#although artists put this behind paywalls

[plavigmaz]

Sketches I did for the commission. I want to share my process.

I always like to do a quick sketch to get to know the character I draw.

The same goes for the environment they are in, and what possible compositions work best!

A few more compositions. I try not to take too much time on them. Warm-up sketches help me to draw them faster.

[kroovv]

previous anon here: dorian's predatory business practices are a lot like wattpad's if you know anything about that—they pocket a huge portion of the proceeds for every VN they publish and only give very few pennies to the actual authors, essentially using other people's work to line their own pockets, while pretending to provide a great platform for artists. Last I heard they also have terms that say whatever you upload to them becomes their property IP. it's the kind of situation where they convince artists its the easiest option for publishing a VN, when in reality there are other ways that are just as or even more simple that allow u to keep full ownership of ur work. I also have a grudge against them specifically because they bought up an indie VN studio that I was a fan of, put previously free stuff behind a paywall and otherwise ran it into the ground, and their social media people were very unprofessional and sent threatening messages to fans for making fan content.

Renpy takes some learning, but it's really simple once you know how it works. And besides renpy there are other VN engines that are even simpler (Unity even has a VN library called Fungus thats very simple and straightforward to use) TyranoBuilder is also a popular one. As for chapters, there are absolutely people on itchio updating their VNs a chapter at a time, although i dont know if its in the way youd want; pushing each separate chapters as updates to the main game, or releasing each chapter as a separate game come to mind as options.

(i'd honestly even offer to convert the game to renpy for you since ive been working extensively with renpy for the past 2 years and am very familiar with it and how to work it, if it meant i could save one artist from the clutches of dorian, but that feels too much like overstepping 😅)

So i am not sure if maybe they have changed things, but with games self published to them they own 0% of that IP so I will own Gravehearts 100% only if they where to buy it from me then they’d own it but i personally do not see that happening lmao. From what i understand about it is it is like Webtoons but for VNs anyone can upload to it but they still own it like how i still own Horizon Walkers even though it’s on Webtoons and Tapas. They do take a % of what you make so that is why I would love to also have my own app or game on itch as well!

I have a decent following for my artwork but who knows what that vendiagram is for people who like VNs is, so if i where to publish the game somewhere by itself i don’t know how well it would do because I don’t know if i have the audience for it, also i don’t know if people would even see it when i post about it cause social media sucks. So like posting HW to webtoons so that people who read comics might see it that’s what I am kind of hoping for with posting Gravehearts to Dorian.

Again with Gravehearts i own it 100%, with publishing games there you can chose when and where people pay for things, and people do paywall love interests and main story stuff but i fully do not intend to do that because I don't want to do that. So I will not be putting any main story or love interests behind paywalls the only thing I would do as paid stuff are optional scenes with a character where you can get a nice full art piece of them from it! (Im also trying to figure out if i could put some kind of code on the image so people can download high res versions of it as phone wallpapers! So you’re actually paying for something more tangible)

However like i said previously i would love to make my own app for it, or something like an app or on itch, but i could maybe try do it in tangent with Dorian, so people who don’t want to support them can still support the story somewhere else! But it might take a little while for me to be able to do something like that because it’d be learning a whole bunch of new stuff and it is just me but I will do my best 👍

[peri-peri-sauce]

hi sorry if this is random but i noticed your recent tags and some other peoples posts about Jeres behaviour recently, so i wanted to ask what exactly happened, how did he change? because he seems the same to me and i cant recall anything happening, other than the NFT situation. the poor jokes have been around a while, hes made them on previous euro tour and nobody seemed to mind.

Before I state my opinion on this subject, I want to make it clear that it's totally okay not to agree with me.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I won't start any drama or arguments over this. Although you're free to leave your thoughts and opinions in my inbox or in this post's comments without any problems.

I don't really care much about the jokes. Yes, after hearing them a thousand times they do get tiring, and his limited knowledge of English is not an excuse to keep making the same jokes over and over. But they're just jokes, it's entertainment, and that's it. That's not what has been bothering me, and I wanted to make this clear from the start.

My issue is more with the other things he's done (or hasn't done) this year.

First the NFTs, which caused a lot of drama and divided the fandom between people who are against it and cancelled him and those who don't care. I'm not going to go into details because there's already been hundreds of posts about this.

On the other hand, there's the drama with the OF. Poor quality content for 40€, no schedule, no communication. Another mess I'm not going to get into, we've already discussed this.

Personally, I'm tired of everything being put behind a paywall. They do raffles, giveaways and post exclusive content only for people who can afford to pay. And what about the rest of us? Are those of us who don't want to pay just going to keep getting vacation photos and the occasional selfie? Mikke still hasn't uploaded anything about last year's Eurotour, and now they want to make this year's Eurotour paid content?

Also, what happened to the album? Why does he keep releasing songs without properly announcing or promoting anything? We wouldn't have even had a date for the Sex = Money release if someone hadn’t posted that on socials yesterday after he casually mentioned it at the gig! The album was supposed to come out in the spring, but there are barely three months left in the year and we still don't have any dates or anything.

Recently, I feel like I'm following an influencer who posts vacation photos rather than an artist who makes shows and music. I want K to live his life and do whatever he wants, but he shouldn't forget that he's an artist, and while we keep giving him our money to go to concerts, get boring merch and see exclusive content, I don't feel like he's giving us something new in return. As a fan who is in love with him as an artist and his music, I feel really disappointed.

I feel like he's not putting in as much effort as he did last year. He doesn't bother to give us dates, to make a schedule for the OF posts or communicate with us what to expect before we subscribe, to provide us with new content (without having to pay), and he doesn't even bother to create good designs for his merch that isn't just the same photo he's been using everywhere for months.

With this, I want to clarify that I'm not canceling him, I'm just mad and disappointed, and for now, I'm not leaving the fandom. But if he doesn't have anything to offer me, then I won't have anything to give him in return either.

[simstomaggie]

Women's History Month Collection for Girls

March is the month to celebrate women and all our contributions to history and society!

(This was totally not supposed to be ready for International Women's Day on the 8th, no no.)

I wanted to give girls the opportunity to show off their feminism and also to celebrate diversity among women, so I made this! We have a sweatshirt with amazing women from history, a dress with incredible women from different media, and a t-shirt with amazing feminist artwork by Alura on etsy (link below)!

the "All Girls Are Superheroes"-Dress

This dress is the dress from Dream Home Decorator made bgc. The design says "All Girls Are Superheroes" in simlish, and above it you can see all kinds of (super-)heroines!

25 swatches

bgc

disallowed for random

the "Historic Women"-Sweatshirt

This was i think the original idea: make some historical women in the sims and put the faces on a shirt! I did a tiny mesh edit, to make the sweatshirt a little nicer. You have the names of the women on the shirt in the white banner, and below it says "The Future is Female". I'll leave it to you to figure out who is who ;) Thanks to my friends @kyriat-sims, @jackiewilsonsims , @dsimsdecades and @simming-in-the-rain for their lovely contributions to this project!

11 swatches

bgc

disallowed for random

a big thank you to the amazing @simverses for her help with a small weight issue!

the "Girlpower"-Shirt

These is a t-shirt with the fantastic designs by Alura! If you like them and would like to support an amazing artist, please go to her shop AluraHome! The link to the feminist art is right here! I edited them slightly, and added simlish!

31 swatches

bgc

disallowed for random

I also made this shirt for toddlers and infants! it's basically the same, although the colors of the shirt are slightly different, and they have one less swatch!

TOU:

Please do NOT claim as yours.

Do NOT put behind paywalls.

Do NOT reupload.

DO recolor (without the mesh please!)

DO use for mesh edits

PLEASE give proper credit

HAVE a good time

DOWNLOAD ON PATREON (FOR FREE, NO EARLY ACCESS!)

IF YOU’D LIKE TO SUPPORT ME, YOU CAN BECOME A PATRON, OR BUY ME A KO-FI. THANKS ♥

cc: @maxismatchccworld @mmfinds @mmoutfitters @public-ccfinds  ♥

[the1312daysofchristmas]

I was gonna ask you this anyway actually bc you know a lot of artists but I just kept forgetting bc adhd is kicking my ass rn but since you wanted asks: do you know of any cool online stores or artists selling stickers? im trying to decorate my new laptop and I bought a few on etsy but I wanna get more

made in a lab to answer this question bc all i do is look for artists that skew cool. i will also give artists that skew cute. some artists are in between these categories, that is, they have a cute artstyle with subject matter that at least at times skews cool. my metric for whats cool and whats cute is pretty much 'based on aesthetics if this were being sold at a basement show in the 90s to 00s would someone get called gay'. if the answer is yes, its cute. if the answer is no, its cool. i dont know if this makes sense but im gonna use this categorizing anyway. i will tag the artists who are on tumblr but otherwise im naming everyone by their instagram handle because thats where i look at art and im on my phone and cant link everyone without losing my sanity

coming back after writing this list i have GOT to put this under a cut

@cursedluver: cute/cool, mostly cool to me, very bright and colourful and his starpions are really fun

ummmheather: cute/cool, mostly cute but shes got some stuff thats silly in a more cool way if that makes sense.

strikegentlyco: cool, they only recently started making stickers so the selection is a bit limited but they do have lots of enamel pins

sheselle: i would say firmly on the cute side of things in aesthetics but i think her sense of humor can be interesting. new to me though. i think you will really love some of her stuff and not really be into others.

@sweatermuppet: cool, lots of queer political stuff

luluvanhoagland: cool but with a soft artstyle so it feels cute.

@sofftpunk: cute/cool, lots of lgbt stuff

thegraveyardrave: mostly cool, they do have a tumblr blog but its specifically for clownposting so i will not tag him

leestrawberrryshop: cute with a cool tilt, mostly white and pink with just lineart but its an interesting scribble/doodle style. memey at times

prettybadco: cool but lately this guys been doing so much i think you should leave fan merch and its not bad but i dont watch i think you should leave and its not what i followed for. the original stuff is pretty neat though

catcoven: medieval. giving this one its own category on the grounds that thats pretty self explanatory and more precise than cool/cute

interrupted by finding a bee in my bedroom while drinking slightly warm tea (house is closed and the windows in my room (also closed) have mosquito nets)

@verdant-succubus: cool but there is body horror and guts and stuff so tread lightly if youre sensitive to that sort of thing.

radhia rahman (knivesmeow): cute but i feel cool when i look at her art

abprallenuk: cool but the colour palletes are strictly pastel

svv.art: very cool

smdefelice: cool. mostly does screenprinting but i am pretty sure they do stickers also. however the shop is currently closed for con prep do i cannot confirm

lilboatboutique: cute/cool has a homesick at space camp sticker which is currently on my water bottle and which i own in 2 variants as an enamel pin.

kerin cunningham: cool. emo. the goat. what else is there to say.

@darbydraws: cool. quite like her stickers although her bread and butter is t shirts. also emo

xraeart: cool. alt streetwear brand so. yknow.

skullingway: cool. theyre one of my favourite artists hands down. not a lot of stickers tho

jordandebney: cool. this guy makes the coolest stickers but most of it is for his subscription box which is fine. theres 2 stickers not behind a paywall

elrosabel: cool stuff, cute style. she kinda like. soft closed. to do polymer clay sculptures. but she might have reopened? i know shes selling stuff under this project again

piratesarrrt: cool but in a soft style. similar subject matter to luluvanhoagland. which is to say weird girl heads.

seankeetonart: cool.

@moonlume: cute. the concepts are cool though

jimibiscuits: cool. this is one of my favourite artists i have. so many of his pins. he doesnt have a ton of stickers though iirc

@8pxl: i am going to invent a category called 'pretty'. i love pixel art and this is my favourite pixel artist ever.

i gotta fuckin stop

go forth and get some stickers

[remnantsofthepast-if]

Monthly Update - December 2023

Christmas is here, everyone!! Finding a little moment to post this update since we’re all going to be quite busy until the end of the month, I imagine!

This month I managed to finish the main scene of this chapter. It’s been a bit difficult, not going to lie! It’s a very important moment for Ada/Omar, and I wanted to make it as perfect as possible. It’s an emotional scene and I cried a little while writing it, so I hope you all like it when it’s released :’). Now there’s only one more scene left before it’s all done, finally!

I’ve also been working a bit more on the scenes I’ll be rewriting from previous chapters. I’ll probably edit them all after chapter 8 and release the whole revised version of act 1 along with chapter 9 to not make you wait too much to start act 2.

And talking about things I’ve been working on this december, I want to announce that the Patreon page is up! I tried to post a little bit of everything for every tier, although just with the lowest tier you’d already have access to the majority of content. I don’t like putting interesting content behind a paywall, so I made it easy for mostly everyone to get the most without having to pay much. The higher tiers add cool stuff, but it doesn’t make it frustrating if you can’t afford it, or at least I hope so! You can check it out here.

The things you see there are just an example of what I want to share as a fun and entertaining addition to this project, but it's not necessary to understand and enjoy the main story. Nothing I add there will be essential to be able to read Remnants Of The Past and enjoy it to the fullest; it's just a more direct way to support me if you wish to, and to earn rewards that I think are cool :D. These are ideas I've taken from other artists, especially from a Spanish illustrator and writer that I really like. If you have any suggestions to make it better, feel free to let me know!

--

Thank you so much for sticking around this 2023. No matter how long you’ve been following this project, or if you’ve decided it’s not your cup of tea, I’m infinitely grateful for each and every single one of you for giving it a chance! <3

Merry Christmas and happy new year, everyone!! Have a fantastic first month of 2024 and see you at the end of January ;)

[jay-catsby]

I recently finished the sketchbook that I got from the workshop course that launched me as an artist, and finally closing that particular book has prompted a lot of reflection about my evolution as an art-maker. I've been thinking about putting together a digital archive of sketches and paintings that would span approximately the last eight years, and if I'm going to the trouble of making such a thing it might be worth letting people see it if there's interest.

This is something I'd be putting behind a pay-what-you-want barrier with zero as the expected contribution - I don't particularly want or expect to make money, but a lot of the older work is stuff that I'm not proud of or impressed by (although it is important to my growth) and I don't want it floating around with unrestricted access. The paywall would just exist to help foster a situation where the only people seeing my timid early efforts are people who have at least some idea of who I am (i.e. my dear 12 followers reading this post)

Anyway.

[macrotiis]

I was thinking a little bit about this today & how deviantart allows artists to submit "premium" stuff which is just art behind a pay wall & like I just rly can't see myself ever using that feature.

Maybe if I were to make a game or something & post the concept art, I might paywall it for a while so if people wish to help support the game or w/e they could & get to see the concept work for it. Otherwise, I just kinda hate the idea of paying to view artwork just coz.

Like I feel like letting others enjoy my artwork is part of being an artist in the first place. It's very weird to me that people are now paywalling simply viewing your art & I kinda feel like it's shooting yourself in the foot bc artists need their work to be visible in the first place to gage interest & sell commissions.

Although, in some ways with where the internet is headed with AI scraping, I can understand artists being more willing to put their work behind a paywall to protect it, but we shouldn't have to do that & I think it would be better if we as artists banded together to push for better labour laws that prohibits scraping artists galleries online for AI image libraries.

its your right as a human being to have access to art

[historyhermann]

Spicing It Up: "High Guardian Spice" is A Cute and Magical Coming-of-Age Story [Part 2]

Sage boops Rose on the nose in episode 1

Continued from Part 1.

The supervising director of High Guardian Spice, Audu Paden, has worked on series such as Monster High, Ever After High, Animaniacs, and Polly Pocket, during his 20+ year career. Although some have criticized Leth in the past, with the issues being brought together in a 46-page Google Doc reportedly outlining her past problematic actions and words, it is important to remember she is only one of the show's many writers. As such, even if you are critical of Leth or dislike her for some other reason, no one in their right mind should dismiss an entire show because of what one writer has said in the past, just as no one should dismiss Twelve Forever because the creator, Julia Vickerman, may have been fostering a hostile work environment.

Reprinted from The Geekiary, Wayback Machine, and my History Hermann WordPress blog. This was the eleventh article I wrote for The Geekiary. This post was originally published on October 30, 2021.

There has been a negative response to High Guardian Spice, primarily from reactionary videos on YouTube and outrage over a "focus on diversity and LGBTQ+ creators," following the release of a trailer a few years ago. This has reached over into the comments on the episodes themselves, which is worrisome. The response is somewhat similar to how people reacted to the release of Kelsey Stephanides' six-episode mature animated comedy series, Magical Girl Friendship Squad, which parodied the magical girl genre and included various LGBTQ characters and themes.

SYFY originally released episodes on YouTube, but due to negative response from a vocal minority who review bombed episodes, the episodes were pulled from YouTube, and were put behind a paywall. Currently, Magical Girl Friendship Squad can only be watched on an obscure streaming platform, Peacock, while the show was left to die, with SYFY not even attempting to renew it.

The backlash to High Guardian Spice from stick-in-the-mud anime fans is a likely cause for the series, which ended production in November 2019, to miss release dates in 2019 and 2020. This means that Crunchyroll sat on the series for two years! Hopefully, High Guardian Spice does not suffer the same fate as Magical Girl Friendship Squad, or Crunchyroll Originals like Onyx Equinox, which has not yet been renewed for a second season. As one fan put it, "the immature audiences have already declared that they aren't watching."

Despite this, there has been a positive response to the show from character designers, artists, reviewers, writers, storyboarders, illustrators, cartoonists, YouTubers, cleanup artists, animators, animation directors, and show creators. Although you could say that the show isn't for everyone, this doesn't mean that anyone should hate on it. A lot of the hate toward the show is from misogynist and queerphobic anime fans, even though anime often features LGBTQ+ stereotypes up to the wazoo, with good representation sometimes hard to come by. Hopefully, this minority of hate-watchers of High Guardian Spice will be drowned out over time by new LGBTQ+ fans who love the show, even as Crunchyroll barely promotes it, leaving the promotional work to current viewers and the show's cast and crew.

If High Guardian Spice receives a second season, it will continue the story of the show's four protagonists, which Rose dubs "High Guardian Spice" in the show's final episode. In possible future episodes, Olive, who worked with Smoke Face, her intermediary to the Triumverate, may continue to be a threat, even though she has said that she doesn't want to kill anyone. As Olive stated in one episode to the show's protagonist, the Triumverate will keep sending enemies, like Mandrake, to fight the protagonists, attempting to cause them, and those at the school grievous harm.

Another season would see more of "cute witches fall[ing] in love with each other," as one fan described it, and episodes that hopefully push the boundaries of LGBTQ+ and gender diversity in media. Some fans would probably hope that characters like Sage and Rose could "run off and elope and travel the world as a power couple," as Amber Vanich, an openly lesbian storyboarder for Tangled: The Series once said about the popular ship of Cassandra and Rapunzel in the series, known as "Cassunzel," or have Sage and Snap do the same, due to their feelings toward each other. There are many possible ships in this show.

If another season of High Guardian Spice does happen, there would be more of what Romero described as an "incredibly inclusive" fun and magical adventure. Such a season is possible despite the fact that Rodriguez is developing a new mature animated drama for Legendary TV and another based on DC animated character for Warner Bros. Animation. If the show was to be renewed by Crunchyroll, new episodes would need to be developed, meaning the show may be on hiatus for some time. As Rodriguez put it recently, on an account which has gone private to avoid harassment from trolls, it's up to Crunchyroll if a second season is greenlit, adding that he'd "love to make a season 2" because he wanted to have the story following "the girls through all 3 years at High Guardian Academy."

As Georden Whitman, creator of Nomad of Nowhere and the upcoming animated series, Port by the Sea, stated, "it seems a lot of people are enjoying it so I hope that hate crowd is nullified." I hope for the same. As for Rodriguez, he has been drawing characters from High Guardian Spice, beginning with Rose, since 2013, even putting Rose in an animation he made in 2014. As a result, it is clear that he would definitely be interested in continuing the series if he is able to do so as he is invested in the characters, even likely basing the name of the catgirl on his cat, Olive, featured on his Tumblr blog along with early illustrations of the show's characters.

It is significant that Rodriguez described Princess Tutu as his favorite anime and Duck as his favorite character, saying she is "put through hardship after hardship, but she always makes it through smiling, she never gives up hope." The series has some similarities to High Guardian Spice in that it has magical girl elements and effective emotional appeal, with emotional honesty from characters. However, Princess Tutu is said to be a "fairy tale set to ballet" with the use of dance in lieu of violence, which makes me think more of the fusion dances in Steven Universe than anything in High Guardian Spice. As one reviewer put it, "the show draws from magical girl series like Sailor Moon and Princess Tutu." While I can't speak more to the influence of Princess Tutu, the sequences in the episode where the girls become mermaids is definitely inspired by the magical girl transformations in anime such as Cardcaptor Sakura, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon, and the like.

High Guardian Spice is, as Marisa Balkus, an animation manager at Netflix, put it, a "very special show that was intended to connect with audiences outside of its main platform." I hope, like she does, that people "find fun, comfort, and... a best girl in it." Certain YouTubers who complain about the show to get clicks and money flowing into their pockets or the hostile people in the Crunchyroll comments don't represent those who actually watch the show. Such people also did not represent those who watched Magical Girl Friendship Squad. The same can be said for the latter show's hard-to-find pilot series, Magical Girl Friendship Squad: Origins, stuck behind innumerable paywalls, written by Diana McCorry, the same person who created the little-known animated comedy web series, Human Kind Of, in 2018.

In a possible Season 2, it would be wonderful to see more magic, wholesome girls from this charming and cute series which has the feel of a Toonami or Ghibli anime but the fluidity and expressiveness that a modern cartoon can offer. Due to the fact it has four female protagonists at the helm, it not only shares some similarities with anime series like Princess Connect! Re: Dive, but with Western animations like Middle School Moguls, the Tales of Arcadia anthology, and Welcome to the Wayne, although each of those series are different in their own ways.

The show's last episodes, where the catgirl, Olive, turns people into stone, reminded me of the ending of the first season of Disenchantment when Dreamland is turned into stone except for the King, making it appear abandoned. In this case, however, the spell is lifted, while in Disenchantment everyone is still encased in stone, and that hasn't been reversed even in the most recent episodes.

The first season of High Guardian Spice makes me think of the four-episode prelude series by Yssa Badiola, entitled Recorded By Arizal. Like that series, I see these 12 episodes as introducing viewers to the show's characters and getting viewers invested in them, and setting a foundation for a future season. Another season would allow the characters to shine even more, and add more characters, perhaps those who are non-binary for instance. Even so, due to review bombing by some anime fans, it is possible that Crunchyroll will not see renewing such a series worth their while. Hopefully, they decide to renew it anyway and let the story continue, as the end of Season 1 left viewers with an unexpected cliffhanger!

I would highly recommend High Guardian Space. It is a harmless, cute, wonderful magical fantasy, and a queer magical girl show all in one.  I hope Crunchyroll will take the dive and keep this series alive. In the end, I hope that readers of this review help give High Guardian Spice a chance by watching it, whether on Crunchyroll or VRV.

© 2021-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

[absurdthirst]

I don't know exactly what this Tumblr plus thing is so can you explain what's going to happen?

Tumblr Post + is going to be a paid service where you have to pay to view certain content creators posts

Here is a rundown on it although according to the Tumblr staff, you can block subscribers

My problem with it is that the wording is set up in such a way that they are providing this service but it protects Tumblr yet leaves the actual user open to lawsuits.

HERE is the problem with Post+. I am a fanfiction writer. I write stories based off copywriter works. While the studios have seen fit to leave us alone, it's because we are not profiting off of it.

You post your stories behind a paywall and you are receiving payment for your works - which is a HUGE no no - you are opening yourself up to litigation by Disney, and any other studio that holds the rights to the work your stories are based off of. . DO NOT DO IT.

If they wanted to use Post+ for porn, great! Good, please do. But don't encourage writers or artists who draw copywritten figures to put up a pay wall. Nope. Nah. Not gonna do it.

[mack3030]

I find it kind of bizarre how so many of these vehement paywallers are often hyper-alpha creators (to be clear, I've nothing against alpha content) whose content often have extremely bloated file sizes. I deadass had a single hair item from a well-known CC creator that was 50 MB *ALONE.* Deleting their stuff from my Mods folder lowered the size by like 2 GB, it's insane.

I had this long post drawn up but tbh, I just lost it and I'm not really able to articulate this well...so lemme just put it blunt and plain. The reason these files are bloated is that these folks are converting 3D models for the sims 4. The meshes are not their own. They're from somewhere else. And most of the time, they don't remotely have any sort of permission from the original modeler, or the site they got it from. It's hilarious how they're willing to go after pirates and whine and cry when people share their CC from behind paywalls when they stole it in the first place. If they were a professional grade 3D modeler, they sure as hell wouldn't be selling their model as sims 4 CC when they can charge an arm and a leg on other sites and have way better protection from theft/infringement, and can still keep a lot of their creative rights as an artist. Most of the people who "can" mesh who are offering CC are people who are self-taught, taught from guides/tutorials, or from others who are self taught. And there's nothing wrong with that because that's the skill level needed for the sims 4. And ironically, many of the people who mesh things by hand don't paywall. (Although there are a few who do, and to that I am glaring at you from over the rims of my glasses.) NOW there is NOTHING WRONG with conversions as LONG as the person is ethical about it: - Letting the public know it's a conversion/not their mesh - Being honest/open with the original mesh owner A few recent examples of how "creators" got in trouble for converting and doing it unethically: - Sims41life (paywaller) posted a converted model of a cyberpunk car that they got off of a 3D modeling site as sims 4 cc. The original owner was notified, and sims41life had to remove the model from their patreon.

- Vintage-simmer (paywaller/adwaller) posted a converted 3D model of a crib behind their patreon paywall. The model was then revealed to be a free model from sketchfab. The original owner was notified, and vintage-simmer had to remove it from behind their paywall.

- Bergdorfsims (paywaller) posted numerous bags/clutter items that were converted 3D models from CG trader that she had "bought". One of the artists who owned multiple models that she had converted was notified about her use of the models which was against their terms/license, and after a long back and forth message chain, she was forced to remove any patreon content she had that contained his models. These are just a "few" examples of how people can get in trouble for not being ethical with conversions. And I fully expect that there will be more cases as 3D modeling sites/creators start to realize the full amount of fuckery going on from some of these "creators". :/

[break-slash]

Puzzleship JP & KR Fancomic Recommendation List

UPDATE (19-12-2020): Added two more artists and two more titles on the Japanese lists!

I don’t consider myself as someone very tidy and organized, but I just like making lists of the things I love, somehow. Hence this post. I haven’t been in the fandom for long but I thought I’d share some of my favorites primarily from two sites: pixiv and postype. Most of the postype ones are behind paywall, and I will mark them differently.

Some of my favorites come from the same artists, so I’ll also link their pixiv profile on top of my favorite work of them.

(I actually bookmarked a lot and picking them isn’t an easy task, so I will update this step by step. If you see only a link of an artist, that’s the reason, but I can guarantee you will love their works! Feel free to recommend me yours through reblogs or DM as well!)

Japanese

Artist: CYHGM

She is a Chinese and is more active on Weibo (she posted tons of puzzleship there, but my Mandarin is beyond rusty so I could only cry in despair lmao), but she has two fancomics that I absolutely adore of. Those two mentioned fancomics are:

The Past and The Future. You can check my translation for this one here. It tells about Atem who gets transported to 3000 years later before his coronation, and that’s where he met post-canon!Yugi. Just... everything about this comic is so wonderful. I teared up at the last page, not gonna lie ;_;

The Pharaoh and The Fairy: An Ancient Egypt-slash-fantasy AU featuring the S0/TOEI casts. The fairy Yugi was saved by Atem, and it’s an obligatory for fairies to grant their savior’s wishes. However, Atem doesn’t exactly have something he wants of, and this confuses Yugi on how he should repay him back. Pure undiluted sugar, and fairy!Yugi is just so cute.

Artist: Fushitas

Arguably one of the most popular Puzzleship fanartists in the JP fandom (look at their number of followers on Twitter, man), but maybe it’s also due to the fact they were in AoT fandom too. They’re mostly active on Twitter, and if you also watch Zexal, they draw tons of Yuma-centric pairings too. They have released lots of books, and their prices on the reseller sites are... well, let’s just say, unbelievable. Just to show how famous they are. 

From everlasting to everlasting: Set after DSOD. A mysterious figure appears in front of Atem, claiming to be his queen. Everyone in the after life somehow acknowledges this person, which makes him even more confused because he’s the only one unaware of this. On the living realm, Yugi who is on the way to his home got hit by a truck (isekai much??) and when he woke up, he suddenly plays the role of Atem’s queen. I’ve always adored Fushitas’ drawing, and this is no exception. The story is pretty simple, but is still good! The ending of this comic is everything I’ve always wanted from the canon lol. 

The King’s Guest: Ancient Egypt AU. The councils are starting to get worried because Atem shows no interest in marrying someone, so Shimon opens up a “chance” sort of for civilians to become “someone for the Pharaoh to talk with”. The civilian Yugi takes this chance right off the bat, and stuff happens? This one is just so sweet and the misunderstanding later in the story kinda cracks me up. I really love the way they build the two’s chemistry in here.

Artist: usi 

They only draw two puzzleship fancomics, but both are so good and explores the themes I’ve loved from the pairing.

The Lotus’ Devil: Set post-canon with a flashback. It tells about Yugi’s regret in the past where he wanted to show Atem a small pool supposed to be full of lotus flower only to arrive seeing them not blooming. Fast forward to the post-canon, he found out that there’s actually a monster residing on that pool. I really, really loved the ending scene of this one.

Who’s The Detestable, Fortunate Guy Here: I think this is set sometime in the canon story, although the exact timing is unclear. It’s a short comic of Yugi asking Atem to pretend to be his date and go on a “dating practice”. A very pleasant hurt-and-comfort kind of story, and who doesn’t love a story of them dating anyways? :”D

Artist: Houzuki Anzu

She doesn’t draw much YGO, but she has some Arc-V and 5D’s fanarts too if you watch the series! 

Hourglass: Sets after the Memory World arc. Yugi keeps hearing a strange sound inside his mind, and he finds out there’s a huge hourglass standing there, guarded by the will of Millenium Puzzle. Apparently, the hourglass is linked to Atem’s remaining time in the living realm? Anyways, the ending of this comic might look like a cliffhanger, but I personally think it isn’t. I love the theme this comic picks to explore and the way it is presented.

Present: Same setting with Hourglass, but this one focuses more on Atem sorting out his feelings about the Ceremonial Duel and what he has learned from Yugi in general. It’s a very nice extra detail that the canon slightly lacks of, and I just love... bittersweet stuff in general haha.

Artist: Chiriko

Are you the type who wants puzzleship to be full of happiness and fluff and nothing else? Well, she has a number of comics to fill that need! I actually love all of her works, but if I have to pick, these two are my favorite:

...Don’t Ever Leave Me Again: A short story about Yugi having a nightmare of where he was stuck in the fire accident at Otogi’s store. Well... this isn’t a fluff sort of, but it’s... a happy ending still? /shot

[Untitled]: A dialogue-less comic, but this is the sort of post-canon what-if that I really, really like. Atem stroking Yugi’s face while sleeping is just... so soft man....

Artist: Komori Nea

Their art style was one of those that’s very noticeable and has a certain charm on it. They are pretty active on Twitter, and even draws puzzle comics once in a while that haven’t been uploaded to pixiv (which is why I recommend you to check their twitter gallery too haha)

The Soul Stays Awake: Post!DSOD. Atem comes back from afterlife in hoping that Yugi would be as happy as he is, but months after, Atem’s existence still hasn’t been registered on Yugi’s life just yet. Another post!DSOD take that I like which involves the fear of another farewell and uncertainty, but this is a good hurt-and-comfort. I swear, it’ll hurt you just... for a while. :”)

The Attack’s Aim: Set during the canon series. A short comic mostly portraying Yugi’s hidden strength but also the tenacity of duelist that is not only targeted toward the opponent, but also to Atem, without the person actually noticing it. The last page of this one is so... soft and gentle I had to put it into this list.

Artist: caf

Often draw with S0/TOEI style, characters and characterization in mind. Their coloring in illustrations is so soft, plus artists who specialize in S0/TOEI style can’t be found so easily. Their comic style is not a manga-like one and they write the dialogues with handwriting, but if you can read hiragana and write and understand how kanji works (so you can write it on translation machine), their comics are easy to understand!

magenta: S0/TOEI AU where Yugi and Atem are two separate person. A short comic of Yugi lying under the rain as Atem searches for his whereabouts. I really love the way they portray the rain and the atmosphere surrounding the scene. Or maybe I’m just biased with rains in general, ahahaha.

Yuugi and Mao’s Stay Home: Same AU as above. Our two boys has to face the same shit we do IRL in this comic, which is quarantine. Atem offers to cook something for Yugi since he can’t eat outside. You love seeing Yugi eating stuff? This is a perfect comic for y’all. 

Artist: Kkyut

Artist: Kayu(i)

Others:

Gemini: As Atem comes back to the living world, Yugi faces the dilemma of having being separated by “his other self” physically and mentally. A short comic, but the lines the artist used are so... beautiful. Like, the way they describe Yugi’s loneliness?? Just hits the park so much. 

Until The Hourglass Runs Out: Set after the Memory World Arc. As their farewell day goes closer, Yugi decides to give Atem a full control of his body at school so he could spend his time with Jounouchi and the gang more. However, things don’t go as smooth as Yugi had expected. If you like that little teeny weeny pain before the Ceremonial Duel, this comic perfectly suits the taste. 

see you sometime: Post-canon. Mahaad offers Atem a chance to meet Yugi in the living realm one more time, but with several conditions. Firstly, he could only stay for a day at maximum. Secondly, Yugi won’t be able to remember who he spent his time with after Atem hangs out with him. Thirdly, Yugi will not be able to “recognize” this Atem; he will only be registered in Yugi’s mind as a new classmate. A bittersweet comic in whole, but seeing the two having fun like a normal teenager would just makes me grin.

After The Rain: A dialogue-less comic, so everyone would be able to read this right away. A short comic of the two, but still very cute and wholesome!

The Tropics of Horus: Post!DSOD, Atem has to chase Kisara who lingers around Kaiba’s soul and he needs Yugi’s help to bring Kisara back to afterlife, but he has his own ulterior motive. This manga is so dialogue-heavy and might be hard to dissect especially if you don’t understand JP grammar and context, but the time spent trying to understand the meaning behind every words will be worth it. That much I guarantee. Just... everything about this comic, and how Atem’s “ulterior motive” connects to our boys’ adventure in canon series are so well planned. You can also purchase the R18 version in a form of the book here (toranoana)

Christmas Day: S0/TOEI puzzleship hint (dark puzzle???). There’s something in store for Yugi in Christmas, but this one might surprise Yugi a lot. It’s not that the prompt of “Atem gets separated from Yugi temporarily” is uncommon, but it is still a sweet one and makes you smile throughout the pages. 

Korean

All titles mentioned here are not free unless mentioned otherwise. Also I don’t understand Korean except being able to read Yugi and Atem’s name, so my story interpretation might be wrong. If you understand Korean, I’d really love for you input! ;_; 

You can check out on how to buy comics from postype here

Yugi’s 2020 Birthday Anthology: Rain and After End

This is an anthology consisting of four titles, but they share the same (or similar) setting where Atem is reincarnated, but he doesn’t remember his past (or has not yet, depending on how the story portrays it). Some are age-gap (adult!Yugi and high school student!Atem), so you might want to consider that if it’s not your cup of tea.

To Like Someone is to...: Age-gap setting. Mostly tells about how Yugi deals with his feeling as the reincarnated Atem in front of him turns out to have a feeling on him. I like how the story’s conclusion is that Yugi will sort it out slowly while also teasing Atem how he’s “too early” to date Yugi w.

In A Circle: A story about how the two met through an online chess game. Iirc Yugi works in a game company and Atem is sort of a famous e-sports player in this setting. There’s a lot of dialogue in this one and the app sometimes can’t process them very well, but I liked what I can understand from it! not very convincing is it haha i’m sorry i shouldn’t have done this

Familiarity: Age-gap setting, where Yugi becomes Atem’s caretaker. The comic mostly focuses on how Atem notices how kind (or too kind) Yugi is sometimes, but there are times where he feels distant. The plot where Atem gets into a fight with the other kid in his school because the kid mocks Yugi, and how Yugi just... accepts it even when Atem doesn’t want to say his reason of punching the kid is just.... god... I love this kind of age-gap setting like this I guess ;_;

Touchdown: Age-gap setting, but Atem is older in here (university student). The two goes to Atem’s university festival and they think about their own feeling when they got separated. On their way to drop Atem off, he confesses to Yugi, but Yugi is still unsure on his overlapping feeling between the reincarnated Atem and the Atem he knows. Make sure you play Motohiro Hata’s Rain and Aimer’s After Rain during the car scene to make the “rain” mood works even better :”)

Others:

Try For Point: A continuation of Touchdown, where Atem (like, the one from the past) visits Yugi in his dream and helps Yugi in sorting out is his feeling toward his reincarnated self. Atem’s advice is so sweet and there’s one certain line from this comic that I remember very deeply - there’s a part where he says, “If you don’t pull out the card, you won’t know what card it is, right?” to help Yugi clearing out his hesitancy ;w; at this point, I curse myself for not being able to understand Korean

[bladekindeyewear]

Bloggin’ bout HS^2 Commentary from start to Mid-Jan-2020

Sigh.  Time to pay the piper.  Someone’s gotta extract whatever plot-important and plothole mentions get mentioned in this commentary, even though reading behind-the-scenes stuff about Homestuck makes me even more nervous than reading frontend stuff ever could so I don’t really want to.  FYI, that’s what you’re going to get out of my posts on these -- anything regarding plot stuff and plotholes, things we would’ve misinterpreted or missed otherwise, not any of the other paid content such as sketches or full quotes from them about things.

TWENTY FUCKING DOLLARS A MONTH!???!??  Is Andrew even seeing any of this cash?  --no, not much of it I guess, he would want to make sure the WP folks get paid enough after the--

Yeah I’m not gonna even think about that.

Fuck it.  I’m ponying up.

Alright, first commentary post on the Patreon, commentary and bonus sketches for Ghostflusters... whoa, this is long and extensive.  Is it going panel by panel??

I guess I’ll give you a small quote just for a taste of how this starts...

Page 33:  Not sure what any of this shit means. It’s pretty deep though. We were going for an echo of the beginning of the epilogue when John is dreaming in anime. Except here it’s Jake, and nobody is dreaming, at least not yet. Also an anime dream wouldn’t be a nightmare for Jake, since Jake likes anime. Or he used to. Now anime probably just reminds him of Dirk.

Good thing we’re never gonna hear from that guy ever again.

...because this commentary is sort of stylized.  They’re kind of riffing on what they’re doing, and I get that -- when you have to write commentary you’re asking people to PAY for you can easily feel like you have to be entertaining.  But they are describing the rationale for the shot choices they made and such.  They’re also going for a sort of Andrew-recap sort of attitude, and I don’t blame them for that choice, either.

[Candy] Jade is...well, you’ll see.

GOD DAMNIT.  Don’t remind me that Dave vanished on her forever while they were doing pro-revolutionary work and she’s probably going to be in a bit of a state!  Stupid knowing author future allusions...

Then again, that’s exactly why I’m here blogging about the commentary for you guys -- for me to relay Authorial Intent on Stuff That Happened That Seemed Plotholey and Hints About What’s Going To Be Relevant.

I just, uh... didn’t expect there to be that MUCH of it.  And that casual phrasing for that Candy Jade Is Going To Be Seen And Or Relevant hint is... kinda indicating to me that there’s gonna be a LOT more of that here than I wanted.  :|

Continuing... there’s talk of why they started with Jake here, being unused to writing for middle-aged characters in Homestuck terms, et cetera, but again, I’m only here to relay anything with plot impact or SERIOUS perspective on how we should / the authors are viewing this.  The rest stays behind the paywall for whichever of you all think it’s worth $20, I don’t really have a choice.  At least now I know why there was no one to tell me what details were actually BEHIND the paywall.  Seriously, that’s steep.

Speaking of how stylized the commentary is here, I can get why some might read it and view the authors as slightly callous -- I’m giving them PLENTY of benefit of the doubt, though.  Andrew was FAR from callous and he hurt us worse out of love of artistic intent with the Epilogues than the HS^2 folks could EVER hurt us.  Real Dirk-like, actually.  Dirk is practically half of a self-insert, as we well know.  No wonder Andrew thought the right thing to do was to take his hands off the story, what with Dirk’s villainous action being putting his own hands ON the story.

We like to make fun of Jake English as much as the next guy, but he probably is actually pretty good at “doing things” if the need arises. 

Mhmm; there are some jibes at how screwed up Jake has made his life, but I don’t believe these authors actually disrespect Jake at all.  He was dealt a bad hand by the story leading up to this point (quite INTENTIONALLY by Dirk’s narrative control in the Epilogues, too) and HS^2 and its bonuses so far have been exploring the heap of merits and potential he’s still got in him.

It’s kind of sweet how he wants to clean out his ecto-son’s house, even if most of that is to prevent the slow creep of mounting existential dread and narrative relevance. 

Huh.  So they think Jake can sort of feel that narrative relevance is seeping in around him, to him?  That’s not out of the question at all.

Continuing... they’re going on a bit about the same sort of things I mentioned about their choices in detail or detail-less-ness when depicting people in this new format, considering ages and the paired text descriptions and such.  That’s the sort of thing you’d traditionally want to pony up for commentary for, so rest assured that all that IS in their commentary posts if you want to do that.  I’m kind of extracting the plot stuff out of the paywall just on principle.

A lot of making this comic--and every other comic ever--is trying to convey as much information with as little space as possible.

Quite so.

From this conversation we find out a couple things. 1) that Brain Ghost Dirk knows about Ultimate Dirk, and he thinks he’s a dickhead. 2) Brain Ghost Dirk knows who Jeff Bezos is, and Jake doesn’t. This could be a sign of a couple things, all of which are probably stupid. 

This is ALSO what I came here for:  Legitimate “don’t worry about it” handwaves about stuff that shouldn’t matter to us.  I never ascribed the slightest bit of relevance or inference to BGDirk making a Jeff Bezos reference, and I’m glad I was completely justified in ignoring it.  So far I agree with this probably-plural-but-acting-like-a-singular author’s train of thought.

Come to think of it, it’s maybe strange that in this Cool Future Earth where all of our characters are rich as hell, none of them have bothered to have any sort of corrective eye surgery. Jane, Jake, John, and Jade all still wear glasses. I guess they do have “signature looks” to maintain in regards to their brand. 

I had to include this, I was legitimately curious.  Understood it was probably an artistic decision to stay on-brand a fair bit -- and losing glasses even temporarily has a lot of thematic significance whenever it happens in Homestuck Proper -- but it’s nice to have some confirmation that this was the understandable rationale behind the choice.

Here we find out what Dirk thinks about Jake’s behavior of the last few years. In other words, we find out what Jake thinks about Jake’s behavior over the last few years. [...]

[Brain Ghost] Dirk is manipulating Jake here, but he isn’t actually saying anything demonstrably untrue. 

Again, most of this was obvious at the time, but it’s nice to have authorial confirmation on what was being brought across as per the strange divide between Brain Ghost Dirk’s independent will and his mostly-part-of-Jake status.

Seriously though, shoutout to the conceit that god tiers can just fly endlessly, with no visible effort. It’s a really excellent form of narrative shortcut that fits perfectly into the bonkers vibe of earth c as a whole. Oh there goes one of the Creators, just flying over the Wal-Mart like an asshole. 

You know... who IS doing the commentary here?  One of the authors, all of them?  One of the artists??  This really is a COLLABORATIVE effort between the authors and artists involved here, I think, and it shows in their clear surprise and appreciation for each others’ work that only settles into a full understanding instead of just knowing what one intended off the bat.

It calls into question exactly how much of the Condesce’s mind control was actually mind control at all, and how much was just a lowering of inhibitions. 

Right, right.

We see Jane greeting Jake here with open arms, which makes you wonder exactly what is going on here. If you’ll remember from Candy, Jane has already served Jake divorce papers. A mystery in need of solving, for sure. 

HERE we go!  This is the potential plothole we were concerned about that got me alerted that the commentary had something to add in the first place.  John mentioned toward the trail-end of the Candy epilogues that divorce papers had shown up for Jake.  (And we also saw an HS^2 update ago or so that Jane hadn’t actually KNOWN Tavros was “awol” at all until he was literally a part of this whole clowncorpse logistics business.)  So in light of what this post continues to say:

It could be that Jane has put aside the nasty business of their divorce in order to have a strong chest to cry on. Can’t really say I blame her. Jake English has many flaws but he does seem like a good person to drape yourself across and really let loose on. And without Gamzee there, Jane needs another punching bag. 

...it all finally fits as pretty logically consistent, although the author is being deliberately coy in a way that leaves it open for more to be revealed later about exactly how this is happening.  Good!  No obvious plotholes in HS^2 (yet).  That’s an honest relief.  The more often they have something in mind where I’d previously worried they’d screwed up, the more often I can give them credit and speculate properly on those gaps in story-logic expecting something there, like we so often got to with Andrew before the retconsplit made even THAT kinda fucky.

If you’ve ever had a friend or family member go evil, you’ll know that one of the hardest parts is there’s always still elements of them that you like.

I can definitely say that from nearly personal experience.

Also, at this point in the story there is no lingering doubt that Jake and Dirk have had a sexual relationship. There’s a familiarity there that wasn’t around when they were teens. 

I assumed so, but I guess I never thought ABOUT how I assumed so.  Huh.

Do any of the creators have a moral leg to stand on if all they’re doing is curling up into a ball and hoping the world gets better without them? Actually, does anyone have a moral leg to stand on if they do that? 

Almost Riddley, there.

These posts are certainly interesting!  Steeply priced for what they are, but interesting.  Moving on to the second of four so far... this one’s about Catnapped Part 1.

Taking over Earth C's business world certainly would have required rubbing shoulders with the already-powerful on the planet.

--yep, which I never doubted even when brought up in the Epilogues is a large part of her supply-side government views.

Ah, looks like the bonus commentary is a good deal shorter!  But that bonus section was a good deal shorter than the story section covered earlier too, so.

On to the next one, for Clown Logistics.

Page 58: If you love Vriskas, i hope you enjoy more Vriska content. If you hate Vriskas, well. Here is another one that is kind of different. Feel free to contemplate nature vs nurture and how best to apply this dichotomy toward emoting about the vriskas of your choice how you see fit.

I’m starting to really enjoy this author commentary.

Tavros being named Tavros sure was a decision. Go back and reread the commentary for panel 58 but stop before the nature/nurture thing, since they are not clones, or even the same species. They just have the same name, which, in this universe, means you at least type kind of the same.

Hmhmm.

Page 65:  Sometimes you try and come up with something to say about a page, and you cannot, and so you wait 8 hours, and go see Knives Out, and then you have 2 white russians, and then you still can’t come up with anything to say, but oh well! Commentary needs writing. Tavros is experiencing an emotion here.

Now THAT’s a mood.  I gotta go see Knives Out sometime soon.

...Alright, I can see why some people think MAAAAYBE this author might be being a little disrespectful to the audience, but if they’re going based on THIS, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  This comment could have come from Andrew’s fingertips any day of the week!!!  I honestly wouldn’t WANT replacement authors who couldn’ comment like this in there for a page in paid commentary, especially in a lighter section of the story that doesn't need too much said about it.

And I paid $20 for this shit.

...Continuing, I’m loving all this commentary on Harry Anderson.  Representative excerpt:

Again, direct your eyes toward the boy. What a fucking asshole. 

...these commentaries are honestly improving my mood!  I didn’t expect that, really.

Ah, I didn’t even notice that the flying cars appear to be self-driving.  I think maybe the back of my mind MIGHT have noticed but only a bit.

Referring to the corpse-carry crew:

Page 82: Pokedex entry for Magneton in Pokemon Sun: When three Magnemite link together, their brains also become one. They do not become three times more intelligent.

Ain’t THAT a mood.

(...I just had an internal “Wait, am I using that right, it being a “mood”?  Isn’t that the hip new term, how do I have any right to latch onto that however much I feel it?  Ohhh gosh I’m so fucking old” moment.)

It’s clear from the commentator’s complaints that the crew never viewed this commentary ALONE as worth upping the pledge to $20, but that’s... not quite a bad thing?  I think it’d have been more disrespectful to think that they COULD make the commentary worth that.  I doubt there’s a single person on their team who feels quite right about the business model (besides the artists they have plenty of context to know how deserving they are of a living goddamn wage), but it’s what they have to live with and go with, here.  I feel weird for honestly understanding ‘em, and more than slightly pitying for how many people will look at all this and read “these assholes don’t care about us”.  I really can’t think that’s anywhere CLOSE to true from this without more context.  (And I really DON’T want more context, don’t send me any.  I’ve got to read HS^2 and I’m enjoying reading it so far so let me keep enjoying it please.  Background drama details make me nauseous, DON’T give me any if there is any (which I wouldn’t know about in the first place beyond an opinionated friend or two dropping hints in a bad mood).)

Did you know there are people who I’ve seen honestly believing “Undertale is pretty good but the creator is an arrogant asshole”?????

Because they saw his tweet about the game score passing Kojima’s MGSV on metacritic briefly and misinterpreted his wide-eyed disbelief, disbelief honed to nervous laughter to maintain sanity by Toby’s insecurity about his unprofessional work and work product???  They thought he was SERIOUS without any of the context of the usual insincere little dog persona they should’ve read into the game of his they played??

Awh man.  That just ticks me off.

Anyway where were we.

Page 91: This is a flashback so I didn’t write this one, which means I thankfully don’t have to say anything about it. 

Wait.  What?

Are they trading off writers between chapters, or...?  Hm.

Whatever they’re doing, it fits together pretty darn well SO far.

Alright, that finishes that off, time for the last commentary post on the second bonus update.

I don't know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don't mean just in Homestuck's dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth.

Now that’s a mood.

I've been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you're making in 2019 has to either address what's going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus's sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

Now THAT is a god damned MOOD.

The author(?) goes in about why this is happening, why Jane is being confronted this way, why she IS this way, et cetera.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it.

That’s one of the biggest goddamn reasons for the inequality and political landscape we have today IRL, yeah.

She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

Jane's favorite comic, a noir-detective drama steeped in the pop-cultural trappings of pulp Americana, reflects this mindset.

So, our catgirl Seer of Light takes us through the looking glass, and we get to see an old friend.

Hm!

Nothing really to say, I just had to share this fitting context the author is giving.  How things fit together even better than they seemed to, and this was all far from random.

I feel warmly ensconced in the womb of nostalgia, gently cradled on Norman Reedus's chest.

Pffffffff

Yep, more of what we already surmised and appreciated, how Swifer and Cliper were giving us some much needed perspective... the commentary post even has little traditional-Homestuck sprites for ‘em.

And... that’s it for the commentary so far!  Again, I enjoyed all that more than I expected.  $20 doesn’t sting for me as much as it does for others in general, but it stung a lot less after I was through reading all that honestly somewhat-entertaining stuff confirming a lot of the insights I’d thought the plot was having.

I’ll probably wait to check for further commentary posts until like... after bonus updates come out, in the future, and then just blog about whatever I’m not caught up on.  Sound fair?  I’m going to blog as often as a real or bonus upd8 comes out, but I’m not going to pop in more often than that for my own sanity’s sake.  Have a good MLK weekend, y’all.  :)

[nbapprentice]

there’s so, so, SO much nonsense surrounding this game that i’m gonna do my best to separate it into digestible bits, with its own categories. even then this is... wow. it’s big.

Warning tags will be added at the start of every section, but the general gist is: incest, pedophilia mentions, fetishization of rape and abuse, fetishization of mlm, fetishization of people of color, racism, ableism, nb erasure and transphobia. aside of the warnings, this post will also touch upon Scummy Business Practices

let’s get going

Dana Rune’s and Elle’s lack of moral fiber: #incest #pedophilia#rape and abuse fetishization #homophobia

tl;dr: dana loves incest porn, elle loves guy on guy rape, and the both of them are friends with at least one pedophile

dana rune has run, is still running an incest zine (please visit my faq on what i think about “thats not really incest” and “it’s just fictional!”). The Arcana, as a dev team, clearly does not care, as shown in their e-mail responses.

dana also very much doesn’t care and has reacted to any criticism on this by dismissing people and blocking actual incest victims who tried to contact her about it claiming it was for her “mental health”

in some tweets she claims she “interprets” the characters as not siblings, but she never really cared enough to cover her ass when it all began (she happily admits she’d “cross the incest line”)

dana has commissioned artists who also ship incest, draw near-pedophilic art that’s supposed to pass as acceptable because the character involved is supposedly not a minor despite looking like a child down to wearing pigtails (the character is also wearing a racist-ass belly dancer outfit), AND even made white-washed fanart of The Arcana.

dana follows twitter user kapymui who also produces incestuous Fire Emblem art

dana has retweeted omocat long after it came out that omocat is, at the very least, consuming pedophilic content (on “omocat didn’t know what shota meant!”: yes they did)

moving on, elle has a long, long, LONG history of fetishizing mlm and the rape and abuse that comes with yaoi and had a rich, RICH “yaoi” tag before they deleted their tumblr

they curiously deleted their tumblr right after i made this reblog

shortly after that, tumblr user thalassiq remade and started attacking and insulting any blogs criticizing them - even people providing support in IMs. Since this doesn’t match Dana and Elle’s normal pity parties I’m personally willing to believe they were just a person wanting to start shit - but it’s so telling how Elle used this chance to dismiss everyone who disagrees with them by calling them “children” and did not even bother to offer a kind word to people who were harassed and even had their trauma mocked by this person. It costs 0 dollars to say “that was not me but I’m sorry about people who were hurt.”

Dana and Elle are close with Ava’s Demon creator Michelle Czajkowski aka that one person who endorses child porn of her characters, and even had her draw a promo image for the game. Michelle has been creating highly sexualized content of her minor characters for a while now.

ok so elle and dana are gross freaks, how is that related to the game?

oh it’s very very related

Dana Rune’s and Elle’s lack of moral fiber that’s Actually Inside The Game or The Game’s Blog: now with more #racism #fetishization of poc and mlm #whitewashing #fat hate #pedophilia #nb erasure #transphobia

tl;dr: the arcana is filled to the brim with racism! so much of it! haha holy shit! and that’s not even where it ends!!!

their game is rated PG-13 but includes incredibly sexual situations such as Julian making this fucking face while getting off on pain. This isn’t the only time Dana and Elle use their videogame aimed at young teens to showcase their kinks and fetishes. I have no issue with NSFW or titillating content, as long as it’s rated accordingly. This content is NOT and it’s a blatant disregard for their audience just to have a larger, more pliable demographic and have more money sent their way.

if you start your argument with “well, teenagers look at porn” 1. shut up 2. theres a HUGE difference between teenagers going after adult content aimed at adults, and adults creating content they know will be seen by kids barely starting puberty

as pointed above, dana has 0 qualms literally commissioning people who make whitewashed fanart of her own fucking game that’s supposed to be all about the inclusivity and safe spaces

thearcanagame blog has a pattern of reblogging whitewashed fanart (before you come in swinging with the good ole “ITS THE LIGHTING”: 1. no it isnt 2. the artist should’ve picked better lightning then 3. i draw and post shit online too so dont come telling me i just dont understaaaand),

fanart of their fat characters showed skinnier than they are in their sprites (although to be real for a moment - Portia is curvy at most and them behaving she’s fat rep is HILARIOUS).

going back to NSFW content: nadia and asra are overwhemlingly sexualized in the game, and were the first to have sexualized CGs and sprites introduced.

CGs: Asra’s here, here aND HERE, Nadia’s here with a NSFW warning because she’s just got her whole fucking ass out. Sprites: Asra’s thank god for whoever compiled it all in one image, Nadia’s and once again, NSFW warning lmfao!

Julian’s sprites on the other hand are noticeably tamer, including the one where he’s fucking strapped in leather. His only sexual (NSFW warning because its literally softcore tentacle porn WHICH, ONCE AGAIN, SHOULDN’T BE PUT IN A GAME AIMED AT 13YOS) CGs were also included months after Nadia and Asra received any of theirs.

Through all of the updates, people have constantly requested that Asra and Nadia’s sexualization be toned down, and time after time The Arcana just churned out fetishistic, hypersexualized content at an absurd rate, especially when compared to the one white love interest.

Oh, speaking of the one white love interest: Julian is based off of Jeff Goldblum (this is not spectulation - they p much bring it up at any given time) but like. If Jeff Goldblum was white. They base their favorite love interest off their supposed favorite man in the world but casually leave his skin tone behind. Lmao.

they also play favorites very obviously - in the prologue, Nadia and Asra have a romance paid scene each. Julian has a scene... that requires no coins. Julian was also the first LI to receive three CGs, two of them requiring no coins, while both Asra’s and Nadia’s first CGs were behind a paywall

Dana and Elle have been notoriously skittish about confirming or denying their characters’ ethnicities. After hyping for weeks on thearcanagame that they would confirm the character’s races they basically made a post that amounted to “well they’re not white lol!”

they only relented after the perfectly understandable outrage... and posted a thread about it on Elle’s twitter. Nothing on the actual thearcanagame blog. Anyway, here’s the thread. Note how there’s mention of Julian being Jeff Goldblum... but nothing about him and Portia being Jewish (or “fantasy Jewish” as it were).

The one time they did confirm their jewishness dana then backpedaled and said she shouldn’t have done that lol.

another fun tidbit of how well The Arcana handles race and how much it cares about feedback from fans: an ask was sent about an anon begging for Nadia to step on them. The blog, with the finesse of a bunch of horny dumbasses, didn’t just publish the ask, but approved of it (even though the fans of color had long, long, LONG been telling everyone not to fetishize Nadia into a “step on me kween” wet dream). People were outraged, of course, and the blog ~apologized~ and said they were still learning.... then a new chapter included a scene of Nadia stepping on the Apprentice. 🙃

not to mention elle, on their twitter, made a passive aggressive “women can be doms?” tweet, trying to twist it into a “yr oppressing women” angle (when the issue is that women of color are always constantly portrayed as aggressive and domineering)

Now for a wombo combo of racism and Elle’s fetishization of mlm:

the devs have spoken at length of how Julian’s and Asra’s relationship was quite unhealthy. In a paid scene in Asra’s route, they’re depicted as Asra being disgusted w Julian touching him+Julian following Asra to his shop when Asra refused his offer to go with him (aka julian... stalked him lmfao).

.......... this scene is promptly followed by a highly sexual scenario where Julian’s pain fetish is played up. Remember how this game is rated PG-13? Me neither. Asra’s previous disgust with Julian is also forgotten, for some reason (and by some reason i mean Elle wants to make them fuck w/o buildup or logic).

Then Asra’s route has yet another paid scene dedicated to Asrian, even though he’s supposed to not even like Julian! And be head over heels with the Apprentice! But Elle just has to make these two be entangled despite insisting their relationship was not good for either of them!

Now here’s the kicker: Julian doesn’t have any paid scenes related to his romance with Asra. Note how it’s one of the brown LIs whose route is highjacked by the white LI, but not vice versa. Hmmmmm.

Now, on the topic of Asra: thearcanagame has said repeatedly that he’s nb and uses he/him pronouns, and promised (since last year) that there would be dialogue where he speaks about his gender

as of the making of this post such dialogue still does not exist

so basically asra is the nb to dumbledore’s gay: anyone who just plays the game w/o keeping up with the official blog has no idea of what asra’s gender is supposed to be.

aka he’s not nb. he’s just a cis guy. the arcana just doesn’t want to put its money where its mouth is, i dont care if elle is nb themself. the team made a promise which has not been fulfilled yet and i suspect will not be.

instead, our introduction to canon nb characters is... these two.

By “these two” i mean neither vulgora nor valdemar are even fucking human, and stick out like sore thumbs with their monstruousness.

so our nb rep is... non-human villains. a few books later one of Nadia’s sisters with they/them pronouns shows up, but that’s too little too late on top of the fact that we should’ve known Asra was nb from the first to begin with. It’s a fucking embarrassment and an insult.

at least two villains are visibly disabled (Lucio’s missing arm and Volta’s blind eye+intentionally asymmetrical face). Julian’s eye doesn’t count because, spoilers, he’s not lacking an eye and even if he was it’d still be hidden behind a dashing eyepatch instead of grotesquely displayed as a sign of his lacking morality.

BUT WAIT! IT DOESN’T EVEN END THERE!

The Arcana Exploits The App Business Model To Price Their Full Game at $500, $1000 if the three extra routes make it out, and they never delivered their Kickstarter rewards:

tl;dr: you heard me

the original price per route was planned on being $1.99

they took that “subject to change” really seriously, it seems, because now each route, once the game is fully out, is estimated to cost around $170 each.

both those screenshots are taken from this post which explains in detail just how truly scummy all of The Arcana’s business model and decisions are: https://mysticmicrotransactions.tumblr.com/post/174308723344/dishonesty-from-the-arcana

the tl;dr is basically what’s listed in the beginning of this section, but other highlights from that post are: the use of addictive gambling mechanics such the Wheel of Fortune, and the dazzling calls to action in the new mini-game.

something that The Arcana supporters forget (or choose to ignore) is the fact that for a long, long time the game did not have the mini-game or the log-in rewards for coins. Players depended only on the gambling of the WoF or paying absurd amounts of money for the new chapters.

the devs went from playing the victims who were unable of controlling prices to (as spoken of in the link from mysticmicrotransactions) saying the making of the game (a pathetic little app game backed by a studio and a kickstarter) justifies the prices

they also gave people false hope about maybe changing the prices in the future, all while bleeding money from loyal players in “micro” transactions

the arcana literally added a $99.99 coins option on their latest update

in case it hasn’t sunk in yet: you can pay a hundred dollars upfront to the arcana, and you still will not have access to the whole game

there is no defense to this

none

“it’s free stop whining” let me explain:

“spend months on end accumulating fake currency or pay hundreds of dollars up-front to be able to play” is a scummy business model no matter how you look at it

if i can spend $60 upfront to play an AAA game there’s no excuse to demand more than that for a game with much smaller and, honestly, inferior content

the combination of there being already far and few games featuring lgbt characters and characters of color AND the little cult of personality set up by Dana and Elle makes people feel that spending money to support them is an acceptable expense.

it’s not

manipulating people into spending ridiculous amounts of money and then claiming “it’s their choice” is just scummy business, baby, and thats all the arcana does

the devs are brats who instead of admitting $500 is absurd for a game instead write petty little caricatures into their game - like, lbr: dana, elle, if i could afford diamonds in my hair i wouldn’t have even bothered with your shitstain of a game

despite bragging that ppl would get the full story w/o needing to pay, the paid scenes are pretty much required - the first few books of julian’s route have no romance without accessing any of the paid options. you dont even get so much as a kiss in without handing coins over. many, many people were baffled when julian had a teary break-up scene when from their perspective they hadn’t even started building a relationship.

wow that’s more than i ever thought it’d be

and i’ve been aware of their bullshit for near a whole year now!

i don’t have much of a note to end this on, other than: the arcana just isn’t even that good. it suffers from weak writing, pathetic character development and above all actually harmful content. do not try to argue with me on any of these points unless you’ve read all of that, because whatever you have to say i’ve likely mentioned before. if you still are that determined to yell at a me on the internet, please preface your argument with the phrase “I’m a pee pee poo poo man” so I know you’ve read everything in here. thank you!

[millimim]

Hello! As most of you know, recently there have been posts regarding a translator profiting off eastern artists’ works through patreon and ko-fi. Although she was never attacked, harassed, or explicitly mentioned by the original post, user @seairu-kun (tumblr) / @seairu_ (twitter) spoke up and admitted that it was her doing. Her most recent posts showed that instead of a proper apology to the artists, she responded with a post that named several translators who were completely unrelated to the incident, for actions she believes justify her own but are not the same.

This is a direct response to @seairu-kun for her allegations against the named individuals translating Katsudeku fanart from eastern artists and to explain why her methods are harmful towards these artists. 

Before I respond to Seairu’s post, people will say “you should’ve messaged her personally” and I did (screenshots of this convo below).

the original ask message to Seairu: "Posting your translations privately is a good way to respect the artists' work, but posting them so only that people who pay you can read it is the opposite of respecting it... please create a private blog or something instead of using kofi and patreon to release privately, the artists get no revenue from what you're doing and exposure isn't a payment. having a kofi for tips or donations is perfectly fine, but translating a work doesn't make it yours, this money shouldn't be going to you."

1) “I didn’t realize providing my translations in private was a bad thing”

It isn’t, if it was a 1 unique translation to 1 unique commissioner for personal uses type of situation. She has been repeatedly charging people $3 on ko-fi for the same translated page. This means that she’s profited off the same translated page multiple times, which is different than charging 1 unique commissioner for 1 unique translation. In addition, Seairu asks for “donations” through ko-fi, but they are only donations in name. By withholding a product before a sum of money is given and charging “donors” (clients) for a “donation” (purchase), it becomes a TRANSACTION.

Translators such as shousanki, whom Seairu pointed out, minimize the damage done to artists by charging a unique commissioner once to cover the hours spent translating one unique doujinshi/comic and can scarcely be classified as a profit. This is more ethical than what Seairu has been doing, which is profiting off the same artist over the same artwork multiple times.

2) “...maybe have a talk with the other popular bakudeku translators in this fandom who post doujinshi on public sites like myreadingmanga while promoting their kofi links and zines?”

Shiku/shousanki (tumblr): “I don't know how Patreon works exactly, nor can I speak for other translators who use it, so I will only be clarifying how my own process goes. Generally when I take commissions it's for full-length doujinshi and inclusive of typesetting, cleaning, and editing services. Additionally, a large number of my commissions are private in that one client pays money for the completed product, along with exclusive rights to it, which means I won't redistribute it to anyone else. More commissions tend to be for original manga rather than doujinshi as well. In the case of public doujinshi translation, again, only one client-to-translator transaction occurs. I'd consider donations and commissions to be in entirely different leagues, too. Even if nobody donates money to my ko-fi, or nobody donates requesting a particular translation, whatever translations I have planned to post for free ends up posted eventually.”

Kat and Vivie/Revenge of the Dicku (MRM): “Hello, we’re very confused as to why we were brought up in the first place. We’ve never really interacted with seairu before; we’re not sure why she specifically named us when her argument seems to be pointing at any and all translators and we’re pretty new in the field. Not to mention, our situation is clearly very different because we give out all translations for free and never profit off of the original artist. As for our ko-fi, like most translators, we put up our link at the end of each doujin as a suggestion; it is meant to be on a purely donation-basis, aka we will NEVER withhold translations until someone gives us money. We produce translations, and if people wanna donate, it’s their choice. Moreover, these donations have and will be solely channelled to the production costs of the zine that we’re helming, so we essentially take no money out of this at all. Also, we’re not sure why our zine (AKOGARE) is implicated in this at all either. Either way, we do this so we can share with our friends so if people do not like what we do, then we will simply take everything down, it’s no loss for us. Thanks for listening.”

3) “I don’t understand how the fandom normalizes this and goes on reading scanlations of the BNHA manga every week, but turns around acting holier-than-thou while trying to ruin someone’s life in the process”

Scanlators (namely Fallen Angels and Mangastream) for BNHA offer their translations for free (you can choose to donate if you want), and do not charge readers $3 per translated page. The issue isn’t about reading things for free - the issue is about making (a lot of) money off somebody else’s hard work.

Asking for donations is completely fine as long as it’s optional. It is not okay to demand that people pay you for something that doesn’t belong to you. Yes, translation work is hard, and it is a service (many translators agree), but in the end, it is not the translator’s content. The hours they spend translating someone else’s words into another language are dwarfed in comparison to the hours of work the artist spends coming up with a plot, composing dialogue, lining, drawing and shading for a doujin; therefore, translators do not have the right to demand money from others for something that is not theirs. Translators may be approached for a commission and offered a one-time payment to compensate them for their time, but this situation is different since Seairu has been reselling the same set of translations to make a lot of money.

Below are pictures of Seairu’s ko-fi, Patreon, and posts about how she is offering to translate doujins and comics only if people become her patron or donate a ko-fi .

Note that it says “donate to [Seairu’s] patreon” but again, it CANNOT be called a donation because the doujins and comics are behind a paywall and money is demanded first. Most doujin artists charge 400-1200 YEN ($4-12) per doujin to primarily cover production costs IN ADDITION TO little comics they post for FREE on twitter and pixiv. Seairu has been charging people much more than the ORIGINAL CONTENT CREATORS and profiting off of that.

(In case people are unaware, Patreon works like a subscription sort of platform - you pledge a certain amount of money that corresponds to a tier, and you get content according to the tier you paid for. Effectively, you get multiple people paying for the same translation done by Seairu.)

4) “... but I’ve already taken down everything I could at the moment, and I sincerely apologize for my ignorance”

Ignorance seems unlikely since people have reached out to Seairu regarding this problem. They reached out to her in DMs to ask her politely to take them down, and she refused to acknowledge her wrongdoings, instead choosing to point fingers at other unrelated translators.

If this still doesn’t seem like a problem, below are screenshots of artists that Seairu’s profited off saying they’re not okay with their works being used for profit:

Hibarihiro: Original and Translated Conversation

Evidence of Seairu reselling the same translation multiple times through her ko-fi account.

Seairu has since deleted her translation posts for these artists’ works, but -

Shibaya:

Silverstar and Yutah:

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a response from silverstar, but their bio says no reposts are allowed, and it’s even in English.

Yutah believed that people were just giving gifticons to Seairu as thanks for her translations; Yutah did not know that Seairu actually opened a Patreon to profit off of her works.

5) “... to support my translation work since [it’s] a hard job that takes up many hours of my day…”

Yes, translation does take a long time, so it really doesn’t make sense to implicate other translators who are doing this for fun or to get by. As stated in Seairu’s patreon, she hoped to make this a “full time job,” profiting off of the works of artists who are unhappy with her doing so.

Many of these artists are against reposting at all, and some allow it with permission but ONLY IF the reposters do not profit from them. Artists who don’t want people to repost their art, much less demand money for it, WILL NOT HESITATE to lock or delete their accounts, their art, and start mass blocking English speaking fans. It’s happened before. Some artists have already done this and will continue to do so. They will NOT hesitate to stop sharing their beautiful art and ideas with us because some people just can’t respect their wishes. There’s a reason why the western fandom has such a bad reputation amongst eastern artists and what Seairu is doing is just aggravating the situation. Not only that, but upon being faced with upset artists and facts, she decided to point fingers at unrelated translators, people who do such for a one time commission and later make it available for free, as well as translators who do it for free and have ko-fis as SUGGESTIONS only. Her “donations” are TRANSACTIONS for something that is not hers, and this is illegal.

Below is a link that talks deeper about translated commissions versus a paywall: http://dmmegsie.tumblr.com/post/171857295019/clarifying-commissionspaywalls-versus-donations

Overall commissioned translation for one person privately is fine. But when you create a paywall for multiple people to pay that's when damage is being done.

If possible, Seairu should refund the money or share profits with the artists. She has responded to messages on tumblr saying that she has apologized to the artists in question and it would be well received for her to post screenshots of these conversations.

None of the original posters used Seairu’s name, but many knew of these illegal actions. This is not a “witch hunt”, but note that no other translators were mentioned until Seairu herself brought them up with her own post (which is titled as an apology, but does not feel like one since she doesn’t post her apology to the artists). She continued to reblog posts mentioning the other translators while none of them have reblogged the post that contains Seairu’s name.

Please do not support these kinds of actions, whether that be illegally mass profiting off of other’s work or attempting to shift the blame onto others.

[locke-writes]

Ok if we’re gonna get into it, let’s get into it

This all happened last year if I’m remembering correctly. I’m honestly not certain why everything came to light but I know that it very publicly did. Anyway Jim Chi ASMR is a popular British asmrtist that made it very clear to his following that he was married. I believe it not only was brought up in Q&A videos but evident by the fact that he wore his wedding ring in all his videos and on certain videos if you go into the comments it’s acknowledged his audience was aware he was married. Now some suspicion was made when he began exclusively collabing with a female asmrtist CrinkleLuvin ASMR (Rachel).

It’s not necessarily unusual for asmrtists to collab but usually collabs aren’t limited to always working with one asmrtist and for the most part unless you meet up at cons a collab means sending the other artist your own footage and there being a cut between files on the video, it’s rare to see two asmrtists visit one another for collabs even though it does happen. But what is unusual is for an American asmrtist and a British asmrtist who live in two different countries to often collab in person. And with no one else. So that was pretty sketch but they seemed to be friends. BUT here’s the bullshit stuff

Rachel apparently is very controlling when it comes to male creators. She’s messaged male asmrtists not to collab with female asmrtists and try and get them to stop speaking with certain artists or stay away from them

Jim and Rachel were in a relationship in which apparently they got another asmrtists nudes from behind a paywall and they were apparently making fun of the artist with additional with other asmrtists. Turns out Rachel was the one who sent the nudes to Jim and just pretended she had no idea who had sent it

Jim also might have been in a relationship with multiple other asmrtists but his with Rachel became very public because!

Rachel posted texts from between her an Jim that exposed their relationship after Jim ended their relationships

And yeah. Rachel ended up deleting her channel although recently she came back, posted an apology, unlisted that video, and then deleted her channel again. Jim on the other hand put up an apology video about this whole situation behind a paywall on his Patreon which did get called out as bullshit.

And yeah there’s a whole video from Karuna Satori in which she has receipts about the whole Rachel being controlling and leaking the nudes

And yeah here’s the apology video that Rachel posted months ago that someone managed to save

exactly what i was looking for