#actually new and improved version

[scatterbrainedbot]

redraw of one of my very first tmnt drawings!!

had meant to do it exactly the one year later mark, but i blinked and suddenly april was may was june -- so ended up being more like a year and 1.5 months lol

May 11th, 2024 vs. April 6th, 2023

its so funny seeing them nest to each other now, but i remember when i finished the first version last year, i was so proud to have finally made a proper 'finished' piece.

like, yall, i struggled for years to every be able to create a piece i would ever call close to 'done'. part of that is me being a very knit-picky kinda person, and wanted to continue to tweak everything all of the time forever, but on top of that i also do work slow af, and before last year i didnt really have access to any digital media. and i love traditional mediums, but im defintiely not practiced enough to be able to get the results i was looking for with any sort of speed. like im genuinely not sure i created a single 'finished' work in my life -- not in school, not in work, not even in the free space of silly fandom doodles.

and then this piece happened!

and i knew even then that it was messy and rough af, but it had a background!! and color!! sure, the linework wasnt polished at all but still, for a silly little fanart? it was defined enough to distinguish the separate characters, and read expressions! there was even a little tiny bit of lighting!! i hate lighting!!

seeing the two versions side by side honestly i kinda have to laugh at how Rough the first version looks now. but you know what. im still so so proud of it. the colors are muddy, theres no shift in value; their clothing designs arent at all defined, leos teeth look weird af and theres lines on caseys face that are definitely from me accidentally dragging my fingers across the tablet when i didnt mean to but like. its there! its finished! i did it!

idk. ive never had a piece ive ever wanted to hang on my own fridge before. :)

[deadpoets]

- Nathaniel Handal, from “Love Letter,” Poetry (March 2021) [x, old version]

[the-names-kam]

in honor of me finally watching season 2 of the bad batch (and once again losing my mind over these two) i decided to redraw this old comic of mine!

(originally based off of this post by @simplysummers!)

[lollytea]

I do love the netflix avatar in my own way because it provides me with enrichment in the same way brain puzzles do for chimps. Like something is WRONG here and it's your very special job to figure out why! And then you will get juice reward!!

[evilkitten3]

au where after shisui rips his eye out, stuffs it in a crow, and steps off the cliff, itachi instinctively uses the shunshin to catch him. now they're both alive and nobody has a mangekyou except danzou so they have to like actually deal with their problems and shit

[cuteniaarts]

Here *throws random and actually much more important than I realised at first OC redesign at you after two and a half years since the OG*

Meifeng, Ming-Hua’s cousin! I just randomly remembered that she exists while putting together my OC family tree and since the only art I have of her is… nearly 3 years old and mediocre at best, and Kat and I have recently spent so much time focusing on Red Lotus siblings, I thought “Hey, why not redraw her? Just because she’s a cousin and not a sister doesn’t make her any less special than Lien-Hua, Summiya, Aiza or Haya!” (On that note… Nia give someone a brother challenge. The only one that counts is Aiza and she’s only a brother half the time)

Some headcanons about her, both new and old (the old copy-pasted over and slightly edited to save everyone the second hand embarrassment of going to look at my old art), which will go under the cut because this has gotten LONG:

Old:

Older than Ming-Hua by around 10 years

Her dad is the older half-brother of Ming-Hua's mom who��s… not the most fond of their side of the family

Has never left her home in the Foggy Swamp Water Tribe

Master healer, specialises in children. Can't have any of her own because of the high pollution levels in the swamp which is why she puts all those motherly instincts into teaching and caring for kids

Got a scar on her leg while saving Ming-Hua from some wild swamp creature when the latter was a child who was absolutely convinced she could handle everything herself and never listened to anyone. Ming-Hua still insists she had everything under control that day

She tried to understand Ming-Hua's perspective on things, she really did, but ultimately tribe mentality and fear for her cousin’s safety, believing her not to be nearly as capable as she claims to be, won over

Attempted to stop Ming-Hua from running away but was, obviously, unsuccessful

Was the one consoling Nuying after Ming-Hua left

Helped Suiren learn waterbending and held genuine affection for the girl, although she ultimately refused when Suiren begged for the chance for her and Midori to escape from Haya and live with the tribe. She thought that while Suiren would most likely adjust well, Midori was simply too Gaoling to survive in a place as dark, damp and isolated as the Swamp. She regrets that decision every day since she found out Suiren became an assassin

Mourned Ming-Hua more than anyone else in the tribe when informed of her death

New:

Was the one who babysat Ming-Hua a lot when Nuying was going through one of her depressive episodes after Cadeo left, and Ming-Hua actually enjoyed spending time with her because she was a lot less overbearing and protective than her mother. Was the first person to start calling her Ming. Sometimes Ming-Ming, but Ming-Hua had a tendency to deliver a very hard kick to the shins every time she tried that

Never left Nuying’s side when she got sick in the years following Ming-Hua’s disappearance, no matter how much everyone, including her own father, told her to stay away, there’s nothing she can do to help her. In her final moments, Nuying was delirious with fever and called out for Ming-Hua. Meifeng didn’t have the heart to remind her that her daughter left so instead let her hair down, covered her own hand in water and told Nuying that she was “right here, mom. I’m right here” and stayed like that until Nuying passed

When Ming-Hua returned, Meifeng was the one to break the news to her. Later, when Ming-Hua asked how and when it happened, she couldn’t quite stop herself from snapping at her because she should have been there, Meifeng shouldn’t have had to pretend to be her so her mother could die without worrying about where her daughter was. Their relationship never really fully recovered after that fight

Still, she had met Suiren when she was little on the rare occasions when the Red Lotus passed through the Swamp and Ming-Hua chose to take her daughter to visit the tribe. She never met Midori, but she did see Ming-Hua pregnant with her once

Didn’t know about Ming-Hua’s imprisonment until an 11-year-old Suiren told her because world news don’t reach into the heart of the Swamp. She just thought they had decided to stop visiting. The news crushed her but… a part of her couldn’t help but go “you should have fucking listened to me when I told you to stay, then this wouldn’t have happened”

Her teaching Suiren waterbending involved mostly the basics of combat (she herself doesn’t know much of it since she’s a healer), plantbending and healing. Suiren reached her level of mastery and proficiency as well as figured out icebending on her own through sheer determination and spite (she’s so much like her mama 🥹🥹🥹)

Is the only one from the tribe Suiren had ever confessed to about being an assassin. That knowledge broke her heart and she spent all those years absolutely terrified that Suiren would meet Ming-Hua’s fate. When Suiren stopped visiting at one point (when she left for her mission to kill Kuvira, got injured, recovered at ATI, reunited with her parents, broke Kuvira out and started living with her, etc etc) she had assumed that it really did happen, until Suiren randomly showed up one day with Kuvira in tow (Meifeng did not approve bc of the whole spirit vine thing 😅)

Absolutely reunited with Ming-Hua at some point and it was an extremely emotional moment

Ripped Cadeo a new one when he suddenly appeared looking for his daughter after 45+ years after it became common knowledge that the RL are all alive and no longer wanted by the law

All in all… quite an interesting character that I really should do something with at some point, bc how come Ming-Hua’s family is the only one to get 0 attention in our discussions?? #justiceformeifeng2024

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

i’m a big fan of marina and debbie gallagher, and debbie gallagher is a canonical marina fan, so naturally i just started a giant post about debbie and marina because i’m neurotypical and very very normal about how much i love debbie

[asexual-juliet]

we are not free. but we are not alone. one song for each We Are Not Free Character

playlist notes under the cut

I. Minnow Ito - Everything Stays - Adventure Time Everything stays, right where you've left it / Everything stays, but it still changes / Ever so slightly, daily and nightly / In little ways, when everything stays The fact that both of Minnow’s chapters take place in San Francisco and bookend the novel make this the perfect choice for him as he reflects on how Japantown has both changed yet stayed the same as the city of his childhood

II. Shig Ito - Little League - Conan Gray And when we were younger / We wore our hearts right on our sleeves / Why did we ever have to leave? / Little league Shig’s chapter is basically him reflecting on his childhood in Japantown as he prepares to leave it and I think this song is perfect for that! There’s also the line “Do you remember days on our old block?/ Messin' with our neighbors who called the cops” which is SO Shig&Twitchy-core… them and their shenanigans!!

III. Yum-yum Oishi - You Are Loved - Defiance, Ohio And as the story unfolds over time / Things we once knew, they do dissolve into the sky / She swears she sees a brand new constellation / Every time somebody we know dies I love the bit in Yum-yum’s chapter where Tommy and Minnow are making up constellations and I have always associated Yum-yum with astral imagery because of it! I think this song really speaks to her unsurety about the future and I love the line “the radio plays a familiar song,” because Yumyum’s chapter is also where we get the first reference to Mas’ Silvertone radio!

IV. Bette Nakano - Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying - Sabrina Carpenter 'Cause I'm young and I'm dumb / I do stupid things when it comes to love / And even if I always end up crying / No, you can't blame a girl for trying I feel like I don’t even have to explain this one like this encapsulates Bette’s vibe EXACTLY!!! She would be such a teen pop girlie <3

V. Frankie Fujita - Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1 - The Mountain Goats Play with matches if you think you need to play with matches / Seek out the hidden places where the fire burns hot and bright / Find where the heat's unbearable and stay there if you have to / Don't hurt anybody on your way up to the light Thinking about this song as a Frankie song makes me FERAL!! something about the fire in this verse as a metaphor for his anger, him knowing he needs to do whatever he can to make sure he doesn’t hurt anybody with that anger… the first line of this song is “Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive”...yeah. i luv you frankie fujita <3

VI. Stan Katsumoto - Once More with Feeling - Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. Don't let the people make you think / That just because you're young you're useless / You know it's not naive to think that you can change the things around / And that no man is an island This is mostly in reference to Stan wanting to go to college to be a lawyer for the ACLU which is a piece of his character that I absolutely LOVE!!

VII. Aiko Harano - Warrior Girl - Nicole Visco Warrior Girl only goes to where she wants to / Warrior Girl maybe has a heavy sword / Warrior Girl has no idea where she jumps to / But she jumps to where she wants to / And she's never ever bored This is absolutely Aiko’s song!!! She is a scrappy little warrior girl and I adore her for it!! There is also a refrain in this song about “maybe someday / there'll be some way I could get to roam free” which. yeah. I love you Aiko <3

VIII. Yuki Nakano - Crazy Dreams - Carrie Underwood Here's to you free souls, you firefly chasers / Tree climbers, porch swingers, air guitar players / Here's to you fearless dancers, shaking walls in your bedrooms / There's a lot of wonder left inside of me and you / Thank God even crazy dreams come true This just reminds me a lot of Yuki’s dream of playing in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League!! especially because there’s a part of the song that says “Never let a bad day be enough / To go and talk you into giving up” which reminds me so much of Yuki’s chapter!!

IX. Mary Katsumoto - Something About Lemons - Chumped And every day, I grow a little more resentful / Of the choices that I did or didn't make / Wanted this to feel a little more eventful / Every day that I'm awake just feels the same This is SO Mary!! especially the line about being resentful of the choices that she didn’t (get to) make… like that’s literally the plot of her chapter.

X. Kiyoshi Tani - Lion’s Teeth - The Mountain Goats And my arms get sore / And my palms start to sweat / And the tears roll down my face / Till my cheeks are hot and red and soaking wet John Darnielle called this song a “revenge fantasy” about standing up to his abusive stepfather and I think that Kiyoshi deserves that kind of catharsis.

XI. Mas Ito - human - Christina Perri But I'm only human / And I bleed when I fall down / I'm only human / And I crash and I break down Song about pretending to be strong and fake a smile and force a laugh until you literally can’t anymore and it fucking destroys you… hello Mas Ito!!

XII. Keiko Kimura - Who Knew - P!nk That last kiss, I'll cherish until we meet again / And time makes it harder, I wish I could remember / But I keep your memory, you visit me in my sleep / My darling, who knew? Fucked up behavior of me to choose this for Keiko but yeah it’s about Twitchy. Feels self-explanatory.

XIII. Twitchy Hashimoto - Brother - Kodaline We've taken different paths / And traveled different roads / I know we'll always end up on the same one when we're old / And when you're in the trenches / And you're under fire, I will cover you Very much chosen with the Twitchy&Shig dynamic in mind but also because Twitchy literally refers to the other characters as his “siblings back in Topaz”... and something about the line about “we were… the kings and queens” combined with the motif of royalty surrounding Twitchy & his relationship with Keiko (“company of kings,” Aiko’s thought about Twitchy treating Keiko like a “queen,” Keiko’s comparing Twitchy to a prince, the Cinderella motifs in Keiko’s chapter…. yeah) and ofc the reference to trench warfare… this is his fucking song.

XIV. Tommy Harano - Landslide - Fleetwood Mac Well, I've been afraid of changin' / 'Cause I've built my life around you / But time makes you bolder / Even children get older / And I'm getting older too something about Tommy finally making the decision to leave his parents behind… he’s built his life around a family that doesn’t treat him right but time has made him bolder as he’s grown up. and like. the references to snow in both the book and the song are beautiful and aplenty but i don’t have the time to unpack that.

XV. All Of Us - Disposable Youth - No-No Boy Disposable you / Disposable me / Disposable hearts / Indestructible teens Off an album named for the year the Japanese American incarceration of World War II began, this is songwriter Julian Saporiti’s “imagining of what it would have been like to be ever experience a Memorial Day bbq with people who looked like me” and has a very similar vibe to the scene at Tanforan where they celebrate of the infield after the Americans defeated the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. somethin’ bout teenagers getting to be wild and loving and free <3

[backpackofposts]

Similar to how the Minecraft cave spider is slightly smaller than the average spider model, I think glow squids should have a smaller model than the normal squid

[wolfstarshipping]

tell me your favorite wolfstar fics (if you want)

sooooo i guess i'm back on tumblr (who knows for how long, lbr)

I haven't properly been active in the fandom in 4-5 years so if any of you who still follow this blog or see this somewhere on tumblr and want to give me recommendations on what some must-reads and personal favorites are, I'm more than happy to listen and read! Seriously any recommendations for wolfstar fanfics (especially first war angst and most AUs but also everything else) will be greatly appreciated, of course you can also tell me about your own fics if you've written some! I just want to get back into reading fics and enjoying some wolfstar and hope this reaches the right people!

[astrxealis]

i will watch the trailer in english soon :))

[alexanderwales]

I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".

[acridid-s]

So, unfortunately, I am not only too stupid to install Linux, a few important apps (mainly Affinity Photo) are not compatible with it, so I will have to continue using Windows for a while. At least I know a techbro (not derogatory) who knows ways around all the shit I don't want and there are multiple, ever-updating tutorials on how to disable or trick the system into altogether removing all the AI shit. I also bought the oldest possible PC model they had (it was the successor model to the PC I've had for nearly 7 years, but the employee said it was THE "weakest" model they had- which by today's standards still means that it is MORE than usable), so this one might not even have at least some of the shit I don't want.

[hide-your-bugs-away]

Having a bit of a Magazine Renaissance in my search for Animal-Magazines, and I couldn't be happier....... 👀

[sunderwight]

SV AU where Shen Yuan transmigrates into a kind of mimicry demon.

He still gets tasked by the System with replacing Shen Qingqiu, except this time he actually has to pull off an imposter role on multiple levels, while the real Shen Qingqiu is stuck in a coma due to his qi deviation. Initially he thinks the situation is going to be temporary -- just take over until he figure out how to get the original goods to wake up -- but Shen Jiu's condition proves to be more difficult to repair than just waiting. Shen Yuan buys special side missions from the System to find items and artifacts to keep Shen Jiu alive, mainly because he doesn't want to be stuck playing this part until Luo Binghe kills him, but also after the first couple of times Shen Jiu regains some consciousness (not enough to leave his bed), Shen Yuan starts to feel kind of... bad for him. Too. Despite everything.

Shen Jiu, of course, is deeply suspicious of this doppelganger that has obviously taken advantage of his weakness to infiltrate the sect and steal his identity. He initially theorizes that the creature must be keeping him alive because it needs some aspect of his vitality in order to keep posing as him, but as they share more encounters is forced to concede that the thing might just be insane? And weirdly softhearted. Over time and by feigning sleep to listen in on Shen Yuan's muttering, he figures out that this all has something to do with Luo Binghe, which he's not pleased about. But he can't deduce what. (Luo Binghe doesn't get to move into the side room in this version of the story, because Shen Yuan has the house on lockdown for obvious reasons, but he does still get to make Shizun's meals!)

Anyway, Shen Jiu doesn't manage to conveniently wake up before the Immortal Alliance Conference. Shen Yuan has to throw Luo Binghe in, which he hates, but along the way he manages to recover that magical flower macguffin that won't work on Without-a-Cure (which he doesn't have in this AU because his species is immune to it), brews a tea that finally fixes Shen Jiu, and then fucks off to go mope about Binghe being in the Abyss.

Shen Jiu doesn't tell anyone about his demonic replacement, for a variety of reasons. One, he's punishing the other peak lords for not figuring it out themselves. Two, he's punishing himself for the fact that a literal demon replaced him for like 3 years and everyone considered it an improvement. Because it was. Three, he has mixed feelings that might potentially amount to not wanting to hunt down and kill Shen Yuan, but he's not admitting that even to himself.

Everyone thinks that Shen Qingqiu's return to asshole form is a result of Luo Binghe dying, and that his sudden new research projects are part of him like, trying to make sense of a senseless tragedy, and coping. But no, he's still trying to figure out why the fuck Luo Binghe was important and why Shen Yuan inserted himself into their lives only to basically just do Shen Qingqiu's job while he was indisposed, and then fuck off the moment Luo Binghe left the picture again.

After... healing Shen Jiu. Also. For some unfathomable reason.

But this version of the System's just happy that the plot is back on track! And surely it will stay back on track. Yes? Problem solved, right? Shen Yuan? Definitely nothing is going to mess with the rest of the story, cough cough, wait why are you visiting User 01, and what would you, a demon shapeshifter, need with a Sun & Dew seed...?

[reasonsforhope]

Paywall-Free Version

"Massachusetts’ so-called “millionaires tax” appears primed to actually deliver billions.

State officials said Monday that the voter-approved surtax on high earners has generated more than $1.8 billion in revenue this fiscal year... meaning state officials could have hundreds of millions of surplus dollars to spend on transportation and education initiatives.

The estimated haul is already $800 million more than what Governor Maura Healey and state lawmakers planned to spend from its revenue in fiscal year 2024, the first full year of its implementation. Most of the additional money raised beyond the $1 billion already budgeted would flow to a reserve account, from which state policymakers can pluck money for one-time investments into projects or programs.

The Department of Revenue won’t certify the official amount raised until later this year. But the estimates immediately buoyed supporters’ claims that the surtax would deliver much-needed revenue for the state despite fears it could drive out some of the state’s wealthiest residents.

“Opponents of the Fair Share Amendment claimed that multi-millionaires would flee Massachusetts rather than pay the new tax, and they are being proven wrong every day,” said Andrew Farnitano, a spokesperson for Raise Up Massachusetts, the union-backed group which pushed the 2022 ballot initiative.

"With this money from the ultra-rich, we can do even more to improve our public schools and colleges, invest in roads, bridges, and public transit, and start building an economy that works for everyone,” Farnitano said.

Voters approved the measure in 2022 to levy an additional 4 percent tax on annual earnings over $1 million. At the time, the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank, projected it could generate at least $2 billion a year.

State officials last year put their estimates slightly lower at up to $1.7 billion, and lawmakers embraced calls from economists to cap what it initially spends from the surtax, given it may be too volatile to rely upon in its first year.

So far, it’s vastly exceeded those expectations, generating nearly $1.4 billion alone last quarter [aka January to March, 2024 - just three months!], which coincided with a better-than-expected April for tax collections overall...

State Senator Michael Rodrigues, the state’s budget chief, said on the Senate floor Monday that excess revenue from the tax could ultimately come close to $1 billion for this fiscal year. Under language lawmakers passed last year, 85 percent of any “excess” revenue is transferred to an account reserved for one-time projects or spending, such as road maintenance, school building projects, or major public transportation work.

“We will not have any problems identifying those,” Rodrigues said. “As we all know, [transportation and education] are two areas of immense need.”"

-via Boston Globe, May 20, 2024