#a lot bothers me about them but overall still like them a ton!!
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Finally, after at LEAST a month of puttering around with it, my design for the King In Yellow!
#malevolent#fanart#King in Yellow#Arthur Lester#john doe Malevolent#I LOVED DRAWING THIS AND THEN#I lost steam on it#as I got deeper into designing other characters#and practicing mignolas style#so just finished these paintings off and calling them finished#a lot bothers me about them but overall still like them a ton!!#john's design in particular has changed a lot in my mind#since I drew these initially#but fah#enjoy!#malevolent spoilers#spoilers#ep 20
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DIRECTORS COMMENTARY PLEASE I LOVE HEARING YOUR THOUGHTS AND PROCESS <3!!!!!!!!
YEAHHH lots to say for this update
there's a scene I didn't so much as cut from the beginning of this update as significantly shorten: Wolf, Loft, Wake, and Slate are changing into their lighter outfits. Loft says the same line as having the party, Wake begs them for this one day with his Gran Gran, and they all agree they can wait. I've been trying to get better about like, not putting a ton of work into unnecessary connecting scenes, which is why I cut it down. Wake sounding more cavalier also works better for the overall chapter. But i was sad to leave this joke out lol:
may I present to you, Slate's picture gallery! he was mostly on task documenting flora and fauna but he gets a little sidetracked sometimes
I love the idea that he's just, like, kind of terrible at photography. he documents stuff for Zelda and it's always weirdly cropped and kind of out of focus, but she appreciates it anyway.
Slate is also picking flowers for the party! so he is still helping out on that front lol
idk if i've mentioned this before, but beetle does still have pincers! they're just. idk what the right word is. retractable maybe? yeah. like the ancient weapon blades
the filling of the half moon pies is pineapple :-) i was. so worried about it looking like an egg HAHA.
I thought way too hard about how they were going to cook these pies. I was originally going to draw a clay oven or some other setup, but ultimately I thought the Zelda tradition of only having pots over fires to cook was a funnier nod lol. So, they're frying the pies
believe it or not, I wrote this scene before reading dungeon meshi HAHA but it certainly served as good reference for how to set up shots for it
Aryll did in fact eavesdrop on Wake telling Tetra The Situation
That's Champion's little sister in the memory! I like the headcanon that her name was also Aryll.
Champion and his sister are making meat pies instead of pineapple ones.
One again, made a bunch of layout mistakes I ended up having to fix, except this time I didn't catch them until I had already gotten to rendering :-( if you're a patron, you probably saw these versions in the WIP:
problems here: Wolf is walking the wrong away. I was sad we'd be losing his expression but alas. And for the panels with Champion's sister, the angle is too low to be an actual POV shot. I could've left it and said he's just sitting or something probably but it was really bothering me lol so I redrew everything. and then recolored all of it. woof.
as a general rule, if he has scars, that's Slate. No scars is The Other Guy
I understand the complaint about this in BOTW, but I actually kind of like that weird moment that occurs after you finish a memory cutscene, and it just abruptly goes back to Link looking blank-faced like nothing happened. It implies this kind of....distance from the memories that I find interesting. Slate has complicated feelings abt the memories of Champion's life he gets, but like. there's pies to make
shout out to peony she's a real one
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thoughts and distractions
content: gojo satoru x fem!reader + established relationship.
warnings: fluff, reader is perched on gojo's lap , uhhh shit ton of grammatical errors i don't have time to fix ig paired with weird and hasty writing ig yeah. i still love this piece lol it feels like a fever dream reading it back
a giggle echoes out in the room.
"what's gotten into you, baby?" satoru closes his eyes as he feels you rub your cheek against him like cats do.
he had been waiting for you to come home from your work. it was his favourite part of the day, waiting for you to come home and have you sit on his lap and ramble on about your day at work. it was common for you to be clingy towards him, he wasn't any better with you either.
but today you were clingier than usual, it was like you were trying to merge into him â not that he minded.
you hadn't even bothered to take off your shoes which were usually the first to go when you came home, making a beeline for his lap the moment you got through the door and started peppering his face with kisses, making his heart soar along with his eyebrows, prompting him to ask the question with an airy laugh.
"i missed you a lot today" a sigh leaves your lips as you voice out the reason for your needy behaviour, hands fisting the white tee he likes to wear around the house.
this was true, there was something about the day that kept making your brain revert back to his blue eyes that reminded you of the sky, his laugh that makes you feel like your heart is bursting from joy whenever you hear it and his overall presence that makes you gravitate towards him like a sunflower follows wherever the sun goes.
"yeah? what did you miss about me?" he hums at you, mouth pressing a kiss to your temple as you close your eyes and simply breathe, body feeling like you'd explode from the love and touch of the man who's currently holding your hips.
your hands travel to the back of his neck, fingers playing with the short hair from his undercut as you try to remember the exact thoughts you kept having as you worked.
a smile breaks out when you hear satoru let out a purring-like sound from his throat when he feels your fingers in his hair, he'd always been sensitive there.
you pull away from the side of his face and press your forehead to his. "well the first thought was about your eyes" you whisper to him, like you are sharing a secret with him. but it's never been a secret, not to him and not to anybody else.
it had always been obvious when your sudden change in favourite colour had drastically and funnily gone from dark red to blue, there was not a single shade of blue that had gone unloved by you when you started loving satoru. you had behaved like it was a crime to get anything that didnt have a dot of blue.
"well duh, everyone and their mother knows how much you love my eyes" satoru replies with an eyeroll that earns him a smack to the back of his head, your pretty lips forming a pout that matches his own now as one of his hands come up to rub where you hit him.
"now you've ruined the mood, get off me" you wiggle around in his lap, half heartedly untangling yourself from him.
"get off you? you're the one laying on top of me" he retorts as he watches you get up with hasty movements, causing some of your hair to fall in front of your face.
you look at him with faux irritation and card your fingers through your own hair, flipping them back and whip around to finally take the awful heels off when you're suddenly being pulled from behind, definitely by the big oaf you call your boyfriend.
satoru laughs a little in your neck when you still resist his hold on you as he gets you back on his lap. a tender kiss to your neck has you melting right back into his chest.
"where you off to, missy? you still have to list your thoughts to me" he says with a smirk. his smirk turns into a fond smile when he hears and feels your laughter as he tickles your side slightly.
his own heart bursting with joy at the sound of laughter of his love, just like yours does with his.
just like it always will.
#gojo satoru fluff#gojo satoru x reader#gojo satoru x reader fluff#gojo fluff#satoru fluff#jjk fluff#jujutsu kaisen fluff#gojo satoru x you#gojo satoru x y/n fluff#gojo satoru x you fluff#gojo satoru x y/n#satoru gojo fluff#satoru gojo x reader#satoru gojo x reader fluff#satoru gojo x you#satoru gojo x y/n#satoru gojo x you fluff#satoru gojo x y/n fluff
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Hello! Sorry to bother but do you have any digital art tips? Iâm quite new to it and any tips, tricks or advice would be helpful! Your coloring style is very beautiful and I love it a lot!
thank you! đđđ sorry this is a bit late, hopefully there's still something helpful in it!
(also, it got pretty long, sorry!)
I think the biggest thing is to just take things slow -- digital art feels different than drawing traditionally, and it's SUPER easy to get overwhelmed by the billions of cool features that the digital world offers. (I say, as someone who spends a lot of time downloading cool brushes and textures...and then never using them ever.) there is a ton of really cool stuff you can do digitally, but because there's so much, I think it's really important to take time to figure out what is and isn't working for you. spend some time doodling without any intent to do a finished piece, figure out how you like to hold (or not hold) your tablet, what keyboard shortcuts you end up using a lot (and therefore might want to map to your pen/tablet buttons for quicker use)...that kind of thing!
everyone's workflow and preferred program and style are different, so it's hard to give hard-and-fast general advice. but the things that I think of as the essentials for learning digital art programs, and what I think of as a good order to focus on learning them in (although YMMV, especially depending on what kind of art you're doing):
brush customization (e.g. flow, opacity, softness)
layers and layer masks
selections and transformations (e.g. scale, rotate, flip horizontal/vertical, skew) (skew is underrated and I will die on that hill)
blending modes (e.g. multiply, screen)
adjustments/adjustment layers (e.g. hue/saturation, curves)
and I think most stuff after that is gravy! often very good gravy though! but yeah, as overall advice I recommend just taking things one little bit at a time, spending some time just drawing and messing around with each feature and what you can do with it. whether or not you end up incorporating any of it into your workflow, it's always good to try things out and just see how they feel! :D
and just so there is at least a little more concrete helpfulness in here, here's a few more specific things that I think are super important to keep in mind!
use! your! tablet/pen buttons! I mentioned this earlier, but they are extremely useful for keyboard shortcuts that you use often! most programs will also let you create new shortcuts for other things -- personally, I use the magic wand tool to fill in big color blocks a lot, so I made shortcuts for 'expand selection' and 'fill' and then mapped them to my tablet buttons.
flop your work horizontally often! when you're working on something, you get used to the way it looks, so seeing it mirrored is a quick way to see it with fresh eyes! in my experience, it often feels like this:
(a common thing is to find that everything is sort of 'leaning' too much one way, which is where skew really comes in handy!) (seriously, I love skew, it is my savior)
if you're working with color, keep a hue/saturation adjustment layer (or a layer filled with black or white and set to Color) on top and toggle it on occasionally to check your values! a lot of people who know a lot more about color than me (and are better at putting it into words) have written about why values are so important, so all I'll say is that the rule of thumb is that your image should still be readable in greyscale:
there are some exceptions and grey areas (do ho ho), but it's a good general rule to keep in mind! (some programs also have a colorblind mode, so you can check to see how your work will look to someone with colorblindness!)
and finally, here's some digital art programs I recommend, if you're still looking for a good one!
free: krita, FireAlpaca
paid: ClipStudio, Procreate (iOS/iPad only)
#art#...sort of#horizontally flipped mal isn't my favorite drawing i've ever done of him#but it's up there#anyway i do personally use photoshop#but i absolutely do not recommend it when there are better and free-er art programs out there#it is the equivalent of texting with a giant 90s-block phone that has been jury-rigged to somehow install whatsapp#because i don't NEED a new phone i KNOW how to use this one it's FINE#(oh god i've become my dad)#someday i will have to actually switch to clipstudio and learn new keyboard shortcuts :(
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WILD. Was anyone else aware that the Ted Lasso team has gone in and made post-production edits on season 3 episodes, sometime in the last year?
I've been rewatching the finale in advance of the one year anniversary of it airing, and straight off, I noticed that the points total on the graphic looked different to how I remembered it - a much closer race. It stuck out because I remembered being annoyed that they didn't celebrate the moment Richmond got confirmed for the Champions League, as the gap was big enough for it to have happened a while ago, offscreen. I still have a screencap from when the episode aired:
However, the current copy on Apple has an updated graphic, making the post-production graphic in line with the numbers on the actual physical whiteboard prop and the script mentioning the win streak. See here:
The corrected copy makes Richmond's points match the whiteboard, but it also puts the teams in 3rd to 5th place much closer to them points-total wise, meaning that now, in the current version of the episode, Richmond only qualified for the UCL in "Mom City," making it make more sense that the start of 3.12 is the first time it gets discussed. Would have been nice to mention that stake in the City match commentary during 3.11, but I genuinely am shocked that they went back in and edited the already-published episodes to clean up the post-production errors. For the record, here's the whiteboard as of 3.08: W10, D9, L6.
Just in case anyone cares, the order of those results was - 1 draw against Chelsea, 6 wins with Zava, 1 loss against West Ham, the rest of the draws and losses occurring between 3.05 and the loss against Arsenal in 3.07, and then the 4 wins mentioned at the start of 3.08. By the start of 3.12, it's mentioned they are on a 16 game win streak, so that's 22 wins overall, 9 draws, 6 losses, going into the final weekend, hence the updated graphic.
I like that they went in and fixed it - no idea when in the past 12 months that occured - but I also kind of can't believe they bothered? Then again, I can't believe the mistake was made in the first place, as they were so specific with details in the prior seasons, so maybe they couldn't live with it being wrong.
I know there were rumours about a ton of issues in terms of getting these episodes posted in time - right down to the wire, still fixing the edit on the airdate - and it's clear that these details were not checked and confirmed by the poor people in post who were not working off the show bible that lives in the writers heads. I don't blame them at all, I blame the people who got the edit to them late, but it did annoy me during the season a LOT. The maths wasn't mathing, and as we know this is a show that has been careful with dates and timelines and stuff like that.
Anyway! The point is, a) this post about my UCL qualification fantasies is now moot, and b) I went back and checked another post production error that had REALLY pissed me off, which was the dates of texts in Ted's phone in 3.04. Phone dates have always given us the timeline quite strictly before - it's how @belmottetower and I started the timeline in our primer, with Ted arriving in London on January 6, 2020 and then following the football seasons from there to place the season 3 finale in May 2022 - but in 3.04, all the cute texts we see to all the characters in his phone were badly misdated, placing the timeline further in the future. This caused arguments or misunderstandings, at the time about the actual timeline of the show, but it seems this was another detail the producers really wanted to fix and tighten up, as they've gone back and had it edited.
It's weird, because the texts Ted was actually going back to - the messages from Doctor Jacob - were dated correctly as late 2019, and there's even a little easter egg in the form of a US rideshare notification picking him up to go to the airport in America, on 5 January 2020. (Even the area code, 316, is apparently correct to Kansas.) That's all correct even in the original version of the episode, but somehow we then skip a year and place his most recent texts, as of 3.04, in late October 2022, when they should only be in late September or early October 2021. (I found this post on Reddit that screenshotted his phone at the time.) Examples:
I had to go back and check this, and sure enough, it's been edited to reflect the established timeline - they didn't just redate the year on each message, they also changed a bunch of the chats to be more recent - so rather than dates, his most recent chats with Henry, the Coaches, etc are from "Yesterday," then the first dated texts are in very late September 2021. This matches up pretty perfectly with where they are in a typical Premier League season - they REALLY cleaned it up. Further back, they do just switch the years on the dates, so he still got a picture from Sassy last Valentines Day, and his last one-on-one contact with Jamie is still set before the events of Wembley in 2.08 (FA Cup semi finals are in April, so a few weeks after the March 2021 date on Jamie's chat.)
My brain is itching because I swear there was a screen of Nate and Ted's text chat at some point too? With Ted reaching out about his new job, on a date that deeply did not work with the timeline? But maybe I imagined it. There's no record of Nate's number in his phone at all now, and the texts date back to before Nate left, so I guess in this version of events, Ted deleted Nate's number and message history.
Anyway, I'm aware that basically no one is going to care about this, but I suspect that the three people who will actually care will REALLY FUCKING CARE. Has anyone else noticed it? Does anyone know when it may have happened? Does anyone know what else might have been changed or fixed? I love details and I love the fact that there is no longer conflicting data about what football seasons the show is covering - it's mid 19/20 to the end of 21/22, end of story - but what a fucking mess the production of season 3 must have been, to end up at this point!
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Any thoughts on the new "Spooky" NC styles compared to the old nostalgic versions? I really like some of the new ones like the Gelert and Xweetok.
I will say off the bat that I'm not opposed at all to redrawing old colours to be more interesting; a lot of the ancient early 2000s art was literally just "the default pose with modifications". Take the original Halloween Aisha, for example; not only is the shading and overall art pretty poor, but it's also just sitting there generically smiling.
However, I will say that there's some weird classifications going on with these guys; to start, "spooky" is a pretty terrible adjective that describes absolutely nothing. It's also a bad choice because it has to be swapped out for each color (the redone Ghost styles are "eerie", for example). I've heard the term "dynamic" tossed around, which I think would've been a much better name choice that could've been universally applied to any colour.
Also confusing is that they classify any new styles for pets that were made post-conversion as "spooky", but when they made new styles for Grey pets they classified them as "nostalgic". I guess they were just going off of the poses, but still, it gets complicated fast.
And finally, I kind of wish they had released both nostalgic and spooky styles for some pets, because it feels like some of the old art changed drastically in ways that go far beyond just posing. I don't mind a few details being tweaked here and there, but some of feels like a drastic change to the pet's whole personality. For example:
Gelert: Entire personality changed (went from being more stoic and shifty to being cunty and more "bleh"). Tail has an extra segment. Hairstyle is completely different with no receding hairline. Detail around the clasp lost. Way more fluffy. Teeth and nails sharper. Cape lost the bat wing design.
Ixi: Entire face changed (eyes too big and too far up on the head, plus the eye shape is wrong), horns facing backwards instead of inwards, ear shaped changed, face and body more fluffy.
There's not inherently an answer to which design is better (I personally don't like the Gelert while Anon does, for example), but having more styles would satisfy both parties. Hopefully they'll add more in the future.
Favorite Styles:
(Good news: There were so many good ones I had trouble narrowing it down. Honorable mentions that were cut for space include the Xweetok and the Lutari.)
Poogle: The pose is not only really fitting for the pet, but it adds a ton of personality (compared to the original, which was just generically angry). A few subtle changes were made to the design, like the muzzle being light blue and the teeth being way bigger, but they're minor changes that shouldn't upset any fans of the original. The changes also feel very "pre-conversion" esq; like, you could've told me the spooky style was the pre-conversion art and I would've believed you.
Bori: Not necessarily the most exciting style, but I like this one a lot. The change to the crouching pose looks a lot more natural and invokes the Bori's more quadrupedal look pre-customization. The shading is spot-on for old Neopets' art, and I love how the design makes some subtle changes to the design that, like the Poogle, are minimal and shouldn't bother fans of the originalâthese include a longer, narrower skull and a different expression, more defined claws, less uniform back plates, and a less uniform tail shape.
Grarrl: Definitely my all-time fav from the Spooky styles. I just talked about this one for my Grarrl review so I won't repeat myself here, but the pose is more dynamic without being too over-the-top, the design reverts back several unnecessary changes that occurred during customization (the clasp was randomly made blue, for example), and the overall art quality is really solid, and there's not many changes outside of the addition of little claws. My only nitpick is that the eye shadow should've been bigger, but that's it.
Koi: Just the fact that it's actually holding the pitchfork is a major improvement, but I also really like the pose; it has a great flow to it and shows off the design well. Subtle touches like the transparent fins are really nice, and the design is really accurate to the original art save for a bigger pitchfork.
Least Favorite Style:
Kougra: Out of all the styles, I think this one is probably the one that's objectively different but in a way that's just kind of worse all around compared to the original. List of changes:
Pupil shape changed.
Eye color changed.
Ear shape changed.
Wings and ears drastically smaller than on the original.
Wing shaped changed at bottom.
And even if you don't care about any of that, the lineart's too thick, the shading doesn't have a clear light source and has too many layers, and the anatomy is really messed up. I like the idea of the pose in theory, but the execution is lacking. Plus, while the original pose wasn't that exiting, it did give off a nice stoic vibe, so it wasn't like it was overly "default-ish" in the first place.
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Damn I've seen people being really upset with Jack and Joker, especially the last episode. Sure it's not perfect but the series is such a little (but entertaining) oddity with villains being true villains (insert the evil laugh), exaggerated aspects and strong emotional/angst scenes, etc. And sometimes reality too feels really grotesque, ridiculous, absurd and also so sad at the same time. And the series just grabs that part really well (maybe that's why I like it and I'm still able to watch it).
However the emotional response... For me, this is also just...weird in fact. Almost like the series just trigger something in people watching this, provoking very polarized answers and reaction.
Like everyone is just letting out their frustation, their anger they (already) have for whatever reason.
And I don't think this is something really related to the series in fact, but an indicator of the growing intolerance spreading into our societies. People needs a scapegoat, needs something to hate or needs something to be negative against. And it is showing everywhere.
Fandom is passion. Without passion, there is no fandom and no meta and no exploration of the deeper meaning and no thoughts about what could have been or should have been or could be made better.
But anyway.
I mean, go off? I guess?
People are frustrated with J&J because a lot of things didn't follow through and a ton of issues the seemed to be touching on simply vanished into nothing.
It's not a biggest indicator.
It's just a mediocre show that started out far, far better than it ended and was held together by some amazing actors who were slowly but steadily failed by the written narrative.
I'm still enjoying it, overall, though I'm worried about the finale lacking catharsis...
But no. It's not a scapegoat for something bigger. It's just a show people had high hopes for that didn't live up to them.
Frankly, my criticism of this show all comes from a place of wishing I could love the show more, wishing the show was more of the parts I liked and not the parts that bothered me. I wished so much the characters and their depth matched what the show expects us to glean from them.
The emotional scenes are strong but the emotional scenes aren't enough to carry a show entirely and that's okay.
Please.
Please.
Fandom is fandom and it's filled with passion and if you decide people not liking a show for their own well-articulated reasons you are the reason fandoms struggle to find a balance between being able to handle criticism and being unable to do so in any manner.
Criticism of a show happens. It's always going to happen. And it's okay.
People being passionate about a show are important and it's important to recognize that the people who are most passionate about J&J having issues are the people who were the most excited for the show and the most anticipatory and that their disappointment and problems are coming from a place of love and excitement and from wishing for better not wishing for less or hating on it for no reason.
This is an imperfect show that is struggling to find a meaningful ending and is struggling with balance between the two main characters and criticism is not condemnation and cannot be taken as such.
I have been in BL fandoms where all criticism was taken exactly like this and it was the single worst experience of my life and I won't even name that show on my tumblr at this point because of the stress of being someone disliking a popular show. Don't do that to people. Don't put that one people.
Be passionate. Love what you love. And understand that criticism from a place of love will and should always have a place in fandom.
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I finished the 2.5 story and I enjoyed it overall, although it didnât hit me quite as hard as Penacony did. I think maybe thatâs something to be expected with a Trailblaze Continuance vs a Trailblaze Mission. I donât know, I just cried so hard at the end of Penacony, both 2.2 and 2.3, lmao.
Truly my favourite thing is that they seem to be giving Stelle more voice lines during the story that aren't just internal dialogue. It is my dream for them to continue giving her more and more voices lines so she can really be an actual character.
It was a little surprising for me when I realized how little Stelle did in the story though. I think she just went to investigate Stargazer Navalia with Yanqing and Feixiao, found Moze in Exalting Sanctum with them, and then was fighting the borisin in Aurum Alley with Moze. I did like how she mentioned her not being at the Skysplitter to help fight Hoolay when sheâs talking with March at the end. It doesnât bother me a ton when Stelle doesnât have a lot to do in a specific story, I love how often they used the perspective swapping in the story so we could see what was going on with everyone, because sheâs always around so it doesnât feel too bad if sheâs a little out of focus once in a while, but it kind of sucks for Moze that I don't think he got any really big moments since he has less chances to be relevant. I wish they had made him and Stelle finding a nearly dead Jiaoqiu an actual scene instead of just text so we could get a little more out of Moze, but it is what it is.
Jiaoqiuâs little trick with poisoning Hoolay by poisoning himself being foreshadowed with his comment about the green peppers was pretty cool, but Iâm curious about whether it was intentional that it could have also been a little foreshadowed in Marchâs training event last patch since in his route there was some talk of Lingshaâs blood having special properties because of her having consumed so many medicines over the years. idk it was the first think I thought of when I realized what he did.
I've grown pretty fond of Yanqing over the course of the story. Heâs just so earnest and I think his childish, competitive side coming out with Yunli is very cute. And I really love the relationship that has developed between him, March, and Yunli. Itâs so sweet that Yanqing and Yunli are both so proud of March and sheâs also so fond of her two little masters. I really hope we get to continue seeing more of their interactions in the future.
This does not stop me from being like, stay the fuck away from my pulls. He's already at fucking E4 and I still don't have Gepard.
March, Yanqing, and Yunli fighting a berserk Feixiao was soooo good. I really loved Yunli attempting to just fucking grapple her when she's so much smaller than Feixiao. It really adds to her feral cat energy. Itâs very sweet, in a weird way, that Feixiao put her faith in these kids and fully believed they would be able to hold her back and keep her from causing too much destruction while she was rampaging. Especially because we later find out that Fu Xuan left Jing Yuan a prediction that they should trust the younger generation.
I thought it was funny that during the story March was like "If I had known we could use other weapons, I would have brought my bow with me" and then she just fucking summons it in the cutscene when theyâre fighting Feixiao. Sometimes I think about the logistics behind the way they summon their weapons in cutscenes and I should probably stop trying to make sense of it because it really does seem to be governed by Rule of Cool. Seeing her preservation ult in a cutscene was so fun though. A while ago I was thinking about how cool it would be if was ever a cutscene where Stelle switches between her paths in the middle of a fight by switching her weapon and March ended up getting to do it before her and it was just as cool as I thought it would be.
I loved March just clinging to Feixiao's leg in the cutscene when she regains control of herself. She's just trying her best to help. And Iâm just very proud of the three of them for managing to not get fucking obliterated by a general. It was also very cute seeing them support Feixiao and helping her stand. I donât know, theyâre just all good kids and I love them.
I donât have a really concrete reason for it, but I just really like Feixiao. It may just be my weakness for hot, strong women, but sheâs just so cool. I love how strong her resolve is, strong enough that this is the first time in the story that weâve seen someone other than Stelle draw an Aeonâs gaze, and that she seems as devoted to Jiaoqiu and Moze as they are to her. She also has SUCH cool cutscenes. The one of her using Yukongâs bow to fire a a giant arrow all the way to Aurum Alley because it would have taken to long to get there to help????? Hello???? Who let her be so cool???
I really am looking forward to seeing more of her in the future and this plotline she has of trying to restore Jiaoqiuâs eyesight. And also seeing the repercussions/benefits of her swallowing the crimson moon.
Itâs like a little funny to me that Jiaoqiu is blind now just because it doesnât matter anymore that his eyes are always closed, he wouldnât be able to see with them open anyways.
When Lingsha was announced and I saw she was a Vidyadhara, I was like. My opinion on her is 100% going to be based on how she treats Bailu because I love Bailu very dearly and every Vidyadhara thatâs introduced is going to be judged by whether or not theyâre nice to her. So I'm really happy to see that she appears to be very kind to her and Bailu likes her enough to call her sister.
I think it's so sweet that Dan Heng is always asking for Bailuâs opinion. Heâs so protective of the rest of the Astral Express crew and it seems like that protectiveness has extended to Bailu and it makes me so happy every time it comes up. I hope they get more into Bailu being sick of being used as a puppet and wanting to leave soon because I too am sick of the way she's disrespected in universe. Let Dan Heng bring her on the Express with him. I would also accept Lingsha protecting Bailu and helping her have more freedom since sheâs the new Cauldron Master. I donât know how much pull she actually has, but I can dream.
I'm so sad that they sent Fu Xuan away to a different ship for this story arc because I miss her!!! Let me see her!!! I still think she had the coolest intro cutscene in the game and I couldn't not love her after that. And because she's been carrying my ass through everything since she's the only limited sustain I have lmao.
God, I am so excited for Ruan Mei potentially being a menace on the Luofu. Like, girl, what have you been up to? Did you do anything fucked up to Tingyun? Arenât Himeko and Welt supposed to be delivering fossils to you? Why are you on the Luofu? Oh but maybe theyâre the ones who brought her to the Luofu. I need answers!
When Tingyun started talking, I was just like, oh no, this is going to be the end of the story for this patch, isn't it? And then it was!!! And next patch is just Rappa, and from her character intro thing I assume weâre going back to Penacony, so who knows when this Tingyun plotline is going to pick up again.
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hi im coming in here to bother you with random questions :3
who is your favorite character to draw in tuesday? who is the easiest to draw? hardest?
HELLO BELOVED oh my goodness this is such a fun question, i've got about an hour before my meeting so let me see how much i can type >:3cc Tuesday art questions!! how exciting!!!
for FAVORITE, currently, it's based upon characters I'm focused upon in Tuesday! right now I'm pretty lost in the Tuesfries characters, so that's characters like Esperanza, Ruse, Maiceo, Giana, etc! I really love drawing Esperanza, her color palette is just heaven to me and I adore her immensely :3 She also has a lot of forms which keeps me running circles about her Lore and gives me lots of interesting shapes to draw!
I love drawing faun Ruse too for similar reasons, its all character love- Ruse's story is one of my favorite little nuggets I've made, i'd like to thank Midveil for enabling some of my favorite tropes so I could go really crazy with her. Her backstory is one I would REALLY love to make into a sketchbook comic. I feel like it would take very well to that! And I know it can be really confusing to explain :'D I'm under the assumption no one knows what's going with Ruse because I feel like it's a lot to infodump and there's a lot of forms to keep track of. a long-form comic might make it easier to explain! She's one of my favorite characters I have, overall, so of course she's one of my favorites to draw in Tuesday! Even if she doesn't live there anymore.....
for HARDEST......okay. a lot of them. Tuesday has some of my favorite design notes - but also some of the hardest for me to draw! Like horns, for example- i LOVE horns. Which is why so many characters have them!! but keeping track of horns can be hard for me! but i'm practicing!! i'm learning!!!!
but that means the hardest character popped into my mind super fast.....it's Paola đ the agony. i love her so fucking much.....honestly, her dads are really hard for me to draw too. Simon and Van are some of my favorite OCs, and some of my favorite designs, but SO MANY sketches of them have been started, and then set down.
but cmon. they're so beautiful!! i really love these guys!! I'M the one who needs to get better. I don't know what it is with these guys....
for EASIEST! most fauns tbh, besides some of their horns! Fauns were made in 2019 of my favorite design traits- tails, paw hands/feet, that certain nose marking, furry, fun markings on a humanoid character- I always enjoy drawing them!! I need MORE of them- Tuesday feels very undercasted to me right now, I am still in the process of fleshing out the world- i'm such a person who loves worlds with tons of side characters, i am very much a large world writer. as you know and understand :3c oooo if youre my friend ooo you wanna design trade a faun so bad- /nf
some fauns who are very easy for me to draw are Evie, Baaree, Mardi, and Georgiana!
oh Evie.......
Some non-fauns that are very easy for me to draw are Kelleher (dude im literally in love with Kelleher), JudĂas + Arandano, and Tiwai!
these are still characters with a lot of details (Tuesday characters tend to be really detail-heavy) but i generally don't spend a long time fussing over the quality of the character's image. you may notice their horns are more uniform or simpler shapes than Paola or even Esperanza/Ruse, which i DO have a lot of trouble with keeping those antlers consistent, but you see, favorite privilege..... /lh
this was very interesting to think about!! i hope you don't mind multiple characters per question, and I know i could go even deeper and grab more examples and talk about each individual character and how I feel about drawing them. King Josephine jumped out as someone a bit trickier to draw, and Chyenne is pretty easy-
but I'd be here all day! thank you already for spending some Tuesday time with me <3
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2024 wrap-up and 2025 plans
could not be bothered to do this yesterday, so doing it today lol
happy New Year!! đđ may 2025 is kinder to us all and brings us the success we yearn for â¤ď¸â¤ď¸
I tracked down my post from last year regarding my 2024 plans and thought I'd comment on them :)) specifically, in 2024, I wanted to:
finish rewriting and editing 'when white crows cry'
and I did!! I rewrote it fully twice and then had tons of editing rounds, deciding to stop in autumn. it's still nowhere near perfect, but it's the best I can do on my own right now x)) this was my sort of main goal for 2024, so I'm happy I didn't get stuck in editing hell haha
have a couple (at least) of beta reading rounds of wwcc
yup, had that too. my beta readers have been super lovely, and I've learned a lot about the whole beta reading process in general. next time, I'll be approaching it a little differently, so I'm excited to get to it with my new story :))
start querying
I've been actively querying all autumn, so I did do this x)) I haven't gotten anywhere with it, though, and I'm probably gonna have to shelve the project for now whilst I focus on something else. it was a long shot anyway, so I'm not too surprised haha. I WILL get it out eventually, but it may just need to wait longer for its turn x))
make an author website
...I did not do this lol. I considered it plenty of times, but never really got around to doing it rip. but I don't consider this goal a complete fail, because I did create a youtube channel and set up a newsletter, sooo I'm still doing Something haha
write the first draft of wwcc part 2
I decided against working on the second part of this duology for the time being. I don't think it'll take me long to write it, but I want to focus on writing books that I can try selling first x))
start posting more art of wwcc
um. haha. well. this year's the year??
read at least 24 books (putting this here for. accountability)
I read 35 books, actually!! so I crushed my goal completely hehe
so, I think 2024 was overall pretty successful in terms of the goals I'd set for myself. here's hoping I can keep up this energy for 2025 as well ahahaaaa
now. as for my plans for 2025... they're pretty similar to 2024 lol
fully finish writing and editing 'a case study on immolation'
I'm a little over 20k into the first draft of it, meaning I still have a LONG way to go, but I'm planning on giving it all my attention for the next several months. I'm gonna Lock In.
have beta readers go over it
I reaaaally wanna have completed a workable draft by summer that I could get critiqued. this story isn't gonna be nearly as long as wwcc, so I think it should be doable
query it
this is super ambitious given my estimated timeframe for all the rewrites and beta reading, so I'm not really sure whether I'll be able to fulfill this goal, but I'm gonna try nonetheless x))
write short stories and send them to magazines
I really wanna start writing more short stories. I do like them a lot, I just never get around to actually sitting down and Doing It. I'm definitely not gonna be writing them whilst I'm actively working on acsoi, but I'll have time in between drafts and whilst it's getting beta read, so hopefully I'll use that time wisely lol
participate in an anthology
similarly to the above, I do really wanna get more into anthologies, both as a reader and a writer
read 50 books
also a very ambitious goal, given I only read 35 books this year, but dammit I wanna read more still
anyway, those are my main writing-related goals for 2025, so here's hoping I manage 'em lol
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terribly sorry to bother, but I've been loving your screenshots since I stumbled on your blog, and like 100% genuinely: how do you get them to look like that? Is it all done in game or is it some combo of mods & shaders? Cause every time I see a cool pose I'm just left wondering how you did it. Obviously I wouldn't ask you to make a massive tutorial just for me, but if there are any resources or general things you'd be willing to share, I'd be eternally grateful!
Hi there! Thank you for enjoying my gposes, and you're not a bother; my ask box is open to get asks after all haha
To answer your question: My gposes are not a product of the vanilla game alone. I'm slapping my explanations under a read more since it's a bit long:
Firstly, I am running reshade, an open source post-processing injector. It's a program that can (in the simplest terms) run various visual filters over a video game in real time. Most everyone I know made the jump from Gshade to reshade last year, so if you look up "reshade for ffxiv" you should be able to find a handful of tutorials. When it comes to finding presets, there are a lot of independent shader devs for ffxiv and generally a quick google search should bring you to a few. Most of the presets I use are outdated holdovers from the GShade days, and I don't know if they are available anymore; so unfortunately I can't recommend any directly, sorry!
In general, I lean towards shaders that enhance the overall brightness and vibrancy of the (imo muddy looking) default graphics. Arsay can quickly get over exposed by the in game 3 point lighting, so putting a shader that boosts the brightness overall really helps preventing that. I set up my lights in gpose at 2, put the character lighting to 100, pick a shader with a LUT that gives me the colours and brightness I want and thats usually enough. sometimes I'll hit the manual brightness in game and mess with that too. I often go into the preset of the shader and muck about with the Depth of field settings depending on what I want. An important note regarding the use of reshade: While reshade does not directly effect in game files or gameplay and it's technically not against TOS (as far as I have read), it is still highly encouraged that screenshots taken with shaders on do not have the ffxiv screenshot watermark visible. Reshade has it's own screenshot button that you can map to any key of your liking that will capture the game and the applied shaders without any watermarks. If you have an nvidia graphics card, I believe you should also have access to the geforce post-process correction tools, and could use that as well to enhance the game visuals. However, I am under the impression it's solely corrective settings (brightness/contrast, vibrancy, saturation, etc.) and you do not have the ability to adjust the depth of field setting, apply LUTs, mess with ambient occlusion, etc. Aka the more in depth rendering stuff that would make your graphic card fan go brrr. I've personally never tried the nvidia filter system so maybe that's incorrect information. Best to do independent research on that!
As well, on the occasion I will bring some screenshots into photoshop and do further, fine tuned, tonal corrections there. Generally this is only when I'm trying to achieve a look that I can't get in game and I try to keep it to a minimum. When I'm working on big photosets or comics, I'll end up doing more corrections just to make sure colours/tones/shading are consistent through out.
On to the second part of the question: the posing. I do all my posing with this tool. It is a tos crime, however it's client-side only and completely undetectable to other players. It gives you full access to character rigs and allows you to not only build your own poses, but export and import poses, outfits, props used by npcs or seen in cut scenes, and character data as well. Tons of people will upload pose files on the various mod archives for others to use, so even people who don't want to mess around with rigs can have fun with their characters. I personally love posing, and it's something I'm very comfortable doing since I have a background in 3D modelling and animation. I do believe in working smarter and not harder though, so what I tend to do is apply an in game animation cycle to my character in question that has a frame or key pose close enough to what I need, pause the animation, turn on posing, and start rotating bones. I never really looked up any tutorials myself tbh, I kinda just messed around with things and figured the tool out as I went along. That said, there are tutorials on youtube if you search for them. "Anamnesis ffxiv guide" or something along those lines should bring up good results.
Anam also gives you further camera control than what is available in game, allowing you to fine tune its position to the .001 degree. You can increase the FOV and zoom range past the typical amount. Bring your character and camera pretty much anywhere on the map too. And you can export your camera setting to use between gpose settings! It's a really great tool, though it has some quirks and can in specific instances crash your game (never change a character while fishing lol)
That's pretty much it! I know this wasn't really much of a guide, so sorry about that. Most of my gposes are a product of seeing a fuzzy image/concept in my head and messing around with various compositions, locations, lighting conditions, ect. until I bring that idea into clarity. It's hard to explain that process in ways beyond "fucking around and finding out (positive)" I suppose to anyone else reading this has specific references in mind, please pass them along to sailor-artemis ! I know being told "just google it lol" isn't super helpful but I really just tend to figure things out on my own ^^;
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Fanfic Tag Game
So @blorbologist tagged me in a thing where one goes to their current/main AO3 account and looks up various tags. This is somewhat less exciting for me with the AO3 account I use now because, well... there's only 3 fics in there, they're all for the same fandom and same pairing. It would make for quite a boring round of this game.
Because I've been in fandom of some sort since 1996, I have fic sort of all over the place. I have an OG and much older AO3 account which I don't post to anymore, but since my online fic publishing predates the existence of AO3 by, like, 13 years, some of my published fic is in standalone, fandom-specific archives, some of which (shockingly) still exist, while others have shut down.
So I'm going to honour the spirit of this challenge rather than the letter of it. I've consolidated all my published fic data and crunched the overall numbers. Just for funsies! The fics that feed into these stats were all published publicly somewhere, at some point, spanning from 1996 thru 2024. Also I'm playing fast and loose with the game rules because who needs rules.
What ratings do you write most of your fics under?
General: 8
Teen: 13
Mature: 0
Explicit: 3
Different archives have different rating systems, but they all map reasonably onto AO3's system so I've translated them across. Apparently I can't be bothered to write anything between T and E. And yeah, those 3 E's are all in the Critical Role fandom: I've been writing smut for years, but only recently started publishing it anywhere.
What are your top three fandoms?
Harry Potter: 10
Gargoyles: 4
Critical Role: 3
The West Wing: 3
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 2
Angel: 1
Leverage: 1
Screw top three, it's more fun to see the whole list! As you can see, even in all these years I am not what one would call "prolific". As with everyone, the published works are only the tip of the iceberg of the many, many, many unfinished bits and bobs I have floating around in my writing archive. But I'm also a pretty slow writer all things considered, and there was a good 10 years or so where I didn't publish anything. I kept reading a lot of fic and still occasionally wrote some for myself, but from something like 2012 thru 2022 I wasn't posting anywhere.
Itâs kind of tragic I canât add The Magnificent Seven (TV series) to this list. I wrote so much when I was in that fandom but never quite finished anything so nothing ever got published. I have one that's almost 20k words and probably 3/4 finished but I never got it over the line so there it sits in my archive, forever incomplete. Other fandoms in my "never published" bucket include Alias, X-Men and Star Wars.
What is the top character you write about?
Original Characters: 10
Remus Lupin: 5
Sirius Black: 5
Ensemble: 4
James Potter: 4
Lily Evans Potter: 4
Percy de Rolo: 3
Vex'ahlia: 3
Joshua Lyman: 3
Owen Burnett: 3
Peter Pettigrew: 3
Severus Snape: 2
Tom Riddle: 2
I narrowed the list to just folks who appeared in more than one fic. And, yeah... look: it turns out I've been writing lots of original characters in my fic for a long, long time, so really the OCs in Gate Building probably shouldn't come as a surprise really. But this time I wasn't planning on them, they just kind of happened!
Also, look at all those snarky brooding men with tragic/complicated pasts and questionable morals! If we expanded this to include my ânever published, just for meâ list weâd get to add notorious gents such as Jack Bristow, Ezra Standish, Brooklyn, Charles Xavier, and Rupert Giles to the list. I have a very clear type; Iâm fine with it. đ
What are your top three pairings?
Gen/Ensemble: 8
Joshua Lyman & Original Character: 3
Percy de Rolo/Vex'ahlia: 3
James Potter/Lily Evans Potter: 2
Owen Burnett/Original Character: 2
Remus Lupin & Sirius Black: 2
The list above isn't comprehensive, I just included the ships and friendship fic that pinged more than once. Historically I didnât write a ton of romantic/ship fic. And often where there was a ship it wasnât necessarily the focus so even whatâs listed there is probably a little misleading. Like, the James/Lily stuff just inevitably kind of happens when you write Marauder fic whether you're going for it or not. đ
I was notably quite fascinated with Remus and Sirius' friendship in a fandom that was convinced they were fucking. I'm not saying they weren't fucking, but I was personally more interested in how on earth they managed to repair their friendship after PoA. There is a lot more unfinished stuff relating to that friendship in my various archives.
The OC paired with Owen is 100% a Mary Sue: a pure, trope-defining, text book Mary Sue plucked from the depths of my teenage brain. The West Wing OC was a childhood friend of Josh's with no romantic intentions toward him that I used to prod at various character study themes.
What are the top three additional tags?
This one is tricky because A) the non-AO3 places where my fic was posted didn't have the robust tagging features AO3 has; and B) I wasn't historically a big user of tags in my original AO3 account beyond characters and pairings of note. But since that's not a terribly interesting answer, I went through the list of 24 fics and tried to at least throw a few tags on them that could be relevant, just to see what might shake out. The top "tags" that jumped out after the exercise were:
Before Canon: 11
Character Study: 8
Kid Fic: 4
Missing Moment: 3
None of those are particularly surprising. A lot of my Harry Potter stuff was Marauder Era fic, and I do have a fascination with going back to when characters were kids/teenagers to explore formative experiences in their lives. And after I got the Mary Sues out of my system for a long time I pivoted pretty hard into gen, friendship stories, and character studies.
I don't know why I like writing about kids. I just like the way their little unfinished brains work, and their POVs are such an interesting place to be as a writer. They tend to have interesting, unusual opinions and make choices an adult brain would never make. Also people kind of forget they're there sometimes, which means they bear witness to all kinds of things even if they can't quite fully understand them. There's something about a character study baked into a formative childhood experience that just gets me.
Does any of this surprise you?
Maybe the preponderance of OCs in my fanfic. I knew there were a bunch but seeing that no-contest dominance at the top of the list is pretty hilarious, ngl.
I am so, so tempted to repost some of my old Mary Sue stuff to Wattpad just to see how it would do in 2024. đ
#tag game#tag meme#el talks#i lived through the chain letter era of email i don't tag people it gives me flashbacks
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Frontiers writing really does feel like "okay let's grab what people love talking about online" mixed with hazy memories of what happened in past games without anyone bothering to, you know. ACTUALLY look at what happened in them.
And then a lot of new stuff being added that then, isn't expanded.
Yup. It's dangling keys in front of my face when I know exactly what those keys go to, and it's not what you're telling me. Like I'm not an encyclopedia and I've got an awful memory, but even I know off the top of my head that Eggman didn't stop Neo Metal in Heroes. Considering how much Flynn loves that storyline I'm honestly surprised he got this wrong.
The cutscenes in general are quite shoddy and miss a valuable piece of writing advice: be careful about including normal conversations.
True, people DO talk this way, but the reason we don't write about it and instead condense it to a "they chatted about the weather for a few minutes" is because it's boring.
I feel like I should give the side stories more slack since they're optional, but they're really so meaningless. Well, they're SUPPOSED to mean something, they're meant to build up this mystery, but just asking mundane questions about random stuff isn't really what I'd call "building a mystery." It's just characters speculating about tiny little details surrounding the ancient culture that doesn't loop back into the overall mystery. They're not good foreshadowing and add nothing of value, not even entertainment. They're all so impersonal since they don't even use these little scenes to show how well the characters bounce off each other.
If you want an example of this done well, there's TONS of optional discussions in Xenoblade 3 where the gang just talk about regular stuff, but it's so funny because they don't know what the hell they're talking about. There's one where Sena accidentally invents zoos, it's great and I'm mad no one has compiled them on YouTube yet Of course, there's also stuff to expand on the lore and world building, but they're mostly reserved for everyday antics that highlight the excellent dynamics these characters have.
And that's what makes them good. It's not just "Everyday conversation #16" because it gives the characters a chance to make something a little more personal to them.
Frontiers misses that mark by because it needs these characters to be informational mouthpieces to move the plot and that destroys the concept of character voice.
Tails uses big words to signal that he's the smart one when his actions spoke well enough for him before. Eggman is literally just sitting on the sidelines for 80% of the plot and instead of pulling any strings, he's reading textbooks into audio logs. Like buddy. You have an AI that is totally obedient, why is your order "find me a way out of here" when you're studying this place? YOU are the one coming up with answers and connections everywhere, why aren't YOU looking for a way out yourself instead of sitting on your ass and relishing in a robot punching Sonic? Fucks sake, Sage can activate these ancient weapons, have her USE THEM to GET RID OF SONIC so he can't UNLEASH THE BEAST. This is such a simple and easy way to make the plot more interesting I will not stop harping on it
I wonder if this story will sour on people over time or if in 10 years it will still be praised it as one of the greats.
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So I was doing a quick google search for the Dramatic Paths or whatever Yugioh card that's behind those funny meme images because I wanted to shitpost about my IS3 experience and the first google image that I saw, that google decided to show me, was a version of that meme where "becoming a trans woman" was set opposite of "becoming a white supremacist". It was one of those "don't ask a trans woman what she was doing when she was 14" memes that I really despise so I figured I would sit down with my thoughts.
When I was 14, I was in a cult. I was not in a far-right organization, I was not a white supremacist, and I was not a Nazi. I take great pride in that, because that's somehow become an accomplishment on the internet these days. But I was a Jehovah's Witness. Jehovah's Witnesses are for all intents and purposes, a conservative high-control Christian cult, despite their attempts to rhetoric their way out of that label. I don't really blame myself for being in the cult, since it was exposed to me while I was very young, but I think about my experiences with it a lot.
I suffered emotional abuse from cult members I'm still recovering from, I suffered trauma at the hands of the religious teachings which existed to chip away at me until nothing original remained, and ultimately, lots of Jehovah's Witnesses end up becoming quite bad people. The problem with an isolationist religion is that any kindness you feel or receive is conditional; its conditional on your continued interest in the religion, and whether you will continue to make the steps so that the religion takes over your entire life. I was learning to become like that until I had some moments of realization and got out.
But I don't really joke about my experiences in the religion pretty much at all. I sometimes joke about various things surrounding the religion, like some of its literature, because sometimes it is genuinely really funny. I was taught masturbation was bad and evil by their youth literature but they were scared that describing what masturbation actually was would make people try it, so until I was about 14 I had no idea what masturbation was as like, a concept.
But I don't joke about being a Witness, and I'm pretty sure if you did the math, there are probably more Witnesses around the world than there were alt-right members in the United States back when I was 14. Being a Witness was not a fun, quirky thing that happened in my past. It was something that came with a ton of baggage. It came with hateful teachings. Being a Witness warps your view around science and the world in a way that is honestly frankly terrifying.
Being a Witness is also not as bad as being a Nazi. Jehovah's Witnesses actually faced persecution for their beliefs at the hands of the Nazi Party, and while there is a lot to be said about how that happened and how Jehovah's Witnesses have decided to frame that and incorporate that into their religious views, it's still a thing that, you know, happened. Witnesses are overall responsible for a lot of individual harm and a fair amount of systemic harm within their own organization, but as a group they are very politically apathetic. They don't really care about something like the Palestinian genocide outside of using it to push their belief on the end times; to a Witness, what is more important is the safety of Witnesses that might be in Gaza.
(This isn't a bit by the way. Jehovah's Witnesses are ultimately an apocalypse cult trying very desperately not to be. They see any desire to improve the world outside of missionary work to be ultimately futile and not worth bothering with, and with their general views that the outside world is out to get them, this has resulted in a very insular philosophy. Major world events still happen, but their perceptions have warped them into a mold where the major people who need help first are Witnesses.)
I treat my involvement with the cult very seriously, to the point where I probably annoy my friends with how much I piss about how bad they are. It's completely unfathomable to me how one can make light of being in a worse group. It communicates to me a fundamental unseriousness, a lack of desire to actually confront and come to terms with one's own agency and involvement. No one is saying you should flagellate under your death for being part of a white supremacist movement; they, like Witnesses, have evangelical recruitment strategies for a reason. But you shouldn't find it something to laugh about. It should be deathly fucking serious to you.
I've never allowed these kind of jokes and memes in the communities I've watched over and moderated. I want my communities to be safe spaces for queer Jewish people, and queer people of color. Those kind of memes communicate to me that you don't really care. And you should. You really should.
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I've now been preparing for the Elden Ring DLC for a couple weeks, replaying the game and building a fun character to tackle the DLC. After replaying ER are my views towards the game a bit more favorable? I'd say a bit yeah. I soloed all the end game bosses I cheesed with ashes on my first playthrough (except Fire Giant, this boss is still a massive piece of shit) and found myself enjoying them.
Mohg was actually pretty fun and it took me like an hour to beat him and the nihil attack didn't bother me that much knowing now I can negate it. I hate that he heals a ton though, the DPS race so that he doesn't full heal is annoying.
Maliketh annoyed me still. His first phase is having a constant seizure and does not stop attacking holy shit, and in second phase he's a ballerina that goes in slow motion. And still deletes you in a second. I got to the second phase with all heals and was instantly destroyed because I got hit by 1 of his projectiles, which then stunlocked me until the cold embrace of afterlife. Yeah verifiable skill issue. The funny thing is when I beat him I did summon an ash out of frustration, but the ash ended up doing nothing and died before doing any damage and on that specific attempt I ended up beating him, hah.
One of my greatest regrets was summoning an ash for Godfrey, the only end game boss I liked. But I was able to correct that wrong this time and yeah, it was an awesome fight! I really don't have anything bad to say about Godfrey. I hope he powerbombs me again some time soon.
I haven't fought Radagon/Elden Beast yet though because I'm not sure if I want to finish the game. I'm also sparing Malenia just in case there's something special in the DLC. Also because I vowed I'd never fight her again. That self healing mechanic on each hit is really something else.
Overall Elden Ring is a fun game. The open world is a bit exhausting, but I enjoyed the game quite a bit since I ignored like 80% of the content. I did end up doing a lot of NPC quests which lead me all over the map in caves and graves. To be honest I'm really wishing for a more smaller scale game from Fromsoft next. I enjoy a smaller and concise world rather than a big open one. If not, at least we have Lies of P now!
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Alright, so Coco outdid all of this as I was writing it by getting real close and then getting into lap, but kitty update time.
We'll start with Coco, because she's the girl of the hour. Coco has been doing very well, and is getting very sociable. She's starting to do pretty well with Bond overall, showing a lot of curiosity and continuing to get close, but she's still wary and runs off if he turns to face her directly or god forbid moves in her direction. By and large, she's doing great.
That said, Coco is also our bastard child. This is now hard confirmed. She bit through my wife's computer charger. The computer was already on its way out, so this wasn't too much of a serious loss, but it's a really bad habit she's picking up, because she also bit into her work computer charger and my own cable. My computer cannot stay on unless constantly plugged in anymore. Oddly, it's only computer chargers. She hasn't done this to iPhone chargers, the DS or 3DS chargers, TV cords, the lamp cord, or the power strip. I have no idea what her deal is. She did try for the controller cord for the Switch, but it was dangling. Girl almost pulled the whole console off the media stand, so that was...a problem. We got some cat repellent spray and are getting cord protectors, as well as some replacement objects in a general rope toy, a longer fish kicking toy, and a stretchy rope on a string kinda play toy. There was also a snake toy, but Bond took that one immediately. Coco likes the rope on a string, and we got some good play time in yesterday, which was the first time she's like...played with us too. And now she's gets between us on the couch, and will get in lap! Big growth.
Bond needs to go next to contextualize Gia. So, Bond is...well, but I'm kinda worried something's still up with his mouth? He had several teeth extracted due to infection, and apparently some just fell out it was so bad. His breathing was a lot better for a while, he seemed to be mellowed out, but now he's cranky again and his breathing sounds congested. There's also a ton of heavy pollen going on, so he might be allergic, but he is very cranky.
Specifically, he's backsliding a bit in his interactions with the girls. As Coco grows more bold, he seems to grow more annoyed with her presence in the house. He's taken a swing twice, not necessarily to hurt, but definitely in agitation. He got really mad at her when he felt like she was getting too close to the bedroom, which has historically been his space, but their fight was in the guest room that's the girls' space, so I do think he feels like he can throw his weight around to intimidate them and get what he wants. He'll kinda hiss at seeming random at Coco, but I've noticed it's always when she's near something he wants, be it a toy or the step to get on the couch. We're getting a bit of improvement where he'll move toward her and she'll leave before he starts hissing, but I don't want her to be afraid of him either.
On the plus side, they do bond when it's feeding time. He's oddly more mellow about that aspect and will sit calmly in the kitchen while Coco is there also demanding I move faster. He's never gotten aggressive at that time. He's also not even trying to go for their food anymore. We let them share water bowls so they mix their scents, and no one seems bothered. Coco has tried to steal his food on occasion, and does not learn lessons as quickly. I'm going to kick her butt if she keeps it up.
Then there's Gia. Originally, Gia was expected to be the hellion, because she warmed up much more quickly than Coco when it came to food. But then Coco jumped ahead to get her portions, and bloomed into a big social kitty who is a Problem. Gia has since been...almost submissive, in a weird way. She'll dart as soon as Bond so much as enters the room, and mostly hides from us too. She just hasn't seemed comfortable, which had me really concerned given her stronger start.
But it turns out, Gia's actually our dainty princess baby. Gia is finally starting to come out of her shell a bit. She'll come out to say hi, and demand attention like Coco did for a while. She's a bit more accepting of us, and while we thought maybe she wasn't as into people, she's definitely starting to prove us wrong. She also curls up her paw while getting pets, and it's super cute. Unlike Coco, she also meows, and has the daintiest little cry you ever did hear. Her big bravery is that she's started to hiss at Bond every time she sees him. This seems bad, and I'm certainly not encouraging it, but this is a similar, if delayed, structure to Coco's development. The first step was feeling confident enough to hiss at him, and when he doesn't engage and try to fight, Coco mellowed out. It's my hope and expectation that as Gia voices her distress and finds out he won't chase or aggress, she'll also mellow out with him and be more comfortable. Which is a relief. I was seriously worried that Gia was traumatized about their first encounter and would never warm up, but we are making progress. Even if itâs often from the window alcove.
All in all, excellent cat progress for all three. Bond could stand to be a bit less of a cranky old man, and I don't like that he's swat at Coco, but he is, I think, improving in his relations. Gia also needs to be neighborly, but is at least coming out of her shell. Coco...girl, if you bite through one more cord I'm going to pet shame you oldschool internet style. My handwriting is atrocious but cat-mother will join me in this.
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