#I'm basically copy pasting what I put under the original post since I know people aren't necessarily going to see it if it's only over ther

[r0semultiverse]

Where in Beyond Canon is Arquisprite?

Took inspiration from the above post by @pastabaguette and decided to expand upon it due to The Plot Point update as well as some stuff seen even before Vriska’s arc started in The Point.

Let's examine some stuff that may tell us where Arquiusprite is at this time, seeing as we seemingly have only one chapter in The Point left. I think we've got a lead on his whereabouts already.

We've got horses and horse-adjacent creatures.

We've got a robot that looks like it's literally ripped from Equius' hive with a notable missing horn hole and a dent in the head.

There's also this twitter response from James Roach which could be interpreted as suggesting Equius' return in some way at some point in the future.

OP, I'm not saying you're right, but I am saying that if Dirk were to consult anyone on horses, it would probably be a mashup of his AI & Equius. Also Void player behavior apparently! Also Dirk has narrative reality warpy powers & we aren't sure as to the limits of those yet!

Below are some reddit notes about classpects that also lead credence to the idea that Arquisrpite is on Deltritus with Dirk at this time. Outside of the obvious fact that we haven't seen him in The Plot Point or the bonus comics with Jasprosesprite at all as of the Davepetasprite^2 feather chapter release.

Are the robots in case Terezi goes ultimate? Are they backup bodies for Rosebot? A metal body for Arquisprite? Who knows, maybe all three! 🤷‍♀️ Robots are being made by someone though (for some purpose) and they have troll horn slots on their craniums. The exact style robot that Equius used to make back on Alternia; so, make of that what you will!

Also maybe they just need a sprite to kick off whatever makeshift sburb/sgrub copycat they're trying to get running and seeing as Arquiusprite is a splinter of Dirk, it's fitting that he would accompany him. Plus the sprites can kind of just seem to be wherever & whenever the story needs them to be? Seeing as how Jasprose kidnapped Jane in the meat timeline, but in the candy timeline the sprites just kind of seemed to not do much or be absent entirely after a certain point.

There's at least a guaranteed non-zero chance Arquiusprite is on Deltritus.

[arandomperson5647]

Misty Island Rescue rewrite draft.....thingy

(I copy+pasted this from my original wiki post btw. Idk if that actually matters, but whatever)

Technically it's more of a summary/outline cuz I haven't even written it. Idk IF I'll actually write it, but this is just an idea of what might happen. This is actually my first time trying to write for Thomas, and my first ever time trying to write a multi-part fic so things may or may not be consistent. I've considered posting this outline here for a while just to see what others think but I never gathered the courage to do it (it might be cringey, idk) until now. (Also, the "how" Thomas got on Misty Island is probably really dumb and stupid cuz I can't think of any other reason. I wouldn't mind any suggestions)

I started this in June or smth and I haven't touched it since the end of that month. Now it's August so idk what the deal is with this

What I'm posting here is not all I have, but I don't want to post all of it yet, in case I actually do write it and don't want to spoil it or smth.

It is summer on Sodor. There have been many strong storms and stuff, which have caused many emergencies. The emergencies varied throughout the season. The Sodor people decided that they need a rescue station for all the rescue vehicles. They want it to be built in a strong material. Hiro tells Sir Topham Hatt (STH) and the mayor about Jobi wood, and that it is the strongest wood in the world. He also says it's only found in Japan. Although expensive, it would be worth it cuz a rescue center is important.

A month later, the preparations for the rescue center are close to an end. The blueprints are basically done and a location has been decided. Everyone is excited for it. Soon, the Jobi wood comes in. An engine takes the wood to the lumber mill. A few days later, during the early night, a dry thunderstorm occurs. Thomas was making his way to the shed when he sees smoke in the distance, so he decides to check it out. He comes to the lumber mill (which is closed, meaning no one's there) to find that a tree was knocked down and landed on the Jobi logs. The tree was on fire from lightning and it spread to the logs. Thomas had to make a decision. He decided that he'd go to the nearest signal box to call for help and then use the water in his boiler to temporarily control the fire. He knew he couldn't put out the fire, so he tried to not let it spread. Unfortunately it had already spread to a few flatbeds of Jobi logs. Despite feeling weak from lack of water, Thomas keeps going. When the fire service finally arrives, Thomas was shunted away near a water tower. He comes back to see that the fire was put out.

The next evening, STH announces what happened to the lumber mill and Jobi wood. A lot of the Jobi wood was destroyed so the building of the Search and Rescue Center will be delayed for a while. STH says that the mainland was asking for him to loan an engine for a couple of weeks, but he hasn't decided who yet. As a reward, he sends Thomas. Thomas is very excited.

A few days later in the afternoon, Thomas and his friends are waiting at Knapford Harbor for him to be loaded on the ship. Thomas did a couple jobs in the morning before going to the harbor. He's about half-fill on water and forgot to refill before going but decides to refill at the mainland. The bridge is under repairs at the moment, which is why he's going by boat. The reason why he's not at Brendam is cuz no ships for engines were coming any time soon or smth. Salty is also there because he had to take some trucks to the harbor. While they wait, Salty tells the tale of Misty Island:

Misty Island is an island. Although it's not too far away, it is hard to find due to it always being covered in mist. Nobody today remembers seeing Misty Island. No engine nor human. Many years ago, near when it was first discovered, a railway was being built. No one knows why, but it was later abandoned. They say a few engines remained there, engines that were different than Sodor engines. They keep each other company, hoping someone finds them. Some say that before their steam went out, they puffed 3 clouds of smoke as their last hope for be rescued. No one knows if the engines are still there in one piece, or if they've decayed throughout the years.

At some point during the story, Edward mentions that he thinks he's seen, or at least heard of Misty Island. Because he isn't 100% sure, he doesn't explain much. After the story, Thomas realizes that the engines must've used smoke signals. Upon questioning, he explains that his driver once told him about it. 3 puffs mean "danger" or smth. He says that he'd also use 3 puffs if he was in danger. Percy says that they'd come to help him.

Soon, the ship is ready to load Thomas on. Everyone says bye and Thomas leaves. Unfortunately, a storm happens during the journey at night. It blows the ship off course. Thomas' chains come loose and he falls off the ship or smth. They were relatively close to Misty Island so Thomas kinda floats to it (while also sinking cuz he's an engine). He ends up on shallow enough water so he doesn't sink anymore. Out of fright or smth, Thomas passes out. The waves kinda push him onto shore even more than before he passed out.

Thomas briefly wakes up to see himself beached on land. It's the middle of the night and he doesn't know what to do. He's exhausted and can't stay awake so he falls asleep again. With no crew to wake him up, he stays sleeping for a while.

The next afternoon, STH gets a phone call. He was told that Thomas wasn't on the boat when it arrived to the mainland. Thomas' crew did arrive, they were the first to notice their engine was gone. STH is very surprised by the news. STH decides to tell the engines the news that night cuz he doesn't want to interrupt their jobs and knows how they'll probably react. He figures the engines will spread the news so he doesn't gather everyone.

That night, all the engines are in the shed talking about their day. STH comes in his car, surprising them because he doesn't usually come at night unless there's smth important. STH tells them the news, shocking them. They ask questions like "when" or "how" is happened. STH doesn't know but answers the best he can. After STH leaves, they talk about the situation. They wonder where Thomas could be, especially since he disappeared in the middle of the ocean.

[genericpuff]

Ladies and gentlemen... we got 'em.

Every now and then, Rachel will post a sketch to her IG story or her page, oftentimes accompanied with a caption that states how hard at work she is.

Now, some of my pals and I in the UnpopularLO Discord have been taking note of the time stamps of when these get posted, so we could keep an eye out for when they inevitably show up in an episode. Normally I wouldn't be hyperanalyzing a creator's posting habits like this, but there's been a unanimous suspicion among the LO community that Rachel's buffer for LO is only a couple weeks ahead at any given time. So, we waited. We kept our eyes peeled for these panels to show. And hoo boy, are the results of this little experiment pretty damning.

The sketch on the left was posted to Rachel's IG about 4 weeks ago. It showed up in Episode 219, posted last week on October 29th.

The sketch on the right was posted to Rachel's IG story on October 27th. It showed up in this week's episode, November 5th, just a little over a week later.

I'm not gonna pretend like we know all the facts from this evidence alone, but again, people have been suspicious over this for a while now so seeing these finished drawings show up in the new episodes anywhere from a week to a month later tells us a lot. To lay out some of the brunt of it:

Whatever buffer Rachel has is small and shrinking fast. There was a 2 week break at the start of the season to "rebuild LO's buffer", and from cross-referencing the HxP make-out sketch and when the episode went up, we know that the buffer at one point was around 4 weeks. Most Originals creators are encouraged to have a buffer of 9-15 episodes, not episodes in progress, but actual finished episodes that are ready for posting, so that the series can still update with new episodes even if the creator needs to take a break for a week or two or if an emergency arises in their life. With the proof of last week's sketches showing up in last night's episode, I think it's highly probable we'll be seeing another 2 week break by the time December rolls around, but it will likely be presented under the guise of a "holiday break".

Rachel does the roughs at the last minute and nothing more. It's basically been confirmed at this point that Rachel's only contribution to the comic is the roughs and script. From former interviews and Patreon chit chat posts that allude to this, to the fact that the only progress pics from Rachel that we ever see are roughs, to the credits in every episode that feature upwards of five separate assistants working on each episode but somehow the comic still manages to have incredibly inconsistent plot threads and art that looks like it's been rushed, Rachel is basically just doing the roughs for her comic, writing/drawing one panel at a time, and passing them along to her assistants to finish at the last minute. This would account for the art being so inconsistent (Rachel's roughs likely aren't very polished and don't feature any sort of referencing or direction for the team), every episode now being made up of mostly copy+pasted panels, as well as it feeling so rushed, because the assistants literally don't have time to draw different shots or put the episode through any rounds of clean-up before submitting it.

Considering there are ALSO sketches of HxP fluff that haven't made it into an episode yet*, Rachel may as well be working on fluff content before she works on anything else. Just because that H x P panel was drawn 4 weeks prior to it being uploaded doesn't mean that's the buffer. She could have just as well drawn it first because it's what she felt like drawing and either shoehorned it in somewhere or just saved the 'boring' stuff for last. So either her buffer was only a month ahead of time at one point and has since shrunk back down to 1-2 weeks, or she's working on new episodes a week at a time and saves the 'boring' stuff for last hence why each episode ends up with so many repeated copy+paste panels and drawn out dialogue. Both scenarios are terrible and indicative of a creator who is both clueless and doesn't give a shit.

Rachel spends an absurd amount of time on social media. Between her Instagram and Twitter (both of which are often chock full of re-shared fan content that has the Lore Olympus hashtag on it) her new Tiktok account, her VERY strictly moderated FastPass FB groups (that she is an administrator for so she can lock any thread that has a hint of criticism in it**) and her Discord, Rachel seems to spend the majority of her time stalking her favorite hashtags and retweeting them (I've literally had some of my own fanart pieces retweeted within SECONDS of me posting them). But she'll still put out Tiktok videos talking about how behind she is and how hard she's working - literally working on episodes the week they're due as we've proven - videos that she's clearly spending time away from her comic to make and that she's sticking around in afterwards to check the stats and respond to comments from her fans. It's great that she's sharing fanart from her readers, but not so great if she's doing it so much that it's eating into her time to develop the very comic they're creating fanart for.

Hot take, but I can't help but feel that Rachel can only afford to not give a shit about her workflow and how she manages her team because she's in the top 1% of creators. Believe me, I've seen the stress building up in the WT Originals community from creators who are being vastly underpaid and overworked. None of them can afford to be so lazy with their work, because a single week without an episode for them means not paying the rent that month. They don't get mid-season hiatuses, they don't get 2 week 'buffer build' breaks, it's a constant grind of 12-18 hour days because if their series doesn't perform well, not only will they not get renewed for another season, but they likely won't even receive any FastPass revenue due to not hitting the 'threshold' they need to hit to receive it. This is not a problem for Rachel who is someone with millions of subscribers and thousands of regular readers checking in each week but also someone who we speculate got in on the FP program before they introduced the Minimum Revenue Threshold around 2020. Hence, she likely does not need to hit that threshold in the first place to receive her earnings. Every other Originals creator who is subject to the MRT system has to work their ass off and hope that Webtoons will give them enough promotion to draw in traffic to hit that threshold and not get cancelled - but those beneficial front-facing slots are often given to Lore Olympus every time it updates, often for an entire weekend at a time, while its creator fucks around on Twitter, gets mad at 'haters', talks about how busy and 'behind' she is, while she visibly miffs around with non-comic-production-related-things like making memes or rigging Vtuber models.

Let's just say, there's a reason why whenever there are Webtoon controversies concerning the state of their working conditions, you never see Rachel say a word. She is simply not affected by WT's current state of affairs so does not feel the need to speak up against it. I'm willing to bet the only time we'll ever see Rachel talk 'bad' about Webtoons, it will be after she's inevitably driven her own image and comic into the ground.

Concerning *: Here are some sketches that haven't made it into any episodes yet. It's hard to tell if they will, I can assume the one on Twitter will show up but the other two could very well just be Rachel faffing about for fun. Either way, these exist and are still publically viewable, so if they DO show up in any future episodes, we can cross-reference them later.

Left: Oct 28th Middle: Nov 4th Right: Oct 29th

The following Hades panel will very likely show up in the upcoming November 12th FastPass episode. If it does, that not only tells us Rachel truly is only working on these episodes 1-2 weeks ahead at a time, but also that she's working on them out of order as this FINISHED drawing showed up BEFORE the UNFINISHED Persephone sketch from above showed up in her IG story - with its respective finished drawing showing up literally a week later.

Concerning **: Rachel is literally an administrator in the official LO FastPass group on Facebook, which wouldn't be an issue if she weren't so anal about any perceived slight against her work. She will literally lock any thread that doesn't make her look good.

And her own interactions with these fans posts may as well be borderline psychotic. She'll either immediately refute any amount of fan theories on the spot (destroying any semblance of discussion or fun theorizing to be had) or just... comment really messed up shit that says a lot about her and how she writes her precious cinnamon roll protagonist.

Fun fact, she got banned from a FB group that memes on LO because she tried to harass the administrators of the group to ban all criticism. The admins banned her instead. It's not really relevant to this post but I wanted to say it anyways because it's fucking hilarious.

***EDIT TO ADD: She didn't just get banned, she was so butthurt over it that she apparently bitched about it in her Patreon, which her cult accepted as permission to go after members of this same FB group. All just for not kissing the ground RS walked on. Literally psychotic cult behavior.

Let's Play creator mongie has done similar things, so this seems to just be a general attitude among the top-earning creators on WT (yikes), but that's another topic.

Concerning the actual topic at hand, the last thing I'll mention is, save for the credits at the end of each episode, Rachel barely ever gives her assistants credit when she goes on rants about how "busy" she is or how "successful" she's become. You'll never see her thank her assistants or give them credit for how easy they're making her life that she can get away with doing the roughs at the last minute and spend the rest of her time talking about her dog, showing off her new gel nails, or talking about how much of a workaholic she is. But she sure as shit will throw her assistants under the bus whenever she has to come up with an excuse for the sloppy inconsistent art.

TL ; DR: Rachel is not 'busy'. She's just incredibly bad at managing her deadlines and team of assistants and would literally rather whine about how behind she is to make it sound like she's pressed for time. Which, she absolutely is. But it's not because of Webtoons or because LO is a hard comic to put together, it's literally her own undoing. You know what they say - it takes way more work to pretend to look busy than it does to actually do your job.

Rant over.

[mcytwebweaving]

hello web! hope you're doing well :D just out of curiosity, how do you collect material for your web weaves? what's your creative process like? big fan of your work <3

Omg thank you so much!!! I'm doing okay, have been very busy with some stuff tho (so sorry for the lack of original content 😅). I will get back into it soon tho, already have some stuff in the making!

I have already answered asks about where exactly do I get all the materials I use from, so I won't elaborate on that part, but here is my normal process: (it's under Read More bc the post turned out longer that I expected haha)

• Starting point is either me getting a request, or my brain going "haha remember that quote/image you saw on tumblr 2 weeks ago? would it be fucked up or what to connect it with a character you like?" (btw in that case I almost never end up using the original quote/image that gave me inspiration for some reason)

• Then I outline some key words about the web weaving I am going to make. I usually go for very abstract and broad concepts, so I can encounter some more interesting stuff. Around that stage I also visualize what exact media I would like to use. Basically, when I go into the "search for the stuff to use" part, I already have a pretty clear understanding of what I will be going for

• And then I go through the websites, Tumblr tags and online archives looking for stuff. I start by searching for stuff relating to my key words, then based on what u find, I can change things up. Actually, about 90% of the time, my website turn out really different from how I imagined them to be at first, just because I encounter some interesting things that I like more. For example, my first knifetrick web weaving wasn't supposed to be centered around the theme of hands at all - the thing I started with was that quote about Jackie laughing like a seagull or something, and I never ended up using it. But even if I throw all of my plans in the window, I wouldn't say that visualisation and coming up with concepts is meaningless work - if you have a direction to move in, you won't be overwhelmed with options.

If I see something that I can't use for a certain theme/character, but I think may be useful for something else, I save it too, so it makes the work a bit easier in future. To avoid all those different things cluttering in my Downloads, I keep separate folders for each web I am working on/could potentially do.

This is definitely the longest part of my work process, partly because despite the 10 image limit per post Tumblr has, I usually save much more stuff to use for each web weaving.

• Compiling/formatting this all in a post and giving credit is the last thing I do. Since I have an excess of material, I have to think what I will keep. My main priorities are 1) matching the theme and 2) keeping a consistent look. With quotes/song lyrics I sometimes can copy paste them into a google doc and play around with fonts, text and background colors. Then I think of positioning it all, which is more important than you may think. In my dsmp!tommyinnit web the colors in both the text and images go from warm orange/yellow hues to grey (it's more obvious with pictures tbh), as a way to symbolize a feeling of desperation and loneliness settling in. I don't even know how many people notice stuff like that, but it's important to me, so I do it. Last thing is putting down the credits (Don't forget your credits, kids!!). Usually it's formatted like [title of the media], [authors name], and images get links to sources :].

That's pretty much it! One web takes me around 4 hours to finish, so it's a pretty long process, and I put a lot of thoughts behind it all :] Sorry it's so long, I am actually glad I had an opportunity to share a little step by step! :D

[jboh-art]

I wonder how you design the touhous' clothing/if you have a decent source of references. I'm trying to draw them in authentic Japanese/Chinese clothing, but I can barely find any useful and/or accurate sources on the internet. And since I'm Europian I only have a limited knowledge in these kinds of things, that's why I'm asking. Stay amazing, I love your art!

thank you so much!! i’m always glad to hear that ppl are enjoying what i post :)

i have a bit of a lengthy response so i’ll try to put it mostly under a cut; if it doesn’t work i’m very sorry mobile people

honestly i just redesign them based on what i think looks good...... i also try to make it somewhat similar (in general) to the original outfits that touhous are drawn with (such as drawing kaguya with an aoqun instead of the standard crossed-lapel robes that initially come to mind when thinking of hanfu, because they share a white collar, sleeves that are kinda wide but not exactly billowy, a top that only goes down to around the hips, and a very, very long skirt)

however i do sometimes make an exception depending on the character (for example, even though seiga has a vest, i generally don’t draw her with any additional top layers because i specifically draw more of a chest-high ruqun since i feel that her original design is very tang-dynasty-inspired)

i also just really like to use patterns on clothing just to make it look extra elaborate (plus you get that nice implied embroidered feel).... lately, most of the ones i use are hand-drawn by me, but sometimes if i’m super lazy i’ll overlay traditional japanese katagami, of which you can find high-quality scans at certain museum websites (make sure you check if you can use them, of course!)

as for sources... i actually don’t really use references all too often because i know the most general/basic styles of hanfu by heart, but i always like to look at hanfu blogs on tumblr for inspiration, like @/hanfugallery or @/ziseviolet. i also generally watch a LOT of old and new wuxia/xianxia/chinese period dramas and i have been since i was really young; it’s really easy to absorb the clothing detail from those. for example plenty of wuxia actually have wheelchairs that are designed to look like they’d kiiiiinda fit in the setting, so i remembered those when drawing my latest keikina thing. basically my recommendation is to start following and checking up on media that have a lot to do with costuming etc. so you’ll eventually just start to absorb detail passively! 

also: KNOW WHAT BASIC THINGS ARE CALLED. don’t be afraid to copy/paste the kanji/hanzi terms into non-western sites because, like you mentioned, there’s not tooooo many english-centered (or whatever) places to get really cool info on traditional east asian clothing. i recommend browsing shopping sites too because of the multiple pictures that sellers will take of outfits in order to properly showcase their products, so you can see how a lot of different pieces are sewn and put together from different angles

@/nannaia also did a bunch of REALLY widespread illustrations regarding how chinese and vietnamese traditional clothing evolved over time so i recommend checking those out.

... also, as you can see i kinda just only covered sino-styled clothing and that’s because i know next to nothing about traditional japanese outfits and nor do i really care to... i think plenty of other people draw that kind of touhou fanart so i usually don’t touch it LOL.

that being said depending on the role they play or their current/past societal status it should still be relatively easy to look up sources as long as you KNOW what you want to learn (such as japanese buddhist monk robes for byakuren, or styles that were popular during the asuka period for miko’s crew)

SEARCH ENGINES ARE YOUR FRIEND.

in general tho, it’s really just is the Power of Evocation. a lot of designs you can get away with by not being completely accurate, just as long as you evoke the Feel of east asian traditional clothing. a perfect example is ZUN with eirin/seiga/junko/sekibanki/yachie; you’ll find that NONE of them are wearing any actual hanfu yet their designs SCREAM sino-inspired.

however, just make sure you know what you’re flanderizing before actually flanderizing it is what i’m saying LOL. like be aware of which cultures fold their robes a certain way and when, be aware of color usage and how it can mean different things in east asian cultures as well as the general trend of utilizing different shades on certain outfit pieces, know when and where to use visible frog buttons vs. bows/ribbons, and for god’s sake don’t sexualize qipao or áo dài etc. unless you’re actually like from those cultures (me @ myself even tho i’m sino because i’m already pushing it with sexy seiga)