#The shapes in the background of the videos and the more realistic say the people are drawn in the photos to the real life of the last two

[lilliancdoodles]

"To Tubbo It's been a while bud! I am- I'm actually working because- really exciting news, me and Pac- actually started dating [crossed out and illegible] I know youll be happy- hope everything is going- well at university, ho- see you soon. Fit Morning Crew 4ever!"

Five this has destroyed me

childhood friends,

[hansoeii]

Hello! Hope you're having a great day/night! I absolutely adore your art, you are one of my favourite artists. I love the way you shade and do backrounds. Also everytime I get into a new show I immediately see your art for it??

I was wondering if you had any advice on drawing more realistically (backrounds, anatomy etc) but still keeping a style?

Hey hey!

Thank you so much!

I have a pretty good understanding of facial structures, because before I got into drawing more semi-realisticly, I heavily focused on realistic portraits. Here are some example, these are from around 2019!

(yes, I was really into danmei and kpop back then, haha)

I just always loved drawing/painting faces and it was all I did. But at some point I realized that I wanted to do more than that because just portraits felt super restricting. So it took me around 2-3 years to somewhat find my style. Thought it would be fun to show a little timeline! Advice will follow afterwards :)

2020

I began working on my OCs in 2020 and since I didn't have an exact reference to work off of, I struggled a lot. My art from this year is super wonky.

2021

Still wonky, but the Lokius obsession was the jumpstart into finding my style! My work from this year is all over the place haha, I was experimenting a lot.

2022

This first ofmd piece is pretty much the first drawing where you can see where my style is gonna go, which I think is pretty cool! This is the year I made the biggest progress cos I was drawing SO much. These two pieces are only six months apart. The one on the right was the first time I gave drawing a background a proper go, too! It was a good year.

2023

And this is where I am now! I'm still constantly learning and improving, but I'd say I have a style you can recognize now!

Now here comes some actual advice, haha:

What I highly recommend you to do is to study your favorite artists as much as you can! I have like 5 A4 sketchbooks all from 2020 that I filled with sooooo many studies, where basically all I did was look at artists I like and copy how they draw stuff, to try and figure out how to stylize certain things. Some of my favorite artists are Ami Thompson, Velinxi and TB Choi. But I also liked to just scroll through pinterest and study all the art I came across that I liked! For example, if I saw a really great drawing of a pair of pants I would copy it many times in my sketchbook and try to learn how they stylized the folds. Doing this for a prolongued period of time will naturally improve your own work! It'll be difficult at first, but you gotta push through, it's gonna be worth it!

I also highly recommend studying unique faces to try and avoid the same-face syndrome. Find some cool looking people and try to draw them as simple as you can! Maybe even draw a little timeline where you first draw them as cartoon-y as you can, and keep going until you end up with a more detailed, realistic drawing. Maybe in the middle of it you find a step that feels the most fun to you, so you can try to build on that! It's a great way to figure out what kind of style might be the best for you.

Here are some cool faces I found on pinterest!

I have a pinterest board with many more!

One REALLY important part of learning how to draw all kinds of things is to understand forms and shapes and how to manipulate them. I have so many pages in my sketchbook filled with just shapes that I drew from all kinds of angles without any references.

This is a great video on it:

6 Ways to Draw Anything by Proko

Learning how to do this is so crucial! Young artists often think they first have to learn all kinds of detailed anatomy before doing anything else, but all that's gonna do is make you tired and hate drawing. Shapes are where it's at! Once you understand how shapes work and which ones to use for certain parts of bodies or objects, drawing is gonna get so much easier! Once you understand them, you can get into details such as muscles and bones!

And honestly the most important point is to just absolutely love what you're doing! I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the fact that I get extreme hyperfixations on certain media that turn me into some kind of beast where I can suddenly draw 10 detailed illustrations a week, haha. Just be passionate about what you do, find something you REALLY love and go crazy!

I really hope this was somewhat helpful! My inbox is always open if there's any more questions :)

[satorupasta]

jjk characters (doesnt matter, up tp you) reacting to reader asking them to say hawk tuah

WHY OF COURSE ANON

also ur my first req ! ty [heart] sorry 4 the wait

JUJUTSU KAISEN REACTS:

→ to you saying…huh?

CONTENTS paragraphical, internal

dialogue, silly conversation—not meant to be

taken seriously, just for fun WARNINGS

light swearing & death threat ( sukuna )

᭨

INCLUDES gojo satoru, geto suguru

kento nanami, ryomen sukuna

MODERN AU

an. suguru’s part is shorter sorry

actually, all of them feel short ngl sorry

────── enjoy ! ──────

SATORU: He already knows, with a twist.

. The thing is, Satoru Gojo is both popular publicly and online. Not that you mind (excluding when he randomly grabs your phone and compares your profile’s followers to his own). However, since you’ve been joining more social platforms, you’ve been seeing trends. It would be quite fun to participate, but not when he’s ahead of you.

He knows just about every new popular video. Well, before you do, at least. Even the ones that are from a day ago, he’s already aware of them. You whisper the line that goes to a video he knows? He’ll finish it off with that cocky grin of his.

For a good while, you believe he must be cheating. Maybe it was that technique of his—what was the name, Infinity?—that he’s using to cheat. There’s no way realistically, you think.

Other people partake in these activities online, making videos and whatnot. And you can’t do so simply because Satoru is already caught up. Don’t get started on scripts, either.

You were on the verge of giving up, and letting him have the win. But then, a thought crosses your mind. What if I do the opposite?

And that statement is all you need to approach Satoru minutes later, your actively recording phone clasped in the hand behind your back. He senses your presence nearly immediately, grinning back at you (stupidly).

“Got something new for me today?” he questions, referring to your other failed attempts at making him fall into the trap. You don’t reply, because that would ruin your plan.

"Could you repeat after me?" You replied, another question from you making Satoru raise a brow. A moment of contemplation between his internal thoughts, and after waiting a minute, he nods his head, facing you entirely.

You sound out the syllables slowly, having him copy you as requested.

“Hawk tuah?” he says.

Your stifled laughter makes him realize, and for the first time in a while, a feeling that hadn’t occurred to him in a while reintroduced itself. Embarrassment.

“Oh, you think you’re so—were you recording me?!" He quickly stood up from the chaise and stared at you. The redness that was on his ears deepened as he saw the rectangular-shaped device in your hand, confirming his assumption.

He proceeds to chase you around the house for about five minutes, and despite his humiliation from the whole thing, you both find yourselves laughing. Your short-lived, sarcastic rivalry comes to an end, on a surprisingly great note.

SUGURU: He’s indulging you.

@kazuhiratortellini

. Suguru is a friend of yours, and has been for a while. As a Jujutsu Sorcerer, the only time he had for social media was on weekends. He was mostly busy with missions other times, but you finally had a chance to test this new trend you’d seen online with him.

You both were lounging on the couch together, watching some sort of a movie. It was currently paused, since he had been finishing up a meal he made in the background of it. It smelt delicious, and honestly, you were getting quite impatient. You needed a distraction.

Approaching his figure, he’s stirring something at the stove. When you stand beside him, watching him continue to cook, you interject the sounds of sizzling and steam with your voice. "If I asked you to do something, would you do it?"

Suguru raised a brow and glanced at you, but after a moment he nods. "Okay." The wooden spoon he was stirring with is tapped against the pot, and he sets it down to turn to you fully. You tell him to repeat your words. There’s a short intermission of giggling, but he finally does.

"…Hawk tuah," he finished, just as you snickered.

With the amount of times you’d been saying that to him, in person and over text, it was expected.

Suguru laughed along with you, making both of you distracted for a few minutes. It was for a dumb reason, but the two of you couldn’t care.

You both suddenly do find yourself caring when the beep of the smoke detector against the ceiling, and the range hood above the stove has a bit too much steam rising up into it.

"Oh…" Suguru stares, before his hands quickly hurry to turn the knob on the stove off. And still, you don’t seem to notice yet, since he can hear your continued giggling.

The smell of smoke filling your nose made you gasp, and that’s when you can finally understand why Suguru isn’t laughing with you anymore.

“Oh my god!”

NANAMI: He genuinely doesn’t know.

. You’d been bothering and begging for Nanami to just hear you out this once. After all, the man was very stubborn, at least to you. When he had his mind set on something, he wasn’t willing to change it. Especially when you’re pleading him to have an alteration in his mind…to do a trend.

“I’m excluding myself from the conversation,” he mumbled, just loud enough for you to hear, to which in response you shout and grab his arm. “C’mon, Nanami!” Again, your voice rings through the man’s head, almost convincing him to give in. Almost.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“Fine, then!” You continue to grasp onto his shirt, hoping he’ll indulge you for another time. You always say that, he thinks. What was it, exactly? Not even minutes later, you answer his question.

“It’ll be the last time I ask!”

Oh, there it is. He remembers now.

For once, Nanami is able to drown out your voice. But only momentarily, and it’s to rummage through his mind for excuses to get out of this. Something that isn’t rude, surely. Just straight to the point. When he can’t find one, he lets out a sigh. He finds himself saying reluctant words that he still isn’t sure if he’s adamant on.

“What do you want?” he huffed out, facing you with a somewhat stiff position.

“I promise, it’s not bad,” you assure, lowering your phone in your hand. It has been playing the same audio for the past ten minutes—the same amount of time that you’ve been bothering Nanami. “I just want you to repeat something for me.”

As he huffs at you again, you know he is finally listening to you. Forcing down the smile forming on your face. After sounding out the syllables, Nanami gives you a blank stare. What does that even mean?

“Come on, say it!” you urge, lifting your phone up to cover your eyes. The screen fills with the man’s deep-turquoise shirt and the yellow, dotted tie. You zoom out, hoping to catch his expression. And you do, but it’s quite lifeless.

“Hawk. Tuah.” he blankly said, and you giggle. When you look down at your phone screen a moment later, you see that the red button on your screen was untouched, and your disappointment is heavy.

“Can you say it again? I wasn’t recording.”

“What?”

SUKUNA: He knows, but who do you think you are?

@francis4evas

. Honestly, this was an insane decision. Does the King of Curses even know what a trend is? Hell, does he even have a cellphone? You are confused, but you can feel the adrenaline from excitement rushing through your veins.

So, you approach his throne, stepping against the piles of skulls, wincing at the slight poke of what seemed to be an animal’s skull horns pushing against your foot.

It takes an extra hour, and you’re out of breath. Even after taking a few rest stops along the way. But you finally make it, peeking above the cliff of hardened remains above you.

You see his figure. It makes you swallow in fear, but…it’s far too late to go back. What would he do if you did, anyway? Kill you? You don’t give into your hesitation, though.

You finally push yourself up, and flinch when a voice suddenly rings out through the crimson and black corridors, menacing and somewhat alluring. “Come, creature.”

When you finally get the courage to step up to him, you’re able to take in his visual, and he’s able to take in yours. A large, tall, pink-haired beast with two sets of eyes and arms. On his lower half is some white, loose pants, a black, drawn string keeping it up. The fabric seems to be kind of ripped, but you doubt a curse cares about his appearance.

Your thoughts are cut off when he speaks, and you flinch, red eyes staring down at your own.

“What do you want, being? Make it worth my time. Or else—“ He pauses, the light maroon in his gaze igniting similarly to a fire. “I’ll slice off your head.” Intimidating, much…

“I…have a request,” you began, looking up at him and almost immediately away. Much, more like a lot.

A request? Sukuna thinks, tilting his head to rest on his fist. He doesn’t out-directly state his curiosity, but you assume he is willing to hear.

“Can you say—“

Before you can finish, all you see is red liquid pooling out of you. You hear the words idiot, puny, and stupid creature, all as your vision turns black. Like nothing had happened in the first place.

→ NEXT: JJK men dealing with jealousy !

[ponchusjbonchus]

i finished hazbin hotel so here is my master collection of all my silly notes

episode 1  

- treat angel dust better and give him actual lines and it’ll be better

- why do the background demons have more variety than the main cast 

- opening number is good 

- when will jesus appear 

- cannibal town is where i wanna live 

- i should keep a swear counter for this 

- charlie is the best character 

- adam shaving down a chicken bone in one bite is really funny 

- i like adam his voice actor is doing really good 

-  all the voice actors are really good. except keith david poor guy

- angel dust sexually harassing husk is not funny

- if adam is a human who sins then why is he in charge of the angel exterminators 

- nifftys commercial bit is funny

- alastors monocle  is on  his mouth in some shots and it’s funny 

- i like the foreshadowing of alastor hating tv 

- lutes design. heart emoji 

- adams song goes hard as fuck. very likeable villain 

- “fuck you i do what i want” contract made me giggle 

- i feel like all the main characters except for charlie and alastor are really one note and it bugs me 

- katie killjoy is still awesome 

- the cliffhanger is really intriguing and i will watch more

final score 8/10 despite the bad dialogue for angel 

episode 2 

intro song is good but the visuals are boring 

what is this cat. who

why is the animation worse in this episode 

paused to read valentino’s texts and the way he sways from calling angel a bitch to calling him babe and being like “don’t be like this” that is like.yeah that’s accurate 

foreshadowing is good 

JESUS APPEARED (sir pentious)

“trust us with your money” 😭

not really resonating with any characters. vox has the best character design so far though 

velvette is really entertaining 

valentino’s voice actor is good and his jokes are somehow better than angels. still a horrible person and i hope he gets exterminated

vox is really interesting and the thing his voice does is cool . i REALLLY wanna like this guy but so far i like adam better 

second time seven years has been mentioned . what happened 

WHILE HE HID IN RADIO WE PIVOTED TO VIDEO NOW HIS MEDIUM IS GETTING BLOODY RARE 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️vivienne be damned but the girl can write a song 

alastor fucking with vox after seeing him for seemingly no reason is really funny and in character . though funny it doesn’t really fit into the episode that smoothly 

hell being shaped like a pentagram is creative (side note when i looked up the name for it cuz i couldn’t remember the third result was “what is the star thing called”)

alastors angry demon design looks better than his regular design 

i love sir pentious so much he’s so cute

pentious and charlie are my favorites so far. i know pentious is a double agent but knowing him from the pilot/what we’ve seen in this episode i feel like he’s gonna be dumped by the vees cuz he’s a pathetic wet slop of a man 

the crackhead play joke is really funny 

angel dusts jealousy came out of.Nowhere. like i know charlie was saying like “hey you aren’t really a real resident” and he was mad about the game but it felt more like “ugh i can’t stand these people” not “ugh i wish i could be redeemed and people cared about me.” it was hinted at just not very well 

angel being lovebombed is portrayed.Fine.ly   like it’s realistic but not outstanding . it would mean more if valentino wasn’t making lighthearted jokes about how he kills and manipulates his workers 

pentious’ tail is randomly shrinking and growing 

the camera work in the fight scene is Awful 

pentious :-( 

first time in a while i have heard a show say you should kill yourself NOW 

imagine pentious immediately goes to heaven after the song /silly

final score 8/10 only because of pentious. overall episode is 7/10

episode 3 

pentious still being peak right off the bat. he gets the funniest jokes

alastor still isn’t very funny 

angel dust isn’t funny booooooo boooooooooo

vaggie centric episode? i think? idk i don’t like vaggie she’s kinda boring 

niffty is less funny than she was in previous episodes. she feels more remnant of internet “dark humor” from the time the pilot released 

okay i ended up watching the rest of this one during gym class so i didn��t have my notes. overall this episode was really good except for velvette kinda sucking . 7/10 

episode 4 

this isn’t the poison episode is it.

animation is noticeably worse

vaggies plain ass delivery of the “angel. what the fuck” line made me laugh

i thought the cold open of angel getting r worded would be a way of showing that his life is really fucked up.though it was just a joke bit which i was not expecting

pentious cowering in fear at pornography 

i really like charlie. kk said that she was one note and .i kinda agree but i still love her 

this one demon has a better design then the entire main cast 

angels real name is anthony 😭

okay the dressing room scene . the fear in angels voice through all of it is so jarring and it keeps you invested in the scene and Val being so fuckinh disgusting and evil . how do people like this guy at all. this scene is so creepy not just cuz of val being abusive but because of how horrified Angel is and the moment he asks the bare minimum of val not hurting charlie his life is put on the line. i feel like this was treated with the weight it deserves and it clearly paints val as a villain. unfortunately it’s tainted by the fact that the writers are aroused by this shit but they do a good job of hiding it i guess. maybe this will change 

it bothers me so much that angels head keeps randomly changing in size cuz all the animation is freehand

poison. im gonna be careful and respectful on how i go about talking about this . i actually really like this song and sequence but it’s brought down so bad and made so beyond creepy and horrifying to know that the writers are into this. i like the constant parallel of angel being his porn actor persona who loves sex and his abused reality where he wants to be free. and the scene where he’s dancing in front of a screen with the foxes intercut with his assault is really uncomfortable yeah but i like how it shows that he’s turning his own abuse and exploitation into entertainment . and the line “it’s so hard to resist another gulp!” or however it goes has a nice double meaning . it’s like “ughhh i love sex how could i resist it” but also “i want to resist but im so deep into this that i can’t” . i am not a sexual assault survivor so i don’t feel properly equipped to go into depth about the representation of angels ongoing abuse but from a PURELYcinematic standpoint as someone with a passion for this stuff i feel like this song did well, but again it’s made so much worse and creepier knowing the writers who made this 

the spots under angels eyes are more eyes??.huh

sorry for the lack of notes i am just. genuinely invested in this 

BEST SONG 💥💥💥yeah maybe i knew all the words to this song before i ever watched th show what are you gonna do about it

ohhi don’t really. like the message of that song actually 🙁 it has been established that angel dusts pervertedness and desperation for drugs is not who he really is nor who he likes to be but husk telling him “hey it’s okay to be like that” and angel immediately coming around to it just feels.ehhh…..it feels like he’s taking one step forward and two steps back . i get that the message was supposed to be “embrace the bad parts of yourself! it’s okay to be a loser!” but in the context of the episode it doesn’t fit. good song in a vacuum

iiiidont really know how to feel about this. the episode was great up until loser baby which,is a song that i really like but it kinda does kill the whole episode imo. 5.5/10 unfortunate 

episode 5 

halfway through the series who cheered

adam mention. win (adam and pentious are my favorites )

i hate niffty im sorry 💔 she was better in the pilot

dude. lucifer is so fucking funny right off the bat i love this guy 

is this guy autistic he feels autistic i like him

lucifer is peak character oh my god

why is??? alastor trying to fight lucifer for charlies dad figure??? i don’t understand this guy he just does shit

this is the character norm called out for being a jewish stereotype. and god i can see it jesus 

i love and hate mimzy. she’s ehh

okay nevermind i do kinda get alastors jealousy

i cannot express how good a character lucifer is. he is the funniest part of this show so far by a LOOOONG shot 

pentious does not know what a siege is apparently. honestly fitting 

mimzy served zero purpose dawg i hope this was just an intro and she comes back at some point 

baby charlie ❤️ 

meaning-wise more than anything is the best song we’ve gotten thus far. through the episode i didnt rlly understand lucifer i just thought he was funny but now i get it! and i love it 

this episode was okay. alastor and mimzy take up way too much screen time for barely anything to happen but lucifer was an awesome character and i love him a lot . unfortunately he can’t save this episode though 6/10

episode 5

this yuri tastes like chicken salad but not the good kind 

i despise cherri 

praying that pentious has a role in this one 

white man jumpscare THATS SUPPOSED RO HE SAINY BETER

the seraphims look sick as hell

emmy and charlie have more chemistry than charlie and vaggie im losing it 

why do the angels look exactly like the demons 

saint peter is .Stupid?????

ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!JOY

charlie should be in heaven. she doesn’t deserve being in hell

vaggie backstory! hooray this is actually sick as hell 

how did charlie not know that vaggie was a fallen angel if she saw her in uniform ?? wouldn’t she recognize that “hey that’s the outfit angels wear” 

adam is a bitch and i love him so much 

karen joke (awful)

websters dictionary joke (not as awful)

adam struggling to think of words so he writes them down,,,,god i love him so much i know he’s a bad guy and a bad person and a bad. he’s just bad all around but i don’t care i love him so dearly he’s my favorite character i think 

niffty is better in this episode 

WATERBOARDINH 😭😭

emily i love 

“fuck yes!!!” oug or character 

i want pentious to get into heaven. please 

angel being a good father 

the delivery of “hey……….i see the club has a sex room…………” is fucking hilarious and i laughed out loud 

i have laughed more at this episode than i have the entire series pentious is so funny 

valentino. gross

angel standing up to valentino is really nice 

why doesn’t emily have a nose 

why are we having a deep song with emily as soon as we meet her???? i mean it’s technically not her song or sera’s but like. we JUST met them it doesn’t rlly make sense for them to have this big number 

yeah it’s really bothering me that emily has this big number. we barely know these people and they’re treating it like we’ve known her forever WHO IS THIS GIRL

if hell is forever then heaven must be a lie 💥💥

I CANT THID RUCKING FACE 

i hate this episode a lot more the writing is worse 

okay. the writing is noticeably worse than the rest of the series in this episode the pacing is completely fucked. at least we get some adam content and vaggie lore but vaggie isn’t rlly a character i enjoy. however the humor is peak in this episode and pentious really carries it with his running bit. he can’t save much of the episode sadly. 4.5/10 

episode 7

the more i watch the intro i really don’t like it . it’s so boring 

pentious petting keykey 

i dont like alastor  bad character bad character whenever he’s on screen i want to kick something 

cannibal town ‼️‼️

awwwwwi love rosie. she’s like mimzy but better and more likeable 

i wanna make a cannibal oc. if i were in this version of hell i would wanna be a cannibal. this whole area makes me happy 

rosie didn’t swear ONCE in her opening scene im so proud of the writers 

i really like carmilla’s design and her stupid nsr hands 

if helluva boss is in the same universe as this one then why don’t they go through extermination ??? or is that like. an au

rosie is so cute i love her so much. 

susan is such an underwhelming name that’s so funny 

this episode is much better 

i know that this show doesn’t have the best writing but it’s honestly just a fun watch

out for love is the best number we’ve had so far 

carmilla walks around in steel ballet shoes all the time i gotta respect the woman 

rosie’s first swear came 2/3rds into the episode. new record 

i relate to charlie 

I LOVE ROSIE.SO MUCH uuhg$hd,s

charlie’s song is really nice 

the cannibals are the best part of the show. easily 

SHE GOT SUSAN 🔥🔥

vaggie getting her wings back . i love 

this is easily the best episode so far. both musical numbers were great and vaggie and charlie being apart and their stories being intercut only for them to come together at the end was amazing. cannibal town is absolutely amazing and perfect and there was a noticeably less amount of swearing. 9/10, praying that  the finale is this good too 

episode 8 (finale)

is this technically just a part 2 to episode 7 

PENTIOUS DRESSED LIKE A GENERAL.AW

i love vox he’s so goofy . i wish he appeared more 

charlie’s message is really nice i love her a lot but it was kinda ruined by niffty

cherri makes everything worse 

angel dust’s development is nice 

pentious being forced into a hetero love with cherri,,,blehh this is the most aroace guy ive ever seen 

mini more than anything reprise with charlie and vaggie is really sweet . 

ADAM 💥💥💥SICK ASS NEW OUTFIT BRO 

adam is still the best character in this show. “chill lute fuck” i adore alex brightman 

the battle outfits are cool 

alastor finally doing something helpful 

gyat DAMN adam. awooga 

vox’s stupid dance 

alastor saying nuh uh to the person trying to murder him is funny

i don’t want to kin adam but i Do. i Do he’s Awesome

while it interrupts the action vox watching and cheering as alastor nearly dies is super funny 

okay Actually dies then

i am enjoying this so much 

SIR PENTIOUS CLUTCH 💥💥

adam is the best character in the whole fuckinh show him oneshotting pentious is hilarious . i know he goes to heaven and doesn’t rlly die i think 

what happened to the angels fighting with reckless abandon??vaggie is getting her shit rocked

GET FUCKED LUTE

ewww adam is a white guy.ew put the mask back on 

lucifer and adam interaction this is just peak

why aren’t the angels going after the rest of hell once they realize that they’re screwed 

adam without the mask is fugly

HE .HE DIES ??WHAY YHE FUCK

the hotel:(

“the ultimate sacrifice” i love pentious a lot but HE DIDNT DO SHIT BRO 😭

i choose to believe that lilith divorced lucifer because lucifer was a gay man and she was a lesbian

why is cherri a main character now i dony. ew

alastor is alive ! boo

bro thinks he’s jack skeleton 

husk being mad when he sees that alastor is alive is funny 

WHAT THE FUCK 

VOX GET A JOB. STAY AWAY FROM HIM

sir pentious gets into heaven :) thaht makes me happy 

season finale! this was a phenomenal episode to end of a good series, though ill be real i don’t know if having a second season is a good idea. most if not all of the conflicts are resolved among the main cast. ending it off with pentious getting into heaven is amazing though. episode is a 9/10 it was funny and engaging and really fun all around.

overall score for the series is a 7.5/10 i really enjoyed it 

[canmom]

How aren't mediums fungible? Any art history class would teach you they very much are.

what, has 'the medium is the message' gone out of fashion now or something?

but to explain what I'm trying to get at, since there's a good chance I misused the word >< - each medium brings its own set of affordances and emphases. if I see a CG animation I pay attention to different things than if I see traditional animation or stop motion or what have you.

for example, we could have a look at the animation of Hiroyuki Okiura - say, the introduction to the Cowboy Bebop movie, or his work in Magnetic Rose. Okiura is one of the most renowned realist animators, someone whose drawing style, camerawork etc. hews very close to live action film. his exceptional sense of perspective and space is remarkable in traditional animation. by contrast, you 'get it for free' in CG and stop motion - you will always have perfect linear perspective unless you go out of your way to break it. however, CG rarely captures the exact qualities of Okiura's animation, which come from the sense of drawing principles - how to simplify shapes, 2D spacing etc. and by making it something constructed, the way characters move through space, the way a drawing can suddenly feel 3D, becomes foregrounded - it's no longer incidental but now a core part of what Okiura's animation is expressing.

so, 'live action into anime' is kinda what the AI style transfer tools are going for. in the technique from the recent paper, you start with a static drawing of a character and some animation data (likely mocap), and the program will generate an animation. that's similar what Corridor Digital attempted a few months ago, using a neural network finetuned on Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and applying 'style transfer' to live action footage they shot. the results were, viewed as rotoscoping, kind of hideous, with shapes constantly flickering and turning into mush. the new paper I linked offers some techniques to improve the temporal consistency of this type of AI rotoscoping which should make it look a lot less bad, though it remains to be seen whether it works in situations other than 'well-lit fullbody shot'.

still, even if Corridor's video was a lot more technically solid (and give AI development a few years to iron out the kinks, I'm sure it will look downright quaint), it doesn't provoke the same response in me as Okiura's animation. the process of drawing something involves a lot of artistic decisions about what to capture, simplify, emphasise; for all that it is 'realist', Okiura's animation likewise has a particular feeling to the way characters move, the way they interact with light, the use of line, etc. which in some large part arises from how it is produced. so much of that is all but impossible to capture in words.

but also - knowing a bit about how it's made, and having my own experiences of animation, gives me an angle to appreciate what Okiura is doing. a drawing of something is a way of drawing attention to the specific details of the subject. two people drawing the same subject will never draw it the exact same way. one of the joys of going to life drawing is seeing how many different ways people can approach the same subject in the same ten minutes - inflected by different media like charcoal or watercolour pencils. one of the great things about anime is the space it gives key animators to bring their own sensibility to a particular shot.

I certainly accept that is inevitable that mediums will evolve with time. anime looks very different today than it did 30 years ago. part of of that is evolving sensibilities, partly the slow-motion collapse of an overstrained industry, but also a lot has do with the fact that every studio has switched to digital compositing and digital background painting. it's possible through painstaking effort to fairly closely imitate the look of cel animation on a computer, but you really have to go out of your way, and it's rare to do that.

and I do feel like something has been lost with the death of cels - qualities of line and colour, the difference between digital bloom and backlight animation. but something has been gained at the same time: maybe we've gradually lost the traditional skills for drawing layouts because the conditions of production made it so that skills weren't passed on to the current generation of animators, which sucks, but we have simultaneously gained the ability to merge 2D and 3D animation with tools like Grease Pencil, to use the camera-like digital compositing effects of directors like Naoko Yamada and Makoto Shinkai. it's not better, just different.

this isn't to make the boring argument that AI art is soulless, or lacks the magic human touch, or whathaveyou. it's just a different medium. nor would it be right to say that there are no connections between media - literally right now I'm modelling an arm, and my experience of drawing arms is directly influencing how I break down the forms and all of that. AI generated images derive in obvious ways from traditional animation and CG and photography and all that, AI engineers study these media in great detail as they develop their programs; our knowledge of those media can inform how we respond to AI.

honestly, CG that aims to replicate the look of traditional animation, such as in the games of ArcSystem Works, or the works of Orange like their Houseki no Kuni, is something I actually find very interesting. not because I think it could or should replace traditional animation; it just reveals fascinating things about both media. the same can be true of AI, I think. like what do you learn from what a neural network is able to capture, and what it isn't? and what does studying neural networks tell us about human brains?

if the development of AI and the accessibility of new tools leads to a flourishing of interesting new animation, I'll be happy. I just don't see it as a replacement for traditional animation and 3DCG. if anything the future of animation will probably look like a hybrid process taking advantage of the best features of all the different media we've invented - insert the usual spiel about Arcane and Spiderverse here. AI is currently very immature, we're still figuring out what it's good for and the hype drowns out everything, but I'm sure it will find a comfortable place, and I'll be interested to see how it all shakes out.

but what I meant with 'not fungible' is that, if you try to replace one medium with another, you will inevitably change the qualities of what you make. nowt wrong with that. like, just because you can adapt books into films (and vice versa) doesn't mean books are obsolete. some things are easier to express in prose, others in film. you can have prose that's informed by film, and film that's informed by prose. everything's talking to everything else, it's great! but the tools you choose are meaningful, and interesting. not just an irrelevant detail to be swapped out when "superior" technology comes along.

[melonteee]

i just wanted to say that i love your videos, more specifically your analysis ones. (one piece and the especially the yugioh ones) you’re so well-spoken and every video essay is so articulated, i feel like i just attended a lecture class for the one piece 1101 course taught by dr. melonteee. i love hearing your interpretations of the characters and what you make of different arcs or topics. (i also love how you say “wano” i literally only say it in the way you do now it’s so satisfying and scratches an itch in my brain) i make jewelry and i always put them on in the background to listen to while i work. honestly, if you had a podcast i would 100% listen to it <3

i found you through your boa hancock video. when i watched it, i teared up, because the way you talked about her story was so understanding and emphasized all the parts of her i love. it felt like you fully understood her character. i really connect with boa and she’s my favorite out of all the one piece girls. as a survivor of sexual assault, boa’s internalized guilt over something she couldn’t control and the way she overcompensates in her actions is something i relate to. you described her so well in your video and it was refreshing to see someone else with a different opinion of her. i’ve seen so many times people reducing her character into only the bad parts. that she’s only there to support luffy or that she’s annoying and it hurts. she deserves to experience romance, whether it’s reciprocated or not, and she deserves to be a bit excessive. that’s what i love about her!! she’s dramatic and unapologetic. it’s the best!!!!! it’s important to talk about characters like her and to see survivors as more than just that, but as people, who do or say ridiculous things. i’m sorry to turn this into a boa hancock rant i just love her a lot and your video on her was amazing.

thank you so much for talking about her and handling her story so well. you’ve really inspired me to look deeper into these characters and made me want to understand them a bit more. i love listening to whatever you make and i get so excited when you post. i’m glad that you’re enjoying making these videos. thank you thank you thank you!!!! have a good day/night!! <3

!!! Thank you so much!! This all means a lot to me truly, and I’m so happy I reached so many people with that Boa video. She really touched my heart the way she touched yours, and one of the reasons I made it is because I couldn’t stand how people saw her as this detestable, annoying being for her surface level actions.

I’m also truly sorry for what happened to you anon, and that was another reason Boa being perceived the way she did upset me so much. Because I could see exactly what her story was supposed to portray, and more than anything I wanted people to understand she IS a victim and her stone mask is due to that lack of empathy she never received. While Boa is a comical character, how she processes her trauma and what she feels is so painfully realistic, and I felt there must be a pain some real life people who relate to her would feel in seeing how Boa is hated by a fair chunk of fans.

But of course, anyone is free to dislike Boa! I just want everyone to have more of an understanding of her, and I really am so happy my essay on her spoke to you. We can really learn empathy through what we watch sometimes, and Boa’s story made my heart hurt so much that it truly taught me a lot in terms of how trauma can shape a person.

I hope you’ve found healing and love anon! I know you’re on anonymous, but speaking of your own experiences still takes a lot of strength, and I’m glad this space I’ve catered made you feel comfortable enough to do so.

Also, I’d love to make a podcast! I just don’t have many ideas for one HAHA but!! If I ever have a brain blast, I’ll be sure to start one! Thank you again! 🫶

[gakkougiftedprofiles]

Report Card: Takashi Fukui 🎮

{ FC: Kano Shuuya }

Alias: YASHO!

Age: 18

Gender: Male

Birthday: May 21 {Gemini}

Height: 5'5" / 165 cm

Weight: 135 lbs / 65 kg

Chest size: 32 inches / 82 cm

Hair: Blond

Eyes: Light yellow

Status: Ultimate Modder/class 80th student

Likes: LED keyboards

Dislikes: Shoes with laces

Appearance: Takashi is of slightly shorter than average height, with light blond hair that's short and wild, and light yellow eyes.

Takashi wears a yellow track suit with a design of a black thunderbolt on the back of it, along with white socks and black sports slippers. On his jacket are several pins shaped like different video game console controllers like a GameCube, a ps2, and an Xbox controller. In each ear, he wears three silver ear cuffs and a pair of studded earrings.

Personality: Takashi is a happy-go-lucky, loud, and boisterous guy who's very friendly and loves being casual with others; ... sometimes to the point where he may come off as overly friendly, but he means well. He's not one for formalities and likes to 'keep it real', as he puts it: by being honest and saying what he means, as he hates two-faced people and ones who take advantage of others. He also can be pretty flirtatious with both guys and girls, especially girls he finds cute, but he'll never continue if he's making anyone uncomfortable.

Background: Takashi was always a big video game nerd, along with his brother. One night when he was a child, he begged his mother to take him to the video game store to pick up a game during a midnight release. She eventually relented and drove him there. On the way back, however... they collided with a drunk driver. They both were taken to the hospital. Takashi's injuries healed over the course of several weeks, but his mother, who suffered the severity of the crash the most; suffered severe paralysis throughout her entire body. This devastated his brother and father, with the latter becoming more cold and distant with Takashi. Deep down, he knows it was wrong to blame him his son, but the agony of the pain his wife went through, changed him... and Takashi himself, suffered severe guilt for what happened to her, fully blaming himself for what had happened. He did not even play video games for weeks during his spiral of depression, until his brother encouraged him to play them again to help cheer himself up. And to hopefully stop blaming himself for something that was not his fault...

Over the years, Takashi became involved in the video game community; specifically in the modding one. To help pay for his mother's medical bills , Takashi created a charity mod for a very popular retro game. It was like an entire game on its own, which became very beloved by streamers and Speedrunners alike. Fans and friends alike happily donated to his charity page. That, combined with the popularity of his brother speedrunning the game, made them reach their donation goal more than successfully. With that, their mother could receive the surgery she needed to help her recover as best as she realistically could. While she still be wheelchair bound forever, the rest of her body greatly recovered. His mother was truly grateful to her sons for helping her... and as one last favor, she asked Takashi to finally forgive himself. Takashi, who always felt bad for making his mother and brother sad for blaming himself for so long... promised he would try. His father eventually came around as well, apologizing for how cold he was to him and inadvertrly blaming him as well. He forgave him as well, and finally, it felt like their family was going back to the happy one it used to be. With the success of the mod and donation, would also get Hope's Peak's attention as well, scouting Takashi under the title of 'Ultimate Modder.' Shocked and proud, he happily took the title, with the promise to continue making mods for the video game community he loves so much, to enjoy together.

[jennifer-ke]

Week1- task2-watching vedio

reflection:

The sentence that impressed me the most was everyone's surroundings and personal values and ideals affects how they see and feame the world. This sentence highlights the idea that photography is not just about capturing images but also about expressing one's interpretation of the world. A photographer's background, experiences, and values play a crucial role in shaping how they view their surroundings and frame their shots. This understanding underscores the diversity and richness in photographic art, where every photograph offers a glimpse into the photographer's personal world.

In my understanding, The observer effect in photography shows that a photographer's presence and actions can change what they are photographing. By being aware of this effect, photographers can make choices to reduce their impact and aim for authenticity in their photos. Understanding the observer effect is important for photographers who want to capture real and honest images of their subjects and surroundings.

For Misinformation and Disinformation, Misinformation can lead to confusion and the spread of false information. It can cause misunderstandings and perpetuate myths or stereotypes. Unlike disinformation, misinformation is usually spread without malicious intent but can still have serious consequences.

False equivalency is a mistake in thinking that happens when two subjects are shown as if they are equal or similar, even though they are very different in context, value, or importance. In photography, this can happen by how the images are presented, framed, or placed next to each other, making it seem like there's a false comparison.

In my understanding, A staged image in photography refers to a photograph where elements within the scene have been deliberately arranged or manipulated by the photographer. This differs from candid photography, where moments are captured spontaneously without interference.

Confirmation bias in photography emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and self-awareness in the photographic process. By recognizing and addressing these biases, photographers can strive for more truthful and balanced representations, contributing to a more informed and empathetic understanding of the world.

Physical manipulation in photography combines art and science, offering photographers endless possibilities for creativity and self-expression. Using hands-on techniques, photographers can create unique images that showcase their artistic vision and connect them to the photographic process. Despite the challenges and complexities, physical manipulation is a valuable and rewarding approach for those looking to push the boundaries of traditional photography.

Deepfake in photography involves using artificial intelligence (AI) to make very realistic but fake images or videos. This technology can change photos or videos to make it look like people are saying or doing things they didn’t actually do. In photography, this can include altering facial expressions, changing backgrounds, or mixing features to create misleading visuals.

A shallow fake in photography means making simple changes to an image that can be misleading. Unlike deepfakes, which use advanced AI to make very realistic fakes, shallow fakes use basic editing tools like changing colors, cropping, or adding things to a photo. These changes can mislead people but are usually easier to spot than deepfakes.

Selected editing in photography means changing certain parts of a photo while keeping the rest the same. This technique lets photographers tweak things like brightness, color, or sharpness in specific areas without affecting the whole image. For example, you might brighten just the subject's face but leave the background as it is. Selected editing helps improve or fix specific details and can make the overall photo look better.

[pa0bee]

SketchBook #3

Saint Christina, c.1640

DESCRIBE PHYSICAL QUALITIES

What is it made of?

Oil Canvas.

How big is it?

 33 x 27 3/4 x 3 in.

In this portrait, there is a beautiful woman with soft features and sorrow reflecting in her eyes. She was subjected to various tortures before being murdered with arrows which explains the fact that she has an arrow piercing her neck.

What colors and shapes are used?

The colors seem mostly cold. It gives a renaissance and baroque vibe to this realistic portrait.

What subjects (if any) are represented?

In this portrait, the woman being represented is Saint Christina from Tuscany.

How was the work designed?

This portrait was designed with various shades of muted colors used repeatedly using a realism technique.

Is it balanced?

I can say that this artwork is very balanced all the mute colors and its details make a complete portrait.

What is emphasized? Rhythm? Proportion?

The colors make the rhythm be present and the proportion is there too. Christina is well centered and all of the details put in this portrait bring it all together.

Contrast? Does it have unity and variety?

The colors and tones used for this portrait are repeated and it makes it have unity.

ALL ABOUT ME:

How does the work make you feel?

This portrait makes me feel sort of upset. Knowing the story behind this just makes me feel sad and angry. Christina was murdered with arrows for defacing her father's beliefs. That's why she becomes Tuscany's martir after her death.

How or why does it evoke these feelings?

The balance of colors makes me feel a sort of sadness and remorse.

NOW RESEARCH:

Francesco Fuirini was an Italian painter. He was one of the leading Florentine painters of the first half of the 17th century, famous for the ambiguous sensuality and sfumato effects of his many paintings of female nudes. He first studied with his father, Filippo Furini, nicknamed Pippo Sciamerone and described by Baldinucci as a portrait painter, and he completed his apprenticeship in the studios of Domenico Passignano and of Giovanni Bilivert in Rome. At the Palazzo Pitti, he came in contact with Pietro da Cortona, who had completed the frescoes in the Sala della Stufa, an encounter that encouraged Furini to develop a more Baroque style, which nonetheless retained an emotional, Venetian character. He then visited Rome shortly before his death.

(all this information was searched on the databases of SCF https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T030220 )

THINKING:

What movement is the art work associated with?

It is the Baroque movement. It was a bequest of John Ringling in 1936. The subject in this portrait is Saint Christina.

What does the artwork say about the artist that made it?

This artwork proves Francesco Furini's style and reputation for painting rapturous images of female nudes.

Can you tell what the artist was trying to say?

The artist is trying to portray how Christina became Tuscany's martyr.

How clearly does the artist get their message across?

It is very clear that in the portrait there is an arrow piercing her neck and that was the way she was murdered. He wanted us to see her backstory through this portrait.

THE LAST PART:

This artwork is basically one of the most beautiful portraits I've ever seen with a dark background story. It definitely yelled my name as I was walking by. It immediately caught my eye. Such a nice color palette, the unity, and balance make the perfect portrait. I love this piece. This is such an important portrait. It explains the dangers of defacing people's religions. And it is upsetting to know that to this day it still happens in some countries. In conclusion, the background story of this portrait and the portrait itself bring everything together to make a beautiful masterpiece!

PROOF OF ATTENDANCE

( I forgot to take a picture of myself. I'll leave a picture of my wristband and a video over here)

[hauntedtotem]

Do you have any drawing tips?

•When it comes to digital art, if you struggle making lines clean or sharp enough, using a textured brush erases that struggle because the whole point is not being clean or sharp.

^left is obvious where mistakes were made and had to be erased, looks choppy and needs cleaned up. right does not need cleaned up much. saves time and energy!

•if a drawing looks a little too bland or unfinished, but you don't know what else to do about it, adding a texture overlay does a lot, especially for solid backgrounds

•For both traditional and digital artists, do👏art👏studies👏. No, this doesn't mean sign up for expensive art classes, it means spend a page in a sketchbook just practicing one thing. So instead of drawing say, a character portrait like usual, have a page that's just full of hands in different poses (use references! Very important for studies!)

2016 example, but you can tell which ones had references (hint: only 3 of them did,but they're way better than the rest)

the only recent example I had was an unfinished page of bird skulls :/

Which brings me toooo

Learning to draw realistic skeletons can also really help with anatomy, if your character looks wonky, think "could a skeleton fit in there?"

Thinking abt how their skeleton looks can help notice things like the eyes being too high up or the mouth being too low, or having no room for a brain

*this is not a dig at people with this style! It's okay to have more exaggerated features and you don't need to draw realism! The skeleton rule does not apply to cartoony characters obviously. Just some advice from someone that used to put the mouth too low all the time

•if you get stuck where you feel like you aren't improving, try different art styles out.

•If you have art block and don't know what to draw, try the 'dtiys' or 'draw this in your style' tags and pick something there, or do screenshot redraws from games or shows

•If you usually listen to music when you draw but it's just not doing it atm, switch to something like long YouTube commentary videos or documentaries, and vise versa. Sometimes the brain wants music, sometimes it wants information or gossip. When you get burned out from one go to the other

•this applies to traditional and digital art too! If you have art block on one medium, switch to another! If digital isn't working, grab a pencil or paintbrush, or play with some clay! Sometimes the brain isn't bored of art, it's just bored of the medium.

•If you're trying realism and struggling, break it down to simple rules.

And I don't mean the shape thing everyone suggests, I mean things like "the inner corner of the eye lines up with the mouth, the outer corner of the eyes lines up with the ears, your nose bridge leans into your eyebrows, feet are the same length as your elbow to your wrist, use the collar bone to guide the shoulder position, the armpit curves into the breast, etc.

*this doesn't apply to everyone or every expression! Remember the mouth moves around and comes in all shapes, it's a very loose "rule", and people's eyes aren't always the same distance or angle, just keep the ear around that general eye area

Glasses test: can your character wear glasses?

carlos passes glasses test- a better rule for mouths is to imagine smile lines, even if whoever youre drawing doesnt have wrinkles, theyre a good guide for mouth placement

•doing color palette challenges can help practice composition and shading with abnormal colors, and helps understand color theory

•for digital, you can overlay colors over a drawing to make the palette more uniform. Don't be shy abt messing around with it

•Watch speedpaints! Watch pencil animation clips! It helps

•don't be afraid to use your art supplies. Ik the struggle of "but I don't wanna waste it", but that paint will go bad if you keep it on a shelf for years! Use it already! Doodle in the "fancy" sketchbook! Yolo!!

•use cyan and magenta for mixing paint, not blue and red. The "primary colors" rule doesn't always apply to all mediums.

•keep your old art! Do not tear it up or throw it out just because you're not proud of it, it's cool to reflect or even redraw it years down the line (backup your digital art somewhere, even the ones not posted online because your computer could just die one day for no reason and take everything with it. It sucks)

•IF you sketch on paper and then digitalize it later, you can draw the pieces seperately and photoshop them together. So dont worry if you drew a really good hand but it's at the slightly wrong angle, or too far away from the body. You can put it where it needs to be without having to erase and redraw it

[getoutofmyjaneway]

Beta Cannon: the Pre Voyager Era of Kathryn Janeway | Mosaic v The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway

This weekend, I got a copy of the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway from a local book store. For how frequently we speak about Mosaic in the community (despite having some flaws) I was shocked that I had not heard a lot about this book and assumed it was a bad thing. And yeah in some regards it was (see @mia-cooper’s post on the subject). I have a lot of feelings (I’ll post a proper review at a later point) but one thing that did stick out to me is the divergence from what we have considered Beta Canon, aka, the extended universe of Star Treks told through novels, short stories, video games, etc. After completing the novel, I jumped right into my old standby copy of Mosaic, which has dictated a lot of Janeway’s back story since 96. Both of these novels cover the beginnings of Janeway’s life and how she was shaped into the woman we know. 

TLDR The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway changes a lot of things for no reason. Some of these are for the good. Some for the bad. And some, for like no good reason at all, like it was fine as it was, and was accepted cannon for like 25 years, but sure fine whatever.

I will mention that, as Mosaic has been a book in my library and I have read it too many times, so of course, I do have a bias toward it. Additionally, I feel like it is fair to mention here that authors of Fanfiction have leaned on this as their bibles since 1996 as Mosaic is written by Jeri Taylor, one of the show-runners for Voyager. Because of its connection with a showrunner, Mosaic is also integrated into the canon of the show. It seems that most points that are taken from Mosaic in the Autobiography are only included because of their existence in cannon material.

Anyway, this review is going to focus on the characters that shape Kathryn and I will end with my final thoughts. This is long so to respect your dash, you are going to have to click keep reading. You’re welcome.

Obligatory Spoiler Warning for ALL of Mosaic, chapter 13 of Pathways, and chapters 1-7 of The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway

Edward Janeway

In all media, I feel like we can safely say that Kathryn Janeway is in fact a daddy’s girl. Her relationship with her father is very important to her, so it is interesting to see how it is portrayed very differently in both novels. In Mosaic, a lot of the highlights of Janeway’s earlier years revolve around time spent with him. From giving her special attention after ‘Your Sister’ was born, to consoling her after her losing tennis match and subsequent walk home in the rain, and trips to Mars, Kathryn mentions great fondness of quality time spent. In the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway he is more described as an absent father, one that she always wanted to see and please. When he was home, she wanted all of his attention and to impress him greatly. She wished to follow in his footsteps after gaining a love of flight and the stars with a plane ride and a telescope he gave her. He tried to prepare her by detaining the events of the current conflict with Cardassia and inviting Starfleet brass over for dinner. Overall, in her early childhood, it makes more sense for Edward to not be around often. There is not a lot of conflict between the sources, other than the details of the aforementioned tennis match and different childhood nicknames.  

Edward is in a crash aboard an experimental ship on Tau Ceti Prime which leads to his death. This is where the big differences begin. In Mosaic, Kathryn and her fiancé are also on board. In  Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway, Kathryn is still on the Al-Batani. The fall out of this event has a great effect on Kathryn of course in both novels. As this is a missive shaping event of Kathryn’s life, I felt it very jarring to be changed. This moment shaped Janeway and gives us good context for why she handles situations the way she does. I see this trauma and I understand her character better, for dealing with the loss of two of the most important people in her life all at once.

Gretchen Janeway

The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway was good to Gretchen Janeway as her character is basically a blank slate. We know little about her from Mosaic as it mostly focuses on Kathryn’s relationship with her father (and other male influences in her life). It is nice to learn more things about Grechen as with Edward’s job, it is likely that Kathryn was mainly raised by her. Other than being an artist, she also wrote some of the Flotter holos and wrote a number of children’s stories about the people of Bajor during the occupation. She does a lot of humanitarian work with the refugees from Bajor during the occupation. She loves to garden and get her daughters involved. She has a close bond with Phoebe due to their overlapping interests, but you can tell that she strives to support her in what she does. Overall, I like getting know Gretchen to be someone of than Kathryn’s mother.

Phoebe Janeway

 I was shocked when researching Memory Alpha for this review, Phoebe is never named in any Cannon media up to this point (Star Trek Prodigy could very well change this). We know Janeway has a sister and she is an artist, but that is it. Both novels keep her very similar personality-wise. In both stories, Kathryn is not looking forward to being a big sister. They also both mourn the loss of their father together. In Mosaic, she is not mentioned much. Kathryn tells her she is not old enough on an off planet trip and Phoebe plays pranks on her. The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway goes much more into depth. They don’t get along when they are younger. They fight a lot. I feel this is a very realistic portrayal of real siblings, vying for attention and approval, snapping when they don’t get their way.  They both excel at what they do, Kathryn in her studies and Phoebe through her art. They seem to need to one-up each other at every turn.  As they grow up, they grow closer together, as many siblings do. Points added for giving Phoebe a wife, something which has been included in a lot of fanfiction. Overall, there are no big conflicting points.

Mark Johnson

Kathryn’s fiance at the time of the Voyager’s disappearance, Mark is a very different part of Kathryn’s life in both novels. In Mosaic, he is a childhood friend and went by his middle name Hobbs. Seemingly always two steps behind Kathryn, he did a lot of the same activities that she did, tennis and swimming in the underground cave systems. He did these poorly, and this makes Kathryn always look down upon him. They reconnected after her father’s death and she fell head-over-heels for him. Personally, I always felt this was a little uncharacteristic of Kathryn, to run away from her responsibilities to be with a man. It just seems very out of character and has always bothered me. The  Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway takes a completely different approach. She meets Mark as a friend of Pheobe and her wife as a widower. They hit it off and they fall hard. You can see the conflict in Kathryn as she debates how to move forward with a relationship as they have different outlooks on life. She has a drive to explore but does not want to be an absent parent. She debates quitting, which I don’t think is something Janeway would have ever done. Overall she decides to accept Mark’s proposal just before taking command of Voyager. This makes the Dear John situation a lot more believable as it makes sense that he would want to move on with his life much quicker. Overall, I have to just ask, why? I know Mark doesn’t have a lot of character, but why change basically their whole relationship dynamic? 

Justin Tighe

Justin is a character I actually like for selfish reasons. This explains why I was very miffed that he was nowhere to be seen in the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway. Justin is Kathryn’s first love, they were coworkers, engaged and in love, and dies in the same accident that takes her father. As a person who always wanted Chakotay and Janeway to get together, this incident perfectly gives the reason. She is afraid to get romantically involved with a crew member because of the nature of the job. This dynamic is seen between Picard and Nella Daren in TNG very well. Kathryn has learned the hard way that she can lose a person under her command and how it feels when you are in love with that person. In early Voyager, you can see she isolates herself from the crew and it takes time for her to get comfortable. And during Night she relapses to her old ways. This is the way I have always justified Janeway’s reluctance to have a romantic relationship during their time in the Delta Quadrant. By understanding her background, I have a lot of respect for that choice. Her relationship with Justin really shaped how she handles relationships and without the impact he had on her life, it actually makes her character weaker.

Owen Paris

Owen is Kathryn’s mentor. In Mosaic, they meet as he is reviewing her junior honors thesis advisor on massive compact halo objects. From here they gained a relationship built on respect and learning. It makes sense that, as he was her personal mentor, that she would be close with his family, and why she would seek out Tom as a person to bring with her to the Badlands mission. In the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway, she does not meet him until she is on the Al-Batani. This doesn’t only weaken her relationship with Admiral Paris, but moreover weakens her relationship with Tom. If he was her superior officer, why would she develop such a ‘big sister’ mentality to Tom if she didn’t have as many opportunities to meet him?

Tuvok

Mosaic does not go too much in depth with Tuvok and Janeway’s relationship, but its sister novel Pathways does. In Pathways, Tuvok meets Janeway when he is an ensign under her command of the USS Bonestell. The Bonestell and the Billings, two ships that Janeway served on, tend to get confused a lot. Most sources have Janeway’s first command as the Voyager, Including Voyager itself -  “It doesn't seem like my first command is shaping up the way I expected,” Janeway Shattered. The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway has her and Tuvok meet on the Al-Batani. I actually really like the dynamic between them, as they grow to respect each other over a much longer period of time. I also like that, though Janeway climbs through the ranks, it does not change their relationship dynamic as she still relies on him and asks him advice as if they were equals. I think giving them a longer time to build their relationship. Also would like to note that Janeway and Tuvok also had a friendship with the original CMO of Voyager, Dr. Fitzgerald. I always wanted to know more about the Pre-Caretaker crew and I would have loved to see this dynamic and how the grief of losing a close personal friend in the Caretaker incident would impact them both.

Also I feel obligated to shout out the Janeway and Tuvok story in Star Trek Waypoint One-Shot. I need to get around to doing a series retrospective, but this short story I have not seen anyone talk about and I love it so much. Please read Waypoint. Okay next.

Other characters

Cheb - Janeway’s boyfriend in Mosaic. He was kind of an asshole and got her into trouble. He is not in the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway and I see no problem with this.

Boothby - “[he is the] head groundskeeper at Starfleet Academy. When I was a cadet, he used to give me fresh roses for my quarters,” Janeway Revulsion. Boothby is not in Mosaic. In the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway, it is explained that her mother loved to garden and this was something that Boothby did as a gradian figure to make her feel at home and destress. Makes sense.

Aisha - A childhood friend of Katheryn’s. Only in the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway. Mosaic has this weird thing about highlighting the relationships with only the men in her life, so it is nice to see her have some other female friends.

Nexa - Katheryn’s roommate at the Academy.  Only in the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway. Nexa helps broaden Kathryn’s horizons by helping to learn about Exoliguisticts, first contact, and the Betazoid culture. Again nice to see her have other female friends.

Riker - Yes they go on a date in Mosaic. He is not mentioned in the  Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway. I know he is a gag character but I still liked it.

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

Final Thoughts

A lot of characters were changed between these two novels. There is a lot to like and a lot to hate. I really like what the Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway did with characters like Tuvok and Gretchen Janeway. Other characters were not so lucky (Justin, sweetie I’m so sorry that they would erase you like that, oh my god). It’s a mixed bag, but one thing I need say is... why?

We have had a good thing going here with the established canon as is. Mosaic (and Pathways) is the foundation of which the last 25 years of fanworks and the relaunch novels are based on. Why change history when it is already written?

Always, would love to hear your thoughts and thank you for reading my novel of a post. I will see you in the full review.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 20: Yugi’s Senshi Outfit

So I’ve been doing a lot of work, and I haven’t looked at the blog for a hot minute and when I finally checked back in to do these posts I noticed something on my tumblr was just blowing up. I got all excited thinking “oh shoot, Did I draw something right??” and instead, it was a random post I made about the bootspants from season 1. Three years later, resurrected from the grave and covered in...thousands of notes? I don’t understand how this website works.

Anyways, the comments are mostly good, but a little bit wild. A lot of people seem to think I would know what Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is, when I’m an adult who is still watching the first 5 seasons of Yugioh. (I will never have time to watch Jojo,) and then some other people started talking about Actual Card Mechanics that went...completely beyond my comprehension. But then there was one person. One person who said one thing, and brought it all together.

Poots.

The boots that are pants.

Poots.

I can’t believe I looked at all the different combinations, but a Poots never crossed my brain.

It is so perfect, so cathartic, although it took 3 years to get there.

Poots.

Anyways, we’re in S5 and unfortunately not in poots anymore, Yugi is now dressed in a tupperware container from hell and they have wandered into a desert. On cue, Grandpa has an injury, but at least this time it’s not his ass.

You know how there’s artists who do hyper-realistic versions of pokemon monsters with detailed bone structure and muscle anatomy? I dare them to look at this orb and tell me how the hell it has wings. Like go ahead and try and pin a spine down on that thing. I’ll wait.

(read more under the cut)

So Joey decides to sprint down this endless desert with just boundless positivity.

Over the edge of this sand dune is a whole bunch of huts,just random civilization out in the middle of no where.

One girl walks over and it’s a look.

She’s really the only one here who can talk, and she just seems...so incredibly bored to be here. A whole lot of Wednesday Addams energy. She leads them into a hut where an old guy pulls a scroll out of blue fire. As you do.

Again, this arc should have been a video game, because while it’s something to get the player interested if there’s some riddle they have to solve to progress, when you’re watching a TV show, it’s not like I’m the one solving the riddle. The format is honestly one of the downers of this arc, tbh.

It has strong “I played a D+D sesh and made a webcomic out of it vibe” and I know I just called out like half of you, but listen, I will not take it back.

This episode, our gimmick is some asshole is going to be yelling at us from the other end of the map, just shouting in the background for the entirety of the episode like that tangible human skull meme.

Then Wednesday Addams hands over yet another MacGuffin because why not?

Tea can twin it up with Yugi now. Her necklace doesn’t seem haunted, but it’s only a matter of time. (also her necklace looks so freakin terrible, we’ll see it later and I’ll have a lot more to say because wtf it looks like some sort of polly pocket.)

I’m not 100% that the voice that shouts at us from the end of the hall this episode is Mokuba’s voice actress. But I’m 99% positive it is, or Mokuba’s voice is just really that type of vibe.

Stuff happens, and it felt like card duel stuff, so I’m gonna skip over the part where they pulled out their duel monsters one by one, since the fight was pointless anyway because the worms can turn you into stone. So Yugi and Pharaoh decide to have a chat about it because their plan is clearly not working.

This is when Pharaoh has a vivid lucid daydream, which seems like something that would have been more convenient before he ended up turning into stone on the floor of some desert. But, hallucinations never come when they’re convenient on this show. They usually come during card games, tbh.

Imagine with me that you’re dreaming of like...an old ass greek guy who is 99% Alexander the Great. Imagine he tells you to fuse with a sentient paper card that you already carry around in a weird capsule.

Please

For the love of all that is holy

Do not think about what it means to fuse with the Dark Magician.

Dark Magician is...he “exists” but he’s like not even a person. There seem to be whole fleets of dark Magicians, which are all the same guy, just cloned, right? Or maybe they’re a family? Or like...I don’t freakin know. Like they’re all hanging out together in some card dimension so it’d be more like fusing with the guy who dresses like Barney the dinosaur instead of actually Barney. Like he’s more of like a concept than a dude, but apparently you can just introduce him to your...whatever this armor is supposed to be, and Dark Magician turns into a Super Suit.

I want to express my thanks to the Yugioh team for not putting Yami in his underoos. Hell, they didn’t even take off his jacket. I do not know what art directer ok’d this for animation and said “yeah, this won’t kills us if we animate it.” but that is a hell ton of lines and design right there. Yeah they have 3d, and probably had to 3d that staff...but that doesn’t mean you don’t end up drawing it, in the end--you still have to draw over your 3d. You still have to draw literally everything.

Anyway, when we get to the eye of the storm. The secret to getting there was that you have to fly, which again--3/5 of these guys already have a monster that can fly. We can finally tell the voice at the end of the hall to stop yelling because it’s really bothering all the townspeople, and then move on with the quest.

Everyone else was stone during this. So when they un-petrified they kinda looked over at Yugi and were like “how freakin long was I out???”

But youknow, Yugi’s 2 people, so it’s fine. So long as you don’t get down to the third bastard still sitting around in there.

After this, our NPCs vanish, and the show pushes us directly forward. No time for them to piss off a land turtle or set a bunch of wolves on fire. Just get out of the desert and freakin go.

I’m just so bothered by this random ass huge chunky necklace.

It’s like the size of your freakin fist. And it’s just...a pentagon. Congrats Tea, you have a fake ass plastic necklace. I guess it’s so that when we’re far away we can still see it on her chest but like...This show loves huge ass necklaces, and they’re all basic ass shapes. We got a pyramid, the Kaiba’s wear squares, Bakura wears a circle with kind of phallic bits hanging off of it and this is just...it’s literally just a pentagon.

I guess Ishizu wore a wadjet and Duke has an indecipherable clown as his necklace. But man...the Yugioh necklace game is just a lot of shapes.

And so we continue on with this filler arc, which is also a pokemon arc, and even secretly has a Sailor Moon arc just stuffed in there for funsies. This arc is weird.

Also, I brought up the human skull so I legally have to post this.

Anyway, here’s a link to read these in chrono order, in case you just got here: https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

And I’m off to drink a bin of ice water because it is 5 billion degrees right now in this house.

[pauvre-lola]

do you have any tips on how to get better at drawing backgrounds and coming up with better color palettes?

Hmmmm I think it really depends on your art style and what you're trying to convey with your piece ! Observing and practice obviously make perfect, but sometimes you gotta step back and ask yourself where the fuck you want to go lol, like don't be ashamed to let go of stuff you don't like or won't be useful to you !!!! Also, if you have a realistic art style, I'm not sure what I'm about to say will really be helpful !

For colors, it's always good to know one or two things about color theory, when I feel stuck on a piece I often read some stuff about it and/or observe what some of my favorite illustrators did/do. You got plenty of guides out there for free, way much more articulated than me, and applicable for various art style ! You don't have to be a master ( I know I'm not lol ), but it makes the process of picking colors easier ! I don't like complicated color palettes for exemple, so I tend to pick two or three colors ( either complimentary or analogous my beloved ), that I feel reflect the mood I'm going for, and build my drawing around them. You can add a little accent colors, I love blue palette and use red or fuschia as an accent color !

You can play with color layer or gradients to unify your painting !

The color's distribution can help you with the composition ( think of the 80/20 rule ! ), especially to highlight certain elements, so you can build a thoughtful background :D

For the backgrounds, try to think about what story it tells, what link does it have with the character(s) in the drawing, what's the atmosphere, the mood of your drawing, what do you want to show. Pay attention to the shapes and where you put them, and if they have a meaning ( round, sharp etc, it is supposed to be a happy scene or a violent one etc ), if you only work with flats and very little shadows ( like me ! ), it can quickly become messy and confusing !

You can play with perspective too ! Who is looking at the scene, from what point of view "the photo" is taken. Since I try to do something close to the "old" illustrators ( gustave doré, arthur rackham and all that jazz ), I often go with a two-points perspective, and something very frontal/direct, it fits what I want to do, and I hope with my style lol. There are a lot of videos on YT that explain how perspective works ( I personally assimilate the info better when I see people doing it ! ). You can also look at some photographies/paintings and try to guess where is/are the vanishing point(s) for training.

But yeah, for background try to think of it in terms of storytelling !

That's all I can think of for general tips, but if you have any other questions, feel free to ask me, I'll try my best to answer ! :D

[quicksilversquared]

Defeat by Data

After getting great success with his efforts to figure out what was going on with Lila, Max has turned his attention to a bigger project: using data collection and analysis to track down Hawkmoth's location. Unfortunately for Max, it's proving to be more difficult than expected.

Unfortunately for Hawkmoth, that's not enough to deter Max.

links in the reblog

The models were ready, the equations tested and confirmed, the map of Paris downloaded and imported and the geo-locator coordinates checked and double-checked. The data sheets had been polished to perfection, each column crisply labeled and with data checks set up to let Max know if anything wasn't entered in the correct format, and linked to the program that he had developed.

All that was missing was enough data to provide a statistically significant result.

Max sighed as he entered his latest row of data, his eyes scanning upwards on the data sheet in hopes that somehow, magically, more information had appeared overnight.

His hopes were, of course, in vain. The data was as sparse as it had been before.

"I am sure that you will eventually gather enough useable information to track Hawkmoth down," Markov told him encouragingly. "Perhaps it is not working as quickly as you had hoped, but that may have been a bit optimistic."

"I think I got my expectations thrown off by how easy it was to find data about Lila," Max said with a sigh, making sure the line was saved before closing the document. Staring at it for too long would just make him frustrated, and he didn't do any decent work when he got too frustrated. "Hawkmoth is proving much more elusive."

Elusive, and the unknown variables that Max had to deal with were much harder to account for.

On paper, the concept of Max's Hawkmoth-finding model was simple: all he had to do was observe when people around him got mad, make note of where they were and what time it was, and then make another note when they got akumatized. In theory, he should be able to take the amount of time that it took for the butterfly to arrive and the GPS coordinates and then plug them in to find Hawkmoth's lair. He could account for the unknown speed at which the corrupted butterflies flew by using a fairly simple equation, which would then transform the data into lines projected onto a map of Paris, each line corresponding to the time taken for the butterfly to arrive. Max would then- in theory- be able to manipulate the lines and make them change in length by the same factor. Once all of the lines met- within a pre-determined margin of error- then that was where Ladybug and Chat Noir should be looking for the source of the akumas.

On paper, it made sense. It sounded easy. In theory, it was straightforward and pretty much guaranteed to produce results. But in reality?

First of all, there was no way to account for the variable amount of time that it might take for Hawkmoth to send out an akuma once an upset was detected. If his response rate varied, that could affect the akuma. Realistically, there was no way to confirm if all of the corrupted butterflies actually flew at the same rate. On top of that, collecting any sort of useable data was really hard, harder than Max had anticipated. There was no telling how angry (or upset, or frustrated, or otherwise emotional) a person had to be in order for Hawkmoth to pick it up. Then it was pretty rare to actually see someone get akumatized- the majority of people got akumatized when they were alone or with a single friend, after all, not in a group setting- and an akuma showing up in public immediately after being akumatized wasn't exactly a given. Sometimes it was pretty obvious that the akuma had shown up immediately, so Max had been counting them anyway- if he didn't, he wouldn't have any data- but most of the time it was pretty questionable and therefore not useable, quality data.

It was really frustrating, to the point that Max had tried making several other models in hopes that something would work out better. But where akumatizations took place didn't give him any leads, either. Much to Max's disappointment, the shape that the plotted points gave him wasn't circular (which would imply a maximum distance that Hawkmoth could reach, and therefore a center point where Hawkmoth's lair was located). Instead, it curved and bulged, the number of akumatizations more dependent on population and neighborhood traffic than anything else. There was, of course, an edge to the akumatizations that had fewer akumatizations per capita, but it didn't tell Max anything that he hadn't known before.

Max was very much stuck, and it was frustrating.

"I would try to get the word out to increase the number of people collecting data, but I worry that that could backfire," Max told Markov, pushing away from his computer. If he stayed close to it for much longer, he would probably be tempted to fiddle with the codes in an effort to somehow increase the value of the data he had collected or something. "If word gets out about what I'm trying to do, then there's a chance that Hawkmoth will find out about it and change up what he's doing. He could move locations on a regular basis, or change up how long he takes to respond to each instance of anger. This is our most likely path to success, so I don't want to risk messing it up."

Markov considered that. "Yes, speeding up our data collection is not worth risking gaining Hawkmoth's attention. I would say that trying to recruit others via a public platform such as the Ladyblog would be a major blunder. Would asking your friends carry a small enough risk to be worth it?"

Max considered that before shaking his head. "I worry that they would talk to other people and word could spread that way. It would be all too easy for someone to overhear what I'm trying to do but not catch why it needs to stay so secret. Or- well, I've heard of Alya doing things immediately after being told not to because she thought that she knew better. She might think that I'm being paranoid about Hawkmoth finding out about the project and post on the Ladyblog anyway." He knew Alya meant well, but... well, she tended not to always think before jumping, particularly in relation to superhero things.

(Max was 86% sure that Alya's little video about the strange symbols on possible Miraculous holders on paintings and sculptures at the Louvre had helped Hawkmoth make the connection between the strange sculpture there and the Miraculous. The chances of that not being the case and Hawkmoth simply happening upon the- what had the newscasts called it? Feast?- the same day that it was unveiled were... well, low.)

"Any of them might tell other friends in an effort to help and end up losing the message of how important it is to keep this project secret," Max added after a small pause. He didn't want to entirely single Alya out, after all, even if she did have the biggest platform and relatively low impulse control when it came to the superheroes. "I suppose I might be able to make up a different reason for wanting that particular data and be able to recruit a couple more people, but would it make a difference? After all, we all go to the same class in the same school. The likelihood that they would see something that I would not is relatively low."

Markov considered that. "I suppose."

"I guess that I'll just have to keep doing what I'm doing and hope that I eventually get enough data," Max said with a sigh, sending one more glance at his computer before getting up. "I don't want to give up. Eventually, it has to work."

  Another week passed and brought with it exactly one more useable data point and a rather unwelcome realization.

Max needed more data, sure. But he needed more varied data. The large majority of the points in his very small data set came from akumatizations at the school. That caused way too much opportunity for error. Really, he needed a lot of data points from a wide variety of locations to try to ensure that he was getting data from all sides of Hawkmoth's lair. That would decrease his margin of error enough to- in theory- pinpoint Hawkmoth's location exactly.

He could keep collecting data points at school all he wanted, but they would only keep getting less and less valuable because they would just tell him the exact same thing that the first points had. Sure, they weren't completely useless, since then Max could look at the variation in response time, but they weren't nearly as useful as points from completely new locations would be.

It. Was. Frustrating.

Max scowled at the air, pen tapping the pad of paper that he had pulled out to help him brainstorm a new plan of attack. The TV was playing in the background, a bit of background noise to help Max think, but he still wasn't coming up with any new ideas.

He couldn't just skip school and wander around the city in hopes of finding people who were getting mad. That would be impractical.

Once summer arrived, perhaps Max could try to stake out spots that tended to see a lot of people akumatized, specially selected to give him as much information as possible- or, to put it more clearly, spots that weren't close to the school. There were a number of parks in the area, or places where tourists and locals alike got fed up with congestion and lines and overly-aggressive pigeons-

"Aha!" Max exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "Mr. Pigeon!"

Markov blinked at him. "Pardon me?"

"Mr. Pigeon- or, rather, Mr. Ramier. He's got to be one of the most akumatized people in Paris!" Max was on his feet- when had he gotten up?- and pacing now. "He gets chased out of public areas and akumatized pretty much every week. Most of the parks aren't that close to school, either. They're pretty scattered- but then that means that the chances of me happening upon him on any given day while hanging out at a certain location is rather low."

"You may be able to recruit some of your friends for that," Markov suggested. "Then you could split up and all stake out a park. If you make up some other project..."

Max considered that, coming up with a couple possible before discarding them as far too suspicious. Lila had proven that many of his classmates would accept even somewhat (or highly) questionable stories without much question, but Max didn't want to depend on that too much. If word got out somehow- he still wanted to avoid letting Alya know, because the less Hawkmoth knew about what research people were doing on his akumas, the better- it could reach someone who would be more likely to take a closer look at the story and perhaps question it.

Better to come up with a solid, logical story now than go with some flimsy cover and have it questioned later. The question was what he could possibly say that wouldn't raise Hawkmoth's suspicions.

Max thought it over for the rest of the day, coming up with ideas and then calculating the probability that each one would hold up under inspection and the probability that, should what Max was doing reach Hawkmoth, it would result in the supervillain changing up what he was doing. In the end, one excuse stood clearly in the lead.

All he needed to claim was that he was doing a public safety project and so he wanted to figure out the average window of time between when someone got mad and when an akuma arrived, which would then inform people how long they would have to calm down the angry person before it was too late.

(Or it would inform people about how long they had to get a head start before a possible akuma attack started. Max suspected that, if he was actually doing a project like that, most people would choose to use the information to save their own skin rather than trying to help prevent attacks.)

It was believable. It would make people want to help. Max still had to come up with an excuse as to why he didn't want a ton of people to know about the project while it was in-progress, but his main story was at least ready to go.

"I have looked up a record of Mr. Pigeon's appearances and categorized them," Markov announced as Max finished typing up his first draft of the Mr. Pigeon akumatization survey protocol. "And I have come up with a pattern that may help us reduce the amount of time that we spend watching for him. I have emailed the spreadsheet output to you for analysis."

Max nodded, clicking to his email and opening the sheet. On it was an analysis of when Mr. Ramier usually got akumatized on different days of the week, based off of a scan of all of the news coverage of Mr. Pigeon. There were some pretty clear patterns- the sheer volume of Mr. Pigeon's appearances allowed for some properly statistically significant results- and that would help inform where Max and whoever he recruited to help would spend their time. There was also an output chart breaking down the frequency with which Mr. Ramier was akumatized in different locations. Not all of the attacks had that information, but Mr. Pigeon showed up so often that people often took pictures instead of running.

Was it a public safety hazard? Yes, of course. It 100% went against the akuma attack safety suggestions that Ladybug and Chat Noir had released. But no matter how bad of an idea it was, Max couldn't deny that it had provided some very useful data.

"I will add the times and places that are most worth our time to my protocol," Max told Markov, already in the middle of inserting a table in the most relevant spot in their protocol so that it would be easily accessible. If he couldn't get enough people to post one at each place, then the chart would let him know how to most efficiently allocate his resources. "Based on this, we will not even have to wait until summer to start our collection. We could do this over weekends and after school."

If things went smoothly- if they didn't miss more than an attack or two- they would probably get enough data from Mr. Pigeon to be able to move on to the next (and currently undefined) part of the data collection plan. After all, they only needed so many samples at each of Mr. Ramier's favorite locations for Max's analysis.

If things went smoothly. Max had learned before that akumas tended to mess up even the most well-laid plans. They were hardly regularly scheduled (even if Mr. Pigeon did show some pretty distinct patterns) and Hawkmoth could very well decide to switch things up at any time. But provided that nothing changed drastically during their study period, their plan should work.

Now it was time to decide who out of Max's classmates and other friends would be most likely to respect his concerns and not go spreading word of the project to anyone else. Alya was out, of course, and by extension so was Nino. Max estimated the chances of Nino letting something slip- either intentionally or not- to his girlfriend were probably around 92%, which was obviously far less than ideal. He would ask Marinette, who was both far better than Nino at keeping secrets and clearly a fan of the concept less is more when it came to superhero information being shared on the Ladyblog, but...well. She was clearly a very busy person and Max didn't want to add even more to her plate. Adrien was similar, what with his heavily-loaded schedule and outings that were strictly restricted by his father.

Rose and Juleka would both no doubt be more than enthusiastic to help if he asked, but they were both friends with Alya. The probabilities of them telling Alya were in the 80s, which was not an acceptable risk.

They had good intentions, but Max knew that they might not remember to consider the drawbacks of the entire city of Paris knowing about the project.

Alix was a bit of a wildcard, if Max was being honest. The probability of her telling someone else could easily vary between 30% and 70%. It was better not to risk it, at least until he could do a bit of probing around and do a better risk assessment. It would be easy enough to do at school on Monday.

Mylène- and by extension, Ivan- were pretty low-risk. Max had talked with them enough to know that they understood the risks of- well, of pretty much any Miraculous-related information getting released to the public. If Max caught them on their own and explained his concerns thoroughly, the risk of them telling any others was negligible.

Chloe was automatically a no. So was Sabrina. Both were so spiteful and unpredictable- Chloe more than Sabrina- that it would be too dangerous to even try to include them. If Chloe tried to make another demand for the Bee Miraculous and got rebuffed by Ladybug again, she might deliberately tell people about Max's project- or at least the cover for the project that she was told- to try to sabotage the effort.

That only left Kim and Nathaniel in their class as possibilities. If Max told Kim not to tell anyone and why, he trusted his friend to respect that and listen. Nathaniel was likely to be similar, though- as with Alix- Max wanted to do some probing and do a more through risk assessment before including Nathaniel in his project.

It was truly unfortunate that Max couldn't just make a small army of Markovs and depend on them instead of all-too-complicated human helpers, but it would be far too expensive and Max simply didn't have enough time in his day to give them all the kind of attention and interactions that a robot on Markov's level required.

So human helpers it was. Unfortunately.

  The recruitment process wasn't as bad as Max had worried it would be. Everyone that he talked to understood why word getting out about his ongoing research could backfire, and badly. They wanted to help, and they were willing to sacrifice their afternoons and weekends to help Max gather the data that he so desperately needed. Nathaniel and Kim even recruited two more people, bringing Marc and Odine into their group along with a couple of Max's tech club buddies and allowing them to pair up to stake out the various parks and other locations. Everyone was briefed before they headed out as a refresher and handed a copy of Max's final protocol, polished to perfection. There was going to be a little bit of deviation from the plan, since some people's parents wanted them home early, but it wasn't too big of an issue.

"I figured that you must have something up your sleeve these past few weeks," Kim told Max as they settled in at their location. They had a good vantage point of the entire park, and would be regularly patrolling the area to make sure that Mr. Ramier didn't settle down in some hidden corner. "You've been buried in your science projects notebook all the time and scribbling stuff down, like, 24/7."

"It's been a work in progress for a while," Max admitted. "A very long while. Data collection hasn't been going very well, though, so that's why I decided to recruit more people and start following Mr. Ramier. I need more data points if my model is going to be of any use."

Kim nodded. "Right! Because you need a bunch of data to make it, uh, statistic?"

"Statistically significant, yes." Max adjusted his glasses on his nose. "Without enough samples, the data may show a trend but it would be unwise to draw conclusions based on insufficient data. A few outliers or even just one could be too much of an influence on the data set."

"Right, right, of course." Kim considered that. "But why don't you just, like, remove the outliers?"

"Because I don't know that that's what they are until I have enough data," Max explained patiently. "I can't just go around removing points right now because they don't give me the answer I wanted."

"Ooh, okay."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Max pulled out his homework and started working on some of the problems for Chemistry, glancing up regularly to see if Mr. Ramier had arrived. His phone was with Markov in his bag, where his little robot friend would be able to see right away if any messages were coming in. Ideally, Mr. Ramier would show up and get akumatized sooner rather than later on Day One, which would allow them to get their data and then head home right away. There would then be a period of three days before they would have to start checking again, because Mr. Ramier always seemed to lay low for several days after an akumatization before trying again.

It was a bit sad, really- Paris just had to allow him to feed the pigeons in a specific location instead of just banning him (temporarily) from whatever park he was in and then they wouldn't have to deal with his frequent akumatization- but it was really, really useful for Max's study.

"Won't the time that it takes for someone to get akumatize be different in different parts of the city?" Kim asked after several minutes. "Or are you just looking at averages in the center of Paris?"

Sometimes Max forgot how observant Kim could be if he wanted to be. "In theory, yes. Time between anger reaching a certain threshold and akumatizations are likely to vary across the city. That's why I'll be including location data along with the time data."

Kim nodded. "Cool." He tipped his head to the side, considering. "Could you use akumas that showed up on TV? Like, someone who got mad onscreen and then got akumatized and came back and attacked everyone?"

Max blinked at his friend, then straightened like he had been kicked. Of course! How many contests had TV stations across the city held since Hawkmoth showed up? And how often had those contests ended in an akumatization? Pretty much all the time, the akuma doubled back and made a beeline straight for the studio. Sure, there might be a window of thirty to ninety seconds when the akumatization could have happened, but it was usually easy enough to narrow that timeframe down to a more reasonable timeframe of ten to twenty seconds..

Really, Max should have thought of that himself. Televised akumas were a very logical place to look.

"I'll have to dig through the footage this weekend," Max decided. He would do it sooner, but his afternoons would likely be taken up with tracking Mr. Ramier and also getting his schoolwork done. "I'll also have to think of some way to add in a little variation with those during analysis, since we don't know exactly when they were akumatized."

"Maybe the security cameras would- wait, no, never mind, that defeats the entire purpose of using the TV footage or whatever," Kim interrupted himself. He grinned sheepishly at Max. "Sorry, my mom's been watching too many of those detective crime shows recently and they always seem to love security camera footage."

"Well, it is a useful source of information in a number of cases," Max offered. He scanned out over the park, then narrowed his eyes when he spotted a very familiar pigeon-grey suit across the way. It looked like luck was on their side after all. "Though I suspect that detective shows may inflate how helpful cameras are in real life."

Kim considered that. "Yeah, I guess. They don't really show a lot of stuff how it actually happens, really. My mom has a friend who hates those shows and I overheard her once pointing out all of the inaccurate stuff in one episode." He shrugged, then perked up and pointed. "Look, there's a policeman! Ready to start the timer?"

Max nodded, pulling out his stopwatch as he watched the policeman approach Mr. Ramier. "Ready to go."

  Max was practically humming as he entered the day's data in his program. His protocol had worked perfectly on their first run, and of course it was fantastic that Mr. Ramier had shown up so soon. He and Kim had been able to get their data and then retreat to safety in the building that Max had previously scouted out, allowing them to stay completely clear of the (very short) fight and even get a chunk of their homework out of the way before the all-clear signal was given and they could head home. Their group text thread had let the other members of their team know right away when Mr. Ramier was spotted, allowing them to leave their posts for the day instead of being left hanging. And to top it all off, Kim had made a very good point about using akumatizations on TV, so in theory Max would have even more data to add to his collection.

All in all, it had been a very good first day.

"Once I finish my homework for today, I want to start making a spreadsheet of contests that TV stations in the city have had since Hawkmoth's appearance," Max told Markov. He pulled out his daily planner to scan down the list of assignments that he had to complete for the night. Thankfully he had already completed a number of things during the school day in anticipation to their stake-out potentially taking the entire afternoon, so finishing wouldn't take too long. It wasn't as though there was anything particularly difficult to do. "It may not be urgent, since the footage won't be going anywhere and it's not going to be enough for me to draw any definitive conclusions still, but I'm curious about what they will add to the dataset."

He was also curious about how many of the TV akumatizations he would be able to use. They would have to be ranked or otherwise marked in some way to indicate which of the akumas had a smaller- and therefore more valuable- possible akumatization window, but some might not be usable at all. How many would fall into each category... well, that remained to be seen.

"I can start doing a search shortly," Markov told him. "At the moment, I have another search in-progress."

Max blinked, startled, and then spotted the cable hooked up between Markov and his computer. Clearly his robot had been doing research already while Max was at dinner with his family. He almost asked about what Markov was searching, but then he decided against it. He had learned before that if Markov wanted to share what he was up to, he would once his analysis was complete. "That would be great, thank you."

They lapsed into silence, Max working on his homework and Markov working on whatever his project was. There was a periodic quiet beep as Markov found and filed something of particular interest and the scratch-scratch of Max's pencil busy against the paper, both of them consumed with their work. Max had to force himself to focus on his work instead of running through possible treatments for the TV akuma data points to try to improve the data.

(It was very possible that there wasn't any good way to improve the data and his best bet would be to simply rate each data point by quality, but Max wanted to ensure that if there was any way to improve the data that he would be harvesting, he would think of it.)

Across the room, Markov let out a pleased little chirp before diving into research again. This time when Max glanced over, his computer screen was rapidly flashing through web pages that he recognized as belonging to different TV stations across the city. Clearly Markov had completed whatever research that he had been working on before and had moved on to Max's project.

Hopefully he would find a good number of contests and associated akumas.

Ten minutes later, Max finished up his homework and turned his attention to Markov. The computer screen was still flashing furiously, though it seemed- based on the progress bar flashing across the part of Markov's screen where his "eyes" usually were- that they were in wrap-up phase, doing a final check for anything that might have been missed earlier.

Really, Max wasn't sure what he would do without Markov. It was so nice to be able to get help with his various (non-school) projects. Whenever he hit a snag with coding or ran into trouble with deciding what model or statistical test or equation to use, Markov was already on the job and looking up resources for Max to reference. And while Max wasn't allowed to let Markov help him on school projects- he had had to sign an agreement saying that he wouldn't have his robot do his research for him- Markov was allowed to help Max study by quizzing him and it was very helpful.

"Done!" Markov announced with a triumphant beep. "I have produced a spreadsheet of all of the contests held by TV stations in the city since Hawkmoth's first appearance and links to all of the videos. Some of them have accompanying articles that mention an akuma showing up during the contest, but not all of them mention it."

"I'll start with those, then. Thank you." Max scooted his chair over to his computer, eyes scanning the spreadsheet that filled the screen. There were a fair number of contests to filter through, which was...well, it was odd. One would think that common sense would dictate that people should stop creating opportunities that were absolute breeding grounds for high, akuma-attracting emotions, but- as with the case of Mr. Ramier- clearly that was not the case.

If it weren't for the fact that Max was actively using those opportunities in his favor, he would bring up the odd contradiction directly to the mayor. Chloe would no doubt protest- she still seemed to be under the impression that she would get the Bee again eventually- but Max could point out the economic impacts that the frequent akuma attacks were having on the city. Taking actions to potentially reduce the number of attacks could be the first step in redeeming Paris's reputation in the eyes of the rest of the country and all of the potential tourists that were currently avoiding the city.

Of course, taking Hawkmoth and Mayura down permanently would have a far larger impact, so Max would simply let things run as they were for the time being. Once he had gotten all of the data that he needed from his sources he would approach the mayor, but there was really no telling how long that would be.

"Before you dive too far into the TV contest research, I have come up with another idea to increase the breadth of our investigation," Markov announced, and Max perked up. Another idea? It seemed like they were on a roll now. "How open are you to illegal activity?"

Max sent his robot an absolutely aghast look. That wasn't what he had been expecting! "Um, not at all open!"

Markov tilted his head to the side, considering Max. "Even victimless illegal activity?"

"Uh." Morally, Max still wanted to say no, but he had to admit that part of him was curious. "What, exactly, are you considering?"

"Earlier, your friend Kim mentioned using security camera footage to figure out when exactly contest contestants got akumatized," Markov told Kim. "There were, of course, logistical issues with the suggestions, primarily the fact that security camera footage is not immediately available to the public."

"We would have to ask for it, which would mean telling more people about my project," Max added. "And there's no way to confirm that all of them would keep the secret, or that none of them are connected to Hawkmoth in any way."

"Precisely. So we need to bypass the human factor and hack into the security camera footage of places where akumas appeared. If we can see both when they got upset and when they got akumatized, the time stamps on the footage should tell us how long it took for the akuma to arrive. After that, we can find the coordinates for each of the locations." Markov turned fully to face Max. "I have been looking into the feasibility of the hacking and come to the conclusion that it would not be terribly difficult. Some locations may allow for remote hacking, while others would require me to enter the building. Given that temperatures are rising, it is likely that I would be able to find an open window to go in through and from there, locate the security desk area."

Max considered that. Markov was right: it would be a victimless crime. The buildings in questions shouldn't even be aware that there had been any sort of breech. It would allow their project to be sped up, which in turn would allow for Hawkmoth to be found and defeated sooner. It was incredibly likely that the owners of the assorted businesses that they would be hacking into would have agreed to releasing their footage anyway, it was just that- for security reasons- that they would be bypassing the actual asking part.

"So, what do you think?" Markov prompted. "Should we take advantage of security footage to speed up the process?"

"You know what?" Max asked slowly, hoping that he wasn't going to regret this. He wanted to help take Hawkmoth down, and if this was what it took, then so be it. "I think that we should."

  "I hope that you're happy with yourself," Max told Kim the next day at school. He hadn't slept very well, dreams of Markov getting caught and being traced back to Max and both of them getting sent to jail haunting him. "You've gotten Markov doing crime now."

Kim perked up, grinning widely. "Really? Cool!"

"Wha- no, it is not cool!"

  Max was pretty sure that he had never been so busy before in his life. His afternoons and weekends were full of stakeouts, watching both Mr. Ramier and the general public. His evenings- and the days when Mr. Ramier had just been akumatized and was unlikely to try to feed the pigeons again so soon- were full of video analysis, going through footage from both security cameras and TV shows. Every time he got a data point, it was entered in his model's spreadsheet. The number of rows increased every day, with points coming from all over the city. Markov was kept just as busy, looking up dates for akuma attacks and hacking into security systems both remotely and on-site to get more footage for Max to review.

Max had been so busy, in fact, that he hadn't really had the chance to see how the new influx of data was affecting his model's output. It would be important to eventually, of course, to see where they needed more points to get the most accurate results, but Max wanted to finish processing the absolute mountain of material that he had gotten before he got distracted by the analysis.

"I'll help," Kim volunteered unexpectedly one afternoon as he and Max headed away from the park that they had been staking out. Mr. Ramier had been spotted at Ivan and Mylène's location, so there was no point in anyone else staying out longer. "It's just watching videos to see if the person shows up and then marking down times and location, right? I have my tablet with me, I could knock out a few streams before my parents expect me home."

Max only had to consider the offer for a second. Kim was the only one of his friends that he had been willing to tell about Markov's less-than-legal method of getting the security camera footage in the first place, and therefore the only one who wouldn't question him about it. "That would be great! Once I'm all caught up, I'll have a better idea of where in the city I need to get more data from to fill out my sample."

"Maybe you'll be done," Kim suggested. "I mean, we've gotten a bunch of stuff from Mr. Ramier. How many akumatizations do you need to get your conclusions, anyway?"

"A larger sample size tends to produce better data," Max replied vaguely, wondering when, exactly, he should come clean to Kim about the actual goals of his project. He had always planned on coming clean eventually to everyone who had helped him, though originally he had figured that it would be best to wait until after Ladybug and Chat Noir had the information in their hands and were ready to take down Hawkmoth. It was possible that an exception could be made for Kim, though, since he had been such a big help in the entire process.

"Yeah, I guess I remember Madam Mendeleev saying something like that before," Kim said cheerfully. "But you have to draw a line at some point, right? Otherwise you're just collecting data for forever."

Max considered his friend for a long moment, weighing pros and cons before coming to a decision. "Yeah, I do have a- a line, as you call it- in mind. We can talk about it when we get to my family's apartment, maybe? I don't want word to get out about what I'm doing ahead of time."

Kim frowned, clearly puzzled. "Wait, you don't want what your line is getting out? Or- wait, do you mean the project in general? But what's the point in gathering data if you aren't going to be putting out the results?"

"It will make sense when I explain it," Max assured him. They rounded the corner, and his family's apartment building appeared down the block. "There may have been some, ah, misdirection when it came to explaining my goals for the project."

"Ooh, misdirection! That sounds like- like spies and secrets and all that cool stuff!" Kim sped up, forcing Max into a jog to keep up. "I can't wait!"

Max could only sigh. Really, considering that he knew exactly how Kim was, he shouldn't have been surprised by that reaction.

With Kim's eager charge leading the way, it didn't take long for the two boys to get into Max's apartment, snag some snacks from the kitchen, and bundle themselves away into Max's room. Max immediately went to boot up his computer, trying to ignore the way that Kim was practically vibrating with excitement.

He probably should have called his cover story something other than a misdirection, even if that was what it was. The 'spy' term was just making Kim way too excited.

"So, the real story?" Kim prompted once Max had gotten his computer up and started transferring some files onto a USB drive so that Kim could look at them on his tablet. "Do I get to know now?"

"I did promise." Max checked one last time to make sure that the data was transferring over correctly, then spun to face Kim. "Remember, this does not leave this room. If Hawkmoth catches wind of what I'm trying to do, all of our work will be for nothing."

Kim nodded. "I promise not to say anything! Cross my heart and hope to die!"

"Thank you." Max took a moment to compose himself and decide where to start, then dove in. "Kim, do you remember how, when I first told you about the project, how you commented that the time frame between when people get upset and when they get akumatized would vary based on where people are in the city?"

"Yeah, since some people are gonna be closer to Hawkmoth's lair or whatever- wait!" Kim practically yelped, jabbing a finger towards Max. "Are you trying to use the times to track Hawkmoth down? Like, you'll make a map of all of the times and make, like, zones or whatever like they do for earthquakes? Or maybe it was some other natural disaster, I don't know. But, like, the center is bright red, and then the next zone out is orange, and then yellow or whatever, and it stands for how much damage was caused. Are you doing that, but with akumatization times? That's so cool!"

Max blinked as he tried to follow that. "That... would have been one approach, I suppose. I decided to go for a slightly more involved model. But yes, the end goal is to track down where Hawkmoth's lair is."

Kim was grinning. "So cool! Totally worth giving up some of my sprint practice time for! So how close are you?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure. I have gained a great deal of data from the security cameras, but I've been too busy to look at the model output and see if there's any area that's particularly lacking. That's why your assistance will be so helpful- once I'm caught up and have some breathing room, I can look at my model and figure out what attacks will be most worth looking up." Max had been trying to get a good spread of akuma locations, but of course there was only so much control he could have over what data he collected. He had to work with the akumas that showed up, and of those, only the akumas that both got upset and got akumatized within the view of a camera were of any value to him. "That might be what slows me down, actually. If I need points from a specific area that perhaps does not get many akumatizations, I will have to wait for opportunities to appear."

"We could just find, like, a restaurant or something from that area and get Chloe to go there," Kim suggested. "She'll probably be able to create an akuma, no problem."

Max sighed. "We can't just sic Chloe on people to get akumas, Kim. That's not ethical."

"It would be for the, uh, betterment for the city, though! Upset a few people, get a few more akumas, and boom! No more Hawkmoth!"

"He does make a good point," Markov piped up. "The sooner we find Hawkmoth, the fewer overall akumas there will be and the sooner Paris's overall mental health can start recovering."

Max groaned. Maybe he needed to start working on improved human ethics software for Markov. First with the hacking, now with advocating for deliberate (or semi-deliberate) akumatizations! Markov was simply looking at the problem from a numbers perspective, instead of-

Instead of-

Well. Instead of an ethical perspective, perhaps? Except Max knew that there were studies on the effects that akumatization had on people, both the akumatized person and the people who were impacted by the attack. Creating a few strategically-placed akumas to bring an end to the attacks sooner would mean fewer people impacted, in theory, or at least less overall impact.

So would causing akumas actually be considered ethical in this case?

Hopefully things wouldn't come to that. It was a bit of an ethical conundrum and one that Max really didn't want to dive into too deeply right now.

"Well, it looks like the transfer is complete," Max said instead of debating the ethics of purposeful akumatization. "Shall we start? The sooner this is done, the sooner we can look at the model."

Kim practically snatched the USB from Max at once. "You bet! I'll be the fastest video analyzer you've ever seen!"

"Accuracy is more important than speed, if you could."

"The fastest and most accurate!"

"Mhmm."

Silence fell over the room as the two boys started to dig into their files, watching to see if the person who would later become an akuma would show up on camera at the needed times. Max made a face when his first set of files fell short- the man exited the building before becoming akumatized, which meant that he wasn't visible from any of their acquired camera files- and closed out of them, moving the files over to the folder marked for deletion. He wouldn't permanently delete them until his project was complete, just in case any of the data came out strangely and he had to refer to his files to double-check his work or in case they wanted to revisit any of the less helpful recordings and attempt to find more footage.

"Dude, is that Nathalie?" Kim exclaimed suddenly from where he was working. "Adrien's keeper Nathalie?"

Max glanced over, realizing what file Kim must have reached. "Yes, we have footage from the Gabriel design and production building. There was one day when there were three akumas in a row from that building alone. I asked Adrien about it-"

Kim was cackling. "That's so funny! That's Adrien's dad's company! You hacked Adrien's dad's company! Oh man, think about what ol' stick-in-the-mud himself would say if he ever found out!"

"Yes, I'm hoping to avoid that ever happening," Max told him. Then he frowned. "And I don't understand- how is it funny?"

"I don't know, dude, it just is!" Kim was grinning. "I mean, all of these other companies, we don't know who owns 'em. They're just some faceless corporation, you know? But I can't help but picture how red ol' man Agreste would get if he knew that a collège student had gotten into his security system!"

"I suppose." Truth be told, Max still didn't really understand the humor, but he wasn't going to keep trying. He had learned in the past that sometimes Kim found very strange things humorous. "Any luck with the videos so far?"

"Yeah! The first set had a good video of some guy stewing in his office and then getting akumatized there," Kim told him. "No analysis of the other footage from that incident necessary, right?"

Max nodded. Kim had gotten lucky. "Right. We just pull as much footage as possible. Some of it won't be useful."

"Sweet, so I can keep watching Nathalie harassing some poor intern!" Kim considered his screen. "Man, if they're gonna be cruel about people's work, you'd think that they would at least consider moving the company out of Paris so that they wouldn't have to worry about the staff getting akumatized because of the criticisms."

"I'm sure that Mr. Agreste feels that the hassle of relocating would outweigh the benefits," Max commented idly, opening another file. "There would be a lot of time lost associated with a relocation, and Ladybug and Chat Noir generally take care of akumas rather quickly. I've heard that a lot of businesses are banking on this whole issue going away within the next year or two." Was it a wise decision? Perhaps, perhaps not. Max didn't feel himself qualified enough to make that call.

They fell back into silence, working away on their videos. The next two hours passed with only a bit of scattered conversation to break up the quiet, and then Kim's mom tested him to come home.

"Hey, at least we got a good bit done, right?" Kim asked as he handed Max his notes on the videos he had watched and started packing up. "You should be pretty close to being caught up, right?"

Max nodded. He would have footage from the start of one and a half fights to finish watching once Kim departed. "Very close. Thank you for your help today."

Kim grinned. "No problem! Promise me that you'll let me know if anything cool comes up?"

Max barely paused before responding. "I'd have to tell you in person, outside of school. Preferably in either your home or mine, so that we can be sure that we aren't being overheard."

"Right, right, of course." Kim's phone buzzed, and he startled. "Okay, I gotta go. Good luck!"

With that, Kim was gone. Max turned back to his computer, intent on finishing the last of the footage before the end of the evening. It wasn't nearly as fun without Kim there, even though they hadn't really been talking that much, but Max forged on regardless.

Data collection wasn't always the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it had to be done.

"Finished!" Max announced half an hour later, closing his video player and clicking over to the spreadsheet for his model so that he could add the final row of data. "And now for the part I've been looking forward to- seeing the output!"

Markov flew over at once to hover by Max's shoulder. "Let's see it! Then I can start looking up attacks in areas where we need more data right away."

Max didn't hesitate to open the model. It took a minute for the data to load, and then little dots popped up in each of the places where akumatizations had happened. The corresponding time-lines took a moment longer to pop into place, all starting with their length linked to the base factor. As Max moved his mouse around, they pulled towards the cursor. A few adjustments of the factor value brought the lines closer to converging, and Max took the opportunity to look at the spread of points around his rough center. Much to his surprise- and relief, they wouldn't have to resort to having Chloe bully people- there weren't any overly bare areas. Some of his data points were definitely outliers- perhaps Hawkmoth had sent his akuma from somewhere other than his lair- but those could be hidden from the analysis easily enough, and so he did.

Maybe he would look at the outliers later, just out of interest's sake, but Max didn't need anything distracting him from the real analysis.

Laser-focused, Max fiddled and fussed, keeping an eye on the bar on the side of his screen that would tell him when his model had the best fit, aka when his cursor was right where the most of the lines converged (or at the very least, nearly converged). After a bit of fine-tuning and fiddling, Max finally had the center. He clicked to mark it and keep his place, then hid the lines layer of his model so that he could more clearly see the map underneath. As soon as he did, well...

Maybe Max didn't spend much (any) time up on the rooftops like Ladybug and Chat Noir, or flying in news helicopters over the city, but that didn't stop him from immediately recognizing the neighborhood around Hawkmoth's lair. There was his school, and the park that he had eaten lunch in with his friends only a few days ago. There was the fountain that Kim and Alix had had a water fight at only yesterday, splashing each other and any unfortunate passersbys until they were kicked out. There was the Dupain-Cheng Bakery, and the Grand Paris, and right in the center of it all, with a glowing red pin solidly marking the middle...

Well, that was the Agreste Mansion. Which meant- unless Max's model had gone very, very wrong somewhere or Hawkmoth was regularly breaking in past Mr. Agreste's not insignificant security measures- that Hawkmoth resided in the mansion.

Since Adrien was out of the house more often than he was in and was far too nice to be Hawkmoth anyway, he wasn't a suspect. Max could be nearly as sure that Hawkmoth wasn't any of the regular household staff, since being a supervillain would take up a fair bit of time and Mr. Agreste wasn't likely to tolerate something like that. Madam Sancoeur and the Gorilla had to be considered as well, of course, but considering that Hawkmoth was definitely a dude and Max had seen both Hawkmoth and Gorizilla at the same time (or close enough, anyway) on Heroes Day, both could be eliminated from suspicion.

That, of course, left Mr. Agreste.

"Well." Max pushed himself away from his computer, sure that his eyes were huge behind his glasses. "Am I ever glad that we didn't try asking building owners for their security footage. That would have been an absolute disaster."

  The next step, of course, was to present his data to the appropriate audience. In Max's case, that meant putting together a PowerPoint that summarized his model's purpose, his data collection, the analysis, and finally, the results. Several times, Max found himself having to scale back his presentation after he put in a little too much detail.

Maybe the equations and coding that went into the development of his model were important and would be interesting to a statistician or programmer, but they weren't relevant to what Ladybug and Chat Noir needed to know. The target audience had to drive what information was presented. If they had questions, Max was more than willing to spend more time going over his model with them, but he knew that the superheroes' time was likely to be in short supply. The main reason for including any of his procedure was to convince them of the validity of his results, and Max had to remember that.

(He was still totally going to give an extended version of the presentation to his mom once Hawkmoth was arrested, though. She would appreciate all of the equations and coding that had gone into his work and they could geek out about it together.)

Finishing the presentation only took a couple days, rearranging and trimming down the slides so that they would be as straightforward as possible while still conveying everything that he needed them to. Max practiced his delivery, making sure that the transitions between slides weren't needlessly excessive and wouldn't slow him down.

And then it was time to actually tell Ladybug and Chat Noir.

If he were anyone else, Max probably would have struggled to get in contact with the superheroes. It wasn't safe to get in close to the battles, and both Ladybug and Chat Noir always took off so fast once the fight was over. Maybe in the early days of their akuma battles the superheroes would hang around, but with the possibility of Hawkmoth lurking and pouncing on them at the end of a fight, those days were over.

But Max had Markov, who could follow battles around without being as conspicuous and who could zip up to rooftop level without a problem. It still took a couple of tries for Markov to get close enough to get their attention before they zipped off, but it was far easier than Max trying to get in contact with them himself.

"I hope this is a good time," Ladybug said that evening as she hung half in Max's window. Behind her, Max could see Chat Noir lingering, keeping an eye out for- well, for Hawkmoth, probably. "Markov said that you had something to show us?"

Max nodded, taking a deep breath. He was feeling oddly nervous now, far more than he had ever felt for school presentations. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was familiar with Hawkmoth, or at least Hawkmoth's son. If Hawkmoth were a stranger, perhaps sharing the news would be easier. "I do. I have a short PowerPoint that I would like to share with you regarding a project that I've been working on. The project was an effort to track Hawkmoth down using a statistical model."

Ladybug and Chat Noir exchanged a look and then both slipped into Max's room, shutting the window tightly behind them. Ladybug took a moment to shut the curtains, too, ensuring that no one would spot them inside of Max's room.

"I've not heard of anyone using statistics to track down Hawkmoth before," Chat Noir said as Ladybug ensured that there weren't any gaps in the curtains. "It's certainly a different approach."

"We could use a different approach," Ladybug chimed in, finally leaving the curtains and joining them. "Everything else that we've tried has ended up with a dead end." She looked over at Max. "Do you want our help with data collection, or do you already have what you need?"

"I already have my results," Max told them, unable to help smiling at the superheroes' reactions. Their eyes had gone wide and Chat Noir's jaw had dropped. He nodded to the two chairs that he had set up in front of a section of wall where he would project his presentation. "If you want to sit..."

The superheroes sat. Max took another steadying breath, mentally apologized to Adrien- after all, his classmate's life was going to be changing a lot soon- and then flipped on his projector. The first slide of his presentation showed up on the wall, and Max started talking.

"Several months ago, I realized that logically, the time between emotion onset and akumatization should vary depending on distance from Hawkmoth's lair..."

  Within the week, Mr. Agreste had been defeated and put in jail, immediately followed by his assistant. After some investigation, Adrien's mom had been found in some sort of magical coma and was apparently being nursed back to health with the help of Ladybug and Chat Noir. Adrien was temporarily staying in the guest room at the Dupain-Cheng house- why he had decided to go there and not to Nino's house was a mystery to Max, but he supposed that he didn't need to get every question answered- while his mom recovered. He didn't seem to hold any ill will towards Ladybug and Chat Noir for arresting his father, nor- thankfully- towards Max or their other classmates for the investigation that had led to the discovery of Mr. Agreste's secret identity.

Logically, of course, there was no reason to be upset with anyone other than Mr. Agreste himself, and perhaps Nathalie, but Max knew by now that human emotions did not always follow logic. He certainly had to admit that if he were in Adrien's place and his father had been arrested for being a supervillain, Max would more than likely be looking for someone else to blame, because his dad? A supervillain?

But Adrien hadn't reacted like that. In fact, he seemed happier now that his father and Nathalie were in jail. Max supposed that the difference probably largely boiled down to the differences between how Max's dad treated him and how Mr. Agreste had treated Adrien and the resulting differences in their relationships.

Adrien might have cared for his father, but there was no denying that they had a strained relationship at best. Mr. Agreste was overcontrolling and absent at the same time, never showing up for any of Adrien's activities or eating meals with his son but refusing to let Adrien go out for at least half of their outings as a group. Theirs was the exact sort of relationship that was on a fast track to have Adrien move out as soon as lycée ended and go no-contact with his father as soon as possible.

Or at least that was what Max was assuming, given the few interactions that he had seen between Adrien and Mr. Agreste in person and what he had heard (and overheard) from his classmates. He might be wrong, of course, but that was just what it had seemed like from that and from what Max had read online during his dives into online forums to attempt to educate himself better about human social interactions.

Either way, Max wanted to at least try to reach out to Adrien and make sure that the two of them would be okay. Presumably Adrien's closer friends had shelter and food covered, but if Adrien needed to miss class because of the trial or anything, Max could take notes to give him or offer tutoring to help him keep up.

Across Paris, people were thrilled to learn about Hawkmoth's defeat. Ladybug and Chat Noir had let on to the fact that they had had a civilian's help with tracking Hawkmoth down- that a civilian had done all of the work, actually- but, in accordance with Max's request, they hadn't mentioned names or given out details on what the civilian had done to track Hawkmoth down. He just didn't want the attention or the scrutiny about how he had gotten the data from the assorted businesses.

Sure, maybe having "located Hawkmoth via use of statistics and modeling analysis" would have been a good thing to have on his resume once he got to the age when he would be applying to university or to jobs, but there was enough time between now and then that he should be able to come up with a few other projects that would look good, ones where he didn't have to break the law to get the data he needed.

(That wouldn't look good on a resume- or, more likely, on a background check.)

Still, not being able to use his Hawkmoth-finding project wasn't going to bring Max's mood down. His project had been wildly successful after a discouragingly slow start, and the results... well, they had been incredibly far-reaching. The project had played a vital part in bringing an end to the attacks that had terrorized Paris for far too long, and now everyone in Paris had far less to worry about.

Max didn't need recognition. The satisfaction of a job well done... well, it made every minute of data collection analysis more than worth it.

[zet-sway]

I went to school for industrial design - that’s a fancy name for ‘product design.’ It goes without saying I had to design a lot of stuff. After one year of school I was basically looking at everything through new eyes. I’m not trying to say “I see things other’s can’t” but we all view our world through the lens of our own experiences, and my experiences taught me that every time you see a Thing That Someone Made, everything about what you’re looking at has a story behind it.

I was going to write a short post but then a wall of text came out of my hands uhhhhh

If someone makes something, they have to consciously make decisions about it. A lot of times, especially in gaming, decisions are made based on time constraints, resources, and available technology. I know very very very little about what it takes to make a video game but I do know that all the assets have to be constructed in 3D and then an artist has to create a map for it, like an image that wraps around the 3D model. To the best of my knowledge, this has to be done for virtually every single 3D object on your screen, and while I’m sure assets are strategically re-used to create more fleshed out environments, this shit takes a lot of work.

I’ve just spend the last 30 minutes walking around the Normandy looking at stuff and thinking about all the people that made it. As a person with a background in design and now in commercial construction - another thing I’ve sort of developed is this weird sense of when something was loved by the people who created it. I’ve gotten like no progress in the story so far but I’m actually in awe walking around the ship looking at stuff because I feel like it was intensely loved by the people who designed it. There are no ‘shortcuts’ here. Like there are parts of the ship that the player will realistically never spend a lot of time looking at, which is why I’ve posted all of this under a screenshot of a god damn hallway. Oh my god I have a lot more to say than I thought I did send help

There’s a transition occurring here between the captain’s cabin and the elevator. Try to think about this from the perspective of a builder who made the ship. We have an oblong weird shaped object, and they need to fit liveable spaces inside it. On cruise ships, a lot of these spaces are prefabricated off site and "dropped in" to the ship as it comes together. That's what the captain's cabin looks like to me - a modular, prefabbed unit that was stacked on top of probably other prefabbed units to complete the interior of the ship.

But again, the ship's hull has a weird shape - and this is what I mean by 'there are no shortcuts here.' The game developers made this fictional spaceship and actually (and I'm speculating here) took the time to think 'what is the relationship of the hull to the modular units inside it.' They could have just designed a digital interior with no regard for the volume that interior occupied - but they didn't. They could have just put up blank walls in all the places they didn't want to spend the time fleshing out, but they didn't. They designed the interior to fit inside the ship they wanted to make, with a staggering amount of detail to boot. It reminds me of how in the Lord of the Rings movies, the costume creators spent time adding embellishments that the audience would never see, like horse heads on some of the scale maille the Riders of Rohan wore. Those embellishments were covered up entirely by other costume parts - but the costume workers fucking loved what they were doing, and they took the time to do it, because it made them feel fulfilled.

If I'm being really picky I'll say it doesn't make sense to separate the captain's cabin from the elevator because what we're looking at in this screenshot is the 'dead space' of the ship, the odd areas that couldn't be made into useful space (but if you look closely, there are a lot of these 'dead spaces' that have been made into shelves and stuff - goddamn they really wanted to do this shit right). Realistically these probably shouldn't be oxygenated and pressurized, but I'll look past it because I think the developers went above and beyond job actually thinking about how the ship works and then taking the time, spending the money on the manpower to make it real. But what if the captain's cabin is a fully self sustaining unit and that's why it's separated :O fuck me i love this game

People made this game. Every table and chair and pipe and panel and door, the most basic shit people don’t even think about, had to be made and optimized for a deadline to make this game happen. I like to think, based on the level of detail, that they loved what they were working on. And I just can't say enough words about how much I love that.

[papermariosuggestion]

What are you hoping for from a new Paper Mario? What's your "golden ideal", I guess?

I could spend, like, years thinking of things I’d like to see in a Paper Mario game, but I’ll try to narrow it down. Here are some of the main things I’d really like to see:

☆ New partners (plural)

• Based on previously established Mario species, preferably “enemy” species, as “The circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”

• Unusual, but believable, and perhaps even poignant, backstories and fully realized character arcs. I want to care about these characters because I’m invested in this world, its inhabitants, and those inhabitants’ personal successes and failures, not just because their design is so kawaii and/or their dialogue is so funny, though those things are a plus.

• Distinct personalities and opportunities to show those personalities off (through design, body language, dialogue, etc).

☆ RPG mechanics

• Built on the solid foundation established in Paper Mario (N64)

• Turn-based combat

• A leveling system where you get to choose which stat to increase

• Badges (Including superficial badges like the L Emblem and Attack FX badges)

• Something new, like being able to use two partners to perform a Bros.-Attack-like move, or maybe even stats specifically pertaining to your partners.

☆ New locations

• It’s a delicate balance. Locations should both feel like they could realistically exist in Mario’s world and feel like something we’ve never seen before. TTYD has some great examples of this (Rogueport, Boggly Woods, Twilight Town, etc). Super Paper Mario has some creative locations as well, but because it takes place in another dimension, not in the typical world that Mario inhabits, none of them really feel particularly “Mario-esque” in nature. They’re all a bit off-brand, so to speak.

• On a technical level, graphics are improving all of the time, but that doesn’t automatically lead to more intriguing and/or more visually satisfying designs. At it’s core, Mario is a fantasy franchise, an escape from reality, and the Paper Mario series is one of the few series in the franchise that really builds out- or at least used to really build out- its world, and that world was interesting because it was new and mysterious, it practically begged to be explored. Paper Mario games should show me something I can’t see in reality; I know what paper and cardboard and lemons and steaks look like, show me underground cities and palaces, show me sprawling gardens with talking flowers, show me a floating tourist trap in the sky. The biggest limit is your imagination, so let it run wild, and show me that, show me that Alice in Wonderland-like controlled chaos.

☆ An interconnected world and motivated backtracking

• No stage-selection maps. Even if the game is fairly linear, I don’t need to have that shoved in my face. I don’t want to feel like I’m working my way down a to-do list, glued to a track, I want to journey through the world and explore somewhat freely.

• No fast travel by default (maybe you unlock fast travel after beating an optional challenge like the Pit of 100 Trials)

• No pipes that take you right from the hub world to the chapter area; I wanna walk…

…and I want it to be through a believable, expansive, intricate world that changes as I progress through the game, a world I could see hundreds of times and never get sick of because its details are constantly in flux, and because those details are the kind that make it feel realistic and lived-in. I don’t want to be teleported from A to B, or confined on a path from A to B to C, I want to explore, I want to discover, I want to experience this world and to form an attachment to it. This alone would make backtracking more worthwhile, but…

• …another way to make backtracking even more enjoyable would be to add events that make walking into a game in and of itself, like having to follow a creature up in the trees, or having to get through a cursed area in Mirror Mode, or having to dodge and weave through falling rocks because there’s a huge earthquake destroying- and altering the actual geometry of- the area. Walking doesn’t have to be a chore for you to complete in order to get on with the game, and it shouldn’t be, it should be part of the game, just as engaging as anything else you’re involved in.

☆ Non-linear elements

• The game should still be fairly linear overall, because Paper Mario games are chapter-based stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, but having some say  in which chapter comes next, or which partner you meet, or even just which puzzle you solve next would give the player a stronger sense of agency. Story-driven games are at high-risk of making the player feel like they’re just along for the ride, and this would help to counteract that.

☆ Spin dashing

• Gotta go fast! Getting rid of spin dashing always felt like an odd choice to me. Characters like the Yoshi kid, Carrie, and Dashell kind of replaced it, in the sense that they allow you to move quickly, but being able to speed up without switching partners, as well as being able to spin attack and just to witness the utter chaos of Mario flinging himself across the screen again, would make backtracking and walking around in general less of a slog. It would also give you more agency in the overworld and serve as a nice callback to the original game.

☆ Free-moving NPCs & situational dialogue

• In past games, NPCs have been confined to certain paths and locations. They might move from chapter to chapter, but they would always stay in the same general area until you triggered an event that placed them somewhere new. I’d like to see characters wandering around, going in and out of buildings, visiting other locations, having private conversations with one another, getting into fights, buying and selling items at the shop, putting on different clothes, and doing just about anything else they would typically do in-universe. Obviously this would be huge challenge to program, but we’re talking about an ideal here, and anything in this general direction would be an improvement in my eyes. We already see a bit of this in the series, but I’d like to see even more.

• When NPCs say things like “Where are your manners, Mario? You shouldn’t climb on the table” and “Don’t be so careless. There are too many enjoyable things in the world to gamble with your life!” it makes it feel like they actually see what you’re doing and care about what you’re doing. Having NPCs respond to you differently because of where you’re standing, or what partner you have out, or what badges you’re wearing, and so on, makes them into more than just set decoration or a sign to read, it makes them people, or at least more person-like. Nintendo’s been pretty good about this in recent years, probably because technical improvements have made it easier than ever before, and I think it would be fitting for a series known for its world-building.

☆ Dynamic lighting design & a day/night system

• This is all about aesthetics because, as it turns out, visuals are pretty important in a video game. Paper Mario (N64) had some really interesting lighting design, notably in darker areas like the secret passage in Peach’s castle, and we haven’t really seen a lot of that since, despite having more advanced technology that would allow for advanced lighting.

• I’d like to see things like swinging chandeliers that cast beams of light, and cracks in the ceiling that light pours through, and mirrors/reflections that Mario uses to solve puzzles, and shadows that hint at secrets. Lighting is a huge part of shaping a world, and using it in a variety of different and meaningful ways just makes your world seem that much more complex and grounded.

• As for the day/night system, I am picturing a game that visually changes based on the actual time of day, kind of like Animal Crossing games do, but not a game that requires it to be a certain time of day for any gameplay purposes, not for the main quest, not for side-quests, and not even for easter eggs. All I want is for it to be bright when I play in the morning, orange when I play at sunset, and starry when I play at night. This also would add to the game’s replayability, as different chapters would look and feel different depending on what time of day it was when you played through them.

☆ Easter eggs that reference other games in the franchise

• I want it to be clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Mario we see in Paper Mario games is the same Mario we see in other Mario games, not another person, and talking about the time he visited Isle Delfino or when Bowser fused with a sentient tennis racket would really drive that home.

• Make me really look for some, though. It’s cool to spot easter eggs in plain sight, but what’s really rewarding is having to dig for them. I don’t just wanna see Luigi standing in the background, I want to spot little inconsistencies and cracks in the walls and cryptograms spread throughout the world. Sure, the five-year-olds playing might not find them on their first playthrough, but when they’re fifteen and they remember that awesome Paper Mario game they played a decade ago, they won’t just be revisiting a world they’ve fully explored, they’ll be playing on a whole new level, figuratively speaking.

☆ amiibo Compatibility/functionality

• I’m not a big fan of DLC in general, as it’s often overpriced, but I do think amiibos are neat; using a real object to unlock something in a virtual world makes the virtual world feel just that much more alive to me, that much more like it’s a little world I can actually affect.

• The Paper Mario series never really got official merch, and while you do see a bit of your partners’ lives in the epilogue, it’s only a glimpse into their future, so getting little figurines of past partners that make them appear in the game, tell you about a recent adventure they had, and give you a unique badge based on their abilities/personalities/experiences, would be like a dream come true.

☆ Just be creative (I know it’s not that simple, but like, figure it out)

• Surprise me; throw in something inventive and revolutionary, like Wall Merging from A Link Between Worlds or The Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device from Portal.  There’s a whole universe of possibilities out there; please dream a little bigger than items disguised as a gameplay element and a hammer that fills in glaringly obvious gaps in paint. Nintendo’s always pushing the video game industry forward with their creative consoles. Use that, take whatever whacky control method they come up with next and integrate it like Super Paper Mario did- but hopefully even better than Super Paper Mario did- with the Wii remote.

• I see fans writing stories, and drawing characters, and making sprites, and working with all kinds of mediums to make art that knocks everything from recent “Paper Mario” games out of the park. Obviously Intelligent Systems can’t just steal those ideas, but I’d love to see them get on that wavelength and match that passion.

• Make a game that you’d never want to put down because you just can’t get enough of it, and don’t even bother with that “You’ve been playing for a while. You wanna take a break, grab a snack, chill out for a sec?” message; if I die playing your game because it’s truly that good, I see that as an absolute win. That’s legendary game design, my friend; aim to make a Paper Mario game so good it’s worth dying for, and if you fall short of that, hopefully you’ll still land on something pretty awesome.