#couldn't get it looking normal

[taffywabbit]

i have lots of flaws but i do at least take a fair amount of comfort knowing that, if i were a customer NPC in a fast food/retail management game, i would be one of the chill early-level ones that can wait a super long time before they start getting impatient, and you breathe a sigh of a relief when you see them show up in a harder level

[mickules]

Why is it even called a Funeral anyway? There's nothing fun about it.

---

So guess what major life event I had to muddle through huh?

to top it off too, I've also had a bunch of OTHER major life changes all happening at once, including stuff with my job and flat- positive things! But not without their own share of stress

I'm doing alright, no need to worry about me, but as you can imagine any art plans kinda went straight out the window. I just had to get my head back on straight.

I'm back in the swing of things, excited about what's coming up, and have got some fun things in the works!

much love for all your patience.

[breannastewart]

just some vets and their rookie, feat. jewell + nneka + nika 🥹

[a2zillustration]

Part 1 of 2

(Part 2)

Many many many many many years ago, I created some space pirates for a contest @tanginello was having on dA. Both characters were pretty heavily self-inserts, as you do, but last year I felt the urge to revisit them and finally make them into their own blorbos. I made this two months before I started playing BG3 and I think it's part of what gave me the comics itch.

[amee-racle-ofmyown]

Captaineer with 7..... Stronk captain.....

STRONK CAPTAIN!!!

[aq2003]

hamlet minecraf

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

i stand with you in the face of a defensive misunderstanding of what critique is.

i think understanding what a critique actually is is a skill that increasingly is not taught. i remember going through freshman art courses feeling the frustration that all negative, nasty, unhelpful, and missed-the-point-entirely feedback is so commonly conflated with critique, and then critique gets a bad name because everyone remembers the time someone said their painting looked like an asshole (true story, altho now i think i would take it as a compliment) instead of the time a teacher or friend or classmate helped them uncover a hurtful bias or think of new ways to explore the same idea or how to connect it to related ideas or how to look up and understand other people's ideas on the same topic.

anyway i think you're great.

ahhh you're so kind to me!! i appreciate your support, and i think you are great also.

i have experience with giving and receiving critique as a student myself, and i think it was the best part of my degree! i majored in creative writing in college, and critique was just a generally accepted part of learning to become a writer. i don't even remember people being especially worried about receiving critique on their work. we had guidance on what kind of feedback was useful, but we were still at liberty to give it as we saw fit as like messy 19 year olds. the standard was that we gave it both written on printed copies of the work AND aloud in front of the whole class, and the writer receiving it was not permitted to speak during the critique. understanding how people are perceiving your work is important!

i don't have any particularly negative recollections of the critique process, although once in a high school writing class, the boys in the class told me that my male characters touched each other too gently and real boys are more rough with each other. in particular, they took issue with me writing that one boy nudged another. nudging is too soft. nudging is for girls. that was more than 20 years ago, and i still think about it sometimes because it was such an interesting perspective! i did not take their advice, though.

i should dig up that piece and see if it reads queer in any other ways. i think that's what they were getting at. (actually i once had a non-fiction class tell me i was in love with my roommate after reading an essay i wrote about her)(i did not listen to that advice either, but having 12 acquaintances tell you that you're gay in 2006 before you realize it yourself is Truly Something!)

i think people have conflated criticism and critique and think that being more openly analytical is the same thing as being negative. but analysis is so fun to me! analysis is why i joined fandom in the first place, and it's why i write fic! can we trust each other to be respectful and to speak in good faith even when we're not singing each other's praises? for me fandom would be better if we could.

oh i also want to clarify that i don't think it's impossible to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about a piece of fanwork while remaining completely positive. people do it all the time and do it very well!

i know i sometimes have tunnel vision wrt my own perspective. in a lot of situations, i wish it were more acceptable to be more direct, and i know people sometimes find the way i express myself to be kind of shocking. i know a lot of people like to be spoken to more indirectly than comes natural to me, and i don't mean to imply that my perspective is the only correct one or that there's no good reason to err on the side of gentleness/politeness in our responses to amateur art and writing. i just think that at a certain level of circumspection, it feels like we're all holding each other at arm's length.

i think for people who can't bear to feel exposed, making and sharing art is always going to be painful and difficult, and maybe too painful and difficult to enjoy the process unless they're sure of a soft landing. but like. the rewards of being loved only come after the mortifying ordeal of being known, right?

[souenkun]

My tiny little kantrio besties to keep me company in my journey! Made by the amazing @okiroash 🥹🫶

[sincerely-sofie]

Cave-in: A comic starring Darkrai, Dusknoir, and an unconscious Twig on an expedition gone wrong.

(Note that this takes place after the ending of the fanfic, and people have settled into having Darkrai in their lives... for the most part. Dusknoir still hates his guts and doesn't trust him whatsoever.)

[tricoufamily]

HUGO HATER FOUND BOO HIM OFF THE STAGE

prev | next

[laugtherhyena]

Control over time

[somegrumpynerd]

What pokemon do you think the sanses would have?

OKAY SO

(This is so long I'm so sorry, readmore for sanity)

Because I’m utterly insane, I’ve split this into 2 categories because I have different thoughts for both, but the first one is what you’ve actually asked which is what pokemon they would have if they were in some kinda pokemon trainer au. (I’m not gonna do them whole entire teams cause that would make this even longer, I’m just gonna give one or two)

For Nightmare I could see him gravitating to poison or dark types, because y’know, that’s on brand for him and he needs to be scary lol Something like muk would be a good fit with his goopiness, but what I find fascinating is that there’s a legendary pokemon that fits him like scarily well and that’s darkrai. It’s a mythical pokemon known for causing never-ending nightmares and it feeds off of them, and it also has a counterpart that helps ward off the nightmares and keep it in check. AND it’s design only has one eye showing and the shiny colours make that eye cyan. So like, that would be a perfect fit for him lol

I also think he would have a noctowl just because it scares Dream

Dream I feel like would be very grass or bug type, like he was raised in nature and I feel like he would still want that around. Especially since a lot of grass types know healing moves, it seems like that would be his kinda vibe in picking up after Nightmare’s damage. Maybe something like cherrim since that reacts to the sun or even sawsbuck since it’s also kinda tree-adjacent. And he would also be perfect to get cresselia, which is the counterpart to darkrai! It doesn’t really fit him as closely in design as darkrai does for Nightmare but it basically lives near darkrai to keep an eye on it and shows up after it’s been somewhere to help ward off the nightmares and bring people good dreams, so it’s weirdly them-coded lol (They're literally called the lunar duo)

As for the others, -Killer has a liepard to me. They’re a big majestic cat that loves to sneak up on people to steal or attack, it’s perfect for him. Also possibly a weavile would be good since they’re very quick and slashy. -I think hisuian zoroark fits Dust really well, since it’s whole situation is about dying and coming back to life out of spite and killing everything and driving others insane, it feels like it would slot into his situation nicely. -I feel like greedent would be good for Horror, maybe moreso once he’s out of his au, since they love to gather food and store it in their tails. It would probably be kinda comforting to basically have a snack buddy with you at all times. -Cross is never escaping the dog influences on his character so he gets a mightyena or maybe a mabosstiff, they’re very well trained in battle and also he loves them more than life itself he would do anything for them. -I love associating Ink with ferrets now so he gets furret, they can both hunch over together while he’s drawing lol but also maybe a grafaiai for him? They like making graffiti and colouring in the trees in the area they live in which feels like a good fit for him.

Now. Here’s where I go truly insane lol I have different answers for if you’re asking what pokemon would they be, like if this was an au where everybody is turned into a pokemon.

Nightmare and Dream are complicated because like.

There’s a pokemon called malamar which is a big evil squid that uses dark magic and one of the pokedex entries says it was even involved in history-changing events. That’s completely Nightmare right?

And there’s a pokemon called decidueye which is a big grass type owl (which I love to call back to your furry Dream) that wears a cloak/cape and shoots arrows at people. That’s totally Dream!

I feel like those two are great fits for them but the problem is if they’re two completely different pokemon they can’t be twins, so I have an alternative suggestion which is to make both of them eevees, which eventually evolve into espeon (Dream) and umbreon (Nightmare). The way to evolve eevee into those two is friendship, so it would possibly have to take place during a truce to make it the most meaningful but I think it would be cool.

Anyway, Killer is houndoom coded to me. I don’t know why, there’s just something about him that my brain cannot disconnect from this hellhound. He takes orders and he has red prominent in the colour scheme. Also the pokedex says if you get burned by a houndoom the pain is with you forever and I bet Killer would love to have that effect lol

I know people hate the rabbit association for Dust but just hear me out. Raboot is very him. It looks annoyed all the time, it has a little pocket to shove it’s hands in like his hoodie and it’s got red fur around the bottom of it’s face like the scarf he wears.

Obvious choice is a bear pokemon for Horror because everybody does that, and I could definitely see him as ursaluna with the big intimidating energy, but for some reason I get a real vibe of tyranitar about him. Just like with Killer it’s based on absolutely nothing, but I can really picture him as this big towering dinosaur with some spikes missing on one side of his head

Again, I want to make Cross lycanroc because big fierce loyal puppy with a limited colour palette, but y’know what I think is a great fit for him? Absol. It’s black and white and it has red eyes and it’s wrongly blamed for things it didn’t do so it lives in isolation, plus the mega evolution gets wings which just feel like they fit him (looking at dragon furry Cross not gonna lie lol)

They literally have an Ink pokemon and it’s smeargle. He’s a little artist who uses his tail as a paintbrush and can change the colour of the paint coming from it, they also can steal any move from other pokemon mid-battle which feels like something Ink would do lol

Anyway I need to spend the next 16 hours drawing pokesonas for skeletons now thank you <3

[skeletalheartattack]

hell yeah pride pfp thats--um. sweating nervously. whats that in the background

[coquelicoq]

i fucking love prereading. getting documents about what's going to be discussed in a meeting and reading them and then going to the meeting and having context for all the things that are happening. if i could do this in all areas of life i would. send me a list of the words i'm going to need the definition of in order to understand what you will be talking about. give me a rundown of what topics might come up during this social encounter. provide detailed documentation of what to expect in a new setting. i will read the fuck out of that shit.

[deadbeandrop]

camp lazlo and "The Machine"

i forgot i had written about this on the screenshot blogs' FAQ, so i think i'll make it a post with my updated conclusions as well... so, have you ever wondered what's up with the colors in the HD version of the show?

y'know...

...this?

the first time i had watched the show, it was in pretty bad quality, and i had chalked any color differences up to that. even when i did have access to a few HD episodes, i never really noticed it outside of slinkman being a bit... lighter, mostly due to the fact that everything else was so submerged in Gunk in the first place. as you can see, the "issue" affects almost exclusively the yellows, most notably seen in the sky, or in characters like slinkman or clam, or even in lumpus’s glasses, and characters' eyes in general losing their off-white tint due to this. a quick look at any streaming service that has the show will tell you that almost all "official" distributions have this issue, and often (in)consistently so, at that. it may very well be the only version these services have access to (considering how they often the resources they have access to aren't always the best, which leads to things like episodes out of order or incorrect subtitles). to say the least, it bothers me a lot, especially for someone like me who's very particular about this sort of thing...! (it's sort of the reason i put the screenshot blogs on hold for a while, aside from the fact that it's a bit of a time sink — the issue just stressed me out too much!)

so, what's going on, then? my friends and i had ended up speculating about it for a while, and we had a lot of theories — was it the result of an upscaling process done for streaming services? was it something technical, like issues with the video encoding? did someone in charge of the process simply fuck up? all of the above?! and... most of all, why???

now, i know very little about all the technical stuff, but i've come to believe the most likely explanation is also the most simple one, with a little bit of obscure knowledge on the side... in that, i think it makes the most sense if the colors are fucked up due to The Machine at cartoon network. see, this isn't just an issue with camp lazlo, and there are other CN shows that have been a victim of this too, such as billy and mandy.

and here's what mr. atoms has to say on the topic:

the shows had also both aired their "later" seasons around the same time, circa ~2007-2008, and it explains away a lot of those inconsistencies, too — "It’s also the reason that Mandy’s hair changes from pure yellow to light yellow and back again all the time." in most other shows, the effect this would have is likely a lot more negligible. as one of the main characters, mandy is pointed out a lot as it'd be something you'd notice the most. camp lazlo, on the other hand... is a show where the whole sky is colored a bright yellow.

...definitely one of the worst shows that could've been hit with it.

even so, "The Machine" application is not actually the only state these episodes are stuck in... or rather, i don't think so, at least...?

so as far as i know... (which certainly isn't everything,)

- in order to to accommodate for the transition period from box TVs to flat screen TVs, i believe that camp lazlo, was, in fact, a show that was produced in a widescreen format, so it could be aired in full on new TVs and crop to fit the 4:3 aspect ratio of older ones.

- i am not sure if this inherently means it was also produced in Full HD (1080p).

- as can be confirmed by old recordings (one of the only additional benefits of sites like WCO keeping the old versions around is stuff like this, as annoying as it is trying to find anything else...), both color corrected and un-corrected versions of at least part of the show have aired at some point.

- as far as i'm aware, there is NO version of this show in Full HD with un-corrected colors.

- however, what i do know is that there is a widescreen, non-HD (480p or 720p, i can't remember off the top of my head) version of the show with the un-corrected colors. if you have a bit of a keen eye, you might have noticed it used on foreign variations of the official cartoon network youtube channel for clips. (it had fooled me at first into thinking it was a secret, all correct colors, and Full HD version of the show, but unfortunately this isn't the case.) see, my friends and i went on a little hunt for it for a while, with that detail as our basis, and it is out there... just not on the standard american versions of those services. instead, we had to look at a whole variation of HBO's streaming service itself, HBO GO, of which's entire existence is still currently on the line due to the HBO rebrand. (we have rescued it from there, in case of it becoming lost media of sorts, but due to technical limitations were only able to get it by recording, and thus also still has the HBO logo.) the mere existance of this version is very interesting to me and raises a lot of questions that may also contradict some of my earlier statements.

- and finally, i haven't looked at every set of files there is (as from all the different streaming services) so i actually am not 100% certain if there's actually variation between THOSE as well, and if there is... the situation is even more confusing to me.

i don't know if there will ever be justice for this, or if any victims of The Machine have ever recovered from its Wrath. it's a topic i've gone over dozens of times trying to sort it out, because, i'll be honest... it sort of haunts me.

but there's your little information dump and speculation for the day

[kandicon]

Actually I really wanna write a role reversal gerrymichael au and let me be so, so transparent when I say it is literally just bc I wanna fantasize about the tall, gangly blond man beating monsters to death

Everyone else has the same roles. Mary Keay is still Mary Keay in all her abusive and obsessive glory; Gertrude is still the Archivist.

Vaguely spiral aligned Michael who Does Not Like It. Pretends his connection is a hell of a lot looser than it is.

The only benefit (that Michael thinks of the Spiral) is how he can move around the Institute with relatively little interference and watch, after all, it is hard to behold something that is both nothing and everything and never was all at the same time.

Gerry ran away from home really young and actually succeeded. Spent a few years fucking around and learning what kind of benches are best to sleep on before applying to the Magnus Institute because that's what his dad did. He lied to hell and back on the application, but was hired quickly because of how thoroughly touched by the entities he was (thanks Mary) and Gertrude was running low on assistants. Gerry also felt completely justified in faking stuff and that he was perfectly qualified bc he grew up in a bookshop and how much different could it be (very different, as it turns out).

They first meet each other when Michael is prowling through artefact storage like it was a shopping mall, and pocketing everything he saw that didn't immediately mesmerize him. He was nervous and jumpy as all hell, even though this was not the first time he's done something similar and he's fairly certain Gertrude doesn't care, so when Gerry first spotted him from behind, he was immediately suspicious even before he saw Michael try to shove a lamp into his jacket pocket. This led to an altercation that eventually led to the lamp being accidentally turned on, Michael smashing it to pieces with a hammer Gerry had not realized Michael had, and Gerry suddenly being a lot more consciously aware of the supernatural than he was.

Gerry's mother was still obsessive over Lighteners, and she didn't make an effort to hide what she did, but she didn't actively try to educate Gerry on anything to do with the Fears. So he is fairly knowledgeable on the supernatural, but he doesn't know anything concrete about the Fears themselves and their categorization. The role of a stand by sacrifice instead of an errand boy and heir.

Michael still trusts Gertrude, but this time he knows he shouldn't and hates himself for it. Gerry wants to trust Gertrude, and she does hide him from anything Fears related and behaves around him like she did Michael in cannon, but he just feels something off about her and doesn't like it. She's just a bit too much like his mother for him to let his guard down.

Michael gets referred to by "it/its" pronouns once by Gerry as a teasing joke before Gerry fully knows what he is and is absolutely terrified by how happy the pronouns make his feel. (He thinks, maybe, that the Michael of his childhood liked something similar, too, but everything too far back is all twisted and he doesn't know what has been touched by the Spiral and what hasn't, so he doesn't trust any of it). He/it Michael ftw

At one point Michael just started putting black lipstick on himself because some of Gerry's always stuck to him when they kissed anyways n this gave them plausible deniability. Michael will never admit to the little spiral thrill it gives him when people do a double take upon seeing his face, the black lipstick contrasting literally everything else about his style.

Gabriel attempted to track Michael down exactly once, a few years before he joined the institute. He had heard about Michael's unsavory... Hobby... (<- reckless destruction of artefacts and throwing himself at all monsters and avatars he sees with a murderous rage regardless of their affiliation) but spiral avatars capable of holding a conversation are so few and far between and the Great Twisting was almost prepared, so he thought a meeting would be worth it. He showed up at a cafe Michael frequented one day expecting lovely, but tense, conversation, only to promptly lit on fire (mostly) in the back alley behind the cafe after he introduced himself. Gabriel survived, but some of his clay body still hardens unexpectedly or shows signs of firing from time to time.

Occasionally Michael's eyes will change colors and shapes, so he likes to put contacts in (he used to just use tinted glasses, but after one time of Gerry getting lost in his eyes in the far too literal, not at all romantic, sense, he decided to invest in smth a bit harder to take off and forget about). Unfortunately, this sometimes means other, very much not his original eyes will pop up around his body and in his hair as protest when he puts them in. It's not very fun to have to chase off eyes at 6am, but he does it regardless and complains the whole time about how he shouldn't have to deal with eyes when he very clearly isn't of The Eye.

Gerry: Oh hey you were running pretty late. I was starting to get worried.

Michael, not about to admit he spent an extra thirty minutes to get ready yelling and brandishing a lighter at a door that was following him around like a lost puppy: Ummmmmm I forgot my wallet. :((