#gonna start posting art on here rather than my art blog because the separate blog feels redundant

[otasuneyaoi]

got a new drawing tablet. hello everyone

[phantalgia]

Getting Back Into Hobbies: Guitar, Introduction

Before I Even Begin

This is the start of a diary section of my blog dedicated towards learning guitar. I picked up my guitar after a few weeks still feeling confused as to what I was looking at. That throat tightness and shortness of breathe has come back. I have energy that came back despite the Long COVID to try and get back to it.

Anyway, there will be other diaries dedicated towards other hobbies. Drawing will be one, not sure if I'll ever share what I've been doing. But I will share my thought process and things I'm learning on the way. I also could have made a separate blog dedicated to just these hobbies. Honestly, I don't know. Perhaps I will if it seems like I should.

I think last night just reminded me of what really matters to me. I have alternating interests that cycle, never consistent. But I can work with that and attempt to work with my physical and mental health. The thing is, I got to start. So I want to at least pick up my guitar again. I will probably talk about how I'm gonna get myself back into drawing via another blog post but let's start with guitar.

Why Guitar?

To make things short and sweet, the American Primitive scene got me interested in guitar. It's probably a pipe-dream at this point to get to that point but I'll do what I can. I have other instruments that interest me but guitar seemed like a good place to start. I can save specifics about guitar and the genres of music that inspired me for a later time.

My Progress So Far

I don't really like to think about my progress, as when I look back I see a year or so went by and I feel like I didn't go anywhere. So I know my goal is in the fingerstyle realm but there has been something bugging me about the instrument that I HAD TO KNOW. This is part of my own perfectionism/anxiety and perhaps a very mechanical way of seeing things that I inherently have.

Guitar Theory/Music Theory Has Been My Focus

I'm really hellbent on guitar theory for the past year. I've pretty much abandoned fingerstyle practice for this. Honestly, what I want to learn is how to transcribe music and play along with songs. My goals have been the following:

"Memorize" all the notes on the fretboard or at least get relative knowledge about them.

Use CAGED to learn scales and chords and then how it can be used to relate to other systems and patterns of seeing the guitar, as well as theory.

Learn 3NPS

Understand how this all connects to broader guitar theory and music theory generally to have a more holistic view of the instrument.

The THEMES here have been holism, diversification, pattern seeking, connecting, relating, and theory (guitar/music)

I have thought about other goals to add onto this either during or after:

Chord theory

Chords and scales their relations

Others I can't really think of right now....

What I've Learned So Far

I initially started out learning fingerstyle but kept trying to find new ways to learn and see the instrument. What I gravitated towards has been transcribing and guitar/music theory. I really enjoy being able to play a song that's in the right key and figure out if the chords and scales are correct. I do need to also practice actual picking patterns too of course.

What eventually lead me to CAGED, memorizing the fretboard, and patterns and systems was because of how much CAGED tickled my brain in terms of how it allowed me to see the fretboard. I was excited and fascinated by the patterns and theory more than the act of playing itself. So that's where my focus has been. I don't know if this is indicative of how my brain operates or it's just "productive procrastination". I like systems and patterns and stuff. That took away from the actual art of playing.

Books I'm Using

I don't really like YouTube videos, they don't feel structured enough for me. Even books aren't perfect in this regard. But occasionally I'll use YouTube videos as a facilitator rather than the main mode. So books have been my go to.

Memorize and Master The Fretboard In 14 Days! - Troy Nelson

The CAGED System for Guitar - James Shipway

I'm also using a couple of courses on Udemy although they're not perfect. The Troy Nelson book has probably been the most interesting and the James Shipway book introduced me to a nice practice regiment I could apply to anything I do by going around the Circle of Fourths.

The Troy Nelson book has been really good for memorizing although, the memory seems to be muscle memory or relative memory rather than mental or absolute, perhaps I can use that to my advantage by incorporating other patterns and systems. Dropping the guitar for months after my surgery I came back pretty much oblivious to what I was looking at on the fretboard. But quizzing myself I realized I did remember quite a bit if I tried hard enough. After a few weeks still, I'm rusty again with the memory even though I tried to pick the guitar back up a week or so ago.

I want to add that Nelson offers not just a system to memorize the fretboard. No, it's more than that. It goes over theory and a whole host of other things with the emphasis on the goal being memorizing the fretboard. So you get a lot more out of it. It's a really good book IF YOU TAKE YOUR TIME WITH IT. Just because it's 14 days doesn't mean you have to or should do it in 14 days. I definitely am not, whether better or worse. In fact it might be for worse as I'm always feeling like I'm not good enough or haven't memorized it well enough.

The Shipway book is great for CAGED obviously, but offers multiple ways to tackle it and see it. So it's very varied in what it does. It does require knowledge of the notes on the last 2 or 3 strings though.

My Thought Process For Learning, Better or For Worse

So I'm a perfectionist, I'm very antsy about doing things the right way. That prevents me from doing a lot or moving along and progressing as I see things in a linear fashion. I have been trying to break from this habit but it's hard.

It's hard for me to see things as a process of just absorption over time. Instead it's all linear, structure, one thing at a time. So certain strategies for learning become difficult such as diversification.

So an example is this need to know the fretboard before moving on. I never finished that Nelson book, and managed to do that on top of the Shipway one and developed a regiment of practice where I went back and forth on top of self quizzing myself on note locations. It helped make learning the fretboard easier. As I had another way of seeing the fretboard and relating note locations to the CAGED system on top of this quizzing thing.

But perhaps I was only able to have this diversification as long as I slowly added new approaches over time instead of all at once. So I did this "fretboard memorization" book first for maybe a little bit, maybe get a quarter of the way through and go "ok I think I have made some room to add the CAGED book now" so I'm able to EASE my way into the CAGED book. And then BOOM I have built my system and didn't give myself much distress.

What Now?

Use this blog to document stuff and maybe get help? Perhaps slowly I can have a much better way of learning the instrument and make progress. I don't know what to do next. Perhaps today I will just take a break. I spent a lot of time writing about this and I'm drained and anxious about this. My mind is kind of bouncing around the drawing stuff too, so it's very active up there. I think I can at least be satisfied that I picked up the guitar for a little bit and did some writing today to talk about how I feel about it.

Future entries on my guitar progress will probably be after I make progress at a given day or even time of day, my thoughts, feelings, breakthroughs, emotions. I think my main worry is the feeling of being stuck or like I'm not going anywhere with this or things just taking too long.

Any Advice?

So I ask the person reading this, anyone with experience in fingerstyle guitar or in the American Primitive guitar space want to help give me some advice? Otherwise I could just go on Reddit and ask at some point.

[rainy19days]

I guess I should make some kind of introduction if I'm doing this tumblr - fandom shit.

(It turned out longer than I initially intended and more like me venting on my life rather than an introduction so feel free to ignore this post)

One shitty day around September I started to think about the things that made me happy when I was a teenager. One of those things was reading yaoi manga (obviously). But I stopped reading yaoi (or any kind of manga to be exact), or watch anime, or draw, or write poems and stories when I met my boyfriend. Life had fucked me up and falling in love fucked me up even more but also it kind of healed me in a lot of ways, it's still confusing to me to this day. Anyway, I threw myself headfirst into this relationship leaving everything behind, I didn't need anything beside him. This love was my escape, I needed to separate myself from my past and at that time it felt freeing. Skipping 10 years later, I realized no relationship is perfect. Even this boy who I know FOR SURE that I've been chasing through fucking lifetimes to finally meet again, because he's my fucking soulmate, even he is not perfect, and well I guess we'll try to be better again in another life... But, I'm getting distracted here... What I'm trying to say is that we both kind of gave up or forgot about ourselves. We stopped being our own separate selves. And that is fucking sad.

So that one shitty day I decided to try logging into my old tumblr account. Of course I didn't remember the password but I finally managed to log in, and I immediately felt a little nauseous when I saw my original introduction as a 22 year old. I never realized it's been full 10 years. 10 long years of not doing the things that I used to enjoy so much.

It was kind of strange and unfamiliar to be on this app again, not to mention the last time I was here I was on my computer, I don't even remember if the app existed. Of all the blogs I followed only one or two keep posting. I felt out of place, so I logged out and instead I started to wonder if Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai had been completed. It was the first title that immediately came to my mind. I remember being obsessed with it and that the last chapter that was out but not translated at that time was when Yashiro left after having sex with Doumeki and talked to Ryuuzaki in the car. After some time of digging the internet (God, it's so difficult to find anything nowadays, all the manga reading sites that I used in the past are gone) I finally found out that the manga is still ongoing and without a moment of hesitation I devoured it from start to finish. All the feelings that I had for this ship came back to me with a new force. How did I live not even thinking about it for so long? Was I dead?

Not sure how I was gonna function until new release that was supposed to be at the end of November, I obviously reread Saezuru countless times. I also tried rereading other stuff and looking for something new but nothing compared to this. Then, something hit me. What was the name of this manga that I used to see some random panels of in my explore page on instagram? About some teenagers doing teenager stuff but also being kinda gay about it. I specifically remembered the panel of two boys on the bed, one with his upper body on the floor, the other on top of him. I was almost positive that there was number 19 in the title, so it didn't take too much time to find it and start reading. Yeah, the beginning is a little bit dark and I was a little confused looking at those short, a few panels long chapters and random art, but when the middle school part began I was immediately in love. I logged into tumblr again and proceeded to read as many posts analyzing this masterpiece as I could find.

I'm obsessed. I feel like a teenager again. I can't think about anything else. My mind is preoccupied with TianShan and I can't function anymore. There are so many thoughts, so many ideas in my head I'm scared it's going to explode if I don't let it out somehow. That is why I created this side blog. The only problem is that I'm an adult and I got adult stuff to do. I wish I was around when I still had some more free time on my hands. Also, I feel a little creepy for being 32 and drooling over 15 year old boys. On the other hand... isn't Old Xian about my age? Maybe it's alright then lol.

I think that's it. Just wanted to explain how I got here and warm up before posting anything else. Now I'm embarrassed thinking that someone might actually read this. At this point I can't tell if I'm going to post much of my own content or if I'll just abandon this blog when life gets in the way. Nevertheless, here's where my fandom journey begins.

[thedreadvampy]

A few notes for people coming in through my Mechanisms posts:

Morgan (who plays Ivy Alexandria) is my big brother (big as in age, he's shorter than me 😊). His pronouns are he/him but Ivy's are she/her afaik. Also APPARENTLY he reads my TUMBLR still so hi Morgan I'm Exposed

Kofi (Marius) is my partner. Further back on the blog he's also sometimes referred to as Mechsam (because my other partner's name is Sam). Sometimes he tag searches Marius or the Mechanisms on here, you have been warned. also things you say to me I may mention to him so like. Bear in mind. I'm also working with him on art for his upcoming solo albums The Wassailant and The Death Of Byron Von Raum so I HOLD FORBIDDEN MARIUS LORE which I Will Not Be Revealing.

Yes I know the person who played Nastya, but they've asked to remain relatively anonymous so I will generally refer to them as Nastya or the Artist Formerly Known as Nastya and use neutral pronouns. Because of their request for privacy I will generally steer clear of talking about them as a person except in passing.

While I consider the other Mechs friends to varying degrees, at time of writing I don't think I've seen them since DTTM and we haven't seen much of each other in the last few years. so I'm not like. a direct line to Jonny or Tim or whoever

Which being said I'm not a direct line to anyone. if you want to ask Kofi something, he's on Twitter and happy to be @ed directly.

which being said, don't be weird about it. Kofi is a performer but he's also a person and it's been discomforting for him the few times strangers have approached him asking about our relationship or referencing conversations and injokes he and I have had.

I worked with the Mechs for a good few years on official art for albums and publicity (I did paintings for Once, Ulysses and High Noon, and the poster and logo for DTTM - Bifrost official character art was @evelynhewett) and I've been into the band since 2011. However I was never on the Discord or very active in fandom beyond live events and chatting with a few people, so my knowledge of Old Fan Lore is potentially limited.

I also did Kofi's makeup and styling for DTTM, you're welcome

the mechanisms are all dorks it's weird they're like. Famous People now.

Serious note: there are some deadnames/names that have fallen out of use on this blog bc I've been on here for the whole 9 year Mechs history. It goes without saying: please be cool about this and don't run around saying SO AND SO'S NAME USED TO BE X, and if you could flag it to me if you think you've seen something you shouldn't, that would be useful, bc it's weird to have long-defunct deadnames pop up in my notifs.

If you were gonna ask, the weirdest thing about the explosion of Mechs fandom is how many of you have photos of my brother as your icon bc I'm used to him being on Tumblr (he's not any more) and I keep thinking you're him at first glance.

If you would like to know more about the Mechanisms the people rather than the Mechanisms the characters, I have compiled and anonymised some of my favourite anecdotes here and you can play a game called Which Mechanism Did This Ridiculous Thing. u can send me your guesses I will neither confirm not deny but I will enjoy it

I'm not bothered by ships but I don't engage in shipping content among crewmates because Those Are My Friends. I won't give you shipping hcs (because I don't have any) and I would prefer not to hear yours.

Nothing I say is canon. the only thing that's meaningfully canon is what's in the albums and fiction published by the band. Also my memory is crap so sometimes I do misunderstand or misremember things and it's not my story to tell.

Having said which: there is no hard and fast Mechanisms canon, according to the band, everything each member writes/says is canon to their character but not necessarily to everyone (which I suppose means in Jonny's universe there is no tube sun)

also I started the tube sun fight in 2014 by accident (I thought Tube Sun was the only obvious take given that the whole band agreed Fort Galfridian was a cylinder) and have not backed down since and now you're all my accomplices in bullying Jonny which 😘👌If you're confused about anything Tube Sun I will explain Tube Sun I have a Lot of explanatory drawings kicking around from the original discussion and more recent conversations

PLEASE do not tag posts I make about the band members out of character as “lore” or “forbidden mechanisms lore” or stuff like that. let’s be clear here. it is not lore it’s gossip. I’m telling anecdotes about my friends. on this blog we maintain a separation between the Mechanisms as characters and the Mechanisms as Actual Human People Who Exist. the space pirate crew of the aurora are fair game but the 9 people who started a band in college are actual people who I know and who are part of my life and it is weird and uncomfortable when people take the things I say about my friends and build them into like. headcanons or fan lore or basis for speculation about their lives or whatever. do what you want on your own time but please respect that it’s weird for me to have my anecdotes about Actual People and our Actual Lives treated as juicy fandom content.

Additional note about TMA because apparently I have to say this: Just because I have in the past been friends with Jonny (and there hasn't been much overlap between when we socialised with each other much and when he did TMA) DOES NOT MEAN I HAVE ANY PARTICULAR INSIGHT INTO TMA. I had nothing to do with any element of the production, nor did Morgan or Kofi, I have had a grand total of one (1) conversation with Jonny in like 2017 about the podcast which can be summed up as 'I listened to your podcast' 'cool I don't really want to talk about it'. I have no special or particular knowledge about TMA (other than that I know a handful of the actors involved through my Mechanisms social groups) and yet sometimes people hold me to the standard of some sort of authority/voice of God which is. wild. I Do Not Know Anything About The Magnus Archives Except That I Have Listened To The Podcast.

[thatblondeperson]

Hi so I'm gonna make a quick post just to go over some things in the wake of likely oncoming news.

First and foremost, I will be happy with any outcome we get for Tim unless it turns out to be queerbaiting because fuck that DC. Either go 100% for bi or gay or don't play at people's heartstrings. Commit or be burned. I myself like to headcanon Tim as bi. I think he's always been very clearly attracted to women, but that doesn't mean he can't also be attracted to men. I've shipped TimKon before and still do, just less so than my main, which brings me to the next obvious thing of note.

Yes, obviously I'm very sad that Tim and Steph broke up. More because it was mentioned in passing which I think does a disservice to their entire relationship as a whole. Where is the respect for their tenure together? I do hope we get some explanation since there was nothing going on in current continuity that predicted this and I'd rather not just have it written off as "yeah they're over, move on." I want to dig in a bit, because Tim's attitude seems like something bad happened which would have to be huge considering that they've been fine up until this point. I do not feel confident that my curiosity will be humored.

Regarding Steph, I hope she doesn't get written out. i hope she gets respect, her own stories, her own life. I want her to not just be cast aside as a nothing in Tim's life, or as cheap training wheels for this new chapter. I don't want mlm representation at the expense of misogyny because media does that a lot. Shippers on this site do this a lot. Someone can't be queer unless you effectively bury their prior relationships in a trauma filled heap of garbage. It's frustrating and I don't want her sucked into that. I believe in my heart that she would be supportive, so if Tim is gonna come out, LET ME SEE SOME DAMN SUPPORT FROM STEPH. This could change her stories too though, which I'm happy for as well. they could let her be canonly bi (not mentioning Future's End as that's BARELY Steph...) and give her some new adventures that I will be thrilled to read. But I don't want her turned into the devil of Tim's life journey. Don't make her his oppressor, don't make her the thing that held him back from happiness. She can be something that was happy for him as well, and now he has something else that makes him happy. It can be both.

My theory right now is that Tim is getting a ton of memories flooding back into his head and he's remembering old friends which is bringing up old suppressed feelings that he wasn't aware of. Bernard is in his memories and I think that's a really interesting way for them to take his. It's not making a new character or starting things out of the blue, it's very much saying HEY! We heard you. This is something people have seen in Tim for a while so maybe it was always there but he never knew it himself. Very cool move, I hope they handle it well.

My next concern is...my fic. Regardless of the outcome, gay or bi, I will post it. If he's bi, I'm not gonna have any issues, but if he's gay, I will pin a disclaimer at the top of my blog and on the fic itself. I just want to post it. I'm a slow writer, but I've been working on this piece since 2019, and I've been wanting to write it since I first got into Tim and Steph. Is it perfect? No. It's very self indulgent and angsty, but I'm proud of it, and I want to post it. With either outcome I'm afraid I'll get backlash, and I will just probably have to link them to a disclaimer. If Tim is confirmed gay, I will be heartbroken at not feeling comfortable discussing my fic with anyone. I won't be able to talk about why I've loved TimSteph for years. I won't be able to post headcanons. I won't be able to participate. I will still love them both separately, but I'll be losing the drive for my art. Those two have inspired me for years and I have list of wips and ideas that will unfortunately never be able to be published. It breaks my heart to have to abandon all of that, but it's my own fault for not writing fast enough or not feeling confident in my drawing abilities. I have been a bit selfish today in hoping that Tim is bi, and I do wholeheartedly apologize for that, but my creativity is going to halt immediately and I'll never get to do what I planned to do because I believe it would be disrespectful to continue to put out TimSteph media if Tim were gay.

More than anything, I am worried about losing friends. I won't get to have deepdives into their characters anymore with a couple people, and those deepdives have kept me going many days during quarantine. I wont get to bounce fic ideas or art ideas off of people anymore, and I'm worried that over time without TimSteph being a bit of glue, I'll lose those people. This is kind of my one big ship. I don't ship a lot of things and while it's not necessary to ship things to be happy, I like having at least one solid ship to fall back on. I don't have a backup, most of my ships are from discontinued shows and I have no desire to write or draw for them a lot of the time. I gotta shift this energy somewhere, but where? And I just do not want this lack of energy period that might come in the wake of Tim being confirmed gay, to lose me connections with the people I've gotten to know over the past couple years BECAUSE of TimSteph. I'm mourning a future that might not even come, but I can't help it. I'm afraid that I'll get left behind.

This is all very dramatic and personal, the comic today was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm being selfish for the sake of my art and my personal relationships which overall doesn't matter in lieu of potential representation!!!!!!! Like actual tangible representation YES. There's ways that I want this to go and ways that I don't, but for the record I want to make sure it's clear: If Tim is canonically confirmed as LGBT+, I will be celebrating with everyone else. I am not here to suppress representation for the sake of a fictional ship that I enjoy. Everyone should get a chance to see themselves in a story, and Tim is a big character to make that leap with. This will hopefully be a diversity win that will make a huge impact in all big name comics going forward, not just DC comics.

[amphtaminedreams]

Sitting Front Row at...(On a Budget Obvs): Lookbook no.15

Hey to anyone reading!

And welcome to my fave lookbook I’ve done in a longggg ass time! Yes, that’s partially because it involved making collages and doing the low effort work of scouring Vogue Runway for “research purposes”, but I promise, that statement wasn’t made out of COMPLETE laziness-I am super happy with it too. It’s been a good use of pre-part-lockdown-lift time in the interim between that brief period of Christmas celebrations and eateries finally fucking opening again because let’s be honest, I always knew I was gonna get distracted by oat milk vanilla lattes and veggie all day breakfasts once I could actually sit down with them at my fave local cafe. You could say I was very much operating on a self-imposed deadline.

The “what I would wear to sit front row at...[insert designer here]” TikTok/Instagram reel trend was something I wanted to get on board with ever since I first saw one and whilst the option of doing my own live action take-I really cannot bear the thought of having to edit footage of myself awkwardly attempting to sit nonchalantly in front of a camera for hours on end-was off the cards considering my complete lack of screen presence, I decided a Tumblr text post would work just as well, and if not even better in a way. Given the absence of the time limitations you face when you’re making a reel or a TikTok I thought it’d be cool to present the looks as part of a mini moodboard for each designer which adds a bit of context to each look even if you aren’t familiar with their past collections and establishes the general vibe of the brand I’m attempting to replicate. Not to sound snotty or as if I am the font of all knowledge on anything high fashion related but even with my amateur knowledge I noticed that as the video trend took off and was adopted by big name influencers, it became less about the average person putting their own personal spin on the aesthetic of the labels we can’t ordinarily afford and more about them building outfits that only vaguely resemble the general public perception of the brand around the real corresponding (and often gifted and thus inaccessible to someone who doesn’t makes thousands for a sponsored post) pieces they own SO I thought I’d take the trend back to its roots and get a bit resourceful. All that being said, in no particular order, here are the outfits I would wear to sit front row at Gucci, Vera Wang, Miu-Miu, Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Brock Collection, Alexander McQueen, Etro, Burberry aaaand Saint Laurent based on their past collections and guess what? They didn’t cost a shit tonne of money :-)

-disclaimer: will include an asterisk before any new purchases if from a high street store though to be honest, I don’t think there are any, we shall see! I do include where I got old purchases from in case anyone wants to search anything on Depop/Ebay-

1. Saint Laurent (formerly Yves Saint Laurent)

-blazer from identityparty on Depop, pleather trousers from Zara, jewellery from Dolls Kill-

I know technically abbreviating Saint Laurent to YSL doesn’t really make much sense anymore given the brand’s name change in 2012, but I’ll always think of it as that in the same way I’ll always associate it with the slightly dishevelled yet simultaneously glitzy rock n’ roll aesthetic. The thing is, whilst YSL hasn’t done anything wildly out of the box for a long time, it’s rare they put a look on the runway that I wouldn’t wear; they never end up being a fashion week standout but the Parisienne take on grunge we’ve seen Anthony Vaccarello establish as his go-to will always have a place in my heart. 

2. Alexander McQueen

-embroidered leather jacket from Ebay (originally Topshop), harness from Amazon, dress from ASOS, boots from Koi Vegan Footwear-

Alexander McQueen is a brand that is pretty much universally liked, from the historically extravagant and groundbreaking shows the man himself put together to Sarah Burton’s more toned down but still beautiful collections. Obviously I didn’t attempt to do justice to the former, so I tried my hand at putting together a look inspired by Sarah’s blend of delicate femininity and nomadic edge, and it went...okay? Like it’s definitely not my favourite of all the looks because it does give off slightly cheap copycat vibes buuut outside of the context of this lookbook it’s cute.

3. Brock Collection

-boater hat from Ebay, midi skirt from morganogle on Depop, corset top from ownmode_, heels from amybeckett1, bag from Primark-

Brock isn’t as well known a brand as most of the others in this list but I adore everything Laura Vassar Brock does and I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to try and channel the vision of one of the OG pioneers of the cottagecore vibe through my own wardrobe. I mean fr, this woman’s work as a steady provider of meadow photoshoot worthy dresses and corsets and skirts is v slept on and I will not stand for it. I will sit in front of a camera and then write a paragraph in my blog post begging anybody who reads to give LVB (an abbreviation I acknowledge is unlikely to catch on because Lisa Vanderpump anybody?) some form of acknowledgement for her services to period romance novel inspired moodboards everywhere.

4. Marc Jacobs

-coat from House of Sunny, white shirt from Retro World Camden, co-ord from Sugar Thrillz, bag from Poppy Lissiman-

If there’s one thing Marc Jacobs always does, it’s COMMITS. TO. HIS. THEME. I just KNOW he has a secret Pinterest with separate boards for every fashion era of the 20th century and he is putting those boards to good use providing us with collections that are as immersive as they are eclectic year in year out. 

5. Miu Miu

-beret from H&M, hair clips from H&M, jewellery from Primark, coat from mollyyemmaa on Depop, shirt from YesStyle, sweater vest from YesStyle, skirt from Depop, diamanté belt from Brandy Melville, shoes from Koi Vegan Footwear-

We all like to talk about Bratz dolls and Monster High dolls and Barbies as fashion inspo but can we all focus on Cabbage Patch dolls for two secs so as to acknowledge the fact that a Miu Miu collection is basically all their fits grown up? And made boujie as fuck? If I want my fix of Wes Anderson meets Scream Queens (what a combo) inspired outfits, if I want prissy and girlish but also glam, if I want to look like a bratty rich girl whose one redeeming quality is her eye for vintage clothes, I know where to look and that is the Miu Miu section of Vogue Runway. 

6. Vera Wang

-blazer as in no.1, velvet bralet from catdegaris on Depop, harness from Amazon, skirt from Ebay, knee high socks from Ebay, lace up boots from Ebay-

Vera Wang’s RTW aesthetic, a blend of the ethereal, ultra-feminine bridal designs she’s known for and British style punk rock influences, is something I feel has only become firmly established in recent years but it is everything I ever wanted and more. I always find myself trying to balance the part of me that loves everything girly and delicate and pretty and the part of me that would love to be in a biker gang and Vera’s collections are always an inspirational reminder of just how well it can be done.

7. Burberry

-coat from charity shop, suit from emmafisher3 on Depop, top from simranindia, shirt underneath from Zara, jewellery from ASOS-

Now I’m not gonna lie, I’m not the biggest fan of Burberry but there have been a few looks over the past few years I’ve really liked and as someone who owns numerous trench coats, high necks and way too much plaid, I thought it’d be an easy one to replicate. Plus, if you can count on Riccardo Tisci for nothing else you at least can rely on him giving you some layering inspo which is very much needed in a country where it literally just snowed in April and where my plans for today have just been cancelled because the iPhone weather app did a Karen Smith and didn’t predict rain for today right up until it started raining so thanks for that one British meteorologists. Your incompetence strikes again.

8. Etro

-corset from Urban Outfitters, vinyl trench coat from Topshop, boots from Ebay, black slip dress from kaoanaoleinik on Depop, fur trim afghan coat from louisemarcella-

Like with Brock Collection, Etro isn’t a hugely well known brand, but it is always one of my favourites-to add a spanner into the works of any attempts to cultivate a firm sense of personal style, I live for the ornate Bohemian look that Etro does so well just as much as I love both grungy and girly pieces, and so I really wanted to include a brand whose collections go down that route. It was a toss-up between this and Zimmerman, the flirtier, free spirit counterpart to the dark romance of Veronica Etro’s designs; her vision really shines through the most when it comes to the brand’s winter collections, imo, and given that I live in a country where winter or some weather state resembling it does seem to take up 70% of the year, I did decide on channelling her work rather than that of the equally talented Nicky and Simone Zimmermann this time round.

9. Dolce & Gabbana

-flower crown from ASOS, tiara from Amazon, earrings from YesStyle, dress from alicealderdice1 on Depop, opera gloves from Ebay, boots from Koi Vegan Footwear-

D&G is a brand I felt really conflicted about doing-I don’t include their current collections in my fashion week reviews based on the actions of designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce over the last few years because I don’t want to mitigate the collective effort of fashion critics to push them towards irrelevancy. Though people like to claim the brand has turned a corner since Lucio Di Rosa was brought on board as the manager of celebrity and VIP relations last year (they are as prolific a force on red carpet fashion as ever), we haven’t seen any real meaningful apologies or reparations made by Dolce and Gabbana themselves which once again leaves us in the all too familiar quandary of whether or not we can separate the art from the artist especially when it is far too much of a simplification to only credit the two men for their work given there’s a whole design team behind them. There are a LOT of shitty people working in fashion, the whole industry is a bit of a cesspit if we’re honest, but I don’t think that should stop us from at least being able to appreciate old collections if we make sure we aren’t engaging in any kind of promotion of current works whilst doing so. D&G are a brand of high highs and low lows, with looks that range from hideously ugly to showstoppingly beautiful in a single show-when the looks are good, they are GOOD-and their presence in the fashion world is most definitely felt whether we want it to be or not. It would just be shit to refuse to recognise the existence of some real iconic runway moments, the practical work that went into the ornate detail and opulence that helped cement D&Gs place in sartorial history, the styling that’s made goddesses and fairytale queens out of modern day women as they’ve glided down catwalks, the far more extravagant and, let’s be real, sexier version of our world D&G shows have transported us to in the past. Will I talk about D&G ever again? No, and if you Google the scandals their brand has faced over the past few years, there are more than enough reasons why, but just this once I did want to pay homage to some of the collections, the snippets of which I saw on my Tumblr dashboard back when I was about 13, that first got me into fashion.

10. Gucci

-fur coat from Topshop, clips from Zaful, glasses from Ebay, dress from gracewright246 on Depop, shirt from Boohoo, blazer from charity shop-

Now last but, if you ever read any of my fashion week reviews (the likelihood of someone actually having read one of them and reading this is incredibly, incredibly slim lol, I wouldn’t read me either) you’ll know, definitely not least, is Gucci because Alessandro Michele comes through every!! single!! time!!

The man is truly the king of quirky throwback maximalism and it hurts my heart that a lot of people seem to think of it only as a brand associated with ostentatious displays of wealth. Year after year since Michele was made creative director he has released purposeful, fully-fleshed out collections which unravel themselves to us on the runway like time capsules containing the belongings of the rich and whimsical and yes that can sometimes result in outfits which are *ahem* a bit mismatched but it doesn’t matter because through fashion he manages to take us to a vivid version of the past where people could dress as freely and lavishly as they wanted to, into the wardrobe of a person unaffected by the side-eyeing of others. You get the impression he doesn’t design so much as plays around with some kind of enchanted dress up box and takes inspiration from there and to give that impression is only a credit to his talent-to make outfits so kooky and extravagant look like they were meant to be takes a boldness and genuine love for clothes that I do tend to feel a lot of the big name designers have lost in the pursuit of profit and the necessary placating of the dying customer base that keeps that coming in. Of course I'm not for a second saying Gucci does not care about profit, but at the very least, they have on board a creative director who genuinely has fun with what they’re putting out there and wants to make a statement too and that really shows; you can rest on your laurels and sell tweed boucle jackets to rich old white women for eternity but nobody’s going to mention your brand name and the word groundbreaking in the same sentence ever again unless they’re talking about what it was a century ago, you know (mentioning no names...unless...did I hear someone say Chanel)? That feels like such a shady way to end, lol, but I’m sure said brand will survive-to be fair, they’ve been included in every other What I’d Wear to Sit Front Row At video I’ve seen so although I’m always slagging them off for doing the saaaaame thinggggg year after year, for that same reason their aesthetic is instantly recognisable and so will always be a source of imitation. There are obviously pros and cons to being a brand which constantly reinvents itself but I think it’s totally possible to do that whilst maintaining an overall mission, and Alessandro Michele’s work at Gucci demonstrates that with ease.

Anyway, if you got to here, thanks for reading! I know I’m super behind on this whole TikTok trend and I know a Tumblr post instead of a video is a bit of a cop out but all the real, physically awkward ones out there know that watching yourself back is excruciating lmao, so I hope this does the trick. After this, I’m gonna get back to the reviewing S/S21 collections post though knowing me I’ll probs take a few days to get back into that because I feel like since I left full-time education (RIP me going back in a few months) writing continuously like this for any longer than about 15 mins fries what brain cells I have left. Again, thank you for reading and if you are, sending many good vibes your way! Stay safe!

Lauren x

[bigskydreaming]

Setting up a side blog  at @bigskywritings to have a place to put all my original work, commissioned work, and commissioning guidelines for both fanfic and original work, as well as other services offered like developmental edits, etc.

That’s why I’m going through so many old files, lol. Probably gonna be a lot of posting going on over on that one today. Got a lot to go through, and not to be dramatic on main, but there’ve been enough points over the past several years where I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to actually do anything with any of this, that tbh, I’d rather just have it out there in some form that can actually be enjoyed by people rather than just sitting in my files. I’ve always been heavy on the world-building, with that usually being considered one of my strengths, that I’ve got a ton of settings that could work for any number of short stories that wouldn’t take anything away from the longer novels or projects I have going for them. 

*Shrugs* Or maybe they’ll just sit there like they do in my files, lol, its honestly not a big deal either way, its just I’d rather err on the side of potential interest these days.

Here’s a snippet set in one of my primary shared universes, something I call the Citadel ‘verse. Basic premise is its a fantasy universe where the universe itself is sentient, but more of a raw, primal sentience than having a fully formed consciousness. But it derives and evolves its own consciousness from the presence of sentient beings, after the first ones evolved on their own without design, and so it knows it wants to be more than it is, but the only way to do that is through sentient beings. So long ago, it shaped the focal point of its power and consciousness into something that would be seen as embodying power to anyone who saw it, and thus the Citadel was made. The Citadel is the universe, the universe is the Citadel. Its all the power of creation, of godhood, contained in one place....but just lacking the will and the imagination to make use of it on its own. For that it needs people, and those people are whomever end up within the walls of the Citadel, claiming the various Rooms and the forces each embody for their own, and in doing so, becoming gods.

But entropy is the natural state of all universes and the one thing the Citadel can’t abide is stagnation, so whenever a god or gods becomes bored or content with whatever they’ve done with that power, whenever they stop creating, changing, manipulating, and just sit back and rest on the fruits of what they’ve already done, the Citadel takes back its power and begins a new cycle of someone new coming across it or seeking it out, and becoming the next god or gods. Some cycles there’s only one occupant of the Citadel, sometimes two or three, sometimes entire pantheons of gods each with their own Room or Rooms, it varies. The last cycle of importance only had one god, and upon his death, the entire First World erupted into war and chaos as people vied to find the Citadel and claim its power. 

Many Rooms were claimed by people whose first acts of godhood were to attempt to seize as many more for themselves as they could, and the whole world was being torn apart and in danger of being destroyed.....so when one of their number, Seshan, finally seized control of the Throne Room, the ultimate seat of power within the Citadel, she sealed each of the other new gods in the Rooms they’d already claimed, and split the Citadel and cast its various pieces to the edges of the universe, where reality was still shapeless and unformed. The exiled gods used this to form new worlds of their own making, via the power of their individual Rooms. And thus their war has continued throughout the eons, as they continue to try and seize control of more and more Rooms and consolidate enough of the Citadel’s power that they can finally force open the doors Seshan locked behind them and challenge her for the Throne Room itself.

(Just FYI, before anyone asks if I’ve read Brandon Sanderson, the answer is yes, I’ve read some of his earlier stuff. This universe was in no way influenced by his work, as I started building this setting back in high school, lol. What I think IS likely is that we were probably both inspired by the same works. I was a big fan of the multi-world nature of The Deathgate Cycle, and I really liked the shared multi-verse setting Michael Moorcock uses for his various protagonists like Elric and Corum, and those and more are pretty clear inspirations, lol. Like....I don’t have an issue with being accused of ripping off someone else, I just want to be accused of ripping off the right people, the people I’m actually ripping off of, loooool).

This particular world, the setting for the snippet below, is one of the worlds created by Pelk the Harper, the god of music (among other things). One of his claimed Rooms is what amounts to a concert hall, and its hidden away on this world, the one he formed from it before moving on to make new worlds. A wide range of cultures and religions formed in his absence, but a common concept many of them circle back to is the idea that all of creation has two parts, existing as both a Shape and a Sound. Some have different names for this, some call it the Shape and the Voice or the Shape and the Song, or Form and Function or Substance and Speech, its defined differently in various parts of the world, but all ultimately contain the idea that there’s a physical component to existence, and a non-physical.

A small percentage of people on this world, usually called something like unbinders, have the ability to find the thread that binds the physical and non-physical aspects of a thing together, and temporarily unweave it, leaving two separated parts. The Shape, which exists unbound as an image without substance, a seeming illusion that has no mass, sound, scent, etc....and the Song, which exists unbound as the essence of a thing, but without form to concentrate it and define it. Once created, its the nature of a created thing to exist as a complete whole, and so being Unbound is an imperfect state of existence. Meaning as soon as an unbinder stops concentrating on keeping the two halves apart, they’ll snap back together and rejoin the way they’re supposed to.

Except centuries ago, people invented devices called mirrorflasks and echo-catchers.....to catch and contain these separated halves of an unbound thing, and keep them separated. Mirrorflasks are glass vials of any size, whose interiors are coated with an alchemical mixture that acts as a mirror that keeps a Shape eternally reflected and never fading, as long as the flask is corked. Echo-catchers are metallic vials whose interiors are coated with a similar mixture, that keeps a Sound or Song eternally echoing and never fading, as long as the stopper is in place. An unbinder is necessary to separate the two halves so they can be caught and contained, but after that, anyone can uncork the containers, the effect is the same no matter the person: the Shape and Sound will immediately rejoin, no matter how physically distant the mirrorflask and echo-catcher are from each other. 

That’s irrelevant, the important part is that both flask and catcher need to be opened, and so they’re fairly useless except in pairs. If you uncork a mirrorflask but not its accompanying echo-catcher, the Shape or image of the thing will be released, just as if you uncork the catcher but not the flask, its Sound will escape as a formless thing that briefly can be heard or smelled or even felt, before its lack of a Shape leads it to spread out in all directions without boundaries, diluting it to the point of non-existence then.

So a fire that’s unbound and contained, will just be the illusion of flames if just its flask is opened, while if just the echo-catcher is uncorked, there’d be the sound of flames, the sensation of heat, but it’d be there and gone in a matter of moments. Anything can be unbound and contained, physical objects like weapons or forces like fires or even storms (the trick of unbinding is seeing something as a whole thing unto itself. An unbinder who sees a storm as disparate elements will never be able to unbind the whole storm, just pieces of it like a lightning bolt. But one who sees the storm as one singular thing can unbind that whole storm and store it in a flask and catcher.) Even animals can be unbound. The only thing that can’t is human beings, but with one exception....unbinders can’t unbind anyone else, but they can unbind themselves. Separate themselves into a bodiless voice and essence as well as a substanceless image...a kind of astral projection that’s exceedingly rare as its viewed as extremely reckless and dangerous....because while in that state, even an unbinder can be trapped in a mirrorflask and echo-catcher, the same as anything else.

Anyway, that’s the scoop on the below snippet. Gonna try and be better about tagging things on the sideblog because yay organization, lol, so the tag for things Citadel related will be ‘tales of the Citadel’ and specific to this setting will be ‘The Chaos Vault.’

(That’s the title to the bigger project linked to this setting. There are legends on this world of a vault that was hidden away or lost centuries ago, but in it was stored all the greatest natural disasters and cataclysmic forces that had ever been unbound. Unbinding things like that is basically a lost art, as older civilizations could do things with unbinding that ‘modern’ inhabitants of this world can’t even dream of....as the more scientifically advanced they became, the harder it was for them to see major cumulative things like storms and other disasters as just being one single thing that could be unbound, rather than a lot of smaller, individual elements. So there’s lots of legends about something called the Chaos Vault existing somewhere. Which eventually culminates in a high fantasy heist caper FTW).

Snippet from The Chaos Vault, in which Miya kills people cuz that’s kinda her thing:

Choosing a spot a few steps from the door that separated the kitchen from the hall - close enough to get a clear view of the servers coming and going from it, far enough away for her to time things just right - Miya braced herself against the far wall, leaning as if she needed its support to keep her upright. Less than a minute later, a server emerged from the kitchen bearing a full tray of dishes, and she straightened and pivoted just as he came within reach.

Her seemingly wine-drunk stumble was nothing short of artful, if she did say so herself, and their collision tipped the man’s tray just enough that the outermost dishes cascaded to the red-tiled floor. The sounds of shattering dishware echoed loudly thanks to the vaulted ceiling overhead. The shattering of a small mirrorflask was a trivial thing in comparison, when she let it fall from her clenched fist. A minor tinkling easily lost in the chaos she’d caused, just as the sound of broken dishes was drowned out by the much louder revels taking place down the hall.

And much like the shards of the broken flask were effectively camouflaged by the mess on the floor.

“Oh, Shape and Song, I’m so clumsy!” She bubbled exaggerated apologies at the man and clung to his shoulder, keeping his attention firmly on her and away from the red and black banded firesnake that slithered rapidly away from the noise. It reached the escape offered by the ballroom at the end of the hall, and vanished into the forest of dancing legs and swirling skirts.

“Its quite alright,” he assured while attempting to be graceful about dislodging her. It most assuredly was not, if the grimace he couldn’t quite hide was anything to go by. Then again, Miya mused, anyone likely to give him grief about the matter would be concerned with far greater things in a few moments.

But only if she made sure her little friend got his Voice back before he was spotted by the revelers. With no physical mass to trip over and coloring fairly well disguised against the tile, she had some time, but not much. 

Miya heaved herself off her unknowing accomplice, and with a few more incomprehensible mutterings, she staggered toward the other end of the hall. Making use of the wall once again, both for “support” and her charade, she came to a rest near a window left open so the heated air from the kitchen wouldn’t circulate. 

She dipped her head and unclasped her right earring. Its intricate array of tiny chiming windpipes, while annoying, hid the equally tiny echo-catcher among them. With a single smooth motion deftly hidden by her hunched stance, she uncorked it and tossed both vial and earring out the window and into the canal below, glad to be rid of both.

A Song once released needs no direction to find its other half, and rejoining its Shape and binding itself back together took but an instant. It would only take a few seconds more for it to be drawn to the scented-oil she’d dabbed her target’s sleeve with when brushing up against him earlier. With that thought, Miya pushed herself off the wall and started down the hall again, this time at a much quicker pace.

3…2…1…

A single scream cut through all other noise and carried horrified silence in its wake.

There we go.

And then it was the silence that was shattered. People spilled out of the kitchen and into the hallway like so many confused and frantic ants. But ones with their eyes all drawn towards the ballroom, leaving nothing but backsides watching her. Her steps straightened and took back their usual confidence, her stride made short work of the rest of the hallway, and she vanished through a side-door at the end of it before anyone thought to look around.

She skipped as sprightly down the steps to the garden as her garments would allow - which is to say, not very - and reached behind her head to release her hair from that ridiculous style. Mussing it just enough to let it flow freely down her back, she sank deeper into the night’s shadows and allowed a smile of satisfaction to curve her lips.

Surely there was nothing wrong with taking a little pride in one’s work.

[ckret2]

So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

[graveyardlovesong]

The Problems with Netrun-mon and Why You All Need to Get Better Standards

AKA “Stop pretending that something being cute and obscure doesn’t mean you can’t get better taste”

If you think this is an attack on any specific person, I’m going to block you because I don’t give a damn. I am trying to warn people that these “cute characters” are from something gross, and that posting them is really not a good thing at all. Honestly I’m just going to block everyone that tries to start anything with me over this.

(Note that unlike most people I have standards and will not be showing some of the stuff talked about in here. I refuse to have lolicon on my blog, censored or not. If you absolutely want proof, DM me and I’ll send you the links. Also note that I’m not good at writing things like this, hence the odd format.)

(EDIT BECAUSE MULTIPLE PEOPLE HAVE ASKED ME BY NOW: No, Mayura is not from Netrun-mon. However, her most popular figure is from it)

What’s a Netrun-mon? A movie meant for the 5th anniversary of the NetRunner magazine. This is mainly known (at least amongst English fans) for being the source of what’s probably the most popular figurine of Digital Witch Mayura, as well as being an animation that has Nini-tan in it. It stars two ducks (BB Runner and Ranna) traveling a net world to save Internet characters. It’s... not as good as it sounds by any means.

What’s wrong with the movie? Oh boy, this list is long... I’m gonna break it into sections.

Chiyu:

Chiyu 12-Sai/ Chiyu Juuni-Sai/ Chiyu 12-Year-Old, or just Chiyu for short. As her name clearly states, she is meant to be twelve years old. At the start of the movie, she comes out of a computer completely naked, and then transforms. While no bits are shown, she’s still a naked kid, and the transformation sequence lingers on her butt. There are more sequences involving her that are suggestive, the first coming to mind being an intermission sort-of picture of her with Biscuit, where they are both completely naked, and the only reason you can’t see anything dirty is because of their pose. There’s also the problem of her most recent, non-Netrun-mon version- she constantly talks about very NSFW things despite her age. Her main figure, and the picture of her on the cover go out of the way to give her a panty shot on purpose.

BB Runner:

He is one of the main characters, and his gimmick is...being obsessed with young girls. Hell, one of his early lines is straight-up “Yes! Could it mean that... I’ll be surrounded by young girls?” while he’s blushing and drooling. While I cannot find an exact age for him, I’m guessing that he’s a young adult. When Biscuit (a character that looks like she’s around Chiyu’s age, if not even younger) is saved, he says “Looks like I’m one step closer to assembling my harem with her” in a suggestive tone while drooling. In the ending, he’s shown ogling some girls in school girl uniforms.

Biscuit-tan/Biscuit:

Another one of the main characters. She’s introduced via her being in a pose where she’s covered in syrup with her butt sticking out. This cannot be a case of “her butt would be shown either way due to her dress length” as her underwear is pretty detailed. One of her figures based off of her (there seem to be three separate ones) even has her in the same pose, and honestly looks even worse. This pose is also used for her card thingie, which makes her dress even shorter as well. Speaking of...

The cards:

From what I can gather, these were cards that appeared in the movie, and were planned to have a physical release, but never got said release. However, a list of the drawings for them is still up if you know where to look.

You might recognize them from this Mayura card, as they are all drawn in the same art style. There are a few cards that show panty shots of very young-looking characters, such as Biscuit and Habanero-chan. As well, Biscuit and Habanero’s cards are drawn to look pretty suggestive.

The figures:

There seem to be multiple different kinds of figures for some of the characters, most noticeably Chiyu and Biscuit. Chiyu’s alternate figure uses her pose from the cover (panty shot included), and Biscuit’s alternate figure uses her pose from when she is introduced, and honestly looks even more suggestive than in the movie.

Misc.:

-There is a scene where the junkies have their clothes completely cut-off, and they run away while barely covering themselves. While being androids, they are meant to be (and look like they are) high-school girls.

-There is another intermission sort-of picture in the movie, this time with Nini-tan. She’s also naked, and you can see her butt. Once again, she looks to be a high-school girl at most.

-There are multiple scenes where they run into Habanero as she’s on the toilet, and her figure shows it too. This is just....creepy to say the least. On one of these occasions, she slams the door in BB’s face, and when one of the characters asks him if he’s alright, he responds with “Yes, at least I got to see something good.”

-In the sequence where the Internet characters are set free, there’s multiple panty shots of young looking characters, and two of them are straight-up naked cat girls that look like they’re like five.

-There is a book that sort of goes with this called Netrun-mon Chronicles. While there are no scans up of the entire book, there are some of a few of the pages. A lot of these show panty-shots of kids and overall very suggestive drawings of young characters.

There’s very likely more, but I’m half-asleep and I’d rather die than have to rewatch this disaster yet again. Tl;dr: stop posting and reblogging content that has a bad origin full of barely-concealed lolicon. I don’t care if Nini is in it and if it’s cute, you’re all disgusting.

[starblazerm31]

Apprentice April Asks #1 Azalea/Imalia

Here are my answers to my Apprentice April Asks #1.  Thanks so very much to @leis-main-blog​ and @verysoftthings​ for sending me asks!  I honestly wasn’t expecting it.  ^^;  I tend to write books about these two, so I made a separate post.

1. The Basics.  What is your character's name?  How old are they?  How tall are they?  Skin color?  Eye color?  Hair color?  Gender identification?

Azalea Larinya Nevra.  30, female. 5'6"; medium skin tone; eyes blue with gold around the pupils; hair aqua to coral ombre; medium length

Imalia Vilyana Gabriev. 36, female. 5'10"; fair skin tone; eyes crimson; hair brown with burgundy ends; very long (art by @carowhitewolf​)

2.  Love Interest.  Who does your character love?  What attracted them to that particular LI?

Julian/Lucio (different universes).  

Julian - she loved how kind he was, and she adored his bumbling.  She was compelled to help him because his cause was right.  He couldn't be guilty, he was too much of a good man.  She really wanted to help him with his own inner demons as well because he didn't deserve to suffer, even at his own hand.  That glorious chest didn't help either, lol.

Lucio - she thought he was overall adorable.  Yeah, he was hot as hell, but it was his personality that got her heart thumping.  He really was brave and skilled, and she had a feeling that not many others had appreciated it much.  Yeah, he had done some horrendous things; but Azalea could see the actual changes happening in him and she knew that he had hope.

Asra.  She had known Asra since she was 15 and he was 8.  They had a good 20 year friendship and she knew him very well.  She fell for him when that friendship veil lifted after the events of The Arcana story and she finally really noticed how beautiful he was.  "He's smart, kind, talented, awesome...AND hot?!  THE WHOLE PACKAGE?!  I'm such an idiot..." 

3. Familiar.  Does your character have a familiar?  How did they meet?

Corva, a white raven.  She met Corva when Malak led her to an alley where Corva was lying on the ground with a broken wing.  Azalea nursed Corva back to health, and Corva refused to ever leave. (image c. Mike Yip)

Balthazaar, a phoenix.  Balthazaar was one of the phoenixes in the magical menagerie at the University of Prakra.  He was ornery, and the handlers had a hard time with him.  Imalia liked how stubborn he was and over time developed a rapport and closeness with him.  The university allowed her to claim him as her familiar and take him home. (image c. Kiss Clip Art)

4. Hobbies.  What kinds of things does your character like to do for fun?

Parquor.  She loves running around, slipping up buildings, jumping over rooftops and sliding down poles.  XD  She's a very high-energy person and parquor keeps her healthy and mentally sharp.  She also enjoys writing.  She will write on just about anything that has her attention at the moment.  Magical theory is one of her favorite subjects, but she does enjoy writing fiction.

Her hobby...is harassing bandits.  She gets perverse joy out of robbing robbers blind.  If she can find the original owners of things that were stolen...awesome.  If not...hey, this is an ancient Drakrian fertility statue!  I'm gonna put this on my shelf at home.  Oh, and leaving off-color messages in ancient languages in ruins.  "Here I sit all broken-hearted..."

5. Hidden talents.  Is there something neat that your character can do?  Tie a cherry stem into a knot with their tongue?  Say any word backwards perfectly?

Azalea is kinda like Sherlock Holmes.  She can look at a person and form their entire story in her mind.  She never uses it against someone; she just uses it to be more friendly.  But if you're annoying her and won't go away...she will scare you with what she has figured out about you.

Imalia secretly loves to sing and isn't terrible at it.  She's one of those people who will sing in the bath, and if someone mentions it, she acts like it didn't happen.

6. Magical talents.  Is there a specific type of magic that your character excels at?  Any magic they aren't so great at?  Or do they actually shy away from magic altogether?

Lightning.  She's good at conducting the currents and utilizing its explosive capabilities.  She also uses lightning as a personal shield while in battle.  She is also really good at enchanting things; like her hair.  She makes enchanted dreamcatchers that actually catch nightmares.  Both Julian and Lucio appreciate this ability.  (Lucio's dreamcatcher needs to be cleansed more often than Julian's)

Fire and Darkness.  Imalia is in tune with fire and is extremely good at using it to its fullest potential; absolute destruction.  As for the darkness...that will be explained in number 12.

7. Interaction.  How does your character typically interact with people?

She is very polite, but not overly so.  She tries to come off as someone you can actually have a conversation with.  Sometimes if she's feeling nervous, she will go into overly-polite mode, but if the vibe starts to feel calmer, she will loosen up.  She is very energetic and sometimes hyper with her friends.

She is ingratiating and very proper until you piss her off.  Then you get things like "Why don't you get a horse, move up to the mountains, and don't bother anybody?  You have the personality of a dead moth." (RIP Don Rickles)  With friends, she's very laid back and frank with what she says.

8. Romance.  What is something that your character and their LI love to do together?  How do they show affection?

Azalea x Julian - They LOVE to read together.  They have spent hours cuddled up together over a good book.  Azalea shows Julian affection with gentle touches, kisses, and koala hugs.  (she really loves how tall he is)  She also makes sure he eats and gets plenty of rest.  More than once, she has brought him dinner to his clinic while he was working late.

Azalea x Lucio - They love to spar.  They are so different in fighting style that sparring really helps them improve their skills.  Also, the prize at the end for the winner is quite nice.  ^_~  Azalea shows Lucio affection by listening to him and holding him.  She also likes to try to out kiss him.  He reaches for her hand, she spins away and plants two on his cheek instead.

Imalia and Asra love to travel the Magical Realms together.  They get into really long and in-depth conversations about the things they see and experiment with how their willpower affects the realm around them.  Imalia shows affection by constant words of praise and sneaky touches and kisses.  The more she can surprise him, the better.  She also keeps a hefty supply of Lapsang Souchong tea at her estate for him and loves giving him little trinkets and things she has found on her travels.

9. Travel.  Does your character like to travel outside of Vesuvia?  How often?  For how long?  What kinds of things do they do away from home?

Yes.  She loves to see more of the world and meet new people and see different cultures.  She will travel maybe once every year or two.  When traveling, she will typically stay away for 1-2 months.  She loves adventure, but she does love her home more.  Azalea loves to learn new types of magic or new methods of spellcasting from different cultures.  She finds that certain techniques make her own magic stronger.

Definitely.  She herself is originally from the northern hemisphere, so travel isn't something new to her.  She gets wanderlust sometimes and has to get out into the world.  She will be gone typically for six months when she decides to travel.  She has been gone for three years before.  She HAS to investigate old ruins wherever she goes.  Who knows that treasures or knowledge lay inside?  She must find out!

10. WTF.  Has anything just...weird ever happened to your character?  Something that made them stop and go "What just happened?!"

She was trying to brew a potion that would allow the drinker to become a mermaid for a short while.  She ended up spilling it on a plant before it was done.  The plant sprouted tiny muscular hairy legs and arms, stood up, walked to the window, shook its fist at her, and jumped out.  Turns out she had forgotten a key ingredient in the early stages of brewing the potion.  Mazelinka made fun of her for a solid week.

One time, she and a rival mage were about to have a battle.  Right before they were to begin, this strange fellow wearing a sentient red cape fell from the sky and landed in between them.  He promptly stood to his feet, apologized for the intrusion, and left.  (Yes...I do mean Doctor Strange fell from the sky)

11. Crime.  Has your character ever been arrested?  If so, what did they do?  Have they ever helped stop a crime?

She has never been arrested, however, she is guilty of petty larceny.  It's not something she does often...just when some jerk needs to be taught a lesson.  They always get their stuff back, but she will make sure they are thoroughly inconvenienced.  She has stopped another thief before.  The thief took the purse of an elderly individual who was trying to buy food.  Azalea scaled up to the rooftops and cut the thief off, holding him down until the guards caught up and arrested him.  She gave the money back to its owner.

Yep.  She's been arrested plenty of times.  Usually for assault and/or destruction of property.  Hey, that jerk deserved to have his carriage set on fire.  She has stopped several assassination attempts on her cousin, Queen Dreen Suval of Seiruun.  She has also stopped dark plots at the Magical University in Prakra.

12. Secrets.  What is a secret your character has?  Are they in line for the throne in a far off land?  Was there this one time at band camp...?  Are they secretly involved in an assassin's guild?

Azalea secretly writes smut.  She loves it.  And her actual hair color is gray.  The aqua-coral is an enchantment.

Imalia actually is in line for the throne of Seiruun; second in line, to be exact.  But she HATES this.  It's why she continues to live in Vesuvia rather than her home country.  Imalia is also no longer entirely human.  During an adventure that went terribly wrong, she summoned the Lord of Nightmares while inside the Magical Realms.  (The Lord of Nightmares or "Lon" is an eldritch goddess) Lon then proceeded to implant herself inside Imalia.  Lon is a being of pure darkness and nightmare, so Imalia has control over darkness when she taps into Lon's power. Through some creative wording, the contract between the two of them allows Imalia to use Lon's power and form when she needs to; however, Imalia is forever plagued by terrible nightmares that not even Azalea's dreamcatchers can stop.  The dreamcatchers just catch on fire.

13. Overcompensation.  Is there something that your character just HAS to do better than anyone else?  Or are they just that dang good without trying?  If they see someone else showing off, what is their kneejerk reaction?

She's actually quite humble.  If she sees someone showing off, she really just concerns herself with their safety.  "Please don't be careless and die, please!"  But she IS gifted.  Her magic is insanely strong, she just doesn't like to make a big deal out of it.  She gets embarrassed.

She is the best in the room, and you'd better damn well know it.  Unless she respects you.  Then she will tone it down.  But if she sees a showoff...she's got to mess with them.  She's got to show them that they aren't all that and a bag of chips.

14. Fight Club.  Is your character a good fighter?  What kind of skills do they have?

She's pretty decent.  Her attack magic is awesome, but her physical fighting mainly relies on how quick and squirmy she is.  Her punches hurt, but they don't incapacitate.

She can fight pretty damn well.  Her father made sure of it after most of her family was killed by assassins (it does sometimes really suck to be royalty).  She is a heavy hitter and her intent is to end a fight with one strike.  It doesn't always work, but hey...second, third, maybe fourth time is the charm.  Or maybe you should just blow it the hell up.

15. The Arts.  Is your character a creative type?  What kinds of things can they create?  Can they act?  Street perform?

She is.  Like mentioned earlier, she writes and makes dreamcatchers; she also gets into stage acting with Julian (when he's her LI).  She's not a solo performer though.  She has to be in a troupe or else she gets massive stage fright.

She can draw very well, almost photo-realistically.  She mainly uses this skill for documentation when she's studying something.  But every great once in a while she will draw a political cartoon making fun of some noble.  Once she drew a penis on the face of one of Lucio's statues.  He snapped back "I'd never put something that small in my mouth!"  She retorted by drawing a full body penis on a different statue.  It got misinterpreted by many townspeople as "Hey, look!  Lucio is a dick!!"

16. Goofy.  Is your character a clown?  Do they like to make people laugh?

She does.  She doesn't see herself as funny, but when she slips in something humorous into whatever she's talking about it usually takes whoever is listening by surprise.  Spit your drink kind of humor.

YES.  She has such a strange way of speaking sometimes that you can't help but snort at the things she says.  Yes, it is entirely on purpose.  She loves to crack jokes and has a self-deprecating sense of humor at times.  She will also be hilariously over-confident as well.

17. Language.  Is your character multilingual?  How many languages do they speak?  Do they have an accent?  Is it sexy?  Is it silly?  Do they have the multilingual lisp?

No.  She only speaks her native language.

Yes.  Imalia speaks ten different languages.  In her normal language, she doesn't have a multilingual lisp; but in about four of her other languages, she does.  It drives her nuts, but she just can't seem to fix it.

18. Embarrassment.  What is something really embarrassing that your character has done/said?

Azalea can't remember this, because it's part of the memories she lost.  But Imalia remembers.  One time she was going to meet one of the magisters of the Magical University of Prakra to see if she would be accepted.  She spent weeks preparing how to introduce herself.  On the day of, she mentioned how excited she was to meet Magister Asshole.  Imalia blinked and said, "It's pronounced Ah-shole."

One time she said something quite rude about Lucio in front of Azalea (when Lucio is Azalea's LI).  Azalea proceeded to tear her a new rectum, claiming that for someone so smart, she was incredibly closed-minded.

19. Memory.  Has your character gotten any of their memory back?  If so, what?  Did it change them?

No.  She insists that she doesn't want her memories back because she likes who she is now.  She gets the important information from Asra and Imalia...her parents’ and aunt's names, what they were like, and how they died.  That's all she feels that she needs. 

*looks at me*  "I'm exempt from this question.  I'm your OC, not your MC."  *walks out*

20. Family.  Talk about your character's family.  Who were they?

Her mother (Etoile) and father (Galen) were traveling merchants.  Her mother was the one with magical talent.  Her mother's sister (Sylvaine) owned the shop and taught Azalea most about magic.  When Azalea was 13, her parents were robbed and killed by bandits just outside of Vesuvia.  She lived with Sylvaine until she died of pneumonia when Azalea was 20.

Imalia's father was Vitalric Gabriev and her mother was Narsial Trevallan.  When Imalia was 14, her father's family (the Sairuun royal family) were murdered by assassins sent by a rival country.  Only Vitalric (and Narsial), Imalia, Vitalric's older brother Rhemun and his daughter Dreen survived.  Rhemun and Dreen remained in Seiruun to run the place while Vitalric and his family moved to Vesuvia as a failsafe in case there were other assassination attempts.  Vitalric started studying to become a doctor, while Narsial started grooming Imalia to wed into a noble family.  Narsial was extremely abusive.  Long story short, King Rhemun died of a hunting injury, and both of Imalia's parents died in the Red Plague.

[robogreaser]

This is a Long Time Coming...

It’s been a relatively hard task to sit down and make sense of, well, a lot of things as of late. I could chalk it up to the state of the world, but it’s been troublesome for significantly longer than that.

Long Story Short Version: I’ve been in a hell of a place, mentally, physically, and otherwise.

The proper story is a hell of a lot more involved than that and I know damned right well it’s going to take me a fair bit to explain myself and my various professional and social failings over the past... while. I’m gonna try to contain this under a read more, of course, but I apologize to mobile users if tumblr fucks that up.

Okay. That took a fair more bit of effort to figure out than I remember. Which, I suppose, is a fair enough bit of a segue into one thing that’s happened to me.

Tumblr has been deteriorating.

Whether I like to admit it or not, tumblr has been my go to social media platform since... 2011. Yeah. I’ve spent the vast majority of the decade here. I’ve seen a lot. Sure, I’ve lurked elsewhere, but I really cannot stand the interface and nature of a lot of other social media, especially the likes of twitter. Unfortunately for me, this place has been in constant decline for years now at this point. It extends well beyond the porn ban, but that’s a whole separate discussion.

I’ve lost touch with a lot of people I care about, some vanishing into the ether, some ghosting me, some just drifting into other communities or onto other sites. I’ve come to terms with the majority of this. It’s been happening for a while. It’s the very nature of digital relationships. It hurt, and I do think it’s contributed to a fair bit of stress and depression that has resulted in my... withdrawal from online spaces. It’s not a major factor, but its here, it’s present, it’s a factor in all of this.

I’ll be honest in that, well, I’ve tried to make this post several times over the past several weeks and months. It’s hard. Talking about my issues, using ‘I’ and ‘me’ so much in a post... it’s a bit jarring. But I’ll try to suck it up.

It’s been ten years (god I fucking hate time) since I’ve graduated high school. Yeah. It’s a fair thing to say that, on reflection, that’s incredibly jarring. The vast majority of that time has been... relatively unstable. I spent a fair few years working on my book and my publishing journey, now all but scrubbed clean from this blog (more on that later) and... well... Trying to be an adult. I’ve applied to, gotten accepted, and had to withdrawn from my dream school twice in this time. I’ve had a fair few jobs, nothing worthy of my resume, and lost all of them in one form or another, whether being fired for retaliating to my shitty work conditions, or, well, quitting for the sake of my own health during this pandemic. There has been a lot of family troubles. I’ve been through a lot of... ‘varied’ living situations, some horrendous, some just stressful, some, like now, actually really good compared to the others. And for the past few years in particular, it’s been constantly one thing after another, nonstop.

In short, progress is slow, but it’s happening. I don’t care to delve into a lot of these sorts of personal details lest this get to a ridiculous length, but that’s the short of the stuff I’d rather gloss over.

I’ve been on a health... Let’s call it a journey. I’ve been on a health journey. Over the past few years I’ve gone through the long processes of being diagnosed with ADHD, discussing my options regarding my depression and anxiety, and finally getting myself on a medication regimen that works. And then, because the health care system is a joke, I was without insurance. I had been off my medication, an absolute lifesaver and release of burden on my garbage tier brain, for eighteen months. Until last week. I think it’s fair to say, between my revolving door of living situations, employment, and then being un-medicated in a continually more stressful environment... That this is the main reason I’ve been absent. I’ve had no focus. There were weeks where I had no drive to do anything outside of routine that others depended on. I had not only gone back to how I was before situating my mental health, but in some ways, found a worse state.

Finances have been slowly eating away at me. I had been working a part time retail job until November, which made decent enough money, but not nearly for the amount of work and responsibility I was handling. I got fired. I found work with one of the big, corporate postal services. The pay was phenomenal, but it began to actively destroy my health, mainly physically, but also mentally, especially considering I was working a graveyard shift. Eventually when I began having prolonged health issues there, and then a whole lot of the symptoms of covid-19, on top of them turning me down for an entry-level position outside of the package handling, I had to quit. This was shortly after the lockdowns, in early April, and I refuse to look back despite people like my parents insisting on me trying to get work there again. Sure, the pay was phenomenal compared to anything else I had until then, but I cant continue to sacrifice my health. As of now, I’m unemployed, and... well...

I’m working on my commission queue. It’s art. It’s stuff I’ve owed friends (luckily those who are incredibly understanding and good to me) for an embarrassing amount of time, even before moving to and from Oklahoma at the end of 2016. I’m terrified of being the person who is known for taking commissioners’ money and running.

I know, I’m not good at giving updates. I’m not good at a consistent work schedule. I’ve had numerous tech failings over the past few years that constantly slow my roll on any progress I have made. Hell, I’ve had files corrupt despite being two thirds of the way complete when transferring from one computer to another. I’ve lost my cable for my external hard drive. I’ve had my tablet go to hell and back multiple times. But I am working. I am trying. I am sitting down as often as I can between looking for work and managing family nonsense to try and get my workload tidied up.

Which... brings me to my next point. And one I’m rather... ashamed about.

I have used trello, infrequently, since taking on a large load of commissions, and despite not being faithfully updating it and checking back on it, and using it to it’s fullest potential, I had kept, at the minimum, a list of all the work I did owe people using it. Well. Dumbass me attempted to use a mobile app. In short, in an effort to try and make myself tech literate and allow me easier access to my queue, I ended up deleting it. Somehow.

I’ve gone through and slowly flagged all my paypal notices and various emails concerning my commissions. I’m putting it together again. I’m trying. Granted, I am damned sure I am going to be missing someone, somewhere, somehow. I know it. I’ve got a shit brain, and despite my need for organization and minimalism, I don’t put it past me to have missed something along the way.

If you have commissioned me, please, do not hesitate to reach out and contact me regarding your commission. I owe every last one of you a massive apology for my continued failure to produce what you have paid for.

More likely than not, I have a wip already started somewhere, and if not, I have a slew of reference and thumbnails already compiled together somewhere on my computers. I am not ignoring this work. It’s been painfully, embarrassingly slow. It’s been one obstacle after another. But I have every intention of doing this work, and, likely, upgrading the quality of the finished piece past what my commissioners have paid for simply because I do feel bad about the wait time.

I have been inexcusably unprofessional. I know this and I am working as best I can with the time and resources I have to correct it.

In a similar vein, as I mentioned before, I have slowly been cleaning up my rather unimpressive publishing attempts. I’ve gone through and cleaned this blog recently, deleting reference to my work by name and the process of trying to get myself published. I may have missed a few posts here and there, but for the most part I would like a clean slate in regards to building a social media platform surrounding my written work. And this is the part where... I am probably going to be the most upfront and honest with you reading this than I have been publicly before.

I am not ashamed of who I’ve been online these past ten years or so, but it reflects only a sliver of my personality, a sliver of who I am as a whole. I catered to a very specific subset of who I am in pursuit of finding acceptance in communities much larger than myself. I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself in that time. I figured out what’s important to me, my health, my sexuality, my relationships and my long term goals. I’ve found a very important group of friends. I’ve found people who understand and empathize with a lot of the things I have been through, experience, and am at my core.

But the fact of the matter is, this hypersexual, sci-fi aesthetic-oriented, very open person is only a singular facet. And it is not nearly enough of a reflection of who I am, or who I want to be as a professional, public adult. Will I always be gay for robots? Yes. Will I, when time permits and creative energies are present, continue to make nsfw art? Absolutely. Will I always have a toe dipped in erotic literature and the like? Most likely.

But a lot of me, a lot of my emotion and strife and feelings regarding most things in the world, are completely separate from this. It’s separate from me liking porn on twitter or having a homestuck roleplay blog. It’s separate from who I am in real life, with my boyfriend or with my family or with my work. And I have been dwelling on this, sincerely, for a while. I need to allocate more energy into my life. The separate life offline and online too, where I am pursuing an actual professional career, because, at the end of the day, I want to be an author. I want to have a career telling stories. And, in my time online, I’ve found a lot of skeletons in authors’ closets, the kind that really put mine to shame, and the kind that will always be a footnote to their work. You know the ones.

I want my creative work to speak for itself. I want people to be able to enjoy what I do without a specter, without my time and energy having to explain to a future audience why it is I had explicit thoughts about x,y, and z. I want to be able to write a book, write many books, and have people enjoy them without a footnote about me, a person with a sexual life and a history exploring it through years of depression and isolation, clouding it. It’s not fair to my work. It’s not fair to a future reader. It’s not fair to me.

I’ve got several social media accounts made and slowly coming to life that I need to spend more time with as I try and pursue this new, second leg of a very long journey into publishing. I’m not going to link those here, now or in the future. It’s likely a few people I know and trust have access to them. But I am, effectively starting over from scratch trying to build a platform as a writer. And it’s hard. Juggling that, alongside all of the things in the world today, alongside family and my relationships, alongside my commission queue? It bears down on me and if I didn’t have experience handling more than one thing at a time, I might trip up more frequently. Hell, I forget to post and use those new accounts regularly.

But I’m trying.

I’m not moving away from my current social circles or hobbies or anything like that. I’m not abandoning any fandom or friends or communities. But I am going to be trying to balance myself more thoughtfully moving forward, past just commissions, past just writing.

I’m here. I’m moving forward, slowly but surely, and I am making an effort to improve.

[ghostboy-gamedev]

Learn Log #7 - Cozy Cabin (Interior)

This week I continued with my Cozy Cabin, now focusing on the interior. I learned how to make wooden and tile floors, walls and various objects of furniture. I’m pretty happy with how this week went but I still have room to improve.

Flooring

I felt like a wooden floor would be most appropriate for a wood cabin. I started by making a brick-like texture, as described in my last Learn Log. The difference between wooden planks and bricks is that, while bricks will be roughly the same size and fit into a consistent pattern, wooden planks are more random and varying. Therefore, within the first stage of my tile, I outlined a couple of wooden boards with different endpoints.

The tile still looks very consistent and too much like brickwork, however. To fix this up, I removed some parts of the wooden boards to show chips, defects, and age within the planks.

This turned out pretty well, so I decided to finish the tile by adding details to the boards. I did this by adding darker areas to the board, making it appear more natural. I also added darker crevasses within the cracks and adding a few highlights on the left edges of the board.

The image above is a repeated 32x32 of the finished tile, and I think it came out looking pretty good. There was a good chance that this tile would become quite repetitive, but I was hoping this could be covered up by furniture within the room. I then decided to move onto the tile flooring.

I had made a tile pattern within last week’s Learn Log by merely using a simple grid for a pathway. I decided to use the same grid technique but with slightly different dimensions of each grid cell. Below is the simple grid pattern I started with.

I added shading to the image, highlighting the top-left corner of the tiles and shading the bottom-right corner.

Lastly, I added detail to the tiles by simply adding variation within the previous shading I applied to the tile along with some scattered darker pixels. Below is a 64x64 repeating image of the finished tile and I really like how it turned out. I feel like there was a lot of depth in it and it seems like it will tile well without getting too repetitive.

I then organised these tiles into the desired shape of my cabin, starting off the piece for this week.

Walls

This was the room once I’d added the walls. I’m starting with this because the walls were very complicated to add. I first started with a flat wall (shown below) to begin as a basis for the room. I copied this image around the tops of the room and started constructing the walls from there.

I added shading at the bottom of the wall as I did with the cliff face last week to emphasis verticality and added a skirting board to establish a partition between the walls and floor. I then added a narrow side wall and joined these sides with a somewhat curved corner piece. Having a flat transition, fitting the right-angled nature of the corner, made a bizarre corner that would only suit one of the two walls (either the top or side wall). To solve this problem, I decided to create curved corners. The curved corners still feel weird but it’s an ok mid-ground, I think.

Finally, I added in a door and a hole in the bottom wall (acting as an interactable exit) to make the room seem a little more realistic. Most rooms have entries and exits after all.

Furniture

There will be a lot of furniture added to the scene so I can’t go over each bit piece by piece, but I will go over two pieces of furniture for this piece: a chair and a bookcase.

As always, the first step is outlining the shape of the chair. It looks a bit strange, but I basically split the chair into three parts starting with an oval seat and then building a chair back and legs of this base. Chairs are a bit of a strange shape, so it will look better with colour and shading.

I then added some base colours and shading to the chair, and it begun to look a bit more chair-like.

Finally, I added some small extra details to flesh out the chair further, such as a pattern in the back of the chair and embroidery within the cushion. I think it looks good to go, next up is the bookcase.

The bookcase basically follows the same fundamental process as the chair. Here I outlined the shelves of my bookshelf and left a large area up the top to later highlight depth. I didn’t do this for the chair as the back of a chair is relatively thin compared to the top of a bookcase.

Next was the basic shading and colours. It now looked like a fairly lovely bookcase. I used a highlight to outline the top edge rather than the black outline. I only wanted to use the black lines to separate different parts of an item (for, example the chair seat and legs) and to highlight the potential collision box of the sprite (to highlight the image has a physical presence). I think this worked pretty well and it looks nice too.

Finally, I added books and wood markings (similar to the house exterior from last week) for some extra detail. I was pretty satisfied with both of these items of furniture, so I got working on the rest (using the same foundational processes) and added it all into the scene.

The scene completely changed with the addition of furniture. More life and colour was brought into the scene, really fleshing out the whole environment. It also distracted from the repetition of the floor tiles (the green rug in particular assisted with this).

Conclusion

Overall, I’m pleased with how this piece turned out. I think I need to develop more consistency in the detailing between tiles and objects such as furniture. Perhaps a larger tile size might have allowed me to add more detail into the furnishings. I’m also unsure how I feel about the walls in the scene; whether I should have added the corner curves and detail to the side walls. I’m also gonna try a few more techniques with furnishings in the future. They seem a little flat, and I’m not sure if that edge highlight was the right move. Despite these issues, I’m actually pretty happy with this week’s piece. It kind of feels like an actual environment that I could picture within a game.

In next week’s Learn Log, I’ll be adding some characters into this scene, filling it with actual (fake) life. Looking forward to it!

My learning and this blog post wouldn’t have been made possible without these fantastic resources. Go check them out if you wanna learn some stuff about pixel art!

How to Pixel Art Old Wooden Floor Boards by TutsByKai

Tutorial: Pixel Art Wood Floor Texture by Michel Mohr

Tutorial: Pixel Art Tile Floor by Michel Mohr

Pixel Art 101: Furniture by Pixel Pete

Bookshelf Pixel Art Tutorial by TutsByKai

Pixel Art Table Tutorial by TutsByKai

[vaingloriosa]

If it's not too much of a bother can I ask what s/e//lfships-in-sp/a//nish did? I remember seeing her art around when I was into DBH for a bit. (Emphasis on was)

first off, congrats on getting off that dbh juice! very proud of you for leaving that part of your life behind. love that for u!!

i’ve actually been meaning to make a post like this. in order to fully answer your question, there has to be a little bit of vulnerability on my part. it’s something that has taken me awhile to process and heal (i’ve only talked to a handful of people about this) from but i am at a point where i think i am ready to talk about it. please note that i am only answering this for y’all to know the truth; this is not me trying to stir the pot and cause any drama. if you still follow her, i am not the all-knowing moral authority to tell you to stop following her but what i will say is to hear me out and reconsider who you give your support to.

there might be some things that i am missing because i don’t like remembering any of this but i will try my best. i will not be using any names in order to protect these people’s identities, even if some of these people did hurt me. again, i am not here to callout anybody, i am not here to say “officer! this person right here!” because this is not what this is all about. i am only here to give you my experience with SSIS (her username for short). also, i do not have screenshots, i deleted the server, and there is no evidence to support me. i didn’t want to keep such baggage around and wanted to just move on...and i hope you can trust me with what i am about to say.

SSIS and i were like two peas in a pod. when we found one another in the dbh fandom, i looked up to her. i thought she was one of the greatest artists in dbh and i felt so intimated by her. soon, i think she was the one contacted me and from there, it was like an instant click. we got to talking and it felt like we were friends for a long time. slowly, in private messages, SSIS and i were often vulnerable with one another. i talked about the things i have to face as a latina woman, and she talked about her own struggles. i thought i was being open and honest with another woman of color but it wasn’t until way later that i found out that she is a white woman. that is something to keep in mind as we go further down the line.

there were some things that she said about other people that felt like she was trying to persuade me from keeping my distance from. i will not name names of these blogs but they were also fairly popular in the dbh fandom and it felt strange the way she got so angry and heated over people i called my friends. sadly, i was influenced by her comments because i started to internalize her words and became weary of these people since she said that they, too, were secretly talking about her and had their own clique. this is something that has taken a lot to unlearn because words can hold a lot of weight. this really should’ve been my first warning, a red flag, but i kept being friends with SSIS because, well, i trusted her and i considered her a good friend of mine. i wanted to defend her honor, i wanted to stick up for her as she did for me. i thought she was on my side as i was hers.

then i created a server for my mutuals and followers.

things were going great, everyone was getting along, we were all making inside jokes, and just supporting one another. slowly, there were events that started to unfold that truly revealed the true nature of who SSIS is as a person. it started out with when there started to be an inner circle within my server. it was SSIS, three other dbh content creators, and another reader of mine. now, i loved that they slowly started to become really good friends with another. however, it slowly started to feel like they were becoming like an exclusive club where SSIS became the head person of the group. i had my suspicions confirmed when i saw that they created their own personal server which, again, it’s okay to make your own server when you have your own friends. but the thing is...they felt withdrawn from the rest of the group and me. it’s like they tried to distance themselves away from me and me only. now there’s another part that i really...don’t like talking about. this part...it’s something that i never fully...grasped. whenever i think about it, it makes me sick to my stomach. the one person that was a reader of mine is a minor and these four adults friended this minor. again, as long as you are respectful with one another, it’s okay to have a friendship. however, this friendship became a bit inappropriate when they were sharing NSFW content with the minor in the server. they even encouraged such behavior from them....and i remember having a talk with my mods of the server saying how that was super fucking odd and kind of disgusting. i didn’t even wanna know what was going in in that private server. this should’ve been the second red flag, but i gave the benefit of the doubt.

however, this wasn’t the penultimate thing.

you know by now that i am a vocal person when it comes to activism. i do not shy away from hot topics because i want people to be informed and be comfortable in the uncomfortable. some of my mutuals often asked me what i meant when i said “all white people” or when i said that white people are responsible for this and that and i was okay with answering these questions because, hey, you’re not gonna learn if you don’t ask questions. at first, i was willing to teach my white friends about some of the things that contribute to the oppression of people of color and what their white privilege meant but what i should’ve learned sooner rather than later was that i can’t always assume the role of teacher. 

and there are some things that must come from a white person in order for them to recognize their privilege, realize their behavior, and come up with ways to do better, and put action towards that.

sometimes that’s better said than done. some of the white friends that i had in that server were kinda agitated by all my “accusations” of all white people but i kept reminding them that when i say that, i only mean this type or that type...but if the shoe fit? i could tell that SSIS was just not understanding any of that...but she never really said that. but here i thought she was a woman of color because she said that her specific group of spaniards faced oppression. i do want to say that it is partially my part for not putting two and two together that spaniards are europeans and are not considered people of color, no matter the region. however, the way she spoke of her struggles made me want to believe that she was. it’s a stupid reason, i will say that. even when typing this, i still can’t believe i thought she was a woman of color...and i want to try to make excuses but really, i should’ve been more informed. but the more i think about it, SSIS should’ve been the one to correct me, stop me, and tell me that she isn’t a woman of color, that she is european. you don’t lie about one’s identity like that just because you think being called a woman of color gets you some sort of clout. people think that being “hispanic” also covers spainards and i fell into that trap. SSIS shouldn’t have kept up the lie like that. that should’ve been the third red flag but i wanted to attribute that to them learning and growing.

the catalyst seemed to be when notre dame burned. an empty church building, mind you. the way that her and the rest of her group were viciously attacking my friends of the server for making jokes about it, forcing one to apologize for doing nothing wrong, and quite literally foaming at the mouth for some silly symbol of colonization by europeans...i was kind of taken aback by it. i remember being in the car with my sister and her boyfriend and reading the messages out loud and they started to laugh because c’mon! it was ridiculous that they were defending this building! this should’ve been my fourth red flag, but once again, i believe people can change.

it became quiet after that, real quiet. i know some of my mods decided to take a break from the server after such a heated argument that was initiated by SSIS. slowly but surely, the server started to pick up again and for that i was grateful that this didn’t completely severe any trust. though i did notice the absence of SSIS and her little friend group. it became more blatantly obvious that these people have separated themselves from us. the private conversation that i still held with SSIS slowed down to more sporadic messages. however, i still supported her and her art. i donated money to her, i even offered to help her buy a website for her art and merch. the support from those friends dwindled down but i continued to support their content no matter what. i wanted to let them know that even though we may have some differences, we can overcome these challenges and support one another.

gosh, sorry, i started...getting teary eyed from remembering this because it comes to show that internet friends...you don’t always truly know them.

i’m not 100% sure when this started to occur, whether it was before the big fight or afterwards but i slowly started to realize that these people were not my friends. as y’all are aware, i started to have a steady disinterest in dbh and often was vocal about that. given that, everyone is allowed to criticize media so my opinions are my own. i was trying to fight for a better community for the dbh fandom, i was trying to fight for my voice and my fellow stans of color to have their voices and stories heard. i believe that SSIS was on my side because she, too, agreed with me for wanting a better fandom where fans of color are taken seriously and are recognized. i thought she was willing to fight for me because she, too, was disappointed that nothing ever come about my rants and awareness. however, that wasn’t the same tune she and her friends were singing. when i brought up racism in fandom and transformative fanworks, i was met by such a response by one white author (who has her own story with me, but i am not sure if i should talk about but she apparently tried to get in contact with me to apologize but as of today, i still haven’t heard from her) who said that it was up to me to create the content that i want to see...and that is a very racist thing to say. the responsibility shouldn’t fall on me or on the shoulders of my fellow people of color. i could go off on a tangent but...lemme bring this back to what i wanted to say.

when that decline started to happen, i was becoming more and more aware that two people from this inner circle, SSIS and that other white author, were making vague tweets about me. they, too, also started to make vague posts about me as well. they started talking so...horribly about me and the things i felt so passionately about...that these things hurt like hell. fuck, crying again...um, i don’t remember specific wordings but i do remember that they were specifically about me...and they were posting that while i was still following them. that’s what hurt the most...because they knew i was going to read these tweets and these posts...so i talked it over with my mods, cried a bit about it, and they held my hand while i unfollowed them quietly from twitter, tumblr, and instagram. even despite it all, i was so....it was hard to unfollow them. i don’t know why...they hurt me so why did i feel like i was betraying them? i unfollowed everyone from that friend group except for the reader of mine because i gave him the benefit of the doubt, i wanted to believe that he was merely influenced by them to do things he was against, and i hoped that he, too, would recognize what they were doing was wrong. 

then it happened. all hell broke lose.

it started with the white author who posted a public message on the general server channel that i would’ve rather have had her sent that personally to me than just having this out in the open for everyone to see. since this isn’t about her, i will save my commentary and just say that it was kinda hurtful to read. 

then, i guess that white author gave the confidence of SSIS who dropped a very long and personal message on the server that was one of the most vile, vicious, and racist things i have ever read in my entire life. she began the message with “now that you unfollowed me on twitter, i can really tell you what’s on my mind” and typed up one of the most ugliest and most wicked messages...i wish i knew what it all said but i remember reading it....and crying. it broke my heart knowing that this woman, someone i considered my friend, someone i trusted, someone that i shared a lot of vulnerable shit with, someone that i thought i looked up to...someone i cared for....harbored such hatred towards me. slowly i began to see that she kept up a front with me, kept those feelings at bay, and waited until i slipped or something so that she had an excuse to air out what she thought was “dirty laundry”. to this day, it’s one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to me.

after that happened, i deleted the server as it served as a reminder of what transpired. i apologized to everyone on my server though there wasn’t anything on my part to apologize for but i felt like i had to. all of last year was one of the most difficult years i have ever been through because it made me second guess myself, my abilities, and i became incredibly weary of white women (even more so than before). i lost any motivation to write, i lost any creative spark i had before that time, and just...completely became a shell of myself. it sounds so dramatic and silly of me...but it felt like i was in some sort of weird sad episode where i couldn’t control my impulses. i deleted a lot of my work, i deleted a lot of my content from my blog, even content i was proud of. even outside of the internet, i was...withdrawn. i tried to throw myself into working but i didn’t even have that drive to do that. i wanted to get over it so badly because i didn’t want to give up like that. i became withdrawn from others, i closed myself from speaking up about what happened because it hurt to open up a huge wound like that. plus, i couldn’t really talk about this with my family or my other friends because it’s like “hey, this one internet friend that i had turned out to be a racist snake” like it sounds wild to be upset about that. it felt silly to me because my gosh, this is the internet! nothing is real! everything is so...trivial. but what happened with SSIS last year is something that i haven’t 100% healed from but i have come a long way since april of 2019 and i am proud of myself despite how it doesn’t feel like i have healed much. also i don’t remember most of 2019 if we are being honest. however, just a few days ago i got a notification from a tweet she had tagged me in but instead of panicking, i kinda laughed? about it? rolled my eyes? that’s growth, babeyy!

if you are a follower of hers, you do what you want with this information. like i said before, i am not going to tell you what to do. you are the one to ultimately make that decision. whether you decide to send screenshots to her of this ask, whether you choose to defend her honor in my inbox, call me a liar, block her, idc but whatever you do, please don’t send her hate anons or hateful asks...i do not endorse that behavior whatsoever. thank y’all for hearing me out

[thegardengrows-infrozenrain]

apparently this blog’s still a thing woah

‘Kay, so... a LOT of thing about me have changed. Like, a lot. Mostly opinions, so I’ll get to those first.

Opinions:

1. I no longer support TBaTF. Mostly because the comic sucks now (it started sucking after that page where they reference the Eddsworld fanfiction Dear Starboy), but also because, well... I’ve gotten a bit more mature and thought about all the stuff people have talked about regarding the creators, and... yeah.

2. I don’t like Sanders Sides that much anymore. It’s just one of those things where I was like “oh cool! i’ll check it out!” then I was like “neat! i love this series! i check every new video!” and then I was like “meh." and kinda forgot about it. A lot of blogs should probably expect unfollows related to this.

3. Homestuck. Not sure whether I like it or not, either way I’m mostly here for the shitposts.

4. Eddsworld in general. I really only like things that are pre-legacy, because, well... Legacy!Eddsworld just isn’t that well done. I can probably point out more errors there than I can in Classic!Eddsworld. Red Leader/Future!Tord is a cool concept, though, and I hope someone can make a version that A. doesn’t connect very much to Legacy's Tord as that depiction of him was... not good, and B. isn’t anything like TBaTF/the entire rest of the fanbase’s version. (I get it. Tord is an edgelord. It’s not cute or quirky anymore. It’s just annoying.).

5. My Little Pony. Okay, this one’s coming right out of the blue, since I haven’t really talked about it on here. I kinda like G4 but I kinda don’t, my favourite is probably always gonna be G3, though.

6. Moomin. ‘Nother one that I didn’t talk about much on my blog. Before this year, I had no clue what this was. I’d see art of it sometimes, go “what is that hippo-lookin’ thing from?”, and keep scrolling. Aaaand... now I’m a total sucker for this show. It’s so cute! :3

7. I think astrology is pretty neat. There’s probably gonna be a few reblogs popping up here and there related to it.

...Okay. I think that's all the stuff that’s changed, opinion-wise, anyways.

Now, uh... more personal stuff!

Me:

1. I now identify as male. Probably gonna get a few ter"f”-y blogs telling me about how much of a “pOoR mIsGuIdEd BuTcH lEsBiAn” I am, but giving a fuck about that is not something I have the capability to do. I’ll just block you.

2. I am also gay. If anyone says I’m just “a StRaIgHt WoMaN fEtIsHiZiNg GaY mEn”, I’ll block you. Because if you seriously believe that, fuck you.

3. I’m gonna go by “Lance” now, which means if anyone decides to post about Emmasworld should definitely separate me and the main character. For satan’s sake, she’s a demon catgirl with wings now.

4. I’m fine with being called ‘they’ as well, and might have some days where I'm more comfortable with that than with ‘he’. If I am having one of those sorts of days, I’ll probably go as "Starboy”. No, I have no idea why this is a thing. Yes, I’m just going to accept it rather than wondering why this is a thing.

Okay, and last thing, it’s related to this blog...

The other thing:

This blog is probably not going to have much Emmasworld stuff. I already have welcometocartoonia.blogspot.com for that. (shamelessly mentioning the blog I have on a completely different website, ‘cause why not?)

And... that’s about it.

I guess I’ll post again here soon... maybe.

[daggcrisms]

Rules for mobile users

[[here’s a google doc for the updated list of rules, applicable for all my blogs]]

anything under this cut is from my outdated rules.

[rules updated: 07/28/2019]

–STUFF YOU SHOULD DO–

• No godmodding. No sending (implied or explicit) homophobic/transphobic/bigoted messages to me or my character either.

• Please don’t over-pester me for replies. I promise I’ll get to them. Feel free to drop me a reminder after at least a week of no replies, though. In return, I usually give you a week too, unless otherwise specified in your own rules, until I remind you if it’s your turn to reply (or more often, I chicken out and trust that you’ll eventually respond/want to drop it and end up never bringing up that particular thread ever again). You’re always free to start multiple threads with me, that is greatly encouraged because I love having lots of threads with people.

• If you start getting bored with the roleplay, feel free to drop it and/or end it. We can always start up another thread in the future.

• However, please let me know if you want to drop a roleplay thread! It can give me major anxiety when I’m waiting for a response that’s never going to come, and I wonder if I did something wrong and assume that’s why you’re not replying anymore :’) I’m not forcing you to let me know if you want to drop a thread, you can drop it without saying anything too. But I personally really appreciate being told about that sort of thing.

• Don’t reblog a thread you’re not part of. This should go without being said, of course. Personals will be hardblocked immediately, rp blogs will receive a warning.

• If you can trim your threads, please do! It’s fine if you can’t, though, because I will most likely trim the thread for you. If you don’t trim threads with other people, however, I’ll be less likely to follow you since I don’t like scrolling through long posts.

• Please don’t claim any of my art as your own. If you post it somewhere, the least you can do is credit me by at least including a link to my blog or something. Bonus points if you ask me first before reposting my art, but I understand if you’re anxious because so am I :’)

• If any of your art is featured on my blog, as an icon or something and you don’t want me to use your art, please tell me!!! Message me privately or contact me in some way and please let me know that you want your art taken down. As a fellow artist, I understand wanting other people to not use your art (although I am personally fine with it as long as proper credit is given,) but if you’re more strict about it than I am, that’s totally okay too! Just let me know, and I’ll stop using your art immediately, will delete all icons I have of your art, as well as delete every single instance of your art being used on this blog.

• That being said, if you’re following me, please let me know if I’m doing something that’s making you uncomfortable or is breaking one of your rules!! I do read the rules pages of everyone, but I’m human and forget things, and I’m not a mind reader either ;~; I care, so please tell me if I’m ever doing anything bad

• You can reply to any of my open starters at any time! Even if they’re a year old! Even if other people have already replied to it! My open starters are open for a reason, and we don’t have to be mutuals for you to reply to them either :’)

—

–STUFF YOU SHOULD KEEP IN MIND–

• I am of age to do smut, but Kris is a minor so that is a no for this blog! There will occasionally be sex jokes, but that’s about it. No explicit smut in this house.

• This blog is not a spoiler-free one. I will not tag roleplays with spoilers, but anything else will be tagged with Deltarune Spoilers

• I’m alright with roleplaying nsfw in general, minus smut. Gore, violence, and generally dark roleplays are cool with me. I love angsty things just as much as I love fluff ;w; Speaking of gore, you’re more than welcome to fight/harm/injure my muse to any extent! You don’t even have to ask! Come in and fight this gremlin tbh! If you want to do a rp where they die, however, please dm me first.

• I prefer not to roleplay with personals, unless you are someone I know from school or something like that. Personals in general are allowed to follow me too!  However! Personals are not allowed to reblog roleplays, in character posts, or ooc posts especially if I say in the tags that I’m going to delete the post later. Only things that are tagged with my “online reblogs” or “musings” or "art tag" tags are okay to reblog. Headcanon posts are not okay to reblog unless I say otherwise.

• Like spamming is okay! I very occasionally lose roleplays, and getting lots of notes from likes are never a factor for that, for me personally. If I lose a roleplay, it’s mostly just because I forgot, so that’s really a “me” thing. I’m usually very good at keeping track of who I’m roleplaying with and how many ongoing threads I have, and I reply pretty consistently, so just remind me if I haven’t responded after five or more days (as stated in one of the above rules)! And I like it when people like my posts! It lets me know that you like my blog and the stuff I post, and it makes me happy :’)

• If you are an OC, I will assume our muses have never met unless you plan ahead with me what their relationship is like.

• That being said, characters who have already interacted in canon will know each other. Unless the roleplay takes place in a different point of time and we are staging their first meeting, of course.

• Kris will be pretty meta sometimes. They are aware of who Players are (they're definitely not fond of them other than the few good players they've met), and they know they live in the game world, and are aware of alternate universes and things of that nature.

• Kris is nonbinary on this blog. Although, I don’t care if you refer to them as a boy or a girl (Kris personally will care if you refer to them as a girl though, because they usually Don’t like that). Their order of preference for pronouns is they/he/she, although they will definitely like you more if you use exclusively they/them pronouns. I respect all headcanons about Kris’ gender, and same goes for any Frisks and Charas. If you play a KFC kid, gendered or not, I will use the pronouns they want used, and I do hope that you use they/them pronouns for my Kris. I personally will default to using they/them for other Krises, Frisks, and Charas unless specified on your blog. No discourse about this, please. 

• Doubles are welcome to interact too! Of course they are, considering the Kris Squad. I’m also cool with interacting with and following multiple blogs who portray the same character other than Krises as well!

• This blog will not have mains. However, the only “main” they really have is the Berdly over at @berdbrainx. That Berdly originates in their timeline in the “main verse.” Other than him, they will not have any specific version of a muse that they’ll talk about in threads, unless the thread is specifically about that one muse for some reason. For Deltarune non-Kris blogs, they will typically be the Kris in your universe unless you already have a Kris main or you talk about it with me beforehand. Doubles of Kris will be treated as alternates. In their “main verse” in spontaneous roleplays/asks/replies to in-character posts (online roleplays), they reside in their own separate timeline. It’s a classic timeline that doesn’t have any other muses in it, so they don’t have a specific blog’s Susie, or Noelle, or other character that is from their own timeline. So they will treat your muse as if they are an alternate of their own timeline’s counterpart of them.

• I’m pretty lenient with short replies. Don’t feel pressured to match the length if my reply gets long! Multi-para (usually 2-5 paragraphs) is my go-to for roleplays, so I usually do long replies by default.

• Adding onto that, I honestly don’t mind one-liners. Of course, in crack/online roleplays it’s fine but I’m okay with it in serious roleplays too. I prefer it if you don’t give me one-liners, but hey, as long as I’m still having fun with the roleplay anyway, it’s cool with me! I understand not being able to think of anything to write, so just as long as you don’t give me one or two words as your reply like ‘He smiled.’ or ’*laughs*’, I’ll be cool with it. Put at least some effort even if you’re only gonna give me one sentence, otherwise I’ll drop the rp once it becomes a repeat offense.

• I will not change the formatting of my roleplays to fit yours. I’m comfortable with sticking to only paragraph style roleplays, thank you very much. Feel free to keep formatting your own posts though, because I think formatting looks really cool! I just don’t want to format my posts, however. I will not go all out with formatting my own posts with all that cool ‘small text’, and indents, and bolding and all that. The most I ever do with my formatting is italics for emphasis on certain words, and using icons.

• I tend to move roleplays from asks onto its own post. If I send you an ask meme and you answer it, I'll respond by making a new post, tagging you, and linking to your reply. Until formatting on asks are fixed, I will answer any asks sent to me in a new text post rather than asks.

• I accept any sort of asks! If they aren’t answered after a while, either I don’t know how to answer it or I might be drawing it out and I am a very slow artist- Sorry-

• Feel free to tag me in any of those tagging memes! I don’t mind and I think they’re pretty fun to do! ^^

• Adding onto the above rule, you’re more than welcome to send me those chain asks like “send this to 10 roleplayers you think are really great!” because it’s super duper nice that you would think to send one to me! But don’t expect me to send them to other people, because I won’t :’) my anxiety won’t let me, so I’m sorry-

• If I follow you, that means I’ve already read all of your rules. I might not send the codephrase, though, because most of the time I get very anxious over having to send things like that. I’m very sorry–! But if I follow you then chances are that I have definitely read them before following- If you choose not to trust me on this, I understand.

• I generally follow every rp blog that follows me, but I might not follow some people back for a few reasons. Some might be for the type of content you post on your blog, but I am still non-selective! I will roleplay with anyone who asks (unless you wanna rp gross things or you’re a mean person,,,, like your muse can be as much of a dick as you want, that’s no problem but don’t be gross to other people as yourself) and if I do roleplay with you, I will be more likely to follow you as well.

• Adding onto the above rule, however, please respect that it’s nothing personal if I ever unfollow you either! It’s not that I hate you or anything, but if you haven’t followed me back and you’re a private rp blog, or if we’re mutuals but never really roleplay, our muses just don’t click, you spam stuff that I don’t want to see on my dash, or you’ve become inactive for years and/or don’t interact with me anymore, there’s nothing wrong with that! We can still be friends but I prefer to have all the people I follow be potential rp partners. Feel free to follow me on my personal, @briightskies, if you still wanna keep in touch but not rp :’)

—

–ABOUT THIS BLOG–

• This blog is OC, multiverse, and crossover friendly! I love OCs and have many of my own tbh, you’re all more than welcome to come rp with me!!

• I’ll also rp with fandoms I’m not into either, as long as you have a good about section for your character, which also indicates how you portray them (any headcanons or AUs you have that aren’t canon, or whether you portray them as canonly as possible, unless they’re OCs of course since a regular about page is a given) and I’ll probably look up other things about that fandom in its wiki if I don’t know what something is anyway.

• This blog is multiship! So any relationships my muse is involved in, are in different timelines unless specified. Poly relationships aren’t bad though, just saying. I ship pretty much anything unless it’s incest or if they’re children paired with someone a lot older. Selfcest is fine too. Because Kris is a minor, they won’t really get intimate with their partners, but romantic stuff is a-okay.

• I also only ship with chemistry. My muses need to get to know yours first, so don’t get disappointed if they only see you as a friend/acquaintance at first and has no intention of pursuing a romantic relationship with your muse. Give my muse reasons to care about your muse and let the feelings develop naturally, and don’t ever force your muse on mine. Unless it’s to mess with them, or whatever other reason. Unrequited stuff is absolutely okay with me too!

• I will tag common triggers and such, but don’t be afraid to tell me if you have something you want me to tag! I promise I’ll remember to tag it from then on. I do not have any known triggers myself. Any trigger warning tags will be written as “tw; ____” with a semi-colon, not a colon. If I feel like something should be tagged as a trigger but I’m not sure what to tag it exactly, I’ll just tag it as “tw” as a sort of catch-all tag.

|     Requested tagged triggers:

tw; gore

tw; contagious diseases

tw; self harm

tw; child abuse

tw; spiders

tw; blood

tw; homestuck

tw; fnaf

tw; drugs

tw; smoking

tw; alcohol

tw; needles

• I will only talk through the IM system ooc. If you send me a message through there, I will not respond with ooc brackets ((these things)) because I will automatically assume you know that you’re talking to the mun. I do not do roleplays on there.

-

Thank you for reading this really long list of rules! It means a lot if you did!

There’s no password, because I’m also anxious with those for other people’s blogs as I said above. But if you would like to interact with me, you can shoot me an ask directed to my muse, or like one of my starter call posts at any time (also feel free to re-like those posts so I can make another starter for you at any time!) for me to write you a starter!

[berdbrainx]

Rules for mobile users

[[here’s a google doc for the updated list of rules, applicable for all my blogs]]

anything under this cut is from my outdated rules.

[rules updated: 08/14/2019]

–STUFF YOU SHOULD DO–

• No godmodding. No sending (implied or explicit) homophobic/transphobic/bigoted messages to me or my character either.

• Please don’t over-pester me for replies. I promise I’ll get to them. Feel free to drop me a reminder after at least a week of no replies, though. In return, I usually give you a week too, unless otherwise specified in your own rules, until I remind you if it’s your turn to reply (or more often, I chicken out and trust that you’ll eventually respond/want to drop it and end up never bringing up that particular thread ever again). You’re always free to start multiple threads with me, that is greatly encouraged because I love having lots of threads with people.

• If you start getting bored with the roleplay, feel free to drop it and/or end it. We can always start up another thread in the future.

• However, please let me know if you want to drop a roleplay thread! It can give me major anxiety when I’m waiting for a response that’s never going to come, and I wonder if I did something wrong and assume that’s why you’re not replying anymore :’) I’m not forcing you to let me know if you want to drop a thread, you can drop it without saying anything too. But I personally really appreciate being told about that sort of thing.

• Don’t reblog a thread you’re not part of. This should go without being said, of course. Personals will be hardblocked immediately, rp blogs will receive a warning.

• If you can trim your threads, please do! It's fine if you can't, though, because I will most likely trim the thread for you. If you don't trim threads with other people, however, I'll be less likely to follow you since I don't like scrolling through long posts.

• Please don’t claim any of my art as your own. If you post it somewhere, the least you can do is credit me by at least including a link to my blog or something. Bonus points if you ask me first before reposting my art, but I understand if you’re anxious because so am I :’)

• If any of your art is featured on my blog, as an icon or something and you don’t want me to use your art, please tell me!!! Message me privately or contact me in some way and please let me know that you want your art taken down. As a fellow artist, I understand wanting other people to not use your art (although I am personally fine with it as long as proper credit is given,) but if you’re more strict about it than I am, that’s totally okay too! Just let me know, and I’ll stop using your art immediately, will delete all icons I have of your art, as well as delete every single instance of your art being used on this blog.

• That being said, if you’re following me, please let me know if I’m doing something that’s making you uncomfortable or is breaking one of your rules!! I do read the rules pages of everyone, but I’m human and forget things, and I’m not a mind reader either ;~; I care, so please tell me if I’m ever doing anything bad

• You can reply to any of my open starters at any time! Even if they’re a year old! Even if other people have already replied to it! My open starters are open for a reason, and we don’t have to be mutuals for you to reply to them either :’)

—

–STUFF YOU SHOULD KEEP IN MIND–

• I am of age to do smut, but Berdly is a minor so that is a no for this blog! There will occasionally be sex jokes, but that’s about it. No explicit smut in this house.

• This blog is not a spoiler-free one. I will not tag roleplays with spoilers, but anything else will be tagged with Deltarune Spoilers

• I’m alright with roleplaying nsfw in general, minus smut. Gore, violence, and generally dark roleplays are cool with me. I love angsty things just as much as I love fluff ;w; Speaking of gore, you’re more than welcome to fight/harm/injure my muse to any extent! You don’t even have to ask! Come in and fuckin deck Berdly in the face, I approve greatly!! If you want to do a rp where he dies, however, please dm me first.

• I prefer not to roleplay with personals, unless you are someone I know from school or something like that. Personals in general are allowed to follow me too!  However! Personals are not allowed to reblog roleplays, in character posts, or ooc posts especially if I say in the tags that I'm going to delete the post later. Only things that are tagged with my "musings" or "art tag" tags are okay to reblog. Headcanon posts are not okay to reblog unless I say otherwise.

• Like spamming is okay! I very occasionally lose roleplays, and getting lots of notes from likes are never a factor for that, for me personally. If I lose a roleplay, it’s mostly just because I forgot, so that’s really a “me” thing. I’m usually very good at keeping track of who I’m roleplaying with and how many ongoing threads I have, and I reply pretty consistently, so just remind me if I haven’t responded after five or more days (as stated in one of the above rules)! And I like it when people like my posts! It lets me know that you like my blog and the stuff I post, and it makes me happy :’)

• If you are an OC, I will assume our muses have never met unless you plan ahead with me what their relationship is like.

• That being said, characters who have already interacted in canon will know each other. Unless the roleplay takes place in a different point of time and we are staging their first meeting, of course.

• Doubles are welcome to interact too! Although currently I don’t know of much other Berdly roleplay blogs lmao. I’m also cool with interacting with and following multiple blogs who portray the same character! Such as the Kris squad.

• This blog will not have mains. Other than the Kris at @daggcrisms. That Kris originates in his timeline in the "main verse". Excluding them, he will not have any specific version of a muse that he’ll talk about in threads, unless the thread is specifically about that one muse for some reason. For Deltarune blogs, he will typically be the Berdly in your muse’s timeline in serious roleplays, unless your muse is part of an AU/UA/canon-divergent universe, or there are things about your muse’s backstory that would contradict Berdly being in your timeline naturally (like Berdly being dead or something), or you talk about it with me beforehand. In his “main verse” in spontaneous roleplays/asks/replies to in-character posts, he resides in his own separate timeline. It’s a classic timeline that doesn’t have any other muses in it, so he doesn’t have a specific blog’s Susie, or Noelle, that is from his own timeline. Only Sponte/Kris from the blog mentioned above.

• I’m pretty lenient with short replies. Don’t feel pressured to match the length if my reply gets long! Multi-para (usually 2-5 paragraphs) is my go-to for roleplays, so I usually do long replies by default.

• Adding onto that, I honestly don’t mind one-liners. Of course, in crack/online roleplays it's fine but I'm okay with it in serious roleplays too. I prefer it if you don’t give me one-liners, but hey, as long as I’m still having fun with the roleplay anyway, it’s cool with me! I understand not being able to think of anything to write, so just as long as you don’t give me one or two words as your reply like ‘He smiled.’ or ’*laughs*’, I’ll be cool with it. Put at least some effort even if you’re only gonna give me one sentence, otherwise I’ll drop the rp once it becomes a repeat offense.

• I will not change the formatting of my roleplays to fit yours. I’m comfortable with sticking to only paragraph style roleplays, thank you very much. Feel free to keep formatting your own posts though, because I think formatting looks really cool! I just don’t want to format my posts, however. I will not go all out with formatting my own posts with all that cool ‘small text’, and indents, and bolding and all that. The most I ever do with my formatting is italics for emphasis on certain words, and using icons.

• I tend to move roleplays from asks onto its own post. If I send you an ask meme and you answer it, I'll respond by making a new post, tagging you, and linking to your reply. Until formatting on asks are fixed, I will answer any asks sent to me in a new text post rather than asks.

• I accept any sort of asks! If they aren’t answered after a while, either I don’t know how to answer it or I might be drawing it out and I am a very slow artist- Sorry-

• Feel free to tag me in any of those tagging memes! I don’t mind and I think they’re pretty fun to do! ^^

• Adding onto the above rule, you’re more than welcome to send me those chain asks like “send this to 10 roleplayers you think are really great!” because it’s super duper nice that you would think to send one to me! But don’t expect me to send them to other people, because I won’t :’) my anxiety won’t let me, so I’m sorry-

• If I follow you, that means I’ve already read all of your rules. I might not send the codephrase, though, because most of the time I get very anxious over having to send things like that. I’m very sorry–! But if I follow you then chances are that I have definitely read them before following- If you choose not to trust me on this, I understand.

• I generally follow every rp blog that follows me, but I might not follow some people back for a few reasons. Some might be for the type of content you post on your blog, but I am still non-selective! I will roleplay with anyone who asks (unless you wanna rp gross things or you’re a mean person,,,, like your muse can be as much of a dick as you want, that’s no problem but don’t be gross to other people as yourself) and if I do roleplay with you, I will be more likely to follow you as well.

• Adding onto the above rule, however, please respect that it’s nothing personal if I ever unfollow you either! It’s not that I hate you or anything, but if you haven’t followed me back and you’re a private rp blog, or if we’re mutuals but never really roleplay, our muses just don’t click, you spam stuff that I don’t want to see on my dash, or you’ve become inactive for years and/or don’t interact with me anymore, there’s nothing wrong with that! We can still be friends but I prefer to have all the people I follow be potential rp partners. Feel free to follow me on my personal, Briightskies, if you still wanna keep in touch but not rp :’)

—

–ABOUT THIS BLOG–

• This blog is OC, multiverse, and crossover friendly! I love OCs and have many of my own tbh, you’re all more than welcome to come rp with me!!

• I’ll also rp with fandoms I’m not into either, as long as you have a good about section for your character, which also indicates how you portray them (any headcanons or AUs you have that aren’t canon, or whether you portray them as canonly as possible, unless they’re OCs of course since a regular about page is a given) and I’ll probably look up other things about that fandom in its wiki if I don’t know what something is anyway.

• This blog is multiship! So any relationships my muse is involved in, are in different timelines unless specified. Poly relationships aren’t bad though, just saying. I ship pretty much anything unless it’s incest or if they’re children paired with someone a lot older. Selfcest is fine too (though I really don’t know how to feel about Berdly x Berdly,,,,,, I mean, if you want to try it with me, go for it lol!). Because Berdly is a minor, he won’t really get intimate with his partners, but romantic stuff is a-okay.

• I also only ship with chemistry. My muses need to get to know yours first, so don’t get disappointed if he only sees you as a friend/acquaintance at first and has no intention of pursuing a romantic relationship with your muse. Give my muse reasons to care about your muse and let the feelings develop naturally, and don’t ever force your muse on mine. Unless it’s to mess with him, or whatever other reason. Unrequited stuff is absolutely okay with me too!

• I will tag common triggers and such, but don’t be afraid to tell me if you have something you want me to tag! I promise I’ll remember to tag it from then on. I do not have any known triggers myself. Any trigger warning tags will be written as “tw; ____” with a semi-colon, not a colon.

|     Requested tagged triggers:

tw; gore

tw; spiders

tw; insects

tw; blood

tw; homestuck

tw; smoking

tw; drugs

tw; alcohol

tw; needles

tw; oceans

tw; cutting

duplicates // (if anyone else has a specific way they want something tagged that's different from my tagging style, please let me know)

tw; zombies

tw; bats

tw; maggots

tw; sibling death

tw; sibling peril

• I will only talk through the IM system ooc. If you send me a message through there, I will not respond with ooc brackets ((these things)) because I will automatically assume you know that you’re talking to the mun. I do not do roleplays on there.

-

Thank you for reading this really long list of rules! It means a lot if you did!

There’s no password, because I’m also anxious with those for other people’s blogs as I said above. But if you would like to interact with me, you can shoot me an ask directed to my muse, or like one of my starter call posts at any time (also feel free to re-like those posts so I can make another starter for you at any time!) for me to write you a starter!