the Planning Stages/In the Planning Stages.  Haven’t Started/Have Started.  Not In Progress/In Progress.  On Break/Currently Writing/Not Currently Writing.  Haven’t Finished/Have Finished.  Hasn’t been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Currently being edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed/Has been edited, proofread, or/& beta’ed.

6.  Maybe/Probably other stuff in the future.  But the above is my current to-do list for my writings and fics.

                                              Miscellaneous Stuff:

1.  Start and get caught up on some fics.

2.  Start and get caught up on some comics.

3.  Watch YouTube Videos.

4.  Some other stuff to write out, that aren’t fics.

5.  Maybe/Probably other stuff in the future.

Hahah, I know this might not seem like a lot (this just my online stuff), but it it is defin. a lot to me, and is gonna keep me busy for awhile.  Which I am happy I have stuff to keep busy, but this is still quite a lot.  Still looking forward start really making way through this to-do list.  

This took me so long to do, lol.  The list itself took long enough, but trying to do the legend stuff, which I originally had spaced differently, but that wasn’t working, so I had to fix it/them to make it/them look good, and that took me even more time.  Finally done for now though.

[ficsandbits]

Muffins for insomnia

So I just had a burst of happy fluffy energy and just bashed this little drabble out. Hope you enjoy it! 

Y/N in this uses She/her pronouns.

Word count: 1,288

Any comments and feedback are always super welcomed and appreciated, will also be posting to my AO3 here: > https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597085

xoxo✌🏻💕🌻

Y/N was restless. She just couldn’t stop her thoughts from running wild whilst she tossed and turned trying to sleep. The insomnia wasn’t an unusual thing to her at all, but now it seemed to be getting worse and worse and she was lucky if she got 30 minutes sleep. She looked over at the clock. 3:30AM. Y/N huffed loudly deciding that the best option was to do something and hope it made her so tired she’d just drop to sleep there and then. She wandered down into the kitchen, working on autopilot as she pulled out her baking supplies. It was something that always helped to relax her mind, the simple repetitive motions that she could do without thinking about anything eased her. She found her recipe book, flipping through the pages until she found a simple muffin recipe. She found the extra bits; lemon for her love, cherry and almond for her friends, and chocolate for her. She hummed a gentle tune as she swayed around the small space, worktops being filled with appliances and mixtures. She worked steadily, baking batch after batch, for the next 30 minutes with no sign of slowing down.

It came as no real surprise to her when she heard the front door gently open and close, signalling the return of her boyfriend Ignis. His work taking him into the early hours of the morning was a regular occurrence and as such he’d taken to sneaking into Y/N’s house so as not to wake her. With his senses dulled by fatigue, he failed to fully register the smells of baking and the glow of light coming from the kitchen. He shocked at the sight of his beloved milling about the small space, flour spread across her face and hands. Polly looked up in time to see his shocked face melt into one of pure concern and worry.

”You didn’t wait up for me did you?” He inquired, pulling his tie loose and making his was over to her. 

He placed a gentle kiss to the top of her head as she smiled tiredly back at him. “No darling, I just couldn’t get to sleep and thought doing something might help.” She places the bowl in her hands down on the counter so that she could turn to wrap her arms around him. “And why not get a little joy out of my productivity.” She breathed him in as she cuddled closer. “How was work today?” She asks, though she already knew the answer with the hour he was coming home.

”Long.” His groaned response didn’t shock her and his soft squeeze made her melt further into his embrace. “I feel much better now though. Would you like a hand with those?” Ignis peered over her shoulder at the mountain of muffins already baked. “Although I fear we may run out of space soon if you intend to carry on.” 

Y/N’s giggle was music to his ears as she turned around to assess the damage. “I’m nearly finished, just this last batch to put in. But you can help by just staying close if that’s okay? You must be tired.” Her worried eyes wondered over to him.

Ignis did admit he was feeling rather sleepy, but seeing the bags under his loves eyes was enough to steel his conviction to staying up with her. “Nothing a little coffee won’t help if you need me.” 

He made a move to grab some coffee but Y/N was quick to stop him. “Oh no you don’t, you’ve been awake long enough. We’ll be done soon, they don’t take long in the oven.” She let go of his arm in hunt of something and once victorious presented him with a single, delicately decorated muffin. “Here! I made a couple batches for you, tell me how they are.” She beamed up at him.

ignis was always moved by acts of love and this one was no different. Taking the muffin as if it was the most precious thing in the world, he bit in without hesitation. He knew her baking was as excellent as his cooking so there were no worries to be had. His hum of approval lit Y/N up and she turned to continue her work. Ignis moved to follow, placing his arms around her to hold her close from behind. He swayed them gently, murmuring into her hair, “that was outstanding as always my love.” He quickly registered the other flavours on the go around them. “The boys will be thrilled when I bring these to them tomorrow.” Ignis placed a firm kiss onto her temple as she sighed out in content.

”Good, I’d hate for all this to go to waste.” She moved around the kitchen trusting ignis to keep in step with her. It was a dance they’d often do, taking turns depending on who was using the kitchen at the time. “Don’t let them eat yours though, even if they do finish their own.” She turned in his arms after putting the last batch in the oven. “I made yours with extra love.” She kissed his nose and grinned at her cheesy statement, enjoying the way he laughed to cover up the blush spreading across his cheeks. 

Ignis let himself be pulled to the table where a pot of some herbal tea had been steadily steeping. Y/N sat on one side and began pouring herself a cup. He grabbed one of his own, plus two muffins for them to enjoy while waiting for the rest to finish. There was soft conversation, neither wanting to raise the volume and break the domestic bliss that had settled over them. Ignis told Y/N of his day and what had happened at work as she recounted tales of her own workday. The timer went off far too soon for Ignis’s liking and Y/N moved to retrieve the last batch of muffins. 

He heard her huff at the dishes and quietly got up to join her. “I’m sure it’ll go much faster if the two of us work together.” He could sense her about to dismiss him or shut him down so before she could he went about running a bowl of water and beginning with some of the smaller items used.

Y/N smiled despite herself and delivered a fleeting kiss to his shoulder as she pulled up next to him to begin drying duties. “Thank you.” She yawned out.

The general softness that had overcome her when Ignis returned home had made her sleepy and she was glad that the dishes took less time than she had planned them too. As soo as the last spoon was put away she took Ignis’s hand, yawning loudly. “I think it’s time for bed.” Ignis laughed as he looked out the window to see the first glows of dawn starting to appear. But he agreed with her all the same, letting her drag him upstairs and into the bedroom.

Y/N crawled straight into bed having already been in her pyjamas whilst cooking. Ignis watched as she squirmed to make herself comfortable, feeling a knot in his chest at how much he adored this woman. He turned for a moment to find his own pyjamas and when he turned back he saw Y/N already asleep, her breathing shallow and even. The knot in his chest swelled as he joined her in the bed and she instantly gravitated towards him, curling around him and smiling in her sleep. Ignis gave a soft kiss to the crown of her head. “Sweet dream my love.” He whispered into her hair as he fell into his own love filled dreams.

[hippriestess]

Part 3 - “ I thought we had some kind of agreement but with you it was just prurience”

So, where were we. Ah yes....Record Store Day 2019.

It was, perhaps inevitably, a heavy day for Fall fans. Lead-in times both for the manufacture of vinyl records and for participation in RSD are such that Smith's death came too late for the impact to be evident in the 2018 event but for 2019, we were absolutely flooded in a way that caused some, quite rightly, to question the judgement of the organisers in allowing so many obvious vultures to swoop in for an easy bite. 

The “monitor mixes” from the 2CD edition of “The Unutterable” were pressed to vinyl for the first time. “Whoo-fucking-pee” quoth the faithful and you will have absolutely no difficulty acquiring it today should you be down to few enough marbles for it to seem like a good investment. BMG hold the rights to the group's Rough Trade recordings and went with a box set of five 7” singles under the awful title “Medicine For The Masses”. This was the exact same format as “The Rough Trade Singles Box” from 2002 although with the bonus of containing the correct Peel Session versions of “Container Drivers” and “New Puritan” (Castle/Sanctuary had updated the 5 disc CD edition once they had acquired the rights to the BBC tracks but the vinyl edition of Italy's Earmark Records retained the Grotesque and Totale's Turns versions used in the initial pressings). Given not only that none of this material is any way scarce but that an excellent single LP release had been given to all 10 tracks in the box (Peel takes included) by US imprint Superior Viaduct in 2018, it was perhaps inevitable that “Medicine For The Masses” pretty much flopped on the day and can now be acquired brand new for a good £10 less than the asking price on the day itself.

Ah yes, Superior Viaduct, let's not forget them. A well-regarded reissue label with a smattering of current artists, they had already issued some Fall vinyl in 2016/2017, putting all the studio albums up to “Perverted By Language” back onto vinyl as well as the first 2 singles and the eternally category-defying “Slates” 10”. Following Smith's passing, they have (almost) completed the task with the aforementioned “Rough Trade Singles” LP and a new pressing of “Totale's Turns”. These editions have been very well received and have been praised for the quality both of the mastering and of the pressings but they remain largely inaccessible to UK fans due to licensing restrictions preventing the editions from being imported. As such, you'll hafta pick these up on a one-to-one basis off your own bat.

Right, back to Record Store Day 2019. We also had the “opportunity” to buy a number of live albums. 5 of them, in fact. All of these had previously been released on CD towards the end of 2018...so this was going to be called Crap Rap Part 14 but it's now called “Stop Releasing Every Gig You Can Find On Some Mouldy Third Generation Maxell C90 on a double LP”

Live albums have always been canon with The Fall. “Totale's Turns” was their 3rd LP release, “Live In London 1980” was issued by Chaos Tapes with the group's permission in 1982, “Fall In A Hole” was allowed until copies were exported. We had “Seminal Live” and “The 27 Points” mixing live with studio, as did “I Am Kurious Oranj” with several tracks recorded during the original Edinburgh run of the ballet. Even the “Perverted By Language Bis” video was largely live material. Even once the shark was jumped in the late 90s/early 00s with the endless recycling of those outtake/live compilations, there were official live missives, such as the excellent “Last Night At The Palais” in 2009, the wonderfully titled but patchy “Uurop VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son” in 2014 though to the terrible “Live In Clitheroe” in 2017. So, all in, it comes as no surprise at all that over 20 more live albums have been added to The Fall's discography since Smith's sad departure from this realm.

There were no less than 5 live albums dumped merrily onto the shelves for RSD 2019, 3 of them doubles. On their own, this would have been an outlay of over £100...in fact, if you wanted the full RSD Fall, you'd have had little or no change on the day from £250. For exactly no unreleased music. No unreleased music? What were these live albums then? Let's wind back to late in 2018... (I told you this was tough to do in any kind of linear fashion).

Arriving via the PledgeMusic site, “Set Of Ten” released by “Cog Sinister”, worked like this: 10 previously unreleased live recordings were contained in a sturdy square box with spiffy new artwork from Pascal LeGras. The tariff? £100. Ouch. Now, a handful of them were announced as separate releases, however, if you bought the box you would receive an exclusive disc – a recording from Derby, 1994. Cometh the hour, the Derby CD was one of the first to be released on its own. Huh.

A small amount of digging revealed that this set was the work of Rob Ayling. With the dates running from 1980 to 1999, the general opinion re: Set Of Ten was that these tapes were very likely to be in Ayling's possession due to the “Live From The Vaults” series on Voiceprint, Ayling's previous imprint, from 2005. When that series was announced, the five releases were said to be simply the first batch.  It could therefore be deduced that these tapes had been destined for future batches. At the time, there was a minor dust-up over them and no further volumes were issued. Whatever the motivations, presenting an 11 CD set of old bootlegs with so little quality control being put into the audio and asking £100 for it felt like cold ash in the mouth. Worse still, PledgeMusic went bust before many customers could receive their sets, leaving them to either claim chargebacks on their credit cards or simply out of pocket as ordinary creditors to the failed business. It must have been galling for those who lost money to see the CDs arriving on their own and several cut onto expensive vinyl.

I've picked up a couple of the CDs separately and these have been largely fine. Recording quality is listenable but obviously audience derived. The best one by far of those I've heard is “Live 23rd June 1981 @ Jimmy's Music Club New Orleans”, a great recording of a full-tilt Fall performance from a critical time in their existence (pictured) . There's a palpable tension, possibly due to the return of Burns, brought back not just out of practicalities but also to even the group up a bit, now that Smith was beginning to reconsider the wisdom of having a team of childhood friends for a group. Rehiring Burns was designed to put some grit back into the machine and it worked. Having a full set from this line-up is a worthy addition to the canon and it should be snapped up before it vanishes – this is the only one of the “Set Of Ten” CDs that seems to be thin on the ground. The artwork and credits show the level of care taken over the release; that is – pretty much none. The CD artwork has the 6 piece “Hex” line-up – Karl Burns is the only drummer here as Paul Hanley was at home doing his O Levels. However, the sleeve credits Paul Hanley and not Burns, adding a credit for Duncan Burndred, who was the group's driver at the time. The info had been sourced from the “Slates & Dates” press release which credited Burndred with “the rest” (ie anything other than music and management). Likely pilfered from thefall.org, this missive was retooled for the artwork without any real consideration.

However, it seems there was sufficient demand out there and, cometh the tail end of 2019, cometh another Set of Ten, given the snappy title...”Another Set Of Ten”. They must have been up all fucking night thinking of that one. Again, it has 11 discs. It does get interesting here insofar as most of the tapes come from between 2009 and 2013 suggesting not only that there wasn't much left from the original “Vaults”- destined batch but also making it unclear from whom these tapes were being licenced. They are, of course, under no obligation to discuss such matters publicly and, indeed the current incarnation of Cog Sinister would likely feel aggrieved at having the question asked. They are, after all, a legitimate enterprise. 

A quick skwizz at the Discogs page tells you that “Another Set Of Ten” is not a triumph; all the tapes are listed as being audience tapes, one disc has just six songs from the gig and several others are also incomplete and/or mislabelled. The main contributor to the Discogs entry (to whom, hello!) notes that the tracklistings appear to be taken from photographs of setlists uploaded to thefall.org's justly revered and thoroughly sublime gigography but, where the setlist didn't match what was played, no attempt has been made to correct this. They haven't even matched up the content with the tracklistings!!! At time of writing, these ones are just starting to slip into the shops on their own, possibly Covid delayed as you could get them via online retailers for a while. The cover for a Manchester gig from 2009 looked like a sick joke and it was hard not to think similar (albeit at lower pitch) about the inclusion of an infamous Motherwell gig at which MES was completely plastered and Brix had quit the band an hour or so before the show. What's next? Worthing? Brownies?

Yet it is very hard not to be continually tempted. There's some juicy setlists in these discs and the artwork at least has some effort – Pascal LeGras has done a very fine job here and his art certainly gives the right feel to the releases. I'm guessing that was the plan. I’ve got my eye on a few. It’s a disease this, I tell you...

Anyway, one way of the other, 5 of the “Set Of Ten” discs found their way onto vinyl on RSD, courtesy of reissue imprint Let Them Eat Vinyl and all of these are still easy to score, should you wish. The whole Gonzo/Let Them Eat Vinyl hookup is interesting for scholars of who-owns-what in terms of The Fall's catalogue. As above, we know that BMG have the Rough Trade recordings but LTEV's “Grotesque”, issued in 2017, states it is licensed by Sanctuary.

LTEV have also been putting some of the other lesser releases from the catalogue onto vinyl, including 2 mid 90's live albums (Phoenix 1995 and “The Idiot Joy Show” - nothing that was wasn't available for buttons on CD in the early 00s) as well as “Interim”, the demos and live cobble-together that attempted to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2004. The latter had never been pressed to vinyl before and with bloody good reason.  Yr mileage, as always, may vary.

Whilst not The Fall, acolytes will doubtless want to know that Ed Blaney issued a 2CD edition of “The Train”, containing the full 40-minute “(Part Three)” CD, a similarly lengthed alternate version and a clutch of remixes. Blaney also uploaded a properly touching tribute to Smith on YouTube, including reminiscences with other friends of Smith.

One more part to come, in which we burn the spotlight of shame onto a couple of the worst products ever to have had the name The Fall unwillingly emblazoned upon their sleeves and take a quick look over some of what we know is in the pipeline.

[pops-and-kids]

And as promised, here’s the first part of the Christmas shorts!! I wrote 3 shorts, each with 3 parts, so that’s NINE parts altogether and 13 PAGES. Obviously I can’t upload all that at once, so i’ll be uploading them in batches of three! That’ll be three posts, each with three parts of the nine. Please enjoy!!

Curiel tagged his chin, leaning back in his chair. He stared at his newest invention with narrowed, calculating eyes. It was a snowball machine, specifically made for the winter island they’d be docking at for the season. It was a lot smaller than he had originally wanted, but after the bigger one had malfunctioned and spat out metal in all directions, the man decided that a smaller, more compact machine would do. He built it so it would spin and gather snow from a gathered mound, with two handles on either side for aiming. The only issue was he hadn’t tested it yet.

A loud knock on the door made him jolt and yelp. “Ooooi! Curi! You’re going to miss lunch if you stay holed up! ….You didn’t pass out again, did you?” Namur called from outside, waiting for his brother to respond.

“Gaaaah I’m conscious.” Curiel groaned, pushing his glasses up to rub his eyes. “...Wait, lunch!? What happened to breakfa--SHIT!!”

Trying to make a beeline for the door was a bad idea. Slipping on some spare parts Curiel’s vision was filled with stars as the side of his face was unceremoniously met with the door. The tenth commander cursed loudly, sliding down the wood slowly.

“A-are….you okay?” Namur asked from behind the door.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Get it together, man! This isn’t that hard!” Thatch overheard one of his cooks yelling from behind him.

“But it is! How the hell do you do this?!” One of the newer cooks cried. He sounded very stressed, unknowingly activating his commanders caring instinct.

“Braym, can you finish rolling this for me?” Thatch asked the nearest cook with urgency.

Braym gave him a nod, their curly hair bouncing as they quickly hopped over and took the head-cooks spot.

“Dude your hands are shaking too much!” Lincoln snapped.

“Well when you’re looking over my shoulder the whole damn time--!” Ausha started before Thatch’s voice cut him off.

“Heeeey guys! What’s, uh, going on?” The commander asked, getting between them and looking at what was the fuss.

He was surprised to be a bunch of sugar cookies before him, all quite terribly decorated. Ausha wasn’t put on cookie duty, so it caught him off guard.

“He wanted to try and help with them, but he’s fucking terrible with frosting.” Lincoln answered with a huff. He looked fed up.

“Oh shush, he’ll learn!” Thatch said quickly, offering some level of encouragement. “Let me see the frosting bag, maybe someone messed it up.”

That didn’t seem the help as Ausha bowed his head further and gave him the bag. The frosting was...a mess. There were thicker globs inside, uneven texture, and the tip was cut wrong. How on earth this happened he had no clue.

“And you said you could frost.” Lincoln scoffed.

“I’m not used to...this kind of frosting,” Ausha said, surprising Thatch, “I’ve always done royal frosting at home with my grandma. This is new for me.” The commander could feel the glare Ausha’s grey eyes shot at Lincoln, like an angry cat wanting to be left alone.

“Wait, so why didn’t you just do royal frosting?” Thatch asked, massaging the bag in hopes it’d help the disaster inside.

Ausha stared for a few seconds before shrugging. “No one offered that kind when I asked….”

This time it was Lincolns’ turn to blanch. Before he could say anything Thatch laughed and tossed the messy bag to him.

“That’s probably because we rarely use royal for our baking. Sorry about that! How about you and I make some and get these done, huh? Linc, how about you go help Braym with rolling out more dough.”

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“MAKE IT TIGHTER UP THERE!!!”

“NEED MORE ROPES HERE!!!”

“HAS ANYONE SEE MY GOOD HAMMER?!!?”

Pops hummed merrily amidst the yelling, a large smile on his face. His children were all preparing for the winter island, setting up the canopy that would protect the deck from snowfall. They didn’t always set it up, winter islands were unpredictable with their harsh blizzards, but this particular island only ever snowed softly. The canopy would be deployed when they got closer and allow them to trap in heat on the deck and keep out most of the snow. This also meant they were allowed to set up lights around and decorate!

That was one of his favorite parts by far, but for now he had to first help his children with setting up the canopy.

“Yaga! Please be careful, my dear!” He called up to one of the crew on the mast.

She was making him nervous with how far she was leaning while testing the ropes. Yaga waved her hand at him in a dismissal gesture, clearly confident she wouldn’t fall. Pops sighed but put his own confidence in her. She’d been manning the rig for years, he was sure she’d be fine. Back to the tarp he grabbed hold of it and lifted it up, inspecting it with some of his children's help.

“There’s no holes that I can see, but I think there’s a weak line here. Look, this parts too see through.” Jeppi pointed out.

Pops hummed in agreement, “It’ll have to be reinforced there then. Please inform Blamenco and Izou.”

Jeppi nodded and went off to find the two commanders, leaving Whitebeard to continue to look over the tarp for any more issues.

Suddenly his haki flared; something moving, falling to his right. Instinctively he lurched over, dropping the tarp and opening his arms just in time to catch a small body. The ripping of IV’s out of his arms was a dull pain as the sudden shock of adrenaline ran through him, though the nurses yells weren’t. Looking down he let out a breath and a laugh at the bewildered Yaga.

“...Well that just took me down a peg.” She said with a nervous laugh. Pops nodded as he let her down, nurses crowding him.

“AAAAA WHAT DID YOU DO?!!”

“Are you fucking kidding me.”

“And this is why we need new equipment so often.”

Yaga cast her captain and apologetic glance as he set her down onto the deck. She ran off almost instantly, still having work to do, but would definitely be more careful. Pops waved his hand at them, already feeling dread sink in as one of his daughters threatened keeping him inside the whole time they docked. If he stayed in then he’d miss all the snowmen and yearly divisions snowball fight!

“Alright, alright. Next time I’ll be more careful keeping your siblings from going ‘splat.’ Gurara!”

[mostfacinorous]

Whumptober 11th

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

(I think this one is my favorite so far)

Whumptober 11th: Stitches

“Crowley-- what’s happened to you?” Aziraphale stood quickly, upsetting the book that had been resting in his lap and sending the empty saucer plummeting to the ground. 

“The miracle of modern medicine, or somethin’.” Crowley answered, waving his bandaged hands and working hard to only speak out of the left side of his mouth, as the right side was stitched at the corner-- to match the stitches high on his cheekbone, and the swelling that kept his right eye shut. 

“Well, certainly, I can see that, but what happened before that?” Aziraphale pressed, setting his tea down and coming out from behind the low table to approach the battered demon. 

“Bit of a reprimand from below. Guess they didn’t like my report about failing to escalate things and start a war. Nothing too impressive. But I lost consciousness towards the end of it, and they left me in the gutter, so some good samaritans called an ambulance, and--” he gestured again, to encompass all of it. 

“Oh, I wish I could help, Crowley, but you know how heavenly power hurts at the best of times for you-- I wouldn’t want to make matters worse.” Aziraphale had begun wringing his hands, and Crowley responded with an eyeroll that, oddly, made Aziraphale feel better. Hurt though he was, at least he was feeling like himself.

“I’ll heal up fine, angel. I just need some help with the stitches. My fingers are a bit, ah--” 

Of course-- if he healed with stitches in, the stitches would heal into him, and, vain as he was, the scars would be horrid. And the unfinished sentence, the potential words hung on the air, each worst than the last. ‘Ruined’ ‘destroyed’... Aziraphale firmly refused to think of any more.

“Certainly, my dear. Oh, let’s go into the kitchen, though? The lighting there is much better, and I’d rather see what I’m doing.”

Besides the kitchen, small and cramped as it was, had no rugs to suffer stains if Crowley started bleeding again, which Aziraphale thought he might. 

Crowley was entirely too agreeable, given his usual views on Aziraphale’s kitchen, and he couldn’t help but suspect that Crowley was either in substantial amounts of pain, still under the influence from his hospital stay, or also wanted to preserve the back room, which he definitely found more comfortable than this one. 

Regardless of the reason, when Aziraphale pulled out the chair for him he sat willingly, and only winced slightly at the landing. Aziraphale did his best not to be too obvious as he looked him over, hiding it behind the process of removing his coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves. 

“Is there-- that is, I don’t suppose they limited their attacks to your face and hands.” He gave Crowley a much more open up and down, somewhat afraid to see signs of further damage, but all too aware that it must be there. Demons didn’t tend to be particularly kind-- or restrained. 

Crowley shrugged, though it looked like it cost him.

“It’ll all heal.” 

“Right.” Aziraphale said faintly, wishing he could ask to see, but afraid that it would be overstepping a boundary. And it wasn’t as though he could do anything to help with it, at any rate. Besides, he was sure anything that needed doing, the human doctors had seen to. 

Having run out of things to distract him or delay with, Aziraphale snapped and summoned his wing care kit onto the little kitchenette table. 

It was probably imposing seeming, the highly polished wooden box decorated with golden inlay. 

It had been a gift, and used to contain a golden vanity set, but it had become home to a host of tweezers and small scissors, specialized combs, soft cloths, and the feathers that came out when he made the effort to straighten them out-- far less frequently than he ought to, he knew. 

He lifted the lid away and moved aside the velvet bag of his molted feathers, glad that they were covered, though he had no doubt that Crowley would guess what they were and say something about it. 

He flushed faintly at the possibility, but Crowley remained polite and quiet-- subdued. 

Almost worrisome, that. 

Though, it was hardly a mystery as to why.

Aziraphale lifted his scissors and carried them to the small sink. 

“I’m just going to wash them-- they’ve been unused for a while, and I don’t want any dust getting in your wounds.”

“‘M not gonna get an infection, angel.” Crowley protested, but it wasn’t a strong argument. 

Aziraphale washed them anyway, and returned, stepping between Crowley’s spread legs to be as close as he could-- the better to see what he was doing, of course. 

“Hold still now- I’m going to take them out of your lips first.” 

He caught Crowley’s jaw, hand wrapping under his chin to steady his head, and made the mistake of looking through his sunglasses and directly into his eyes. 

He swallowed compulsively, and had to turn his attention to the stitching in his lips, though that wasn’t precisely a safer place to be looking. 

Crowley was, after all, made to be a temptation. 

Aziraphale took a steadying breath and brought the scissors to the widest of the stitches. He slid them gently under and snipped-- one down-- and checked in with Crowley’s eyes, looking for any sign of pain. Not, of course, that Crowley made it easy, hiding behind his shades as he did, and averting his eyes.

When he didn’t call a halt, Aziraphale did it again, then again, working his way through all of them. 

Once the loops had all been cut, he sat down the scissors and retrieved the tweezers, beginning the unfortunate process of pulling the threads back through the holes, which were still bright red and inflamed, swollen and painful looking. 

Crowley hissed softly as the first one tugged through, and Aziraphale paused. 

“Forgive me,” He murmured, and reached for the sunglasses. Crowley froze, eyes wide behind the smoky lenses, but he didn’t protest.

“I just want to see when you react-- be certain I’m not hurting you too much.” He spoke gently and, he hoped, convincingly-- though it was only half-lie, and thus only half-selfish, the way he drank up the sight of the burnished gold of Crowley’s pupils, the way he soaked up the proximity, knowing he shouldn’t, and wishing that so many of their circumstances were different. 

“Get on with it.” Crowley sounded cross, and Aziraphale knew that meant he was more uncomfortable than he wanted to let on. 

“Right.” He said, and began pulling the next through, careful to draw the knot side out, lest he tear Crowley’s dear lip. 

Crowley had to work hard not to wince or flinch, and Aziraphale paused again. 

“‘S fine angel. Just-- talk. Say something. Distract me.”

His lips could move more freely now, and Aziraphale turned to summon forth a handkerchief to dab away at the slow trickles of blood that followed. 

“Oh dear me, I wouldn’t know what to say.” He started, fishing around for a suitable topic. 

Which oughtn’t be hard, he knew; he often spent the majority of their dinners nattering away while Crowley watched him with a look that, on anyone else, might be adoration. 

“A pair of women came into the shop yesterday,” He started. 

“Oh no,” came the demon’s sardonic reply, and Aziraphale felt his own lips twitch upwards, absurdly comforted by this bit of normalcy, even as Crowley’s blood dripped down the tweezers and onto Aziraphale’s fingers, stinging lightly where it fell. 

He wiped it off, barely sparing it a thought. It wasn’t the first time he’d had Crowley’s blood on his hands, and while he hoped it would be the last, he knew better than to expect that to be true. 

“Well, they wanted to request that I make a list of the books I had, and list them online. So that more people might come to buy them.” He knew he oughtn’t sound scandalized and horrified at the thought; Crowley had pointed out more often than not that traditional bookstores sold books. 

Crowley’s lips pulled into a smile, and Aziraphale was glad to see that it didn’t hurt him any more. 

Pulling the last bit of thread through the holes in his cheek, though, clearly did, and just like that, the tiny glimmer of a smile disappeared. 

He must’ve looked stricken, because Crowley patted at him with one of his wrapped hands. 

“What did you do to drive them off?” He asked gently, and Aziraphale shook himself, turning back to his task.

“Ah, I explained to them that neither computers nor the internet are allowed in the shop. And do you know what they said?”

He goaded for a response while he began snipping at the next set of strings, these somewhat harder to get to due to the relative firmness of the skin over his cheekbone. 

“Mm?” Crowley asked, his eyes drifting closed. 

“Apparently there is something called a Yell Page, with reviews of my shop, and they intend to leave a bad one. Can you imagine! A website to tell people not  to come to my store. Modern technology is wonderful.” 

A warm chuckle rolled through Crowley’s chest. And standing close as he was, Aziraphale could feel it. 

“Yelp. One of mine. Invented specifically for me to leave scathing reviews on this place.” 

Like the rumble of his laughter, his words vibrated through Aziraphale’s core, followed by an unrestrained surge of fondness that he was sure even a demon could feel. 

“How very dastardly of you.” He said, though without any accusation or bite. 

“I’m going to cut this last batch as well, and then we can pull all of these and have done with it.” 

“No rush.” Crowley mumbled, and Aziraphale wasn’t certain whether he was meant to have been able to hear it or not. 

Regardless, he elected to ignore it and focus instead on the work at hand. 

For all that they had been harder to cut, the stitches slid out of this skin more easily, though Aziraphale was careful to hold the skin steady with his other hand, so that it didn’t pull or twist in the process. 

Once all of them were removed, Aziraphale lifted Crowley’s left hand. 

“This next, and then you can heal up, hm?”

“Aziraphale, I should warn you-- it’s not-- it isn’t pretty.” Crowley was looking away, refusing to meet Aziraphale’s eyes, and he had to swallow around a lump of worry that formed in his throat. 

“That’s alright-- your hands will be lovely and whole again soon enough. This too shall pass.” He promised him, resolving to hide any reaction he might feel as he unclipped the outermost edge of the bandages and began drawing them away. 

It wasn’t pretty. Whatever they’d done-- and Aziraphale’s mind was providing entirely too many options-- they’d twisted, broken, and shattered his fingers until they barely resembled hands any longer. The doctors had set them as best as they could, and there were clearly places where they’d put screws in-- and that would be trouble later, if Crowley healed them that way. 

“Will you be able to snap at all?” He wondered aloud.  

Crowley grimaced.

“It’ll hurt.” He admitted. “But better than the alternatives.”

“Can I-- I can’t heal you but I think, I could remove the metal with a miracle, if you can snap it better after.”

Crowley tilted his head. 

“Would you?” He asked, almost as if he were surprised, and for some reason that made guilt swell in Aziraphale. What had he ever done to make Crowley think otherwise? 

Whatever it was, he would have to be sure to remedy it from here on out. 

He got both hands unwrapped, and sat them gently on Crowley’s thighs.

 “Alright. As you said, this will hurt--” He cautioned. Crowley nodded, and Aziraphale snapped, the screws joining the bits of suture string on the table at his elbow. 

Crowley groaned and swayed, looking for all the world as though he might pass out and slump out of the chair. 

“Alright?” Aziraphale asked, grabbing hold of his shoulder to keep him upright, and then pulling his hand away like it had been burned, when it appeared his touch had hurt Crowley. 

But maybe the pain was the grounding force he needed. Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and lifted his mangled hand.

The snap looked like it hurt, but its effects were instantaneous. 

And, no doubt, costly. 

Crowley swayed in his chair again, but this time he lifted his hands to steady himself with a grip on Aziraphale’s hips. Crowley leaned in, and rested his face against his stomach-- usually Aziraphale considered it too plush, too soft, but for the job of being a temporary pillow, he found himself incredibly well suited for it.

“Would you like to stay here and rest for a bit?” Aziraphale asked softly, loathe to end the contact, but well aware that sleeping might be better for Crowley right now, and he had some mess to see to in the form of surgical debris. 

“Mhf.” Crowley answered, or didn’t, but Aziraphale knew what he meant. 

“Come along then,” He said, shifting and pulling Crowley gently to his feet, then up off of them. He carried his demon friend into the back room and laid him out on the soft couch. 

“Don’t you worry. I’ll watch over your sleep.” He assured him. Crowley seemed already to be drifting off, but he smiled gently at the words, and Aziraphale couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and brushed his lips against Crowley’s forehead in an affectionate and blessedly-- damnably?-- chaste kiss.

Crowley would wake with his glasses and a good whiskey beside him, and Aziraphale in the chair across the way, reading and sipping cocoa. And everything would be perfectly normal again, hurts and temptation alike banished.

For now.

[dansnaturepictures]

Five of my favourite pictures I took in May 2020 and five of my most popular images online for the month (as of yesterday morning)

The five of my favourites are; 

1. One of my favourite butterflies the Adonis Blue at Martin Down 

2. One of many young Starlings in the garden seen this month 

3. A lovely flower at Lakeside 

4. Sunny day at Lymington 

5. Sunny day at Lakeside Country Park 

Then as this is the fifth month of the year and five plus five makes ten I thought I’d fill this photoset up with five of my most popular online pictures in May. This is done using interaction to the tweets they were included in when I uploaded them as new pictures on the days taken. So its five pictures that were in five of my most liked/retweeted/replied to tweets in May. I just added each tweet’s number of those interactions together like I do to chose my weekly pinned tweet out of my most popular new photo tweet over the weekend/week prior. Twitter is one of the main places I upload my photos on my account Dans_Pictures. I must say the most popular the Marsh Fritillary I took two separate pictures of the same butterfly which I included in the same tweet as I always do for the same species/similar views. So for this I just chose my favourite of the two photos. Below are the captions to the rest of the five pictures in this photoset, in order of how popular they were on Twitter so 6. the most 10. the least. 

6. Marsh Fritillary butterfly at Bentley Wood 

7. Five-spot Burnet moth at Bentley Wood

8. Collared Dove out the back 

9. Yellowhammer at Stockbridge Down 

10. “Rex” the regular Feral Pigeon that comes to our garden out the back on Bank Holiday Friday

Well this has been another month, to the backdrop of this huge national and global fight against coronavirus that continues, that has been brilliant for walks, photographs and wildlife sightings and listing for me. Its been a truly very hot and sunny month which has been great, with summer temperatures of late it felt really and signs of summer here and there. This lent itself well as always for taking so many types of photos for me, I’ve so far taken over 270 photos this month. With photos taken each day every day since 19th March still this smashes what could have been my record in April which only just touched 200 in total. 

The blue (by water) and sunny scenes really lent itself well for me to take so many landscape photos I was proud of, as did for landscapes and wildlife photos being able to travel a bit further afield safely due to lessened restrictions and this surely also pushed up the amount of photos I’ve taken overall. On one last note for my photos this month continuing on from some older ones I got in during April I got two more of my photos published in the Hampshire Chronicle in the Hampshire Chronicle Camera club page of a Magpie which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago and a Lakeside Mute Swan photo from this month I have literally just seen a copy of the latter in there as I write this. Alongside Twitter and Tumblr the Facebook camera club group among a few others have been a wonderful community to be a part of and really rewarding for me right now. 

As the main part of my hobby I’ll always mention birds to assess a month and this month I was very happy to see lots at home and on walks and be able to get quite a few decent year ticks despite the whole situation. These were of spring time birds I really needed to see and had waited for, both common and a little bit rarer, and top birds I’d already seen this year cropped up too for sensational wildlife moments. I have seen nine bird species for the first time this year in May, up from April and my most in a month since February. This meant my year list which had been the highest amount of birds I’d seen on given dates compared to my previous years before lockdown recovered and confirmed its place within my top 6 year lists based on what I had seen on these dates getting back into the top 4 at times too like it is right now. 

I’ve continued a smashing development in my butterfly season, year list wise its way out in front two butterflies ahead of what I had seen last year at this stage my highest ever butterfly year list total making it the highest amount of butterflies I’ve ever seen at the end of May. I really feared for my butterfly year a sacrifice I was more than happy to make of course when the need for lockdown became apparent just as spring truly dawned. But with further afield walks possible just in time to get to certain habitats to try for certain species coupled with seeing a lot the butterflies I might normally see at further afield locations more locally I have only so far not seen one butterfly that based on previous years I would have probably done at this point and that one we usually see if anywhere in the south on the Dorset coast understandably somewhere we’ve not been able to get to yet at least. I’m onto summer butterflies now too seeing my first of what I call the summer species the Meadow Brown and Large Skipper this week. I got ten butterfly year ticks in May. Most have fitted into the theme of my butterfly year so far that nearly ever year tick I’ve got has been either my earliest ever or second earliest ever sighting of the species in a year. So that’s why I’m into the summer batch of species a little now and my year list is doing so well by my standards as well I guess. 

Its also been a brilliant month of dragonflies, damselflies, moths and flowers for me too. With such species as the foxgloves another key sign that summer is coming for me and my favourite flower, various orchids, Large Red Damselfly, Beautiful Demoiselle, Southern Hawker and Broad-bodied Chaser to name a few seen throughout the month. I got eight year ticks for this list this month making it the highest I’ve ever ended May on for dragon and damselflies seen too treble what I had seen at this stage last year my highest ever total then as I said yesterday evening. Its been one of my best ever years for seeing and photographing all of these groups I dip into now and again so far. A little deeper delve into beetles occurred for me this month too finding many Swollen-thighed beetles on flowers lots of times my first ever this year seeing lots of Green Tiger beetles at Hut Wood on a glorious day lovely to focus on the little things of nature more for this specific group.  Spiders in my house has lent itself to that theme nicely too. I even had some very close mammal encounters with Roe Deers in thick grass at Lakeside on my daily walks. 

There’s not much change next month. I will very likely be working at home the whole way through it still so I expect to see a lot more and take lots of photos still. I should have some long overdue annual leave too the final week of June which should have been our Anglesey holiday which we’ve rightfully postponed until next year. I hope to get to explore some brilliant places on walks that week too. Thanks for all your immense support again this month, I wish you all well and hope you are staying safe.

[edge-lorde]

original vampire bullshit

part...... 1? EDIT: PART 2 HERE    part 3 here  part 4 here

idk i wrote like 5 pages of rambling about vampire biology with a bit of disjointed theory at the beginning. i didnt even get into anything orcs related or any of the history or how the world works, but its very long.

if anyone seems interested to know the other stuff, ill write more.

until then:

Vampires. What are they? = sentient viruses.

In this world we are assuming that all viruses are living things, but are descended from NOT the same common ancestor as all other forms of life on earth, which is why they are so weird and don't match up with what we describe life and living things to be. 

Here is a list of what makes a living thing in current science:

are made of one or more cells. 

need energy to stay alive. 

respond to stimuli in their environment.

grow and reproduce.

maintain a stable internal environment.

I don't actually know how many of those things do apply to viruses, but the point is that we defined what a living thing is, and if evolution had gone a little differently, perhaps we would have made a different definition. 

In this world, let's say that all normal viruses like the flu and stuff exist, but there are also ones that don’t. There’s a lot of bullshit science things people smarter than me have figured out about viruses that i don’t have the patience to read. Suffice it to say that for now, vampirism is a form of virus that does not just take over single cells or particular tissues in order to reproduce, but entire organisms. 

In this case, it only effects humans but there could be many similar viruses in this world that work the same way. Basically it's like a mutual thing where, the vampire virus infects a host, and as a result the hosts own reproduction ability is completely shut down, and now they are only able to reproduce via the virus. The host benefits because in human evolution, the body starts to degrade after the age of reproduction. This makes sense because all evolution is is what causes an organism to have more of its DNA survive in the past = what will be alive in the future. 

It benefits the virus for the infected host to be mobile as long as possible because the vampirism virus needs blood exchange from host to host in order to infect. In this way, the infected host being able to travel and make this happen for as long as possible benefits the virus the most, and results in a human that appears to never age and stay in good health long after a human of the same age would have died. 

The human host’s DNA also benefits because even though the original reproduction system is shut down, the virus copies a little bit of the original hosts DNA and transfers it to the next hosts that that person infects. Independent of that, it benefits human populations to have vampires included in society because they live so much longer and can relay information/give extra support from a longer period back in time and for a longer period of time. 

However, nowadays the relationship between vampires and uninfected humans is different and i’ll get to it eventually. 

FIRST: physiology. 

Vampirism is a bone disease. It is passed along through blood contact only. When someone is infected the main thing that changes is that bone marrow stops being able to make new red blood cells, why this would be I'll figure out eventually. To remedy this, they must get their blood through other means. Once infection has taken place, the future vampire will grow new “teeth” otherwise known as “fangs” that connect to their circulatory system. The time period before these new teeth come in is known as the fledgling stage, when a person is considered halfway between human and vampire. More on this later. The end of this stage is signaled when the old human teeth fall out and the new blood-teeth fully emerge. This also usually signals the time when the vampires’ bones will stop making new blood cells. Every vampire has until all their current red blood cells begin to die off to feed and replenish themselves. If they don’t do this, they will die.  If a vampire is unlucky enough to stop making new blood before their teeth are ready they must receive blood in some way or they will super die. 

Vampires are not dead or undead. Magic does not exist in this world, so while getting new blood is a physiological problem that their bodies need to address,  they still need to eat regular food to fuel themselves as well. I thought about making a garlic allergy more common for them just because it would be funny but it actually doesn’t make sense, unfortunately. Vampires can and do eat everything that humans can eat. Raw blood is more palatable for them in taste than it was, and probably do use it more in cuisine as a result, but they can’t gain red blood cells by eating/swallowing blood as food, it must go through their blood fangs or possibly be injected into the bloodstream. 

It also can’t be bad blood-- it must still have living red blood cells and blood types still apply in some sense. When the blood goes through the blood fangs, the body doctors it to a form that won’t get attacked by the body’s immune system, = vampires all have their own, new blood types that are universal receivers to all/most human blood types. For this reason, I feel most animal blood would make a vampire very sick, or perhaps only non-mammal blood? This also makes direct blood transfusion into a vampire via a needle very risky and even likely to make them sick as well. In modern times I imagine that either they have developed a technique of making harvested blood vampire-immune system- friendly before injection, or have a way of injecting the blood directly into their blood-doctoring organ. In any case, blood transfusion is only done on vampires in life or death circumstances. 

I mentioned before that vampires old reproductive systems shut down, that's true. That takes up energy so it's gone. Sex hormones are replaced by vampire hormones that keep organs working. I don’t know enough about biochemistry to say more about how that might work. The more time that goes on, the less clearly masculine or feminine a vampire will look and also the less interested in sex they will be on average. They can still have sex if they want, but the more time that goes on the more medical intervention they may need in order to do it.

There’s a small window of time just after a person has been infected where they are still fertile, for those with sperm that’s until their last batch of them dies off. For those with eggs, it’s usually up until their last ovulation cycle, but in some cases they may still have viable eggs for years afterward that could be harvested and used in IVF, but the longer someone waits the less likely that is to work and the person would need a surrogate, both because the persons uterus may or may not be able to still work and because there's the potential that the unborn baby could be infected by the vampirism virus. That’s a bad thing and I'll explain why in a minute. The kids of new vampires are either infected with vampirism or not, no matter if they have one or two vampire parents. There is no half-vampires in this setting, only full ones and unaffected humans. 

Vampires also age weird. Immediately after being turned, it's like getting a dose of extra youth. As long as one has enough blood, organs that had begun to deteriorate will suddenly get better, reach a state of equilibrium, and then slowly begin to deteriorate at a much slower pace. If they routinely are forced into states of having low amounts of viable blood, they will deteriorate much faster. 

The prime age to be turned is 25 - before someone begins to lose their strength, whenever that is. The aforementioned dose of youth can only do so much, chronic conditions can still affect vampires, though to a lesser degree. 

If a child were to become infected with vampirism, they would skip puberty all together. No matter what age they are, after they are done with their fledgling period, their bones will begin to fuse at the stage they are at and the person will begin to age at the vampire rate as if they were adults. This results in old vampires bitten as kids looking like kids with wrinkles and arthritis. This is why vampire babies are very bad, and super illegal to make. 

In modern times, both adult and child vampires can take hormone treatments to either replace the sex hormones they lost when bitten, or supply the human growth hormones that would allow them to grow up as a human would. In order to get the best result, the latter treatment should be started before the person's bones fuse-- before or just after the end of the fledgling stage. For individuals whose bones have already fused, the treatment may still be recommended for some-- they can still have a puberty but won’t get any taller. 

There is also the issue of the brain. The reason why it's considered optimal for vampires not to be turned until at least 25 is because that is when the brain finishes maturing. Once turned, the vampires brain may also stop maturing. I don't actually know that much about the brain, so this section relies on info that someone knows, but not me. If it's the case that the brain’s maturation is caused by growth hormones, then taking them will let the underage vampire’s brain finish growing. Hooray! If it's just caused by being alive and figuring things out via life experience, hooray! They don’t need any kind of treatment. If it's not caused by either of these concepts, then their brains stop maturing at whatever age they were bitten at and will never go far beyond that. 

For the aging brain, vampirism will initially improve general brain function and temporarily halt dementia. This is because during the fledgling stage, the infected person's brain will begin to detach emotion to their old memories as a human and begin to create new neurons. As a person's memories become less and less personal, they will bond to the vampire who turned them. The exploitation of a fledgling  by their vampire parent is again, super illegal.

The new vampire will essentially lose the person they once were and gain new formative memories during this period. This is a very real physiological process that is difficult to protect against. They will retain all of their old memories, but all emotion attached to them will be lost. Even if a vampire manages to remember their past fondly, if they were to be presented with the people, places, and things that they once loved, they might not even recognize them. If they do, they won’t have an emotional response. It will be as if they know that this person or thing was once important to someone, but was it really to them?

The undead may not exist in this world but that doesn't mean becoming a vampire isn’t a serious loss to a person's humanity. This loss primes the new vampire to find a new place in life with their vampire community......

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Fic-Writer / Vid-Maker Meme

Tagged by @educatedinyellow and @gailbsanders, thank you!

Author/Vidder Name: sanguinity

Fandoms You Write For: Lately it’s mostly book!verse Hornblower and ACD!Holmes (although the ACD!Holmes is largely behind the scenes with a long-form WIP that I’ve been focusing on). I also write for assorted small Holmesian fandoms as the whim or prompts take me, and I used to write fairly prolifically for Elementary, before that show wore me into the ground with how persistently they don’t care about Joan Watson. I’ve written a fair bit of Strange Empire, some Doctor Who / Torchwood, and quite a few one-offs in random fandoms, from the Oz books to Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Fandoms I Vid For: Mostly one-offs or small batches that overlap with the fandoms I write for: Holmesian multiverse, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, plus a number of rarer Festivids-qualifying fandoms like The Middleman or Noah’s Arc. 

Where You Post Fic: Most of it is on AO3, excepting some three-sentence and five-sentence fics that I’ve never collected. 

Where You Post Vids: Variously Vimeo, YouTube, and DailyMotion, depending on who threw a fit about what copyrighted music the week I posted it, but all my vids are listed at AO3.

Most Popular One-Shot: “The Sincerity of Dust,” a BBC Sherlock Mystrade flash-fic I banged out one morning and which then went on to eat Cleveland. It has 1400 kudos and is working on 14,000 hits. Its nearest rival is “Score: Q to 12,″ an Elementary flash-fic featuring Sherlock and Joan playing Calvinscrabble, which performed modestly on AO3 but cleaned up on tumblr to the tune of 1700 notes.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: “Holocene Park,” an Elementary case fic featuring dinosaurs under the streets of New York City. If I’m remembered in the Elementary fandom for anything, it’s probably for this or Calvinscrabble.

Most Popular Vid: “Something Good (Will Come From That),” my Holmes/Watson multiverse vid. It has 10K plays, the AO3 page has 2.5K hits, and the tumblr page has almost 800 notes. It escaped my corner of pseudonym-based AO3-centric fandom and has made the rounds of the Sherlockian scions on Facebook, as well as being rec’d on non-fannish websites in French, German, and Japanese. For a little while there it was making me anxious with how popular it got -- at the height of its popularity, I was worrying my mom was going to email it to me. After it hit it big I almost completely stopped making things for a while, because I was pretty sure that nothing else I made would be even half that good ever again. Happily, that turned out to be a stupid reason to not make things, and so I started making things again.

Favorite Story You Wrote/Vid You Made: Yeah, sorry, no, my brain burns out on “favorite” questions, especially ones that have no criteria. I’ll just refer you to my Fic/Vid Speed-Dating Score Card, which can be construed as a list of my favorite works on various axes, and is still fairly accurate despite being a year old. (Scariest nowadays is probably “Tea for Two,” a Moriarty-centric story from this last round of Holmestice.)

Story You Were Nervous to Post: “Any Service Required,” which is dark Bush/Hornblower porn. I always feel hideously exposed when publishing porn -- I’m nervous about posting it even in the best of cases. But what with this being dark-fic, I was half-expecting the self-appointed morals police who get prescriptive about “healthy” relationships to show up and make a stink. Or along similar lines, I was fearing that followers who are used to a certain kind of thing from me will look at this one, think it base trash, and lose respect for me over it. I’m happy to say that nothing like that has happened so far, and while readership has been light, I’m fine with that: I’d rather a story have a small readership who is genuinely into it than a large readership who isn’t, and I’d like to believe that this story’s small readership is mostly due to people taking a look at the tags and making good decisions about the kind of thing they enjoy reading. 

How Do You Choose Your Titles: BY ANY MEANS I CAN MAKE WORK. My preference is to grab a meaningful phrase from the text, but I’ll also use quotes and popular phrases, sometimes straight-up and sometimes with a twist, if it seems a decent fit for the story. Ideally, a title will speak to some deeper truth about the story, but when push comes to shove, I’ll settle for a title that is short, clean, and memorable: basically, anything that I and others can remember without having to look it up all the damn time. (This is my main problem with people using lines of poetry or song lyrics as titles: they tend to register in my brain as generic word salad, and in many cases I couldn’t say without looking it up what the title actually was, let alone what it had to do with the story.)

Do You Outline: For long or complex stories, sure, yes. If there are many scenes or multiple chapters, I tend to jot down a few lines listing out the succession of scenes or chapters; for “The Next World,” whose main body is a long and rambly conversation, I had an outline that listed out every twist and turn of that convo. The outline for “Langstroth on Bees” (WIP, currently 58K) is a monster of a thing, listing out the internal timeline (five years of current action plus another ten of backstory), various promises I’ve made that I need to deliver on, assorted events that I want to remember to include, and rough ideas about where chapter breaks should maybe fall. Given that I’ve been working on that story for five years now, often with breaks from it of nearly a year, that outline has saved my ass. I guarantee you that without it, I would have picked up this story at some point, tried to remember where I was going with it, come up with nothing much, and shelved it permanently. If anything, I really should outline more often -- I have a few long-standing drafts in my WIP folder that I just... don’t remember where I was going with that. I remember that I did have a destination in mind, yes, but what exactly? WHO KNOWS. Btw, my outlines are living documents -- I revise them often, as my understanding of the story develops. In fact, revising the outline is one of many tools for understanding where a story is going and what is still needed to bring it together.

How many of your fanworks are…

Complete: 92 stories or story collections (I have a few AO3 “stories” that are actually collected ficlets from tumblr or Sherlock60), and 26 vids and vidlets, 

In-Progress: Nothing published to AO3 -- it makes me crazy to have a partially-published WIP. My drafts folder has 36 partially completed stories in it, and there are probably a half-dozen vids that I started but haven’t finished.

Coming Soon: Four? For various values of “coming soon.” I have two Hornblower stories that are mostly done (one for the Tegmore verse and another for the Kraken verse), and I’ve been working steadily on “Langstroth on Bees” in the hopes that I’ll finish it this year. And I’m signed up for Remix Revival -- whatever I do for that will probably be the very-most-next thing.

Do You Accept Prompts: Yes! Although I have only a 1/3 to 1/2 completion rate on prompts -- I do hope that no one minds that too terribly! But I’ll actively solicit prompts from time to time -- to celebrate something, or if I’m having a shit day and want to turn it around -- and some of my best stuff has come from prompts people have given me. I never ever guarantee filling them (see my above mentioned completion rate), but if someone wants to prompt me something, my ask box is open. Even if the prompt never gets filled, I still get a warm flutter of “They want to play with me!” from it.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: “Langstroth on Bees,” a 58K-and-counting Holmes/Watson retirement fic that I’ve been working for five years. I added a solid 13K to it this month, and have maybe 20K left to go -- I’m hope-hope-hoping to have it done this year. But I’ve gotten far enough into it that “Langstroth” has finally begun overlapping the territory covered in “From Allegany,” and by the end of this chapter I’ll have passed it entirely. Then I’ll be in unwritten territory, wheee! (Speaking of titles, I never really intended to call this thing “Langstroth on Bees” -- that’s just a working title for my drafts folder. But enough of you now know it by that name that I think I��m going to have to stick with it? So I’m desperately trying to figure out how to justify it. ONE OF MANY THINGS TO DO IN THIS DRAFT.)

Tag Five Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions As Well: @beanarie @quipxotic @phoenixfalls @xserpx @amindamazed And of course anyone else who wants to play!