#I absolutely hate the fact that a lot of bigger artists tend to make it some secret knowledge

[gurggggleburgle]

As a writer/artist I sympathize and feel for Shang Qinghua so fucking much because I too understand the absolute horror of not knowing how you'll make bills and trying to pander to the algorithm and whims of the internet. Especially because I've done my hw on how online noveling pays shit for all but usually the top percentage and the man's 10k a day updates were probably not because he was so passionate about the project he couldn't stop writing but because of requirements and site mandates to be paid or keep relevant in the algorithm. Like Shang Qinghua clearly hated writing wife plots over story substance but they paid the bills. I don't doubt the holy mausoleum arc among other things was super long because wanted and needed it to be but was trying to milk for what it was worth. The longer he drew out the story the more likely he was to get licensing deals for adaptations because things tend to not get adapted once they're finished unless they reach a classic status. He had bigger plans for his book. He had themes and a moral. He had more in mind but he knew his audience were finicky incels that would move on if he stopped giving them what they paid him for. Man probably intended to use the fact he had an audience now to actually write something good and fulfilling only to die horribly. We never hear about graphic novel or animated adaptations, because if the existed SQQ would never shut up about them, so we gotta assume that as popular as PIDW made money but probably just a modest sum which had to hurt even more.

Man knew his book was shit. Knows it's shit. Understands that what he cut was stuff that would have made him happy but his readers who were there just for porn wouldn't give two flying dicks about and therefore was like fine. I no longer have all this work I spent forever on and only so many hours in the day. If it means I can keep the lights on and eat 2 meals a day instead of one and half a bag of sunflower seeds instead so be it.

Like man went, "yeah fuck my dignity as an artist. dignity doesn't pay my bills."

And i respect and feel that. Rock bottom is a soy sauce packet and a piece of bread you stole from the trash in the bakery department of a mid-tier grocery chain being your lunch and dinner for the day as you pray the suspiciously wealthy furries will finally give you money rather than just liking your work and asking for requests.

Rock bottom is writing porn you don't even like because for some reason a lot of your fanbase has a thing for feet and various other fetishes and you desperately need an extra $20 because of sudden expenses that overblew your budget.

[drzootsuit]

Hi, I saw ur comment on the AI post while combing thru the notes. I’ve been seeing a lot of gorgeous architectural images come up in my feed and I’m discovering a lot of it is done with AI. I remain on the fence abt whether it’s cool or not, or whether to use it, bc im uneducated on what the ramifications could be. Do u think if we didn’t live in a capitalistic shitworld where artists didn’t have sell their creativity and their labor to live, that AI would still hinder or push out human creative expression? Is it’s shittiness inherent or is it just bad under these circumstances?

This is actually a really good question, and a very worthwhile chain of thought. While I endeavor to be thoughtful it's all too easy for my frothy-self to descend to loom smashing, so this is an angle worth considering. My opinion on things is heavily colored by my upbringing. It may sound pretentious, but for various reasons, I consider 'artist' as one of my cultural designations. For those who have taken sociology 101, I consider it one of my inherent status' rather than an ascribed status. Call it what you want, but for me, it's in my bones.

My problems with AI artwork are slightly hysterical at points as a result, but let's start with the most sensible note that you bring forth; the fact that we are within the system we are.

Our current form of capitalism is based around an eternal cancerous expansion of profit, and if one follows certain industries, (in my case, the games industry) one can easily see the problems with always trying to grow bigger in a finite world. Companies firing whole development teams right before shipping so that they don't have to pay them for actually completing the project, and other such acts of corporate autocannibalism are the signs of an animal that is nearing the cliff edge and begun choosing which of its own internal organs it can claw out in order to make itself lighter.

Art has always been at war with money. Making art requires money, but the people that control money tend not to understand art. This is obviously a gross tribalistic simplification, but the point is that the two need each other, can achieve great things in concert... and absolutely hate each other.

In a perfect money world, art and artists would be eliminated entirely. I speak with proof behind this: look at the NFT bubble from earlier this year. This was an attempt to boil artwork down to a stock price. Numbers to be traded and nothing more. The art attached to NFT's was crude, designed as such to carry the message of "the artwork doesn't matter. Only the money that makes it up."

So. When we look at AI, it becomes clear: a machine that can spit out art perfectly to order with no involvement from those annoying artists who demand respect, freedom, and worst of all, pay? This is a wet dream for the money. Under the current system of corporate function, AI art is one of the single most dangerous tools yet created. It stands against artwork, it stands against labor and negotiation in all forms, and it stands against the idea that art is worth anything more than cash.

But that wasn't your question. Do I, personally, consider AI art valuable if viewed without the context of the war of art vs money?

Me personally? No. This is where I will appeal to emotion so hard it will make anyone versed in debate weep enough to fill an overly-salty swimming pool.

In my view of things, Art is the result of every stimulus we recieve. Everything. Every single thing any of our senses receives goes into a huge bubbling rendering vat, and then we use that bubbling material to sculpt new works to portray our experiences and view of the world.

As such, I don't think it's worth using AI art as a jumping off point. Yes, it can provide some gummy material that can kickstart creative impulses, but to anyone that strapped for ideas, I would beg that they instead experience more things.

Hideo Kojima has spoken about his philosophy that an artist must always be adding new things to their rendering vat of experience, and I agree with him. no matter who you are, you haven't seen everything. Even within the purviews you obsess over. I love video games dearly, and even I have not played every single one. There will always be something new within the things you love, wether those things are sci-fi novels or urban architecture or tax filing systems. There is always something new to learn and see, and the pursuit of knowledge, of fresh experiences, of new people and new conversations about new topics, will, if you are an artist, spark something within you. And I think that shows what I think is another danger that AI art poses to artists: complacency.

Life begins at the end of our comfort zone. Artists must by nature be curious about the world and her people if they are to dream up stories within and without her boundaries. If an artist is able to punch in familiar keywords and receive a computer-made blob of associated goo made from stolen, unaccredited, scraped work, that artist has robbed themselves of the chance to examine themselves and the world around them.

Also, that's really the big issue. This shit comes from somewhere. The AI needs to be fed existing images in order to know what an image looks like, and there is no possible way for that to be done in a way that does not denigrate the work or the artists who make it. Even if that work is a cell-phone photo of a stack of pancakes, it is wrong for the machine to silently harvest it, and due to the other issues, I struggle to find any arrangement I am happy with even with consent and transparency.

So overall, while I think the technology is very impressive, and I can't blame people for getting excited about it, within my worldview, I am forced to be a curmudgeon. My view of art, the world, and humanity requires that I thank the programmers for their work, shake their hands on their success, marvel at the power of the technology, and then push the server cabinet off the edge of the building. It is a danger to human identity and the development of such.

Loom-smashers ahoy.

Thank you for your question! I absolutely love writing essays about things I'm impassioned about, and this was a blast.

[tosye]

// rant incoming, probs gonna delete later

i think you all know my stance on tracing

so seeing one of my fave ever artists whose sense of anatomy I’ve always admired post a wip that’s not only being traced but being traced over like a physical 3d model/puppet so the anatomy is kinda correct but the.. meat isn’t really there and so it’s wonky and apparently they don’t actually have any good sense of anatomy and turns out that all of their previous pieces are very likely traced too is… discouraging?? heartbreaking?? I really don’t like to get up in ppls business and tend to stop myself whenever thoughts like that start to form in my head but this one.. i mean I’ve looked up to them for the longest time?? and now this?? and seeing ppl not say shit abt it bc they’re really big?? I mean 70k on main on twt type big?? I mean at least acknowledge that you’ve been tracing this whole time bc clearly some ppl are more okay with that than others so it isn’t that big of a deal….

[owlpip]

hey sorry to bother you but i wanted to ask what you use to draw digitally? i’m looking to get a drawing tablet but i don’t know where to start and i’ve seen you draw on live and i have no idea what kind of tablet you’re using, thank u in advance if u choose to respond <33 ily

hi! absolutely no problem at all, I love these kinds of questions. this is pretty lengthy as I am unnecessarily verbose when it comes to answering questions like these...

I use a 2016 Wacom MobileStudio Pro 13 and I love it! it took me nearly a year of research, comparing tablets, searching where to purchase, and saving up for me to decide on the MobileStudio and, after two and a half years of using it  nearly every day, I have certainly discovered some pros and cons to it. I’ll list those for you after which I’ll list what I looked for in a tablet while I was searching.

pros:

- I don’t need a computer. the driver is built into the tablet itself so it’s technically considered a computer. this means I don’t need to attach it to a computer for it to function like you would a graphic tablet or a computer drawing tablet.

- carrying it around is relatively easy. because of the point above, travelling with it is pretty easy due to the fact that I don’t have to lug around a computer with it as well. which means I can also use it in small spaces or while I’m travelling like on a bus, airplane, car, etc. plus, the mobilestudio I bought is 13 inches long, so it fits in most computer sized bags. 

- display/screen. the display is beautiful. the colors are vibrant and crisp. the pen pressure is super amazing and since that was one of the most important things I was looking for in a tablet, I couldn’t be happier with it. 

- the pen. the pen that comes with the tablet is fantastic. you don’t need to charge it like you do with the Apple Pen which, in my mind, sounds like hell. the pen also comes with interchangeable nibs: felt and plastic. the felt nibs are god’s gift to artists... i love them. they make you feel like you’re drawing on paper and they can’t scratch your screen like the plastic ones are capable of if you use them too much. also, if you flip the pen like you would a pencil, it has an eraser that also uses pen pressure like the nib side!

- buttons. both the pen and the tablet come with built-in customizable buttons called ExpressKeys. the pen has two and the 13 inch tablet has six. 16 inch tablet has more. these buttons are easily programable to specific keystrokes (ctrl-z to undo, ctrl-alt-z to redo, etc) or clicks (right click, double click) which are helpful with it comes to specific commonly used commands in art programs. my pen’s buttons are set to ‘b’ for brushes -- so I can easily switch back to the brush I’m using -- and ‘i’ for the eyedropper tool -- so I can get specific colors from my illustrations. my tablets ones are set to paste, copy, deselect, undo, transform, and redo. there is also a remote with 17 extra buttons you can buy (which my dad got me for christmas in 2019, can you tell he’s the art supportive parent? i love him). I don’t use the remote often due to the fact that I haven’t configured all the buttons in a way I like but I’ve set a few of them to new layer, undo, redo, and increase and decrease brush size. there’s also the radial menu but I don’t use it.

- accessories. you can purchase a lot of cool things through Wacom’s website for your tablet! I’ve had to use this when I lost my charger but there are certainly more interesting things there than a charger. 

- made for artists. this tablet -- unlike the iPad, other tablets, or certain touchscreen computers -- was made by a company specifically making tablets for artists.

cons:

- expensive. I saved up money for a tablet for quite a bit and my dad promised to match whatever I saved up in order to purchase whatever tablet I chose but in the end he surprised me for my bday with the tablet fully purchased. I believe he bought it secondhand or refurbished which is a bit cheaper, but I’m not entirely certain! either way, it comes up to about 2,000 USD depending on where and how you purchase it. 

- sometimes the pen stops working :( what I mean by this is randomly the tablet will stop recognizing the pen so I have to use my finger in order to fix it. while most people restart the whole tablet I don’t recommend doing this. there’s a much easier way! just go to ‘Services’ and restart the ‘Wacom GSensor Service’ or the ‘Wacom Professional Service’ and it’s all fixed! it’s just annoying :(

- display/screen 2.0. this is probably my most hated thing about this tablet. though, it’s not something completely unique to this specific one. the colors on my tablet don’t match the colors on other computers or phones. they tend to be brighter, warmer, and more contrasted on my tablet so when I send an illustration to my phone the colors are completely different.

- weight. while the mobilestudio is certainly lighter than most it’s not light. I don’t really care that much about this as it’s not crazy heavy but when I was lugging it back and forth to school everyday the weight was noticeable.

my number one recommendation to do when researching tablet is to watch videos of artists comparing and review tablets they’ve used and to write a pro and con list of the ones you’re interested in. also for which videos you watch, I recommend actual artists, artists that you think make art similar to the kind you want to make or art that you admire, and to watch both sponsored and unsponsored videos. 

as for what to research, keep these things in mind: 

- what are you planning on using this tablet for? (professional commissions, complicated art, sketches, art but also for school/work , etc)? 

- what specific things are you looking for? (pen pressure, light weight, durable, etc.) (for instance when I was researching, I wanted a tablet made specifically for art that didn’t need a computer to work, could run Clip Studio, had amazing pen pressure, and was relatively light weight and could be carried around.)

- where are you going to use this tablet? what size tablet would fit comfortably there? 

- what art program are you wanting/going to use?

- how much storage do you need?

- how of a physical canvas are you used to working on and do you want to go bigger or smaller?

- are you going to be traveling with it often? if so are you going to use it while travelling?

- do you want to use it with or without a computer? 

- what is your budget? how much are the specific things you’re looking for worth to you? what are you willing to compromise on?

I haven’t done any research into what is currently available so I can’t tell you what on the market I would choose today but I have heard great things about the iPad Pro. that would definitely be one of the top ones I would look into if I was searching for a tablet now that it has Clip Studio Paint.

there are probably a million things I could’ve added that I’ll remember hours from now so if you have any more questions or you want me to go into further detail about something, please let me know! I can also go through all the tablets and/or art programs I have used for digital art if that is something you are interested in :-)

[frenchie-sottises]

Skelebros Headcannons.

No one asked for these, but whatever. Also, there may be some triggers, so be aware. (It’s mainly trauma stuff.)

Also, this is like, super fucking long. I included quite a few versions.

Papyrus:

- Is over 7′9 without the boots. He’s 7′11 with them. - Smarter than he looks. (I might as well say that this is confirmed cause he apparently knows of Sans’s ability to prank people across time and space.) - Isn’t the best cook when it comes to dishes other than spaghetti, but that doesn’t mean he can’t learn. Excellent baker though! - He didn’t jump out of the window because he forgot the door exists. It’s his way of being comedic. (And it worked.) - He loves Sans’s puns, but he only gets so salty because he feels like the timing could be better. - Almost burned down the house once when he tried to make spaghetti the way Undyne did it, so he learned to tone tf down. He only gets rambunctious when he cooks with Undyne cause, come on, it’s fun to go nuts every now and again. - Isn’t afraid to curse, but he doesn’t do it cause it’s rude.

Sans:

- Is over 5′2 and is literally big boned. (All the Sanses are, really.) - Doesn’t actually know that Papyrus loves his puns. - The jacket he wears is something he made, so this means he’s good at sewing. - He went outside without a shirt once, so when he made the joke about the cold going through him, he opened his jacket as the wind went through. He got sick like a dumbass hours later. - Speaking of dumbasses, he managed to get Papyrus to call him one for getting sick. He’s managed to get Papyrus to cuss also. (They still love each other dearly, don’t worry.) - He totally doesn’t have PTSD. Nope, not at all. It’s definitely not from the genocide routes and seeing his brother get killed multiple times. - Because of his trauma and not having the proper resources to help it, he suffers a form of CFS. (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.)

Edge:

- Is over 7′10 without the boots. Is 8′2 with them. - No one knows how he can wear heels in the snow. (He runs in them for crying out loud.) - Can be easily flustered when it comes to flirting, but when he’s in the mood to be saucy? Oh boy. - Is practically a professional chef and baker. Undyne’s lessons made him realize that he has to teach himself if he wants to provide decent meals. - Is rough with his brother, but he isn’t straight up mean. It’s more along the lines of him struggling to be kind and gentle out in public. - Half of his encounters usually don’t involve him doing anything. He’s just that intimidating. - People mostly know him for being loud and angry 24/7, but this isn’t always the case. He can control his volume when he needs to, and is actually pretty damn tame. It’s pretty rare to see him genuinely angry.

Red:

- Is the shortest Sans in this list standing at 5′0. - His sweating mostly comes from him trying not to piss off his brother despite the fact that said brother’s made it clear that he would never be angry at him. - He has PTSD, but due to the environment, his symptoms tend to be worse. - He’s resorted to cutting himself several times. His brother has no clue though. - Struggles with his moral code more than his brother. He’s torn between following his own path and suffering possible consequences from the king, and being loyal to the king at all costs to avoid his wrath. - His shoes are always untied, so it’s not uncommon to see him on the ground face down. - If given the chance to take his mind off of things, he will take it. Drugs are off-hands though. You can thank Edge for that.

Stretch:

- Is over 7′6 when he’s not slouching. - The cig’s gonna be lit, but he doesn’t smoke. He only does it cause it makes him look cool. - He actually doesn’t use any drugs, but he did get himself high one time via weed brownies for pure shits and giggles. Boy, was he high off his ass. - Unlike the classic Sans, his jokes have better timing. He’s made Blueberry laugh several times. - “I can make every dirty joke in existence... AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME!” - Stretch at one point in time. - Has an endless supply of hoodies and it confuses his brother to this day. - He’s learned to give mercy while making you wish you were dead. (I may or may not have watched Rising of the Shield Hero.)

Blueberry:

- Is over 5′6 with the boots. Is only 5′5 without them. - Has a bod that screams the power to wrestle BEARS. - Someone teach him how to cook. He keeps overcooking the fucking TACO MEAT- - He has the body of a himbo, the personality of a himbo, and the mind of a himbo- okay, maybe the last one is a little inaccurate. He can be pretty smart. - May or may not be a bit of a perv. - His smile is so bright that it lightens up just about everyone’s moods. - Is a fantastic artist and no one can tell him otherwise.

Pup (Swapfell):

- Is over 7′3 when he’s not slouching. - Does actually smoke. - His blind eye was given from his brother playing far too rough. - He likes to rob people, but will learn to stop if the victim is shown to be far too powerful for him to handle. - Despite his not-so-welcomed attitude, when he’s put in a place where there is no threat of his brother, he can be quite friendly. - Has tried to feel people up in the past, but constantly keeps having his ass handed to him. - Makes only dirty jokes.

Blackberry (Swapfell):

- Is over 5′7 with the boots. Is only 5′4 without them. - Really needs his ass handed to him. - He can say he loves his brother all he wants. Doesn’t excuse why he treats him like shit. - He tends to poison his food when it comes to others. It could possibly contribute to why his brother steals other’s money. (And by “poison”, I mean he’s not a good cook. At all.) - Although he fights a lot, his body doesn’t quite match up to par, and he hates it. - Is easily jealous and possessive. - Surprisingly doesn’t actually swear when he swears.

Slim (Fellswap Red):

- Is over 7′3, and he doesn’t slouch. - Has the fluffiest jacket in existence and wears a lot of the bigger collars. - Is an absolute sweetheart when his brother’s not around. (More so than Red.) - Although he often drinks hot sauce, he’d rather prefer BBQ sauce. - Actually handles his PTSD better than his other lazy counterparts. - Has a bad habit of falling in love too easily. - Is very reserved and quiet for the most part.

Bloodberry (Fellswap Red):

- Is over 5′9 with the boots. Is only 5′6 without them. - Has a bad tendency to be saucy with someone he likes. - Is a decent cook when it comes down to it. - Also struggles with being kind in public. - Has taken a liking to archery. He’s even become good at it. - He hates the queen, but mainly because she’s always cruel to her subjects. He hopes to overthrow her for the betterment of the kingdom. - Unlike Blackberry, he does care for his brother.

Wine (Fellswap Gold):

- Is over 7′4, and he doesn’t slouch. - Since he mostly writes, he’s become a very good writer and artist. - Whenever he’s given a compliment, he sits in silence. He usually doesn’t receive them, so when he does, he kind of just.. breaks. - Like his blacklist, he has a list of names of those who have been extremely kind to him. - Tries not to become someone who has to depend on someone else. - He has days where the braces on his canines hurt like all hell, so he’ll wind up with tears in his eyes. - The constant oppression gets to him sometimes. He isn’t violent, but he will continuously cry and whimper.

Coffee (Fellswap Gold):

- Is over 6′0 with the boots. Is only 5′10 without them. - Wants to try and fix the kingdom so its people aren’t so oppressed. - Will be there for his brother within seconds. - Learned to be a decent cook for his brother. - The oppression gets to him also, but it’s mainly from the people. - A lot of the clothes he and his brother wear are from his own hands. - Has taught his brother some military fighting to protect himself as he is related to someone who the people hate.

Axe (Horrortale):

- Is the biggest Sans on this list standing at 6′7. - Is also the strongest in terms of physical strength. - Really needs to stop seeing human flesh and regular food as the same thing. - To those he cares for, he becomes almost like a guard dog but 10x scarier. - None of the Sanses and Papyruses aside from his own brother mess with him. - If someone is not scared of him for whatever reason, he has some respect for that. He just doesn’t really show it. - Gets easily spooked by really loud noises.

Everest (Horrortale):

- The tallest Papyrus standing at 9′2 with the boots. He’s only 9′0 without them. This also assumes he isn’t slouching, but he always is. - After being without food for so long, he struggles to not eat human flesh. - His kindness challenges classic Papyrus’s. - He hit a growth spurt far too early, and it’s why he’s slouching. (It’s kind of like he suffered Gigantism, but he stopped growing eventually.) - Compared to the other active counterparts, he’s the weakest. - Because of him being so thin, he tends to freeze far more easily. - When he’s pushed in a corner, he will fight back, but it’s best if his brother is with him.

And that ends that. I had these ideas going for a while, so I decided to spill them here. Hope y’all like these.

[chyuans]

          hello , hello  !   first of all ,  i’m super excited to be here even if i’m like 10 hrs LATE  ( gmt timezone things )  i’m noe ,  a gay  they / them at the age of 19 ,  and this privileged lil disappointment of a jock boy is gonna be filling the position of kong_01 . despite the rumours ?  yuanjun’s actually not nearly as bad as some of the people he’ll be meeting here >:)  but you’ll get to know more about that below  !  if you’d like to plot just light up that HEART , or add me on disc*rd which i’ll give out in im’s , where i’m infinitely faster .  if i’m not gaming .  no tw’s under the cut  .

* backstory. > many people know of yuanjun, but few people truly know him. he's the famous kong families’ son, heir to the kong legacy, now forward position for south korea men’s national hockey team - which brought forth a ton of international fame from back home and amongst hockey lovers worldwide. while his talent is undeniable, he is long overshadowed by his families’ accomplishments, forever reminded that he’d never be the perfect son they’d hoped for, and no one ever lets him forget it.

> being the child of business tycoons who’s art business seemed to never be on the decline, tended to lend itself to an unconventional, pretty lonely childhood. 

> although jun no longer wants to dabble in the stupid shit he probably did as a teen, and escape from their home in a childish fit of rage and make the lives of the various nannies that tended to him while his parents were off being great hell, he still wonders sometimes whether this profession is what he would’ve wanted if he’d just not wanted to spite his parents. he loves hockey - that fact is undeniable. he thanks the nanny who took him there once out of necessity to stop his whining, and he fell in love with it almost instantly. but he also questions whether he gravitated to it because it was something he could throw himself into wholeheartedly to fill a void.

> he's very open to different types of people, and after being scouted at 19 and having a massive shift both in culture and identity as he then begun to travel worldwide, he’s a tiny bit more wordly now than he was back then. he's much more concerned about who you are underneath than superficial appearances, which means developing relationships are few and far between, because a lot of people do approach him because of his fame/fortune. he's unjudgemental to the point where his friends worry about his naivety and how easily he trusts people, but he's absolutely not dumb, just very well versed on telling good people from the bad.

> jun may even come across as naïve, but he's very aware of that perception is nearly important as reality. he's not extroverted in a way that demands conversation, but he knows how to talk to anyone from any background even if its just to maintain pleasantries. after competing in various competitions and versing players from canada to japan, he's become much more sharp and ambitious, a guy who very rarely lets distractions take their course. perhaps it’s with this that his family loathe his choices all the more, with his appetite, he was born with the skills required to run a business - pity he never took to anything of the creative sort.  

> working in a fast, stressful, highly coveted job such as pro-sports is a full time job and then some; jun doesn't spend much time not working on it. outside of his schedule, he likes bettering his stamina at the gym and eating healthy. he likes being surrounded by authentic people or nobody at all. he’s not one for trying new things and having new experiences due to time management, tending to stick to a schedule.

> he gets a lot of bad press though, which is beginning to weigh a little heavy on him. doubly now the murder has people talking. from being accused of performance-enhancing pills, various personality scandals, to being linked with ‘dating’ (see: ruining the image of) idols and chaebol’s alike. right now, he’s currently battling a lot of unwanted publicity because of a misunderstood interaction online against a wealthy sweetheart that went sour. 

> while jun might be generally unsympathetic and analytical when it comes to developing relationships with people that’ll last long-term, he's a bleeding heart when it comes to kids who may have experienced the same lonely upbringing as he did, without the financial gains. right now he spends sunday’s teaching a bunch of local foster home kids how to skate, and is trying to fund a couple of sports scholarships for those who show promise under a fake name, just generally being a good ‘ole guy.

> his family do not approve of his job, ofc. in fact neither of his parents have ever attended any of his matches to this day, and are only on semi-decent terms with him because jun begrudgingly is still tied by name to the business and shows his face at events for all of 30 minutes until he physically can no longer maintain pleasantries. his celebrity image perhaps is one thing they can manipulate, and even then, jun could get into scandals galore and still be doing his job. good press, bad press, it has the kong’s family name at the forefront of peoples’ minds, which always brings forth revenue.  

> pros: could be a lot worse considering his upbringing, collected, and level-headed most of the time. wicked good at sports, and keeps a cool head in a tough situation. ambitious, curious, a little reckless. eager to prove himself, rich? and very endeared to people/places he finds fascinating. which are many. knows where the good, authentic chinese cuisine is. hardworking and very interested in the idea of Progress.

> cons: the most private person alive, will not divulge any palatable information about himself or his feelings. devil's advocate always. will put himself and others at an arm’s length the second he feels (disgusted noises) e-emotions (love, namely). gets bored easily. paranoid, leads with the head more than the heart. friends > > > family. a little self-involved, never fucking sleeps - will be that neighbour you can hear padding around above your apartment at 3.05 am like it’s mid-day, aaaaand Loves Winning Above All Else

* personality & relationships.

> like many others, jun has his fair share of surface-level friends. he’s quick to be interested in people, to get to know them better, but it's difficult for him to get closer than that after a childhood of being picked up and dropped by those who looked over him - which kinda has left him with abandonment issues.

> he’s a curator of neat things that aren’t too overtly complex, and that includes friendships. so if you have something unusual about you, whether it's a talent or a way of thinking, he would be inclined to get to know you better. also, he has a lot of leverage with his job. being friends with a sports star slash million dollar trust fund baby who can get you free shit never hurts, just don’t befriend him for the perks, yanno?

> jun is very dedicated to his vision of things, and can sometimes be very obstinate in the way he a) wants them to be done b) doesn't accept other options, think steve jobs. he's very mercurial and can be nice one minute but isn't afraid to switch to hardass boss to get things done and did.  > he is insanely competitive and his strive is drawn out by always wanting to be on top. truly first child material. that's the kind of guy he is, with standards that do not reflect his passive side too well, which sometimes can get him into some “personality” scandals. he is driven, motivated, always looking for ways to be winning.

> i'm sure someone is bound to hate him, he’s probably got a few accounts online dedicated to a steady stream of shit-talking, given his cutthroat status or holding many hockey cups.

> jun doesn’t think too much about his sexuality - he'd probably best be labelled as pan, but leans towards those who identify as women? because of his current placement in a workspace, and with a cultural identity, that both don’t often lend themselves to lgbtq+ rights, i doubt he’d ever make that public.

> he works amongst some of the fittest people in the world, he knows how to appreciate beautiful bodies, but he's not about to discriminate. he's tragically a committaphobe and isn't interested in anything long-term right now, although i think it'd be funny if someone tried. he's very open for flings and one-night stands and even a friends with benefits sort of set up. 

* wc’s.  >  bring me his baby bro and sis. i command u. i have many thoughts  >  somebody who maybe gets in on his foster-kid situation? idk maybe they have a perception of jun being what he is in the articles they read of him, but they see him and are like <3_<3 he actually real Nice huh. i see this being romantic but it could bloom a really nice, wholesome friendship too. >  enemies. not gonna lie, he doesn’t vibe with rich kids w / a stick up their ass, especially since a lot of the people he works with aren’t from exorbitant families. people who loathe him for declining to take over his families’ business? like the boy can’t even name more than 3 artists off of the top of his head?   > fwb except neither of them know what “just friends” mean.  > i would love if jun had a confidante. a best friend, a partner in crime, a total bromance 'cause i can never get enough of those. whatever label you ‘wanna put on it. wiping up each other’s messes. maybe a Betrayal in the works  > again, gonna be a wc, but i would love a “rival” of jun's on a similar level (or bigger)  that’s entirely fabricated based off of trashy articles or a misunderstood interaction online. bonus points if they’re an absolute sweetheart, well loved by most people, and generally the antithesis of jun with his multiple drug/personality rumours, which in contrast, make him seem like the bad guy. 

> party buddy. this guy hasn’t touched alcohol/cigarettes/any other stimulants since he was underage and wanted to rebel. the word “relax” does not exist in his vocabulary. Help

[beetlemancy]

Anon again: Thank you!! I appreciate you taking the time to answer me because I am kind of active in the community but very very new. I did know your opinions but being new I just wanted to know whether those recent posts held any weight. I want to be socially responsible with my media consumption and I was worried there was something I was missing, given I have seen specific call outs for certain cast members (Travis, Laura, Sam, and Liam) recently. Thanks again!!

Anon pt2: you don’t have to post this but for context the call out posts were as follows: Travis actively supports the military, Laura voiced a black character?, Sam did brown face??, and Liam is fake woke/virtual signaling (or something along those lines). Obviously I can find out information about this for myself but I have seen more anti-CR stuff lately which prompted my ask.

As with everything, I suggest you do your own reading on those topics, and any topic that comes up in regards to the media you watch. Below is simply my opinion. Note: this gets long.

Travis does support the military - but not as an institution. He has family in the military. He supports the soldiers. He works with Operation Supply Drop and I’d encourage you to look into OSD specifically. Whether you agree with the idea that we should even have a military or not, you cannot deny that our veterans and soldiers are given the short end of the stick. We cannot just abandon them because helping them might be viewed as giving money to the military. I have so many military vets in my disability groups. The VA is awful because it has no funding (I know good people who work at the VA too, but they just cannot help everyone like they’d want to). Programs like OSD are genuinely helpful to a lot of hurting folk and the people who shit on Travis and CR for promoting and helping them out have clearly never actually sat down and talked to a vet or a soldier before. 

Laura and many many other voice actors have voiced people of color in various shows. Yes, this is a legit problem. However, obviously as with most things, the problem is nuanced. The fault mainly lies with the VO industry as a whole, in that actors actually have very little control over what they do. There was a whole strike about this very topic (though the strike covered other issues in the industry as well). In the case of Laura, for instance, she was never told what her character would look like until after the fact. And that is super common in the industry. One of the things they tried to get in the strike was more transparency so that actors could make the decisions themselves whether to voice characters or not - not just based on race or culture but also based on type of work (stressful screaming vs chill dialogue) and whether the content of the game itself was something they wanted their name attached to. 

Sam’s blackface scandal is extremely old news. That’s not to say it isn’t important to note, and in fact Sam made a point to note it again back in 2018. I know people who can’t watch CR because of it, even after his apology, and that’s fine because its not my place to judge others for how they react to that kind of thing. However I know a lot of people who read his apology and the circumstances surrounding it and decided to forgive. To some people, the fact that he was asked to do so by will.i.am changes the situation. To others, it doesn’t. To some the fact that he apologized and has clearly worked to improve his behavior matters, to others it doesn’t. You have to decide that for yourself. You can read Sam’s letter HERE. 

Now. Regarding Liam. * sigh * I think, and again this is my opinion, that you cannot proclaim someone you do not know as ‘fake woke.’ I think there are parts of this fandom that have it out for Liam because of a whole bunch of gross reasons, many of which I’ve spoken about before. He is sensitive and a man - that makes people uncomfy. He plays a lot of women characters and tends to embody them in both personality and body language - that makes people uncomfy. He fully embraces the bi energy (this is not to say whether he himself is or not) - that makes a lot of people uncomfy (and angry). He loves theatre and loves to explore the human condition, warts and all - that makes people super uncomfy. Now. There are people who thinks he’s homophobic. Do you know why? Its because his bi character ended up with a woman instead of a man. That is biphobia, no matter how they twist it. Bi people being “allowed” to be bi and not ‘pick the right side’ in the LG (not BT, lets be real) community IS revolutionary because its so very hated. 

Another reason they say he’s homophobic is because of the jokes he is often involved in - some gay men in the fandom believe that joking about sex is him ‘making fun’ of gay relationships. As a bi enby, I disagree, and I read many of the jokes he himself makes as the kind of humor I use among my own friends. I think there is a definite disconnect between bi vs LG humor and I’m not entirely sure who would be considered in the ‘right’ on that. However, when LG people in the fandom claim that he cannot talk about gay relationships because he is cishet? They cannot know that. That is an assumption they are making. When LG fans say that he alone is responsible for this issue and not -literally every single member of CR- ? I have to question whether its really the issue and not just that they still hate Liam for deigning to make a bi character bi instead of gay.

Another thing re: Liam. Aside from Marisha, he is the one I see the most hate about. People on Twitter and Tumblr both have legit uttered death threats about him if he doesn’t do exactly what they want his characters to do in the game. Usually this is about shipping. I have seen people claim that they WISH he was ‘like vic mignogna’ so they’d have a reason to hate him more. I’ve seen a certain group of people and one in particular say they have ‘dirt’ on him but refuse to say what the dirt is - and yet continually bring up that it exists, but that they just cannot say. Why would you incessantly bring up information you possess just to say that you cannot divulge such information? 

Legit issues about CR that is attached to Liam is the whitewashing issue. Some say that only Liam is responsible here because he controls all the art. I would say that we actually don’t know that for sure. He is ‘Art Dad’ and clearly has some pull. I do think that CR should address this issue, but I’m not sure they can legally do what the fandom wants them to do, which is “call-out” artists by name and denounce them. Now, this too is more nuanced than the fandom makes out because its often way more about colorism vs whitewashing. Many people do not draw Beau as white, but they do draw her as much lighter skin tones than her original art. Colorism is a real problem, but white allies tend to go about talking about it wrong or making smaller things a bigger deal when POC would really rather talk about something more important to them. It was these same white allies that tore Mica Burton apart on Twitter because she liked and enjoyed a drawing of Reani, her own character, that was a few shades lighter than the drawing she herself had brought in, even after she had said that she appreciated the variety of skin tones due to seeing herself in each of them. On the topic of whitewashing/colorism in the fandom, I personally tend to wait to hear from POC over the masses of white allies.

The CR fandom is very big for a niche thing like DnD. As such, there are many many corners of the fandom that can get really jaded, really dark, and really up their own ass in regards to the discourse. There are legitimate issues in the fandom and with CR as a whole. Nothing is perfect, nothing ever will be perfect, and people should absolutely do what they can to do better and to ask their media to do better. That being said, there are also people who think that if you don’t do something exactly like they want, then you’re Problematic by default. There are also members of this fandom who have an active vendetta against certain cast members and will use any opportunity to co-opt legit issues in order to shore up their false arguments. These people are only using the real issues and it becomes clear pretty quickly that they don’t actually give a shit about the people they say they are trying to speak up for. 

There is also some fandom drama that has occurred ONLY in fandom and has absolutely nothing to do with CR other than the fact that the people involved happen to be CR fans. Certain people in the fandom think that CR should arbitrate this issue and involve themselves, call out the individuals responsible, etc. This is, I believe, a GROSS misconception of what CR’s role is and asking way too much of a source of entertainment. The fact that CR has not involved themselves in this issue has led certain members of this fandom to claim that CR is homophobic. I would caution that most callouts of CR as homophobic are directly linked to this first issue, and also a callback to the Vaxleth drama from campaign one, and is incontrovertibly tied to bi and enby-phobia and a seriously sick misunderstanding of the responsibilities a show has versus the responsibility individuals have as viewers of said show. 

That’s it for now. I could go way more in depth on this problems, but I’m tired of typing. Suffice it to say, its easy to make a list of things Problematic with CR, but once you actually delve into each topic hopefully you’ll realize how complicated and filled with nuance and Different Opinions going on back from the first episode of Campaign One... Listing problems without actually addressing them head-on isn’t a good way to deal with the problems that are true anyway, let alone tell them from the false ones. 

[toonytoodles]

Random fun fact time! Ft. OCs! (Repost because I added more/ edited a lot of stuff)

Avery -

- Sneezes like a kitten, and most of the time she accidentally uses her fire breathe when she sneezes, so watch out

- Sleeps on a rock

- Is made uncomfortable by actual dragons, it's just... too weird for her...

- Has a strange and inexplicable extreme fear of eels

- Reacts to fear by singing/humming/speaking very loudly, and also by running and screaming (basically, how markilpler acts when playing horror games? yeah that)

- At least once a week her dad has to help her brush through her hair, he says they should get it cut but she absolutely refuses

- Owns a few pairs of gloves- most of which look nearly identical. Some are for different days, some pairs are for bedtime, and some are for special occasions, but she also has some different types and styles of gloves for different events

- Loves the holidays, dislikes the weather that comes with it

- Absolutely hates people touching/messing with her tail, even if it's by accident she gets kinda mad. That's hers- don't touch it. (Emma's the only exception to this simply because it can't be avoided- although Emma does try to touch it as little as possible)

- Slightly allergic to pollen

- She has a clicking-like purr

- If you scratch under her chin she'll purr and relax, but if scratch a certain spot on her neck she'll sleepily fall over

- Adopted as an egg and raised by her human father and fairy mother

- Has a Scottish accent 

- Works as a Glazier (glass blower) and makes potion bottles, also helps with making the potions, and occasionally costumer service and boring stuff like stocking/inventory

Emma -

- Plays with hoodie strings and/or hair when upset or nervous (it happens often, her hoodie strings are sorta worn out)

- She's a big fan of animals! Especially bears, puppies, and unicorns, she thinks they're adorable! When she was younger she used to like dragons quite a bit too

- She's a protective friend and big sister, and she's a little over protective over people she cares about

- Tends to read into things; if your tone or demeanor is slightly different she begins worrying that something's wrong or that she did something. She also tends to believe that no one actually wants to be her friend or wants to be nice to her, but that they're only being nice because they're afraid of her or pity her.

- LOVES HUGS!!! Absolutely loves them, hugging other giants, hugging people smaller than her, getting hugs, giving hugs, she loves hugs

- Once accidentally ate a fake candy cane decoration, off someone's front lawn, because she thought it was real gigantic candy, left out for giants (she was like four, so it made sense to her then, but she still gets made fun for it a bit by her family)

- Loves snow and winter

- Her favorite color is probably blue

- Is surprisingly good at sneaking up on people, for someone 30ft tall she's quiter than most borrowers

- Is the second oldest of five kids, her older brother Rory is 23, her younger brother Richard is 15, and her youngest sisters Aroura and Tiana are 6 and 8, and they're all pretty close

- Her dad is a size shifter, and so are Richard and Tiana, the rest of the family are giants

- She's ambidextrous

- Very cautious of her surroundings

- Hates surprises/being scared

- Bi-romantic and ace

Sofia -

- Can write without looking at what she's doing

- Only wears slip on shoes or shoes with Velcro/zippers, she never learned how to tie them, she couldn't figure out what to do with her head or look at what she was doing

- She's an artist! She likes to paint!

- Has a hard time saying "no," so when she says it, she means it

- Hates surprises and people sneaking up on her

- Has a pet python named Albert

- Probably the only person on the planet who has worse anxiety than Emma

- Don't call her "Soph" or "Sophie," and she gets mildly annoyed when her name is misspelled

- Typically uses right arm to carry head and left hand for everything else

- Has a weird sense of humor

- Has a million stuffed animals, has like 20 on her bed, but Rupert the blue bunny is her favorite

- She has an enchanted scarf that allows her to wear her head when needed, she doesn't usually use it because she's not used to it & it gives her anxiety (she's scared of the scarf falling off/being taken off unexpectedly) but she has it and uses it on occasion, mostly at home

- She doesn't let anyone else hold her head, it seriously freaks her out, her dad is the only exception, but Avery held her once for a group photo (her body took the picture)

-She loves singing and has a soft beautiful voice but is too shy to sing around anyone 🎶

- She was bullied when she was younger and doesn't like to talk about it, she already gets emotional easily and those memories hurt

- She loves Avery's jokes and has a bit of a weird sense of humor

- She's adopted, she lives with her human father (another fun fact, her dad is one of Avery's parents best friends!)

- Unlike Avery, she wasn't adopted as a baby, she was about 6-7ish when she was adopted

- Loves vegetables

- Gets embarrassed easily

- Doesn't go out of her comfort zone, she only does stuff when Avery basically forces her to

- She really likes Emma, but is also sorta scared of her sometimes, she's just scared of people and being looked at, so she can be a little overwhelming without meaning to be, it's nothing personal and she knows Emma wouldn't hurt a fly, she's just scared of people and sometimes Emma is a lot of person

- Doesn't want Emma to hold her (Emma respects it, although sometimes they work it out to where Emma can give her a gentle hug)

-Her favorite season is fall

-She loves rabbits and frogs, but won't admit she loves horses (there's a stereotype that all dullahans love horses, she won't give in)

-Hates confrontation

-Loves vanilla cake

-Hates strangers and people she's not comfortable around being anywhere near her

- Pansexual

- Sorta has a voice claim, but it's weird and sorta difficult to explain?

Andie -

- Has a French accent (picked it up from dad)

- One of my only OCs to have a voice claim

- Plays the flute

- Mean, selfish, and self centered, but somehow also a good person

- Sings sentences sometimes

- Scared of turtles

- Works as a bard/waitress at the family tavern

- Unfortunately she is heterosexual

Andy -

- Somehow didn't pick up their fathers accent

- One of my only OCs to have a voice claim

- Plates the lute

- Genuine and kind hearted, but also a bumbling moron

- Dreams of being a song writer, wants to be a professional musician

- Works as a bard/waiter at the family tavern

- Bi, but prefers women

Clementine -

- A book worm

- Likes to sing

- Practices magic, knows a few interesting spells

- Sometimes her and Avery fight over magic usage vs. potion usage (they know it's a dumb fight, but they don't care, at this point it's a joke)

- She's a white tailed deer

- She has great hearing, and is usually very aware of her surroundings

- She wants to be a magic professor as an adult

- Demisexual, pan, but prefers men

Pond-

- Elementals don't really have gender, she chooses to present as female and use female pronouns

- Can't "see," but rather senses vibrations, since she's made out of water she doesn't have eyes, but based on other senses she can get around just fine

- She can't smell either

- Doesn't care for romance

- Has 4 pet fish she keeps with her, named Karl, Frank, Phillip, and Fish

- She has a baby sister, Brook

- She's odd and can be off putting unless you know her pretty well, then her weirdness is sort of endearing

- She can tell her friends apart by the way they walk and their gestures, and of course their voices, but really has no idea what any of them look like, she knows their species and the normal traits of those species, but not much outside that

- She doesn't eat or drink

- Smart, but sorta reckless

- Sorta hard to hug :( but the others still try

Sapphire -

- Has minimal size shifting abilities, but prefers to be her true size, she loves sitting on her husband's shoulders or in his pockets (She's about 5ft in her bigger form)

- Used to be an adventurer, at one point she was a pirate

- Met her husband on one of her adventures

- Has a Scottish accent

- She has a sword her size (no it's not a toothpick or a toy or anything, she has an actual tiny sword) 🗡

- Makes potions for the shop and deals with customers

- Grew up outside of Tradeskeep, her and Kal retired from their adventuring career and settled down there

Kalvin -

- Used to be an adventurer/ mercenary

- Huge, ripped, has all kinds of scars, but his 4" tall wife is scarier than he his, he's basically a teddy bear

- Makes potions, does restocking, inventory, and doesn't as much anymore, but makes potion bottles

- Has scars/tattoos from various adventures

- Used to have dragon scale armor, he once saved a village from a dragon, but has sold it and no longer tells the story, he now claims it was a bear

- He's a great dad ❤

- Loves ale & meat, but not as much as his girls

- I cannot overstate how much he loves his family, he LOVES his wife and daughter, like a LOT, it pretty much defines who he is, he's a family man

- Met his wife while on a quest

- He used to be a nomad while adventuring and getting paid for jobs, he'd wander from town to town, until he settled at Tradeskeep and put up a shop

Ok so i know that's a lot, but it's there for anyone who's interested in all that ❤ I have other facts too, so if you wanna know any more just look around on my blog or send an ask, Q&A for OCs are open, and I'm open to art/writing requests/ideas! ❤

[same-side]

I just finished DBH and Im seriously so in love with it! But when I came on Tumblr, all I could find is all this content around Gavin, and Im just so confused, because he seemed like such a jerk in the game. Why are people so into Gavin? Did I miss something?

Hi there!

First off, allow me to welcome you to the fandom!

In regards to Gavin: you literally did not miss anything; he is absolutely a one dimensional jerk in game!

Its important we make a distinction here between fanon Gavin and canon Gavin. You’ll find the fandom is incredibly divided - a lot of people adore him, a lot of people hate him. The reason for disliking him is understandable, of course - there’s a slew of incredible and well rounded characters in dbh (North, Luther, Kara…) that are swept under the rug in favour of a veritable avalanche of content for rat man reed. He has 14 minutes of screen time in which literally all he does is antagonize and threaten the player. But people have to understand, when someone says they love Gavin, they mean fanon Gavin. I don’t think theres a single person that is actually a canon Gavin stan. 

Keeping that in mind, you also have to take into account the drop off - at this point, the only people still left/creating content in the fandom are generally the ones that are balls deep and clinging to the headcanons, au’s, etc. that they’ve built with friends. This applies heavily to Gavin for reasons discussed below. Additionally, the algorithms for sites like tumblr and instagram won’t recommend old posts; old posts don’t show up in tags. Artists with a lot of clout that have since moved on from the fandom’s work have basically disappeared into the void (rebelflet, for example). So it may seem like there’s only content of Gavin / Gavin ships, but in reality there’s a ton of jericrew and Kara crew out there from when the fandom was still new / bigger - you just have to know where to look.

So… why do people like Gavin… I mean, it helps that canonically he has beefy tiddies, a cool bad boy jacket, and a pretty face at certain angles.

That being said, I think one of the biggest reasons Gavin (and RK900, by extension) are so popular is that they aren’t well rounded, fleshed out characters. Because we don’t really know anything about them and they have minimal screen time, they’re easy to project on or to add onto, and no one can tell you that you’re wrong because there’s no evidence against it. It’s almost like a universally shared OC that the fandom has developed together. Since they have no canon backstory, and in rk900’s case, no canon personality, it allows for a lot of creative freedom and the ability to explore character interactions, foils, and growth within the dbh universe. The growth aspect, I think, in conjunction with the projection aspect, is key point for the popularity. It tends to be fairly formulaic. Take the canonical asshole Gavin, stick him with an android - whether its RK900 as his partner or Connor as a coworker. Have him come to care for the RK model, and deal with his own insecurities (and usually a traumatic past, the flavor of which might depend on the creator’s own life struggles). Repent, redeem, grow. This redemption arc is the same exact vein of growth and change that makes Hank and Connor such an appealing partnership for players as well - only, in Gavin’s case, it allows for complete freedom in how to get from point a to point b. People like a character they can relate to - and when you can smack your own possible trauma (being an illegitimate child, having an abusive lover, abusive parents, abandonment fears, body insecurity, whatever it may be) on a character because they’re a blank slate, you relate to them and vent through them. Even little “silly” projections or projections that aren’t necessarily traumatic can make someone love a character even more - for example, “Gavin loves Hello Kitty,” “Gavin can’t handle spicy food,” “Gavin is Latino.” Even when the creator isn’t projecting, adding these kinds of headcanons make him a fleshed out, three dimensional character that people can relate to or empathize with, especially when giving his actions an explanation besides just fear of losing his job.

I came into the dbh fandom a little late; by the time I knew what it was, the hype had died down and reed900 was already a firmly cemented, heavily present part of the content. Given that, I’m not sure what its exact origins were, or if it seemingly popped up overnight. It could have been crack. My best guess is that people saw the positive change between Hank and Connor, and thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be rad if we stuck the other Connor with the other dysfunctional DPD bastard?” . I admit, it makes a nice parallel, which may be part of the appeal in additional to the previous reasons. Speaking of those kinds of interpersonal relationships, there’s also a popular headcanon (that’s been mentioned/liked by d*vid c*ge himself) that Kamski and Gavin are siblings/half siblings/cousins. This stems from the fact that Kamski and Gavin are both mo-capped/voiced by the same actor. By taking this headcanon into account, it adds depth to Gavin’s hatred of androids and allows for interesting backstory exploration, growth, and reconciliation.

Another reason is the enemies-to-lovers trope. For a lot of people that trope really jimmies their neutrons, and what could be better than an android hater and an android to fit that cliche? Once again, analogous to hankcon. The angst potential is also incredible when you take convin or hankvin into account instead of reed900 - reading into Hank and Gavin’s interactions it would seem there’s a tumultuous past between them. And in Connor’s case, Gavin can actually kill him or he can KO Gavin, which allows for a good deal of enemies-to-lovers and angsty regret material. Besides, a lot of people are really into hate s*x.

That…. makes a good segway. I may as well mention the elephant in the room for Gavin’s popularity. There’s a culture of fetishizing abuse in fandoms and Gavin is a prime target for this because “”he’s asking for it.”” It’s also easy to make one character a psychopath when they don’t even have a canon personality. This shows up a lot, whether because of writers treating it as a kink in fanfic or artists using it as a gag because its “funny”. I… won’t really go into detail on this, but it is a phenomenon that adds to the slew of Gavin content. This is another reason for why a lot of people hate Gavin / hate reed900. I started out feeling this way as well. Their perception of it is coloured by the abusive stuff or the mishandled stuff that seems to be prominent. I just have to say that this blog is a safe, sane, and consensual zone.

Sorry, that was a really long breakdown but I hope that gives some insight into the Gavin phenomenon. Last point. He winks like a dumbass. How can you not love that face.

[lovemesomesurveys]

Whoa, me doing a bolding survey?

*lol bolding surveys are tough for me because I want to elaborate on my choices, which I did a lot of in this.*

NFP | mediator/idealist You get carried away by fantasies and ideas Always want to be hugged You’re energized by quiet time alone Constantly looking for the best in people People say you’re shy/calm/reserved So open-minded Can’t stop thinking about the future Probably a writer or artist in some way Compassionate and empathetic Insanely good listener Prefer a small group of friends Absolutely hate injustice Easily get lost in deep thought 9/13

ENFJ | protagonist/mentor Expert at communicating with others You’re sensitive and easily offended A natural born leader You strive for win-win situations Everyone wants to be your friend You’re basically everyone’s cheerleader  Hate seeing people excluded from things You stand firm for what you believe in You just want everyone to be happy Live for supporting people around you You’d be a great teacher You love to keep your life organized You’re probably an empath 6.5/13

ESTJ | executive/supervisor Incredibly practical about life You naturally step into leadership roles You can be very detail-oriented You’re very matter-of-fact You’re known to be very direct The first to take charge in a situation People say you’re very focused and driven Sometimes you can be too impersonal Strive in managerial positions Driven by results You love meeting and talking to new people You strongly believe in working hard You hate people who don’t follow rules. <<< I consider myself to be pretty rule abiding for the most part and I don’t condone crimes, but I can’t say I’ve never done anything wrong. Maybe nothing too serious, but still. I wouldn’t say I hate people who don’t follow rules, but I have an issue with people who don’t follow certain rules. It’s complicated hence the italicized answer and the need to explain a little further. .5/13

ESFP | entertainer/performer You love to live in the moment You’re energized when around people Avoid conflict like the corona virus You never forget anything Can be materialistic <<< I mean, I like my Apple products and Beats headphones, which are nice and expensive things, yes, but I don’t know if the term materialistic applies to me because of it. I think it goes bigger and beyond that. I’m not consumed with buying expensive things to fill a void or think it can buy happiness. I don’t have to be bigger and better. I don’t want to be flashy. I enjoy the items I listed above, but there’s more important things in life than worldly possessions.   You’re constantly changing your mind Way too friendly You could easily be an actor Often the life of the party Not a huge fan of deadlines or structure Independent af Constantly finding the light of a situation Sensitive to the needs of others 3/13

ISFP | adventurer/artisan Tend to hold back your feelings You live an easy-going life  You stick to a close group of friends <<< no friends anymore, but I stick to my family, who I’m close to and spend a lot of my time with. That’s how it was when I did have friends, though. I never had a big group of friends and that was perfectly fine with me. Hate long-term planning <<< I have to take things day by day or do short-term goals. Mistaken as “lazy” or “slow-moving” <<< Italicized because they’re not mistaken. You take things at your own pace So considerate to those around you <<< Italicized because I think I am? I sure try to be. Absolutely hate criticism and conflict Sometimes too hard on yourself <<< All the time. You could be an artist or musician You have a special bond with animals Have been called “unconventional” before Learn best with hands-on training 9/13

INTJ | architect/mastermind Everyone go away Very low tolerance for stupidity Small talk = your worst nightmare Have very dry humor Sarcasm is your first language You love researching everything Planning is your favorite hobby Can’t stand salespeople Known to be very blunt Probably could be a doctor or engineer A grammar nazi You like to silently judge people You love to create theories about life 3/13

ESFJ | consul/caregiver You care so much about others Take your responsibilities very seriously <<< Not these past few years like I should, but normally. You have a contagious laughter Tasks are your best friend You’re very family-oriented The most loyal person ever You absolutely hate feeling useless No one would ever call you selfish Probably strive as a nurse or social worker Overflowing with compassion and love Always seeing the best in others You value security and stability for everyone So down to earth <<< In some ways. I’m not a relaxed and stress-free person at all, but I’m also not arrogant or proud. I get along with and can work well with others. I don’t see myself as better or superior to others at all. 6/13

ISTP | virtuoso/crafter Very comfortable with change Easily find the solution in any problem Always want to know how things work Love to be constantly doing something Handle crisis-situations really well Efficient af in everything you do Stubborn when you know you’re right Hard for others to tell how you’re feeling <<< For the most part. My mom is good at it, though. 100% a hands-on learner Could easily be a mechanic or it the military You’re never afraid to make a mistake You dress for comfort more than style Easily bored and unfocused with tasks 3/13

ENFP | campaigner/champion Spotted constantly laughing So much enthusiasm for life Love to start new projects Constantly have a new hobby to do Hate repetitive tasks so much Expert at brainstorming new ideas Not a fan of micromanagers Very quick to understand people’s concerns So much energy Probably a comedian or counselor You’re never afraid to make a mistake Easily motivate people to join a cause Always looking at the big picture of life 2/13

ISFJ | defender/protector Very sensitive to others’ feelings Love to have a routine to follow every day Drawn to facts more than theories Hate the “unknown” in any situation <<< The unknown is generally scary to me, but some things I don’t want or need to know. Always want to keep others safe and sound Safety first You’re always obeying the laws/rules Known to procrastinate on certain things Easily taken advantage of, unfortunately Strives as a nurse or interior designer So detail-oriented and organized You love following traditions Probably quiet as a child 6.5/13

ESTP | entrepreneur/persuader Always seeking to have a good time Bubbly and happy almost all the time Love being the center of attention Like to live in the “now” Sometimes you can be too impulsive Life always seems to work out for you Expert at adapting the life changes Rules suck Very observant of the people around you Could be an entrepreneur or bartender So detail-oriented and organized People are drawn to your enthusiasm You’re a “get things done” person 0/13

INTP | logical/thinker You’re known to be quiet/thoughtful Can be distracted for hours by one thing Always hated group projects <<< Not because I have a problem with working with others, it’s just that group projects always gave me added stress. I didn’t like my grade dependent on other people and vice versa. I always stressed about everyone getting their part done. You find it hard to trust others Serious introvert Have a child-like sense of wonder Hate structure You never run out of things to talk about Can handle criticism pretty well Would strive as a lawyer or professor Will share educational articles with others Could easily win a debate with anyone Just generally pretty smart 5.5/13

ENTJ | commander/ceo Find the most efficient way to do anything Very goal-focused Can come across very assertive Born to be a leader Work hard and play hard Can motivate anyone to do anything Hate repeated mistakes Feel the need to fix everything Allergic to stupidity Never satisfied with your own work It’s so easy to get what you want Probably excel as a lawyer or ceo The word “impossible” doesn’t exist for you 1/13

INFJ | advocate/counselor Fear doing the wrong thing Genuinely want to please and help others Believe in the complexities of relationship <<< Not sure I understand this correctly, but I think so? Love encouraging others to be better Very likely an empath Could be a photographer or teacher Always avoiding conflict and criticism Feel the need to fix everything Really good at communicating with others Take relationships very seriously Sociable and fun but needs time alone too Loves physical contact with people Always the one to give advice to others <<< I used to be. 6.5/13

ENTP | debater/inventor Constantly coming up with abstract ideas Champion at debates Arrogant but also aware of your own faults The most introverted extrovert Getting really excited about sharing ideas Constantly changing your opinions Low tolerance for people but also social You overanalyze everything Known to take a lot of risks in life Picking accidental fights all the time Have probably argued with authorities So freaking clever Could be a detective or inventor as a career 1/13

ISTJ | logistical/inspector Take constructive criticism like a boss You thrive on organization Incredibly responsible You don’t rest until the job is done Actually really good with money Believe things should be done by the book Strive for structure in your every day life Absolutely hate getting in trouble Probably an officer or accountant Literally the most dependable person Sometimes too logical for people Take time to warm up to new ideas Some call you a perfectionist 3.5/13

[tisthenightofthewitch]

GHOST – “I would say by early 2021, you can expect the next chapter of the Ghost story.” TOBIAS FORGE

From the underground to a bonafide global take-over, GHOST are fast becoming the most-talked about band in Metal music today, with legions of fans dedicating their total and utter commitment to the bands every move. Overdrive sat down with one Tobias Forge to discuss the bands success and that all important new album…

The spectacular rise of GHOST is a success story that nobody could have predicted. From their captivating live show’s, to a rich discography that continues to win over armies of fans the world over, GHOST are fast becoming one of the biggest bands in today’s current global Metal/Rock scene.

From the projects birth back in 2006 to conquering American arenas, winning a Grammy for ‘Best Metal Performance‘ (2016), headlining their first UK festival at Bloodstock Open Air (2017), selling out the iconic Royal Albert Hall (2018) and now, floating around Europe as very special guests with the biggest metal band the world has ever seen, Metallica.

One could say that that the Cardinal and his Ghouls are in a rather good place right now.

Prior to taking the stage for their Irish debut before 75 thousand fans (no pressure), Ghostmastermind, Tobias Forge is calmly hanging out in the enormous the backstage compound with his band members and crew, happily sipping on a hot coffee and eager to talk about his excitement in playing the impressive Slane Castle venue.

OD – Firstly, let me congratulate you on the continuous success of GHOST. From the outside, it’s been an incredible few years for the band. My question is how has it been for you personally, from the success of the album (s), playing to stadiums in the US, and now this tour with Metallica?

TOBIAS – Absolutely! I have moments where I have to step back and take it all in. You see, I’m not a very ‘in the moment‘ type of person. In fact, I’ve always been very distant and I guess a ‘dreamy‘ sort of person. If I look back on my life so far and I think about how I spent my childhood, I guess this comes with age and it comes from the fact of also being a parent because when you’re a parent, you can’t help to look at your kids from an upbringing point of view where you have to think about our progress.

I found myself asking the question;”Well, how did we do when we were younger?” [Laughing]. I guess there is a certain amount of reflection you have to do as an adult and now, for me, especially being an artist, I tend to have to think about my life and the journey I’ve had growing up and I’ve come to realise that very little has changed. I have spent my whole life drawing, writing and dreaming about doing all of these things that I’m now getting the opportunity to do.

So, at some point, that dreamy, adolescent looser just like, transgressed into this person who could go back into childhood again. The backside of that is sometimes, I have to remind myself that I’ve gone past the point of wishing to get here, and understand the realisation that this is actually happening. Like today for instance, getting to play this infamous venue, (Slane Castle) is huge for me. I’ve known about this place since the ’80’s.

I have a bit of a ‘now‘ moment with this today, but what often happens is that I play a certain venue, or meet a particular person and it’s like that moment just happens and I’m looking in from the outside, but afterwards I’m like; “WOW!” [Laughing]

OD – You recently did your first unmasked television interview, considering the history and the mystic of Papa Emeritus / Cardinal Copia was this a difficult decision for you to make and why did you feel that this was the time to do it?

TOBIAS – I think I thought and pondered for many, many years and at a certain point, in fact on that very day, it was one of those kind of ‘rip the bandaid off‘ kind of moments. Let’s just get it over with, no drumroll, no fanfare, let’s just move on. I try to be super transparent with this, but my choice of trying to be anonymous or should I say “masked” because anonymous is when no-one knows who you are. That choice was purely an aesthetic choice based on how I wanted this project, this band, this concept to become.

It was not my personal choice, because I don’t want to be famous, or a well known rock musician. So, fast forward to right now and when I look back, I have been involved with some very well-known bands and I’ve had my own share of recognition, so really, I don’t have a desire to become more famous. Bearing that in mind, I was noticing over the years that trying to maintain that vague order was causing a few problems and issues with the whole thing.

There was definitely moments when there was discussions and demands and enquiries about what can we do in order to enhance things. So, I figured well, at some point when I feel that the concept, or the band, or the name and it’s visual aspects are big and strong enough to stand on its own, I can do a thing like that unmasked interview, and hopefully whatever we are doing aesthetically and what we choose to present to the world, that will still be more interesting and better than anything I have to do on the side to appease journalists.

OD – What do you think of the critics who don’t look to favourably on what you do?

TOBIAS  – Well, traditionally I’ve noticed that the critics that are critical of the band have been so since day one. Often a lot of the times the shit that people click on is criticism that is not really meant to be positive or productive anyway. I’ve been very vocal towards those people and have to remind them that what I set this project/band out to be, happened to get very popular to an extent that I didn’t foresee.

There are people who say: “Ghost was way better back in 2010” and as a rock fan myself, we can start where my collection begins from ‘A’ and I too will have some critical things to say about each album/artists. That’s just the way things go. You can’t please everybody all the time.

OD – There has been reports of entering the studio for 2020, is this still something that is very likely and is the intention to release the album next year or 2021 or is it too early to think about that right now?

TOBIAS – I think about it all the time.  But, let me be very transparent here. I am indeed going into the studio where I will be beginning the work in January. We’re doing another American tour in September/October and then we’re gonna come back to Europe and that is gonna take us right up until Christmas basically.

So, after New Year’s we are gonna have maybe one or two small things at the beginning of the year and then it’s gonna be all about the new album.

People need to understand that I spend about 5 to 6 months in the studio. That’s not with red lights going or anything [Laughing]. But it’s just being in that creative environment you know? I also try to work ‘normal’ hours because I have a family also so, I try to work traditional hours, you know. I like to come in on Monday morning at about 9 am/10 am and then I do normal stuff like have lunch and think about what’s going on, and then I wrap up for the day and head home and see my family.

In order to make that record, it’s gonna take me about 6 months and then that’s gonna take me to the Summer, which we’ve already decided we’re gonna take a break a let the dust settle, and then hopefully by the end of the summer the record will be finished.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depends on how you see it, the US elections are happening, so bearing that in mind, it’s not the best time to release new material when peoples minds are focused on other things. I just want to make sure that when we release this new album, we have peoples attention.

OD – So, you’re hoping that the album is going to be ready by late Summer then?

TOBIAS – Well, that’s the plan but in the event that it’s not finished, it’s gonna be okay. I don’t want to stress the situation. Every record I’ve done has been under some type of time restraint, even ‘Opus Eponymous‘ (2010), that album was on a very tight schedule. It was definitely last minute [Laughing]. I just want to make sure that I have enough time to release the album that I’m thoroughly happy with.

When strategising about where Ghost is right now and where we want to go moving forward, we have to be aware of all the possibilities regarding the best time to release the new album.

OD – I’m sure you have big ambitions for the production of the new album also?

TOBIAS – Yes, totally. We now have the pleasure of playing in much bigger venues all over the world and with that comes the fact that there are a lot of tickets to sell. I hate to talk about it in this way, but it’s a huge part of this business. We have to take great care in everything we do now. Like the best time to announce a tour, a new album, as well as the best time of the year to release the new album. There’s loads of things to take into consideration.

OD – Do you think that some of the previous album releases were not timed well?

TOBIAS – Yes, some of our previous releases were not released at a time that was in our favour. In fact, I have memories of things being very stressful at times. At this point in the bands legacy, it’s far too important to just release the next album with no plan or strategy put in place first. Also, it’s very important that we give the production of the album a few weeks of rehearsal. Basically, we have to plan it like a rocket launch [Laughing].

OD – So, when do you see this album finally being released?

TOBIAS – I would say by early 2021, you can expect the next chapter of the Ghost story.

OD – With regards to each character, do you have an overall plan of what will be happening or is it something that are inspired about with the writing of each album. Does the writing of the album determine the character we will see when it’s eventually released?

TOBIAS – Well, at first there was no masterplan, but now there is one. A lot of the things that have been communicated over the last few years will be fined tuned and explained in the coming years.

OD – Can you give me an example?

TOBIAS – Well, there will be a number of non-album things that are going to happen. This will all happen in tandem with the overall story. These things might be happening next year also.

Even in the void of 2020 not really being an active year for us in terms of live performances, there will be other things that we will be doing in the interim where there’s going to be an album made.

OD – So, would you say that things are more conceptional now than ever?

TOBIAS – Yes, totally. In the beginning there is was lucid, but things have changed in a huge way.

OD – Have you ever considered making a documentary or perhaps releasing a book about your life?

TOBIAS – Well this can tie in with a previous answer that we have already spoken about. At some point or another, during the high points of Ghost, I’m sure there are people that would be interested in reading about my thoughts and my background. But I feel like I’m not really there yet, if you know what I mean.

I feel that I have a lot more to do, before I can think about something like that. Right now if feels like thinks are ever progressing and it just doesn’t feel like the moment where I need to document everything to date. I mean, who knows what’s gonna happen but for all I know, all of this could go tits-up in four years from now.  If that happens then I can look back and reminisce when it’s all over.

I just don’t feel like I’m anywhere near the end. I’m gonna be 4o years-old in 2 years time and i’ve got a lot more to do even before I hit that age.

OD – Do you worry about getting old?

TOBIAS – Not really. In fact here’s a little life hack about feeling better about your age. I have a lot of friends who are much older than me. Not only is that very interesting socially, but if I have any issues with the concept of ageing, sometimes it’s great to have older friends whom you can use as a sort of barometer.

I have a lot of respect for my older friends. I think to myself; “If I was half as cool as my friends, I would be very happy with that“. The concept of ageing is definitely hated by a lot of people. At the end of the day, regardless of all of this, my plan is to become a really cool 50-year-old [Laughing].

OD – Do you think it’s important to have role models that are older?

TOBIAS – Yes, very much so. You can not stare yourself blind at the idea of youth being the only state worthy of being because that will greatly disappoint you.

OD – So far, what has been your biggest personal achievement?

TOBIAS – Hmmmm, there are many to choose from. [Thinking..] I think the biggest achievement for me and what I really feel blessed about is..there’s not really a word that can encapsulate what I’m thinking here. Let me try to explain.

From a family point of view, knowing where we were and what our options and possibilities were 1o years ago when our kids were born to present day. I am extremely proud and happy and thankful that I managed to steer things around to something very different. I’m not saying that everything would be crap had all of this not worked out as we were still very happy back then.

I’m very happy that it turned out this way because I got to be one of the few that got to live out a childhood dream. Music really is the only thing that I can do intuitively. I’m quite able to do this and I get better at it with age [Laughs]. But, there is a lot of things that I can’t do, and I don’t exactly know if it’s because I didn’t do that certain exam or for another reason.

I have a hard time concentrating when I’m faced with doing things I don’t really like doing.

OD – How did you back in school?

TOBIAS – I actually wasn’t really good in school [Laughing]. I have no scholastic background, so basically the outlook 10 years ago, had this not happened, did not look that good.

OD – There are few (if no other) bands that have managed to achieve the success that GHOST is currently experiencing, although it’s an exciting and wonderful thing, surely that, in its own right, is a huge achievement for you?

TOBIAS – Up until I was 29 years old, I was on the outside looking into the music industry, trying to figure out a way in [Laughing] and during this time, this industry was not interested in having me as part of it.

Since I was a ‘late bloomer‘ in this business and I got this very coveted opportunity, I feel that my biggest achievement is doing the right things at the right time. This is a highly strange situation for me at times. For instance we are a crew of 25 people here today. I’m not setting up the stage, tuning the guitars etc… I’m expected to put my shit on and get up on that stage, do a little dance and sing my songs in the somewhat correct key [Laughing]

If I have to talk about someone else that made all of this happen, it’s my wife, who gave me the freedom and the pass to continue to chase my dreams when things were just starting to happen.

I remember her saying; “Why don’t you quit your job and just go for it?”

OD – At what point in time did this happen?

TOBIAS – Only a couple of months after Opus Eponymous came out. I was in a critical moment in time. I was employed in a position at a company doing a job that I was not really good at, and I didn’t really enjoy nor felt any value in doing.

She then said to me one day; “It seems like some good things are happening with your ‘rock dreams’, so why don’t you just quit your job and try that? It’s not like your job is worth anything to you. So, you can just do that and if it doesn’t work out, then at least you’ve tried it”.

When I look back on that and realise what she helped me do, most people don’t get that break. Most people who are in a relationship and are grown up, with children, just don’t get a pass like that.

Of course, my Mother also was a huge support for me. When I was in school, she was very saddened that I was such a poor performer and we went to many of the school teacher meetings where there were saying things like; “What can we do to aid you?” [Laughing] and my Mom was like [crying sound] “I don’t know what you want to do with your life“.

Meanwhile I’m over there in the corner being obnoxious, telling teachers to “go fuck themselves“. My Mom had to deal with a lot of worrying and hoping that life will fall in place for me. And by 2010 she was finally beginning to think; ‘Maybe this ‘rock’ thing is actually gonna work out!“, because I finally had a job and with two kids etc..

OD – As Mother’s do, she stood by you all the way.

TOBIAS – Yes, she believed in me.

OD – She’s been to the shows I’m assuming. She know’s all about the ‘Cardinal’ then?

TOBIAS – [Laughing] Yes, she’s been there and loves it. She is not an authoritarian. My Mom was born in the ’40’s and is very “arty“. She was very much a part of the ’60’s generation. In fact, a little bit of side information for you. My Mom bought my first and my second guitar.

OD – What kind of guitar was it and do you still have it?

TOBIAS – Unfortunately, I don’t have that guitar. Ironically, since we’re here with Metallica today, the first guitar that I had was a black Fernandes Strat,  just like the one that Kirk (Hammet, Metallica) had on the cover of the original “Garage Days‘ ’87 release.

That was my first guitar and I was so proud that I had the same guitar that Kirk Hammet had and here I am today, sitting backstage on tour with Metallica. Talk about full circle in life. It’s mind-blowing for me, it really is.

OD – I guess there was no hesitation when the Metallica offer came in then?

TOBIAS – I believe the term used was; “A stone-cold no-brainer‘ [Laughing]. It really felt like it was the right time to do this much more than say, if we were given this tour six or seven years ago.

OD – I remember the first time I ever saw Ghost live was back at the 2011 UK Download Festivaland you were on the Pepsi-Max tent, during Soundgarden’s performance on the main stage. There was only a couple of hundred people in that tent but that show was fantastic.

TOBIAS – I remember that show. Phil Anselmo and the guys from Anthrax were standing on the side of the stage watching. That was a really big show for us as we almost cancelled because we did a show in Sweden the night before and we just about didn’t make the journey. It happened because it was very much based on my will to play Donington Park.

Not only were we seen by a lot of cool people, but also that was when our now manager saw us perform for the very first time. I didn’t know that she would end up managing us at the time but it was because of that performance that things took a huge turn for us.

Ghost is very much a collective effort in many ways, from the people that work with us, our crew, techs, management, band members etc, they are all responsible for making this happen. That show was very much a landmark gig that changed the course of the bands destiny.

So, the message here kids is don’t cancel shows, you just don’t know what might happen. [Laughing] Just be cool to everyone because you just don’t know who you’re dealing with. One day a stage hand, or lighting tech, could very well become the next big label, booking agent etc. Just be cool to everyone all the time.

Catch GHOST on tour with Metallica NOW. US dates have also just been announced. Check out the full listing above. For more information, please click here.

ALL RIGHTS OWNED BY OVERDRIVE.IE

[teganberry]

The Destiny Trio is far from over

I don’t tend to post opinion pieces here, but I figure there’s a first time for everything so here goes! I absolutely adore Kingdom Hearts and the Destiny Trio. So let’s take a good look at their relationship, the symbolism of their friendship and where it could all be headed in the future.

To say Kingdom Hearts 3 has been a divisive entry in the saga for the fan base would be some what of an understatement. As for me, I’m firmly sitting in the camp of people who loved the game and will happily play it over and over again without a care in the world. But I can also agree that Kingdom Hearts 3 isn’t flawless, no game is, and there are certain plot beats that probably could’ve been handled better.

I’ve seen a lot of critiques and straight up hate being thrown around in regards to this game and its character portrayals. Mostly I’ve tried to tune it out as white noise, as long as I enjoyed the game I’m happy, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But there have been a few interesting comments about the Destiny Trio that couldn’t help grabbing my attention. Comments suggesting that the Destiny Trio is over (if it was ever really a trio in the first place), and that Kairi and Riku aren’t friends anymore.

When I first read these comments I was surprised, and questioned if we’d all played the same game series or not. But then again looking back through Kingdom Hearts 3 cutscenes its pretty easy to see where this sentiment is stemming from. Throughout the entirety of the game we never see Sora, Kairi and Riku interact as a trio, only Sora interacting with his two best friends separately from one another. For me this was one of those flaws in the game I mentioned earlier. I’ve been waiting for years to see the Destiny kids hanging out and joking around again like they did back in the first game, but alas it was not meant to be.

Because of this, however, some people seem to be jumping to the conclusion that no group interaction and no scenes between Riku and Kairi = Friendship Over! But I highly doubt that’s the case. I believe what were seeing here is that annoying little thing called time constraints. There were so many loose ends and character relationships that needed to be wrapped up and given satisfying conclusions to in this game, it only makes sense that some elements needed to be cut back to save time. Kingdom Hearts 3 has had by far some of the longest cutscenes in the series to date, with some compilation videos on Youtube reaching over 10 hours in length. It wouldn’t be all that surprising that potential scenes of the Destiny Trio interacting would be cut to stave off audience fatigue, and focus on bigger plot points.

In regards to whether Kairi and Riku are still friends, as far as I’m concerned yes they are still firm friends. You need only play through A Fragmentary Passage to see that’s still very much still the case. Kairi playfully teasing Riku while he laughs it off like the big bro that he is says it all. While for all of us its been two years since we played that game and last saw Riku and Kairi interact, as far as I can tell in the timeline of the games it’s only been a few weeks for them. I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m not about to stop being friends with my childhood best friend just because we didn’t get the chance to speak over the space of a few days or a couple of weeks. It’s also implied within Kingdom Hearts 3 that Kairi and Riku do interact on two separate occasions, when he delivers her new outfit and sometime shortly before the Paopu scene. Unfortunately these two interactions happen off screen.

So why would Nomura choose not to show these moments? Likely it was due to time constraints again and their inclusion would lead to an awkward break up the story’s flow. I suspect the interactions between Riku and Kairi that occurred in A Fragmentary Passage were included due to the fact Nomura already knew there wasn’t going to be enough time for something like it to appear in Kingdom Hearts 3. We should also consider that by the end of Kingdom Hearts 2 Riku and Kairi’s relationship had been more or less resolved, all was forgiven and they were back to being friends. Given how many other character relationships needed to be sorted out in Kingdom Hearts 3 we can see why Nomura would choose not to focus on a relationship that for now has been happily resolved.

I think we should also note that while Riku’s somewhat muted reaction to Kairi’s death was rather disappointing, Riku is the first and only character at the conclusion of the game to offer up a suggestion to figure out how to save Kairi. He still cares about her. But with the plot so focused on Sora’s interactions with Kairi this time around, Riku wasn’t given the deeper character reaction we would have liked to see.

So then what about the Destiny Trio being over? And what about the future of the series? Well I’m not going to get into all the other reasons why people think the Destiny Trio is over, because that’s a whole other ugly can of worms that I really don’t want to touch. Rather I’m going to focus on the visual symbolism of the Destiny Trio and how it will likely effect the course of the story for here on. I’m an artist so you know I love that symbolism!

We all know that Sora means Sky, the “Kai” in Kairi means Ocean, and Riku means Land. If we were to visualise ourselves looking out over a beach and towards the ocean then we would first see the sky, then the ocean and finally the land. This visual symbolism can be understood in two ways, the sky and land are divided by the ocean or they united by it. The themes of devision and unity are constantly weaving in and out of the Trio’s relationship throughout all the main entries in the saga.

In the original Kingdom Hearts we are presented with the theme of devision. Sora and Riku are divided in their quests to save Kairi, despite both having the same goal. The ocean divides the sky and the land. We ultimately see this symbolism come to its full fruition when at the end of the game all three friends are physically separated from one another across different worlds, not knowing when they’ll see one another again.

Then in Kingdom Hearts 2 we are presented with the other side of the coin, unity. During the climax of the game it’s Kairi who helps Sora see Riku’s true form through the facade of Ansem Seeker of Darkness. As Kairi holds their hands together we finally see the sky, ocean and land united again. Sora and Riku do become separated from Kairi just before the final boss. But again we see Kairi unite them all once more by aiding Sora in opening a door to the realm of light for them to escape through. In contrast to the ending of the first game, the trio are all back together again in the same world, the sky and the land united by the ocean.

Then we come to Kingdom Hearts 3 and its seems that the theme of devision has come to the forefront once again, but this time it doesn’t appear until the final moments of the game. Kairi is lost and Sora makes a choice, he can go back with the others to safety, or he can venture forth to rescue Kairi but risk his own life in the process. Naturally Sora chooses to save Kairi but in the end he has to pay the price. As Sora fades away we see the devision. Sora’s choice to save Kairi has lead to the three friends being divided once more.

This constant back and forth of devision and unity continues to be the main driving force behind the development of the Destiny Trio’s relationship. I strongly believe this suggests that Kairi’s symbolic roll as the ocean will lead her to unite the three friends once again. Sora, Riku and Kairi were the only trio at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 who didn’t receive a happy ending and overall satisfying conclusion. It seems only natural then that the next game would place the focus of the story back on the Destiny Trio. Having Riku and Kairi venture out together as protagonists, united and not divided this time, to find their lost friend Sora would be an interesting new dynamic for Nomura to play with, while also creating a wonderful echo of the original game to kick off the next saga.

[carryonmyswansong]

[All page dividers are created by me. If you’d like to use any of them, please message me. I make these to sell and offer sets of two for $3.]

On  Oct 4th, 2018, I received the following ask, at my old blog:

This is my answer:

First of all you need to know some things about me. I am plus size as well as chronically ill. The other things about me is that I do lots and lots of research, when I answer these questions. I try to base my answers on what I’ve observed in the movies, what I know or find out from the comics, as well as any gaps that are filled in via interviews, tweets, and articles. I write MCU fanfic but most of my characterizations come from a mix of the comics as well as the movies. I also google stuff to make sure I am -historically- accurate… or as historically accurate as I can be.

That being said:

Steven Grant Rogers:

Steve Rogers is the son of poor Irish immigrants. He grew up in Brooklyn. He grew up very very ill. In fact, he spent more of his life ill than not, not counting the time he was in the ice, after crashing the plane. SO growing up in that part of town, he had some exposure to plus size women. Whether they were plus size by the 20/30/40s standards or our own, big women are not new to him, and being who he is, I have no doubts that Steve saw beauty where ever it was. His mama taught him right, is what I’m saying.

Steve even says in the moves that he hates bullies. He’s always been bullied. Always ignored. Never taken seriously. Even as Captain America, before he went on real missions… he felt like a performing monkey. He hated it. That’s not what he signed up for. He didn’t want to be a performing monkey in a fancy suit. He wanted to be a real solider, helping other real soldiers, to fight the enemy.

Steve has like zero experience with women. He didn’t get very far with Peggy and he didn’t like her because she was thin. He liked her because she saw past the sick body and saw him for who he was… and Sharon… Don’t even get me fucking started on that disaster of a relationship… I mean come on. The great niece of the only woman you ever loved? Come on Steve. Do better, buddy.

Captain America is sure of himself. Confident. Strong. Seemingly emotionally stable. Steven Grant Rogers? Probably still thinks of himself as that gangly sickly little man who everyone ignores… and is often baffled when pretty women look at him and flirt with him. He is a super soldier. But he hasn’t been one for very long. Not actively.

Look at it this way: when someone who is overweight looses weight, a switch doesn’t flip in their brain and they automatically have good self esteem or a good relationship with their body. Same with someone who is very sick for a long time and finally gets treatment and a cure. These things take their toll on someone’s mind and Steve is no different. He spent so long being unnoticeable that even tho his body is hard and doesn’t get sick, and probably doesn’t age.. and probably has a bigger dick… doesn’t mean he SEES that as who he is.

And another thing. Steve doesn’t work out because he has to. The serum maintains his metabolism and stamina. Steve works out because now he CAN. I keep mentioning him being chronically ill. Because it is VERY important. He was sick for more years than not (again, NOT counting the time he was in the ice)…. So now he can -just be- and not have to worry about passing out or having an asthma attack or having a heart attack because of his blood pressure… he can run in the winter and not have to worry about catching a cold, of all things… Him working out is his way of celebrating that he CAN do those things now, when he couldn’t before… This doesn’t change how he sees himself though. You can celebrate the better you, while still seeing yourself as the not-so-better-you and still have self esteem issues all the same. Those don’t just go away automatically. That’s not how human brains work.

He’d rather live in Brooklyn, where he grew up, then live in The Tower. He’d also rather do his morning runs through the city, then work out in the gym that Tony build, so he can watch his city come alive (Both of these are canon and easily searchable on google)… I only mention this because it speak to the kind of man Steve is. He loves people. And he loves watching people’s lives unfold… It makes him feel attached in a way that he normally can’t because he spent so long on ice that there’s a big disconnect in how he relates to people

He isn’t gonna care if his girl can “keep up”. No one, except Bucky, and maybe comic!Natasha, can keep up with him. He doesn’t want another super soldier or spy as a partner. He wants someone he can hang up the mantle of Captain America, and just be Steve Rogers, from Brooklyn, with. Period. Someone who will love him for who he is, not his serum, or celebrity status, or paycheck. None of that. He would want someone who SEES him for who he is. Not what he can give them. And Steve isn’t fucking shallow and to assume otherwise is really insulting to the man who grew up almost too disabled to live as long as he did. But somehow his will to live, got him far enough that now he is a super soldier and is Captain America.

Steve is also an artist and sees beauty absolutely everywhere, and yes, even the fat girl he passes on the street who stares at her shoes because she’s afraid to take up space but can’t help it. Steve understands, probably better than most, that bodies come in all shapes and sizes and growing up, he wished people saw him instead of ignoring him. So fat girls? Are not off his radar. And they ain’t gotta be conventionally or “acceptably” pretty, in order for him to notice them.

James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes:

Ok, so if you think Bucky is shallow, just cuz he’s fit… then you don’t know the man at all.

He grew up with Steve as his best friend (at least in the MCU, anyways)… They were practically brothers, and since Bucky lost his mom at a very early age, guess who helped raise him before she passed? Yup, Mama Rogers.

Sure, Bucky is often considered a womanizer, in the MCU… But people are so afraid to portray good looking men with fat women because its often presented as a joke… because fat bodies are not seen as good bodies so why would a fit man want to be with a fat body?

Thing is tho, a lot of fit men are with women (and men and other genders) who have fat bodies. And not for fetish reasons either. Its because they are decent people who SEE their partner and not just the fat or the lack of fat or whatever else.

You also need to understand something about Bucky. Bucky of the 30/40s might have been a little full of himself, but he wasn’t shallow. If he was, he wouldn’t have been Steve’s friend. He wouldn’t have interacted with him in public. He wouldn’t have admitted to even knowing the scrawny chronically ill man who insisted on picking fights with men who were much much bigger than him, simply because he saw an injustice that needed tending to. By all rights, Steve was embarrassing. But Bucky is better than that. And loved and accepted Steve for who he is. Period.

So of course he’d be that way with women. He might not have committed to them, but Bucky loves women. And women come in all shapes and sizes. Why wouldn’t he like fat women, too?

Fast forward to Bucky with the metal arm. You know, the arm he needs and if he didn’t have he’d only have ONE ARM WHICH MEANS HE IS DISABLED, NO MATTER HOW ADVANCED THE DAMN ARM IS???????

Bucky ain’t a shallow man. And fit or not, he hates who Hydra made him into. Who cares about the chiseled abs or the ability to run side by side with Steve or the ability to accurately shoot a target in his peripheral vision. They stole his life. They took everything from him. But what they didn’t take from him was the teaching of one Mama Rogers, and the life lessons that come from being best friends with a disabled man. It might have taken him a bit to remember both of those things, but Bucky? Bucky loves women and that will never change. No matter fat or thin.

And have you seen Bucky’s thighs? If that man wasn’t built to bone fat chicks against walls, then I don’t know what even the point of those thighs even are… But he’s better than that. With who he is now? He isn’t just a one night stand kind of guy. He’s in it for the long haul and he isn’t gonna let a little thing like someone’s weight, deter him from seeing the beauty in them.

Steve and Bucky’s fit status and raging metabolism aren’t going to suddenly make them into shallow people who will only love or bone women who are of “acceptable” size. When both men could literally easily carry an overweight girl, over their shoulder, like she is a 5lb sack of potatoes. Because of both of their life experiences, as both disabled or friends with someone disabled, and all that stuff that came with their lives… I really don’t see them ignoring a woman just because she’s not fit or just because she’s got a big belly or can’t run a mile in under a certain time.

You would also do well to remember that people can be healthy at any size and someone’s weight doesn’t determine their health. Just like there are unhealthy fat people, there are also unhealthy thin people… and both can be unhealthy in the exact same way. And both Bucky and Steve are going to know this.

Send me an Ask! | Lets discuss stuff!

[Once i get more of my blog settled, I will be transferring over all of my asks. But until then, you can find them HERE.]

[simon-newman]

Ants

So...

In my previous post about my new Praying Mantis Athena I mentioned that I’d love to try keeping a few other Arthropods.

Ants in particular.

I am going to try and do so this year.

There are total of six species in my country that I’d love to keep at some point and I’m going to outline my plans for them in here.

So, here they are:

1. Manica Rubida

Common name - Wścieklica Dorodna (Literally - Greater Fury Ant)

This is my favorite native ant and one I grew up familiar with as I had a nest of those in my backyard.

As a kid I used to feed them regularly as they were the biggest, baddest ants I knew.

Indeed - the workers can be up to 9mm long. Those ants are BIG.

They’re also hated by most people because they will defend their nest and do have a potent sting some compare to the wasp’s.

Personally - I’ve been stung by those ants before and while painful it’s far from being as painful as the wasp’s sting.

Anyway - the species is not recommended for beginners due to the sting and the fact that the queen requires some special care (she requires feeding during the founding stages).

Still. I am familiar with them and willing to try keeping them. They are my choice species and seeing as they have their nuptial flight in May I’ll try to get a hold of the queen or two.

I’ve also managed to confirm that those are still present in my area. So far I’ve discovered two sites with nests of this species.

Another interesting note - while those ants don’t have a proper soldier caste there ARE some noticeable differences between workers.

Some of them do have a sturdier build and larger mandibles. I’ll try to provide some pictures when I get the chance to compare a regular and large worker.

This coupled with the fact that there’s surprisingly little information available about this species makes me want to do some research myself.

Document their behavior, preserve different specimen to compare the large and small workers and finally...

When the colony grows to 200-300 workers I’ll try attaching them to a classic ant-farm unit and observe the architecture of their nest construction.

FYI - this is the only Manica species in Europe. There are four species in the US and one in Japan. I am curious if all of them have similar nest architecture.

However - comparing those would require me to cooperate with someone in those countries...

2. Camponotus Ligniperda

Common Name - Gmachówka Drzewotoczna (Literally - Mansion Treecarrier? Ant)

A carpenter ant.

The largest in my country.

The largest ant in general present in my country.

You’d think Manica Rubida above was big with their 9mm worker.

Camponotus workers are just as big in general.

That is... Regular ones.

This species produces actual soldier ants that can be up to 16mm long!

Those are huge. And the queen could be even bigger than that!

Those ants are just enormous and I’d love to keep them.

They’re also good for beginners and have their nuptial flight in late May and June - I’ll try to get one of those if I fail to get Manica Queen first.

The downside is that those ants take a long time to build their numbers.

They take their time to grow and the famous soldiers don’t appear earlier than on year 3 of the colony.

Still - I am a patient man. I can wait.

I also have an interesting setup in mind already.

You see - those ants like to travel far from their nest while foraging.

I’d just love to set up a tubing pass from one room to another so that I could feed the ants in another room (or the kitchen) and watch them bring the food back to the nest all the way from there.

3. Formica Cinerea

Common Name - Pierwomrówka Żwirowa (Literally - Gravel Feral Ant)

A common species and one I think is very, very common in the area I live in.

I am currently waiting for some equipment to arrive so I can proceed to properly identify the species but there’s AT LEAST 7 colonies of ants that look like this species in the area.

Unlike the above species this one has several similar species living in the same areas.

I still think it’s this one in particular as the ants I’ve observed are a bit grey and not black.

Why would I want an ant this common then?

Well. Because they’re crazy.

Those ants have two modes - stationary and TURBO.

Much like their sister species they’re just constantly running around as if it was an emergency.

So they’re very, very active ants and they don’t even sting!

They prefer to run away when disturbed.

They’re also of comparable size to Manica species - easier to prevent escapes.

This species is not a priority for me but I am 90% sure they are in the area and I WILL NEED THOSE if I ever am to keep the next species which is...

4. Formica Sanguinea

English Common Name - Blood-Red Ant

Polish Common Name - Zbójnica Krwista (Literally - Bloody Bandit Ant)

This is an interesting species of a slave-maker ant that requires some other Formica workers to start it’s own colony.

In nature a young queen would attempt to take over a young nest of another Formica species (Like Formica Cinerea above) and do so by killing their queen.

In captivity you just need to extract some pupae from the other ant colony and provide the queen with soon-to-be workers.

This already means the species is not suitable for beginners but this isn’t all.

The colony can easily reach several thousand in numbers. Possibly over 10,000 ants if they’re kept well.

They are aggressive and can spray Formic Acid so a good ventilation is required so they don’t poison themselves.

Luckily this is not such a problem as with Formica Rufa and the colony remains manageable even at the peak of it’s development (F.Rufa can reach few hundred thousand workers and requires A LOT of space so they can’t really be kept in captivity outside of a specialized insectarium or a zoo - not even mentioning they’re a protected species).

Still - I find the ant interesting and absolutely beautiful with their coloration.

They come in varying shapes and shades within the colony itself and can be given other formica pupae to include in their numbers (forming a kind of a mixed colony if one so desires).

I have no “dream setup” in mind for them as of yet and they are not the species I will try to find in the near future. On top of this I have no idea where to find them in my area (they should be present here but I never saw them or maybe mistook them for other forest ants).

5. Lasius Flavus

English Common Name - Yellow Meadow Ant

Polish Common Name - Podziemnica Zwyczajna (Literally - Common Underground Ant)

This is one of the smaller species in my country with the workers reaching the size of 2-4mm only.

The queen is much bigger than her daughters however.

This is both a species easy to handle and not considered “that interesting” due to staying mostly underground all the time.

In nature they don’t forage much and feed on insects and honeydew from root aphids - something which might be difficult to supplement.

I also don’t intend to keep them anytime soon due to the small size - I am quite afraid they’ll find a way out of the setup I make myself for them.

Pros: They don’t need much space as the short foraging range limits the distance you could setup the outworld.

They’re also beautiful with their yellow or even amber colors.

It’s also repeated everywhere that those ants are extremely common despite not being seen often.

Personally i have to admit to destroying a huge nest of those last year when I was rearranging the stones in my garden (I’ve uncovered an absurdly huge colony which moved out within few hours) - I know however those are definitely around.

Maybe one day a small compact setup for those, eh?

And by small I mean... Yes - their numbers can reach tens of thousands...

6. Dolichoderus Quadripunctatus

Common Name - Nadrzewnica czteroplamka (Literally - Four-dot Tree Ant)

This would be the apex of ant-keeping ability for me because this ant is often described as very difficult to keep and known to just die when slightly mishandled.

It’s a tree-dwelling species with characteristic dots on the gaster, it also has a beautiful shine.

TBH some people claim the ant is pretty much impossible to keep in captivity... Easily proven wrong as quick google search reveals people abroad manage to keep them long enough for the colony to grow into a thousand workers.

I blame my countrymen’s inability/unwillingness to do proper research using the Internet that’s not in our language (and I find Polish Internet to be lacking and misleading in a lot of cases).

Still - the species is definitely demanding and not suited for beginners.

They are very sensitive to temperature and humidity, live on trees and tend to simply dump their garbage down + they’re expert climbers that effortlessly pass fluon barriers which makes them the escape artists on top of all the other problems they cause.

Also - did I mention that their Queen requires the same treatment as Manica Rubida above (as in feeding during initial stages)? Because she totally does!

There’s also the detail about the queens being rarely found on the ground and looking almost identical to the workers... Yeah. So many difficulties with just one ant species.

My dream setup is thus a very farfetched project of a vertical formicarium that imitates the tree trunk the ants live in naturally.

The nest could be connected behind the artificial wall shaped in the likeness of a tree - with some small shelves to deposit food on.

I’d also make sure to include a temperature and humidity regulation to make sure they don’t die on me...

Now - I’d love to have the means to build something like this one day... One day...

Picture sources:

http://www.antwiki.org

https://en.wikipedia.org

https://pl.wikipedia.org

https://insektarium.net

https://ru.wikipedia.org/

[lethesomething]

A note on fictional jobs

There's a joke that all fanfic characters are either baristas, teachers, lawyers or some denizen of the tattoo/florist au set. This isn't really fully true (there's also witches and vampire hunters!) but for anyone going for a realistic setting, let me at least, as someone who has worked a number of jobs in media, software development and catering, give some pointers on how that stuff works, because dear lord does Hollywood get it wrong.

This post is 2k words, so under the cut it goes.

Journalism/Photography/Media

General tips

This sector seems to be pretty popular in old school comics, and for good reason. Clark Kent gets to go out into the city and be near events. It's a job women are historically allowed to do (and be sassy in) and even Peter Parker gets to just traipse around the city getting into adventures.

It must also be noted that all these characters were developed in the first half of the 20th century, and media has changed a lot since then.

If your character is a journalist, they will work long hours and not be paid *that* much. Carrie Bradshaw is the most unrealistic journalist character in the history of everything. Especially after, oh, 2010 or so, when the traditional press sales really started declining. No journalist is that well paid for that little. And none will have that much free time.

Journalists generally have a beat, and what they do and know heavily depends on that. Your character can get into the gritty streets of downtown chasing drug dealers, or they can go to theatre premieres. They won't do both. The Vast Majority of modern media have beats. A person can be a sports caster and then he will go to sports events to report them. They can be a jetset reporter or restaurant reviewer and go to swanky places. They can be a cultural reporter and be invited to premieres and shows. They can be a dedicated business journalist, reporting on IT, or cardboard logistics, or whatever, and go to conferences around the world. But they will rarely be all these things at once.

How wide this beat is, depends heavily on the 'range' of the medium. Big news rooms, like NYTimes, have a lot of journalists, and some very, Very specialised ones. This is deep dive, spend weeks trailing every leak out of the White House stuff. In contrast, a small regional tv station can have their reporter (with or without a camera man and sound tech) drive around the countryside reporting on pumpkin carving festivals one day, and grisly murder the next.

A lot also depends on the medium. If the character works for a newspaper, they will have a noon to eight shift as a writer, and a two to ten shift, most likely, as an editor, because papers need to get printed overnight. If it's a weekly or a monthly print mag, there will be a few days with relative freedom to do interviews and such, and then a few days of crunch time. If they work for a news website they will have a desk job and most likely work in shifts. TV and radio news people are the ones doing most of the running around to get quotes, but they are also on the tightest of schedules.

Speaking of schedules. Unless the character is a blogger, they won't finish an article and immediately rush it to the printer/publish it. Reputable news sources have, at the very least, a copy editor to check for mistakes and typos. Bigger newspapers and magazines and sites have a dedicated fact checker.

Very VERY few papers in the world have full time photographers on the payroll. If your character is a photographer, they will most likely be a freelancer and do corporate events or weddings on the side (sorry Peter Parker). What happens is, a medium will decide in advance which article or interview will require a picture, and book a photographer for that piece.

Any other pictures tend to come from news agencies. Think Reuters or Associated Press. These sort of agencies do use full time photographers, as well as freelancers who happen to visit an event. They'll take like two hundred picture and sell them to the agency, who distributes them to media all over the world.

Few media have the money for correspondents, so they'll pick only a handful. This means a foreign correspondent has a large area to cover. European news media tend to have one correspondent in the US, covering the Entire US, for instance. American media tend to have more moneys, but if your character is a respondent in, say India, expect them to trek along India a lot, because they're prob the only one in that vast country.

Having said that, coverage, especially war coverage, is super expensive. If they're sending a journo to a war zone, it will absolutely not be a rookie. They will have proven themselves capable, preferably speak the language and they'll be Very Prepared. Think local guides, vast networks of informants etc. A startling amount of war reporters and investigative journalists are also freelance. If they are trekking through a jungle and come across anything exciting, you bet they'll try to sell that story in several angles/versions to different media.

Have you considered:

Bread and Butter Freelancers: It's a gig economy my friends. Freelance writey people don't have a boss and usually work from home or from some coffee shop. If they are to be successful (enough to make a living), they'll still have a beat, and will actually have to be fairly good at this subject. Since these characters make their own shifts, they do have the ability to go out in the middle of the day to do superheroing or witchery or to investigate the disappearance of their best friend. Upsides: Freedom. Downsides: Usually very little money. Unstable hours, like one day nothing and then a week of 14 hour days. The crushing stress of looming deadlines ànd job insecurity.

Copywriters: The people that write the text on corporate websites, that fill mail order catalogues with entries for every picture, compose newsletters for various organisations, turn technical instructions into actually mildly readable user manuals. Upside: money. If they're good at it, they will have a fairly stable income. They have the same freedom as freelancers to go flirt with flower shop assistants. Downside: the crushing knowledge that with every piece you write, your soul sinks deeper into the void. Anyone who's ever read clientsfromhell will know what to expect of their clientele.

Lay-outers: The creative side of making media. The bros making the graphs, putting the text to paper,  photoshoping the head of Putin onto the body of a baby, whatever. Upside: artist character. This is a slightly more realistic character than the 'painter'. They're creative, but they have yet to sell their soul to the corporate machine (depending on the medium you put them in, of course). Downside: this is basically a desk job with stable hours.

Cameraman, sound technician: the people that hang out with the news reporter and trot all over the region with him/her. Upside: see the world! Without being instantly recognizable. Downside: they're probably stuck in their mission and they rarely have the power to go 'hey, let's investigate over there'.

 Software development

General tips

There's actually a few different environments for software engineers to work.

Start-ups: the hip one. Think Silicon Valley, the upstarts in sneakers and Star Wars t-shirts living on pizza and red bull and basically coding 20 hours a day. Depending on where they are in the growth of their start-up, these people will be nearly alone, or have a team of coworkers. Traditionally, start-ups start with like a founder (or four) and an idea, and some coding. As the company grows they'll hire a sales person to sell this stuff, a marketing manager to brand it, a support person to troubleshoot it, an HR person, etc.

A very Very VERY large part of start-up business is pitching, aka selling your premise to a bunch of venture capitalists and investors. It's Dragon's Den. Literally. Your super shy, autism spectrum character who hates public speaking and who can't even look at another person without blushing would make a super crappy start-up founder by themselves. They will definitely need their bubbly, motivational speaker best friend. On the other hand: this is an amazing environment for that suave, smooth talking character who could sell sand in the desert.

Second environment: corporate. The vast majority of software engineers out there just work for some big company. These are the people building and deploying management system software for banks, installing security in factories, that sort of thing. A lot of the time they're consultants. They wear a suit. They use something called the Waterfall method, which sucks out your soul, or the Agile method, which also sucks out your soul. There's a lot of managing and meeting and progress reports. If they're good enough, they're allowed to leave the tie at home.

Software needs to be tested. You don't just write the code last minute and put it live.

The coders are absolutely not the only people in a software development team. There's the project managers, the designers, the copywriters, the testers, the lawyers, oh god, the lawyers, etc.

Software Needs to be tested. It takes ages. I cannot stress this enough. It usually happens in India or some other Asian country where the wages are lower.

Will a lot of environments, even corporate, allow their creatives to come to work in like… jeans and a t-shirt, the only people realistically allowed to actually act like teenagers, in any environment (corporate, start-up, small business), are the ones with skills that are very hard to find. In essence: security experts and specifically white hat hackers. Yes, you're allowed to have a hacker character that acts dumb and comes to work in his pyjamas and it will be realistic that he does not get fired. Your clerk character that's super rude and deals in hurtful quips? Not so much.

SOFTWARE NEEDS TO BE TESTED

 Have you considered:

Researchers: you know those people that made a song that can give Alexa commands without the owner knowing? Those are university researchers. A lot of really cool stuff is being developed not by office workers, but at universities. This includes software. Upside: probably a looser environment, with a lot of young people. Downside: you're basically writing a college AU.

Venture capitalists: in a Silicon Valley environment, this is basically the 'wealthy businessman' stereotype of old. The dragons in the dragon's den, the people that traipse around the city talking to people and assessing the potential of their pitch, before throwing money at them (or not). There's a bunch of paperwork, but they probably have a small army of accountants to handle this.

Evangelists: the cool people that hold TED talks. They usually work for a big tech company, as a specialist, and part of their job is to be a spokesperson.  A good example of this is the tech researcher, who has a day job finding nasty hackers or viruses, and who also blogs about that and holds talks and presentations about securing your business. A character like this has the advantage of being a deep tech nerd hacker type. They're rarely the CEO, so they can go deep into the coding, while also travelling places and meeting crowds of press or business people.

Project managers: these don't tend to do the actual coding, but they do, well, the managing. Characters like this will be more social and creative, they're the ones making the reports and presenting their progress to the CEO, and they're the ones troubleshooting when stuff goes wrong. In general, there's a lot of planning involved.

 Bakeries/Catering

General tips

Mass production of food is gruelling. You think you're writing about your sexy pastry chef and how they're carefully, tip of their tongue peeking through their lips, putting a cherry on top of that little moeilleux, but in reality, there's two hundred more to finish on this rack alone and they need to be done in under an hour.

Say it with me, people: baking is a night job. Industrial baking, mom-and-pop rural French bakery, bagel shop, donuts. Someone is going to be making all that stuff before the first customer arrives and that someone is slaving in front of a hot oven at four in the morning.

Any type of catering is a time management business. You know this. You've all watched Great British Bake-off (or, like, Chopped or whatever). If your professional cake maker is only working on one project/wedding at a time, they're not going to be in business for long. Your line chef will be plating up several dishes per minute. Your short order cook is baking six pancakes and scrambling eggs at the exact same time.

Unless it's a very large kitchen, the people that cook are the same ones that clean. And since it's food prep, there is a lot of cleaning.

Have you considered:

Recipe writer: ok so we're kinda back to media but big tv chefs don't make all those recipes themselves. Someone, usually a freelancer, writes them and tests them. Imagine someone getting the request to develop a seasonal cronut recipe that involves peaches and charcoal, because it's hip, and then baking several batches until they find something edible. This is a somewhat realistic environment for your super creative baker to live in a small house and make some money while also working on a book on the side, and falling in love with the quirky … goat… herd… brewer, florist, whatever.

[macbookpro-hard-drive]

also im gonna go ahead and state that chubby reader =/= ‘i hate myself’ thing??? if you’re doing it as a vent fic, im not talking abt u at all! 

like. there’s a big difference in writing a fic where you get comforted by someone while having a bad body image day, and taking a request for a chubbier reader and automatically assuming that it means “i hate myself” and writing a fic based around that. it kinda pushes the idea that all fat people hate themselves for being fat, that fat people should be ashamed of their bodies because it’s not “the norm” i guess? some people still suffer from body issues, sure - but it’s absolutely not really helpful when you try to escape into fluffy romances and can only find fics where you see yourself completely hating your body over and over.

im chubby. i absolutely have struggles with my body image. but when i look for a fic specifically for me (aka a chubby gal), i’m not always looking for someone to hold me and say “i love you, you’re beautiful no matter what other people say, i love you just as you are” - because while that’s so so so sweet, i’m tired of seeing chubby readers (and, hell, chubby characters in general) be assumed to hate themselves. 

where’s my cute picnics in parks on warm summer days? where’s my artist s/o drawing me and having playful conversation as they admire my tummy rolls and chubby cheeks and love me for being who i am? where’s my happy fics where we have a nice diner out and we watch dumb movies together and i get to cuddle into my s/o’s chest while their arms are around me, not once thinking about ‘what if i’m too big’ because we’re happy and things are good?

anyway thats all i wanted to say, since i dont really want someone to see that post and assume i’m 100% writing a chubby reader who dislikes their body as a vent fic. i do that a lot too! it never makes it onto here bc it’s really, really self indulgent shit and i hide that in the depths of my computer lmao but i understand that completely.

loving yourself is a battle sometimes, no matter who you are. while a lot of bigger people tend to struggle with their body, i know for a fact it can happen to anyone at some point in their life. learning to love your body is a journey - which can be really, really hard if your body doesn’t match you. sometimes it’s easier to start small and look in the mirror and say that you love your smile, or that you love your eyes, or even that you love your eye color alone. yesterday i was admiring my cool undertones and the fact that my veins look blue and i love the color blue - and i just kinda fell in love with the fact that my favorite color is on my body!!! that’s so cool!!! sometimes you just gotta start small and work your way up. we’re all at different points of loving ourselves, and sometimes other people can’t help with that. sometimes you have to go part of that journey alone. but that doesn’t mean people can’t cheer you on! you can learn to love yourself on your own but still have people there to say “hey, i love you, and i believe in you” - because having those people are so good.

fuck anyone who says you aren’t beautiful. the fact that you’re you and that you’re alive and human and breathing is beautiful enough. we’re all gonna get to that point of self-love someday. we just have to walk that path first.