#for the purpose of this post those are just simplified examples

[avelera]

Ugh, sorry, one last political point because it’s the day for it and this is bugging me.

Democrats and people on the left in the US have got to knock it off with this whole, “All Trump voters are obviously stupid” thing.

I’m sure it’s satisfying to believe, but it is simply not true, and making assumptions about your opponents that aren’t true is how you lose elections.

Half of the voting population of this country is not stupid and it is ludicrous to insist on believing that. Trump voters include doctors, lawyers, business owners, people with PhDs and graduate degrees, and people who attend college courses for fun. They are, unfortunately for many of us including yours truly, our parents and relatives and I at least know for a fact in those cases that they are well educated, well traveled people.

Assuming these people are just stupid and uninformed is, in fact, stupid. It a simplistic view of the world that is going to make your platforms lose if you embrace it and refuse to look deeper.

In practice, people engage in politics because they want the greatest happiness and prosperity for the largest number of people that they care about.

Everything after that is just haggling over price.

For example, the Left/Democrats might believe that the great amount of happiness and prosperity is brought to the largest number of people they care about when an advanced degree is available to everyone without leaving them in crippling debt, when people can age with social services that allow them dignity, when billionaires and companies cannot exploit their workers, and when peace and just causes are allowed to flourish around the world, including the education and enfranchisement of women, and the long term health of our planet. I personally believe that brings long term prosperity to us all.

Left and Right wing voters right now both probably agree that everyone is happier and more prosperous if they can afford a house and have a job that covers their needs and then some. How to get to that is the sticking point that they disagree on.

Right wing voters also want prosperity for themselves and those they care for and what they disagree on with the Left is how to achieve that. I’m not going to go into their platforms here because the whole point of this post is not assuming things about your opponents.

Now in order to persuade people to hold more Left leaning views, you need to make the case for why what you care about is a thing that they should care about and, more importantly, how it enhances the happiness and prosperity of them and those they care about.

Otherwise, you are asking them to vote against their own interests, which no one engages in politics to do, at least not on purpose (even if it is the ultimate outcome in many cases).

If you don’t care about making this argument to opposite side, then fine, you’ve already lost and you deserve to keep losing elections.

You deserve to lose because you’re not making a case for why anyone should support your causes in order to gain happiness and prosperity for themselves and those they care about, including expanding the field of people they care about, and it is ludicrous to expect people to do that without being persuaded either intellectually or emotionally.

This is what finding common ground and building coalitions is about, even if you don’t agree on every point. And if you self isolate and stick to your purity, you deserve to lose because politics is about how we govern large groups of people towards a common goal that, ultimately, is best simplified as the goal of their greatest happiness and prosperity.

Good faith politics is negotiating over what that means. Because resources are finite we can’t all get everything we want all at once. And not everyone agrees on everything so you need to prioritize the best possible allotment of happiness and prosperity for the short and long term, and that’s when we get into the nitty gritty of all the horse trading that happens in politics etc etc.

And you get into things like billionaires having outsized ability to enact their own happiness and prosperity but here’s the thing, many people especially on the right go along with those views because they believe (rightfully or not) that those goals will increase their own happiness and prosperity as well and if you don’t agree you’ve got to explain to them intellectually or emotionally why that is and provide and alternate platform or path for them to gain it that is more effective by at least some measure of that value.

Anyway, at the risk of this becoming a political science thesis from someone who isn’t a political scientist, just an amateur academic, tl;dr please knock it off with assuming everyone who disagrees with you is stupid, it is a losing proposition and it doesn’t get us anywhere near the goals we want to achieve politically, ie, the greatest happiness and long term prosperity of the people we care about.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

the thing with the "not like one of these store-bought types" is

ok so like. have any of you ever been in a casual group conversation, like with a group of friends or classmates or something. and it's like, one guy talking with multiple girls. or one straight person talking to multiple gay people. or one cis person talking to multiple trans people. or one white person talking to multiple people of color. basically Person With X Privilege talking with a group of people who don't have that privilege.

and someone from the bigger group makes a dig at the Person With X Privilege, but like, in an accurate way? like, a woman making a joke about how the one guy in the group doesn't have to worry about walking home at night by themselves, or a gay person making a joke about how the one straight person was allowed to take their date to prom and nobody else in the group was, etc etc etc? and then the group of people laughs?

if you've ever been in that sort of situation, you know the Person With X Privilege has a choice: either laugh along with them, or get defensive. and the correct choice is to laugh along. by making the joke about X Privilege right in front of the Person With X Privilege, the group is giving the Person a chance to prove that they have a baseline level of awareness about their privilege.

not that laughing along makes Person With X Privilege like, One Of The Good Ones or anything, but it shows the group that they're self-aware enough to recognize that they have X Privilege and they're not going to try and deny it or argue about it. (and we're all familiar with those conversations, right? the "not all men" argument? like, a joke about white privilege gets countered by a white person being like "well, i'm also a woman!" or "i grew up poor!" or "my best friend is Black!" trying to distance themselves from their white privilege instead of just laughing along and agreeing with the simple fact that yes, I have white privilege, it's true)

when calico jack said "That's a real pirate! Not like one of these store-bought types," that's the social interaction he was setting up. people don't become pirates by choice, they do it because they have no other choice—everyone on stede's crew is there because they can't make a living elsewhere. stede is the only one there who was born into wealth and still has all his wealth. that's a privilege nobody else on the ship has.

and instead of laughing with them, shrugging it off, stede got defensive. only instead of arguing that he is a real pirate, he tried to argue that jack isn't. and lucius is right: it is a bitchy question! from the perspective of the crew (who weren't all around for jack and stede's first two interactions, first on the deck and then at breakfast), jack just gave stede an opportunity to laugh along with the group. and rather than be cool about it, stede got defensive and bitchy.

(not that jack was being genuine in any way. there's no way the tears are authentic. it's questionable if he's telling the truth about his crew mutinying three times in the past year. he's not actually giving stede an opportunity to laugh along with the crew, he's setting stede up to be defensive so he can make stede look bad. but that doesn't make what he said about "store-bought pirates" any less true.)

[foervraengd]

Mirre’s “How i render gemstones” tutorial!

(note: image above is not what is shown in the walkthrough. It is an example piece)

Ingredients:

Art program that has layers and selection tools

Patience (hubris or stubbornness is fine too)

(recommended) photo references of gemstones and/or prisms

(Optional but very helpful) Knowledge on how to use Reference layers and anti-overflow in Clip studio Paint

For this tutorial i am going to use clip studio’s “anti-overflow” feature. This post is not going to explain how to use that specific setting but you should be able to find guides on how to use it on clip studio’s official website or on youtube.

Please Note: The result of this technique will not 100% represent real life gemstones. These are more simplified but should still make an impression of the brilliance and appeal of gems, crystals and diamonds.

If you don’t work in CSP: the best workaround is to use the polygonal lasso selection tool for the same purpose.

This ended up being a long post so I am putting it under the readmore:

First off; Basic idea on how the light refracts inside a solid transparent object:

Wether it is acrylic, glass, water or crystal, the way light pass through more or less should behave the same as long as it is solid and not hollow inside. Pay attention to how the darkest parts of the stone goes along the inner edges, leaving a ”mid tone” sort of in the center. However, this might vary depending on the light setting. But it is a generally good rule-of-thumb to follow if you’re drawing something not based on a photo. Another thing to pay attention to here is how the placement of the highlight will lit up the inside of the gem in a parallel line. It also shows through on the cast shadow.

Light refraction on a cube:

I have already made two posts on this, so definitely go through them:

CUBE BREAKDOWN POST HERE

But a rough summary from those two links would be: Every side/facet of a gem or a cube etc refracts the light individually and not as one entity (that would make it look hollow and not solid). Think of it like how each piece in a broken mirror individually reflect your face back to you. Like a weird patchwork!

Putting this into practice:

For this tutorial I’m going to be nice to myself and not try to draw perfectly accurate gemstones. Instead I’m gonna draw them with a more ”natural” looking set of facets. Which actually isnt as common in real world as video games makes us think. Some crystals have geometric shapes naturally, but a lot of other stones are not as fancy. Anyway, im taking artistic liberty on these example stones because the technique I’m going to use will work for these just fine.

So, in clip studio paint, I first draw the stones on a vector layer. I give them facets for the front side. Then I duplicate the layer, remove the front facets and replace them with the facets on the back of the stone. The third image here shows both layers visible on top of each other. I now put these into a layer folder and mark the folder as ”reference”.

Now, on a layer below the lineart folder, fill with your base tone. Then make a layer on top (if you can clip it to the base tone, do that), this layer is where you decide where the highlight will be placed. In some cases the highlight is only lighting up one single facet - it really depends on the design of the stone. You can also blend and soften the highlight here if it looks good for you, just make sure not every facet is highlighted. The highlight layer should be on top of all the other layers clipped to the base tone layer.

Now it is time for the juicy juicy stuff! Turn on both lineart layers so they’re both visible. I hid the hilight layer here because it was in the way, but might not be needed in your case. Make a layer clipped to the base tone and paint in the darkest tone. This is where anti-overflow helps me out, because when i run my brush over all these crossed lines it will make the stroke pop in and out for each facet. If you dont use CSP, this is where you can use the lasso tool and select every second facet. It will take a bit more time but it should work similarly.

After the darkest tones I then make a layer for the inside light that the highlight has lit up. Here i keep it inside the darkest tone but this might vary depending on the light setting. If it looks good to me, then that’s what i stick to.

The way I approach rendering the facets here is like the grid in the example images above, every shade and tone appear more or less in each facet but the amount is relative to their position. So a gradient wouldnt have a smooth transition; it would be slightly scewed in each square on this example grid. Essentially like how some bathroom window glass panes look like.

Now it’s time to hide the lineart layer folder and check if the gemstones look decent to you. If not, then you can look up some reference photos and analyze where the values group together the most; be careful not to focus too much on the photos 500 million sparkles. Squint your eyes or blur the reference and try to see how the overall values behae.

I, personally, am satisfied with these rocks so I slap on a gradient map (you can manually color in them too if that’s your thing) and call it a day. The lit up inside of a gemstone tend to have a brighter and more saturated color than the mid tone.

Other Examples with this technique:

If you look up ”gemstone types” you can often find images displaying various facet types from more than just front view. These can serve as useful base templates for practicing this rendering technique. The backside of a gemstone is called the “pavillion” and is really useful to have at hand when it comes to painting the inner refractions. You can probably also use 3D models and convert the wireframe into lineart. But that is slightly out of my pool of knowledge.

Applying this knowledge without using a base lineart layer is of course possible. In this painting I followed a simplified summary of how the facets sparkle: Keep the highlight shape to match the front facet design, and all the inner refractions should be more scattered and split up but face a direction towards the center of the gem. Now don’t you think this sort of makes the gems look like eyes? That’s right! You can, and absolutely should, apply this on eyes to create the most sparkly anime eyes ever.

Now, refracted light that lands on the surface surrounding gemstones varies depending on the material - and if the gem is inside a metal frame it usually doesnt create this much refraction around it. But I want to have fun so i decided to break this rule in the name of pretty sparkles. :)

[mel-addams]

Get Started Drawing...

...even as a complete beginner!

In my efforts to help some friends who are only just starting to learn to draw (as adults! glorious!! <3), I kept digging around for resources that cover things I remember learning in the various art classes I've taken...but that does a better job than I can of laying it all out in a comprehensive, but not overwhelming, manner. (I am far too prone to rambling as you can see from this post, and bounce around topics as I remember them, rather than in a sensible order.) I've found a few guides here and there that cover one thing or another decently well...but I've finally found a free site I'm really keen on as an overall source if you're just starting out with learning to draw!

It's incredibly clear and concise, whereas many of the other sites and books I found could sometimes be overwhelmingly detailed. It's arranged in a way that reminds me of the flow of art classes, starting at the very first steps--how to approach art if you've never done it before, and the fact that you only need basic tools to begin with. If you go in approximate order, it then establishes that you should start sorting out a solid foundation by practicing simple lines and shapes--the same way you learned to write letters so you could ultimately make words, sentences, stories... This includes some neat little practice exercises with questions to consider while you do them, so you also learn to see and observe things like angles and proportions, which are critical for being able to accurately draw more complex things.

It evolves from there into how to take those basic shapes and turn them into simplified human bodies--and from there, how to consider more complex 3D versions of the shapes to give those bodies a sense of dimension and physicality. It even touches on things like composition, silhouette, negative space, and line of action--all in a quick, straightforward manner. It plants the seed of understanding for these more complex illustration concepts, which you can then research further, armed with relevant terminology to dig up more in-depth resources as they catch your interest!

The style itself is usually simple, but even if your aim is to draw with a more detailed style, this one can serve as a base sketch to add that detail to. (Combine learning this base with photo studies, plus more detailed style guides for wherever you want to take your art, and you could use this as a base for comics, cartoons, anime, realism...the core concepts and skills remain the same!) There's also examples of how to adjust for varied body shapes, so it provides more flexibility than some drawing guides do, which often only focus on one "ideal" body type. (This style can also be used for that, if it's what you want--you just adjust the proportions of the basic shapes as you need! But this provides examples of how to handle variety, which will give you a better foundation for drawing people and characters so they don't all look the same, instead of having to figure out how to adjust for it later on.) The Shape Dolls for reference are also incredibly delightful, and a great cheap way to have a little pose reference mannequin of sorts!

There's also links to sources if you want to dig into concepts more deeply--available both as a general source page, as well as some specific topics including relevant sources at the bottom of their respective pages. There's also a patreon with some extra thoughts that is fully accessible for free, but has a paid option if you want to support Tan for providing such a lovely resource! (Also they have a legit vegetable farm?? How cool is that.)

So yes! If you have any interest in learning to draw--whether you've ever tried before or not, and no matter your age--try looking through this site, and let it guide you through the process!

[cherryfennec]

Okay I love your most recent art work of Mario and Mr. L!!! I’m just curious how on earth did you draw their hats so well?? Especially the brim of their hats?! Hats are the one thing I struggle with when drawing them! I can’t make it look believable!

Hi! First of all thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you like the art! Now as for hats (more specifically Mario and Luigis type) there can be different ways you might go about drawing them.

(I should probably mention at the beginning that I am not an expert and sometimes struggle myself as well. Despite this I'll try my best to explain how I usually approach it.)

Let's start with brims because they seem the most problematic (as I see it.)

What I'm going to talk about might already be intuitive for a lot of people, including myself, however I thought it'd be a good idea to break down the mindset so everyone is on the same page and those who have trouble seeing it can hopefully understand stuff better.

First it's obviously the idea. No real details, just the general idea. With it we'll be able to establish the basic rules for what you're drawing, most importantly the angle and perspective.

Now this is going to be pretty self explanatory but: if I'm drawing a character looking up I know that the bottom of the brim will be visible, if the characters looking down it won't and etc. An easy way to check which parts of the brim will be visible from a specific view point is to imagine it as a slab.

Now this isn't anything mind blowing, I know, but saying this out loud can be handy and save you some overthinking.

Alright, let's talk about the hat itself now!

In most of the pictures I could find of the bros hats they're divided into two parts: the front, which is taller and slightly spiked up, and the back, which is noticeably shorter. Now this kinda goes back to the idea of simplifying shapes:

At some point it unfortunately becomes rather difficult to explain why some stuff is drawn the way it is because it's kinda justified by: "that's how the real life counterparts act". Above everything I highly recommend references, both irl and ingame ones. It's not embarrassing to use them, trust me, no one will criticise you and they'll help!

Now that we got the brim and the hat, let's put the two together!

There isn't really a strict order of how you should draw things, everyone has different preferences and processes which should be taken into consideration. For example, I personally like to draw the entire head before I touch on the cap:

(I added the hair and colours for the sole purpose of this post, this process is usually done during rough sketching.)

This way I have a point of reference where the brim ends (right before the ear for me) and where I should place the middle line on the cap (it's a bit of a stylistic choice than anything but it also lets me know where the fold will be). You can find your own way and make your own rules and with time the process will get much easier! I hope this somewhat helps.

Just practice, have patience, experiment and most importantly: have fun!

[3liza]

thank you for speaking rational thought AS AN ARTIST into the ai debate. i get so tired of people over simplifying, generalizing, and parroting how they’ve been told ai works lmao. you’re an icon

some of the worst AI art alarmists are professional artists as well but theyre in very specific fields with very specific work cultures and it would take a long and boring post to explain all the nuance there but i went to the same extremely tiny, hypefocused classic atelier school in San Francisco as Karla Ortiz and am actually acquainted with her irl so i have a different perspective on this particular issue and the people involved than the average fan artist on tumblr. the latter person is also perfectly valid and so is their work, all im saying is that we have different life experiences and my particular one has accidentally placed me in a weird and relevant position to observe what the AI art panic is actually about.

first thing i did when the pearl-clutching about AI art started is go on the Midjourney discord, which is completely public and free, and spent a few burner accounts using free credits to play with the toolset. everyone who has any kind of opinion about AI art should do the same because otherwise you just wont know what youre talking about. my BIGGEST takeaway is that it is currently and likely always will be (because of factors that are sort of hard to explain) extremely difficult to make an AI like Midjourney spit out precisely wht you want UNLESS what you want is the exact kind of hyperreal, hyperpretty Artstation Front Page 4k HDR etc etc style pictures that, coincidentally, artists like Karla Ortiz have devoted their careers to. Midjourney could not, when asked, make a decent Problem Glyph. or even anything approaching one. and probably never will, because there isn't any profit incentive for it to do so and probably not enough images to train a dataset anyway.

the labor issues with AI are real, but they are the result of the managerial class using AI's existence as an excuse to reduce compensation for labor. this happens at every single technological sea change and is unstoppable, and the technology itself is always blamed because that is beneficial to the capitalists who are actually causing the labor crisis each time. if you talk to the artists who are ACTUALLY already being affected, they will tell you what's happening is managers are telling them to insert AI into workflows in ways that make no sense, and that management have fully started an industry-wide to "pivot" to AI production in ways that aren't going to work but WILL result in mass loss of jobs and productivty and introduce a lot of problems which people will then be hired to try to fix, but at greatly-reduced salaries. every script written and every picture generated by an AI, without human intervention/editing/cleanup, is mostly unusable for anything except a few very specific use cases that are very tolerant of generality. i'm seeing it being used for shovelware banner ads, for example, as well as for game assets like "i need some spooky paintings for the wall of a house environment" or "i need some nonspecific movie posters for a character's room" that indie game devs are making really good use of, people who can neither afford to hire an artist to make those assets and cant do them themselves, and if the ai art assets weren't available then that person would just not have those assets in the game at all. i've seen AI art in that context that works great for that purpose and isn't committing any labor crimes.

it is also being used for book covers by large publishing houses already, and it looks bad and resulted directly in the loss of a human job. it is both things. you can also pay your contractor for half as many man hours because he has a nailgun instead of just hammers. you can pay a huge pile of money to someone for an oil portrait or you can take a selfie with your phone. there arent that many oil painters around anymore.

but this is being ignored by people like the guy who just replied and yelled at me for the post they imagined that i wrote defending the impending robot war, who is just feeling very hysterical about existential threat and isn't going to read any posts or actually do any research about it. which is understandable but supremely unhelpful, primarily to themselves but also to me and every other fellow artist who has to pay rent.

one aspect of this that is both unequivocally True AND very mean to point out is that the madder an artist is about AI art, the more their work will resemble the pretty, heavily commercialized stuff the AIs are focused on imitating. the aforementioned Artstation frontpage. this is self-feeding loop of popular work is replicated by human artists because it sells and gets clicks, audience is sensitized to those precise aesthetics by constant exposure and demands more, AI trains on those pictures more than any others because there are more of those pictures and more URLs pointing back to those pictures and the AI learns to expect those shapes and colors and forms more often, mathematically, in its prediction models. i feel bad for these people having their style ganked by robots and they will not be the only victims but it is also true, and has always been true, that the ONLY way to avoid increasing competition in a creative field is to make yourself so difficult to imitate that no one can actually do it. you make a deal with the devil when you focus exclusively on market pleasing skills instead of taking the massive pay cut that comes with being more of a weirdo. theres no right answer to this, nor is either kind of artist better, more ideologically pure, or more talented. my parents wanted me to make safe, marketable, hotel lobby art and never go hungry, but im an idiot. no one could have predicted that my distaste for "hyperreal 4k f cup orc warrior waifu concept art depth of field bokeh national geographic award winning hd beautiful colorful" pictures would suddenly put me in a less precarious position than people who actually work for AAA studios filling beautiful concept art books with the same. i just went to a concept art school full of those people and interned at a AAA studio and spent years in AAA game journalism and decided i would rather rip ass so hard i exploded than try to compete in such an industry.

which brings me to what art AIs are actually "doing"--i'm going to be simple in a way that makes computer experts annoyed here, but to be descriptive about it, they are not "remixing" existing art or "copying" it or carrying around databases of your work and collaging it--they are using mathematical formulae to determine what is most likely to show up in pictures described by certain prompts and then manifesting that visually, based on what they have already seen. they work with the exact same very basic actions as a human observing a bunch of drawings and then trying out their own. this is why they have so much trouble with fingers, it's for the same reason children's drawings also often have more than 5 fingers: because once you start drawing fingers its hard to stop. this is because all fingers are mathematically likely to have another finger next to them. in fact most fingers have another finger on each side. Pinkies Georg, who lives on the end of your limb and only has one neighbor, is an outlier and Midjourney thinks he should not have been counted.

in fact a lot of the current failings by AI models in both visual art and writing are comparable to the behavior of human children in ways i find amusing. human children will also make up stories when asked questions, just to please the adult who asked. a robot is not a child and it does not have actual intentions, feelings or "thoughts" and im not saying they do. its just funny that an AI will make up a story to "Get out of trouble" the same way a 4 year old tends to. its funny that their anatomical errors are the same as the ones in a kindergarten classroom gallery wall. they are not people and should not be personified or thought of as sapient or having agency or intent, they do not.

anyway. TLDR when photography was invented it became MUCH cheaper and MUCH faster to get someone to take your portrait, and this resulted in various things happening that would appear foolish to be mad about in this year of our lord 2023 AD. and yet here we are. if it were me and it was about 1830 and i had spent 30 years learning to paint, i would probably start figuring out how to make wet plate process daguerreotypes too. because i live on earth in a technological capitalist society and there's nothing i can do about it and i like eating food indoors and if i im smart enough to learn how to oil paint i can certainly point a camera at someone for 5 minutes and then bathe the resulting exposure in mercury vapor. i know how to do multiple things at once. but thats me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[nightowl33art]

How To Make A Toxicsona- A Master Post!

!This page may update over time! So I was looking at my inbox and noticed I got sent an ask. Likely due to site bugs, I was not able to answer directly, but I'm sure the asker will be able to see this post.

Hello Anon! Firstly, thanks for the fun ask! Keep in mind this post will apply to most toxicsonas. I'll be using my own designs and process as examples. What I recommend does NOT have to be followed. In the end it's your design and it should be for fun most of all. I'm just presenting what the "ideal and average Phisnom toxicsona/toxic blob oc" should have.

For those tuning into this lengthy post with no idea what I'm on about, I'll be excerpting the toxicsona submission form Phisnom/Phil made for his toxicsona review streams. (Phil being the leader of the Toxic Cesspit community.)

(Despite "sona" being in the name, a toxicsona does NOT have to be representative of you! Toxicsonas can also be regular ocs!) Now to the advice!

1. READ UP!

Read the Toxicsonas For Dummies character guide! This image contains all the basic lore and traits for toxicsonas! What I say going forward may reference it. (Reading may also give you some fun ideas!)

You should also peep this from the toxicsona submission form:

In order to have a toxicsona you need* a:

Dark body for a base with accents (ie lines) that must be neon/brightly colored.

Mouth(s) with sharp teeth. Ideally will have at least one extra mouth somewhere on the form.

Unique pattern image for the body.

*You may not need it but it's more or less what makes a toxicsona a toxicsona. I'll be going over each point in detail later!

2. Purpose

What purpose will your blob fill? Are you creating an oc, a sona for yourself, or something else? This will affect what you create and how. If you have a preexisting design/sona you want to toss into the slime, reference off that design! Use what you know about that character/person to create this new form!

Starting from scratch? What I do is come up with a basic idea to concept off of! Think of something you want to design! If you need help, try using one of the countless idea generators out there or put your head together with others and see what you come up with! Moodboards, playlists, and Pinterest albums also serve well! Whatever type of brainstorming gets your inspiration bug flying, go for it!

Regardless, one thing to make note of is who was this design in life? Most blobs were once living beings. They all come from a liquid superorganism called The Substance. When a living being with a consciousness foreign to the slime (like a person) is absorbed into The Substance, it'll be spit out and reanimated anew if it has a strong will. Your blob must've been alive or had a connection to living things. Then it must have undergone some sort of transformation after making contact with The Substance. Asking who your blob was before the slime will be very helpful!

3. Body

You likely either have an idea of what your design will be, or you're jumping headfirst into the doing part. Either is okay! Everyone's process is different. If your design is based off a preexisting one, you're likely to make the new form into a similar shape. Some things to think about when coming up with a body:

A slime body is meant to reflect the ideal self. What are your toxicsona's ideal traits? If you're making a sona, what are YOUR ideal traits?

What were they when alive? Were they a feral stray cat? A human? You may want to stick to a shape that resembles their former appearance, especially if they are in denial of being a slime.

Who were they when alive? Did they like a certain animal a lot? Give them physical traits of said animal! Maybe your toxicsona wanted freedom, so they develop the wings they always envisioned. Maybe they believe they were a terrible person and so deserve the devil horns on their head. Were they two-faced? Give them two faces!

Is this the only form they have? Do I want to add a simplified blob form? Do I want to make a bigger/smaller form? If my character has an alter ego disguise, should I make a form for it?

(Most toxicsonas have a simplified little blob form, reflecting what they looked like at default after The Substance. They're super cute and puntable!)

How much mass do they have? The more mass a blob has, the more they have to work with physically, the more developed they are. What appendages have they formed with this mass? Many toxicsonas lack legs, including Phi himself, who is simply too lazy to use legs. Why your blob does/doesn't have legs can have a reason too!

What colors are they? Common dark colors for the majority of the body include black, gray, and dark shades of any given color (ex dark blue.) The neon can be just about any color! If the design is a sona, pick your favorite color(s)! Keep the color vibrant- it's supposed to stand out from the dark color! Your slime will always be surrounded by a dark/black outline around the very edge.

Where's the extra mouth(s)? The best designs have a mouth placed with thought, but not all are. Thoughtfully placed mouths have significance to the toxicsona. Scars/important wounds on their living body can become mouths. Perhaps if they were a gluttonous or starved person, you'll put a mouth on their belly to represent their hunger. If they're anxious about their mouth or general appearance, maybe it's hidden. (Ideally let the mouth be visible. It's visually appealing.)

(Dutch's extra mouth is on his back. Wings were always a big part of him, both appearance and story-wise, so the mouth emphasizes that. His wings come out of the mouth like tongues!)

Being a cartoonist, we're personally big on shape language and like to have designs with strong, recognizable silhouettes, but you do not have to do this.

Some advice on basics for drawing your slime!

Here's how I create the lineart, clothing coloring, and the outline that surrounds the blobs. (Some steps may be done at the same time or skipped entirely. This is the Nightowl 33 method so your mileage may vary.)

Draw lineart.

Alpha lock lineart layer. Recolor it to neon color.

Clip new layer on lineart. Color clothes black.

New layer for body color.

Move body color layer under lineart.

Color body colors. (I clip different clothing coloring layers on the main color layer. This main base color layer gets colored black when ready.)

Make a folder. Place all lineart, lineart coloring, and all body coloring layers in the folder.

Add a dark color outline in a layer beneath the folder. (I use the "stroke (outer)" tool in my art program, ibisPaint X.)

How I draw eyes!

Draw eye lineart.

New layer, clip on lineart layer, draw dark circle.

Layer sclera coloring under lineart layer.

Add pupil layer below lineart layer and above sclera layer.

(Coloration used to show different steps/parts of the eye!)

(Without the weird example coloring, your end result should look like this!)

4. Pattern

Much like how everyone has their own unique fingerprint, every toxicsona with a well defined identity develops their own unique pattern. Coming up with the right pattern is tricky! Patterns are made up of symbols, lines, or a combination of. They have a rhyme and reason to them. A pattern to the pattern, so to speak.

(Here's a bunch of example patterns, created by me (sometimes with the help of CrystalKleure), or Phil and StupidButterfly. Stare at them for a while and take some notes on what rhythms you recognize.)

For maximum appeal, your pattern cannot be too complex or simple! Try to select 2-4 symbols/lines to create your pattern. These symbols/lines should be thematically relevant to your blob. Ex: A spiderweb pattern for spider-themed toxicsonas, checker pattern for a blob that likes checkers/chess, a UFO for an alien slime, eyes for an angel slime or a slime that loves/fears being watched! (You may also want to reference off the emotion patterns if your blob is heavily associated with an emotion. Ex: sparkles for a very happy/excited slime!)

Feel free to pick basic shapes, like triangles and circles, for one or more symbols.

Create a few variants of your chosen symbols. Draw them big, medium, and small. Fill some of them, leave others empty/"hollow."

Patterns are seamless! This means when you apply a pattern to your toxicsona's clothing or body, it must be able to consistently loop! While you may wing it, below is a handy lifehack to easily make a seamless tiling pattern by @crystalkleure !

1. Draw a base design 2. Split that design in half, and arrange the two halves like this. [You might want to use guide lines/a guide grid to make sure the pixels line up in such a way that these two halves will stitch back together correctly, so they'd make clones of the base image again if you were to tile sets of these halves horizontally.] 3. Stitch the two halves together by adding more to the design 4. Split the image again like you did in step 2, except this time split the top and bottom apart instead of the sides. 5. Add more stuff to the design again, in any way that crosses the "seam" made by step 4 [where the top of the bottom half meets the bottom of the top half]. And if you lined up the pixels correctly while you were splitting and rearranging the chunks, you now have an image that tiles seamlessly both horizontally and vertically. The trick is just splitting an image into halves, swapping those halves' places, and then adding more to the image to hide the seam made by splitting and rearranging parts of it like that. Do it with the sides and you get a horizontally-tiling image, do it with the top and the bottom and you get a vertically-tiling image, do it with both the sides and the top + bottom and you get an image that tiles in all four directions.

Here's a speedpaint where I make a pattern using this method! While creating, double checking that your pattern looks good when looped is important! Don't forget to experiment with placements!

(Wow! What a cool pattern!)

Your pattern doesn't have to be insanely unique, hell you don't even HAVE to have one, but it's honestly better if you come up with one. There's no reason NOT to have a pattern unless it's for lore reasons, such as a confused identity or a mimic character. (Do NOT copy others' patterns and make them your own, especially without permission!)

(Phee, Pho, and Phum have the same default pattern as Phi because they're copycat scammers! They try to convince others they're related to Phi to get what they want.)

Gradient and pattern application!

Now you may want to give your slime a gradient! Gradients tend to appear on the lower halves of blobs but can be placed anywhere! Below is a guide to show how I apply the pattern and gradients to the body! While defaults apply to many toxicsonas, like Phi, they do not have to be followed.

Clip pattern layer over body color layer. (Pattern transparency default is 47%.)

New layer (add mode), place under pattern, clip over body color layer. Draw gradient. (Gradient transparency default is 40%.)

Alpha lock the pattern layer.

Airbrush the upper half pattern layer with the dark body color.

The pattern is often the same color as the neon lineart, while the gradient is often a darker version of the color.

(Weird bright green coloration used to emphasize the layers clipped onto it.)

(The finished gradient, sans weird example coloring, looks just like Phi's!)

Here's how to apply a pattern to clothing! Create a new layer with the pattern. Clip it to your base. (Pattern layers on clothes are usually somewhat transparent. The default is 65% but you can deviate.)

5. Outfit

Clothing is a HUGE self expression that extends to the world of toxicsonas! Blobs can harden mass they acquire, turning it into wearable cartilage clothing! Below are some tips but the bottom line is DESIGN WHAT YOU WANT.

Who they were before the slime often heavily influences their outfit(s). Ex, if your blob was a clown when alive, they may dress the same as a slime.

You'll often find the body pattern on the clothes, but you don't have to do this.

A popular addition to blob fashion is caution/hazard tape! While often black and yellow, feel free to deviate the colors.

(A bunch of fashionable slime outfits with caution tape themes that I made or had a hand in making!)

Phil does not like hoodies on toxicsonas but you can totally join the #hoodiesweep nation. (It would be super funny.) That aside, many do put their blobs in hoodies, so avoiding a standard hoodie is preferable if you want to make a super unique design.

You don't have to give your blob any clothes, especially if they're non-humanoid. Accessories are still recommended to personalize your design and make it stand out from an average ...whatever it is.

Unlike the rest of the slime body that has colored lineart, clothing almost ALWAYS has black/dark color lineart.

Any slime overlapping atop non-slime materials requires a black outline, including over clothing.

(While the consistency of this rule varies with established toxicsona art (ie Phi), I personally try to apply it as much as possible, even when slime overlaps slime. It makes things look nicer and allows the neon lines to stand out more. It's also easier to make out what's going on when looked at.)

Misc. tips!

Bananas are the main unit of measurement in the cesspit! Giving your blob a height can help people draw them to scale, especially when drawn next to other blobs! To get the accurate height: 1. Conjure a length of your choice. 2. Convert your length to inches (in). 3. Divide the inches by 7. (Because 7 inches is the average length of a grocery store banana.) 4. Congrats! You have banana height! Now you can also reverse the order and get standard heights!

Too gay or lazy to do math? Click here for faster conversion! http://bananaforscale.info/#!/ (Note the results will be slightly shorter than my method above but the measurements are about the same so who really cares about that.)

Come up with a backstory for your toxicsona! If you haven't already made one during the design process, you may want to now! -Consider what life was like before they came in contact with The Substance. How did they feel about their old life? -How did they come in contact with The Substance? (Preferably avoid the basic backstory of accidentally falling into a vat. It's overdone, mainly due to how vague lore was before the toxicsona review streams. I'd suggest letting Phi lure them into the slime or tossing them in, if you want something traditional. Phi's goal is to make a blob army, after all.) -What is their life like now, post-Substance? How do they feel about their new life?

(Canon backstory comic on how Phee, Pho, and Phum became blobs!)

Feeling social? Working with other cesspit members (or your own ocs), you can develop links between your toxicsonas! Make your friend's blob their friend! Or maybe enemy! Why not ship them? GO NUTS????

(Phee is a massive flirt in the cesspit. Mr. Sex/Noctus belongs to @corovusin !)

-Consider how your blob may feel about others. Are they a social butterfly or a shut in? Who do they like? Who would they rather avoid? -What are their thoughts on Phi, the leader? (Generally avoid giving them a super strong, personal bond with Phi, such as relatives, best friends, or close partners of any kind. Phi does not have a family and she's a total bitch to just about everyone!) -Phil says there's no love in the cesspit but he's literally just a hater. Make your ocs gay kiss!!

Feel like cooking a little more? Why not design a pre-slime form if it doesn't already exist?

(Phee and Phum before their fatal scam attempt on Phi.)

Many cesspit users also create a "living disguise" form for their toxicsonas, so the slimes can wander among others without rousing suspicion! Blobs have the ability to learn to shapeshift. It's a skill that must be mastered with experience and time, so disguise forms often have "flaws" that give away an inhuman quality, like extra mouths, eyes, patterns, or gradients on their skin.

(Dutch is very good at shapeshifting, so his disguise lacks most flaws. The flaws that are there are mostly intentional, since he's proud of his slime qualities. A blob who perfects the skill of shifting can look like an ordinary human, but where's the fun in that?)

Most toxicsonas can change color based on emotion. (They may also change based on other factors so feel free to get creative with it.) -As a slime has a base pattern and color of choice, these will change based on their mood and that mood's assigned color! Many toxicsonas share patterns and colors with Phi (like red and triangle pattern for mad, blue and flowered squiggles for sad, etc.) but this is not a rule. You can assign any color to any mood. You are not limited to Phi's emotion set either! You can even make your own patterns for your blob's moods if you feel like it! -Some color changes are very subtle in some slimes! Is this true for yours? -Modifying the design of your blob to match their mood is a fun way to create expressive and interesting variants!

(Dutch's hair, horn shape, halo, face, and hands can change with his mood! He has an array of emotional patterns, both preset and custom-made, to match the different colors/moods.)

(When Goober was alive, they had DID. Mimicking the behavior of their former life, the three alters, Ziggy, Skrunk, and Wumbus, became separate blobs. They still need to work together to function properly. They combine to bodily become "Goober." Goober's left eye functions as a collective eye, while their right eyes that can emote separately reflect their respective alter.)

(Goober's default color is green, indicating all alters are co-fronting. When there is a primary fronter or two, the upper body color changes to match!)

Design a shell for your toxicsona! Shells are foreign objects blobs use, often to live, sleep, or hide in. Shells are protective. ANYTHING can be a shell. Not all toxicsonas need one, but those that do often have a thematic shell that relates to who they are. (Ex: Phi-barrel, Bucket-bucket, Collette-chocolate box.)

(Thanks to his angelic theming, Dutch's shell is a reliquary- a display container for holy relics, often being remnants of holy figures. Goober's shell of choice is a mini UFO!)

Stuck? Want to grow your design with less work? Collaborate with others or take their advice if you like what they give you. Ask people what they'd change about your design!

You should NOT be designing just for the approval of Phisnom, You should design for YOURSELF (or whoever is paying you- I see you, adopt/custom ppl.) He's just another person out there. Yes, a creator of the species, but he does not have to dictate your choices or give your design an S tier ranking just to validate it. The satisfaction should come from inside, not outside.

Hope these tips help, best of luck creating your own toxicsona, and feel free to ask any additional questions regarding this! ✌️

[smolsleepyfox]

hello! I've been listening to Wake Up the Wicked on loop pretty much constantly for the past couple days and keep finding new things to love about it! in particular I have many Thoughts about the way Powerwolf's songs with women as the focus have shifted over the years. unfortunately when I try to articulate those thoughts they mostly just come out as "AAAAAAAA Vargamor and Kyrie Klitorem and Joan of Arc just FEEL like such an important thing! I've been a fan for so long but something about these songs makes me (as a fem-adjacent person) feel like I can actually be part of the group!" in one of your posts about your thesis, you note how there's never been a Powerwolf song with a woman werewolf — I'd never noticed that until now, tho Vargamor and Dancing with the Dead feel close. examining that distinction is fascinating!

considering you've got a whole thesis on it and so will likely be able to go deeper than me, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on how gender is handled in this album as compared to others, and in general, who "gets" to be a monster!

Okay this is a great question and also funnily enough something I've spoken about with another friend recently.

So the thing about monstrosity is that it is very heavily gendered. This doesn't start but is reflected in the Middle Ages where monstrosity is physical (since the distincion body/mind didn't really exist) BUT directly related to gender roles. The example most scholars go with are the Amazons, the mythical warrior women. They are monstrous because they only have one breast AND because they take on both gender roles, making clothing (female) and hunting (male). If you behaved weird people would assume you had a physical abnormality and a physical abnormality could be a sign of somethig wrong (e.g. witch marks). Note that "monstrous" isn't technically synonymous with "bad/evil". From what I gather, bestiaries and collections of monsters from far away lands were a curiosity with no inherent moral dimension, although it obviously held implications for the treatment of queer and disabled people, foreigners etc. Dana Oswald splits monstrosity into hypermasculine, hypersexual (feminine) and hybrid. Hypermasculine is exactly what you think it is, werewolves, giants, anything that is large and hairy and ravenous. The theme here is Taking. Wealth, sex, someone's life. Interestingly, exaggerated sexuality in the middle ages was culturally feminine, so centaurs are monstrously feminine due to their exagerrated sexuality. Another example are sirens. Hypersexual/feminine monsters seduce instead of take by brute force.

About werewolves specifically, let me open with Willem de Blecourt's opening line in a book about werewolf history: There is no werewolf history. What we today see as a werewolf (and Powerwolf uses as a mascot) is a modern cultural concept that is only an approximate to other times and cultures. Let's take the Varcolac, a creature from Slavic mythology (spelled differently in different languages). The Varcolac is often translated as werewolf, but if you look at the mythology it is - simplified - a reanimated corpse that drinks blood. Usually it's a person who was evil/frivolous/was excommunicated in life that rises again. So for all intents and purposes it's a vampire. Powerwolf does have some werewolf/vampire hybrids in their music and on tshirts, but since werewolves and vampires are both hypermasculine monsters that's only a side note.

To talk about as actual a werewolf as possible, you know 1589, you know the story of Peter Stubbe. Peter Stubbe was a highly publicized case that influenced later ones. Elements of his case reappear in trials in the low countries, Germany and England, but not in France because the pamphlets telling his story were not translated into French afawk. Some details also bear striking resemblances to earlier French cases, so it's very difficult to know what actually happened. Peter Stubbe single-handedly (heh) cemented the image of the cannibal werewolf for the early modern public BUT he's an outlier. Werewolf Georg if you will. Cannibalism is definitely a defining trait of many werewolves but almost everything else is different from our modern understanding. The persecution of werewolves in central Europe was almost completely tied to witchcraft allegations. Without getting into historical witchcraft as a whole, there was a concept of male and female witchcraft in line with the gender roles of agrarian society. A werewolf was related to violence against people and livestock as well as sexual threats. Just like witches, werewolves were assumed to transform with an ointment or belt given to them by the devil. The transformation is not physical, just like witches can't actually fly but fall into a trance (induced by the devil). [Note that the idea of physical transformation has been a MASSIVE point of debate for church scholars for as long as said church existed. Go take a look if you're curious.] More modern werewolf lore (1960s) from the B/NL/DE border region shows werewolves to be a shorthand for unacceptable liaisons and sexual assault, possibly homosexuality and bestiality, but usually just people dressed in a wolf pelt taking the piss. The modern idea of the werewolf, specifically the bipedal form and painful transformation is a Hollywood product. We can quite easily pin the origin on one specific film: The Wolf Man from 1941. The transformation and visual presentation was driven by the improved special effects of the film industry and their desire to give people a spectacle. This is also a central trait of monstrosity: It is physical because people want to see it.

SO! If we're being pedantic, no, werewolves are not inherently male. A handful of women were prosecuted as werewolves, though they were the minority within the already minor number of werewolf trials. But it is a fact that the majority of werewolves are male throughout history and werewolf characteristics are - as Dana Oswald puts it - hypermasculine, meaning they exaggerate and therefore threaten the dominant concept of masculinity in a given societal context. That's the baseline of monstrosity- it breaks boundaries and threatens the system it inhabits while reinforcing a rule for the listener.

It's notable that female werewolves in modern film are almost never seen transforming, including in staple films like Underworld. You have those beefy werewolf guys and the women just. Stand there. An outlier that gets quoted in almost every paper I've ever read is Ginger Snaps, which directly deals with the way Ginger's lycanthropy makes her monstrous both in breaking the boundaries of human/animal but also what is acceptable behavior for a girl. I don't have the sources to back this up yet but I see a strong parallel in this to women in Metal in general. Think about it, Metal music is counterculture and is almost defined by depicting monstrosity (satanism, violence, etc) and breaking the boundaries of what is music. Women in Metal are "monstrous" by associating with the transgressive scene the same as men - except they get held to a completely different standard. Metal is so male-dominated the ideal (visual, behavioral) gender presentation cannot include femininity or at least makes two clearly gendered molds. Women in metal, then, have to balance being "Metal" and being sufficiently feminine to be accepted. The male ideal I like to call the 'Metal warrior', because he's so often inspired by historical warrior culture but primarily defines himself by being large, strong, possibly aggressive and definitely drinking a lot. Everything that is masculine but juuuuust over the line of polite society. Which is what Powerwolf sings about as well, they just made it a furry.

-------

ANYWAY sorry for the long-ass background info, I got carried away lol. Note that for the next section, I am doing this off the top of my head since I haven't gotten to that part of the analysis yet. The deadline is approaching, send help.

I like to call Powerwolf my problematic faves because as camp as their performances are and as self-ironic as they try to make themselves out to be, their lyrics and videos are profoundly cishet. This isn't a criticism, just an observation. As far as we know they are cishet men from a rural part of Germany (and one Dutchman). I know we make jokes about the homoeroticism between Falk and Attila but I would not be surprised if they had no idea that's what they're doing. Most cishet people do not think about queerness unless they have a reason, and in a lot of social circles there simply is none. They just don't even consider it. There's something to be said about homosocial bonds in metal music but that's a topic so large I'll skip it for now. The only queer aspect I've seen in the entire history of Powerwolf is that lesbian kiss in the music video of No Prayer at Midnight and that was so blatantly male gaze-y I'm not sure if it even counts. So, fair warning, I'm going to say men and women as in cis men and women because I'm on mobile and typing is annoying as is.

First off, to answer your question: Yes, women have absolutely become a bigger part of Powerwolf's repertoire. Joan of Arc is a historical story that they implemented beautifully, and so is Vargamor. While I personally don't like Kyrie Klitorem it's definitely interesting to analyze in a wider context. What does stick out is that the majority of women in Powerwolf's music are sexualized in some way along with sexuality becoming a larger part of their theme in general. As far as I can see, sexuality was actually not a major part of the Powerwolf brand until Sacrament of Sin. Coleus Sanctus and Resurrection by Erection are from albums before that, but they're single songs on albums otherwise concerned with werewolves, vampires and that warrior image I mentioned before. Their earlier videos have almost never any side characters and it's mostly about spooky priest things and/or werewolves (kind of mixed with vampirism, which is a parallel to the Varcolac).

In general I would say there are two 'roles' that characters in the PW universe take and it was kind of hard to find the right wording, because depending on your reading they have VERY different connotations. I'm just going to call it the 'active' and the 'passive' right now until I've explained what I mean.

Women are sexualized in the music and the videos/artworks. That's just a fact, and hasn't changed much from the beginning until now. It's not even out of character for Power Metal as an heir to classic Heavy Metal and Glam Rock. Powerwolf sing about sex, specifically hetero sex, and mostly from the perspective of cishet men. Matt even said in an interview many years ago that he's unsure if he could write about pussy because he doesn't have one. Yes, really.

The language of the music is clerical, and commonly from the viewpoint of a religious person/priest of course, which reinforces the themes of wildness/hedonism by contrasting them with what is 'proper'. Circling back to my explanations of monstrosity - improper behavior and improper physical appearance are linked, so to break the laws of faith is to become monstrous, possibly physically. The band constantly portrays this overstepping of boundaries in a religious context. Call of the Wild quite literally says "To praise the wild while the bible we're tearing". Corpse paint I would argue I'd a visual marker of monstrosity as well, especially since the band are usually the only ones in that type of makeup.

Just visually, women are a big part in Powerwolf's art and video as side characters, especially burlesque dancers, and they're typically a shorthand for desire and sexuality. Open sexuality is a massive taboo in the Catholic Church, especially in the pseudo-medieval world their music inhabits. And a woman being active in her sexuality, even choosing what, who and how to desire is far over the line even in many modern societies. (Ginger Snaps tackled this as well.) So let's take a look:

There's Demons are a girl's best friend, which is on the surface a warning against being "corrupted" by demons (sexuality) but can also be interpreted - as the title suggests - that the female protagonist is quite aware of what she's doing and likes it. Kiss of the Cobra King shows the female protagonist in white, standing in for purity, before being corrupted and possibly killed for her transgression. Still unsure about that video tbh. Dancing with the Dead is less sexual and leans more heavily into the corruption (by witchcraft?) angle. I feel like there is a disconnect between text and video in this one because in the video, the female protagonist doesn't look at all willing to dance and Attila forces her to, whereas in the text the protagonist seems quite aware and in control of what she's doing. Undress to Confess is pretty fucking clear that the woman is having fun and the artwork shows a nun, while naked, in a dynamic, powerful pose. This is what I'd call the active role. There's also the flip side of that active role that isn't passiveness but control:

Kyrie Klitorem is about how women have power over men by virtue of their sexuality. Powerwolf often uses 'we' in their lyrics and while that's technically a non-gendered pronoun, the songs suggest the narrator is a (cishet) man. Venom of Venus is also similar in topic and structure, and the vampire queen from the Killers with the Cross video is also clearly in control while being sexy (as are the hunters).

So in the 'active' role, women can be corrupted, seductive as well as empowered, it really depends on your reading. Same goes for the videos by the way - the dancers can be shown in an objectifying way, but thinking of the dancer in My Will be Done she is on equal standing with the other characters asking Attila for something. (Also, burlesque dance is an awesome art form.) Angel and Devil in that same music video are portrayed by women. However, the reduction of a woman to her body is obviously part of a long history of sexualization.

Which brings me to the passive role and the use of the nun image. Nuns have been sexualized for absolute ages. There's drawings and gossip from the Middle Ages about nuns and priests doing stuff they shouldn't. Good for them etc pp.* Powerwolf is really not reinventing the wheel by contrasting the nun's modesty/virtuousness with unrestrained sexuality. I mean look at this.

The role of women in the Catholic Church is an entire can of worms by itself. In Powerwolf's art, the love of Jesus/God is just placed on a different figure. I actually hesitate to interpret what the intention is, if it's critical of the church or a power fantasy. They absolutely criticize religion in their songs (Glaubenskraft, Sinners of the Seven Seas) but their visuals are also heavily inspired by historical art and can just be meant to look cool. That's something the band stresses in almost every interview when they are asked about deeper meanings: It has to be entertainment first. Their cover artist Zsofia Dankova told me the same: Looking cool has priority.

So nuns are in general portrayed as subservient, as they are in history and art, and sexualized. The focus on the band in performances - which in itself isn't really that surprising - and Attila's and Falk's role as 'clergy' does put them into a position of power. Here's where it gets interesting, because the bottom line of Powerwolf has been and is Have fun. In Wake up the Wicked it's a major plot point that one of them actively invites the young priest (altar boy? Idk I grew up Protestant). The artworks draw on art conventions from pulp fiction and classical works, but if you look at the lyrics involving women** it's either about submitting yourself (to pleasure) or actively seeking it out.

This has gotten way too fucking long but here's a minor detour before we get to the end. What else does PW sing about? Yes, werewolves, and history, but regardless of the underlying inspiration (Blood for Blood is about an Irish legend, I wouldn't have guessed that just from the lyrics) they sing about either bravery and power, or excess and hedonism, sometimes both. I've already mentioned the warrior ideal in my introduction, and that does a LOT of heavy lifting. Many of the artworks and merch have some sort of military theme, especially the crusades because that's fitting for the medieval-ish vibe the band has. The 'holy' knights as werewolves is both commentary on the actual crusades in a way, but also puts the listener into the body of a powerful beast heading into battle, which is just plain fun. Plenty of music is about riding into battle, Viking Metal exists. I spoke to Zsofia Dankova, Powerwolf's resident visual artist, and asked her what she thinks about the werewolf being implicitly male. She said she doesn't really see the werewolf she draws as gendered because it's just a symbol, something that stands in for power. I was a bit dubious about that answer at first, but it actually shows my own cultural bias, because that is the connotation of the werewolf at work, not the artwork itself. You can absolutely argue that the positions and clothes the werewolf is in (see image above) are men's, but for the most part, the wolves in their art are clothed in simple robes or armour that anyone could wear. It is just convention that makes it seem male. Growling (the vocal technique) is also male-coded even though men and women who growl sound identical.

I'm not going into more detail about the depiction of masculinity because y'all can read my thesis for that. Instead, I want to return to my introduction about what is considered monstrous: The breaking and exaggeration of social norms. Sexuality is what makes the women in Powerwolf monstrous - alongside a proclivity for witchcraft. Vargamor shows her to be a mother as the name implies, but more importantly a wise leader and powerful magic user. It's implied that she can fight, but the chorus is more insistent that she dwells in the shadows and is a steady presence for many different iterations of the pack through the years.

The men on the other hand are shown to be monstrous by being violent, hedonistic beasts. The songs again and again reiterate wildness and unrestrained summer fun battle prowess. Technically you could argue that 'we' doesn't have to mean men, but that would ignore centuries of cultural connotations and that it needs a pretty good in-text reason to assume an all-male metal band is writing their songs in a female lyrical I (we?).

Powerwolf quite simply portrays monstrosity as it has been since the Middle Ages, along gendered lines. This makes sense because they draw on given cultural conventions, history and folklore, they're just on the side of the monster. There's definitely something to be said about the sexualization of women in Metal and the male gaze, but the wolves have also very clearly heard the call for more female representation.

If anyone is still reading, congratulations I nearly drove myself insane here.

* As with most things in life, this isn't black and white. Nuns had some social advantages and there were most likely plenty of consensual relationships, but as women in a patriarchal society they were still under the authority of men who could harm them. ** I excluded Glaubenskraft because that song breaks with the Powerwolf universe by adressing a current, real-life injustice. Completely different topic.

[supahstarrr]

rambling.

Hu's case is interesting to me because the objects associated with her (butterflies) seem to imply that her character revolves around changing & rebirth due to its symbolism, and she herself finally has the strength to speak about her secret while implying she wanted to put the secret "behind her."

This along with the chapter's themes around change/regression could hint to her "change" already happening before the killing game, similarly to Levi. Although at first I thought it would be least satisfying thing for her to be the murderer due to the symbolism and potential of her character, this "change" of hers already happening before the series taking place mean there's a more likely chance that her being the culprit can be executed in a satisfying way since the murder could act as her arc due to it being the "regression" to her "change."

This is more of an interpretation of mines, but I feel like the this regression arc of hers is more likely to happen because the series has been deconstructing that this "change" Hu implies is partially or even entirely false and struggling to occur. Her emphasis on life being fulfilling if she has a purpose (or feel useful) fuels her constant need to repress her emotions to reduce her humanity into a person who lives only to serve for others.

Thus in the process she reduces other people's humanity, speaks over them and is the negative fuel to her dynamics (Hu/Nico) & (Hu/Ace) [this example is more complex as of course Ace also the one who negativity fuels their dynamic, she surely does add to it by simplifying him as a villain than a human]. These are things that increase the unlikeness of getting outside support she needs, helping her become stuck in her chambers even more.

Her pushing aside the secret with a "putting it behind me" is although understandable due to the nature of it and her depression, the wording could be interpreted as not truly addressing her issues and the severity of her depression. I could see if she wanted to brush aside her secret if she acknowledges that it could trigger regression to recovery. Problem is that her actions so far has shown poor attempts, or hardly any attempts at all, at addressing her mental health, especially with her fixation on being useful and repressing her humanity. It doesn't seem as if she focus on recovery but more on superficial change. In a way, she constantly isolates herself from others and even herself. In way she's just developed another way to harm herself.

We genuinely cant forget that what makes her even more isolated is her preferably getting emotional connections through her idealizations of people, instead of deconstructing those standards herself. She approaches herself and others in such a shallow way. She only see people (including herself) as ideas more than genuine people, and her ideals being broken constantly isn't helping either.

There can be depth to her being the culprit other than her suicidal tendencies. She could risk being the culprit if it meant to she would go out in "glory" because she was "useful" when it came to taking Arei out. I can't pinpoint why she specifically would want to kill Arei, other than Hu desire to target her being rooted in a negative interpretation of Arei (her being the "trouble of the group"), because she wasn't there when Arei blatantly said she wanted to change.

Maybe Arei came during the wrong place wrong time, thus the murder at first was accidental before the culprit and possible accomplices decided to take the steps to make the murder seemed "planned" or "suicide." Or maybe Arei was the planned target yet the murder and planned still managed to fuck up somehow. I don't know man Okay lol. I can't explain how I feel about the murder scene, but it feels unusually sloppy yet planned at once, as if there was a sudden transition to motivates or plans or something.

The main point of this post is to see how her being a culprit could make sense for the story and her story, not really as an attempt to entirely decide that she's the culprit. I'm trying to keep my options open. Problem with deciding that she's immediately the culprit is that her words during the trial (episode 12) specifically gave an emphasis on living. Which could still mean she's involved in the murder case, but more of a planner than the one doing the killing.

Can I just go back to the symbolism for a minute. Why does she cover herself in butterflies, other than their association with femininity that she embraces in? Perhaps she admires the idea of change, but can't find the true methods to change. Maybe her covering herself in butterflies is an attempt to "force" the association with her, as a shallow attempt to say she's change without actually doing the recovery behind the change. With this "change" actually happening before the killing game, the symbolism could really be seen in a different perspective...

Semi-related but another post out there admitted that they were scared for the story, and to be honest I do too. I'm feeling too conflicted about how the story is going so far although I'm not willing to say there are writing issues yet.. im just conflicted about stuff. Okay. Okay. Okay bye im done talking.

Also, I am a little disappointed that most of the predictions of Hu being the culprit doesn't really come out of concern for her character and story, but because they don't like her. I really do feel like she's so severely misunderstood, it sucks imo.

[tendaysofrain]

Random Stuff #12:  What is Simplified Chinese?

For people like me who grew up speaking and using Chinese in day to day life, the vast majority of us have at least a basic understanding of what Simplified Chinese is, but it wasn’t until some days ago when an English speaker asked me “what is Simplified Chinese?” that I realized not many people here understand what Simplified Chinese is.  So, I’ve gathered some misconceptions I’ve encountered both in real life and online, and I will try to answer them in a concise but factual manner.

But first, let us talk basics.  There are three things we must cover first before going into this topic.  The first is the fact that both Simplified Chinese (简体中文) and Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) used today are modern standardized systems of written Chinese, as in both were compiled within the past 100 years or so (modern Simplified from 1935-1936, then again from 1956 and on; modern Traditional starting from 1973), and the two currently widely used versions of both systems were officially standardized in the past 50 years (modern Simplified current version standardized in 2013; modern Traditional current version standardized in 1982).  However, since simplified characters already exist in history (called 简化字/簡化字 or 俗体字/俗體字/”informal characters”), and “Traditional Chinese” can be taken to mean “written Chinese used in history”, in this post I will use “modern Simplified/Traditional Chinese” or “modern Simplified/Traditional” when referring to the currently used modern standardized systems.  

Second is the evolution of written Chinese.  Usually when this is taught, instructors use examples of how certain characters evolved over time, for example one might encounter a linear diagram like this in Chinese class:

(Original picture from Mandarinpedia)

However, this diagram only gives a very general idea of how characters evolved from more picture-like logograms to the more abstract symbols we call characters today, and does not reflect the complexity of this evolution at all.  To get into these details we will need to talk about Chinese calligraphy.  In terms of the evolution of written Chinese, Chinese calligraphy--all those scripts like oracle bone script (甲骨文), bronze/Jinwen script (金文), Seal/Zhuan script (篆书/篆書), Clerical/Li script (隶书/隸書), Regular/Kai script (楷书/楷書), etc--they aren’t just calligraphy fonts, but actually change the way characters are written, and are representative of the commonly used forms of written Chinese at different points in Chinese history, as in the appearance of a certain script on a historical artifact can actually be used to estimate how old the artifact is.  Below is a (very) rough timeline of when each script appeared and when they are most popular:

Oracle bone script/Jiaguwen (甲骨文):  Shang dynasty (~1600 BC-1046 BC)

Bronze/Jinwen script (金文; includes Large Seal script/大篆):  Western Zhou dynasty (~1046 BC-771 BC)

Seal/Zhuan script (篆书/篆書; sometimes called Small Seal script/小篆 or Qin script/秦篆):  compiled in Qin dynasty by chancellor Li Si/李斯 around 221 BC, was the official script in Qin dynasty (221 BC-207 AD); popularity went down after Qin dynasty but was still in use for ceremonial purposes like official seals (the archaic meaning of 篆 is “official seal”, hence the English name); still in use today in very specific areas like seal stamps, calligraphy, logos, and art.

Clerical/Li script (隶书/隸書):  appeared in Qin dynasty, became the main script used in Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD); popularity went down after Han dynasty but was still in use; still in use today in specific areas like calligraphy, inscriptions/signatures on traditional Chinese paintings, logos, and other art.

Regular/Kai script (楷书/楷書):  appeared in late Han dynasty, became the main script used in Tang dynasty and has been popular ever since (618 AD-present).

(Note:  there are other calligraphy scripts like Semi-Cursive script/行书/行書 and Cursive script/草书/草書 that were never mainstream yet were also significant, especially in the case of modern Simplified Chinese, but I will mention them later so this won’t become too confusing)

So if we plug the information from the very rough timeline above into the linear diagram, it becomes this:

But wait!  There’s even more!  Because there is a thing called variant Chinese characters/异体字/異體字, which basically means that there have been multiple ways in which a character can be written (“one character, many forms”/一字多形), and these can come about as a result of homophones, personal preference of historically significant people, historical trends, mistakes in the past that stuck around, or the result of stylized scripts like Cursive script/草书/草書, which simplifies and connects strokes in a liberal manner.  The reason Cursive script is important here is because of the logographic nature of written Chinese, meaning the simplifying or connecting of strokes actually changes how the character is written.  Because of this, 马 and 馬 were forms that have already existed before modern Simplified and modern Traditional were compiled.  A diagram that takes variations and evolution into account should look something like this:

And since the above diagram did not take Cursive script into account, here’s another picture of a myriad of scripts/fonts (not in chronological order) that includes 馬 in Cursive script (mostly on bottom left):

Now you may have an idea of where modern Simplified and Traditional Chinese came from:  they are both compiled from existing variants.  Since both modern Simplified and modern Traditional are supposed to be standardizations of written Chinese, they each set a single variant for each character as the “standard”.  Modern Traditional Chinese kept the more historically mainstream 馬, and modern Simplified Chinese substituted it with the simpler variant 马.  Taking all of this into account but still keeping it concise for our topic here, our linear diagram from the beginning should be modified to look like this:

And that’s just an example of a single character.  This evolution diagram can differ depending on the character too, due to there being other rules for simplifying characters.  This is why standardizing written Chinese is an immense amount of work, but once standardized, the written language will be streamlined and much easier to use in communication.

Finally, we are ready to clear some misconceptions.

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About Common Misconceptions Regarding Modern Simplified Chinese:

“Simplified Chinese replaced all Traditional Chinese characters”. Untrue.  Modern Simplified Chinese only standardized 2274 of the most used Chinese characters and 14 radicals with simpler variants.  That’s really all there is to it.   For reference there are a total of about 60,000 Chinese characters, and about 3,500 of these are deemed to be often-used characters; so only ~3.7% of all Chinese characters and ~65% of often-used Chinese characters are simplified in modern Simplified Chinese.  Play around with any online tool that can switch between modern Simplified and modern Traditional, and you will find that many characters stayed the same.

“Simplified Chinese is the opposite of Traditional Chinese”.  Untrue.  Modern Simplified Chinese is just a simplified and standardized system of written Chinese.  Modern Simplified Chinese and modern Traditional Chinese are not “opposites” of each other at all, just different standardized systems serving different purposes.  Modern Simplified was compiled with ease of use in mind, since Traditional characters can be time-consuming to write, for example imagine writing 聲 (sound) when you can just write 声 instead.  Also back when Simplified was being introduced to the public, a huge part of the population was illiterate, especially farmers, poor people, and women, so Simplified Chinese was a great way to quickly educate them on reading and writing, and to improve efficiency in all aspects of life. Knowing how to read and write is key to education, and education is a must if people's lives were to be improved at all.

“Simplified Chinese is Mandarin”.  Untrue.  Mandarin is a spoken dialect that came from Beijing dialect, and both modern Simplified and modern Traditional Chinese are modern standardized systems of written Chinese.  One concerns the written language and the other concerns a spoken dialect.

"Simplified Chinese was invented by the Communist Party". Untrue.  As mentioned before, most characters used in modern Simplified Chinese are already present in ancient texts, artifacts, and inscriptions as variants.  Apparently the only character simplified by PRC was 簾 (blinds/curtain), which became 帘 in modern Simplified Chinese. History wise, Republic of China was the first to start compiling Simplified Chinese in 1935 and introducing it to the public, but this was called off after 4 months.  PRC modified and built on the original plan, and introduced it to the public again starting from 1956.

"Simplified Chinese is to Traditional Chinese as Newspeak is to English in 1984". Completely untrue.  Modern Simplified Chinese is just a simplified way to write commonly used Chinese characters and does not alter the meaning of the characters.  There are some Traditional characters that are combined as one simplified character in modern Simplified, but the meanings are not lost or altered.  For example, 發 fā (development) and 髪 fà (hair) are combined as 发 in modern Simplified, resulting in 发 having 2 different pronunciations (both fā and fà), and each of these pronunciations carrying their original meaning.  The meaning of neither 發 nor 髪 was lost, 发 will just have a longer dictionary entry.

"Simplified Chinese is a huge change from Traditional Chinese". Only partly true in that it is a change, but it is a change justified by the evolution of written Chinese throughout history.  The origin of most modern Simplified Chinese characters come straight from history itself, since many characters had alternative ways in which they were written (sometimes for convenience), for example these characters below.  Each row contains different forms of a single character (smaller characters indicate what time period these variants are from; ex:  汉碑 means the variant is from a Han dynasty inscription).

In reality, written Chinese has always been standardizing itself.  Less-used variants become forgotten over time, sometimes only rediscovered through archaeology.  Besides, effective written communication does partly rely on standardization of the written language (imagine everyone writing in the various variants...how horrible would that be?).  Modern Simplified just took this one step farther and made some characters easier to write.

“Traditional Chinese is no longer used in Mainland China”.  Untrue.  Modern Simplified is the commonly used form in Mainland China, but Traditional is still used in a variety of places, such as on store signs/brand logos, particularly for stores/brand that are old.  For example the old Beijing brand 天福号 below (est. 1738).  On their logo, 天福号 is written as 天福號 from right to left, which is the traditional way of writing horizontally.

Traditional Chinese is also used in the logos for many universities in China:

Another way in which Traditional Chinese is commonly used in mainland China are personal seal stamps.  Often times when people carve seal stamps for personal use (for example showing ownership on artwork they created or collected), they would put their name/courtesy name/nickname on the seal stamps in Zhuan/篆 calligraphy font, and Zhuan font use Traditional Chinese.  Of course, the ways in which Traditional Chinese is still used in mainland China isn’t restricted to these two examples here.  There are other places where Traditional Chinese is still used, such as traditional paintings/国画, calligraphy/书法, and many many more.

“People who grew up reading Simplified Chinese cannot read Traditional Chinese”.  Depends on who you are asking.  I grew up learning only modern Simplified, and I can read Traditional/modern Traditional Chinese just fine without having to actually learn it from anyone.  Most people who grew up with Simplified Chinese should be able to read at least some Traditional without help.  There are some people who say they can’t read Traditional without taking the time to learn it, but I doubt they’ve really tried, to be very honest.

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And that’s it for the misconceptions!  

My personal philosophy regarding modern Simplified Chinese and modern Traditional Chinese can be summed up as 识繁写简, or basically “know how to read Traditional and know how to write Simplified”.  In a way, knowing how to read Traditional is a bit like knowing how to read cursive:  a lot of history could be lost if we completely stopped using/learning about Traditional Chinese, but to meet the fast pace that modern life demands, I think modern Simplified Chinese is the more convenient choice for writing for day-to-day purposes.  Since quite a few posts on this blog concern history, you will find that I usually use both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese for historical things, since modern Traditional Chinese is closest to what people used in the past, and modern Simplified Chinese is more often used now.  If it appears that I didn’t put modern Simplified and modern Traditional side by side, that usually means either the characters stayed the same and there’s no need for me to type the same thing out again, or the topic does not call for both to be shown.

Finally, the fun part.  Here’s a Seal/Zhuan script calligraphy work by Mi Fu/米芾 (1051-1107):

Does something look familiar there?

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Do you have any advice on how to go about designing monsters and animals and the like? I like the idea of creating those kinds of things but I always blank on how to go about it, like I know little facts like Allen's Rule but I don't know how to find out about something like that intentionally or even think of it for my thing. (me when I have no idea how to explain that I have no idea how to research smth lol)

first I've heard of Allen's Rule, so that probably says a lot about the fact that I'm mostly self taught lol.

here's the wikipedia page about it for anyone else who didn't know.

to sum up, it is a rule stating that animals in cold climates tend to have shorter/thicker appendages while animals in hot climates tend to have longer/thinner ones. Arctic hare vs desert hare, as an example.

the first thing to do when you want to design anything is to do a lot of studies. just in general. look up images of any animal or insect and draw sketches studying how they're built. do it for people too! you'll always be better at making new designs if you have a basic understanding of how real things are shaped and how they function.

study from videos by sketching fast gesture poses as you watch the creatures in motion! I have also done this while attending sports and dance performances. studying bodies in motion by watching olympic athletes or videos of people trying and failing to do a sport. just study the heck out of everything you can! it's as simple as putting down some lines and shapes to show the main body forms. heavier detail studies are also useful! tracing images in order to study the details is not wrong. I do it all the time, as you can see in a lot of the advice posts I make! I frequently provide traced images of the creature references I've found in order to show my process of breaking down the simplified body shapes.

my actual sketch process often looks like this:

(image description: multiple layers of very loose scribbly sketches in different colors. visible notes on two layers of sketches read "aerial silks dance" and "flying birds". the clearest and topmost layer of sketch is a humanoid figure with wings, performing a dance.

as you might be able to see if you can even begin to parse the mess that is all my study sketching, the final pose sketch I made here for my bird dude Morianon doing a little dance does not even match the poses I sketched from reference videos! This is because gesture sketch studies like these are more based on vibes than accuracy! They're a good way to warm up and practice making really fast gestural doodles that just show the form and motion more than anything well proportioned. It also frees you of the pressure to draw anything perfect! this is messy on purpose! you gotta be messy, it's how learning works.

and then once you're more confident with speed studies, you can get more specific with detail studies. all of this is essential if you want to be able to design creatures. it's all about artistic confidence and developing the skills to notice details. and then you get better at applying those details.

I have two posts on how to study and use references! one over here focused on humans. and another one here about non humans.

this is getting longer than I expected lol. I have other posts on my to-do list that will also be helpful to you I think, and you can explore the links on my pinned post to find more advice on a lot of topics! I might have to make a post on the more general topic of "how do I even get started on designing a creature?" because it is kind of the whole premise of this blog, huh? I have a lot of advice for people who already have a solid idea and just need some advice to overcome a few obstacles along the way, but I don't think I've made a proper advice post for what to do when you don't even have a starting idea.

the tldr version of creature creation is this:

pick a niche (mountain people, flying predator, burrowing creature)

study real life creatures in similar niches

start throwing ideas at your page until something sticks and then take the things that stick and build on them until it feels good

refine your design

[inventors-fair]

Common-Typal Commentary: Matter over Mind

What did I want with this contest, really? Flavorful purpose. Communication of niche. Some weird stuff. I don't actually know what I wanted; perhaps there's this inner frustration that came out with how Bloomburrow drafts were treating me, and I wanted to express a world where typal didn't matter as heavily, where a world could run on its own merits. As I write this, I'm just finishing a draft of Lost Caverns, where I got some awesome artifact synergies going with splashes from other archetypes in the mix. That felt good! There wasn't the typal wonders, but there were pieces in between that folks used, little bits of revelatory connections. I wish it was easier to do typal. And it's not. On a week where the prompt was "typal that didn't care about typal as a theme," it becomes... Well, let's just say that the mess was justified.

There were some messy things that I want to call attention to, though. Firstly, please read and reread the prompt, because three separate people submitted uncommons. Secondly, when you're designing for common, keep complexity and power level in mind. Thirdly... There is no third point, and maybe that itself is the third point: that sometimes, I can only say what I know, and my communication should meet you halfway. If I ain't getting there, then that ain't nobody else's fault but my own. Simplify, revise, correct, and you know what, point four: your first idea isn't gonna be your best one 99% of the time. Reiterate upon yourself and you'll be taken to the stars.

I've got a few Judge Picks I wanted to point out, as you'll see, but this week was a little light so there might only be a couple. I'll go over everything in post. Speaking of post, here's what we have for commentary, posted below:

@bergdg — Aspect of Ruthlessness

From a Tarkir-oriented perspective, I think the flavor of having snakes add to their ruthless qualities with a bit of poison is pretty reasonable. Flashing it in seems a little...off? Hear me out, because this card's totally fine, but flash-deathtouch is one of those really cool combat tricks that Green's been out of for a while (see the whole Ambush Viper debate-thing that happened some time ago, I forget where/when), and if it's not granting that, then a three-mana +1/+1 feels pretty weak even with the surveil.

Flash as a keyword provides both timing-oriented tricks for responses and proactive EOT additions for turn advantage. The advantage here feels minimal on one side and maximal on the other for snakes. And maybe that answers the prompt just fine, yeah, but I still find myself asking: if I'm not playing snakes, would I play with this card at all? Honestly, no—having some snakes would be fine and having no snakes makes this card pretty dead in the water. Looking at the Step Through example, a double-Unsummon is still decent in a pinch, and the Wizardcycling makes it better just in case. I don't see the "just in case" side of this aura right now.

~

@bowtochris — Necrosis

I think that I can see some of the BTS of this card with "creatures" instead of "creature" there in the first sentence. Regardless... In a set that has incidental Zombies, this card would be totally fine, and a lot of sets and worlds do. Honestly the amount of sets that I remember as having more Zombies than they actually do is fairly high! But you can see how popular they are and how a necromancy/grave-style play system that has incidental zombies could use this as a removal spell with upside for sure. Pretty much the only place that it wouldn't fit the contest would be Innistrad, heh.

With that said, is there anything more to this card than that? Not that it doesn't work, but I feel that the type is kinda indicative of this card's lack of polish. What world is it supposed to be from? What does this flesh-eating disease/condition have to do with the Zombies' hunger contextually? I feel that this card is unfinished in a lot of ways and it's hard to commentate fully on it when there's not much given in that regard.

~

@bread-into-toast — Gift of Wings (JUDGE PICK)

I honestly thought this was a card already and I'm kinda gobsmacked that this name hasn't been used. As far as cards in general go, yeah, we're in a good spot. I see you're still using "enters the battlefield" instead of the shorthand, and lemme tell you, I'll be doing the same thing for a while as well. But all the same, yeah, mounts with evasion add to an aggressive deck and make a target for you. I like how 99% of mounts are of a higher-ish mana value, and so this card being cheap allows for more answers to follow.

Mounts are an interesting one. How many Mounts in a set, would there be mMounts with vehicles, would Mounts be brought back as small batches...? Lots of questions being asked here. But I could tell even by the art that this would be a Theros set before double-checking your prompt, and I'm down for it. If this was before or after a more Mount-heavy set, I could see a few Mounts especially as legendary horses and/or their offspring. Pegasi, too! When they attack, they carry another creature with them. You know what, I'm not gonna lie—I almost wish this had been Horse instead of Mount, but I get why you chose to go this route. There are far more Pegasus creatures on Theros than Horses, and they already have flying. Maybe there are other possibilities, but you know what, this route works just fine. I'll hash out a more comprehensive thought process if you want later.

~

@dimestoretajic — Rockface Staff

This card falls right back into the Bloomburrow trap, I'm afraid. While Bloomburrow's color overlap was a pretty no-brainer design choice, that's really not what this contest was looking for, and as such I don't necessarily know how to judge it. Is the expectation that these creatures wouldn't be major parts in the set? I mean, I could, but what world is this on if not Bloomburrow? I don't want to make any assumptions here. I also don't think that this card was intended to be on different plane than the one where this type-batching has already been precedent.

This is the extent that I can give commentary on this card's application to the contest prompt. As an equipment in general, it's fine, and I get the hybrid cost down there is intended to be an every-color-but-best-here suggestion. But that's as far as I can go. There's just no way to interpret the typing otherwise.

~

@grornt — Smothering Spores (JUDGE PICK)

There were only about ten cards in Dominaria that cared about Saprolings, and that was quite an archetype, but my personal first introduction to them was in the Alara block, where only six cards across the whole block produced them—and looking back at DMU, there were only two. So how many Saprolings does it take to screw in a good draft common? Honestly, I'd say if there were...4-5 across a set, then this card could go from just plain decent to really funny really fast.

Saprolings are meant to be as expendable as they are delicious, and while regulating a token subtype to a cheeky one-off is a little questionable, I'm down for this being a good enough card. It's totally okay to have a derived card like this get a flavorful little twist, right? Depending on the sacrifice archetype (hint: probably B/G), you could have instances where you lean more into black, or you could have an overlap where there's enchantments on one side and Saprolings on the other, right? Maybe if there was a random rare that pumped out uncommons... But that's just extra brainstorming, because the thought of a fungal infection being made deadly via Saproling is good enough for me. Solid and thoughtful.

~

@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Lights in the Sky

I'm so sorry that I didn't get a chance to message you beforehand and remind you that this is a common contest. I'll read this card on its merits, but you're not the only one to submit an uncommon at first, so hey, that's all good.

The other thing is that I may just not be the right audience for this card as it stands. The only Aliens we've had so far are the ones from Unfinity and the Doctor Who—will there be any in the Death Race set? I forget. Anyway, there's currently no metric for what that might look like in an in-universe set, and the implications are...very sci-fi in a way that I can't critique in good faith. The card is fine, the mechanics are fine, and it could be a real painful beater in limited. You might want to put "this permanent" instead of "this enchantment," but I'm not sure. I'll be honest, comrade, I got nothin'. If MTG has a single sci-fi hater among them, it's me on top of this hill, dying from an alien death ray. We'll shoot for the stars next time.

~

@lich-of-the-golgari — A Good Boy's Rest

Let's back up for a second and talk about what this card is doing. From a purely flavorful perspective, this card makes sense. Pragmatically, it's asking for Shrines at common, perhaps additional shrines, legendary enchantments at common, and a new kind of role token, and a multicolor theme at common as well, and on an ambiguous world. Do you see where I might have some issues with this card design-wise?

Time and time again, I want to tell folks that unless we're asking for out-of-this-world weirdness, you don't have to reinvent the wheel for these contests. Most of the time, it's detrimental to good design sense. This prompt in particular is looking for starting keystones and the base beginnings for some designs that would suggest small pieces of an overarching set in a way that aren't main themes. In my opinion, this card goes against pretty much every one of those notions. Simplify, simplify, simplify. I know it's tempting to stick with an idea that resonates internally, but it's more important to learn when to go back to the drawing board.

~

@melancholia-ennui — Haunted Crypt

It's really, really hard not to see this card as a derivative of Step Through. The only question is whether or not the role it would have in the set would be that of a cycle or that of a one-off. As a one-off, it would be one of the more powerful ones, presumably, if there are any half-decent Spirits in this set at all. Never underestimate the power of landcycling. The reason that Step Through could be at common is because it's a steepish cost for a half-decent effect, and the discarding (even with no Wizard) was part of the possible pieced-together archetypes. What would the archetypes be here?

This card highly suggests something to do with discarding or BW graveyard shenanigans, but also with the typal component; a reasonable player would assume that this draft archetype would be a BW spirit typal shell. Do you see what I mean? It's hard to get away from that specifically because it's a land. Now, if there was a typal archetype, then this card would be bananas, and I think that it's certainly well-designed as it is. For this contest, it's a little too specific for what we were looking for. I'll still commend the general chops, even if, like I said, it's a bit on-the-nose given our examples.

~

@piccadilly-blue — Sonorous Hum

NB: "Deck is 22 cards, all major arcana, not magic cards (in the same way that a d20 is not a magic card), no rules text. // You choose whether or not you run a tarot deck as the game begins. If you don't, you ignore all instructions relating to the tarot deck. // If you're using a tarot deck, after all mulligans have been taken, you shuffle your tarot deck and then the top three cards are turned face-up as your spread."

When you submit a card like this, not only are you asking us to evaluate the card in its relation to the contest, but also evaluating a new mechanic with a series of highly complex rules interactions. And you're also asking us to evaluate a deck with card that each would have a series of as-of-yet unknown rules interactions that have not, to our knowledge, been designed or submitted. So with that said? I can't evaluate this card. I literally, actually cannot, because it's asking knowledge of me that doesn't exist.

I want to love it, of course, and not in the way that I want to love all submissions. I want to be able to love what you've done. I do not have the means or the tools to give you the feedback I want to give in this position, and that's because of the choices you've made by submitting this kind of card. There's nothing wrong with going off the beaten path, but in order for us to judge properly, we gotta use the tools of the collective. I don't have those tools at the moment and I don't really have the time/energy that this idea would both require and deserve. One of my partners does love him some tarot, so just imagine we're giving this a thumbs-up in an alternate universe.

~

@wildcardgamez — Tuskeran Axe (JUDGE PICK)

Berserker is a heavily underutilized creature type, in my opinion. On Kaldheim, there were all those zombie berserker thingies, IIRC, but also a few in the general BR shell. Still, what if you wanted warrior/equipment blends, or you wanted a Giant Berserker to go out there? This card, upon reflection, is a sheepish reminder for me of how I should've made this contest out to be. I'm writing this before I get to the grand reflection, but seeing this card as a unique and funky draft-archetype hybrid is certainly interesting on a design scale, but it's not exactly "weird." It's good! Don't get me wrong, it's quite good.

Was I looking for that weirdness more so than cohesion? It's possible. World flavor is a strange thing. Sometimes, everyone is a berserker. Sometimes the colorless-ness matters, especially for equipment, like that artificer example from earlier. Actually, what I like about this card is that it assumes you're playing red if you're playing berserkers, but if you manage a mono-black berserker deck or whatever, then you're just getting some cool color advantages. I dunno, this card's pushing all the right buttons for me. Am I just jaded with myself, or is this closer to the prompt than I imagined? This is good self-reflection but probably not the best critique. Well, you've already got a seal of approval, so I'll axe the rest of this before I start rambling even more.

~

@xenobladexfan — Death's Finality

When making this prompt, I feel that there was more of a typal-payoff kinda vibe than a draft-answer kinda vibe. As we have it here, Thraben Exorcism is already a card that exists, and this card more or less goes a little farther than that. I want to say that there's nothing wrong with that—and in a vacuum, there isn't. But when there's already such a specific card, and when that card itself wouldn't be what the prompt is after, it makes this kind of judgment a little more difficult than it would be otherwise.

Whether or not you saw Thraben Exorcism before this, well, I have no idea. Exiling zombies and cards from graveyards is also a little beyond the initial scope, so there's that. The similarity is just too much for me to buckle down and say that this card stands on its own merits. If nothing else, though, I hope that this is some kind of learning experience. One, it's a good idea to double-check your cards to see if some maniac at WotC has printed the effect before. Two, feel free to lean into the more proactive side of payoffs rather than answers; answers come to the board when they need to. Right now is the time for asking questions.

Tomorrow's another day. Be well! @abelzumi

[spotsupstuff]

Questions about the recent art post!

1. You said the first karma/natural urge glyph relates to the Anemons’ chitin skeletons— how so? I can see it as a pictograph of a few different things, but it’s so simplified that the connection ain’t obvious- at least to me.

3. Why were the lower caste kept intentionally stressed? That seems particularly spiteful.. though of course real life class- and casteism is just as arbitrarily cruel.

2. What role did the CitID drones play in population control? Was it primarily as a surveillance tool, and thus an implicit threat? Or were they like, literally designed to kill people

The relation is in the question of ,,Why would the very first prohibition/warning be related to violence?" and the answer of ,,Most likely because they indulged a lot in it at some point. It says not to do indulge in something, so the opposite had to be true beforehand to a meaningful degree." A religion spawns out of a prompt from physical reality, so what real events inspired pieces of their religion? It's related to my ideas about their "technological" development. Rather than evolving their abilities likes us through machines, they went through the biological aspects (getting to those purposed organisms not out of sadism, but because that is how they knew how to do elaborate complicated things). To know biology, they had to do a lot of research and, with the "respawn" mechanic real to them, they could have had the means to "ethically" brutalize each other (and animals) for the sake of researching how things work, what the limits are, how can they be used and augmented. Mentioning they are of chitin, not of bone, is a reassurance that they are not wearing the remains of their own species.

It's related to the idea of the Caste system, but also to keep them more vigilant since they are down there with all the animals (you could say the High castes can allow themselves the pleasure to be calm and slow about things) and then the fact that stress does cause physical issues and kills. This is a major wip currently that I'm trying to figure out: they could be biologically immortal, what with sea anemones sharing phylum with such things as the Hydra and the Immortal Jellyfish. They have incredible regenerative ability, one of the traits defining the Cnidaria phylum. They have the Small Cycle, which is the respawn mechanic from the game explained in-world (though might be changed around yet for better definition). But I'm a writer and I want my characters to die, have to confront it as a fate and as on-lookers (Sparrows dying is important for Caper's character, for example), I want them to have different past lives that could plague them, that they would need to reflect on. There needs to be some kind of stake in the story to make it interesting. There's also no explanation for how they don't overpopulate the planet (just Sparrows is one of 13 children from one pair of parents), from sociological outlook immortal people who remember things are also disadvantegous to manipulators with political power. So I'm trying to figure out limits for their abilities, what *could* kill them enough to result in a reincarnation we are familiar with, what they should be afraid of, give good reasons that make sense. Stressing out the Low castes to make them die and therefore have them in a sort of monstrous rotation and in somewhat controllable numbers would be beneficial for the Elites, while they get to live on for as long as they want. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections I imagine was over 900 when he took the Void way out. Sparrows dies in her 110s, some of her siblings in their 70s-90s. Still a wip though, needs troubleshooting and confirming it doesn't poke holes Somewhere in the logic and if things feel right.

Surveillance tool, yes. Secretly keeping track of the citizens' indulgence and location next to the public knowledge of being helpful tools for things like navigation and circumventing karma gates.

[fruityyamenrunner]

“why would i listen to someone "simply telling" me what words to use?”

….Because it's a necessary step for communication? Because in order to have language we at some point have to agree on a set of sounds to correspond to a given concept?

“in fact, i don't think I've ever seen a "definition" because every time I've seen someone telling me what words to use, it always comes with attached claims, like you easily identify with the dictionary example. if i ever happened to see a "definition" it might well be impossible for it to be wrong, but I don't expect to see one any time soon.”

You seem like someone who has probably done pure mathematics at some point in your life so I highly doubt you've never seen a definition in the purest sense.

The truth claim I identified in the dictionary example does not lie in the definition of horses, it lies in the context of placing that definition in a dictionary, which is an object with a use other than “contain any definition someone could hypothetically invent”. What truth claim do you think is made by using the combination of letters h-o-r-s-e to refer to the particular rideable animal it currently refers to as opposed to any other combination of letters? Is it wrong to also call a seahorse a seahorse because someone might think this implies a seahorse has more in common with that animal than it does?

"what's wrong about the horse definition isn't exactly "it's not the consensus". it's that i got the part of speech wrong and the description is of plasmodia. do you *really* think the most likely reason for the error is that i was trying, in some subtle, "implicit" way to assert consensus that horses are very small and cause malaria”

Yes, I can guess that you probably wouldn't actually have meant to assert that, in the same way that if you made a strange enough typo you might write a sentence I could guess you didn't mean to type. Nonetheless that is what you would be asserting by putting it in a dictionary, the same way your hypothetical typo'd sentence would still have a meaning you didn't intend. The definition is not consensus because someone could, hypothetically, have a personal vocabulary where they call horses plasmodia and plasmodia horses, and not be misled about any actual facts about the world as long as they understand that other people do it the opposite way around and remember to mentally translate every time they encounter the world - it would be an incredibly inconvenient and unusual personal idiosyncrasy but not technically wrong.

It is also ironic that you end your response by using what is clearly a completely personal and idiosyncratic definition of witchcraft and expecting others to understand you.

what irony? throughout this penny-excursion to Bedlam to see the Lunaticks (or rather, Plutoniacks) I have been consistently saying how a worldpicture and the meaning within it can be well disclosed by a purposeful, thoughtful, poetical use of terminology. That is exactly what I am doing! I am posting through a very specific persona, and this whole tumblr blog is a disclosure of a worldview.

You, on the other hand, are an anonymous grey ball. It is just as fitting that you - like the other grey balls I get from time to time who speak to me with a very familiar voice of Millennial Conscience by employing some stereotyped bit of social control (I am "not having a normal one", or am "yikes"worthy, or like your sibling in sphericity suggested of me earlier this week, that i "woke up today and decided to be...") and are appealing precisely above all to an "implicit consensus". You disclose a worldview of "reading the room". Social engineering simplified and operationalised so even shift managers can employ it... Vulgar...

Speaking of dull globes, that reminds me. Before those pictures were beamed back, this is what the best picture of Pluto was:

Do you recognise it? It's an anonymous grey sphere with black markings on it. Is it a cousin of yours? Is this why you have a fondness for the 2005 solar system picture?

[trees-for-the-forest]

OC Master Post

As the title says, this is my OC master post! It contains all the OCs I will draw/write about for kink purposes! As this gets longer, I'll split it and this will be a source to links to other posts!

This is from a kink blog!

Most of these OCs involve pregnancy or belly kinks in some way! They will be grouped together by concept, though technically I suppose they could be in the same universe? Haven't really thought about that yet.

Clover dividers from here!

The Elementals!

The Elementals are, well, a group of 8 elementals; Fire, Water, Ice, Earth, Wind, Plant, Light, and Shadow.

Each of the Elementals may become pregnant with their respective elements to disperse around the world as needed (though they aren't the only source of it to be clear). They are all pretty big, at least 20 feet tall, and they live in a temple/airship thing to travel around the world.

The Elementals induce pregnancy by eating energy orb things.

The Elementals can also fuse with each other, making new elements along with those of their components! So, for example, the Fire and Water Elemental fuse to make a Steam Elemental, of course, who can make fire, water, and steam!

This group is mostly an excuse for unconventional pregnancies!

Life Spirit!

This currently unnamed life spirit (they/them) grows fruits, vegetables, and other plants in their womb!

The amount of energy they give off causes seeds to sprout inside of them, up to the point where their womb becomes big enough for a person to comfortably walk inside.

They're mostly just an excuse to draw/write more plant preg things!

Weird Superpower Lady!

This currently unnamed lady (she/her) has the ability to synthesize various substances and is able to control what she synthesizes. She is able to control it with her hands (like those elemental magic users, you know what I mean?), but her power also leads her to transform and become pregnant with that substance, though this gives her related abilities as well.

For example, ice cream. At "full-term", for lack of a better word: her stomach has swirls of different ice cream flavors; her skin changes colors to look like it has different splotches of ice cream; she hair becomes "flowier" and more like milk, with ice cream toppings as decorations; and, she gets resistance to extreme temperatures and excellent ice control abilities.

Her powers are primarily thought-based, so thinking about something causes her to slowly become pregnant with it, and the further along she gets, the more her body changes. She has jewelry she may wear to slow the process down if needed.

She is mostly just an excuse to draw different themed pregnancies.

Slimes!

Fusion of several slimes, pregnant with eggs.

Mostly just an excuse for slime pregnancy stuff.

Main Trio!

Maple (they/them) - nonbinary cat centaur (like centaurs but cat instead of horses).

Oakley (he/him) - trans man sheep satyr.

Leif (she/her) - cis woman chickenfolk (humanoid chicken people).

These 3 live together and run a little shop, where they sell their milk, wool, and eggs, respectively.

Mostly just an excuse for lactation, eggpreg, and slice-of-life scenarios.

(Will add more here later! Trying to simplify this section since they have a lot of info!)

More to be added later! Feel free to ask questions!

[arliedraws]

Hiii I really love your art! I'm always impressed how ppl like you are able to simplify drawings like this and still get the emotion across! I'd like to ask how long you've been drawing/how long you've been drawing cartoons and how you learned designing your own characters/style and drawing all those face expressions?

🙏🏼🧡

Hi! Thank you so much!!!

Lately, I've been really frustrated with my art and style and technical abilities, so honestly, thank you for giving me a minute to reflect on where I've been! I'm annoyed at the obvious mistakes I am noticing in the things I've posted over the last few weeks but I realized during this that it's always a process and growth is forever.

This got longer than I intended, so I'll put the rest under the cut.

I've been drawing for a very long time, probably for most of my life. And for most of it, I have not been very "good" at it. I had friends who were very serious about drawing in middle school and high school, and in college, I used drawing and fandom to deal with depression and anxiety. Then I started dating late in college which took up all of my spare time for drawing, and then I had a really nasty breakup with my first (emotionally manipulative) partner. I was really depressed (not because of being single but because I didn't know who I was anymore), so I didn't draw or write for yearssssss (I did somewhat but not seriously and loathed everything I was creating).

Then Covid hit and I felt like drawing again.

This was four years ago that I made this comparison of my art. I genuinely like what I was doing in 2012 more than what I put out in 2020. So it's not a matter of how long you've been drawing but consistency and a willingness to take risks (and learn from failures).

You can see I wasn't thinking as 3-dimensionally in 2020 when I started to draw again. The character's expression is really bland and you can see I was focused more on aesthetics than character. I think I even recognized it at the time, and I was really pissed about it.

I guess it's been four years since Covid started, and four years since I really jumped back into drawing regularly. I won't pretend that I know a lot--I very much do not, but here's what has helped me in the last few years.

Think in terms of volume and shape. I always warm up with perspective exercises. I often use posemaniacs' 30 second drawing practice for about 10-15 minutes, or I draw a ton of 3D boxes and spheres and triangles. I like to draw stacked boxes at various angles just so I can get my brain to wake up and see 3-dimensionally.

Know what you want to draw and draw with intention. This sounds obvious, but sometimes, I pick up my pen and just. Draw. Like I'll draw a face or a body but it's just completely soulless and boring because I don't know what I want. Draw with emotion, and have a purpose. Otherwise, your drawing will be lifeless and boring.

Ditch "aesthetics." Seriously. Focus on character. Draw that person ugly. If it's a sexy character and you're focusing on their emotions rather than how attractive they are, it will turn out sexy regardless. For example:

This was supposed to be scary, but people got horny for it anyway.

Anyway.

Your character will determine "aesthetics." Your character wears ripped tights because THEY think it's cool (or they trip a lot and scrape their knees), not because YOU like ripped tights. This is not a hard and fast rule, it's just what works for me.

For example, I don't draw Sirius wearing band t-shirts because I don't think he'd care about Muggle bands (at least, I don't think he'd care enough to advertise that he did). Consider why YOU wear band t-shirts. My partner wears his death metal shirts because he wants to support small bands and talk to strangers who like the same, obscure music (I hate those fucking shirts but he needs to live his truth lol. Some are ok and have beautiful art, but others are gross and weird).

Point is, focus on character.

Side note: If you want to draw a hot character (or if you want to BE a sexy real person honestly lol), you need to internalize this: Sexiness is a state of mind. If you are a sexy, confident person, it doesn't really matter what you look like--people will want to be you or fuck you. This applies to characters as much as it does to real people. It's about being you, focusing on your strengths, recognizing your own worth, keeping boundaries, and giving people your full attention when they speak to you. Seriously. That's basically it. Ask me how I know.

4. Make faces while you draw. I use photo references to understand how the face works, but what helps me the most is when I physically make the same face while I'm drawing. That way, I can feel which muscles are moving in my own face. Plus, I love acting and playing pretend, so I get to "be" that character while I'm drawing. I'm a naturally expressive person and communicate with my eyebrows way too much, and I think you can see that in my drawings.

5. Study other artists. Do this all the time. I particularly love to watch process videos and observe sketches. Here are some videos, books, and artists that I regularly visit or study:

TBChoi -- this person is my favorite artist stylistically. Just search their name + expressions and study. They just understand the way muscles work in the face so well.

Aaron Blaise -- okay, full disclaimer, I've heard some weird things about this artist, so I don't purchase their materials. However, I have practiced with his videos for years and found them exceptionally helpful.

Artists on Instagram I tend to look at: sleepy_kc, krosrios, starbite, rhiwynter

And artists who have influenced me since I was a kid are Tealin, Rufftoon, Shoomlah, Makani, and so many more.

6. Oh. And also, draw things other than people. Draw animals, draw landscapes, draw that weird building. Play with shape and perspective.

And look, I'm not a professional. I am an underpaid English teacher with ADHD, an Intuos Pro, and a horniness for a particular fictional character. Take this with a grain of salt and just do what works for you.