#At least I'm learning to text edit on Tumblr

[goat-guy-tm]

I was talking about deep analysis of Curly and Jimmy's dynamic in my discord server (which you should join), and I thought "Hey! Maybe tumblr would like this!" So, here this is! It's a rough copy paste of what I said, edited slightly to fit better in a post format:

Also long post warning.

I feel like because a lot of ppl haven't experience people like Jimmy irl they have a hard time understanding why Curly acts the way he does, and by no means is it still 100% okay, but when you know someone that's been mentally manipulating you for years if can become easy to be tunnel visioned to they pain they cause others. I think a big example of that is when Anya shows concern over Jimmy's last psych evaluation but when Curly does it Jimmy (from the little text we get about it) tells him it was just all jokes, which could have been, but when it's just Jimmy and Curly it's much lighter in perspective, because Curly believes him, and Curly sees no reason for Jimmy to lie to him about his mental state (which he obviously was doing as he has quite the psychotic break a few days later)

Not to mention, Jimmy gets quite aggressive at Curly when he notices that Curly is rethinking his career. He activly calls him horrible things for 'not appreciating his position and wanting something new' (<not direct words but overview), when if Jimmy was a good friend he would have been talking about it with Curly. Instead he shames Curly for it, that in Jimmy's mind it's unfair for Curly to not be happy cause Curly has a better seat than him, but he'll frame it as them, the whole crew, to make Curly feel bad about it.

Like, when the rest of the crew learned they were going to be let go after that haul, none of them were really mad at Curly for him being the only one to be given a recommendation and compensation. Yeah Anya and Swansea are upset about it, but only Jimmy is the one to call out Curly for being the only one to relieve special treatment, when it's pretty established Curly is/was one of Pony Expresses' best pilots. But Jimmy doesn't talk about himself during the party. Swansea mentions how unfair it is that PE is throwing them to the side after all these years, Anya almost has a panic attack over not having any money in savings, Daisuke isn't really phased since he's only an intern, but Jimmy gets mad at CURLY, not Pony Express. He even full on calls it Curly running away, as if Pone Express closing them down is Curly's fault for wanting something different for his life

I mean what's wild to me is I'm p sure Curly even has a conversation with Jimmy in the game about how he hasn't been handed anything and has been working hard for where he is. Curly never out right really says it, but he does make mention of both of them working hard. Then again Curly doesn't talk about himself a lot even in conversation (minus the "on the edge of a bridge with your feet in the cememnt" one cause Jimmy made it about him)

When going back through the playthrough, I realized Jimmy is such a well written villian because he convinces even Curly that Curly is the villian here, the one in the wrong. Curly isn't perfect, he is quite literally the imperfect victim, but Jimmy is such a big manipulator that he convinces Curly it's HIS fault all this is happening, that Curly needs JIMMY so that he can fix all this, only for Curly to realizes what Jimmy's been doing when he finds Jimmy curled up outside the cockpit with a ship wide system failure blaring.

Buddy Corl: "Hey, just an idea, would Jimmy keep Anya alive so that Curly can stay alive? He berates her medical expertise but never elects to care for Curly beyond feeding him pills."

I'd say 50/50. A big thing is Jimmy quite obviously doesn't view Anya as a person, or at the very least views her as bottom of the barrel useless, but after the crash and with Curly how he was, there was no way he'd be able to do it and survive, because the entire time Swansea has the axe and Jimmy even recognizes that if he steps out of line too far within the lines of "I'm captian so I say so", then Swansea would basically usurp him. His own personal caring for Curly was most likely to keep him suffering. He voted on keeping Curly alive, and unless he was just trying to blend in with the others, then he did it because he wanted to keep Curly suffering.

Friend Corl again: "There was a Tumblr post that claimed the hands of the others were missing (the overview angle of Curly on the table was used as evidence) but this could just be the angle of the scene itself as he was going to die shortly after."

Hm, it could have been either the angle, a rendering choice from the devs or Jimmy could have cut their hands off. Idk why he would only go for the hands though, since he seems to show full intrest in cannablism. But you could chalk it up to a concept of keeping them from being able to do anything. Yes they are dead but Jimmy is far gone enough to believe that cutting their hands off could still make him better because they can't do anything to change what he's done.

Anyways that's it! For some context on why this is so important to me, from elementary school to the end of middle school I had a 'friend' that I was extremely close with. She was a horrible person who mentally, emotionally and physically tortured me for years, but since I was a child I never saw anything wrong with it. I would even rush to her defense when people would point out to me that what she was doing was bad. Now a days I hate her, and I love to talk shit about her, but I think a lot of people don't fully take in Curly's actions because they haven't gone through that (and they shouldn't, mind you).

I feel for Curly a lot, because I see myself in him in how he tries so desperately to protect someone he didn't even realize was killing him. Curly isn't perfect, and believe me I wasn't perfect when I was friends with her. She made me act out against people to gain her approval, she made me bitter and mean to others, do things I would never do. Very few people acknowledge what an over powering manipulator that has been controlling you for years can do to a person.

[wings-of-ink]

Hello, my friends!

Just wanted to pop in with some info and updates.

*The "Cursed Birthday" won the 2k follower celebration poll. Sorry dads! I don't have an ETA for that just yet. I may write it here and there until the end of the year as the motivation strikes. I think the easiest way to tell the tale would be from Oswin's POV or even a shifting POV between him and Da (Kip). I'll decide for sure once I begin to write it. Also playing with the idea of doing this in Twine to make it playable. That way you could put your MC's specifics in for maximum emotional damage.

*I will still write things about the dads though, so all my Papa and Da fans out there won't be left in the dark forever.

*I will be "patching" Chapter 5 in the near future. I redid Zahn's scene (again) which gave me such a headache on release day. I formatted the beginnings in a much more streamlined way and fixed some bugs. When I have more time to sit and go through error reports, and make more corrections to typos, grammar, and code - then I will put the patch through.

*All chapters will be getting a scrub for issues in the text in the coming months. I will do my best to find them, but self-editing is very difficult (there's good reason that professional editors exist). In the future, I may need to ask for testers/editors.

*ASKS will be changing a bit. I do not know the full extent of how because it's a trial by fire. The rules will be updated as I come across things. But, here's why:

Spoiler prevention - as much as it is possible, I want to limit spoiling content for both new and existing readers. Not just for the plot points that are developing, but also for our mystery suitor who will have a lot of unraveling in the coming chapters. I will probably make a specific tag for answers that may contain spoilers, but some of the issue is the information in the Ask itself, which I can't hide. I may opt to compile these in a big post like once a month or so. This way, if anyone does not want to see anything spoilery, it's easier to avoid.

Time management - reaction asks specifically will remain limited and they will honestly have to be a lower priority depending on the condition of my inbox. I am very sorry for this, but these can take an inordinate amount of time. I write this IF in my downtime from work and personal life, and I also use those moments to manage Tumblr. I need to balance those so I can work toward releasing more of the IF.

Patreon - I still plan to give Patreon a go probably starting January. This will help me fund things for the game, such as art, and help me justify spending even more of my time writing chapters and extras. But like everything else, I will need to allot time to work on these things.

Personal Development - I'm taking a coding class! I can work on it at my leisure and it won't take a ton of time during the week, but it will take me out of my Tumblr time a little bit I think. Fingies crossed, I will learn a lot that will help me code a better game for you!

*Inbox - I have several Asks awaiting responses about chapter 5. As noted above, I am holding these due to spoilers to give readers a chance to catch up. (I may opt to compile these in one large post.)

Anyway, that's all for now (it's at least all I currently remember, lol).

Take care, all!

~Lunan ^_^

[em-harlsnow]

all my works - the master list!

here's a list of all my current works on AO3:

what I'm currently working on: iron bars

fluff/humour:

only you (not your brother) - someone mistakes Mickey and Lip for being married, and neither are very happy about that

butterflies - a collection of small, sweet actions in their married life

I like taking pictures (as long as you're in them) - Ian has many photos of Mickey on his phone and Lip discovers them

Welcome Home (outside POV) - all the Gallaghers' reactions for Mickey coming home from prison in season 10

I see you as you see yourself (outside POV) - Fiona's boyfriend Sean's point of view on Gallavich in season 6 as if they never broke up

study group (outside POV) - Liam's view on gallavich and Mickey when his friends come over, plus their reactions to them

old love (outside POV) - Trevor runs into Ian and Mickey in a coffee shop

moments - my Tumblr drabbles all in one place

don’t surprise me - (outside POV) Iggy’s view on Gallavich in season 4-5

mostly fluff, light angst:

you're all talk - mickey talks a lot, and not many people realise it. Ian just loves it

Gallaghers and group chats - text conversations between various Gallagher family members over the years (ranging from snapchats between gallavich and a family group chat)

not everything's a struggle - Mickey still suffers from his childhood injuries even years later, and Ian convinces him to get some help

Mystery of Artist Mickey Milkovich - Ian discovering old drawings that Mickey made of him

what do you know? (outside POV) - Tami gets snowed in with the Gallaghers and learns about Ian and Mickey

lilac shirts and bart simpson - mickey hates working at old army, but then he gets offered a job at a tattoo shop

angst:

It's Dark Tonight (will you stay?) - Ian witnesses Mickey getting hurt by Terry and takes him back to the Gallagher house to look after him set in season 3 (MY FIRST EVER FIC)

motherhood and what comes of it - mickey's mother returns after all these years and wants to see mickey set in season 10

iron bars (WIP) - Ian and mickey's time in prison in season 9, including difficult conversations and playfully reuniting

dark times - mickey dealing with a panic attack while Ian helps

shower - mickey and Ian living together dealing with their issues in season 4/5

find a place to stay - mickey goes to Ian after a run-in with his dad

hearts and the strings they pull - Ian sends Mickey voicemails while he’s in Mexico

miscellaneous:

I'll fight everyone but you (AU) - Ian and mickey are in opposing gangs and have to work out how to be together

white knights and friends - just a season 3 ep 5 canon divergence of mickey protecting mandy (my absolute least favourite of all, I wrote it in like an hour and never checked it over)

cardinal sin is a vivid red - depiction of mickey's feelings when Ian leaves for the army (I tried to use a different writing style)

heard you could save me (AU) (WIP) (not updated often, but will be eventually)- superpower AU where Ian and mickey are enemies who slowly become something more

group projects:

s'more of you (AU) (WIP) - Mickey and Ian meet for the first time when they work at a camp together in the summer

my personal faves (should I have favourites of my own work?):

motherhood and what comes of it

welcome home

iron bars

Gallaghers and group chats

dark times

love you all, I'll be editing this as I go!

<3

[blinkees]

Hello! I just want to say your blinkie style is a huge inspiration for me! I love how everything looks, and its making me consider using aseprite instead of clip studio :D Do you have any tutorials, beginners guides, or other advice you can give to someone who's specifically wanting to make blinkies in the program? Thank you for all your cool art <3 - @m0dem0n (its a side blog so i cant ask from it OTL, pls @ me when you reply!)

THAT'S SO AWESOME, I'm so happy to have inspired you, @m0dem0n !! :'D

I've got a very quick and rough guide linked in my pinned post, but it's really basic and doesn't touch on any sort of 'advanced' techniques, so I'll go a bit more in-depth below the cut. I'll also include a 'speedpaint' of how I make my blinkies!

Before we get started, just a quick disclaimer: I am not really a professional! I love pixel art, but I really am just a hobbyist. Everything I've learned about Aseprite has been through trial and error. That said,

I've put enough hours into it to have picked up a few tricks, LMAO.

The pacing in this video is... bad. You'll need to pause to read all the text, sorry ;o; I'm not really familiar with making videos, but I did my best. (there is no audio, jsyk!)

A few things I didn't mention in the video:

If you plan on drawing any sort of pixel art graphics for your blinkie, CHECK THE "pixel perfect" BOX AT THE TOP!!! it's a magical option that helps you avoid 'doubled up' lines. example:

If you want several color versions of your blinkie (like how I tend to upload 2-3 versions of the same blinkie in pink, blue, green, etc), select every layer you'd like to change the color of (usually it's background, border, and text, but usually NOT the image), then use ctrl+u to open the hue menu. shift the hue here (it's the slider labeled "H"), and once you confirm, all of your selected layers will shift colors! Note that the preview may only show a single layer updating colors, but when you confirm, all selected layers will update.

You can use the alpha slider under the color wheel to select a fully transparent color. Combine this with the gradient tool for cool effects, but remember that you cannot have a *partially transparent* pixel on a *fully transparent* background and still save it as a gif. So if you have a partially transparent red on a solid black background, it'll work! But a partially transparent red on a fully transparent background will not.

When you save your blinkie, make sure you use the "save as" feature, not the "export" one.

I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you save every single blinkie as BOTH a .ase and a .gif. A gif will not save layers!! So if you want to edit your blinkie later, the .ase file will save your layers and make your life so much easier. Learn from my mistakes. ;O;

Aaaaand here's the speedpaint! This is what my process of making a blinkie looks like in real time, starting with my little flashing border template.

i had to shrink that speedpaint gif down so much to get it small enough for tumblr to accept that you can't really tell what's happening in it anymore LMAO, but it IS still real speed at least! also the weird distortion on the color picker is what happens if you have a non-dithered gradient with too wide a range. it clumps different values together to reduce colors and makes it look bad. that's why i recommend using dithering, or using a *very slight* gradient!

I know that was a lot of text but hopefully some of it is useful! o/ i'm gonna go lay down now LOL

[submalevolentgrace]

Question about hand prostheses; would it be more worthwhile to get them if the character had lost BOTH hands, or would it still be easier to just learn to do stuff with their feet/mouth/whatever? Does how far up the arm the severing point is make a difference to whether it's worth it, like a wrist is relatively easy to do things with but a shoulder is not? (Also, I recommend Sigdi Thundershield from Order of the Stick as a character who doesn't use an arm prosthetic and manages just fine without.)

i get that there's no way for any one asker to know how often i get asks like this, and probably 2/3rds of the time i don't even answer them, but when i do i like to try and mix up my responses based on what i can glean from the way the question was asked. if we're going to call ourselves writers, let's engage with the text given. so here's what i've got this time:

i have already written out my opinions on the topic of upper limb prostheses in fiction. it's long, carefully and purposefully constructed to deliver all the information and emotion i think possible and necessary... short of sitting down one on one for hours at a time of interview style back and forth to really dig down into it. you've ostensibly read it - that writing, my pinned post - because you're responding to it and had to metaphorically step around it to get to my ask box. and yet... i'd say in it, i overtly expresses 3 major themes; the first two of which already answer your questions, and the third of which should hopefully have inspired you to not need to ask them at all.

so based on that, and how you constructed your question, from my perspective i reckon there's one of two possibilities going on here:

1) you've already written/conceptualised a character with one or more cool robot arms, and you're unwilling to do the introspection or self-editing to change that and 'let go of them', so you're looking for loopholes and where exactly the line is drawn. you want permission that it's okay from that tumblr blog linked on those 'how to write disabled characters' lists. why not just accept responsibility as an author, and change your character? or...

2) you want to write a character that has a robot arm or two because it lets you score Disability Representation Points with your audience for including a Disabled™ character, but like, not in any awkward or difficult way that including someone actually disabled would, like a real amputee or someone in a wheelchair or blind-without-magic or whatever. why not just write a disabled character, with a disability you understand?

neither one of these explanations for your ask reflects on you particularly well as a crafter of fiction, so hopefully i'm just being a pretentious judgemental bitch and you composed this after only half skimming my writing while barely awake, or some fourth other option that makes you look better.

but then again, in response to an essay where i laid out my feelings on medical abuse in pursuit of normativity and and a society that treats me as barely human because of the shape of my limbs, you suggested to me a character whose backstory seems to be 'trauma porn for easy pathos', from a webcomic that, in my time at least, was famous for jokes like 'a lead sheet blocks detect evil so you can't prove he's a psychopath' and 'the gang tries increasingly insane ways to spy on the genitals of their gender ambiguous companion'.

which is to say, i'm fucking tired of self-described writers apparently not really thinking about anything they're writing; in their work, in their joyful suggestions, or in their clumsy asks to a clearly hurt individual on an obviously sensitive topic.

[weaselandfriends]

Have you thought about opening a Patreon? I would pay a lot of money if it meant getting your stories more regularly...

My prose sucks, yours is spectacular. How do I get better at it? I try reading a lot, but I'm starting to conclude there's only so much you can pick up via absorption without some kind of formal instruction.

1. I'm not especially interested in opening a Patreon, and here's why. First, I work a reliable full time job that isn't too demanding on me, so I'm already financially stable. My following right now likely isn't large enough to sustain me full time, so I wouldn't be able to use Patreon as a primary income source anyway. Even if my following was larger, though, it would be a gamble to quit my job and sustain myself solely on fan donations. Ultimately, it would probably be more stressful for me than my current situation, and I could see my writing quality suffer under the pressure of needing to constantly output material on a monthly basis. On top of that, I'm not sure if sustaining myself on Patreon would actually increase the regularity of my stories. Unlike seemingly most authors (go look at Alexander Wales' Tumblr for an example), I'm not an "ideas guy." I don't get a lot of story ideas. The ideas I do get I nurture for years, slowly adding details to them until they're ready to write. Cockatiel x Chameleon was an idea I got in 2015 (published 2022). Modern Cannibals was an idea I got in 2012 (published 2017). When I am actually writing a story, I'm usually able to consistently output content, even with my job. The limiting factor for me isn't my available time in the day, but my brain. I appreciate the sentiment, though! One of my favorite comments, which I received on Cockatiel x Chameleon, went something like "You should be on humanity's payroll."

2. My prose sucked too. When I was a teen, I would write stories and my classmates would laugh at how badly written they were. In college, I couldn't even get my friends or family to read my stories. (I once described one of my stories to my grandmother and she said, "Well that doesn't sound any good at all.") At age 18, I decided to start reading classic literature. Only classic literature, at a rate of 50 pages a day, every day. I read all kinds, from all sorts of time periods and countries. I read everything from Homer to David Foster Wallace. And while I read, I wrote. I wrote badly. In college I wrote novels that pretty shamelessly imitated the prose styles of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. By the time I started writing Fargo (which is a story where I think my prose was still improving), I had written nine complete novels and had read somewhere between 200 and 300 works of classic literature. I didn't have any formal training, at least in terms of writing fiction. I was an English/Geography dual major, and from my English classes I learned how to close read a text, and in general I learned how to write an academic essay. In my final year of college I took an MFA-styled creative writing workshop, but by then I was pretty much beyond what it could teach me and I don't feel like I learned much of anything from it.

Other than reading and writing, I started editing. One of my later pre-Bavitz novels I finished, then went back and edited assiduously. I took a 100,000 word rough draft and over 14 editing passes pared it down to 70,000 words. That was massive for improving my prose, as it forced me to engage with my story on a word-by-word level. Every single word fell under my scrutiny and thus I had to grapple with how valuable, how good that word was. What I learned from that experience was massive for improving my prose going forward.

I think it's entirely possible for someone to improve their prose just through the basics of reading, writing, and editing. Julirites, the author of Fargo fanfic London, has massively improved her prose over the course of the story. It didn't even take her nine failed novels to do it, either. Be willing to experiment. Be willing to fail. Don't be afraid of someone laughing at you for writing purple prose. Imitate authors you like, that's the first step toward developing your own unique style.

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: Ilyecham

Presenting the results for the Ilyecham -- a name which continues to look wrong in Tumblr's sans-serif font. That's:

Ilyecham

There we go. As usual, if you're not sure what this is about, you may find an explanation at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting . The text from which the artists are working is here:

I saw one post saying something along the lines of "if these things are going to keep being birds, I'm going to have to learn more about bird-drawing." I regret to tell you that the Aberdeen Bestiary has a whole section on birds, so they are indeed going to keep coming up. They make up, like, a third of the entries I have queued. Sorry. Or, if you wanted motivation to practice your avian drawing skills, you're welcome.

Also, sorry this post is a couple hours later than usual -- I had Other Obligations this evening.

Anyway, here's the art, in roughly chronological order as per usual.

@embervoices (link to post here) has drawn both a colorful adult and a less-colorful juvenile, and moreover provides us with a quick vocabulary lesson, which I always enjoy because I'm a language nerd. (They also wrote their own image description -- thank you for that, saves me some time.) I absolutely love that the Ilyecham "greedily seizing larger birds" is here represented by a hatchling aggressively going after a "bewildered goose". The linked post includes some notes on design decisions also.

@miapcain (link to post here) has done another beautifully stylized picture, showing multiple Ilyechams and their aggressive behavior. I love the style of course, and I also like that these have an almost sandpiper-like body plan with long beaks, which they apparently use to stab other birds -- or at least I think that's what the one in the bottom right is doing, which I think is pretty cool. The blue heads are a nice visual touch also, I think. The kind of tiled geometric background feels very period-appropriate, exactly the sort of thing you'd see in a particularly richly-illuminated manuscript.

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) notes that there aren't many visual details in the description, so she decided to draw a regular bird of prey and then add a wizard hat to indicate that it is armed with spirit, which I love. I actually laughed out loud when I saw her explanation of why the hat. Excellent choices, no notes. Also I think this is a pretty good bird drawing on its own merits, hat aside.

I continue to enjoy @rautavaara's drawing style (link to post here). I really like the way the rays of the sun are drawn here, specifically. Their Ilyecham is molting in an extremely dramatic fashion, missing whole clumps of feathers, which I think looks quite cool and communicates the idea well. (I worry a little bit about how long it's going to be able to stay in the sky with so many wing feathers missing, but they're apparently quite unpleasant birds, so maybe a rough landing is well deserved.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has drawn us a whole family of Ilyechams. Also in excellent medieval style, as usual -- the stylized drawing are kind of all in a cluster in this post. I like the plants; coolest-capybara is quite good at drawing plants in a way that looks just like the Unidentifiable Medieval Foliage you'd expect in a manuscript. We can see one parent exhibiting its molting behavior, another fighting a much larger bird, and three poor little juveniles walking off looking a bit dejected. Hits all the highlights of the description very well, I think. The linked post includes a brief description and a few close-up details of the image.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) would like to acknowledge that this is "kind of a mess" and "the wings are just gonna look like that", which I think is an example of artists holding themselves to very high standards because this looks very realistically rendered to me and I have no idea what might be wrong with it. That's a damn fine bird drawing right there. The linked post includes a pretty thoughtful explanation of which behaviors in the provided description are reminiscent of which birds, and how silverhart has combined elements of a few different birds to make this one.

@karthara (link to post here) has drawn us what is unmistakably a bird of prey, and briefly explains in the linked post what birds this is inspired by. I think the feather pattern is very interesting, particularly the blue on the head. Something about the way the shape of the pattern interacts with the bird's eye looks very cool. A certain je ne sais quoi, if you will.

@hairycarrot (link to post here) has done a pretty cool-looking sun in the corner of the page. One of the unexpected things I'm enjoying about these is that multiple artists decided to have fun with how to draw the sunshine in which the Ilyecham spreads its wings. Poor little guy falling out of the nest there... buddy I don't think that one is quite ready to fly.

@treesurface (link to post here) shows us an Ilyecham creating a breeze by beating their wings, as described in the entry, which I like. Their Ilyecham is equipped with a dangerous-looking pointed beak for the purpose of fighting larger birds, and the look in its eyes definitely helps with that impression. The linked post provides an explanation of design decisions.

@strixcattus (link to post here) notes that the description provided reminds them of a number of small raptors, but that all of those raptors look kind of alike, so they've given their Ilyecham a striking feather pattern to stand out from the crowd. I really like it, the pattern is excellent. I also like that we're seeing the return of an animal from a previous entry: that thing it's grabbing in its claws is a Holghras chick from a couple weeks ago. (Though I'm slightly torn because I like those little muppets, and the Holghras has enough problems without being attacked by an Ilyecham.) Strixcattus has again provided us with a modernized description of the creature in question, which is amazing as always. If any of y'all enjoy worldbuilding half as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to read these.

@moustawott (link to post here) has drawn us a very small-looking bird here, performing stationary flight to aid in its molting behavior. The feather pattern is very good, in my opinion, and I like how the molted feathers are kind of blowing away behind it. Also an excellently-rendered bird in general.

@pomrania (link to post here) envisions the Ilyecham as looking old and grumpy to fit the vibe of its described behavior -- an early draft of this drawing includes a speech bubble reading "get a job you freeloaders", which I think hits the mark pretty well. (For early drafts and additional commentary on the design, see the linked post) I like the eyebrows, I like the severe color scheme over most of the body paired with the colorful wings, and I like that this is the closest to what I pictured when I read about the Ilyecham, namely this:

(Not that it's an eagle, but you know. Vibes.)

@mobileleprechaun (link to post here) has very clearly depicted a small bird attacking a larger one. They note "heavy Season’s Greason’s inspo" and you know what? I totally see it. I also enjoy the decision to make the larger bird a dodo.

Another cool pen drawing from @cheapsweets (link to post here), who also has some thoughts about how this particular nib works for drawing. Pretty well done birds, I think. I enjoy the one on the right just shoving the juvenile out of the nest, and the stylized sun is also pretty cool. The linked post includes a detailed explanation of the design decisions, and also has some questions about the entry that are probably rhetorical, but I figure I can try and shed some light on a couple of them anyway.

Again, we have a lot of behaviours, but nothing in terms of a physical description… Did the author just thing ‘everyone knows what birds look like’, was this just a bird that the reader was expected to be familiar with, or were they all like 'I’m not describing yet another bird… :p’?

I think it's a little of all of those, and also that the author tends to be more concerned with the symbolism of the animal than naturalistic description. So if, say, the color of its feathers doesn't have a symbolic meaning attached to it, the author won't bother to tell you. Related to that...

Hang on, this is going to be some kind of inspirational virtuous animal thing, isn’t is… :p I can imagine some medieval scribe writing 'and so, the ilyecham represents the cardinal virtue of fortitude’ or something…

Interestingly, this bird's parenting style is basically the only part of its description that doesn't have any symbolic explication attached. The molting in the south wind gets, like, pages of material though, including the fantastic assertion that it's the south wind because God comes from the south but the Devil comes from the north. Literally, that's what it says:

God, it is said, will come from the south. The Devil from the north; God from the south.

Moving on, let's take a look at the Aberdeen Bestiary illustration.

Honestly, that also kind of looks like Sam the Eagle.

However, this is the entry for the Hawk. Yep. Turns out hawks are inherently opposed to the welfare state, which... actually lines up more than it should with present-day politics.

I don't have much more to add here, because most of my thoughts on hawks boil down to "Tobias was a pretty good character in the Animorphs series".

Pretty sure that's not how wings work, anatomically. But nevertheless. End of post.

[crystalyssa35]

A General Guide to Writing Well, Now, & Consistently

In all my years writing, I have struggled with keeping writing as a fun and healthy habit. It took me five years (and many instances of writer's block and giving up) to actually have a basic set of guidelines to keep my writing going...

And I would like to share these "rules" with you all today!

Now, a bit of a disclaimer: developing the quality of your writing skills comes with time, research, and thinking. It may sound frustrating to hear, and you may hear it often, but the only way to get better at writing is to write and read often. Many times, just by jotting a silly thought down or reading fanfiction, you can spawn ideas without realizing it.

Now, to the list of tips that (I hope) will help you on your writing endeavors!

If you are not having fun writing your story, your readers will not have fun reading it. It sounds silly, but it's true! If you're enjoying your writing, you're more likely to write more and input more ideas into it!

Even if you have people to check your works, reread them on your own anyway. This may be a little frustrating tip for some, but let me tell you: I used to HATE checking my own stuff. The worst way I learned that personally checking it is a necessity was when my aunt checked it and pointed out tens of mistakes within my grammar, storyline, and characters. Check yo work, it will save you a LOT of embarrassment in the future.

Write anything. Read everything. As ambiguous and obscure as it will sound, it makes sense with context. As I mentioned before, the only way to get better at writing is to write and read often. Write anything your mind desires, that's simple enough. But read EVERYTHING; not only books, blogs, and articles, but also games, texts with friends, billboards, pictures with text, and (sorry, students) even homework as well. You'll be surprised how much your vocabulary expands when you actually pay attention to anything that is written (for me, it was video games. Seven-year old me knew vocabulary that I was taught in seventh grade because of it). And on that note...

Research what you don't know. Please, this one is genuinely important (I'm biased because it's one of my pet peeves). This includes words you don't know the definition of, spelling, and even generic, real-life information you want to add into your stories (e.g. I actually spent four hours researching how gemstones are categorized for my sci-fi story: Eco-Adstrum). Unfortunately, sometimes researching and fact-checking your ideas before writing them down can prove to be unmotivating, especially when you're wrong. But, it's always good to stay optimistic and be creative enough to twist the actual fact to mold it to your stories. Unless you're writing non-fiction, then maybe don't do that last bit.

If you have no ideas, keep wiggling your pencil. To those that recognize that phrase, yes, it is not my own. This is a piece of writing from former Tumblr user "officialtheonite" (I was only able to find the post because it has been reblogged multiple times) and their fifth grade writing teacher. Essentially, even if you have no ideas, keep writing. Write ANYTHING, even if it doesn't make sense. You will always be able to double-check it later and you will save yourself a lot of wasted time sitting around trying to stir the soup in your brain.

Balance the usage of your names and pronouns. To this day, I still struggle with this. I tend to use an abundance of pronouns when I'm referring to a character, so much so that sometimes, it becomes unclear on if we are still talking about aforementioned character or if we're talking about a different character entirely. Use names when the focus or action of a character is on stage; use pronouns if we are still talking about said character (even if we are talking about the same character, make sure you at least reiterate their name when there's a new paragraph).

I'll be editing and reworking this list as time goes on. I hope these tips can be of use so some of you all. Feel free to ask me any questions if needed. Enjoy writing and keep at it! I believe in you all!

[stoopid-turtle]

On the Acceptance of Unsteady Ground

Throughout this whole dive into turtle world, I've been very conscious of just how LITTLE access to information I have. I'm relying so heavily on English translations and platforms, and most of these are from turtles, so I'm fully aware I'm getting a biased perspective.

I've tried to read stuff from solos or even just neutral third-parties. The neutral parties don't have much depth of information, though, and I found solos heavy on accusations and declarations but light on actual...evidence. And they sometimes use some really nasty rhetoric against the idea that gg and dd might be gay.

Don't get me wrong, turtles get weird too. There's plenty of clearly false rumors, deceptively edited videos, silly stretches of logic, weird ideas of what how people in a relationship would act, etc. But there's at least enough English-speaking turtles that I can find some who are giving open and, as far as I can tell, accurate information (honestly, I find tumblr turtledom better at that then other platforms). I haven't really found a similar pocket of solo fans.

I'm also aware that there's always going to be a limit on how much I can know. I don't speak the language, so I'm always relying on translators. I have limited access to Weibo (even putting aside the language barrier, I'm in text confirmation limbo in actually getting an account), and I have little familiarity with the culture. I don't get a lot of the jokes or references, and stuff may strike me, an English-speaking American, differently than it would someone in China.

Add on top of that the fact that I'm trying to find out purposely obscured information about two celebrities, and, yeah, I'm fully aware that I'm on unsteady ground here. I can do my best, but I'm never going to know anything for certain.

But I've become okay with that.

It took a while. The dissatisfaction with the unknown (and unknowable) is what drove a lot of my early fixation and subsequent fall into the turtle pit. But now, especially after laying out my thoughts, I've reached a zen place with it. I'm 100% certain ggdd were together during filming/promo, and I'm 95% certain they're still together (I had this at 85% originally, but then the whole dd being sick and gg changing his schedule thing happened and I'm just...welp, guess I'm in this confidence interval, then).

Just having that certainty means I can enjoy updates from them without anguishing about "proof" or uncertainty. Oh, gg took the day off on dd's birthday? That's really sweet! I'm not gonna fuss about if it's coincidence ENOUGH to convince me, because I'm already convinced. It's a good place to be.

I typically don't care about celebrities. In fact, I've long been bewildered by celebrity culture here in the US, and I've often been actively annoyed when people assume/expect me to have opinions on things celebrities do. I'm the nerd who doesn't get why the actors get all the attention when the writer or director would be much more interesting.

So the fact that I've gone all fangirlish over two celebrities is bizarre to me, and I appreciate the irony. Well done, me. I attribute some of it to just being able to watch the bts and see their early interactions play out like a story. I find stories compelling, and both gg and dd are charismatic, attractive and have great chemistry. Whatever disdain I have for celebs, I do love a romance.

In my foray into the ggdd world, though, I've also had to learn more about c-ent, and y'all. It's nuts. Like, US entertainment is nuts too, but c-ent ratchets it up to 11. I've been in fandom a long time, and I thought I'd seen some weird stuff, but it's got nothing on c-ent. Just wrapping my head around the culture these guys are in took a lot of learning.

But I appreciate being able to dive into this culture and this country, because I knew very little about China beyond the antagonistic politics. It's been refreshing to get a view on life on the ground in China to humanize the folks there and get a clearer picture of the country.

I started this thing bc I had been spending so much time on Youtube watching clips, and I had thoughts and opinions and nowhere to put them. I already had a tumblr that I use to lurk on some fandoms and I had started following turtles too. I figured tumblr would be a decent place to splurge out my thoughts, so I set up a throwaway account to do so.

I get the vibe that a lot of new turtles come to bjyx through the same route I took? They watch The Untamed on Netflix. They get curious about the show and start watching some clips on YT. Next thing you know, they have 3 playlists full of purported "proof of love" and they need a whiteboard to connect everything together and their wife thinks they've gone completely bonkers supports them in all their oddities.

Like, I was really confused by turtles at first. I was just trying to watch bts videos on YouTube and I didn't know what bjyx meant, but the videos with the label were weird and had strange disclaimers that they were "only for turtles" and I had no clue what that even meant.

My confusion continued as I tried to read more. The fake story disclaimer convention is hella confusing as an outsider, and my first impression was that turtles were kinda crazy. The videos I saw gave overviews of candies without context, and some of them explicitly said they were proof of Yizhan love while still having that fake story disclaimer. Basically, it was a big confusing environment, and it's why I resisted buying into bjyx so hard for so long. It all seemed delulu.

But in reading more, I guess part of that is the point? Recognizing that gg and dd are in a vulnerable position should their relationship ever come out, having so much noise to muddy the waters makes a twisted, clownish sense. I don't know who came up with that convention or if it just kinda happened (is it a normal thing in c-ent? I don't know enough about celebrity fandoms), but hats off, I guess.

With the supertopic recently hitting 4 million active fans, there's something heartening about such a depth of support for the guys. I'm not naive enough to think all 4 million (plus international fans) are allies to LGBT folk in general, but it surely means something to ggdd to have that sort of support for their relationship. Honestly, it means something to me, as a random gay chick on the other side of the world, to see a gay couple get that kinda of support behind them.

I started watching the bts because I was afraid there'd be a lot of cynical homophobia on the set or some evidence of all the male cast being icked out by the whole thing. Instead, I got gg, who was so passionate about WWX being gay. I love that everybody knew they were telling a love story with as explicitly as they could get away with. I love that the guys wanted more Wangxian scenes and that the cast and crew made "everyday is everyday" jokes in a non-mocking way. I'm glad that the whole shoot seemed like such a positive environment for the cast and crew to being themselves and tell a type of story that they may not be able to be involved with ever again.

So, yes, this is my zen turtle place. When I set up a soapbox for myself, I didn't think too much about the fact that people would respond, but I'm so grateful to have had a chance to talk to some other turtles! Everybody is lovely and thank you for sharing my enthusiasm.

Like I said in the beginning, I don't have the time to keep super-active in the long-term. I had intended to write up my thoughts and poof away. But I do also plan to keep up with gg and dd and turtles, so instead I'm just gonna leave off with the potential for further posts down the line.

I'm not gonna be incredibly active, so please don't expect frequent updates or interactions from me. But if I have more Yizhan thoughts I'll pop up again with a post (I mean, I do have lots more thoughts, but nothing energizing enough to write about), or I'll leave a comment somewhere if I have something I simply must say. I'm also open to responding to asks about the timeline or anything else. And if I ever do stumble across anything groundbreaking with regards to the timeline, I'll probably add that in, because I'm particular about things being complete.

So thanks for being so welcoming! It's been a joy to clown around and make up completely fictional stories with everybody here. 🤡🐢🙇🏼

[milhoutvanhousen]

little Crocodile x reader drabble that I figured I'd post.....peep the AN to keep any expectations at bay lmfao. Story under the cut or Ao3 linked below! (idk why it won't give a link preview but I guess why would tumblr work lol)

Read on Ao3

Summary:

There are rules, and he knows when you break them whether you realize it or not. Sir Crocodile hears and sees all, as you would learn, but is punishment really all that bad?

Notes:

Listen....I don't ever write x reader (or much at all lmfao) but One Piece is annoyingly lacking couples I like to ship. Just a little drabble I had tucked away that I fugured I may as well post. First, second, third person? Don't know 'em don't care, I tried for ten minutes to make it at least all the same, but you get what you get because I'm tired of sitting on this pretending I'm going to edit it properly lol. Will there be more of this? Who knows! K byyye love u :*

Work Text:

"Ah shit!" It came out as a quiet hiss as she pressed against the vanity counter, mascara wand having just become acquainted with her eye, which resulted in the makeup that had made it onto her lashes smearing. She gave a quick pout at Sir Crocodile in the mirror as he approached, sad that she would have to fix her makeup slip so near the end of her routine. They were on their way to a gala, some kind of fundraising event if she recalled, not that it mattered much to her personally. She was only going along to hang off of Crocodiles arm and 'look pretty' as he had put it. Wand quickly put back in the tube and tossed into the makeup bag on the counter, she went to turn around, only for the cool metal of his hook to press against her nape, forcing her to follow his path and end up bent over, face pressed on the vanity.

"What..." Her eyes made contact with his in the mirror as he began to speak "did I say about swearing. Watch your fucking language." A smack resounded across the room as his hand came down swift on her ass, the former warlords aim as true as ever.

A stream of smoke came steady at her face as his hand rubbed the cheek that he had just assaulted. Before the heady smoke had all cleared, he leaned down and kissed behind her ear, so soft that it sent shivers up her spine. His hook pressed more and more into her neck, contrasting what his mouth was busy doing and sending her thoughts into a spiral. Her eyes flickered closed as the two conflicting feelings took over, but they flashed open along with glossed lips as his fingers firmly grasped a handful of her back side. Eyes wide not quite with fear, but not fully lust locked with his once more, his face holding an air of expectance.

"Do you have something to say to me, princess?" His voice held note of a smile and while she couldn't see it forming on his face, she knew he enjoyed every moment of her failure to follow the rules he had set for her. It was half of the reason why he had set them. To be honest, she didn't think he had been close enough to hear her at all when it slipped out, assuming him to be in another room completely. Even when she had seen him walking to her in the mirror, she didn't think she had sworn loud enough that he could have heard. Apparently, she had been wrong, much to his delight.

His fingers slowly trailed up her spine and then back down to the small of her back, circling around the swell of her hip as it found purchase in the soft material of the evening gown she wore. While his hook had softened it's hold, she still kept herself down on the table as if it were still forceful, knowing better than to think the lack of pressure meant she could move, although she did try to slide her face off of the compact that pressed into her cheek, hoping to save her makeup from further disrepair. The less time she had to spend fixing her face the better, and though there was no avoiding it at this point, she didn't want to have to start over this close to leaving. She didn't know exactly what the dinner entailed other than the dress code, but she knew him, and she knew what was expected of her image when by his side.

"I'm so-" a yelp escaped, interrupting the apology as his hand expertly pulled her dress up to allow itself into the scrap of fabric he called underwear.

"What was that dear? I couldn't hear your, you'll have to say that again." Her focus had already started to wane as two fingers immediately found their way inside, having no problem pumping in and out thanks to the initial swat he had doled out.

"I...I'm sorry Sir Crocodile! I didn't mean to swear, I-I promise!" A third finger began to stretch her out with the others as she choked out the apology. A whine escaped as he put some more force into his movements, hitting deeper inside with his fingers than before without sacrificing the speed he moved them at.

His hook continued to hold pressure against her neck and she tried to grind her thighs together, desperate enough for any sensation on her clit that she deliberately risked that he would swat her ass again for not keeping still.

"You see, I seem to have a problem believing your apology, I'm sure you can figure out why." His fingers were quickly removed, and although his palm rested against her heat, it denied her the pleasure that had just existed. She attempted to press against him harder, trying desperately to shift his fingers once more to where she wanted them, buried deep inside.

"Come now, at least pretend that you can behave please. You're acting like you're in heat, trying to rub your cunt on me like that." The smell of his rich cologne mixed with his cigar, the somehow still cool feeling of the large hook on the back of her neck, she was a lost cause. There was no coming back from the edge she had already raced to, and she didn't care if she looked pathetic trying to reach release. But as soon as the thought of release even breached her thoughts, his hand was completely out of her undergarments. Her dress slid back down and the warmth that had just occupied the space between her legs was gone, replaced with only an ache.

Still unmoving, she watched as he licked his fingers clean in the mirror, a blush overtaking her face where before it had just dusted the apples of her cheeks. His hook was next to pull away, leaving her bent over now only of her own accord, still watching his reflection as he cleaned himself and readjusted his sleeves. She slowly pushed herself off of the vanity, smoothing the silken length of the dress over her hips as it shifted, eventually looking like the reprimand had never happened.

Now dry like it hadn't just been edging her to release, his hand grabbed the her chin, raising her gaze to meet his.

"My plan was to fuck that pout off of your face, gala be damned, but your whining made me realize how much you'd like that, you brat. Maybe when you learn to behave you can cum. Now, fix your makeup and get ready to leave." Another round of heat spread across her cheeks, dusting all the way down her neck from the combination of his deep voice and firm hold on her chin. A smile started to creep onto her lips but he quickly raised an eyebrow prompting her to tamp it down and instead murmur out a 'yes sir' as he released his hold and turned to leave the room.

[seiwas]

hi sel! i was wondering if you had any tips or tricks or advice for making fic banners and dividers? yours are always so cohesive! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

hi nonie! omg i'm so flattered you asked me this 🥺 i’m happy you like them!! admittedly, i am a bit particular about the aesthetics of my fics, but don't really expect anyone to notice 😭

i am by no means a designer! but i'll share a few of the things that have worked for me 🥺 under the cut will be what i do for sizing, editing, and inspo!

SIZING (w x h dimensions, 300 dpi)

› banners: 1280 x 320 for my thicker banners. 1280 x 249 for my thinner ones. i've been preferring the thicker ones lately just because i prefer how it looks on the post compared to my thinner ones (more balanced and stuff!)

› dividers: 1280 x any size you want or 500 x 5. i have both jpg (thinner) and png (thicker) versions for my dividers, mainly because my jpg ones stopped working after a while* 😭 i use the png ones more now because the actual image itself is also bigger in height; there are transparent spaces above the bar itself that allow more control over the space your divider will have between text (please let me know if this is confusing! i'm not sure if i'm explaining it well).

*tumblr can be really selective with the media it allows on the feed and tags, and for some reason, some dividers have been causing that problem 😭 i still haven't figured out what characteristics/factors exactly cause it, but i suspect it might be a combination of size + colours. i usually have to do test posts to make sure it appears!

i'm attaching some screenshots below for reference!

EDITING

› software: photoshop, figma. though i know there are others you can use (e.g., photopea, canva, picsart, etc.)! i just use these because i'm more accustomed to them 🥹

› process:

find a manga panel i like and clean it up (background removers can usually do the trick)

find colours i like and use it as the base for the background

*if using photoshop/figma/photopea: set the manga panel layer as 'multiply'

add the text

*for dividers: i usually just grab from the background of the banner (either i crop a portion of it or colour a long, thin rectangle the same colour)

attaching what my editing board looks like on figma! (i could be more organised but i usually do these things in such a rush i could never be bothered 😭)

› things i consider

for general fic banners: i like to keep a consistent format, which is: character panel + name + identifiable colour because they're the details that i'd like to inform people of first when they stumble upon my post! (some people will put fic titles too, which i don't do bc i can't be bothered to mess with the spacing 😭)

*keeping a consistent format also makes it easier to duplicate elements of your banners into other banners you'll be making! ex. if i'm writing 2 different gojo fics and decide to change what manga panel to use, at least i can always duplicate certain elements (i.e., name text) and find colours along a similar saturation/hue! it makes things a lot quicker and easier.

for event fic banners: i usually pattern it after the event banner itself! so for example, the fics under my 'how to be your loverboy' collab share similar elements (i.e., the wavy edge) to the main event banner. sometimes i use the same colours too (i.e., in's and out's event).

*on dividers not showing up on the dash: i notice it a lot more with light-coloured banners (some neutrals) and super thin ones. to find a way around this, i either change the colour and/or the size OR i'll find a photo that shares the colours i want and crop it to the size that i want (for some reason, it works this way 😭)

INSPO

i usually browse through pinterest for inspo on digital design stuff! i learned a bit of UX/UI so there's also a part of me that's influenced by its trends.

lately, i've been really into gradients! because it's a fun and easy way to make things look clean but not boring, and i think it can evoke the ~vibe of the fic based off the colours you end up choosing!

when i can't think of anything and want to come up with the banner quickly, i'll usually choose a photo/aesthetic i associate with the fic and blur the image until all you see are kind of blobs of colours. they're similar to gradients but have more shapes and require less of your brain power 😭 (i.e., by your passenger seat, and there's something...)

... and that's it!

sorry for this really lengthy post, i hope it's helpful nonie 🥹 let me know if you have any other questions/if anything is unclear!

[piedoesnotequalpi]

Prime numbers for the writing asks!

[Writer questions!]

[1 is neither prime nor composite!][also this was So Many Questions so I ended up just picking my favorites (of which there were still a lot)]

2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil?

The drafting would be doable; the editing/occasional rewriting less so. I do occasionally handwrite, and it's nice to have a built-in editing phase when I transcribe the draft onto my computer (it's also nice to actually use my collection of stationery, what a concept).

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

I don't know if this is a superstition so much as an observed phenomenon, but after yet another failed novel attempt I have the fear that if I write a scene from farther along in the story (beyond a 100 word or so dialogue or description), especially if it's one I'm looking forward to writing, I will not finish the story.

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

Probably getting to share my writing with people. In high school and college when I was involved in literary magazines, I had to put a couple of my pieces under pseudonyms for various reasons and I did not enjoy that feeling; nowadays it's a little frustrating that I can't just fling google doc links for my fanfiction at people I know irl (I don't want to risk them finding my AO3 and by extension my tumblr).

On a more positive note, I wrote a short story called "Dear Abby" and submitted it to my college literary magazine as a freshman and it was unanimously accepted, everyone at the meeting loved it, and when we hosted an open mic my friends in the magazine practically demanded that I perform it (which I did). It remains one of my favorite things that I've written.

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you to write about? What is easy?

Oh god suddenly I have forgotten about every subject matter ever. I think I struggle with heavy worldbuilding, which is why so much of my writing is set in places I'm at least somewhat familiar with (or can easily research). I also tend to take settings from my life and repurpose them to work around this weakness.

Easier writing - this is a weird one, but I think gender and sexuality crises come a little easier to me than they perhaps should. Best not to think too hard about it.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

I have multiple active WIPs right now (which I normally try to avoid, as it leads to none of them getting done), but! I will talk about the juggling AU.

Basically, I was at a juggling festival last January with my friend who is a casual Newsies fan, and we were discussing which props/skills the various newsies characters would be into. This, of course, led to me realizing that I could use this for my mini bang fic, so on the (very snowy) drive back my friend and I figured out the overarching plot. We decided early on that it would somewhat mirror the plot of Newsies since we had Davey as an outsider with a slightly different skillset from everyone else.

A piece of background lore that won't necessarily make it into the story is how Katherine got into contact poi - as a preteen/teen, she went to CTY (nerd camp, essentially), where poi are very popular. When she got to college, she (much like one of my friends) wanted to bring her poi to the juggling club, but was nervous that people wouldn't be into other circus props. Turns out, there were a couple casual poi people (poi-ple?) in the club, but also some people who made fun of poi. Katherine wasn't a huge fan of that, so when she learned about contact poi she convinced her mom to split the cost of a set of contact poi as a birthday present and learned how to juggle them. Turns out juggling poi is pretty hard, so it's made Katherine a much better juggler. I got the idea for this from a combination of my irl friend's anxiety + wanting a parallel to Katherine being taken seriously as a reporter in canon.

31. Write a short love letter to your readers.

I am still in shock that anyone wants to read my silly gay fanfiction, but! I appreciate you all so much and I have all your comments saved in a folder on Google Photos.

[nostalgebraist]

Hello I have a question about the bot, hopefully you’re not too tired of those. I’ve heard that machine learning models have a tendency to sometimes just recreate an existing image or post from their training data, which is a problem with a lot of the currently popularized AI art creation tools. Have you ever noticed the bot closely recreating a post from your blog? Sometimes I’ll see a Frank post that’s like a review of a movie or book or an impressively coherent shorter text post that makes me wonder if it just got lifted wholesale from somewhere deep in your blog. Also, when Frank is just generating new content that isn’t in response to an ask, is there any sort of seeding that influences what topics she’s making posts about? Thanks and have a great day!

I’ve heard that machine learning models have a tendency to sometimes just recreate an existing image or post from their training data, which is a problem with a lot of the currently popularized AI art creation tools.

This isn't exactly true.

We should distinguish between

Whether the model can re-create examples from its training data

Whether the model is likely to do this, during normal usage, if you aren't specifically aiming for it

For almost any generative model seeing use in 2023 -- including Frank's language model, stable diffusion, etc. -- the answers are

Yes, it can re-create (some) training examples, if you prompt it in just the right way

No, you're unlikely to see this "by accident" during normal usage

I've never seen Frank re-create a post from the training data, or even come very close to doing this. (At least not for a long time -- I think there might have been some very early, very overfit, not-very-good versions of the model that did this sometimes.)

I've never had this problem with an image-generating model, either ... at least, not to my knowledge. Maybe this is a pain point with some of them and I just don't know about it.

(Lots of people are worried that these models can capably reproduce the styles of specific artists, but that's different. Also, there are just a lot of misconceptions about these models flying around.)

Also, when Frank is just generating new content that isn’t in response to an ask, is there any sort of seeding that influences what topics she’s making posts about?

There are a few small factors, which also apply to asks/etc.:

Frank's mood value

The time of day in my time zone

I'm not sure the time of day really affects anything. It goes into the prompt, and it's present in all of the training data, but I've never seen a clear indication that it's having a real effect on post content.

Also, for original posts, the bot uses tumblr's queue to make them well in advance. That makes it doesn't actually know what the mood value will be at the time of posting. Instead, it uses a simple guess about the future value: namely, what the mood would be if no one sent any asks/etc. between now and then.

And then, some of these posts don't even get posted at the time they were originally "slated" for, because sometimes they get flagged by my automated moderation system and saved to drafts so I can manually review + queue them.

So yeah, it's complicated, and the tl;dr is "nothing really affects those posts much."

EDIT: oh, I forgot -- for original posts, I also randomly choose between a prompt for a normal tumblr post, a prompt for a fiction chapter, and a prompt for a book review.

The training data for the fiction chapters was taken from my fiction, and the training data for the book reviews was taken from my Goodreads reviews.

[baeddel]

@elancholia ty for your reply i always like them ^/////^ i will try and respond better to your whole post another time. obviously the conversation has evolved into more of a larger discussion about plagiarism & intertextuality in general, but i wanted to point out something w/r/t what i was originally asking. when you say:

The specificity of citations means that each claim is easy (for a specialist) to find and address; the points of dispute are very clear. And it's possible to pick out anomalous patterns, like century-spanning claims being sourced from one very specific document, or a consistent overreliance on "problematic sources" which are known to have been "heavily edited and sanitized" at the time they were originally compiled.

you understand that this is again not the kind of knowledge that i'm talking about in that post. if i learned how to make an argument (in this example, a 'dialectical' argument) from a really problematic and flawed book, it wouldn't really help you at all in evaluating my argument—my entire argument is transparent to you as soon as you read it, and if you tried to attack (using my example) my post based on a criticism of Clausewitz it would just be irrelevant, because i'm not actually saying anything he said.

i realize that i muddied the waters in my wording by at the end saying "in philosophy or non-fiction" in general, but my surprise was about this kind of thing, not about claims. w/r/t the kind of citation in the quote i don't feel confused about it, i try to cite my posts as much as possible for several reasons, both practical and ethical (one tumblr specific reason is that it helps to avoid establishing onesself as a kind of priestly authority with access to secret knowledge & instead invites the reader into your context so they can argue with you as an equal—since a lot of people who read your post may not know how to access the information otherwise, a concern which arises strictly in a non-academic situation).

you get where i'm coming from right—i have textbooks that are supposed to show how to make a kind of argument, which forms are valid, etc. they're aimed at training you to argue in a certain way and they don't expect you to cite them or even really remember them. why does it change when you learn how to argue that way from another kind of text?

when i went to read some of the literature on plagiarism i was similarly surprised to find other things which are considered plagiarism at least by some definitions. in one study that looked at Iranian Applied Linguistics researchers' views of plagiarism & intertextuality (click), the questionnaire included the following questions:

Creating a new piece of work structured according to a documentation standard, by referring to existing work of the same type.

and

Using a published work to identify important secondary citations that make a particular logical argument and then citing only those secondary sources to support your own use of the same logical argument.

the first one (copying the structure of another article) was considered plagiarism by 68% of respondents (15% said it wasn't and 17% said they didn't know). it surprised me a lot to learn that anyone would consider that plagiarism. the second one (copying an argument and just borrowing the citations necessary without saying where you learned the argument) is quite close to what i was talking about, and the responses were: 32% yes plagiarism, 57% no plagiarism, 11% don't know.

my takeaway is that there is not a lot of certainty about what counts as plagiarism on offer & i'm probably not the first person to experience this kind of surprise, confusion or skepticism about it.

[vampireacademysims]

Well, I guess it's time to address the situation... or the lack of situation lol This is gonna be long, be warned. There's a TL;RD at the end if you wanna skip the wall of text. To start, thank you to the two anons who took the time to read the comic and prod me about it and the new people who started following this tumblr in spite of the Hiatus warning. Altho this place has been collecting dust for more than a year now, I'm still around, updating my side reblogs tumblr, so it's not like I dropped from the face of the earth.

The truth is, at this moment in time, I've feel out of love with making this comic. It was always a lot of work due to me being a perfectionist. I never used any extra rendering apps, all you've seen here is raw sims images and a lot of work on Photoshop, so much so it gave me a muscle contracture on my right shoulder (because I did all my work in bed with my laptop/drawing tablet in my lap. I never said I was a smart person lol) that still flares up from time to time because I learned nothing. Then the VA fandom was already quite small by the time I started doing this in 2015 and I never really advertised this in the fandom anyway. I always got the impression most of the fandom didn't like the OG comics as it was and most of the people that followed the comic were sims 2 fans because, well, it's made with the sims and the images were pretty (forever holding in my heart the people you said this &lt;;3) The recent "Vampire Academy" TV series (it was just in names, honestly) was the final nail in the coffin of my motivation. After information had leaked I was already disappointed in it, but after actually watching it, yeah no. Only plus to it was the surprise to see it was partially filmed in my country, in places where I have been myself. And lastly, and probably most importantly, I struggle with motivation a lot. It happens to us all, I am sure. It's no secret that I hated to panel, if I'd start all over again I'd just post the big images like many of you telling stories are doing now, it'd be less of a stress for me, but alas, I can't change formats now. And I said many times I was doing it mostly for myself, because I did love the comics based on the books, but doing it for yourself only gets you so far until you get bored. And I got bored. I'm actually surprised my hyper-focus on it lasted for as long as it did. I haven't been to Photoshop for editing - I used to make photomanipulations and other kinds of editing - for way over a year, so it's not only the comic that stopped.

I still have 7 pages to end chapter 6 in various degrees of editing, Veninorchid and Esotheria-sims have seen them, so they exist lol I will eventually finish editing them - it's mostly a Romitri flashback - and post them. But after that, I will have to decide how to proceed. Spending less time editing would help, but lowering the quality of my pages, the only thing people like about it, really doesn't sit well with me, because yeah, perfectionist.

So at the very least the remaining pages will be posted in early 2024, I might go back to it slowly, a little bit everyday so I don't burn out or put stress on my shoulder. But after that, it's up in the air. It's not like I've been staring at the walls during this time, I had other things taking my goldfish-like attention. I got interested in home bookbinding, which made me dig out old unfinished stories I once started and I've been trying to finish them and later try to bind them, because why the fuck not lol And on my reblogs tumblr I had this set of pictures about a Regency little story that people really loved and I'd like to add to it, but then again, all the editing it'd need *cries* I feel tugged in so many directions I fear I'll end up doing nothing lol

So the TL;DR is, I got bored with the comic because it was too much work and resulted in physical pain, I lacked the motivation and other things got my attention meanwhile. Chapter 6 will be be finished eventually, but after that it's up in the air. Cross my fingers that I get my mojo back while editing those pages. Still, a thank you to all of followed and are still following, sorry these were not the good news you wanted to read just because I made a post. You support up until now was what kept me going in the past, I can't thank you all enough.

[voiceoutofstars]

Revising the HSR Data Bank for Readability: An Idle Side-Project

This is a masterlist post for a little side-project I've been thinking about--fan-edited versions of Star Rail lore text that have been (amateurishly) revised for (slightly better?) readability. See the lengthy note below for a full explanation of my intentions and complete lack of qualifications for this pet project.

(Edit: the important disclaimers below were originally included in my first post on this topic, which shared my revision of the "Band of Sizzling Thunder" relic sets. Because I enjoyed the exercise, I wanted to do at least a few more of these, but since they all really should have massive disclaimers attached to them I thought I'd just stick them together in a masterlist and link to/from here where needed. Sorry if you're seeing this pop up repetitively. I'm bad at Tumblr.)

Band of Sizzling Thunder

Champion of Streetwise Boxing

Eagle of the Twilight Line

Firesmith of Lava-Forging

Genius of Brilliant Stars

Guard of Wuthering Snow

Hunter of the Glacial Forest

Iron Cavalry Against the Scourge

Knight of Purity Palace

This is something quite different for this blog, and I feel like it needs some explanation, as well as a few important disclaimers.

Honkai Star Rail is, in my opinion, an extraordinarily well-written game. It is also comparatively–again, in my opinion–an impressively well-translated game. ‘Comparatively’ is the operative word here; so many game companies don’t take nearly the time and the care to secure immersive experiences for audiences playing in languages outside the company’s own primary one.

Despite miHoYo’s comparatively immersive translations, there’s still a lot of room for improvement–especially in the massive amount of text-only lore buried in the various codices Honkai Star Rail has. Some of this stuff–Data Bank entries, readable collectables, etc.–can be really hard to follow and enjoy in English. Vocabulary is often imprecise. Simple topics that (in my opinion, at least) are intended to be clearly understood are obfuscated by weird stilted grammar and phrasing. These issues really stand out to me while I’m dabbling with my Data Bank narrations. Sometimes it takes me quite a while to piece together what the heck a sentence is trying to say, much less what it means for the grander universe of Star Rail, and that's a pity.

So, what I’m doing in these posts is attempting to revise these entries--to reorganize them into smoother, clearer versions of themselves by fixing issues of vocabulary and mechanics. I am not re-translating. I cannot read any language but English, to my shame; I am only playing with a lovingly crafted fragment of a beautifully built world and trying to rub it a bit cleaner and brighter with my own meager, monolinguistic perspective.

My toyed-with versions don’t--cannot--solve the problems these entries have with imprecision and unclear intended meaning, because I'm not an authority on the original Chinese text and its intentions, or on Star Rail or Honkai series lore. What may seem to be clarifications in my revisions are truthfully just bluster–I’m arranging the words into shapes that make the most sense to me, but the conclusions I draw are my own, are not canon, and honestly are not always conscious on my part. It would not be wise to assume anything below is accurate to the cosmos of Star Rail. I will take care to link the authentic in-game text in any posts of this nature that I make.

And finally, boy oh boy am I not a professional anything about this. This is a thing for fun and for joy, because I just really like Star Rail–and if you’ve got tips, tricks, thoughts or feelings, advice or ideas or revisions of your own, I’d be delighted to learn from you.