#I posted some low res versions earlier

[eve-be-sleep-deprived]

The Hex, lookin' lovely!

[winxwannabe]

Winx Season 9/Reboot Leaks

Okay here's the tea: earlier today a twitter user by the name of Cataclysm_Power started posting a video they claimed was from the new Winx season/reboot. When pressed for further information, they linked to a telegram chat with what appeared to be assets from Rainbow (17 screenshots/2 videos). After some C-grade internet sleuthing, I am here to give my (worthless and possibly wrong) opinion on which ones I think are real and fake.

A note before we jump in: I'm not posting full images on my blog, because again I do think some of these are real and if the leaker is to be believed, they hacked Rainbow to get them. You can look yourself through the telegram link, or others who've posted them on the Winx Club tag. I also think the leaker themselves is scammy because they've tried charging for Miraculous leaks before. Do NOT give them any money if they ask.

Real: Bloom, Stella, and Icy's asset sheets, Bloom Full Body Pose

A lot of these leaks are 3d modelling assets, and these 3 are the ones I'm totally convinced are real.

The biggest clue of their validity is the bottom banner. All 3 sheets have them, along with the same episode code and notes in Italian. They're all also linked to the same person: Pasqualino Masciulli is Rainbow's 3D modelling supervisor, and has been with the company for at least 9 years. He's done videos on Rainbow's youtube channel as well, using his shortened first name Lino. My main point is that's way too niche for someone to fake just to make some convincing leaks, and it would make sense for the assets to be tied to him.

Likewise, there's a full-body frame post of Bloom with fucking ugliest denim leg warmers credited to a g.riccobono. This is likely Giulio Riccobono, who is listed on Linkedin Italy as a Rainbow employee.

Probably Real: Tecna's asset sheet, Bloom's detailed asset sheet

Both of these are likely real but have weird things about them that make me pause. Bloom's more detailed asset sheet is missing the name, date and episode reference on it, and the notes are in English. Tecna's is missing the bottom banner entirely, and there's some weird cutting around her head that makes it look like someone hastily made a png and stuck it on there.

Unsure: Computer File Tab, MD Concept Photos, Videos

There's a screenshot of a folder with both 2D and 3D assets of all the girls. in the files. I'm not sure if this is from a computer at Rainbow or the hacker's personal folder, so it goes in unsure. I do think most of the assets in it are real - it's low res but the eyes on the 2D sketches are so similar to the ones on Rainbow's newer images of the girls I think they have to be connected.

There are also some full body concept photos for Bloom, Aisha, and Stella. They all look pretty legit (as they're updated version of images we've already seen) but Stella's has other images for 'possible pallets' included. She's the only one with it and the images look like they came from a flash dress-up game, and it gives me pause.

Lastly, the teaser videos of Bloom are probably real based on the outfit, animation and that stupid fucking Bloom shelf being in the background, but I'm placing it in 'unsure' because of the bandicam.com logo burned into the top. If it really came from Rainbow and everything else was downloaded, there was no reason for the hacker to not get the raw file. I think it's real, but I don't know if it came from Rainbow.

Something Ain't Right: Group Shot

What gives me pause in the fully-rendered group shot (even though its shown in the computer file tab) is it shows transformation we haven't seen teased and has a 'Lorem Ipsum' placeholder text. Aisha's hair also looks like it was done with AI - the back of her wings clip through the hair, and parts of it look copy-pasted. I'm stupid, it's the end of her braids. The 'Lorem Ipsum' thing still stands, but I'm re-filing this under 'unsure.'

Probably Fake: Darcy and Damien's asset sheets

I'm showing things from here on out because I'm so convinced it's fake please let me be right. Unlike the other character sheets, the ones for Darcy and 'new character' Damien have no bottom banner, are marked as 'Winx Club Season 9' with an outdated Winx logo, and have notes written completely in English. Darcy's has a bit of 3D modelling, but it's too different from Icy's. Maybe they're super early concepts for Darcy, but Damien...go home, buddy.

You're in the Wrong Place: Rainbow Pants Girl

I'm convinced this girl is from a different show and was saved to the 'Winx Club' folder by accident. Different clothing, hair, and shading. May you end up somewhere better than this reboot, Mystery Girl.

[noxiatoxia]

Talked about this briefly when discussing those Komaeda/Kamukura pins, but merch is sometimes a prime way of finding beta sprites.

For example, this Komaeda pin:

While true that this beta sprite is seen in DRS for Komaeda's swimsuit sprite, I cannot find one for his regular sprite (with jacket). This pin is all we have.

Take also this post card:

Though edited so they're having fun, all 3 sprites are using betas as bases. In fact, I have yet to find the unedited version of all 3 sprites.

I used the earliest versions of each sprite I have on hand for comparison. For Hinata and Nanami, this is the final sprites used in SDR2. For Komaeda, it is a beta sprite mistakenly used in DRS.

Even with Komaeda, it is clear whatever sprite that was used for a base was an even earlier version.

I'm willing to bet for both Komaeda and Hinata here, these are the earliest version of their sprites used as bases based on the lack of line weight anywhere. Hinata's earliest sprites also had spike outlining in his hair, which seems to have been removed in most sprites.

Nanami in the sprite used here looks a little too polished for me to call it the first version, but it could be. Shrug.

Finally, another post card:

For those who can't read it, here is the text:

TANAKA: Behold! The storm of clouds that moisten this earth are departing for respite! Now, it is time for hellfire to reduce all things, earth and heaven alike, to smoldering ash! KOMAEDA: Yep, that's right! Looks like Spring is coming to a close and Summer will be on its way. TANAKA: Come, season of unending heat! Burn everything to the ground! Leave naught but ash! Thence we shall rejoice! KOMAEDA: But your hamsters wouldn't like to be caught in such hot weather, right? Let's take care to avoid getting heatstroke!

It's cute, but also very helpful in my research!

Firstly...the card for Komaeda in UTDP uses a beta sprite.

(I will be going more in depth into the UTDP cards soon...)

But the sprite used in this post card is actually even earlier!

I believe this sprite used in the post card is the same one we see in the SDR2 PSP manual, which is fairly low res.

You can see the outline of his ear on the left go into his hair, much like the sprite used on the post card.

And it's not just Komaeda! I did some color-editing so the Tanaka comparison wouldn't be as jarring.

Quite a few changes here, too. Especially the left hand.. I feel this may be the earliest version of this Tanaka sprite we have.

Anyways, this is all to say that if you're interested in this stuff like me, please keep a look out when you see any Dangan merch using sprites! They very well may be beta versions. I'd say earlier merch is more prone to it, but considering DRS itself - the newest DR game - uses beta sprites, I'd say that's not the case.

(And if you find any...send it to me of course)

[creaturecomfortsva]

some old things i made.

i used to call my crochet shop "sadgirlcrochet". i started posting and selling my crochet stuff in late 2020, was dealing with some serious depression, and had only come to terms with being NB a few months earlier. calling myself a girl still felt right back then, or at least not painful. i put frowny faces on everything.

this was the flagship product, the depressed daisy bikini. I'm thinking about re-designing these because they were always my best-selling product. honestly, as someone who works in marketing, "sad girl crochet" was branding gold. I could make any design that was popular with the tiktok crochet girlies but trade a smiley face for a frown and BOOM. iconic piece. hundreds of instagram likes. for example, my 420 creations in 2021:

these are some of my favorite creations from that year. and while they're adorable, they're also simple. i wasn't exactly challenging myself on a technical level - more of my energy was going towards figuring out how to market via the instagram algorithm. because sadgirlcrochet was, above all else, marketable. the clothes weren't for crocheters. they were for followers.

i redesigned the depressed daisy bikinis in 2021. i sold close to a hundred of these, maybe more. i didn't track inventory too closely (but i DID track my instagram followers, obsessively, at the time)

i also had a really shitty phone camera, so i edited the fuck out of my photos to make the blurriness and low resolution into a feature instead of a bug. it worked for a little while. also, my living situation was hellish at the time, but we had a giant yard with this 70-year-old dogwood tree, and it made for an excellent backdrop.

a commissioned witch hat i made for a friend. one of my favorite things i have ever made. after a while, i realized i liked doing commissions more than just creating products to sell to the masses because it let me push myself on a technical level.

this was my most-liked photo of 2021. partly because of my boobs. that's fine. they look great. i created this top because of a commission that went viral, and it spawned so many copycats and fake etsy listings.

my feelings toward the top itself are mild. it's cute. i made it so that people would like and share this photo. there's not much heart in it, if i'm honest. i look back at this top and know that it was made almost algorithmically. granny square bralettes + halter straps + strawberries were all Very In right then so my hands produced this.

the picture above is one of the first photos i took of myself and felt like i looked like my gender. gender euphoria, i suppose, though the stress of my life at the time dampened the joy. it was then that i started really questioning how i felt about having my online image so tied up in my girlhood. in my feminine body shape. i was 24 and recently estranged from my relatives and working through childhood trauma, including all my preconceptions about gender, and whether or not i owed girlhood to anyone.

i owed girlhood to my followers, though.

when i announced that i would be killing the sad girl crochet brand, a lot of people were genuinely upset. i lost over a thousand followers in three months. people didn't care what i, tabby, was creating. they cared about seeing Content under the Sad Girl Brand. that's okay.

when creating for sad girl crochet i felt beholden to both sadness and girlhood. my primary mode of expression and self-understanding, my crochet, started to be incongruous with what i actually needed to express. instead of contending with my sadness and seeking to understand it, i exploited it. instead of finding my own version of girlhood, i recreated the girlhood that was shown to me online. it led to a pretty significant creative drought from mid-2022 till about three months ago, in late 2023.

when you make the art people expect of you rather than the art that is true, you kill a part of your soul. i know this now.

i did my first craft fair in summer 2022 and immediately after, i was creatively bereft. what little bits of creative energy i had left were spent. a few months later my husband and i moved across the state, away from the hellish house with the beautiful yard, a fresh start. once we moved, i told myself, i would feel at home with sad girl again. and i kept waiting to feel the way i did in 2020 and 2021. but the more time went by, the less sadgirl felt like a creative outlet, and more an albatross round my neck.

and weirdly...i started to feel guilty about ever marketing my sadness in the first place. to grapple with the fact that i was making money off of other women and femmes with depression - and marketing to them on the basis that they were as depressed as me. the more i thought about it, the squickier it felt.

i barely posted anything in 2022 and 2023. i signed up for pattern tests and immediately dropped out of them. i made promises i didn't deliver on. eventually, i just stopped logging on.

a lot of life went by. i crocheted for my family, my loved ones, myself. journaled. got back on tumblr. deleted twitter. started trading screen time for books. got outside more. made friends in the new town. and the longer i ignored sadgirlcrochet, the less i wanted to go back.

see, the thing was, i was actually healing and growing, finally. our living situation was stable. my family found our own little village. i came to terms with being trans-er than i'd let myself admit. sad girl was dead. i'd killed her. and that was healthy for me.

creature comforts was born of a desire to be truer to myself and to live with more love. to craft instead of sell. to share instead of market. to be online without wearing a mask. to be active on tumblr instead of instagram. to be a creator and an artist. to let these desires be misunderstood by others. to love, unabashedly.

i'm excited to see where this takes me in 2024.

[fridaysjournal]

★ friday's journal entry - oct.19th

While I wait to get my hands on Catching Fire, I checked out two other books in the meantime.I got Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and 'My Year Of Rest and Relaxation' by Ottesa Moshfegh, so far so good-really good! I'm pretty sure I'll read MYORAR a lot quicker than Frankenstein because I really have to focus on what I'm reading because I haven't read many books from 1818 so you know amateur reader or whateveh. There isn't much going on this October/ Halloween for me so reading Frankenstein has me feeling spooky. Shout out to the Libby App! I did go to a pumpkin patch earlier this month but it felt rushed too many things to do that day so I had to hustle outta there.Made my roomie watch Hannibal with me, this is my 3rd time watching I think, her first time watching and she asked right away what was with the gay tension in the air- I would like to pick up where I left off with Gravity Falls asap, I was very excited about re-watching when I started it about a week ago.I think I left off on the Summerween episode.I just need access to my family's Hulu account again-

POV this is where I got heated in the moment while writing and I rant at you about certain streaming services

You know it really grinds my gears that we pay for all these flipin streaming services, multiple streaming platforms because these companies are so damn greedy and stingy they already have ads and now I have pay more so I can share my account with family whaaatttt that is so crazy.Crazy because we were all trying to escape the advertisements in the first place from cable and now we gotta deal with it anyway.Maybe physical media really is the way.Netflix when I catch you..I mean they already have so many people angry at them for other reasons like I don't know uh not giving Julie and the Phantoms a second season.Me.Its Me.I'm the angry people.My friends and roommates are the angry people too.In exchange for making my roommate watch Hannibal with me she got me to watch JATP and it was so good,I was distraught I tell you when I found out there was no second season-I cried real tears people! "Unsaid Emily" that’s all I have to say.. just stfu rn... “its because the ratings and views were low” blah blah blah shhhuuuttttt uuuuuppppp NETFLIX WHEN I CATCH YOU.

Also I got a potential fic [or one shot.. do people still use that to describe a short fic] not sure anyways its in the works at the moment I have 2 rough drafts like two versions of it. I've just been racking my brain with the idea and it might be a little basic to some but idc idc. It's going to be a fnaf mike schmidt x reader... -erm ..maybe I say maybe to the "x reader" cause I kinda wanted it to be "x OC " but at the same time I don't know clearly I cannot make up my mind right now.Def want it to be a slow burn and like childhood/old friends to lovers- we also love enemies to lovers but I want to see how it goes..decisions decisions but anyways if there's still any baddies out there that love fnaf/mike/josh hutcherson I'll be whipping up something good very soon,I hope y'all enjoy it once I post it of course heheh updates soon! Maybe I’ll post a snippet of it Thanks for reading!

-Friday

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 24/08/2024 (Bruno Mars & Lady Gaga "Die with a Smile")

Chase, Status and Stormzy remain at the top of the UK Singles Chart for a second week as “BACKBONE” retains its #1 spot amidst a surprisingly slow week. The big story is Gaga and Bruno returning with their comeback duet to the top 10, but before we get to any of that, well, there’s just about everything else. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

content warning: references to war

Rundown

As always, we start our episode with the notable dropouts - those being songs exiting the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40. This week, we bid farewell to a small group of “Alibi” by Sevdaliza, Pabllo Vittar and Yseult, “DEVIL IS A LIE” by Tommy Richman and two tracks from Central Cee - not his best week - those being “gen z luv” - thank God - and “BAND4BAND” with Lil Baby.

As for our notable gains and re-entries, we have “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield scrape back at #75, but the big story in these categories is Post Malone, whose country duets album F-1 Trillion fails to chart any new songs, probably because it’s not all that great and the UK is going to rarely grant much success to a full-on country pivot, but we do have a big return for “Pour Me a Drink” with Blake Shelton at #39, and his other songs see gains: “I Had Some Help” with Morgan Wallen at #29 and the terrible “Guy for That” with Luke Combs at #25. We do see some notable boosts outside of Post, in particular for “The Man Who Can’t be Moved” by The Script at #64, “You’re Gonna Go Far” by Noah Kahan at #60, Taylor Swift gains for “Fortnight” featuring, well, Post Malone at #50 and “Cruel Summer” at #41, “Carry You Home” by Alex Warren at #46, “Sailor Song” by Gigi Perez at #35 - definitely not complaining about that one - “Big Dawgs” by Hanumankind and Kalmi at #15 and finally, Chappell Roan snabs her second top 10 with “HOT TO GO!” at #10.

Finally, in the top five… the trio of Huh, WhoNow and whatshername have finally made it, with “Kisses” by BL3SS, CamrinWatsin and bbyclose making it to #5. The rest should be familiar: “Guess” by Charli xcx featuring Billie Eilish at #4, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” by Billie Eilish at #3, “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan at #2 and the aforementioned “BACKBONE” at the very top. Now before we get to our big top 10 debut, let’s see what’s scraping up below it.

New Entries

#72 - “Cry Baby” - Clean Bandit, Anne-Marie and David Guetta

Produced by Jack Patterson and Grace Chatto

If we end the show with a long-awaited collab between two big-name 2010s hit-makers who have kept quiet for most of this decade, but always create a global smash when they arrive… then I guess we’ll start with a trio of European hit-makers from the 2010s who haven’t been able to go away, and given this is actually a week after it debuted in the top 100, I think the impact of that next Clean Bandit album may be a little muted. What I was personally terrified of when this line-up appeared was the prospect of the previous hit they’d blatantly sample, so the fact that this is an original song is already an improvement on my low expectations. As for its quality, well, firstly, it immediately sounded outdated. Sure, the country flair they acknowledged is contemporary but the Official Charts Company themselves noted that the whistling harmonised with the typical Clean Bandit string swell resembles the sea shanties of 2021, and really, this is just an undeniably Just Dance 2018 line-up. The main melodic hook resembles a traditional folk sing-song, but that translates to a particularly staccato tropical house drop, and when you find out from the band themelves in their OCC interview that this is straight out of 2020, with them dismissing most of the changes they’d made to the track since and releasing an earlier version, everything starts to make sense. Guetta says it was four years in the making but realistically, this had been made four years ago, and it speaks to the public’s change of taste that this seems to be more of a slow burn. The song is completely serviceable, but made redundant but much else of Clean Bandit’s catalogue, and this was made long before Anne-Marie really channelled her bratty instincts in her last record, so apart from some cute obnoxious laughter in the backing ad-libs, this feels dry, lacking in much to set it apart, which for all three of these acts, is pretty par for the course nowadays.

#55 - “New Woman” - LISA featuring ROSALÍA

Produced by Max Martin and ILYA

Now if there’s something that definitely isn’t lacking in personality, it would be a track by BLACKPINK star LISA with a guest appearance from ROSALÍA, and naturally, production from Max Martin instead of any of the weirder acts like Arca or el Guincho that ROSALÍA often gels with, and LISA could use to help her carve a distinct sound. It struck me as a bizarre decision, and one that I’m genuinely surprised she had the ability to make, especially given LISA seemed inching closer to both rap and the avant-garde with “Rockstar”. Martin and ILYA may have taken themselves further out of their comfort zone by enlisting Tove Lo as a writer, and given the robotic vocal loop that is barely on beat, the blocks of synths against the factorial drums and even record scratches, you can hear her all over this more garish attempt at an 80s pastiche, even in LISA’s verses themselves, as her vocal delivery of monosyllabic, abstract and separate phrases borderline feels like an impression, before the fast-paced, staccato chorus full of stuttering meshing with the flashy chiptune synths that seems just as like Tove Lo.

The song is all about a newly-gained female confidence, and whilst the lyrics don’t stand out to me as particularly quotable, they may not need to, especially since ROSALÍA takes the song into a murkier territory with a wave of grim bass fuzz, drowning out the melody and replacing what remains with hyperpop-esque effects as she dominates the mix alongside a stray, overly loud snare, so she can take a flex verse to an oddly sinister edge, using her sheer emotional strength as a coping mechanism before it flashes back abruptly, in typical K-pop fashion, to the plastic pop mask. It’s rare that the stop-and-start momentum of K-pop is used to such thematic success, on the charts at least, and honestly I really like the progression, and they even find time in the mix to give LISA the opportunity to rap as a book-end on the intro and outro - it fits the call-and-response post-chorus really well. Surprisingly enough, I really enjoyed this, and I also appreciate seeing Max Martin being taken out of his comfort zone whilst still employing his signature sound. It makes a lot of sense that the presence of ROSALÍA and Tove Lo would prompt that, and I’m slightly more interested in where LISA goes from here rather than wherever I could have predicted she went from “Rockstar”.

#53 - “Pretty Slowly” - Benson Boone

Produced by Evan Blair

Well, at least one of these songs can be quick and easy. As the lieutenant-general of the Boonecorps and CEO of BDS - Benson Defense Squad - I don’t think this one’s too great. It’s still good, I genuinely like this guy and the wordy, tripping-over-himself way of writing his lyrics, but the folkish tones are almost childlike in the verses, not fitting for his whinier tone, especially with some questionable pronounciations and inflections along the way. The overlong build of the chorus makes perfect sense with the stomp-clap elevation and backing vocals given how the track lyrically themes itself around the gradual degradation of a relationship, with him only getting into his signature shriek once it feels too fast to prevent it all from collapsing. The harmonies that are slightly off on timing and have a gang vocals feel whilst still feeling very attached to Boone’s tone makes the song have a great sense of panic in its fuller moments. I just wish that led to more than the frankly disappointing bridge-turned-outro, as a mostly good song ends with a slower, melancholic rise, with an awkward vocal mastering job, and repetitive lyric that really does not resolve the song’s post-breakup angst in a satisfying or even compelling way. Even blowing out the mix to ridiculous proportions, which honestly usually helps me enjoy a song, doesn’t help me get over the weird left turn and frankly, I think this is where he needs some help lyrically: actually completing his song’s narratives. It’s still fine, though, and we stay in folk rock territory with…

#48 - “Nobody’s Soldier” - Hozier

Produced by Bekon, Pete G, Chakra and Sergiu Gherman

Though not as explosive as his last EP of B-sides, thanks to the lack of a really immediate hit like “Too Sweet”, Hozier is still trickling out another trilogy, with the new EP Unaired. The stand-out opener is the anti-war song “Nobody’s Soldier”, which got the video treatment and takes on a lone-wolf character fitting for its strident guitar fuzz and distorted intro, taking a third option in between selling yourself physically to a warzone and selling yourself to a capitalistic society, becoming another product in the midst of others fighting for “consumer” attention, with several pieces of imagery directly mirroring the experiences of those in the trenches of the World Wars. Hozier sounds as powerful in the relentless, dynamically-mixed chorus as he sounds uncertain in the tense, breathy clinging of the verses, demonstrating a very real disillusionment with the selfishness inherent in a society that benefits financially from promoting and waging conflict, both as industry market competition and actual bloodshed.

Whilst more of an anthemic independence, Hozier can come off as a tad weak here, being buried in the mix sometimes by the more prominent, almost digital-sounding guitar pumping in the right channel, and not having the best enunciation - not that you really need that in a populist protest song - but the lyrics also seem to look too in between two dimensions to really settle for what change can be made. I don’t exactly think there’s all too much room in the geopolitical climate for centrist disgruntlement, and I can’t see a society where the potential motive behind this song - just being “all about the music” and wanting to release art rather than force himself into commercialism and/or war, which he paints several parallels between - isn’t selling yourself. Even in a world where art is not commodified to the extent it is now, the deeply personal lyrics of some of Hozier’s tracks combined with the need to create a centralised space wherein that art can be expressed, spread and accessed is creating a product out of yourself, it almost seems unavoidable. The song is still very good, I am not really going to defy a song’s impact, grit and tightly-written narrative if I don’t agree with it thematically, though I feel it may stem too closely to “Too Sweet” for Hozier’s own good in its overarching themes and tone, setting itself apart with a harsher and political edge but falling into the traps of circling itself into recapturing the same idea, to the point of being a tad under-developed, all the same.

#7 - “Die with a Smile” - Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars

Produced by Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, D’Mile and watt

As much as Bruno and Gaga both feel like icons of a 2010s style of grandiose pop long gone, they still have made plenty of work that I personally enjoy greatly on many more levels than pure nostalgia, and I think that’s part of why the two have resonated so strongly and for so long, alongside the diverse range of their talents and genre-scoping abilities, they’re like pop music polymaths, and in Gaga’s case, she works between so many forms and mediums that calling her a “singer” feels like an understatement. Both acts have recruited people from their side - D’Mile and James Fauntleroy are writing here alongside producer Andrew Watt from the pop rock sphere - so this dramatic re-entry, which may be on either artists’ album or both, whenever that’s coming for either of them since it’s been a while on both fronts, should be an easy push and slam dunk on both the charts and in the eyes of the critics. And is it worth the hype? Does it pass the already high expectations we have for these two, we can probably call it now, legends of pop music? …Yeah, obviously, the song’s fantastic.

The conceit of the exhausted “ooh-ooh” from Bruno that enters the song in through feathery falsetto and returns to signal the floating verses, both of which start outside of their respective singer’s control, is such a neat little detail that Bruno would obviously add in, those sneaky refrains are probably part of what makes his musicianship so special to Gaga herself, as explained in their Variety article, and you can definitely tell that this was Bruno’s song first, mostly because it’s a smooth jam that has his harmonies dripping all over it, even when Gaga’s supposed to be the lead vocal. The dramatic drumming that fills in for the gentler guitars is mixed so perfectly, down to a really brilliant panning job when they first come in, that it adds a lot of genuine strength to this power ballad, even when the rest of the instrumental benefits from its languid, throwback slide, balancing the song’s aged comfort, which you can really hear in Bruno’s “just for a while” delivery in the chorus, with a lovestruck intensity from their early 2010s work remaining, especially through Gaga’s belting that meshes note to note with Bruno, particularly in the rougher pre-chorus. It feels like a perfect middle man between the youthful, dedicated bops that launched them into fame and the natural adult contemporary conclusion, bringing that same 100% energy to a style more fitting of their age and career progression.

I adore the production details down to Gaga’s vocal being distanced and filtered in the second chorus to bubble below Bruno’s delicate take, signalling the careening swell of pianos to come in the bridge, which wastes no time from dipping its toes into the shallow pool of water that sounds like it’s below their performance, to crashing into theatrics like a true megastar moment. The sheer strength of the instrumental break sends Gaga into a ferociously dedicated passion right after, and renders Bruno’s early coos into a screech that resonates through the mix well into the passage’s closing moments. I love the thematic conceit of Bruno always overpowering Gaga on the “I’d wanna hold you just for a while” line whilst she’s much more prominent in both renditions she has of the chorus’ first half. There’s simply so much to appreciate about this song, but perhaps its biggest appeal is just how big it sounds. It’s written like the climax to a soundtrack, its scale lyrically is that of the end of the world, and it features some absolute powerhouses going toe-to-toe on an instrumental so layered and massive that it could overpower any of the two at any given moment.

It should be of no surprise that these two titans come together for this extravagant of a song, and the two always felt like they should have crossed paths a long time ago given their similar - but not nearly identical - paths that have not just followed but actively played on the public perceptions of what a pop star could and couldn’t be, whether through the gesamtkunstwerk spectacle of Lady Gaga’s time in the limelight, using her decade and change with the public eye to make the most challenging pop of its time whilst branching across film, fashion and contemporary art in a way that has forever fused the artforms, or Bruno’s slow-burn dedication to perfectly replicate the styles of music he holds dear, in blind disregard to release dates, and prove himself as a man who makes art purely because he loves it and wants to transmit that joy he experiences unto others. Simply put, I imagine these two are somewhat on the way out in their hit-making career, so to have this beast of a power ballad as their ending credits, with the two finally coming together to prove that dominance and evolution, it really is kind of beautiful. It does help that I’ve been alive to track these artists’ progression, and for much of the second half, document it on here, so a song like this that even uses the subtext of their pop stardom being somewhat behind them, or even them just being beyond that now, will resonate particularly well with me, in particular because ARTPOP and An Evening with Silk Sonic are borderline perfect albums, in my opinion, and whilst this may be more comfortably in Bruno’s camp, “Die with a Smile” still hits immensely and I really hope it smashes just to give them that victory lap. I can’t say this about really any song that debuts and I have to review in real-time, but this one… it feels like an all-timer. An absolutely perfect song to end this episode. This is pop music incarnate.

Conclusion

Wow, I mean, you can’t really have it better than that! Only five songs, not one I dislike, and aside from one, they’re all very good, so it gives you an easy Worst of the Week - “Cry Baby” by Clean Bandit, David Guetta and Anne-Marie - without actually being hard to listen to, and I’m spoiled rotten for the Honourable Mention but the Best of the Week is barely a choice simply because of how far Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars run away with it with “Die with a Smile”. Ultimately, I gave the Honourable Mention to LISA and ROSALÍA for “New Woman”, mostly because there are small nitpicks with the others, but this is ultimately a nice little batch of songs. As for what’s on the horizon, I suppose we’ll have to look out for Sabrina Carpenter’s newest album release given her recently-acquired megastar status, as well as new tracks to look out for from Myles Smith and Coldplay. Hell, Fontaines D.C. might end up with something here, you can’t count them out. For now, thank you for reading, long live Cola Boyy, and I’ll see you next week!

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Long post and hyperfixation/infodump session incoming:

It's reminiscence time again... A) Life hasn't been great as of now, and B) I saw something pretty cool the other day...

So, there's a free book online called DRAWING FOR NOTHING, which was compiled by an individual named Ziggy Cashmere. It is a book chronicling unmade animated movies, or animated movies that got - more or less - cooked into something else...

The book, so far, has a treasure trove of concept art and stories for ME AND MY SHADOW, FOODFIGHT!, B.O.O.: BUREAU OF OTHERWORLDLY OPERATIONS, THE INCREDIBLE MR. LIMPET, JOE JUMP, DREAMING MACHINE, DRAGON'S LAIR: THE LEGEND, JACK AND BEN, CAPTAIN FANTASTIC AND THE BROWN DIRT COWBOY, and HUCK'S LANDING...

All kinds of animated films from different eras, some that weren't made, some that were re-imagined as something else entirely...

And their work isn't over yet!

The Drawing For Nothing's twitter account is posting all kinds of cool, unearthed stuff...

And the other day, they found some conceptual work for an unmade Disney animated movie called AMERICAN DOG...

Actually, AMERICAN DOG kind of... Was... Made?

This film was to be directed by Chris Sanders for Walt Disney Feature Animation, his sophomore directorial outing following the success of LILO & STITCH. If all had gone according to the plan, this movie would've likely debuted around fall/Thanksgiving 2007-ish, maybe a little earlier. Things were a little more fluid back then, when it seemed like The Walt Disney Company were to lose Pixar after their contract was up. Either way, it was aiming for 2007.

Of course, a lot had changed at Disney Animation after Michael Eisner was essentially ousted as CEO of the wider company. After Bob Iger succeeded Eisner, one of his first big moves was acquiring Pixar for over $7b, in early 2006... And then that move lead to the studio's veterans and founding fathers John Lasseter and Ed Catmull becoming the heads of that studio, on the heels of critically lambasted films like HOME ON THE RANGE and CHICKEN LITTLE.

And they took their way of doing things at Pixar with them, infamously. Chris Sanders was given lots of notes on AMERICAN DOG throughout 2006, until Lasseter took him off the movie at the end of the year. Lasseter had "reasoned" that the movie was "too quirky for its own good", and that Sanders wasn't getting it to where it needed to be. This was a shocking blow to animation fans everywhere, that not only was Sanders removed from his next movie, but that he was also leaving Disney Animation for DreamWorks. (Where he currently is at the moment, in twenty-twenty three!) Yet some suggested, "They're from Pixar, maybe we should trust them?"

Lasseter then had AMERICAN DOG completely re-imagined, working only off of the core concept of a dog TV star going on a cross-country trip with some animal friends, into an entirely new movie called BOLT.

Directors Byron Howard and Chris Williams, both first-timers at the helm of something, brought the film to the finish line for Thanksgiving of 2008 to critical acclaim and even an Oscar nod, but a low final gross at the box office... While it was generally liked, there was a sort-of lingering feeling of what kind of movie AMERICAN DOG would've been. BOLT has often been compared to it, negatively, because visually it's just sort of... There? It looks nice, it's cute, the animal character design is pretty appealing, while WDAS was still working out CG human designs pre-TANGLED. Some of the extras in BOLT are little strange-looking to these eyes, to go off on a tangent.

Anyways, the short version: BOLT's fine, but what could've been... AMERICAN DOG...

There have been other pieces of concept art for AMERICAN DOG that have available to view for years, especially pieces from when the movie was still in development...

So, now... I want to talk about the days when I first came across this project... Around November/December 2004...

At the time, 12-year-old Kyle was beginning to look up upcoming movie slates and such on various movie news websites. Stuff like ComingSoon-dot-net and stuff like that. Box office was reported in many places, not just the usual suspects...

I had already seen THE INCREDIBLES maybe three times in theaters by this point (I saw it *five* times on a big screen total, during its one and only theatrical release), and that movie really rocked my world. It still does. I'm a huge fan of THE INCREDIBLES, and its sequel too. I was endlessly influenced by the movie, and it actually legit excited me at the possibilities of what CG animation could... Even though this was an era of hand-drawn animation being ushered out...

Still, I saw a lot of potential CGI before we got glomped with a ton of kiddie talking animal movies and such within a few years, that kinda cast CG in a more negative light online. It already got so much blame for ending 2D, for merely existing, so the kinds of movies that came out - like a dam burst - around late 2005-2007 certainly didn't help...

Anyways, I wanted to know... What was next???

For Pixar, since it seemed like they were splitting with the Disney Co. at the time, the future was a little less definite. A teaser for CARS was running before THE INCREDIBLES, and after that the plan was for RATATOUILLE to be next... Which it ultimately was. This was back when Jan Pinkava was still directing the movie, before he got taken off of it in early 2005 and replaced by INCREDIBLES director Brad Bird... And a lot of it was changed after that. Back in late 2004, it was simply a movie about a rat "living with" an eccentric famous chef.

Of course, per the original contract that Pixar signed with DizCo (to borrow from Steve Hulett, to save syllables), Pixar couldn't make any sequels to their hit movies. DizCo had those under lock and key if Pixar were to split with them, and they planned on taking advantage of that... DizCo opened up a CG animation studio called Circle 7 Animation, and tasked them to make TOY STORY 3, MONSTERS INC. 2, and FINDING NEMO 2... Quite different ones from the movies we ended up getting. At this stage, TOY STORY 3 might've still been about the whodunit story set at Andy's grandmother's house... Or, it had become the infamous "Buzz Lightyear recalled" story that got the green light.

Other studios had slates of sorts. DreamWorks, in addition to having MADAGASCAR and Aardman's WALLACE & GROMIT movie lined up for 2005, had OVER THE HEDGE and RATROPOLIS (changed to FLUSHED AWAY) on the horizon. They also had multiple SHREK movies lined up, up to five and a direct-to-video origin movie about Puss In Boots. KUNG FU PANDA was entering development at this time, but it wouldn't be announced officially until about a year later, ditto a few other pictures. Donkey made an appearance on the studio's CG animated primetime NBC sitcom FATHER OF THE PRIDE (a real trip of a show), in an episode that aired 9/21/2004, and remarked "But let your kid know that SHREK 3 is coming out in 2006!"

Other stuff was coming, too. Sony was getting OPEN SEASON fired up, I think Imagi was getting started on CAT TALE, there were a bunch of other random movies here and there... Most of them not made, I reckon...

Then there was Disney Animation's future stuff...

CHICKEN LITTLE already had a teaser that I first saw on the spring 2004 BROTHER BEAR DVD, and there was a much faster-paced trailer playing before THE INCREDIBLES (set to R.E.M.'s 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)'). Next up were likes of A DAY WITH WILBUR ROBINSON, AMERICAN DOG, RAPUNZEL UNBRAIDED, and FRAIDY CAT I believe was announced as well.

I caught glimpses of AMERICAN DOG, and saw this particular action-packed image:

And I was draaaawn in. I was already hyped about how THE INCREDIBLES did such dynamic action, and this piece was reminding me of the scene where the Parr family use a news trailer to weave through Municiberg traffic to find the Omnidroid. I like a good car chase, so this was exciting.

At the time, I was already writing lots of stories about dogs, cats, stuff like that, dogs running away from dogcatchers and such. I was literally writing and picturing all these action sequences because THE INCREDIBLES really lit up my imagination on how action scenes could be done, especially in animation. All the wild angles and camera pans and swoops, it's like I was Incrediblizing everything I was writing at the time, my 12-year-old brain was just sooooo influenced by it. It was a formative film for me, m'kay?

Moving on... I was kind of in-and-out on what was happening with AMERICAN DOG once Chris Sanders was fired from the movie. I had found out that it become BOLT a little before the first trailer debuted, and I remember being down on it. Not to mention, I was going through a lot of other things at the time and I was kind of out of the loop on what was going on. There were some bad vibes going around in the circles too, that BOLT was sure to be bad because it wasn't AMERICAN DOG. It created a sense of "this is what we got instead", like we see a lot nowadays... And I saw the trailer before WALL-E in theaters, and just was not impressed.

The marketing for this movie was so weird. The posters, which pushed a lot of heavy reds, seemed to pass this picture off as "Dog INCREDIBLES". Anyone who has seen BOLT knows that the superhero stuff is literally a TV show he stars in, but the posters and covers really make it seem like it's a super-pets movie or something. And Disney had already done that live-action UNDERDOG movie a year prior. We were kind of at the tail-end of that weird period of Disney's movie output, the remains of the Eisner years and some very strange greenlights... I was starting to see movies in theaters again, following a depressive period where I didn't really go out in public much. And I was kinda softening on BOLT, but I missed it in theaters. I would later get the Blu-ray, as a blind present, around the end of 2009 I wanna say? And I finally gave it a watch, and I really dug it! I still do, actually, even if it is rather standard and workmanlike. Part of me assumes that Disney Animation, after years of critical and/or commercial bombs, were intentionally making something very familiar. Something cute and Disney-like and digestible, a fun little dog movie, as a way to ease back into the swing of things and get audiences to see their movies again.

After all, their last string of movies were... MEET THE ROBINSONS (lost money), CHICKEN LITTLE (made over $100m domestically but barely doubled its budget worldwide, got terrible reception), HOME ON THE RANGE (critical/commercial dud), BROTHER BEAR (critical flop but made its small budget back), and TREASURE PLANET (infamous massive bomb)... Maybe the rationale was, "Let's just make a classically Disney dog movie, but with some stuff that people like about the movies we make at Pixar!" It does feel a little assembled, it does feel like Lasseter using stuff from the movies he directed/oversaw at Pixar, mixing them with some "Disney" elements. The light satire of Hollywood and network television was an extra touch that gives it a little bit more flavor. In a way, I get it... Disney Animation hadn't had a genuine big hit in *years*, and maybe the thought process was "let's just make a straight-up family movie about a dog". Not something a little weirder or wilder, certainly not the utterly gonzo stuff Sanders was coming up with... But maybe, if they had taken a chance on it and kept the budget reasonable, they could've had a bigger hit on their hands? Who the heck knows...

BOLT ended up making around $309m worldwide against its $150m budget (I wonder how much of that came from the thrown-out AMERICAN DOG, since that got *very* far in pre-production), and managed to have spectacular legs in North America after such a blah opening weekend. I guess it's kind of a flop? Underperformer? The Hollywood math changes for each and every movie, it seems. But I think the positive critical reception and Oscar nod were taken into consideration, and so the movie was probably viewed as a stepping stone to the likes of THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, TANGLED, WINNIE THE POOH, and WRECK-IT RALPH. The so-called "Revival"...

But I would loooooove to visit an alternate universe where AMERICAN DOG *did* happen. And that it was the unhinged Chris Sanders movie it was looking to be. Maybe not an alternate universe where David Stainton is running Disney Animation, by all means he really had to go. Lasseter was not exactly an exemplary replacement, as we'd learn in later years, but someone should've let the movie happen. I think a second Sanders WDAS movie could've not only been a major hit, but it could've down as one of Disney Animation's most interesting and experimental films... Much like his own LILO & STITCH was! And to think John Lasseter despised that movie... It's no wonder Sanders left the dog movie and left the studio, though he did negotiate with Lasseter to keep at least one of the characters from his concept and use it elsewhere... Namely the one-eyed cat who became the main character of his comic, KISKALOO.

Sanders made some really cool movies at DreamWorks. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is good stuff, and THE CROODS is a lot of fun. I even enjoyed that live-action CALL OF THE WILD movie he did for 20th Century Studios, with the CG'ed dog... And I'm excited as heck for THE WILD ROBOT, his third DreamWorks movie... But, part of me feels like AMERICAN DOG would've been Chris Sanders at his most Chris Sanders. Something totally uncorked and wild and unlike anything else... Whereas, two of his DreamWorks movies are based on books, and the other was someone else's movie first. He had expressed interest in turning KISKALOO into a feature, and if he gets to do that after WILD ROBOT... At DreamWorks... That would be pretty amazing, honestly. It'd probably be the closest thing we get to what AMERICAN DOG was shaping up to be...

Anyways, I wanted to talk about where I was at with upcoming animation in 2004 as a young, weirdo enthusiast... And just talk about an unmade movie and the director's stuff in general and such. Hope you're having a great holiday!

(And go read DRAWING FOR NOTHING!)

[nyupreservation]

"Azul" Print Comparison

This blog post for Preservation Week was contributed by media preservation graduate assistant Adrianne Lundy about her work on the Roland Legiardi-Laura and Joanna Kiernan Collection on the Azul Documentary (TAM.814).

Azul was directed by Roland Legiardi-Laura in 1988. The film focuses on Nicaraguan poetry and culture, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Ruben Dario’s published book of the same title. In 2022, NYU Special Collections acquired Azul’s many production materials, including raw footage and audio recordings.

Included in these acquired materials were nine separate prints of the film. All were assumed to be exhibition prints, based on their labeling and because they were housed in travel carriers used to ship prints to exhibitors. It’s not uncommon for duplicate materials to exist in a collection. However, maintaining duplicates means committing storage, funds, and resources that could otherwise be devoted to original elements of other collections. Exhibition prints also tend to have high rates of damage from projectors, abundant handling, and travel wear and tear. It was decided that these prints should be inspected and assessed to identify the best quality prints of the bunch.

The inspection of all nine prints took place in March and April of this year. The film is 105 minutes, and each print consisted of three reels. I made notes on key condition points, including the number of splices and level of shrinkage. A common form of damage across many of the prints came from misloading projectors or from DIY-ed projection marks. On two different occasions, the first ~100 feet of image on the first reel were heavily scratched, contained damaged perforations, and edge damage, but contained very little damage going forward. This is as if a projectionist had improperly loaded the film, stopped, corrected, and reloaded. 

On other occasions, the projection marks varied in how they were implemented. Oftentimes individual projectionists/venues would have their own systems for indicating that a reel change was needed. On a number of prints, the heads and tails of the reels were painted white, presumably to indicate this.

On other occasions, one or two frames were cut and re-spliced into the film. This was likely a result of the three reels being edited together onto one reel for easier projection, and then separated again when the print was returned.

Another common issue across almost all prints were high levels of shrinkage. Most prints were found to have shrunk by 0.3% or more. Prints with 0.5% or higher shrinkage were noted as unsuitable for projection. 

In inspecting the films, it was found that some prints were subtitled in English, while others were not. For this reason, a “best copy” was sought of each of these two versions. The two unsubtitled copies had the most vibrant colors of all the nine prints. Both were printed on Eastman 7243 Safety Stock, a stock used for color master positives. The stock type, plus the lack of subtitles, indicates that they may be of an earlier generation than the rest of the prints in the collection. One was in excellent condition, while the other suffered from projector damage and shrinkage over 0.5%, making the choice of “best copy” simple.

The remaining seven prints all had subtitles and were all marked as “Low-Fade Positive Prints” (LPP). Though this stock was created to prevent color fading (in response to earlier color stocks that were susceptible to fading to a magenta color), the colors of these prints often appeared a bit duller in comparison to the 7243 prints. Despite this, there was one film that registered as having 0% shrinkage, along with a minimal number of splices.

Additional repairs will likely still be needed on these prints. The subtitled print was one of the versions with projector damage at the head, though the rest of the film is in very good condition. Though no perfs were broken, many were bent and damaged. The non-subtitled version has an improper tape splice halfway through the second reel that is collecting dust and grime. Despite this, it was wonderful to identify two minimally damaged prints to represent these two versions of Azul.

[myrrhmaidwrites]

Sunstruck Writing Wrap-Up

I think I’m going to start posting writing wrap ups here for my own benefit. Writing about writing is supposed to make you better at it, or something.

This fic was not only my longest ever, but it also ended up spanning 12 google docs, 6 Word files, 8 pages in Notion, and 100+ DMs. If you think my writing process could use some improved organization, well, you’re right.

Originally, Sunstruck was about Trevor writing the book. He had finished it, and the book was in some ways a love letter to Jamie, and a lot of their conversations revolved around what was in the book. (Have you read The Next Next One? Yeah.)

Anyway, that didn’t end up happening. Somewhere along the way I switched the story to Jamie’s POV and moved away from the book idea. I just couldn’t get it to fit. I don’t think I’ll write a sequel to this, but if I did, it would be Trevor POV and it would be about the book.

Now I’m going to talk a little about the writing process for this fic.

16k words isn’t that many for a lot of people. For me, it’s the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I think that deserves some note. Woo! May there be longer fics to come. Also I genuinely have no idea how people write novels, haha. Practice, I suppose.

Shortly before I started this fic, I did some reading about various approaches to the editing process. The method I ended up using, which worked well for me, was to basically just get some words down for the first draft (“shitty first draft), and then rewrite the whole draft based on that. This worked well for me because I was able to get the pure words down pretty well via writing sprints and typing on my phone in bed before I went to sleep.

Then came the rewriting. I took one scene, slapped it in a column on Notion, and used it as a guide to write a new version of that scene. No copy+paste allowed, but I could rewrite the original words if I did want to keep them. I almost never kept them exactly. The second version of scenes were almost always better than the first.

During this period is when the story feels most like a confusing mess that I have to muddle through. I have scenes missing that I don’t know I need, I have to rearrange things and delete things and realize that something I wrote won’t work anymore because I changed something earlier. I’m constantly re-outlining, adding notes to scenes, writing new bits and deleting them, etc.

To give you an idea of some of the things I changed in this stage, in an earlier version of the fic, Jamie said something really heartfelt for Trevor’s video and they cut most of it out for the public video. Trevor only sees it after the Ducks staff send him the full video, and their reunion/get together scene happens at home the day after the ceremony.

At another point, I really wanted to have that long distance/breakup/dark night of the soul moment that would require a big gesture from Jamie (flying across the country for Trevor or similar). In the end, I couldn’t get it to work, so we have the condensed crisis that starts during the sex scene. I’m not mad about that change, but I do sometimes wonder if I could have made that scene hit harder if the separation/downturn had been worse.

Anyway, after getting through this horrible muddled mess, there’s a third re-writing, where I have the scenes mostly in order and I go through and rewrite everything from beginning to end for a third time. This time around, there’s a lot more that stays the same. What’s nice about the earlier stages is that when I write something I don’t like so much, I don’t have to worry about it at the moment because there’s an incredibly low chance it’ll make it to the final fic.

After the third rewriting is when I like to loop in my beta reader. I usually try to have a couple of specific questions for them as they read. I think technically this is called alpha reading (and beta reading is just for spelling/grammar), but if I’m honest, I need this kind of help more.

Then I go about incorporating changes from my beta reader, which usually involves a major overhaul of 1-2 scenes, almost always the finale and another scene in the second half of the fic.

After that, I go through and re-read the fic in order and look for places where I need to make major additions. This typically includes descriptions of emotions or settings and additions to dialogue where characters get to the point of what they’re trying to say far more quickly than is realistic.

Finally, in the last couple of days before posting, I look at sentence structure and word choice. I tend to use the same sentence structures over and over in my writing as well as certain words. In this phase, I try to mix it up as much more and make the sentences and words sound interesting.

In the “adding” and “sentence structure” phases of this fic, I added about 5k words. Yep, the fic was only about 11.5k words before this. That means the fic my beta reader read, while kind of close to the finished version, is also hugely different from the fic up on ao3. It’s kind of crazy to think about.

Finally, I do one last read for typos, and the fic goes up.

There’s one thing about this fic experience (and others I’ve had) that I haven’t really gotten to talk about yet, though.

This fic was part of a big bang, and as a part of that, I worked with a hard deadline, and I also had an artist relying on me to be finished so we could post at the same time. Last year, I participated in an exchange that had a similar type of deadline.

Both times, I’ve had horrible insomnia for ~3 weeks leading up to the deadline. We’re talking 3+ weeks of not sleeping, sleeping extremely poorly, or not sleeping without pills. (And I’m talking sedatives here, not melatonin. God, I wish melatonin did something useful for me.)

It didn’t matter that I could have pushed the deadline back. It didn’t matter that I could have just dropped out. It didn’t matter that I was actually quite on top of this fic and not particularly concerned about finishing on time. My brain was not interested in sleeping.

Luckily, I got through it. Most of this week after posting the fic I slept just fine. But it does make me think about whether doing something like this is useful for me, or sustainable in the long run. I really love the community aspect of writing fic. I doubt that without doing a bigbang that my fics would have art made for them. I doubt I would have produced such a long fic so quickly without a deadline.

Maybe these are just things that I need to accept about myself. If I don’t want to cause myself weeks of insomnia (and I don’t because it fucking sucks), maybe I need to just accept that. Really what I need to do is probably talk to my therapist about this, but it’s hard.

Does this happen to anyone else? Just me? Okay.

To end this on a less depressing note, one final observation I want to mention is that after I choose one fic to concentrate on, my ideas for other fics tend to slow down, and then once that idea is close to wrapping, they tend to speed up again. Now I’m stuck in the middle of 4-5 fic ideas and I want to write all of them. Of course I don’t have the time, and I’m sure I’ll end up concentrating on just one or two eventually. But for now I have like five different gdocs that I want to keep open at all times. It makes me wish I didn’t have a job so I could just write. (Plus my two anons that I owe fics to…oops!)

If you read this far, thank you. Sometimes it’s nice to hear whispers in the void when you know you should expect silence.

[lovinglifewithlight]

Id like to attempt to explain, mostly for myself in this journey what has occurred recently (and may be hinted at in other posts).

I may have had some kind of spul splitting earlier in life 🤔 This history can be researched more in 2D/4D ascensionglossary.com

I was likely targeted with an Alien Bite around 11 and was fed a lot of negative energy in life which allowed for a low frequency and dark attack. I lost my inner site and stuffed my kundalini actively suppressed for many years. Until i had a spiritual return to christ consciousness and experienced forgiveness in higher realm as well as real life (also explored in other posts here).

Recently I went through a huge wave of energy and was triggered with ptsd and serious anxiety. Earthquakes. Fear of driving. And even holocaust type memories. The remembrance and relation of forced breeding to keep it simple. The inner trauma of not knowing the creations and caring for them even though some of them may have been terrible or unwell (memories and details unclear and unnecessary). Both on and off planet in other lives, all kind of re-happening at once and playing a reel. As if another time or parallel was being relayed too far into my present reality and cause my body to be overloaded with relations.

However I made some serious decisions and commands to the house. Promises and communicated with nature and its living beings locally.

Effectively a part of my Indigo 3 Integration and activations from Light Language and Sound and Kundalini Rising energies took over and commanded the space for change for a while. This also had moments of upset and confusion for some in the shared reality (most). It was also influenced by sleep deprivation, stress/threats and a strong desire for change in my life (accepting of changes in life as they occur, also. While others resist change strongly...) I also was having complications within my close friend/s and had some hard ends to make to finalize Inner Union.

With the lowe-higher nature, allowing for the shadow selves to be absorbed by the light. To be comfortable and comfomforted by holding love and wisdom for those whom I encounter to recieve it. Without expectation. Holding center. These are the final lessons I need to have to finished this cycle and contract and move from it. This required most other unaligned contracts to be settled.

I had a kind of Etheric Surgery and for the next 48 hours had a lot of positive symptoms. Including the return of my foot! And a more significant and harmonious merge of the inner feminine and masculine parts of my left-right and even soul personalities/faces/identity.

(This wasn't understood my me in previous posts but hinted at the masculine part of me (Lee) is often the one that was belittled, but playful and lived for joy, a hard as that is stubborn and had/has tendency to be anxious/excitable). (The feminine side has been on a slow return since 2017, becoming dominant within me (Caylene, natural self, closer to inner child self) and therefore more submissive to my husband in marriage.)

Recentl my this signified my Avatar Self integrating and preparing my body for changes. There is also the ancestral child within that is more aware and proactively a part of me now. I don't have to try or to change myself or my mind or thoughts. I just am a complete identoy that has access and connection to all my aspects of self.

For months in my healing spaces I saw many versions of myself becoming one and integrating together. And this to me was my multidimensionality. (Also,.clone wars are here lol.)

Due to fear and not knowing what some of the signs meant at the time. I (much like when I was younger) shut down the healing spaces used for now and have yet to decide which areas to return to. This has to do with feelings of insecurity honestly. As well as protocols for personal protection, likely. It could also be to ensure that I stay in the present. New Aurora Shields are being realized. Probably for building hubs and connecting the arcs and pillars later on.

I intend to work to integrate and fully realize and close the Indigo 3 contact and move into Indigo 1 Gridwork. That seems the most exciting to me, and so I've become to work towards that and offer Patreon options. Planetary Gridwork, Reiki and Crystal Therapies.

[ailelie]

So I didn't work on Nora's story for a month. I did try dictation at one point and managed about 400 words. All of those have since been rewritten.

Anyway, I've set a low goal for November just to get me back into gear writing. What is weird, though, beyond having to remember how my own characters are characterized (yay re-reading) is the shift in writing styles.

Because I did write something recently. Basically, At the start of November, I sat down ready to start writing Nora's story again. And instead wrote a fanfic for a fandom I'm no longer in or support. (...I did post the fic b/c I do crave recognition/etc like most other people but still...). And I wrote this fic in by-now fairly typical "ficcish not!fic" style.

This style is prose, but breezy and tends to skim over a lot to focus on the moments I'm interested in. It is the type of writing style that turns a potentially super tense and action-packed chase and fight scene into this:

Escaping the hospital is a narrow thing. Escaping Coruscant even narrower.

(That's from an older fic; not the one from earlier this week).

In contrast, Nora's story is almost overwritten. One bit of feedback I've gotten twice from my critgroup is that I need to trim words. Not moments, scenes, or dialogue, though.

This is the start of a stand-off scene. This is 235 words and the other member of the stand-off hasn't even arrived yet.

Their quietude was short-lived. “Help!” The voice was hoarse, just loud enough to be heard. Nora and Fletcher spun around. A man was limping and running toward them. A long rip in his shirt revealed dark shadows on his side when he was in the light. Blood matted his face, streaming down from his forehead and clotting under his nose and over his lips. They raced toward him. The man lurched forward; Fletcher caught him. “Hide me,” the man begged. Nora glanced around the street. No one else was around. There was an alley, a tall building with lit windows, and a closed shop. The rest of the buildings did not seem potentially helpful. They could get surrounded in an alley. The people with lit windows might not be allies. “There.” Nora pointed at the shop and started to help Fletcher and the man to its stoop. The door was inset like Dr. Benoit’s had been. During the day, a curtain likely hung in front. “Hey.” Fletcher crouched down across from the man. “We’re going to help you. First, can you tell me what hurts? I see the blood on your face and some bruises on your ribs. Is there anything else?” Pounding steps echoed down the street. The man tried to get up, but Fletcher held him in place. “We’re going to help,” he repeated. He shot Nora a pleading look and she nodded.

The man's pursuers arrive in the next sentence. Still. Do you see the difference? In my ficcish style, this might instead be:

"Help!" A rasping voice called from behind them. Nora and Fletcher spun around to see a man limping and running toward them. "Hide me," he begged. Nora led the way to a small alcove and stepped in front of the man and Fletcher who was attempting to treat his wounds. She could hear the footsteps pounding. She would protect them. Somehow.

That's 61 words. A 74% reduction. That's actually not the best ficcish version I could do, but it is surprisingly difficult moving from fully written to sketched. The other direction is easier.

Anyway. I have found that I have had to write and re-write a bit as I resume Nora's story just as a way to remind myself how to write.

It is all very strange.

[itsclydebitches]

Rewatching RWBY there's this chilling lack of empathy through the volumes that I used to just wave off. Yang has no empathy for Tai, Blake is just entirely about what Blake needs, Weiss almost kills a woman at a party and her takeaway is 'my dad is mean so I'm going to run away'. Qrow sinks hard into depression in vol. 6 and Ruby's reaction is to yell she's never needed him. No one has EVER helped a civilian. It's so prevelant. Knowing how 7&8 go really changes the earlier writing.

I think there was a great deal of well-written empathy in the early volumes — after all, this cast was designed as the kind, well-meaning heroes — but that care was expressed almost solely within the group itself. Ruby sits by Jaune in the hallway and says "Nope!" to his self doubt. Weiss offers Ruby a hand up after she fails to kill the death stalker. Yang seeks out Blake and gets her to open up about what's bothering her. Now, I want to emphasize that there's nothing inherently wrong with this. It actually makes perfect sense. These are our main characters and they're written as peers co-habiting the same space. Of course whatever emotional growth we get, which automatically includes moments of compassion, would be directed towards each other. Similarly, the dynamics originally introduced — that of teachers and parents — likewise (rightly) puts the burden on the adults to provide the comfort, not the other way around. Port snaps Weiss out of her arrogant mindset. Ozpin reassures Ruby about her leadership worries. Tai is there to support his daughter when she's recovering from a lost limb. That's the natural order of things, so to speak.

The problem, to my mind, begins to occur when the group exits those dynamics. They're no longer students, they're licensed huntsmen. They're no longer kids, but equals who never needed adults in the first place. They're no longer doing things for themselves and their friends on personal downtime, they're doing them for the community at large as a profession (to say nothing of the world-altering war they've insisted on shouldering responsibility for). That's what a huntsmen is meant to be, a defender of the people, not someone who uses that power for personal interests alone. All of this is a huge change from where we started out: cutesy kids going off on comparatively low-stakes adventures because one or more of their teammates are invested, only just beginning to realize that they're signing up for a job where their desires come second (that fireside conversation at Mountain Glenn).

This change invites — demands, really — that the audience read them differently too. Qrow's spiral in Volume 6 is a good example of this. If Ruby is demanding to be treated not just as an equal in terms of maturity and experience, but also as the primary leader of this group, then the viewer expects her to treat her uncle as an equal too, not dismiss his hardship. I've seen numerous fans defend that arc with some version of, "He's her uncle. He's supposed to take care of her. He's failing" but that, according to the show, is no longer the dynamic. Qrow is now just a member of Ruby's team, someone she's responsible for as their leader. It's easiest to see the problem if we switch out Qrow for any of the other members. If Blake developed a drinking problem, do we think Ruby would just shout at her until she magically got over it? If Jaune endangered the group, do we think they'd all be angry about it, rather than trying to figure out the source of what caused the mistake? We don't even need to think hypothetically for that one because we saw it on screen. Jaune attacked Oscar and drove him off, not just threatening him, but arguably endangering the whole team by requiring a search party. Fans have long insisted they had to steal that airship right then because being in Argus was too much of a risk, but if we buy that reading (which I personally don't, but), then that means Jaune made things exponentially worse by forcing them out into that super dangerous city, rather than allowing everyone to stay hidden inside. He made a massive mistake which, according to the logic of Qrow's arc, should be met with frustration, disdain, and eventual demands to get over his anger at Ozpin or ship out. But, of course, he received nothing but concern. Yang was worried about him, not Oscar. The search becomes about his grief for Pyrrha and his team's willingness (as well as Pyrrha's family member) to provide more comfort. Suddenly, the tendency to express care solely towards those within the group becomes a flaw the story won't acknowledge.

And then it spirals. The thing to remember is that no single act here is bad on its own, especially when we consider that yes, we want flawed characters. Rather, it's about the pattern. Ruby is allowed to get mad at Qrow for his behavior and chuck her scroll in frustration. She's human. I'd be crazy frustrated too. However, if Ruby is meant to be written as a caring, sympathetic character, she should not only respond to the situation with frustration, yelling, a refusal to listen, and demands that he follow her lead, no questions asked. We can, and should, acknowledge that Weiss was the victim during that party. Her father was hurting her, the woman was beyond insensitive, Weiss was triggered in regards to a horrific event, and her power acted on its own. However, if we want to write Weiss as a compassionate, mature huntress to-be, she should acknowledge that she nearly killed someone — even an asshole someone — and vow to work on her control because she's not willing to put someone in danger like that ever again. Both of these moments have a "They could have been handled better" response attached to them — the former more-so than the latter imo — but these moments are made far, far worse due to later events in the show, events where the characters are cruel without any justification attached. Weiss didn't mean to attack that woman, but she did mean to ignore Whitely and threaten him with her weapon. So once we see that, it informs our understanding of what came before it. "Oh. The fact that Weiss never reacted to nearly killing someone isn't just a bit of missed potential, it's an early indicator that she... doesn't seem to care. If she endangers people, threatens people... that's fine with her." The group has a right to be frustrated with Qrow. The group did not have the right to magically steal Ozpin's entire life story, assault him, and blame him for the world's problems until he felt his only course of action was to run from them. So when we see that it becomes, "Oh. The fact that the group treated Qrow so poorly isn't just a one-time mistake born of a stressful situation and young adults being out of their depth in regards to alcoholism. They really will just abandon anyone the moment they start making mistakes." Anyone outside of their group, that is.

To say nothing of how all of these moments interconnect. Yang's recovery isn't just about getting used to not having an arm, it's about getting used to having a new one. Weiss' party isn't just about nearly killing someone, it's about not committing manslaughter because someone else stepped in. The Volume 6 arc isn't just about trying to escape with the Relic, it's about trying to get it somewhere safe. Fans frustrated with Ironwood's treatment don't harp on these details out of some desperate attempt to make him look good post-murder spree, rather, they recognize that he's a character that's been around since nearly the beginning, originally written as a good guy, and thus has accumulated a number of key connections with the cast. So when none of those connections are acknowledged during an arc about trust... that makes the group look very uncaring. Yang doesn't care that he gave her the arm, Weiss doesn't care that he saved her from hurting/potentially killing someone, Qrow doesn't care that he's trusted Ironwood for years (in a rival-bros way) and that they've been heading towards him this whole time. And when Ironwood begins to spiral, they don't do anything to try and help him, let alone acknowledge that their own choices, that lack of trust and empathy, had a hand in getting them here. "But it's not their responsibility to fix him!" Isn't it? Even a little? Just as human beings seeing an ally struggling under horrific decisions and circumstances? Sure, they don't have to try... but that doesn't make them look very heroic to my mind. And we can't even shrug that off by simplifying things with, "Well, Ironwood is evil now so who cares about him." They simultaneously don't care about finding Qrow who is missing, then captured. They don't do anything to try and find their missing teammates, with the exception of sending May to do it instead. They don't help the army fight off the grimm. Don't try to make sure Pietro and Maria had portals to escape through. Barely hesitate when the newly resurrected characters goes, "Kill me. That's the easiest thing for everyone." And these are just a few of the big ticket moments. It doesn't even begin to cover all the details we get that paint a picture of, "Wow okay. They just really don't care about people outside the group, huh? I mean, they say they do, in a life-or-death way, but they're not putting forth effort to show it on a daily basis."

And if you pick up on all that, if you acknowledge how much the group has changed based on where they started out, you might wonder when in the world that started. Surely we didn't just flip a switch around Volume 6. So you re-watch early stuff and, sure enough, there are moments that feel like setup for what's to come later. Not intentional setup (quite obviously), but a lack of care towards details across the series that, once the dynamic changed, became far, far more pronounced. Characters should be at least somewhat recognizable from start to finish, especially characters who have only experienced about two years of in-world time, so if we now get to see Ruby blandly commenting on all the people who are dying, or Weiss using her weapon as a means of coercing her little brother into doing what she wants, or Yang and Jaune dismissing Ren until he gives in to their point of view... we're going to look for the beginnings of that behavior early on. As you say, we were able to wave all those little details off due to a number of important factors. Now though? Now they feel like they hold a lot more weight, simply by virtue of that early material proceeding what we have now.

[thedudewiththedragontattoos]

Downtown Revamp - A complete overhaul of Downtown from The Sims 2 Nightlife

It’s finally here! This is going to be a long post, please read everything before you download, as there is quite a bit of information to go over! Let’s get started!

First, a picture of the finalized Downtown!

Click here for a relatively complete imgur album of all the lots!

*The pics are not in order. I seriously cannot be bothered going through 140 pictures. Sorry!

*Please note that some of the venues may look different in the final download than the pictures. This is because after building everything I went through and picked/replaced all of the CC that I felt wasn’t 100% necessary to use in the hood, thus some of the color schemes of the lots may differ, especially on interiors.

What is this?

 If you haven’t been following me for the past few weeks, I took on a project to completely renovate all of Downtown from The Sims 2 Nightlife. This means all lots have been completely remodeled and updated. No more fugly Maxis lots! I had three main goals for this project - First, to update everything to look good and be fun to play, second to have each lot offer a unique “experience”, and third, to keep the original feeling of the lots in tact. 

This comes in two versions - a Subhood version that you can add to your existing hoods, like you would with a traditional Downtown, and a Main Hood  version, so you can play my updated Downtown as a main hood if you’d like!

General Information:

I renovated every single lot (except four lots which I removed from the hood, more on that later). Downtown had a special way of reusing the same idea for multiple different lots - I stopped counting how many dark vampy dance lounges with raised or lowered dance floors there were. Three freakin bowling alleys? As I mentioned earlier, I wanted each lot to have its own reason for you to come visit, and there were four lots that I ultimately felt offered nothing and wouldn’t be missed if they were taken out. The following lots are not in this Downtown:

Lost in Love Hedge Maze

P.U.R.E.

The Corner Shoppes

Comandgo Emporium

Aside from those four lots, every lot has been renovated - Including Residential lots!

This is not populated. There are no townies and/or Tricou ghosts.

There are a few unavoidable NPC’s that have spawned when I made this such as a busker and the New Year’s Toddler. There are also a few stray animals that decided to spawn, but those could not be avoided. All in all, don’t worry about this adding tons and tons of NPC’s to your game - I did my best to ensure the hood was empty.

This hood does include custom content. Sorry if you don’t play with it, but there’s just some things that I couldn’t go without. I tried to use only what I felt was necessary to make the hood look and play nicely.

This was built in the Ultimate Collection, so unfortunately I don’t know exactly what is “required”. Recommended at the very least to have NL, H&M, BV, FT, UNI, and AL. 

Custom Content info & Download links/Instructions below the cut :)

UPDATE: You can now download all Downtownies (Except dead Tricou’s) easily to add to this hood! Check out the post and download here!

Custom Content:

Firstly, a HUGE thank you to all of the following CC creators who have so kindly allowed me to include their CC in a single download folder. Below are links to the individual pieces that were used, along with their creators blogs/profiles as well. There are also some important pieces of information and disclaimers about certain sets and defaults below. Please read everything before you bork up your game and blame me. 

Custom Content used in this hood/Credits:

**You do NOT need to download the following items one by one. These are credits. All but ONE of them are included in a single download folder included with both hood versions**

*Those with a * next to their name are Default Replacements.

Pub Bottle Recolors and *Clothing Rack Defaults both by @withlovefromsimtown

Better Nightlife, Tarmac Hood Deco, and Matching Road Floor Tiles by @criquette-was-here

A few recolor sets from @cluedosims AKA @shastakiss

Community Phonebooth by nicvncnt

*Linden Trees, Seasonal AL Pond, Tower of Communism Skybox, and The Emerald City Skyscraper Set all by @lowedeus

Skyfix by @simnopke

Hood Deco Buildings by @dulcinean-alien

Criquette Horizons by @witheredlilies​ and @criquette-was-here​

*Terrain Default Replacement by @dramallamadingdang​

Invisible Driveway Recolor by Roddyalexio

*Invisible Stop Sign Default Replacement by Psychosims

4T2 City Living Murals by @moocha-muses​

Simlish Neon Signs by @polllinationtech​

Some (excluding the DFR) items from the Bespoke Build Set by @honeywell-mts​

Public Bathroom Deco by @nekosayuri​

Vampire Gravestones by @tony-veis​

*Low Poly Tree Defaults and *Edited Defaults of Criquette’s Rural Road by @peppermint-ginger​

I do not claim any of the included CC as my own. If I mistakenly included CC that you created and you do not want it included (Though I contacted those I was unsure about) please immediately reach out to me and I will remove them :)

Additional credit to the amazing and dear Mootilda for this extremely helpful tutorial :,)

Important CC Info:

DISCLAIMER: There are SOME default replacements in this CC folder. They have been marked in a separate folder with “-DFR” in front of their names. If you have your own defaults, simply do NOT add them to your downloads. 

Note about Bespoke Set: This does NOT include all of the items in the Bespoke Build Set. If you already have it, do not add these folders to your game. If you do have it and plan on getting the rest of the pack later on, just delete these two folders and install those from MTS. The items included in this folder are the following:

Windows

Doors

Wall Coverings

Floor Edging

If you do not wish to use the entirety of BBS, then just use the items in the folders I have provided, as these are the ones that are necessary in Downtown :) Thanks again Honeywell!

The Roads that I use in this hood do not have a grass median between the road and sidewalk. The way my DFR’s work is that that space needs to be filled in once the overlays are placed. If you do not use a DFR OR if you use something different, you may have to remove the filled in section. You’ll know what I mean when you load it up. Also, if you don’t use these defaults, there may be random rugs in the road, that is just the game replacing unavailable content.

If you don’t plan on using the Phone Booths that are included, you will want to go back through the lots and add back the EA default phone booths. I am not sure if your sims will be able to get back to their home lot if you don’t download the custom ones, since I deleted the original vanilla booths. 

Excluded CC:

I used these recolors of Numenor’s stairs. You WILL need to download these (be sure to properly download them) as they are NOT included, since Numenor does not allow this.

CC Download Instructions:

CC is included with both versions of the hoods.

Instructions: Download the zip file for the hood version you want, unzip it with your preferred zipping program, and extract the contents into your downloads folder. Don’t forget to check your Default Replacements!

Download Instructions:

Instructions:

If you want the Subhood version - Download the DTWN Subhood zip, unzip with your preferred program, and extract it to the following folder, depending on which version of the game you have:

DELETE THE D001 Folder, or move it to a safe location. This is the original Downtown.

Ultimate Collection:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Double Deluxe\EP2\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate

Disk: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\NeighborhoodTemplate

Once this is installed, load up the hood that you wish to add the new Downtown subhood to, and add it as you would with the vanilla Downtown. Note that you will know it’s the right one as the thumbnail will be different.

If you want the Main Hood version - Download the DTWN Main Hood zip, unzip with your preferred program, and extract to the following folder, depending on which version of the game you have:

Ultimate Collection: Documents\EA Games\The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection\Neighborhoods

Disk:  Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods

Hood Download Links:

*Links include CC

Main Hood

Subhood

If you have trouble downloading, let me know and I’ll throw in an alternate link :)

TOU: I guess I need my own TOU now. Please don’t be an asshole, don’t steal my lots or hood and claim it as your own. Use common sense. I am fine if you renovate one of my renovations and want to post it yourself, just give me credit and link to this original post. Also, do NOT redistribute the cc folder included. This is meant only for Downtown, only saying this as I wish for the creators to get all the credit.

Thank you all once more for your interest in the project! I can’t wait to see what you all do with this! Please feel free to tag me in screenshots, renos of my renos, etc...

Additional thanks to everyone at PleasantSims’ discord for the interest and motivation for this project, especially to Sabrina, Melting Magnetz, Crosimmer, Yeetus, and much more!

Keep an eye out for my next project. Thinking of moving on to Bluewater Village or a Vacation Hood!

Enjoy and have fun :D

- Mike

[nim-lock]

Art Career Tips, 2021 Edition

Here’s an edited version of my 2019 answered ask, because... this feels relevant. 

It is a problem of capitalism that folks equate their income as a judgement of their value as people; and let me preface. You are worth so much. You have inherent value in this world. Your income is not a judgement on who you are (plenty of billionaires are actively making the world worse). LARPing self-confidence will go a long way to helping you get paid more for your work, because clients will believe that you know what you are doing, and are a professional. 

& real quick—my own background is that I’ve been living off my art since 2018. I went to art school (Pratt Institute). I work in a publishing/educational materials sphere, and a quarter of my income is my shop. Not all of this information may apply to you, so it is up to you to look through everything with a critical eye, and spot pick what is relevant. 

So there are multiple ways of getting income as an artist; 

Working freelance or full-time on projects

Selling your stuff on a shop

Licensing (charging other companies to use your designs)

This post primarily covers the freelance part; if you’re interested in the other bits there is absolutely info out there on the internet. 

IF you are just starting (skip to next section if not applicable) dream big, draw often (practice helps you get better/more efficient), do your best to take "a bad piece” lightly. You’re gonna RNG this shit. At some point your rate of “good” works will get higher. Watch tutorial videos & read books. A base understanding of “the rules”; anatomy, perspective, composition, color helps you know what the rules are to break them. This adds sophistication to your work. One way you can learn this stuff is by doing “studies”—you’re picking apart things from life, or things other people have done, to see what works, and how it works. 

Trying to turn your interests into a viable career means that you are now a SMALL BUSINESS; it really helps to learn some basic marketing, graphic design, figure out how to write polite customer service emails; etc. You can learn some of this by looking it up, or taking skillshare (not sponsored) classes by qualified folks. Eventually some people may get agents to take care of this for them—however, I do recommend y’all get a basic understanding of what it takes to do it on your own, just so you can know if your agent is doing a good job. 

Making sure your portfolio fits the work you want to get

Here is a beginner portfolio post. 

Research the field you’d like to get into. The amount people work, the time commitment, the process of making the thing, the companies & people who work for them. 

Create work that could fit in to the industry you’re breaking into. For example, if you want to do book cover illustration, you draw a bunch of mockup book covers, that can either be stuff you make up, or redesigns of existing books. If you’re not 100% sure what sort of work is needed for the industry, loop back into the portfolios of artists in a similar line of work as whatever you’re interested in, and analyze the things they have in common. If something looks to be a common project (like a sequence of action images for storyboard artists), then it’s probably something useful for the job. 

CLIENTS HIRE BASED ON HOW WELL THEY THINK YOUR WORK FITS WHAT THEY WANT. If they’re hiring for picture books, they’re gonna want to see picture book art in your portfolio, otherwise they may not want to risk hiring you. Doesn’t have to be 100% the project, but stuff similar enough. If you aren’t hired, it doesn’t mean your work is bad, it just wasn’t the right fit for that specific client. 

If you have many interests, make a different section of your portfolio for each!

Making sure you’re relevant 

Have a social media that’s a little more public-facing, and follow people in the career field you’re interested in. Fellow artists, art directors, editors, social media managers; whoever. Post on your own schedule. 

Interact with their posts every so often, in a non-creepy way. 

If you’ve made any contacts, great! Email these artists, art directors, editors, former professors, etc occasional updates on your work to stay in touch AND make sure that they think about you every so often.

Show up to general art events every once in a while! If you keep showing up to ones in your area (when... not dying from a sneeze is a thing), folks will eventually start to remember you. 

Industry events & conferences can be pricey, so attend/save up for what makes sense for you. Industry meetups are important for networking in person! In addition to meeting people with hiring power, you also connect with your peers in the community. Always bring a portfolio & hand out business cards like candy. 

Active job hunting

Apply to job postings online.

If interested in working with specific people at specific companies, you could send an email “I’d love to work with you, here’s my portfolio/relevant experience”, even if they aren’t actively looking for new hires. Be concise, and include a link to your work AND attached images so the person reading the email can get a quick preview before clicking for more. 

Twitter job postings can be pretty underpaid! Get a copy of the Graphic Artists’ Guild Handbook Pricing & Ethical Guidelines to know your rate. I once had a twitter post job listing email me back saying that other illustrators were charging less, and I quote, “primarily because they’re less experienced and looking for their first commission”. This was not okay! For reference, this was a 64-illustration book. The industry rate of a children’s book (~36 pages) is $10k+, and this company’s budget was apparently $1k. For all of it. 

Congrats you got a job! Now what?

Ask for like, 10% more than they initially offer and see if they say yes. If they do, great! If not, and the price is still OK, great! Often company budgets are slightly higher than they first tell you, and if you get this extra secret money, all the better for you. 

Make sure you sign a contract and the terms aren’t terrible (re: GO GET THE  Graphic Artists’ Guild Handbook Pricing & Ethical Guidelines) 

Be pleasant and easy to work with (Think ‘do no harm but take no shit’)

Communicate with them as much as needed! If something’s going to be late, tell them as soon as you know so they aren’t left wondering or worse, reaching out to ask what’s up. 

And if all goes well, they’ll contact you about more jobs down the line, or refer you to other folks who may need an artist, etc. 

Quick note about online shops/licensing and why they’re so good

It’s work that you do once, that you continuously make money off of. Different products do well in different situations (conventions vs. online, and then further, based on how you market/the specific groups you are marketing to), so products that may not do well initially may get a surge later on. 

Start with things that have low minimum order quantity and are relatively cheap to produce, like prints and stickers. 

If you are not breaking even, go back to some of the earlier portions of this and think about how you could tweak things as a small business. Ease of access is also very important with this; for example, if you only take orders through direct messages, that immediately shuts off all customers who don’t like talking to strangers. 

Quick resource that you could look through; it’s the spreadsheet of project organizing that I made a while back 

Licensing is when people pay you for the right to use your work on stuff they need to make, like textbooks or greeting cards. This is generally work you’ve already made that they are paying the right to use for a specified time or limited run of products. This is great because you’ve already done the work. I am not the expert on this. Go find someone else’s info.

“I am not physically capable of working much”/ “I need to pay the bills”

Guess who got a hand injury Sept 2020 that messed me up that entire month! I had a couple jobs going at the time that I was terrified of losing, but they were quite understanding when I told them I needed to heal. So:  Express your needs as early as you know you need them. Also do lots of stretches and rest your hands whenever you feel anything off; this will save your health later. Like, the potential of a couple months of no income was preferable over losing use of my hands for the rest of my life.

This continues to apply if you have any other life situation. Ask for extra time. Ask for clarification. If you tell people ahead of time, folks are often quite understanding. Know how much you are capable of working and do your best not to overdo it. (I am.. bad at this)

Do what MAKES SENSE for your situation. If doing art currently earns you less money than organizing spreadsheets, then do that for now, and whenever you have the energy, break down some of the tips above into actionable tiny chunks, and slowly work at em. 

The original ask I got in 2019 mentioned ‘knowing you’re not good enough yet’. Most artists experience imposter syndrome & self-doubt—the important thing is to do your best, and if anything, attempt to channel the confidence of a mediocre white man. If he can apply to this job/charge hella money for Not Much, then so can you! 

Check out this Art Director tumblr for more advice!

Danichuatico’s Literary Agent guide

Kikidoodle’s Shop Shipping Tutorial

Best of luck!

–

Once again disclaimer this post is just the ramblings of a man procrastinating on other things that need to be done. I’ve Long Posted my own post so that it turns into mush in my brain if I try to read it, but I wrote this so I should know this content. If you got down here, congrats. Here’s a shrimp drawing.

Yee Ha. 

My reference post tag My tip jar

[pontmercyingtil]

a post on re-writing and improving with time

I’ve been working on rewriting some early chapters of the way back home. I know, as as writer, it can sometimes feel as if we’ve never made progress with our words, so I wanted to share this.

The first snippet is what it looked like four years ago, and below the cut is the revision. When I re-worked it, I focused on deepening pov and emphasizing the conflict between the characters, so that there’s a bigger emotional payoff in later chapters. I also worked to remove that whole “constant dialogue” thing I used to do.

Old version

“I… I asked for you to be my guard. To give you back a little peace.”

“I was ordered to take this role. By my commanding officer.”

“Yes, and I put in the paperwork.”

Cassian looks at her then, suddenly, and sharply, and his gaze hurts worse than any words. There’s real pain in his eyes, clearer than she’d ever seen. It melts into fury as she watches, the smallest bit of a frustrated snarl appearing. “How dare you.”

“I…”

“I am not your pawn.’

“I never said you were.” Leia tries to keep her voice calm. “I… Fine. I’m sorry. I’ll rescind my paperwork.”

“I’m here now. I will do my duty.” And just like that, the rage folds itself away. He’s once again polite, calm, cold. Everything she’d always thought of him as during the war. “We will follow your schedule.”

“I…”

“I will meet you in the dining hall for your morning caf with the other Senators.”

New Version

“Yes, and I put in the paperwork,” Leia sips her caf. She’s not quite sure why he’s confused. It had seemed like a foolproof plan to her, a way to ensure he got a bit of rest, that he would no longer be asked to pull sniper duty, that he could finally relax. “You’re… you’re not who you once were. I thought maybe, that if you just could take a break, rest, you’d be able to--” Leia, realizing her words are faltering, nearly whispers the last one. “heal”

Cassian looks at her then, suddenly, and sharply. His gaze cuts like a vibroblade. Pain, the clearest pain she’s ever seen in his expressions, twists his whole face. It melts into fury, and, in a low, calculated near-snarl, he says, “how dare you.”

“I…”

“I am not your pawn.” Cassian’s voice has lost the cruelest edge, though it remains frigid. “I am a soldier for the New Republic. I do what is asked of me, what is needed of me. As I always have. I didn’t ask for your pity, Senator, nor for you to try to step in and fix me.”

“I never said you were.” Leia tries to keep her voice calm. “I… Fine. I’m sorry. I’ll rescind my paperwork.”

“Of course, because that’s what a commander does, isn’t it? Use paperwork to try to fix things, like it’s nothing more than a bacta patch to be slapped on a wound.”

“Cassian--”

“Senator, respectfully, I would prefer to be addressed as Captain Andor.”

The titles seem to mock everything that she’d thought they’d started to build, in those few small stolen bits of time. “Captain,” she tries again. “What is it that you want?”

“I will serve out my orders. That is all.” As quickly as it appeared, the rage folds away. He’s once again polite, calm, cold. Ironically, everything he’d been during the war. In briefings after Scarif, aboard the transports, he’d always stood aside, arms folded, listening, never letting his expression show an emotion. When she’d said Cassian wasn’t himself anymore, this wasn’t what she’d meant. Instead, she’d been recalling earlier, to fragmented moments and passing-bys in winding corridors of the Yavin temple base. To a sunny day when she’d sat outside on a balcony, warm wind rustling the leaves of the Massassi trees, and seen a young man she’d never been able to completely forget. Even now, twelve years later, the memory lingers.

“Until a new guard is located for you, then you may request my reassignment.”

“I don’t NEED a guard,” Leia snaps back, finally pushed beyond the point of civility. “I can protect myself. I just wanted…” she curls her fingers into fists, aware, too aware, of the faint trembling of vases and cups on her counter, as the Force’s power comes at the beckoning call of her frustration. She takes a ragged, steadying breath, counting back from ten. A show of her sensitivities, which no one in the Senate was aware of, would be the only thing that could make this moment any worse. “I wanted you,” she admits. “Not just any guard. Because--” because she’d thought they had things in common. Because she’d thought he just might become a friend.

“Because of my record of perfect service to the cause?” Cassian replies, that same bitter curl of his lips once more appearing. “Do I need to remind you of my failures, Senator?”

Leia closes her eyes. It’s a low blow from him, one that summons up every bit of anger she’s fighting to quell. “You didn’t fail.”

“The map of the Core Worlds show otherwise,” he replies.

There. He’d finally made it clear. He’d taken that vibroblade and twisted it into her heart, reminding her of who had been sent to retrieve the Death Star plans, who had sent them to her, who had been the first half of that mission which both destroyed everything Leia had ever loved, and set the Rebellion on a trajectory that led to their eventual victory. “I do not think either of us should speak of that,” she returns his icy tone back to him.

“Then I will be happy to suggest younger guards unaware of it,” Cassian replies, “who will be a more suitable match.”

So that’s why he’d done it. Like a cornered manka cat, he’d lashed out, striking at her not with claws, but with words. Wounding her so that his own wounds could stay protected. Because if he was reassigned, he’d go back to sniper work, go back to killing without rest, go back to being nothing more than a cog in the crushing wheel of what’s so euphemistically called peace-keeping. “No,” Leia says, lifting her chin, as if once more a crown sits upon it. “You are the best fit, and will remain in my employment until I deem a more suitable replacement is found.”

“Very well.” Cassian nods, once. “We will follow your schedule.”

[popculturebuffet]

Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa:  The Isle at the Edge of Time (Thank You Comission For Rosie Isla)

Hello all you happy people! Today’s review is a bit special as it’s the result of another review. See I had trouble finding a translation of the subject of last weeks’ mother’s day special, Family Ties. 

No not that one. I have Paramount+. I can watch all the Family Ties I want and that’s a fact that i’m pleased as punch about. 

No it was the story 80 is Prachtig, called Family Ties in the copy used, Della’s first major comics appearance and one that explains what happened to her in the classic continuity, one that clearly served as the foundation for her far more fleshed out 2017 versions personality and backstory. It also had Pinocchio in it for some reason, and spent most of it’s large run time on a meta comedy plot that had nothing to do with the reason anyone wanted to read this story in the first place.

But despite being a vitally important story, it never got an english translation, something that baffled me till I read the story and found cameos of the racist indigenous stereotypes from Peter Pan. In 2014. You may commence booing. Even with how weird the story was I simply couldn’t find the story googling it and the Della tag is too vast and deep to go spelunking in.

So what’s all this have to do? Simple I put out a post last month when neither I nor Kev, who wanted to comission it as part of Moons, Millionares and Mothers, my coverage of all three season 2 Ducktales story arcs, could find a copy and offered a review to whoever found it.  Weeks passed I got nothing.. then in the 11th hour I got a break as the lovely @rosieisla​ found a translation that was on this very site, one she seemed to have helped with. As a result I could do the review and as a man of my word, offered it up despite her clearly having not seen that part of the post and simply having done this to be nice. Still she gladly took up the offer and offered me my pick of two stories: The Carl Barks Story Back to Long Ago or this one. 

As for WHY I picked this one Back To Long Ago didn’t seem bad, i’m just not a fan of “The Cast is put in the past as their own ancestors” type deals. Or in some cases put the cast as people from that time period. It’s just not for me and is most often done in TV where it can get really goofy, Beverly Hills 90210 being a prime example of this, though Girl Meets World was no slouch in being embarassing... that being said I really need to finish that show and miss it. 

So yeah when put up against a story with two intresting hooks and FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, even if i’ts not the version that’s my boy, it was no contest. So what are these hooks you ask? Well join me under the cut and find out. 

We open with a weird stylistic choice: This story has a narrator complete with caption boxes. Now for those of you familiar with comics or pastiches of comics in tv and film, this probably dosen’t seem like a big deal. It was a common thing in comics from their inception to 90′s to have caption boxes, big boxes of text narrating the action to help move things along faster. It did start to fade out by the 80′s and was gone by the end of the 90′s for the most part, replaced instead with first person narration. It’s the kind of thing you’d see most often in the Golden and Silver Ages, with stuff like tihs

It’s not a BAD device, it’s good old cheesy and bombastic fun and some writers did get clever with it.. like that time Chris Claremont used the narration to yell at a greiving cyclops after he lost a teammate early in his long and storied run on the uncanny x-men. 

This is a objectively weird scene that’s still somehow effective by the by. On the one hand it does come off as Chris Claremont essentally bullying Cyclops who already feels guilty for a death that was not in fact his fault as Thunderbird was told the plane he was attacking with fleeing villian Count Nefaria was about to explode and refused to listen.. and that they needed to get rid of either him or Wolverine as both served the same purpose and chose the non-white guy. 

On the other htough it comes off just as much as Scott beating himself up in his grief and anger over the event and his perceived failings as a leader. It’s good stuff and shows why this run caught on as this was only three issues in. Also the rest of the issue features the X-Men fighting a giant cyclopian demon that Cyclops accidently freed in his rage by destroying the stone thing keeping him imprisoned. No really here’s the cover

Huh so tha’ts what Nifty’s dad looks like. Neat. Also I REALLY hope we get the X-Men fighting aliens or demons in the MCU. Unlike the XCU the MCU isn’t alergic to getting batshit.. and for the record Deadpool and New Mutants are the exception, not the rule.

My point that I swear I do have is that this was common practice for most comics.. but never really for Disney Duck comics. It popped up ocasionally, like with Scrooge’s introduction, but Barks and those after him never really used them that much. Sure they’d have caption boxes for flasbacks and what not but Barks and Co geninely only used this sort of thing to set up a story. The most i’ve seen it in a duck comic is life and times and even then i’ts usually only used for gags or to set up the passage of time, as the story IS covering decades and thus often needed to have montages to show time passing, and in the case of chapter 11, had to cover decades in the span of a single chapter, so it’s not like they had many other options. So even Rosa as a personal quirk didn’t really use these often. 

Rosa used this specifically because he felt the plot was complicated by the use of the international date line. As for what it is, it’s essentially a line marking calender dates from one side of the hemisphere to the others. To use the offical defentition from the National Ocean Service I found via a quick google:

“The International Date Line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway round the world from the prime meridian—the zero degrees longitude established in Greenwich, England, in 1852.

The International Date Line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve “gone back in time."

Despite its name, the International Date Line has no legal international status and countries are free to choose the dates that they observe. While the date line generally runs north to south from pole to pole, it zigzags around political borders such as eastern Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.”

Rosa felt this made the story complicated.... and that... really isn’t remotely true. The narration is mostly used for gagas and really dosen’t clarify anything. it’s mostly used well in the opening.. but the actual explinations for the date line are clear enough in the story that even if I hadn’t looked the thing up, I still would’ve got it and i’m sure a kid would’ve too. It just feels like a weird thing to ruminate on, especially because he’s got actual things to make up for: while to his credit the native american characters he cribbed from carl barks are sympathetic, their culture respected and treated decently and used for a green aseop, their dialouge is stitled and sterotypical something he dosen’t even comment on (And these trades ewren’t THAT long ago) 

And of course it dosen’t help that he dosen’t even comment on using a common device in american superhero boooks.. in the same volume where he ONCE again makes an unwanted and outdated diatribe about superhero comics. I’ll probably cover the Super Snooper Strikes again so I can throughly tear this apart but higlights include: Calling superhero comics “Unwanted” just because he dosen’t like them personally, when people like me would disagree and they’ve lasted through a LOT of highs and lows, outdately saying they took over the American market as the only suitable comics which while true for a TIME,but by 2015 when this book was printed is laughably out of date, as non superhero works like The Walking Dead, Saga, and Scott Pilgrim were massively popular, one of my faviorite comics that is entirely slice of life and would go on to bea huge hit, Giant Days, re-debuted that very year. He also has the fucking gal to insult The Uncanny X-Men by name and I swear to god I did not know this when I made those references earlier, but as you probably guessed REALLY god me livid. 

And this is just on his COMMENTS on the story I can’t imagine just how bad the content itself is and having read the first few pages which come off as Rosa using Donald to essentially do an “old man yells at cloud rant” about superhero comics, I really don’t want to. Might make htis a patreon exclusive or again would do it on comissoin. You all make the call.... the point is I don’t likes his elitist bullshit about superhero comics, and this is clearly something that gets my hackles up as I just spent a good two paragraphs of an entirely unrealted review yelling at the guy for it. I don’t like when he does this and this authors notes entirley felt like an excuse. I GET the dark age of comics were bad, they REALLY were that bad, but I will NEVER accept painting an enitre genre as bad just because one work in it is bad. And I wont accept it from someone who himself writes about an often throughly unlikeable anti-hero for a living.  Scrooge may not have a gun on his gun on his gun or get to stabbing or have pouches, but he DOES finacially abuse his nephew, scoff at people’s personal troubles, and often refuse to use his wealth to help others in general. So yeah in conclusion Rosa really needs to say less about this subject. 

Okay so where were we.. right the story hadn’t even started yet. Jesus. 

Okay so our story begins with the narrator. Whose going on about time and what not. The main point of this speech about time is that it’s night in Duckburg and Scrooge is going to bed as, even being the workhorse that he is, he can’t keep going 24 hours. While he’s snoozing though something major happens and it’s the hook that made me pick this story along with the international dateline one.. an island rises thanks to volcanic erruption.. and the lava is GOLD. That’s just pure unabashed classic Duck Stuff: a mysterious treasure or phenominon of gold bound to bring scrooge in. 

But Scrooge isn’t stupid: the sun comes up and the world still spins while he sleeps, so he set up a satalite to monitor for this sort of thing. The thing naturally goes nuts.. and even more naturally breaks down becasue Scrooge bought cheap parts. A nice gag and a fully in character way to bring our antagonist into the picture, as the Satellite of Loaded falls in the middle of South Africa... right on the property of my boy Flintheart Glomgold. 

This is something Rosa brought up in his commentary for the story i’d never thought about. It turns out Glomgold being a citzen of Duckburg WASN’T an invention of the original Ducktales but the comics: some overseas had understandably moved him from his home country of South Africa. Him bieing in the same town as Scrooge instead of half a world away allows for easier setups and more intresting ones.

Rosa however being obdient to Barks Version of things, ketp Glomgold in South Africa like barks did, which was an .. ifffy decision given Apartheid had JUST ended at the time of this story. Not so much in the reboot as not only had apartheid been long gone by the time of the reboot, but that’s more fair. Still we do get some gorgeous vistas as a result as Glomgold’s minon goes to look at it and finds it’s from McDuck Mining company... Glomgold’s reaction is obvious. 

So on that note we cut to Scrooge rushing to Donalds house and forcing him awake and not telling him anything at first. Look his Ducktales Counterpart straight up kidnapped his donald in my last review, I’d call this a win. He also tries to dress Donald while explaning both his panic to find the crashed satlitle and what it found: the golden island. The end result of him dressing donald is worth a chuckle

So after Donald puts his shirt and little hat on our heroes get rollin rollin rollin what keep rollin rollin rollin who to Manilla. On the plane we get the scene I mentioned: The boys make a quip about Scrooge having lost a day and the group go over the international date line. It’s a fun little scene especially Donald trying to get paid early at the end. Classic scrooge and donald stuff without the abusive undertones some of their classic stuff has. 

Meanwhile Glomgold works out the data and finds out about the gold island, and his excitement accidently wakes a giraffe outside.. welll it was nice knowing him, Giraffes are the deadliest species known to man.. here’s an educational video t back that up....

So at Manilla Airport, Scrooge finds out abotu the south african crash, figuring he’ll get a laugh out of glomgold being there ... only for Donald to spot the Jet. Scrooge figures this can’t be anything good... now come on man maybe he’s just promoting his energy drink. 

As super sayin god super sayian as my witness, I will never get tired of Ultra Instinct Glomgold here. 

Scrooge isn’t so nice about that though and figures he better find out if Glomgold knows about the island and bribes one of the fueling crew for his uniform. He sucesssfully eavesdrops on Glomgold talking to his pilot, finding out from him exactly WHERE the island is. He ends up hilariously botching the mission though: when getting ready to leave Glomgold complains abotu the price of gas and that naturally causes Scrooge, just as cheap, to join in... and Glomgold to find out it’s Scrooge. The two wrestle outside the plane but before this can progress to a game of Naked Robber an airport security guy comes up and Scrooge cleverly claims that Glomgold’s plane has an infestiation, requring it to be quanrantined and allowing Scrooge to jet on.. thoguh not with an actual jet. With Glomgold seemingly dispatched, he can afford to save some money and take his time with a seaplane and I know just the man for the job. 

Oh nope looks like he’s busy. So one time related rambles later we meet Keoki, their asian pilot from the tiny island of Wookawooka.. and no that’s not a real place i checked... and no Fozzy dosen’t own it his check bounced. That being said it is a very well done represntation of someone from a smaller country: he’s doing this job to try and bring money back home, but being a seaplane captain just isn’t enough and his island is dying. Scrooge naturally is about as sympathetic as you’d expect, having apparently never even heard of the idea of a bonus when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests it. 

Even less suprising is that Glomgold streaks by in his Jet:turns out Manilla was already overun with the bugs Scrooge claimed and Donald rubs it in that had Scrooge got a JET this wouldn’t of been an issue. 

So Glomgold easily beats them there, and to add insult and actualy injury to a cash based one, our heroes get blasted by golden lava on the way in and crash. Should’ve gotten launchpad... got the crashing professional. Keoki is dispondent as this means his people are doomed. He also dosen’t know waht staking a claim is when Scrooge mentions it and the boys bring him up to speed with the poor guy saying he wish he could for WookaWooka. Donald also makes a valid point about how greedy and heartlress scrooge can be.. and really billiionares in general.

No no YOUR the Grouch who refuses to have one drop of emapthy. Donald’s just pissed at your general selfish and terrible behavior. 

Glomgold glomgloats and has seemingly won... but naturally that rant that seemed extranious at the time about the date line comes into play: turns out the Island is on it, and since glomgold put his marker int he west, Scrooge simply puts his in the east which is a whole day before. Now GRANTED there’s nor eal legal prescendice for the intetaoinal date line itself , as noted above... but there’s enough witnesses in Scrooge’s favor that it simply does not matter anyway. Scrooge SEEMINGLY wins.

But Huey, Dewey Or Louie instead backs another claim: Keoki’s from earlier. While it was made in gest, he and the others along with Donald back it as witnsses instad. WookaWooka is saved and SCrogoe ends the story yelling at the narrator.

Final Thoughts: Don Rosa.. did not like this story, feeling it wasn’t one of his best and apologizing for it. I however.. really loved it. It’s not PERFECT: the narration feels not entirely necessary and the gag isn’t as funny as he thinks, though the payoff of scrooge saying “it’s time for this story to end” is fucking hilarous. I also feel it’s a bit too compressed: the story is only 16 pages and was only THAT long because Rosa added a few for exposition, a worthy addition. This feels like one of his 30 page adventure stories but slightly crammed into half the length. I also feel the golden island bit was BADLY underused as it’s such a cool setting but barely shows up in the story. 

But despite that.. it’s still a fun story: as is standard for Rosa the art is gorgeous and the humor is great. And unlike some stories where Rosa casually ignores how terrible scrooge is, here it’s his own greed and hubris that do him in: had he actually agreed to help Keoki, the boys likey would’ve let him keep the island but his own cold refusual to be a human being does him in, just as his cheapness nearly did. Flintheart is also decent here.. not the deepest foe but frankly most classical duck antagonists really aren’t all that fleshed out, and we still get some good bits with him. The dateline bit, while telegraphing that it will be important, as I said REALLY isn’t that hard to understand. All in all while i’ll agree with Rosa this isn’t his BEST, it’s still a really damn good story and one he shoudln’t be ashamed of. 

Tommorow: Green Eggs and ham is back for some train shenanigans! Kay. 

Saturday: The Tom Retrospective returns for it’s last detour! Eclipsa and Moon team up to stop meteora but grapple with diffrent wants: One to save her daughter.. the other to stop waht she clearly sees as an out of control monster. The result.. will only lead to tragedy and a hell of a two parter. 

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