#get back to the 1-10 writeup

[pumpkin-spike18]

✨Weekly Progress #52✨ +Happy New Year 2025 ✨

So I survived another year...!

Some extra self-promotion here, but I'm running a raffle on bsky as thanks for 500+ followers!

The winner will receive a half body full illustration of whatever character they choose! To enter, follow me on bsky and repost the the raffle announcement!

Now... onto the weekly stuff! c:

Weekly Progress 2024 #52

Sketched Winter Jam full BG

Finished celebration art

Posted devlogs

Finished Winter Jam BG

Put together Winter Jam test animation

SWAK music writeup + discussion

Went through VA roster

Updated SWAK Jam schedule

Sent in Winter Jam files

Participated in Meet and Greet

Drafted End of Year Writeup

Drafted VA lines

Provided expressions list

Provided CG info writeup

Made base marketing schedule

Looking back at 2024 ⏳

It's been a year of ups and downs. Of trying new things, of failing, and getting back up again.

The Results of 2024 Goals

Finish SYVNH ✔

Finish BWOBK ❌

24 Illustrations ✔

Write a happy story ❌

Getting Bingo ❌

My biggest accomplishment this year is definitely completing Stuck in a Yandere Visual Novel...HELP!!

This was finished in May, but somehow it feels like a lifetime ago... The full story is 84k+ words, which is definitely the longest (finished) story I've written.

In this coming year, I hope I can get some merch completed for the game, and maybe redo some of the art since I think I've improved since I started development back in 2022.

I did "finish" 24 illustrations for 2024, but I might've cheated a bit based on my original intentions. In 2023, I said "24 illustrations not used in Visual Novels." This year, I didn't add the latter requirement, but I had intended to follow it.

However, come December, I was short 4 illustrations. Coincidentally, I completed 3 CGs for Spooktober and 1 animation for Winter Jam. Since I didn't have that criteria, I decided to add it into the count.

(The animation was too big and had to be uploaded as two files, thus pushing the last image to another row.)

...And now what I didn't succeed in :(

I accomplished 6 items, but they were not bingo. I only have myself to blame for making one of the requirements "10 VN BGs" 😂 Honestly some of these goals were so difficult, I'm surprised I managed to succeed in any of them.

I am quite sad that I couldn't finish much fanart for my favorite vtubers. I thought it'd be easy, but I often ended up spending time on commissions and projects.

I was pleasantly surprised that I completed more than 25 commissions as I counted them up! I really thought I didn't make it...;; Sadly, although I completed so many commissions... it still wasn't a salary I could live off of. If I didn't had savings, I would've been in big trouble 💦 This was definitely the biggest "down" I felt this year. The physical evidence that I could not make digital artist my career.

The team is still together for BWOBK! But we've all been busy with our own separate projects and various private matters. We still intend to work on it for 2025, though!

And, it'll definitely be one of my big goals for 2025.

...I don't even remember the happy story goal 😂 (I won't count my fanfics- they're also not that happy either, just slated for a happy ending.)

I wrote for two VNs this year. Sorry to say neither are happy.

Visual Novel Releases

Thank goodness I did not beat last year's record (9 projects) 😂 I would cry with pain...

This year, I submitted 3 "solo" projects.

*Disclaimers:

Most of the remaining work to release the full SYVNH game was mainly just me, but a number of people worked together to make it a reality.

A Sky of Falling Birds is still a demo.

But if I put all these in separate categories, it'd both look like I did very little + stretch the post even further ���

I also participated in 2 jam projects as an artist!

I also participated in 3 other projects as an artist, but those games are currently not released. So... can it be said that I participated in 5 team projects this year...?

Does that mean I total to 8 projects this year...? Jesus, I didn't beat last year but I sure came close again 😭

A Year of Fan Projects

I participated in a lot of Ace Attorney fan events this year! You can see all of them in my art tag!

Last year, Arimia convinced me to join the DGM 20th Project Zine and although I cried at my own mistakes, I got through to the end! Paneling is hard... Drawing so much detail is even harder... There were definitely many tears during that zine.

See the post here!

Alongside that, I was working on two NaruMitsu Big Bang projects as an artist. I worked with some really great writers who wrote some amazing stories for our love of this pairing!

You can read more about both stories here and here!

Aaaand then after that, I fell in love with The Great Ace Attorney and spent a whole week speedily finishing as many chibi illustrations as I could for Ryuubowl Week, which celebrated the pair AsoRyuu.

You can find all the artwork I made for the week in this tag!

And then I also.. Wait, that's it?? Huh, I thought I did something for Golden Kamuy, too...

Well, I tried to, but ultimately I was so tired from everything else, I didn't get very far beyond one image per challenge/event. Ah, well... There's always next year.

Then... that's it for 2024. It's hard to summarize a whole year of my feelings in a single post (and keep it positive). It's easy to just show all my successes, but there were also many failures. Many attempts in projects that I won't talk about anymore and ideas that couldn't make it through the initial planning phase. There's much more than what I've shown here. But despite it all, I want to keep creating. I want to tell my stories and I want to see people enjoy them!

So I'm going to keep trying. It may not be the way I imagined it to be, I may have to try new methods, but I want to make it happen. And if you read everything and still want to stick around for this journey, thank you, and Happy New Year 2025~

[half-life-citizen]

A rundown of the flumblr Crimson peak watch party.

As you may or may not know, we recently had a watch party of the Guillmero Del Toro film Crimson Peak, I won't talk spoilers, but will mention some plot details.

It was organised by @thedeafprophet and @the-dye-stained-socialite, who streamed it in a discord.

The discord was made specially for the watch party, being set up a few days before the actual event, and invites opened at around the same time.

The setup:

As I previously mentioned, the server was open for a few days prior to the event, with a few members of the flumblr community joining, myself included.

A few emotes were made, mainly joking in matter. They included some amazing art by @the-insouciant-scientist of the endgame professions.

Some channels were made about the movie, spoilers permitted in one and not the other.

As well as some lovely conversation, the testing for the jackbox games was set up, and a few games were played.

The Pre-Show

As the date; March 9th came, more people flooded into the server, and said people began to talk.

The conversation really began to pick up 2 hours before the show, with many people preparing food for the event, such as pasta, or popcorn.

But there was a casualty.

In their unending hubris; one of the event organisers, prophet, created a quiche too powerful and deadly for any human to handle, and launched a quiche blast across the Atlantic, hitting the bowl of pasta I had made, knocking it to the floor, destroying it.

I am warning you, the image of the quiche pictured below may be too horrible to imagine, to even think about without the edges of your mind falling apart like wet paper.

You have been warned.

And the unleasher of the quiche admitting to their crimes

After this horrible event, I was left scarred, but more importantly, in lack of food. I thought nothing of it and ordered food for later that night.

I thought I'd also mention the loaf of bread made by @zeebreezin

Just a good solid loaf.

After the quiche incident, the conversation just moved along from topics of food and ended up continuing until the time of the event beginning.

The Beginning:

An executive decision was made to wait 10 minutes or so for people to arrive, just to make sure nobody would miss anything.

At 8:12 IST, the watch party had begun in full swing. People sat on chairs, beds, and couches, and were all tuned into a 720p possibly illegal stream of a movie from 2015.

As previously mentioned, I won't go into spoilers in this writeup, but I will mention characters and plot points, but nothing particular.

For this write up, I will go over some of the main characters featured in this film with a simple bio.

Edith: an aspiring author who's wealthy businessman father who disapproves of her relationship with Thomas Sharpe

Thomas Sharpe: an owner of a crumbling estate slowly sinking into the clay mines below the house, he seeks funding for a digging machine to help revitalise the mines.

Lucille Sharp: Thomas's older sister, seemingly distant from the world.

Dr Alan McMicheal: Blonde doctor guy

Ferguson: appears on screen for a total of two seconds, I expected him to come back later.

The slop: liquid clay, looks tasty and probably cures anemia.

As the movie began, everybody who hadn't seen the movie before immediately distrusted Thomas Sharpe, myself included.

As the movie continued, I began keeping two counters and a constant rating.

These were

1: the gun counter

2: the violence counter

And 3: the beard rating

The gun counter was simple, every gun on screen would add 1 point to the total.

The violence counter was every scene of violence in the movie; not act of violence. So a scene of someone getting punched twice would still only count as one.

And the beard rating, where I rated all the beards visible to me during the watch.

Anyways, as the movie progressed, a common theme appeared in the chat.

Manic slop posting.

The slop (pictured below) is the liquid form of the red clay the Sharpe household is slowly sinking into, a deep and rich colour that makes your mouth water slightly.

In my personal opinion, the slop is the single best character in the movie.

I will not explain myself.

As well as slopposting™, during scenes of intense violence people would start talking about the blood; and honestly? Good for them.

I wish I could go into more detail about the events of the movie, but I really urge you to watch it yourself, it's violent and very heartfelt.

Also slop.

now, about half way through the movie, I told the chat I needed to check for the pizza I had ordered over an hour and a half prior to the movie starting, and The Powers That Be graciously granted us an intermission, we're I called my pizza place 4 times and they never picked up, so I was forced to wait another 30 minutes for my pizza.

I did get it eventually.

The rest of the watch party was not uneventful, with a lot of jokes and gasps as the movie continued telling its story.

But all good things must come to an end, and as the final scene cut to black; the end began.

The aftermath:

Most people left after the movie ended, leaving around 8 people left to play some jackbox as the night continued.

Nothing major really happened, (except for prophet finding out the truth behind Easter eggs), so here are a few funny screenshots from the games I was in, I even won one of them

As a bit of a final note, I really have to thank everybody involved. It was a really fun little event, and any more in the future, I'd be glad to participate in.

SLOP!!!!!

[entropy-game-dev]

Phylogenesia Automatorum Post-game Devlog #3: Upgrades Everywhere...

When I first developed a barebones prototype of this game (you can see it in devlog #1), I showed it to one of my friends, Z, who suggested adding roguelike elements to the game. This was an absolutely amazing idea that cemented the direction I was going to take, and at this point in the development cycle I was finally getting to implement these features! Read on to find out more...

Oh and friendly reminder: this series of posts will make way more sense if you have game, tried the game out already (you can also rate it here if you have an itch.io account).

While I have the field upgrades as the main image here (only because it's animated), the first random upgrades I worked on were individual plant characteristics. This was the first time I'd ever written to a database in-game (usually I am just reading from them) and I knew this was a no-no without a backup copy, so I make two copies of the database when the game starts - a read-only copy and a copy that the game draws the plant statistics from.

Sidenote: There's no actual difference between the two in terms of the code, I just say to myself and keep in mind that one of them is not to be written to.

When determining what upgrades out of a potential list to show, I first loop through every available plant, and every available characteristic that isn't already at the hard cap. Obviously for, say, spawn range, the minimum is 0 and the maximum is 8. If the upgrade would increase the statistic past the cap, it is clamped to the cap, and then if that value is different from the starting value, add it to the list of potential upgrades.

I then loop over this list twice, once for positive upgrades and then again for negative upgrades. There's only a 30% chance to receive a negative upgrade but these are nonetheless important when you need to have a plant die faster (to generate death points) or to stop a plant from spreading so quickly. Naturally, statistics like point value and point generation are purely positive with no downside so negative upgrades for these are not generated.

Finally, I roll for whether an upgrade is "critical", a 10% chance for the increase/decrease to be doubled. If the roll is critical but the change in stat isn't double (i.e. when you're at a spawn max of 7 and you're going to 8), the critical flag is removed from that upgrade (which determined whether you see a double exclamation mark next to the upgrade text.

I then repurposed that entire system but for choosing new plants themselves. This was easy enough - only add plants to the list if they haven't been enabled yet.

Field upgrades were even easier - always add field upgrades to the list and add these tiles to a separate grid with the same dimensions as the field grid upon purchase. With field upgrades, because they were a completely new system suggested by Maza, one of my other playtesters, I then needed to go back through the code and add field tile modifiers (such as spawning plants, reducing/increasing statistics for plants on that tile, etc), but honestly it wasn't too painful.

The codebase is incredibly messy as I was trying to smash this out as fast as possible, but the main thing is that everything worked in the end!!

Stay tuned for the 4th and final part of the devlog, and then a post-mortem writeup shortly after. Thanks for reading!

[paperanddice]

This section of the Tome of Beasts is going to be interesting, because demon lords are not scaled the same between all these games. In 5e, demon lords sit largely between CR 23 and 26, and while powerful can't grant clerical spellcasting and thus are usually instead patrons for warlocks. In Pathfinder (mostly 1e, but 2e will probably replicate this) they are all level 26 or higher, and for Pathfinder 2e none have been statted yet at all, with the closest being the nascent demon lord Treerazor, a level 25 monstrosity and the highest level thing in Pathfinder 2e so far, while full demon lords are literally gods and grant clerical spells. For 13th Age, demon lords aren't exactly a thing, with the Icons being the top of the pyramid and the Diabolist in particular the most powerful being related to demons.

So, yeah, the long and short is that converting the Tome of Beasts demon lords to other systems isn't as simple as converting other stuff. The scale of them varies so much across the different systems, the way they're intended to be used is quite different, and just converting across will heavily change how they interact with the different settings. Just statting Alquam as a level 21 demon for Pathfinder 2e demotes him to nascent demon lord at best, which is clearly not the intention of the original writeup. But 13th Age doesn't have anything that'd be qualified as a demon lord at all, so any conversion of them would be just making an end game, near Icon level foe.

So I'm delaying the issue for a moment with the spawn of Akyishigal, a minor demon that was created by the lord of cockroaches, Akyishigal! A humanoid, human sized cockroach creature, with a pair of duel tails each ending with a deadly, poison dripping stinger, they have an innate control over vermin and enforce their creator's will upon the world wherever it sends them.

Inspired by the Tome of Beasts 1. This post came out a week ago on my Patreon. If you want to get access to all my monster conversions early, as well as access to my premade adventures and other material I’m working on, consider backing me there!

Spawn of Akyishigal Creature 5 Rare, Medium, Demon, Fiend, Unholy Perception +10; darkvision Languages Abyssal, telepathy 100 feet Skills Athletics +11, Intimidation +8 (+14 vs. arthropods), Stealth +13 Str +2, Dex +1, Con +4, Int +0, Wis +0, Cha +1 Command Vermin The spawn of Akyishigal can use Intimidation to Command an Animal on arthropods (insects, spiders, scorpions, crabs, and similar invertebrate animals) with an Intelligence of -3 or lower. AC 22; Fort +15, Ref +10, Will +12; +1 status to all saves vs. magic HP 85; Immunities disease, poison; Weaknesses cold iron 5, holy 5 Speed 25 feet, climb 15 feet Melee mandibles +11 (magical, unholy), Damage 2d8+6 piercing Melee stinger +11 (agile, magical, unholy), Damage 2d4+6 piercing plus Akyishigal Venom Divine Spontaneous Spells DC 19 ; 5th translocate; 4th translocate (at will); 3rd vomit swarm; Divine Rituals DC 19; demonic pact Akyishigal Venom (poison); Saving Throw DC 22 Fortitude; Maximum Duration 6 rounds; Stage 1 1d10 poison damage and enfeebled 1 (1 round); Stage 2 2d10 poison damage and enfeebled 1 (1 round)

13th Age

Spawn of Akyishigal  3rd level troop [demon]  Initiative: +5 Stinger +8 vs. AC - 7 damage. Natural 14+: The target also takes 5 ongoing poison damage. Natural 18+: The target is also weakened while taking the ongoing poison damage. C: Vomit Swarm +8 vs. PD (1d4 nearby enemies) - 4 ongoing damage. Natural Even Hit: The target is also hampered while taking the ongoing damage. Limited Use: 1/battle, when the escalation die is 2+. Wall Crawler. AC 18 PD 17 MD 13 HP 48

[beingbigbrother]

Week 1 Writeup: Big Brother feels like Big Brother again

▲ Dark days are over

Nearly five years since Big Brother UK's second "last ever" episode, the all-seeing eye returned to our screens on Sunday.

I loved - loved - Big Brother back in the Channel 4 days. Even in its darkest days (Big Brothers 8 thru 10), a properly good season was never far away (Big Brother Celebrity Hijack, Celebrity Big Brother 6, Big Brother 11).

And then Channel 5 happened to Big Brother.

The only two Channel 5 seasons I managed to get through were Big Brother 15 and Celebrity Big Brother 15, both of which were pure poison. The other ones I tried just bored me.

I've been watching Big Brother 19 - Channel 5's final season - in the run-up to ITV's reboot, and I have to admit it's a diamond in the rough. So it bodes well for this year's revival that much of the BB19 creative team is also working on BB20.

The good

There's a lot I like about this year's season.

The outdoor set is - well, it's a bit of silver MDF and a fog machine really, isn't it - but it still trumps pretty much all of Channel 4's efforts. And the House itself still blows my mind - considering this is ostensibly "just" ITV dipping its toes into the BB pool, with a six-week run on a free-to-air digital channel.

The casting is great, somehow managing to push the feelgood wokeness of BB19 even further with one of our most diverse groups of Housemates ever. Speaking of casting, one of the new hosts is great, too (AJ).

But the absolute greatest change is that the Live Stream is back for the first time in a decade! It's not on 24/7 - you'd have to go back to the Channel 4 days for that - but 23 hours a week is a big step in the right direction, and shows ITV at least has the right idea about Big Brother.

It feels so good unwinding with the Live Stream every evening, and I feel like I'm getting to know these Housemates so much better because of it. Big Brother finally feels like Big Brother again!

And, as I said before: this is ITV's inaugural toe-dipping season, so who knows what will happen in the future.

The bad

It's not all sunshine and rainbows, mind you.

What the fuck was up with those nominations, Big Brother?! They took place on Thursday, so we had to wait till Thursday's Big Brother Late & Live to find out who was up.

That gave viewers one measly day to cast their votes. For casual viewers, who aren't interested in BBLL, it would've meant finding out who was nominated, who nominated who, and who was evicted - all in the same, roughly one-hour episode.

It's quite frankly broken, and I really hope it changes in Big Brother 21. I didn't love each Housemate only giving one nomination, either - it means the obvious troublemakers will be up every week (which is exactly what happened this time) and we may well end up with bland Housemates in the final.

Presumably they've done it to try to speed things up in the highlights show - but they should probably have just copied BB11's editing, which made nominations the best they've ever been on BBUK.

Oh, and, to follow up on my earlier point: one of the new hosts is, um, not great (not AJ).

The ugly

Let me just finish off by saying the new opening titles, theme tune, and motion graphics are - frankly - rancid. There's the ghost of a good idea in there somewhere, but unfortunately it's almost impossible to make out behind multiple layers of inexplicable film grain(???) and "Free Glitch Effect Premiere Pro Beginner" google searches. 🤢

[janaawrites2024]

Week 7 Writeup #1 After Midterm Exams Edition: Skills-Based

💤How to Cope with your Midterm Scores💤 ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) Only Real Ones Know ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) 

By: Nike

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘

Step 1: Denial (Immediate Reaction)

( ˶°ㅁ°) !!

The first thing you’ll want to do upon seeing your midterm score is pretend it isn’t real. Look at the paper for a solid five minutes. Maybe squint a little. Close one eye. Is it a typo? Did the professor accidentally grade you on your aspirations instead of actual knowledge? It’s all part of the process. Denial buys you valuable time to mentally prepare for the next steps.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘

Step 2: Panic (5-10 Minutes Later)

( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) 

Okay, fine. It’s real. But your brain can’t process it yet, so it goes into full meltdown mode. You begin questioning every life choice that led to this moment. “Did I even study? Was I supposed to read the textbook? Was that entire Netflix binge not part of the plan?” In this phase, you may also want to re-check your Wi-Fi connection—just to see if the grade magically changes.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘

Step 3: Self-Blame (About 30 Minutes In)

(╥﹏╥)

Now comes the guilt. “I should have studied harder. I should have taken better notes. Maybe I should have just skipped the TikTok videos and focused on… well, anything else.” This is where you’ll start rationalizing that your grade is basically a direct reflection of your character as a human being. Spoiler: It’s not. But the heart wants what it wants.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘

Step 4: The Bargaining (Up to 1 Hour Later)

(ㅅ •᷄ ₃•᷅ )

This is where you start thinking that maybe you can convince your professor to give you extra credit. You might even consider offering them your first-born child or your best batch of cookies. (Or, you know, just attending office hours and asking what you can do to improve.) At this point, you'll also entertain the possibility that the grading system itself is flawed and that "curved grades" should totally be a thing.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘

Step 5: The Acceptance (After a Solid 24 Hours)

ദ്ദി ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ )

Eventually, after a well-meaning rant to your friends (who may or may not be going through the same thing), you come to terms with the reality of the situation. Your score doesn’t define you, your future is not ruined, and you’re probably still smarter than the person who accidentally turned in their grocery list instead of their midterm. You can still bounce back from this—because that’s what college is all about, right?

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘

Step 6: Action (The Ultimate Choice)

( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ

The final step is the most important: you get to decide whether to repeat your past mistakes or actually study next time. It’s time to use your newfound wisdom. No one’s perfect. You might decide that next time, you'll start studying before the night before. Or not. You know, no pressure. But at least now, you’ve earned the right to look back and laugh at this moment while acing the next one.

˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘⋆˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒✧˚.🎀༘

Remember, in the grand scheme of things, midterms are like a bad haircut: uncomfortable for a while, but soon enough, you’ll move on and realize it wasn’t as catastrophic as it seemed. And if you did poorly, there’s always next semester—and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧

[aaronafgash]

10 NEW SONGS - 2/9/24

I’m starting a series where I write about approximately 10 new songs. These are intended to mostly address new releases for that respective week (new music is released on Friday’s), but I may dip into older songs I discovered at times, especially for bad weeks for new music (like this one). There’s no order here, but the first few songs will generally be the ones I’m most excited about.

1. Feeling Good Today - Faye Webster

I’m a Faye Webster fan through and through, but this is a different sound for her. Production wise, “Feeling Good Today” is stripped down, simple, and gorgeous - just one electric guitar and some piano near the end of the track. But I don’t think we’ve ever heard her sing in autotune. You don’t hear a lot of harmonized autotune like this, outside of Bon Iver and T-Pain (wow - those are not two artists I expected to be pairing together today), but it lands. Excited for Faye’s next project (March 1st).

2. Double Standards (feat. Sampha) - Ghetts

Didn’t know much about Ghetts before hearing “Double Standards”, but a Sampha feature always demands my attention, and I was not disappointed. Sampha obviously does not miss on this hook, but Ghetts comes correct right away, rapping “Jack's in the airport with drugs in his baggage / And security are troublin' Muhammed 'bout a sandwich”. Later, he brings up Ukraine getting international aid/support but Palestine being ignored. A jazzy, progressive, politically-charged UK rap with a soulful hook? Sign me the fuck up.

3. Holier - JD. REID Remix (feat. Shygirl) - Kelela

Kelela follows up her outstanding Raven album from 2023 with a remix project, just as she has with her past albums Hallucinogen and Take Me Apart. The album is hit or miss, but the JD. REID “Holier” remix is landing for me. Cool production, mesmerizing Kelela vocals, a fun Shygirl verse. (For the record, the Flexulant x BAMBI “Closure” remix is the best track on this album, but that one was released two months ago.)

4. Alesis - Mk.gee

Had a harder time getting into Mk.gee’s recent music so it wasn’t shocking that I wasn’t loving his new album Two Star & The Dream Police. Fortunately, “Alesis” redeems the otherwise underwhelming project. Nothing crazy about this song, but I found myself enjoying his tone and melodic choices, and the production is, as the kids say, a vibe. I was hoping for more considering how excellent his work was on Dijon’s 2021 album Absolutely, but at least we have this!

5. You’re Always On My Mind - Owen Vonn

Technically released last week, but I found it this week and I'm already struggling to hit 10 songs - fuck it! This is just a fun little house remix / reworking of “You’re Always On My Mind” by SWV, breathing some modern life into a classic ‘90s joint. Not mad at it, although it’s a bit repetitive and could have been cut down by a minute or two.

6. Since September - Walter The Producer

We have officially hit the “this week sucked ass for new music and I gotta reach for older songs I discovered recently” portion of the writeup. I had never heard of Walter the Producer, but “Since September” from 2023 is a bop, and the influence from Steve Lacy is inevitable here. Definitely keeping an eye on Walter moving forward.

7. Fifty-fifty Clown - Cocteau Twins

I found Heaven or Las Vegas my freshman year of college, and I was completely blown away by the title track, but for whatever reason, I never really got into the rest of the project. After watching videos of multiple artists on the Grammys red carpet declaring this to be their perfect album, I decided now was the right time to dig back in. One thing that’s always struck me about Cocteau Twins’ music is how modern it all sounds. “Fifty-fifty Clown” was released in 1990(!), but it still sounds so futuristic. The excellent production is one thing, but it’s the vocals that floor me - Elizabeth Fraser was OUT HERE. Her swirling, angelic voice is so stunning, you don’t realize that official lyrics for the song don’t even exist! 

8. Taurus (feat. Julia Zivic) - CARRTOONS

Became familiar with CARRTOONS after hearing his fantastic album Saturday Night from last year (2023). Came across this track this week after seeing him perform with Julia Zivic on Tiny Desk and immediately did some research to find more songs by her. Taurus feels like a warm, lazy, comfortable weekend day. Does the fact that I’m a Taurus impact my feelings about this song? Who’s to say!

9. Till There Was You - Peggy Lee

I had only ever heard the Beatles version of “Till There Was You” - after doing some digging, I found out that Paul McCartney was introduced to Peggy Lee’s cover of the original (written for a musical in ‘57). The more you know! Anyways, this is chill. Classy, almost-tropical, cruise ship vibes. I’m a fan.

10. I’m Goin’ In (feat. Lil Wayne & Drake)

It’s been a, uh, long week for Drake. Amongst other things that got big this week, his verse on the 2009 song “I’m Goin’ In” was all over my TikTok. It’s a great verse and really shows how hungry he used to be as a rapper in comparison to how he approaches his music nowadays. I love how he raps “21 years and I ain't ever met a good cop” here but on 2020’s “Pain 1993” he says “Police in my city, man, I keep they pockets greased up”. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. ACAB.

[esoteric-cue-sports]

Canadian Skittles

I discovered this little gem while searching the internets for more details regarding Danish Pin Billiards.

Among other things I discovered that another word used for pin billiards is "skittles", presumably named after the lawn bowling pins bearing the same name.

Anyway, a game that caught my eye seems to be a half-way thing between Snooker and Danish Pins. It's referred to as "Canadian Skittles" and doesn't have a Wikipedia entry for me to refer back to. The lack of such a centralised resource was actually the main motivation to create this blog!

Anyway, on with the game explanation.

From my limited research, I can see that the game comes in a number of different variants. The most notable three differ in the number of black pins used.

This writeup will introduce you to the 1, 2, and 3 black pin variants of the game. The rules shouldn't differ too signficantly between versions other than initial setup.

Materials and Setup

To play this game you need the following:

A Snooker table, but a Pool table can also work

1-3 black pins (depending on variant)

4 non-black pins. This can either be 4 whites, or a yellow, green, brown, and red pin.

A white cue-ball, a yellow ball, and a red ball.

The pins are between 3" (7.62 cm) and 3.5" (8.89 cm) according to the rules I found, which is taller than Five-Pin pins (2.5 cm) and shorter than Danish Pin pins (10-12 cm).

To set up for the 1-black-pin variant, put the yellow ball on the brown Snooker spot, the red ball on the pink Snooker spot, and place the black pin on the blue Snooker spot with all the other pins surrounding the central black pin as shown below:

To set up for the 2-black-pin variant, set up exactly as before, but place the second black pin on the pink Snooker spot, then put the red ball on the black Snooker spot as seen in the diagram below:

To set up for the 3-black-pin variant, place the third black pin on the brown Snooker spot, then place the yellow ball on the yellow Snooker spot in the corner of the D, as seen in the diagram below:

As usual, please note that the diagrams are not to scale.

The placement of black pins and balls may vary from variant to variant. From placing the yellow and red balls on the black and pink spots in the 1-pin variant, to swapping the black pin and yellow ball in the 3-pin variant.

I don't think there's any official standardised set of rules for the game. The number of black pins basically just determines the difficulty level of the game.

The Game

The object of the game is to get 31 points without going over.

An optional variant is to play the game with numbered peas (nomally used for Kelly Pool), where each player gets a secret random number from 1 to 15 which determines their starting score.

Most versions of the rules I've found also sees players play for a $10 pot with additional penalties for fouls and such. Winner collects the pot plus money for each foul made by the other players.

Structure

The game is played in innings, meaning a player's turn continues as long as they make points and don't make any fouls.

Causing a foul ends the turn immediately, see Fouls for details.

The Break

To break, the starting player places their cue ball in the D, which must then exit the baulk area/kitchen, then hit a ball. This is the same as the in-hand rules.

Note that the cue ball may hit a cushion outside the baulk area then rebound and hit a ball inside the baulk area. The point is just that it must fully exit.

Scoring Points

There are a number of ways to score points in the game, all of which come from the games that inspired it.

Pocketing the yellow ball: 2 points

Pocketing the red ball: 3 points

Losing Hazard/In-Off on the yellow: 2 points

Losing Hazard/In-Off on the red: 3 points

Carom Shot/Cannon: 2 points

Knocking over non-black pins gives the appropriate values in points, red: 1, yellow: 2, green: 3, brown: 4.

Knocking over a black pin gives 5 points.

Pins can be knocked over by any ball, as long as the cue-ball has made contact with another ball first.

A Losing Hazard or In-Off is a shot where the cue-ball is pocketed after hitting another ball. A Carom shot/Cannon is when the cue-ball hits both the other two balls.

All Losing Hazards give the player ball in hand.

Additionally there are three ways to get an instant win:

Royal: Knocking down all the non-black pins by themselves. This is also knowns as a sweep.

Natural: Knocking down all the black pins by themselves (not available in the 1-black-pin variant)

Pocketing all three balls in the same shot (according to one rule-set)

Re-Spotting

Any pocketed balls and knocked over pins get re-spotted to their starting points as necessary. A pocketed cue-ball gets "re-spotted" in-hand within the D and must then be shot with the normal break rules.

Fouls

When a foul occurs, the foul is marked with an X on the scoreboard and the player's score resets down to zero.

Knock over both black and non-black pins.

Score on the same type of shot three times in a row.

Cue-ball doesn't hit any other balls.

Cue-ball hits the pins before hitting a ball.

Cue-ball gets pocketed without hitting a ball.

Cue-ball fails to make contact with a ball outside the baulk area when in-hand.

Active player exceeds the target score.

Active player achieves target score without knocking over any pins.

Pins or balls get knocked off the table.

Knock or move something in other ways than intended through normal play. i.e. with a sleeve or the side of the cue etc.

Winnings

As mentioned, the winning player wins the pot + the value for any X's the other players made in fouls.

If you aren't playing for money, call these victory points or game points instead.

Sources

As mentioned, this game didn't have one de-facto source for rules, so I had to source them from a few different places:

[kadoodles-on-ao3]

Hello!! I took a longer break than I thought I would but now I'm back! :)

I hope to finally sit down and take the dang gpose pictures for my FFXIV crossover so I can share it all soon! For those who'd like to cosplay the squad in-game I'll be putting the glam lists (and any alt options for stuff that's lower level, non-mogstation, class neutral, etc) on Eorzea Collection, but if you're more interested in just looking at what I made and/or the crossover aspect like "ooh what ff jobs would they be??? if they actually did a crossover what races from 14 would they make them???", more pics with better outfits as well as my crossover-job writeups will be here on my blog (along with links to my Eorzea Collection posts)!

Also if you do play 14... I may have went ahead and made a couple alts based on the above and may have even made some text macros to type in chat voice line quotes from XC 1 during dungeons to make it like you're actually fighting alongside Shulk or Melia :) (and Egil too but he doesn't talk he grumpy... and has very few voice lines to work with in comparison lol). And you may also send me asks to meet up with either of them and talk to them and/or do dungeons/raids with them if you want! They are very baby, level/msq-wise, rn because I don't have much time to play them (and I'm nervous to rp at all least of all mid-dungeon lmao) but they exist!!! Shulk and Melia and Egil real omg

Completely unrelated to anything I've talked about ever at all whatsoever but my bf and I have been doing a Godzilla movie marathon the past month or so and (aside from them being very very fun to watch and I recommend you watch them if you're interested) I actually have a lot of thoughts about each one and the series as a whole, so I might post my reviews of them on here too! And perhaps make a tier list ranking them since that's what the kids are doing right? They still make those? (Also I think the number system we use for rating everything nowadays isn't super informative in terms of telling an audience if something is worth experiencing or not, lots of bad movies and games are fun because they're 3/10s, so instead of that I have little categories like "how often are the fights silly because you can really tell it's just guys in suits" or "does this film or does it not have a comic relief side character who is obsessed with one (1) singular thing in every scene and is genuinely really hilarious because that is a Thing a lot the Godzilla movies have for some reason and I love it so much" or "how much does this film tie into the original allegory/moral of the atomic bombings on Japan or is it just 'big monsters cool'", so depending on what you're wanting to get out of these movies you can tell which ones you'd want to see. As well as an overall "do I recommend you watch this movie" rating haha)

[mr-magoriums-im-sorry-emporium]

okay im gonna sound abslolutely mental but:

a) not only did i get this guy so hard they blocked me, they also CHANGED THEIR URL, ICON, DESCRIPTION, AND THEME COLORS, but

b) this wasnt because of my Epic Rebuttal because lbr it was mid at best. this was because i realized they were the person that put an INCREDIBLY ableist metapost on izaya durarara on my dash

c) said metapost unironically used IQ as a point and the whole crux of it was it was trying to without a doubt say that izaya durarara absolutely did NOT have one specific mental illness

d) that headcanon was one i popularized, and it was directly a countermeta to me. i know this because

e) my situationship's fanfic, which baron iq von metacringe was reading, canonized that headcanon and then linked back to a writeup my fiancé did because of me

e.1) i'm polyamorous, not a cheater

f) the metapost was the subject of ridicule for two straight days on my sideblog. baron metacringe's reputation tanked overnight. a countercountermeta i wrote got more notes than the original countermeta

g) that guy was in the fandom since the Olden Days and id only been there a few months. in one fell swoop he ensured i would be more relavent than him AND that his own reputation would be tanked

h) he tried beefing about the headcanon on twitter, too. i basically told him exactly where he could stick it

i) anyway this guy that made the stupid comment is baron von metacringe's partner

j) imagine writing a meta so shit only ur partner reblogs it and it obliterates a 9 year strong reputation. just to spite someone with like 70 followers

k) after all this happened i had to take my cat (also named izaya) to the vet. hes ok hes fine. he was more upset about being in the car than the puncture wound on his foot

anyway i succeeded in sounding batshit insane AND terminally online. op im so sorry for what i did to your post. very relateable quote btw 8/10. points docked for being TOO relateable. instead of asking for attention i will do increasingly inane shit, such as this,

Ottessa Moshfegh, from My Year of Rest and Relaxation

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary49

10/30-31/2023

monday - tuesday

i did kind of a lot today, surprisingly.

starting strong w/ recording new vocals for a song today and pretty much getting back into the swing of working out and stuff, also started the collaborative music project with some random stems. i'm thinking now how i have to get to the collab poem w/ my friend, i'll open that now, and also; here are a bunch of selfies from the trip:

outfit 1

outfit 2

outfit 3

outfit 4 (dressed plain for the ride home)

and look, here i am as a shadow:

using the good/okay lighting of the bathroom to make myself feel better is not an insane thing to do and is perfectly totally normal/okay, i think, or hope mostly and try hard to not think about too hard. there's like more selfies too. anyways there's some video i took but the most important ones are the videos i took of my gf's mom's awful terrible stupid snoring!!!!!!!!!!!!

here's the longer one that shows kind of what it was like. it got louder, harder, more jackhammer-esque. she was a really awful sleeper. glad we don't have her in our apartment.

and here's some of the other weird shit i saw around asu:

and then the art:

audrey robinovitz

i talked about seeing these last night, i honestly feel there isn't much to say about them, the writeup about them in the gallery said things about reclaiming girlhood/examining girlhood and the ways it is produced and so on, but that feels like a bit of a copout. they don't necessarily feel like they are negotiating what girlhood is or the means by which it is produced, but the transposing of these images into fabric, as ornaments that we could carry around, place on walls, use as rugs, wear as scarves, stare at and use, makes me think about the reign of images/screenshots in particular online, and the way we carry these images around in our hearts as things we wish for, to be, to see, anything really, to embody, whatever, and by making them material totems, and doing the work to make them material, there is a very real thing there, that relationship to these very transient lossy images, and bringing them out into the world, in a way, with these graded colorations, reducing the quality but increasing the texture.

~

beatriz herrera

these are harder to write about still, i did not even read the blurb, but they immediately struck me, i think how a lot of art of this nature strikes me (from picasso to takato yamamoto, in some cases of his at least) is the kind of jubilant and exploding body, or maybe not jubilant, but so full of energy, or there being so much energy lost and reused and lost again, that excess of vital runoff, where we lay as the waste, the non-vital parts of life still moving, those explosions of the body and rapid transformation/sensing. something like that, really, it's the joy of guts and wanting to see them outside the body.

~

and here's a little jumping spider i saw in the buffalo exchange (didn't see anything i liked, sadly).

thinking on fashion, it's interesting how everyone around asu was so trendy but still like, cheugy. like, they wore all the brands/pieces, i saw a mom in a ysl sweater, i saw girls in brandy melville (who is basically cheugy but post-ironically so it's not cheugy right) but they were doing it all so sincerely, baggy bright blue denim pants, the silhouettes were right but the attitudes were off, it's almost like these trends really don't have anything in them, and they can be adapted to any environ (like a super conservative hellcity).

look at this, that we saw in the brandy melville store:

anyhow, like, whatever, i am sleepy, i did a lot today that i cannot even talk about which was a big use of my energy, sooooooo

byebye!!!!!!

[pochapal]

Oh sorry I was on mobile that's probably why😭 have u gotten past episode one yet?

yeah sorry if it doesn't work properly i don't use mobile enough to understand/put the effort into making everything work on moblie haha

and i'm still not past episode one oof. i'm up to the end of chapter 10 (the first twilight) and i'm currently going back through the earlier parts of the episode that i skimmed through initially to take better notes before i try and really tackle the mysteries now that they're actually happening.

[trelkez]

Ah, Ted Lasso. This episode was 90% mess, but that 10% sure does know how to hook me.

I wish I could go back in time to the self who went into Ted Lasso thinking it was tightly plotted, top tier stuff and say, "this is a ridiculous show, but you should watch it anyway. You'll love the characters. You will get so much found family. Just don't get too attached to any plotlines or expect anything to make sense ever, and you'll be fine." That would be a reasonable expectation for this show! Unfortunately for me, we're down to the final three episodes, so it's a bit late for me to recalibrate at this point. I am, alas, still invested in the plotlines. 

So let's get into 3.10, because … wow, is there a lot to get into.

I'm rewatching the episode as I write this (just in case I forget any of the batshit turns it took and/or parts of it turn out to have been a fever dream), so I'm going to tackle it roughly in order. 

1. Richmond's ten game winning streak

Where are we at in the season? Does anyone know?

Remember when this show had season arcs organized around some kind of football-related goal? Avoid relegation, make it back into the Premier League. It seemed logical that the goal of this season would be to win the league, but I guess we're going to get there by putting the team on cheat mode in the background and then shoehorning in some "will they or won't they" football drama at the end, which is actually very in keeping with the overall theme of this episode.

2. Nate quit West Ham off-screen

I'm so glad the guy in the apartment on the other side of my living room wall was out for the night, because I literally shrieked "WHAT?????? WHAT???????" when that "Nate Shelley Out at West Ham" graphic went up.

I didn't get to Nate in my 3.09 writeup, and it's just as well, because anything I wrote before that graphic would have been immediately rendered pointless. Nate quit West Ham off-screen. He quit off-screen.

I am going to reach way, way back to the Nate Shelley I liked in season one and say: that Nate did not deserve this shit.

It has been obvious throughout this entire season that the writers weren't interested in telling the story that season two set up. They didn't especially want to dwell on or in the toxicity that bottomed Nate out last season; they didn't want to do the harder narrative work of actually building back an unlikeable character through a slow but steady redemption arc, even though they've spent entire seasons doing exactly that with Jamie. Instead, they said, "yeah, but Nate isn't really That Guy."

Does the show regret what it did? It sure feels that way. It feels like, in the pursuit of telling a story about a good guy on an ego-fueled descent, the show went way further than it meant to and has now decided to backtrack on that by treating the whole thing like a guy waking up from a bender and going, "I did what last night? Why did I do that?" That wasn't really Nate who did those things, that was Drunk Nate! He did five shots of narcissism and got blackout drunk on jealousy, and he woke up in the morning with a new job. What wild shenanigans will ensue? 

So, sure. The only way any of it makes sense is if none of it meant anything. Fine. Even then, what was the point of sending Nate to West Ham and throwing all of Rupert's smothering, menacing glitz at him only for NATE QUITTING HIS JOB AND WALKING AWAY FROM RUPERT AND WEST HAM to happen OFF-SCREEN so they can CATCH US UP ON IT via FAKE SPORTS NEWS INFOGRAPHIC??

If they didn't show it because they felt the real rejection was in Nate going home to his girlfriend, that is very poor storytelling in a season that started out with the most literal Rupert is Palpatine visual parallels imaginable. If they're trying to say that the real climax of Nate's story isn't in rejecting Rupert, but in the amends he makes with the people he hurt, then why did they drag the West Ham stuff out until the tenth episode??? Why is all of this being left for the end, when none of the West Ham stuff has ultimately mattered at all, and pulling the plug on it earlier on could've left a lot of room for handling Nate's healing process at a slower, more organic pace?

Ultimately, this is a story about a good guy who lost his way a little and wound up hanging out with a bad crowd, and now he has to apologize his way back into the hearts of his real friends. The storytelling along the way has been wildly incoherent and had brutally terrible pacing, but if you completely disregard how we got here and pretend season one Nate just woke up from a West Ham bender, there's still time to enjoy the endgame.

3. Isaac is team captain again!

So – Isaac went into the crowd and wasn't banned for the remainder of the season? Let's close our eyes for a moment and imagine that the football gods looked upon Isaac's actions and said, "yeah, that seems legit, let's give him the smallest possible set of consequences." He was sent off with a red card. For assault. But the football gods are treating punching a fan like having a go at an opposing player! Cool. That's still, what, three games?

So even if we assume he only got a three-game ban, and keeping in mind that Richmond isn't in the Champions or Europa leagues and the FA Cup is just – not happening, I guess? So they probably don't have a ton of midweek games, which means that it's been … weeks.

But wasn't the win streak at eight games last week? So – did Isaac just – not get a ban? At all? 

Nope. No. Self, you are a Ted Lasso Doylist now, remember? Nothing that happened last week was actually about Isaac in any way, so why would there be ongoing consequences for him from that storyline? Deep breaths.

Isaac is one of my favorite characters in this show, and I'm not particularly interested in there being ongoing consequences for him from whatever that was last week, so – this is fine. Don't question it. We float on an ocean of vibes. Everything is great.

4. Why?

Why did we just take a beat for microaggression with Ted being shocked Bumbercatch is Swiss? Is this really where we're at these days, comedy-wise?

I'm genuinely not sure that anyone involved here knows how to write Ted without making him completely exhausting to be around, anymore. Is that on purpose? Let's pretend it's on purpose.

5. Do we think Nate is capable of being involved in something like that?

"Nah." – the writers, who are pretending they haven't seen season two

6. Jade

I like her so much, but I am 99.95% sure that's because she is being written to be likable, with no other discernible qualities. Who is she? What motivates her? In a season full of long episodes, was there really no time to show her existing when Nate isn't in the room? Did no one in the writer's room stop to wonder, "hey, is it at all dicey if that woman in the restaurant who dislikes Nate suddenly falls in love with him so he can be healed by the power of love?" Did no one say that out loud and hear how it sounds?

Anyway. Jade. Big fan. Looking forward to hearing all about her hobbies and backstory in the ample time remaining.

7. Dani vs. Van Damme

I have a feeling this completely random side adventure into our purest angel having an asshole hypercompetitive side isn't going to land for everyone, but you know what? Sure. Why not. There are epic tales out there of teammates facing each other in the Olympics, the World Cup, etc. and trying to destroy each other and then going home like none of it ever happened. I'm totally onboard for this kind of plot in theory! They took it a little too far with Dani breaking Van Damme's nose, but as we've established, "they took it a little too far" is the story of this entire show. 

You know what would have improved this a lot? If it had happened near the beginning of the season and kicked off a recurring storyline in which someone else now has to face Dani on a spring international break. Shoved in at the end of the season (and probably the end of the series), it loses a lot of its potential, so the placement is … strange. Instead of being an ongoing character trait they could slowly build up and make funnier in the re-telling, it comes out of nowhere and immediately goes to 11. But otherwise, why not.

8. Beard gets it

Beard is the only one who watched season two. He gets it.

It would explain a lot about Beard and this entire season if Beard used to be a time traveler, so he's the only one in Richmond immune to changes in the timeline. Maybe somewhere just out of sight there's a genre show about time travel happening, and this football team just happens to exist in that universe – so the world of Ted Lasso is constantly being rewritten, but no one notices. Ted Lasso as a Doctor Who spin-off in which no one has ever met or heard of The Doctor. 

No one but Beard, anyway. Is Beard also the only one who remembers that Isaac went into the crowd last week?

9. Uncle's Day

10/10, no notes. Every time I think I'm out, this show uses Jamie Tartt to drag me right back in.

(Actually, no, one note: Jamie was joking about Isaac being his best friend, right? That was just to screw with Roy? I'm going to assume Isaac was the choice for that line because it's so obviously unlikely given how rarely they interact, and not because the writers think Jamie and Isaac are still BFFs. It would be very in keeping with this season for them to think Jamie and Isaac's friendship is just running on cheat mode in the background, but like – I'm going to assume. For my sanity. That it's just a joke.)

The funniest part of this scene winds up being that they accidentally made it look like Phoebe was having an "oh. oh" moment about Roy and Jamie. I had to rewind that twice to figure out that she was spelling it out in her head, and not like, catching on.

I would've understood if she had caught on. Roy stares at Jamie for 10.6 seconds before he says "I love it."

10. Super League? In this economy?

+10 points to Leslie for "I hate to break it to you, Rebecca, but those children are dead."

Unfortunately, -10 points to Leslie for "who cares why Rupert invited you?" Historically speaking, Rebecca should care. Rebecca is totally justified in wondering why Rupert invited her!

Why would Richmond be invited into talks about a Super League at all? Richmond? Recently promoted Richmond? Complete lack of international play Richmond? It's sus as hell. If I were Rebecca, I would absolutely assume this was some strange plot by my evil ex-husband.

(I'm not convinced it wasn't, in fact, a strange plot by her evil ex-husband. Something is going on there.)

Super League is about the richest teams banding together to shake off the chaff. As a Spurs fan, I fully, completely understand the concept of a team that isn't actually rich and successful trying to buy into an exclusive club – yes, Spurs were involved in Super League drama; no, you shouldn't ask me about their season or we'll still be here next week while I cry on you – and we are definitely already outside the tethers of reality when West Ham is at the table, but it, truly it makes no sense.

(And even if Rupert weren't the one extending the offer, "go check it out, what's the worst that could happen?" is naive at best. What's the worst that could happen? The media finds out that Rebecca was at a Super League meeting and now Richmond is being dragged into a shitstorm, whether Rebecca decided to buy in or not. Girl, do not go in there! If you don't want to join, don't join! Why is any of this happening! Get Keeley back in the building before someone runs into a PR problem they truly cannot back out of!)

11. Is the psychic's prophecy still a thing?

So … is the show going Tedbecca? After that weird flirty moment she had with Sam earlier, the matchbook almost calls back to Sam more than Ted, but the show did make a point of having Ted pull out that matchbook a few episodes ago, and here it's directly paired with his toy soldier. 

(Honestly, slow clap for everyone who did those green matchbook / green soldier gif sets earlier this season, I thought you guys were reaching straight into outer space with that one and apparently I was dead wrong!)

Ted and Rebecca have barely even talked to each other in the back half of the season. Every week I log on here and see shippers shriveling into dust, their crops unwatered. Is the matchbook/soldier thing a misdirect, or are they going to cram a significant relationship change into the final two episodes of the season after largely ignoring them in the lead-up?

I have no idea which way this is going to swing, and that's kind of terrible, because there are only two episodes left. There isn't time left to do any kind of meaningful build. There's only time for a sudden last-minute rush of drama.

When I put it like that, I think they probably are going to shove it into the endgame. Either that, or the houseboat guy suddenly shows back up out of nowhere. Whatever happens, it is going to have a "bet you didn't see that coming" flavor, because there isn't time for anything else.

12. Roy has an epiphany

What the fuck even is this?

Listen. It never made sense for Roy to have broken up with Keeley. It was clearly something they did as a way to inject some new drama. THAT SAID, they did it, and they committed to it for almost an entire fucking season, and TEN EPISODES ON a teacher with a crush on Roy makes a way-too-personal comment about how she hopes his mess hasn't caused any damage, and THAT'S what makes him suddenly realize he needs to apologize to Keeley? THAT? Just like. Boom. Realization sets in. Lightbulb visibly goes off overhead as he mutters "fuuuuuuck" to himself. A fully illustrated epiphany!

What the fuck does this show think it's doing having Roy suddenly realize that he probably hurt Keeley and needs to apologize? 

In episode ten?????

I don't know how much time has passed, because in Ted Lasso season three time is an illusion, but at minimum – months. Months later, he suddenly realizes he might have hurt his girlfriend when he broke up with her??? That isn't character growth. That is completely fucking absurd. They needed Roy and Keeley to get back together and pushed it too close to the last minute, so they did some schoolteacher deus ex machina. Of all the abrupt plot turns in this episode, this might be the second worst.

(There's a clear winner and this isn't it, but second place? It's a contender.)

13. What happened to the corporate pixie dream girl?

So the overall implication here, between this and Trent's rumor of West Ham workplace misbehavior, is that Rupert is probably headed for some workplace harassment trouble, right? If withholding the mystery of it all turns out to be why they didn't show Nate quitting in this episode, I'm going to scream. I will literally shriek with the frustration of a thousand bad plot decisions.

14. Nate's nostalgia journey

This is, sincerely, great stuff with the photo albums and the music and the journey into the attic. There is still time to enjoy the endgame!! Disregard how we got here!!

15. Rebecca vs. Super League

Just watching this scene made me feel like I've now put in enough time on Ted Lasso to be allowed by contract to take some PTO. Ted Lasso needs to pay me for my time while I recover on a tiny island in the Outer Banks. I've earned it.

So – they thought – having Rebecca scoldingly yell "what do you think you're doing? Just stop it!" while picturing aging rich men as little boys was, like … feminist? Someone involved in this process thought, wouldn't it be great if we empowered Rebecca by making her everyone's scolding mother, and no one along the way went, wait, what? 

But then it keeps going so that we can humanize Rupert, which – what? Why is this happening? Why do I know Rupert's humanizing backstory when to my knowledge, Jade was born inside Taste of Athens?

This is the most I have ever seen Rebecca care about football. It's a lovely speech, but where is it coming from? Since when is she this invested? The only thing that rings true about this is that Super League is an ugly money grab and many, many owners do not give a single shit about their team's fans. Someone wanted to write a speech about that, so we're getting it through Rebecca, just like we got that speech about deleting your camera roll through Isaac. 

Also – the food: I know that the food is a continuation of Edwin Akufo's whole thing with Sam, but it is a weird fucking choice to put so much emphasis on Ghanian food and then reduce it to slop thrown at Rebecca.

Beginning to end, we could've done without this entire Super League story and been just fine. It isn't like this 63-minute episode required extra filler.

16. 24

10/10, no notes. They really do pull me back in with Jamie every time. He revealed that 24 and I, like Roy Kent talking to a schoolteacher, suddenly realized that I ship it. Jamie wore Sam's number?? I'm going to vid this so hard.

17. Nate's dad

I did say there was a clear winner for the episode's worst plot turn.

Nate is sad at home for one episode and suddenly his dad does a complete turnaround after almost three entire seasons? It isn't like we heard a story one time about Nate's dad and now we're getting a reveal on what actually happened there – we've seen him a lot! Nate's entire motivation set is built on his dad and their relationship!

"I pushed you to succeed so you would have more opportunities than I did" is a completely legitimate story to tell, but this has been almost three seasons of disapproval so thick that it threw toxic sludge across the entire show. Nothing Nate has done has ever been good enough. Now we're at the end, and they want to heal it so that Nate can grow, so all of that is being retconned into, "I never cared if you were successful, I just want you to be happy," and suddenly his dad is a completely different person. Boom, fixed! Definitely not the kind of thing you have to heal from over time!

I say again: Nate's story deserved better than this. By pushing this all the way to the end, they've run out of room to take their time with it, so it's just being dropped in. What a mess this season is.

18. Rebecca, do NOT do it

This season is, in fact, such a mess that for a minute there, I believed that Rebecca might actually go for it with Rupert. 

I think, more than anything, I'm puzzled by the perceived necessity of this closure on Rebecca and Rupert. I get that they wanted to give us a taste of what brought Rupert and Rebecca together in the first place – to have Rebecca to see him in that old light again before taking a step back, so she could acknowledge the past in a way that helped her finally make a clean break. I get it. But … why? Was this really something lingering out there for her to overcome?

Rebecca's entire season-long conflict with Rupert has felt like intentional backsliding for the purposes of The Drama. If you imagine that she came into this season still very fired up and insecure about her ex-husband, the arc from "I want Zava so Rupert can't have him" to "I don't care about beating Rupert anymore" is fine. But … did she? Is that really where we left her in season two?

And why did an episode in which Nate quits West Ham spend so much time breaking up Rupert and Rebecca, who were already broken up, while Nate quit off-screen? 

19. What's left?

Two episodes to go! That's so much time in which to accomplish so many things!

I said to someone last week: you know, I thought this was headed for a "Nate takes over as Richmond's head coach" place, but there isn't enough time left in the season for them to do that, so I guess he's just going to be staying at West Ham?

Turns out they can do anything, because they're just going to drop in whatever at the last minute. Nothing means anything! We exist in a world without the constraints of plot and continuity! Everything is on the table.

So, what's left to shoehorn in?

- Manchester City has been inevitable all season (ask Arsenal how that feels), and we're probably going to get some stuff with Jamie's dad there. Jamie has been one of the only characters they've consistently done right by, so my fingers are crossed they don't screw that up at the finish line.

- Will Trent ever come out to the Diamond Dogs? Maybe being out in the workplace isn't his thing, but it feels like a missed avenue of storytelling to have Trent be right there in the coaching offices, in on all the gossip and sharing and advice, and not have whatever he has going on be a part of it. That would have been such an easy way to integrate queer identity into everyday conversation over a decent chunk of the season, instead of playing it almost exclusively for drama the way they have been.

- Still on Nate's apology list: Colin and Ted? If apologizing to Ted doesn't involve the believe sign somehow, I really don't know anything about this show anymore.

- Is Ted staying in London or going back to Kansas? A lot of people seem resigned to the idea that he's going back, and a lot of Tumblr is hoping he stays for Rebecca, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's some secret third thing. Two whole episodes! There's still plenty of time for them to drop a surprise twist on us. (If he goes back to Michelle, it won't be a surprise twist, but I will turn this car around.)

- Are we ever going to learn what was up with Baz's friend who got kicked out of the pub? I really thought we were headed for some bigger integration of Colin's story, wherein it turned out that was Baz's secret boyfriend or something, but … … …?

- Is anything going to come of Trent's book? I have $5 on there being an epilogue time skip in which we fast forward to the book release and see what the characters are up to (aka the "no seriously, this is it, the show is over" ending) and another $5 on the show ending on Ted in the airport and the book not ultimately meaning anything.

Two weeks until we find out!

[vashtijoy]

I came in like a wreeecking baaaaall

These really need more attention than I can give them right now, but since I have them to hand, here are the English texts. Note that there's a whole second set for the third semester—some are the same, but many aren't. And the differences can be revealing...

first and second semester

A third-year high school detective from another school. He seeks the culprit of the psychotic breakdowns.

third semester

A Persona-user and former foe. After meeting an unclear fate, he reappears to solve new mysteries.

rank 1

first and second semester

While investigating the Phantom Thieves, his "detective's intuition" led him to [Ren]...

third semester

While investigating the Phantom Thieves, he was moved by [f 4 2]'s words...

rank 2

first and second semester

He invited you to play billiards. What does he aim to accomplish using his non-dominant hand...?

third semester

He invited you to play billiards, and provoked you by using his non-dominant hand.

rank 3

first and second semester

You helped him escape a close call with fans of the popular high school detective.

third semester

Through helping him escape a close call with troublesome fans, you saw his distrust for adults.

rank 4

first and second semester

The Detective Prince invited you to his go-to place, where you talked a bit about your personal lives.

third semester

The Detective Prince invited you to his go-to place, where you talked a bit about school life.

rank 5

first and second semester

You played a shooting game with him while talking about his childhood dream of being a hero.

third semester

You played a shooting game with him while talking about his childhood dream of being a hero.

rank 6

first and second semester

In the bathhouse, he discussed his family and promised to play another round of billiards.

third semester

In the bathhouse, he discussed his family and promised to play another round of billiards.

rank 7

first and second semester

After defeating him in a game of billiards, he declares that he won't hold back next time.

third semester

After defeating him in a game of billiards, he declares that he won't hold back next time.

rank 8

first and second semester

You fought Akechi in Mementos and seized victory. He swore not to lose to you again.

third semester (inaccessible)

You clashed with Akechi in Mementos and siezed victory. He swore not to lose to you again.

rank 9 (inaccessible)

This one has a writeup here.

first and second semester

His objective is to get revenge on his father, Shido. After stating that, he attacked...

third semester

His objective is to get revenge on his father, Shido. After stating that, he attacked...

rank 10

first and second semester

He sacrificed his own life in order to save you... In the end, your wishes became one.

third semester

You kept your promise to settle his complex issues with Shido. When will the other promise be fulfilled...?

HAS ANYONE WRITTEN DOWN ALL THESE CONFIDANT FLAVOR TEXTS SOMEWHERE IM GOING CRAZY. I NEED AKECHI'S BUT I DONT WANNA PLAY THE WHOLE DAMN GAME AGAIN.

[creylune]

AX ‘22 Con Report

I tabled at AX with my friend (no public social media) last weekend!! I’m sure most people saw tweets about how awful the artist alley conditions were lol... I’m doing this writeup mostly to reflect how sales went + for my own reference but I will also cover con organization, how it felt inside re:safety, masking, AX staff/volunteers. FYI this is very long as it’s a sort of blogging recap with lots of photos.

Here’s our booth! 👇

Day 0:

Setup day! I forget what time Kentia Hall opened for setup but we got to the convention center at like... 4:45-5PM. Getting into the loading dock (a garage directly connected to Kentia) was pretty smooth, luckily since we arrived a little late there was no wait for other cars ahead of us. A con center staff (?) driving a forklift gave us a cart to put our boxes etc. on. 

We weren’t allowed to park our cars in the dock, so my table partner had to go repark her car after we wheeled our merch to the Kentia rear entrance.

Here’s what the loading dock looked like (this was from Day 4, so it’s pretty empty).

Directly to the right is Kentia Hall.

Fortunately the staff at the Kentia entrance (between the loading dock and Kentia, normally closed during convention hours) was also doing COVID checks, so we got our COVID wristbands right off the bat. Setup took the entire 3 hours until 8PM. We didn’t finish either, but we got the basics set up (photo display stand for large prints, grids for charms/small merch). We just needed to add our side hanging prints (medium and mini prints) via a clamp-on side arm.  

I don’t think AC was on, so we were kinda sweaty and also tired/hungry from the 6+ hour drive down.

Here’s our original setup; we decided to move the “window” to one side so there’d be no break in our display (easier for customers to see all our merch at once). This is because we didn’t evenly split mine vs. her merch LOL. Other artists often keep their own stuff on one side if they split a table. Also we had a plexiglass screen because we were paranoid about non-maskers breathing on us. Neither of us got COVID from the con so I like to think it worked!

Day 1:

We tried to get to the con by 8:30 AM so we could get convention center parking and finish setting up before 10 AM (AA open) but there was a literal car accident + one that happened 30 feet from our car on the street leading to the parking garage 😑 My table partner had to drop me and our neighboring table (also part of our Airbnb) friend off on the street so we could walk the rest of the way inside lol.

We were both wary of customers stealing our display charms so we pinned our charms through the grids, then secured them on the back. We tugged on each charm to make sure they didn’t come loose.

Here’s Anya, my best-selling charm (or about tied with my Jack Frost charm). My memey-themed merch sold the best lol (not a surprise for me). The pin was stuck in there unless you really yanked it. Also, we used black grids because the contrast really makes the charm colors pop more (vs. white or a corkboard). We got the idea from our friend who uses black canvases. 

Some more pics of my merch (and our display in the background). You can see we had a Square payments sign + NO MASK NO SERVICE sign (we forgot to print one but the sticky note was enough). We used the top of the grids to display more 3D items like omanjuu plushies (we used two-tier displays from Daiso, inspired by Hinamatsuri displays), acrylic standees (a mini wooden bench from Daiso again), and my bargain bin (old charms) box. We tabled at Fanime in May and all our stuff was directly on the table, which was low and hard to see. Added height lets people see your merch from farther away. 

Personally I wish we displayed our stickers better but we kinda ran out of space. They’re not the main money makers anyways (charms and prints are) but oh well, they’re easy to ship/sell online.

And here’s what it looked like on the artists’ side:

AX volunteer staff is pretty strict about making sure the walkway is clear. Every few tables had personal trash cans, though whether they were emptied or refilled with another plastic bag was kinda dependent on luck...? Most of the time we just had our own personal trash bag we brought and disposed of after closing each day.

Luckily the volunteer assigned to our strip was SUPER friendly and nice. She stopped by our table every day starting Day 2; she reminded us to eat and stay hydrated because another artist had passed out on Day 1. I think actually more than one artist passed out in AA during the entire weekend 🙃 CO2 levels were off the charts especially on Days 2 and 3.

I didn’t get a photo of the actual back of our display, but we had organizers inside our grids so we could store handfuls of charms for quick access. In the past we’ve just hunched over and dug through our giant luggages to find charms when customers asked for them, which REALLY takes a toll on you and your back. We finally learned this year 🤡✨ You can see it jutting out in this picture. You can also see my medium/mini prints hanging (all taped) from the side arm.

We had an open box full of unorganized omanjuu plushies between our table and our neighboring table since we did a group order together. Most of the time I helped dig and grab them when customers wanted to buy them. It was kind of hard in the beginning because my table partner and I had 4 blonde characters LOL but we didn’t bother organizing them because they took up too much space and were too light (like packing peanut light) so they fell out of containers easily...

I would say the only downside of our main display setup is that one person (me) is always hidden by the grids, while the other artist is stuck doing customer service. To talk to customers, I had to stand up on my toes to talk over the grids, and it was uncomfortable because I also had to avoid our large prints that were hanging directly behind my head (when I stood up).

I think I generally had a more enjoyable time at Fanime because I was the one doing the majority of customer service, so I got to chat with customers more. AX I was mostly just... chilling... also there was no service and I couldn’t get onto the AA wifi because it was at capacity (people were sharing the password with their non-AA friends :) ).

This is also when we realized while the plexiglass kept us “safe” from people breathing on us directly, it was also REALLY HARD to hear people. Voices are already muffled with masks on, and cons are LOUD. The plexiglass was thick so we literally could not hear almost every single customer. We either had to ask them to speak up multiple times or we straight up asked them to talk over our grids so we could hear what they wanted to buy. The latter making the plexiglass useless...

It was also tougher on my partner’s back because she’s 6+ inches taller than me (and was wearing heels lol). For me I just had to stand up taller, for her she actually had to scrunch her back to dodge our prints.

Here’s what it looked like from the Customer Service chair:

Anyways Day 1 sales were slow... even compared to Fanime 1 month ago it felt pretty slow. Not a huge surprise since it’s Day 1, most people will browse AA on Friday and then make purchases later during the weekend UNLESS you’re a super popular artist and people want to get your stuff before things sell out. Unfortunately neither of us are at that level lol

Also here’s a photo of my luggage under the table. This was taken on Day 4 during takedown so it has all the manjuus poured inside LMFAO

AC was either broken or on energy-saving mode (according to some staff?) this day so it felt like A SAUNA. It was humid and stifling. I was fanning my partner and my neighbor with an empty portfolio and shikishi board to help keep them cool. I didn’t feel terrible since my house doesn’t have AC (so I’m used to it) but it was NOT comfortable. This is the day that staff at the South Priority Entrance (for vendors, exhibitors, Artist Alley) apparently had miscommunicated instructions and were confiscating coffee, drinks, snacks, food from everyone. Luckily they hadn’t checked my bag when we got in in the morning, so I had snacks (KitKats, dried apples) and bottles of tea, but we didn’t eat lunch until 4PM (table partner and I split food truck fries).

Maybe it was the hunger but these fries were so so so good lol.

Day 2

We expected to get the most sales on this day but sales were also really slow considering it was Saturday... My partner also has tabled at AX multiple times in the past, and she said sales were disappointing for her standards. We wondered if it’s because we were at the back of the hall. 

I think my most popular mini print from Fanime (ACNH Timmy and Tommy going “Poggers!”) didn’t sell as well because it wasn’t directly in customers’ faces. At Fanime it was right above the seller’s “window” so while customers waited for me to grab inventory, their eyes would wander and immediately see it, then add it to their purchase. Or they’d see it front and center when they passed by the booth. This time we kept all smaller prints on the sides, so that may have impacted sales. It still sold the best out of all my prints though, but it didn’t sell out like it did at Fanime.

AA conditions-wise were better from Day 2 onwards, but it’s a fact that the AC is not strong in the back of the hall. It’s strongest at the entrance. I did fan myself during Days 2-4, Day 4 was the most pleasant because crowds were much smaller lol. Trying to get through or leave AA on Days 2-3 were a nightmare because of how jampacked the aisles were. Usually I would walk through the artist walkways just so I could avoid the crowds (at least 30% of whom were unmasked 🙃). Honestly it’s a miracle I didn’t get COVID considering how many bare faces I saw!!!!!! After attending Fanime, where it was like 99% mask policy adherence, AX crowds gave me hives... I take Norcal Bay Area masking for granted...

I think...? Because CO2 levels were so potent, I didn’t feel productive or want to draw commissions. At Fanime I took over 30 commissions across 3 days, like I was pumping them out every 20-30 minutes. At AX on Day 2 I took down my commission display and didn’t bother putting it back up until the next day because I just wasn’t in the mood. And it didn’t have anything to do with how much sleep I got (or lack thereof), I was not sleeping well during Fanime either lol. But 🤷‍♀️ who knows. Luckily I didn’t experience nausea, fatigue, dizziness, or headaches like other artists did. My table partner complained of headaches but she also does require more sleep than I do.

Day 3

Sales were the best on this day! By this point I realized I didn’t really draw enough popular series, but ngl I don’t care much about drawing popular things just for sales. My partner’s Luxiem/VTuber merch was selling like hotcakes.

Okay I’ll just speed through the rest lol

Day 4

I was hoping for a lot of last minute sales on this day but it was kind of slow. Overall AX this year was fairly slow for a lot of artists; I talked about it with other artists and friends who were tabling and we all agreed our sales were lower than we’d anticipated. Like we did well but it wasn’t as high as we wanted; we definitely ordered more stock than we needed to.

AA closed at 3PM, and we were hoping to finish takedown by 5PM. Unfortunately after we’d packed everything up + my partner had helped pack away some of her out of state friend’s boxes into her car... things got really disorganized and confusing. 

So my friend had parked in the Venice Parking Garage which is directly across the street from Kentia Hall/the south side of the convention center. The street between the two buildings was filled with cars and PARKED trucks. So normal cars that were exiting the garage were stuck and couldn’t move. No AX staff bothered to explain to these cars that the trucks were Exhibitor’s Hall trucks, and they were parked and waiting for the corporate vendors to bring their stuff down. My friend was stuck on that street for like... 15-20 minutes I want to say. I was stuck in a pretty much empty AA at 6:30PM with way too much stuff for one person to carry. The loading dock that I mentioned earlier in the post was also blocked off.

I briefly went outside to take pics of the street outside the loading dock (the street that my friend was trying to turn onto, so that we could pack our belongings) so I could show her what the holdup was:

All the trucks and cars in the middle/left lanes were parked. Driver-less. lol. 

These were cars trying to exit the South Parking Garage (directly inside the con center).

After I sent these pictures to my friend I ran back inside AA, noticed a forklift had kinda haphazardly discarded/dropped two rolling “carts” at the end of the aisle, and realized I was gonna have to grab one and put all our stuff on it if I wanted to move our belongings relatively quickly. These didn’t have handles, just a legit rope tied to it that you had to pull LOL

I felt kinda bad because there was an artist who had been sitting at her table for hours by herself, literally SURROUNDED by luggages. We started talking and it turns out she was confused because her boyfriend was in the same situation as my partner, stuck trying to get out of the parking garage. I told her she should grab one of the rolling carts to start loading her stuff too, since there were two that had been left a couple tables away from us. I didn’t wanna wait for a forklift because we had dinner plans lol.

Once I managed to wheel our stuff outside, I was still pretty lost on what to do, because my friend was around the corner and as versatile as the “cart” was, it could not go over curbs. Under the platform, there were two little mini wheel things on each end. They were not affixed so our stuff actually fell off when I tried to go up one curb (it was smooth but I made too sharp of a turn). Just imagine these things but more industrial looking

Two of these under the platform here 👇 on both ends

Another artist who was loading their car asked me if I needed help and I said I wasn’t sure since my friend was stuck on another street (literally like.... 200 feet away). They were kind enough to explain the situation, so I relayed it to my friend via Discord (basically, talk to one of the security people, explain that you’re an artist and not exhibitor’s hall vendor, and they’ll wave you through).

So yeah this was a pain in the ass and very disorganized but at least we made it to dinner on time-ish... 

Now on to general sales stuff:

Neither of my partner and I sold that many large prints, which was disappointing because 1) large prints are HEAVY and a pain to carry back home, 2) usually she sells a lot of them; large prints are good money-makers because the margins on them are really good. Of my prints I expected my Tokyo Mew Mew and Ib prints to sell the best, but disappointingly I only got 1 buyer for my TMM print 😕 It’s a little disheartening because it’s a nostalgia print, I put the most effort into it, and the reboot anime is now airing... but I guess AX was a few days too early, or I didn’t have it up front and center. I ordered 25 of them, definitely ordered too many.

Meanwhile my Power and Meowy print sold the best (14-15 sales, I ordered 20 which was a good amount). Which is funny because I put the least amount of effort into it; I literally was speed-shading her shirt at 4AM on a workday because the print order deadline was that morning. It was also an “eh this sketch can be a simple large print, let’s bank on Power’s popularity for this to do well” and it did! 🙏 What is a little weird is my partner’s Makima print didn’t do as well as she expected. She said she sold a lot of them at ALA earlier this year... I noticed my mini Makima print also didn’t do that well (I got like 4 sales). I’d wonder if it’s because Makima is controversial but people were buying my Makima charm (more people got my Power charm though).

My second-best selling print was Ib (7-8 sales, ordered 20)! I got more buyers for it on Day 1 and 3 iirc. I was pleasantly surprised because like the Power and Meowy one I was literally rush-coloring parts of it the morning of the deadline. Like actually it made me late to work lol. It’s actually unfinished 🙈 but it’s okay no one knows that...  I didn’t sell any of my P4 large print but that was to be expected because it was a last minute decision to print it; it’s old.

Charm-wise my Anya and Jack Frost “I’m gonna kill you” sold the best by far. I think in general, memey merch sells really well since people think it’s funny and want to show it off to their friends. So if all else fails, make some memey merch to ensure sales ^___^..... Surprisingly, people were not buying my partner’s SpyxFamily charms though, even though we placed our SpyxFam stuff right next to each other. It’s probably because her charms were huge, like 3 inch long/wide Christmas ornament size. It’s a shame because they came out super cute and had a cool transparent effect... But yeah, a lot of people bought my Anyas or the entire family set. I had two customers ask for 3-4 Anyas in one purchase which made me o_o LOL. I think it’s because I drew Anya’s iconic smug face on one side. 

A couple Dimileth people came out of the woodworks to buy my Dimitris which made me happy... also what surprised me was that NO ONE bought my Felix charm, whereas he was my most popular charm at Fanime. Really goes to show how demographics differ depending on the con. Most people bought Hilda and Hubert at AX... these are also my slightly messed up charms from a second charm order in early 2020, right at the start of the pandemic (so the manufacturer messed up on clasps and print quality was inconsistent). So I really wasn’t expecting to sell any of them lol.

Another disappointment: I don’t think I sold a single lollipop charm all weekend... and I really expected them to sell well :\ I checked in with our table neighbor and she said only her Anya lollipop was selling, the rest of them weren’t getting bought at all. We found this kind of weird since lollipop charms aren’t super common yet, so we expected they’d do better LOL. 

Bad photo of some of the lollipops:

On the flipside my partner’s candy bag charms were selling like crazy, but then again they were all Luxiem streamers so... her Gojo/Geto candy bag didn’t sell well. Probably because the ship hasn’t really come up in the anime yet.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend, I profited a bit over $1k after expenses (Airbnb, gas, parking, merch production costs, badge and table fee). This doesn’t include some tabling gear because my friend and I split (she bought the grids, the pins and their holders, the plexiglass, we borrowed a friend’s side arm thing, the display things I bought were all cheap minus the $50 main display stand).

Honestly that’s pretty low in comparison to all my artist friends who table at 3-5 cons per year, but I table really casually (this is just for fun) and I do more online shop selling, so I’m not too disappointed. I also didn’t draw any Genshin, didn’t have any SpyxFamily-heavy inventory besides a couple charms, didn’t have any VTubers, etc. etc... so I can’t complain about not making a ton of money. We were also tabled super far back, so we didn’t get nearly as much foot traffic as some other friends. HOWEVER we both avoided getting COVID so maybe our table location was a blessing. Based on an unofficial spreadsheet artists have been updating wrt symptoms and test results, there were positive clusters near the entrance (though people tested positive pretty much everywhere in the AA, including a table across from us).

To conclude, I hate LA and traveling to cons is more tiring than it’s worth personally, so I think I’m gonna stick to local conventions from now on. I am a tired introvert lol. I think Airbnb-ing with 8 people (all of us have dodged COVID miraculously) would have been more fun if I was still in college, alas I am now a few years out of school and very sleepy/prefer to keep to myself usually. I had way more fun at Fanime (I drove in every morning) and also didn’t constantly fear I was getting infected with COVID each day there... also didn’t witness a car accident every single day of the con... could relax at home and not worry about forgetting to pack something...

I hope this was useful or interesting to read if you made it this far  d( > _・ ) If you have any questions feel free to hit my ask box, though I can’t answer much about merch production because I did group orders via friends and some prefer not to share their manus.

[jotatetsuken]

Shyna's 100 Follower Event: Made with Love

Thank you so much for the number of followers and I can only hope it'll grow <33 In honor of y'all's support and of my family who've set high bars for me in terms of cooking, I've decided to come up with a domestic-type event here! (PS: Thank you Sil, @burnthoneymint and Icarus @cuz-like-why-not for brainstorming this event and giving me feedback ♥️)

This will go on for a week and a half (April 7,2022) or until I get all the requests. Basically, all of the write-ups from this event will be based on the domestic AU setup.

Edited: Extending till the 11th of April, 2022 🤍

Event Status : CLOSED

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Rules:

If I don't get these done in time, I'd appreciate it if I'm not asked about it over and over? This is because I might have other WIPs or prior commitments I'm working on and I want to make sure I finish those.

There will be fluff, there will be angst, there may even be suggestive stuff. I may have to write dark content if it were to come to it. But there will be no smut for this event. So, please don't send in those requests.

Followers can send one entry and moots can send two entries :) However, you'd have to follow me to participate. I can accept anon requests too.

I'll mostly be writing for afab!reader and gn!reader. However, I can do 2nd person POV's

Oh, and for simplicity purposes, a character can't be asked for multiple times, and you can see my character rules.

Tropes can be chosen multiple times. :D

Limiting the fandoms to AOT, Marvel/DC, MHA, Black Clover, JJK, JJBA, Demon Slayer, KNB & Tokyo Revengers (anime only)

If you're requesting Haikyuu, preferably for writeups, please choose among the following, if possible: Hajime Iwaizumi, Asahi Azumane, Keiji Akaashi, Shinsuke Kita, Osamu Miya, Kiyoomi Sakusa

So here's how it's going to go -

What I need from you:

Your pronouns, your MBTI, a picrew of yours with 2 facts about yourself (for matchups only), and the options that you're choosing from the list below: Eg: she/her, ENFJ, Dessert, Eggs, Sugar, Cinnamon, and Tetsuro Kuroo (if you're not choosing matchups)

she/her, ENFJ, Drinks, Picrew, 2 Fun Facts about yourself and Haikyuu (if you're choosing matchups)

Choose the type of meal you're ordering: (Type of writing)

Entrée: Headcanons (10/10) (Suguru Geto - Icarus, Tooru Oikawa - Rei @quirrrky , Tobio Kageyama - Theo @miikoos ,Toge Inumaki - Ella, Satoru Gojo - Ares @oyasumiares , Rindou Haitani - Twyla @cynolover , Yuuji Itadori - Soph @izu-fi , Daichi Sawamura - Lydz @ceo-of-daichi , Manjiro “Mikey” Sano - Anne @cocoaevening , Ran Haitani - anon)

Main: Oneshot (7/7) (Levi Ackerman - Gen @arcanestage , Tengen Uzui - Dae @burntbuttermm , Atsumu Miya - Ro @beware-of-the-rogue , Nozel Silva - @chocoberries-keisuke , Ushijima Wakatoshi - Martina @miyamartina , Jean Kirstein - Lucy, Shoyo Hinata - Rexy @rexy26 )

Dessert: Drabble (8/8) (Satori Tendou - Dice @sweetsbysatori , Izana Kurokawa - Alyssa @noekoi , Tetsuro Kuroo AND Kei Tsukishima - Kurisu @hyeque , Noriaki Kakyoin - anon, Kenma Kozume - Ella @mrskenmakozume , Erwin Smith - Lija @ffsg0jo , Kotaro Bokuto - Lexi @suckerforsugawara , Fuegoleon Vermillion - Laura )

Drinks: Appearance Matchups (10/10) (Dice, Lucy @cirigiri , Emily @sanmiya , Laura @thoughtfullyrainynightmare , Vicky @saltyvanilla , Maya#1 @miwaizumi , Claire @chronic-claire-universe , Maya#2 @yanderedreaming , Gen, Joy @joyfulenthusiastwitch ) + additional one for Ro 'cause it was her birthday yesterday

Choose the main ingredient to work with on the meal: (Tropes) (not applicable if you're choosing drinks)

Rice: Friends to Lovers

Eggs: Fake relationship

Milk: Enemies to Lovers

Flour: Love triangle (you can choose two characters here btw)

Butter: Marriage of Convenience

Choose the seasoning to add onto the meal (Prompts, selected from @sleepyprompts , they're so beautiful btw) (you can choose a max of 2) (not applicable if you're choosing drinks)

Salt: "If you don't put the kitchen utensils where they go, then you're not allowed to complain about it later."

Pepper: "You can sleep in my bed but I'm not sleeping on the couch."

Cumin: "Well, this is not what I expected to happen."

Sugar: "I don't know how to fix a broken heart, but we could learn together."

Paprika: "I swear I came here to photograph the scenery, it's just that you're way more beautiful."

Cinnamon: “You said you needed me - the feeling’s mutual. You make me believe in the beautiful. You said I held your heart together, made you better. You made me fall, every day, and I’d do it all the same.”

Rosemary: “I may or may not be secretly leaving teddy bears outside your house so I can see your delighted face in the mornings.”

Oregano: “We couldn’t have picked a day when rain wasn’t predicted?”

Choose your secret ingredient from the following: (Character from anyone of the fandoms)

Haikyuu, Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Kuroko No Basket, Black Clover, Marvel/DC, Tokyo Revengers

Tagging some of my moots for this: @novaresque @megumischubbycheeks @sluttyzucchini @simpingforthisonedeer @tiddieluvr @festive @kiiraes and others whomever I've missed :D

Thank you all who’ve been there for me. As I say whenever anyone hits a milestone, here’s to many more! ♥️