#it'll just be tedious as heck

[veinsfullofstars]

I'm so mad about the CSP color settings thing, guys. Why is it on perpetual by default if it desaturates everything?? I just went through and fixed the saved flats for all of my current prompt pieces for next week and kirbtober, and did a test post on here to see if there's any external influence on it (there doesn't seem to be), and my Nova, the difference!! is insane!! Stars, all my precious colors... years of them... unknowingly being eaten by my own art program T-T Guess I know what I'm doing start of November... ugh...

[alphards-asterism]

TED talk/rant under the cut

tl;dr locking the butterfly outfit behind Master doesn't make any sense and is discouraging

I'm still moderately salty about the butterfly body being locked behind Master Rank. Like sure maybe they wanted incentive for people to reach Master, or they wanted it to be a 10* pattern, or whatever. But Master is a *heck of a grind* and even with my current hack of spending about 45 min a day getting 70k followers it'll still take me 8 or 9 days to get to a million. Diamond might have been more reasonable.

Imagine if an MMO ran a seasonal event quest, requiring only Lv 15 and some very easy prerequisites to participate, but the purely cosmetic gear that's rewarded requires Lv 90 to equip. Which means newbies would have to clear six expansions worth of content to even be able to use the gear as an outfit. That's right, they qualified for the quest but have to reach endgame to even be able to use their reward. This only accomplishes a few things, a) feeling excluded and disappointed, and b) they'll probably have forgotten about the gear or found something cooler by the time they get to 90, or c) they don't even get through the entire game, put it down, and move on.

And an MMO is at least stuffed to the gills with other content to do. FD doesn't have a whole lot going for it at the moment. Unless a player decides to commit to the most efficient but also most boring method of grinding up followers, they face quite the hurdle getting to Master through natural play.

I'm not trying to bash on FD but locking the main body of the butterfly outfit behind a fairly tedious grind is just baffling. Especially when the other pieces aren't even that high rarity either. Just let the butterfly outfit have the unique distinction of being a popular lower rarity item, there's nothing wrong with that.

[mera-mann-kehne-laga]

To my adorablest idiot,

//पर ये सब सोचना

दिल को यूँ खोलना

सब कुछ कह कर ही

सब को बताना ज़रूरी है क्या?//

I've always wanted to tell you so so so many things but...........i just.....couldn't. Maybe Because idk how to entangle this tangled mess of thoughts in my head and say them out loud as words that make any sense. Because i feel like it won't ever make sense to you. It has never to anyone before.

//अक्सर तुमसे मिलकर मुझको

घर सा लगता है।

फिर क्यों दिल ही दिल में 

कोई डर सा लगता है।//

Or maybe bcz I'm an insecure coward. And I'm afraid of being perceived. By my own home.  I thought I should let it all out thoda toh bcz it was getting too much to hold in. I know you'll call me stupid. You'll tell me to stop thinking itna. But trust me i want to stop too. I so desperately want to. But i just.......can't.

i sometimes wish you could read my thoughts. So that you'd know how much i love you and how much you and everything you do and say mean to me and how I'm always resisting the urge to kiss you lol. But then i think no. He won't be able to withstand all the darkness in there. He'd get lost. It'd be too much for him. It'll consume him and he'll never be the same. Keep it to yourself please. 

But on the other hand i still so desperately want you to reach to those dark cracks of my mind and heart. And plant the seeds of your love and reassurance. And water them with your firmness. And make them bloom into the most beautiful flowers, being the absolute sunshine you are, sunshine. 

I know. It's all tedious work. But news flash. Loving someone like me is never easy. You ask me if i'm alright atleast 20 times a day, don't you? Or when I'm staring at you and you say What? And what is my answer everytime? Nothing. 

I want to say everything. But everything sounds like a lot doesn't it? And then how'd i explain it to you if you ask kya everything?

Girls like me are not easy to love. We feel everything so very deeply that it consumes us whole at times. We need constant reminding that you love us. Because even the tiniest slightest change in your behaviour would make us think we did something wrong.

i often feel excluded from everything but it's mostly my fault because i distance myself because i think i'm annoying. Then i feel lonely. And soon enough the whole world comes crashing down. And this wave of sadness makes it feel like all friends are annoying, everything is loud, and I'm contemplating why I even exist. This restlessness took so much away from me, sometimes I wish it would have taken my life as well.

I'm jealous of those who can function like a normal human being. They don't have anxiety holding them back from everything, they don't struggle to get out of bed or have to put on an act that everything is fine when its not. They don't struggle to hold friendships and relationships... they don't feel sad for no fucking reason everyday. Those that can manage pdhai and work towards their dreams, the ones who have self esteem and see the beauty in themselves. Those that know what its like to feel safe and secure, not insecure and fearful of it all.

I wonder how do you tell people? How do you tell them that you're exhausted even though you slept for 8 hours? How do you tell them that you need a break from talking and smiling and simply being near them? How do you tell them that you too are human and can make mistakes and can be a failure sometimes? Bc when the heck will this burn out leave me

i'm trying not to make it sound like a plea or an apology, but it should be one right?

//तू होगा ज़रा पागल 

तूने मुझको है चुना।//

Aaj when i said that thing about jumping off that flyover on my way back home or when i told you I'll be going away after 11th ends, tujhe kuch sunai nahi diya hoga but my heart shattered into a thousand little pieces. To see how disheartened and concerned and tensed you were. I then went to the washroom and broke down thoda because the feeling of being an unlovable burden worsened all of a sudden. I was also kinda overwhelmed by how much you cared and the guilt of concerning you itna. Because never in my wildest dreams did I imagine ki someone'd ever love me aise. But then i came back and saw your stupid pyaara face and everything felt good again. I'm sorry. For concerning you like that.

Aur sun. Though I may seem at times somewhat distant from you, through the gray mist of my own thoughts and storms, I am never far. my thoughts always circle around you ok? I love you hehe

Yours,

Nishu.

[infplusultra]

Monday Meditations: Death Note (2006)

Another anime classic I'm really late to the party for, but this one we can chalk up to stubbornness. You know how there's that classic that everyone talks about, but only in vague expressions and never really says anything particularly exciting? And you're left feeling outside and cynical about people's impressions of the classic, so you kind of dig your heels in and refuse to get swept up in it? That was my impression of Death Note for a long time. It was just too mainstream, too fuzzy of a concept for me. I wouldn't get into it.

And honestly, I kind of didn't.

But let me back up. Initial impressions. Death Note is the edgy concept anime. Or wants to be. Is treated that way. According to my unenlightened early impressions. Essentially an anime that follows a self-righteous serial killer with a magical notebook that really gives him a perfect way to kill. But I just didn't see the redeeming value, the hopeful or cathartic element to the anime's concept.

I did however, find myself wanting to understand it's cultural impact better, and at least a specific one of its fans. So I end up watching it. Start to finish. In about 3 weeks. I guess that means it's okay... 😊

As a quick summary, the eponymous Death Note is a tool used by the Shinigami to kill humans, collecting their souls and using the cut-short lifespans to extend their generally pretty boring lives. For Ryuk the Shinigami, however, he drops his on earth on purpose so he can see what kind of mischief it'll cause in the hands of a human--who can use it to kill anyone whose name they write in the book. It's found by Light Yagami, a milquetoast high-school over-achiever in Tokyo who it seems was just waiting for this sort of opportunity.

Seriously, no hesitation.

He starts using the notebook to kill those he views as evil, convicted killers and such, and pretty soon he's made a big enough splash to have a rumor mill swirling about his identity and intentions. He gets a serial killer name, Kira, and almost immediately a cult of personality, followed by a concerted effort by the police (led by Light's own father) and a mysterious international investigator.

If that sounds like a lot of ground to cover in dramatic realism, this is established by the third or fourth episode of the anime. Seriously, Death Note has a really problem with squandering it's most interesting points and then dwelling on really tedious stuff. There is no screen time dedicated to Light's transformation from cardboard cutout to tireless serial killer. No attention paid to how he's able to kill with zero doubt that any of these people are innocent-but-convicted of terrible crimes.

Maybe that's deliberate, and it's supposed to be a commentary on Japan's ridiculously prosecutorial justice system. But social commentary needs more... commentary. Death Note devotes its screen time to...

Which is basically Light and L going through the whole iocane powder thing from Princess Bride.

Or Captain Amazing and Casanova Frankenstein from Mystery Men, if you'd prefer.

The point is, that Death Note spends so much time playing cat and mouse that very little action actually happens, but there's a whole fuckton of talking about elaborate plots that play out very quickly once the pieces get moving. And I'd settle for the downtime--heck, I actually watched that entirely wordless episode of Flowers of Evil and was riveted--but I wanted the talky bits to give us more of the edges of the concept. To tease things out thoughtfully. Instead, there's a lot of interesting questions that never get addressed. Such as:

1) How fast can Light right down a specific name, realistically? He has to research them, get their full name and see their face, and then write down the name, time, and manner of death. I'd say from starting to research to execution, it'd have to take him the bare minimum of a minute to line up such a kill--plus commercial breaks, ads, over-use of the word alleged in news articles, and so on. Even with the excuse of him hacking his dad's computer, it's a big investment of time that can't be overcome. How can he kill enough people to gain the world's attention in the early phases? Japan had like 70,000 people in prison when this anime was made--it would take him 12 hours of solid writing just to knock off one percent of Japan's prison population at the time.

2) If Light needs to have a face at the time of writing, and L figures this out, why doesn't he play with that? What if Light has an incorrect face in mind? Fake nose, wig, colored contacts? What's the limit of that feature? What about scars, effects of age, or just shitty photography--like that terrible OJ Simpson photo.

3) Speaking of OJ, do celebrity criminals try making direct appeals to Kira at some point? What's the point of a lawyer if the real judge is Kira--do they ask the court for permission to plead their case to him?

4) Which name is valid: birth names, nicknames, changed names? Seems like there's a lot of wiggle room there that the show just avoids. They even expressly have characters spell out their names to each other in conversation so Kira has the ammunition needed to kill. Seriously, is that such a common thing in Japan?

5) The cult of Kira. There's a small bit where the show hints that Light will eventually start killing off people for more and more petty reasons. Light is upset when an underling implies he'll kill off lazy people, but only so far as "It's too early." And in the second half of the show there is a mention that people threaten to report each other to Kira for made up offenses, trying to weaponize the temperamental god, as it were. We see how quickly Kira moves from killing criminals to killing people he finds inconvenient--he starts killing off police long before they 'corner' him. But the idea is never touched upon again.

There's a lot of narrative space to explore here, but instead the show never goes deeper with it's own concept past the first episode. And that's a shame. There's a lot to be said about ego, perception, the moral insulation we can feel when we can commit atrocity through a simple action like writing in a notebook. Or typing at a keyboard. Not to mention the show squanders some of it's most interesting characters--Naomi Misora, the bitter but determined ex-fiance of one of Kira's first victims in law enforcement.

Rem and Misa, a second Shinigami and her notebook's owner, have an initial arc that is a lot more interesting at first. There's the sort of fallen angel element of Shinigami falling in love with a mortal (why tho) and the consequences of that. But upon meeting Light Misa immediately gives over her agency entirely to Light in the form of giving him the second notebook. And then Rem's agency is likewise lost when we find out she loves Misa and therefore Light's control over Misa effectively extends to Rem.

Heck, we don't even get to see Ryuk so much as eat another apple in the second half of the show. WTF?

The plotting of the show is good. Considering the nature of conflict is so cerebral, the series does a great job of making each episode end on meaningful cliff-hangers that make you think the plot will blow up in the next episode. And when Light and his law enforcement antagonists actually get emotionally invested in the plot and stop smirking so damn much, things really hit hard.

The animation is solid, but really nothing special for the mid-00s in anime. The plot really doesn't require much of the animation, show the art style is sort of stuck with the talking-heads trope for at least 95% of the series, and then they try to compensate by making silly things--like scribbling on a page--look impossibly impressive. But for the most part the animation is just serviceable.

I watched the English dub, because I needed to get work done and pop-out's still don't support subtitles (why?!). The voice acting was good, with the main characters' VA all doing great work. Light's emotional tantrums were particularly well-done and made his moments of well-earned defeat really satisfying. But, there's a seriously moe character in the form of Misa Amane, and I just can't. Okay, she's not actually moe. She's just terrible. At first she seems kuudere, then yandere, then moe, and then the show seriously just forgot she was a key player in the plot altogether. Seriously, Misa stinks. Super annoying and pointless.

All in all, it's a good watch--one I'd rate at 3.5 or 4 stars out of 5. I'm really glad to have finally gotten around to seeing it, and I'd love to explore the ideas in a more dramatically-grounded setup. But I feel like the show was so eager to be a cat-and-mouse story it forgot that there was a whole lot more nuance to the story than the plot they chose.

[frogsandfries]

🙄😒 Not again

Once again, I've realized I forgot a step.

Well, I guess not really forgot?

No. Let's face it, I forgot. I didn't even place speech bubbles 🤦‍♀️

Yeah, I got to like, frame twenty-five and stopped placing speech bubbles, let alone placing text or even planning for it. There's at least one frame I'm going to have to edit before turning into a pattern so that I have room for text. There is at least one frame I'll have to edit for compositional reasons.

So now I'm torn: Do I stop trying to update the pixel art, and immediately go back and add in speech bubbles and text? Or do I finish updating the completed frames to pixel art? Maybe I should do a little of both.

I also tried to begin to hold myself to my new agreement to make 1.5 new frames for every frame that I post/queue. So that means I owe myself three more frames from what I got this evening. Actually, I don't remember if I inked this page....

I should sit down with my linework first thing tomorrow. Then I'll be caught up on that. I won't finish my pixel art updates tomorrow, but I sure can start. And once I'm done with that, then I'll go back and add lettering before carrying on with creating new pixel art.

I wish I stood even a remote chance of finishing even three frames a week. I think I'll be lucky to do two and a half most weeks, no matter how much time I pour into it. If I could make eight a week, I could put out the first volume by June....... It'd be really cool to release two volumes of graphic novel pixel art a year. But I'm not going to drive myself punishingly to burnout for no compensation.

It'd be a dream come true if someone would pay me like, six month's wages to just sit down with the project, and maybe they want me to finish the script. So I finally sit down, maybe print out all my notes like I've always threatened, literally cut them up, put them back together and string them into a cohesive script. But that's really silly, because no one even knows the project exists, so why the heck not skip the boring parts that aren't any fun until there's no choice but to do them?

Like, eventually, I will run to the end of my storyboard and I will need to figure something out. I don't currently have the materials to create anymore of the books I made for storyboarding--even if I would now use those books for this format and part of the storytelling process. Eventually, I will run to the part of the story where the pretty, organized narrative ends and there's only a bumpy, rocky path ahead made of metaphorical sticky notes. Hmmmmmmm........ maybe I preempt this part by making them literally sticky notes....... A sticky note can only realistically hold a few sentences, a couple small paragraphs at most.

I feel a bit bad that I don't want to sit down with what material I have and organize it even a little. I feel bad that writing went from a pleasure to......... unpleasant. I feel bad that I'm trying to find as many shortcuts as I can to getting the narrative organized enough to tell a visual story from.

It's easy to feel like I don't need to lay more narrative track because I'll never run to the end of my narrative track. I've been half-assed trying for years and still haven't. At this point, I'm not going to do the journal; my interest just isn't there. So at this point, the only writing I need is for myself, enough material to work from to create a visual narrative.

I know over two hundred frames stand between me and the end of my storyboard, and even though it took me well over a year the first time, to reach a hundred, I intend to bring about the second hundred frames a little faster.

I think there are just too many steps right now. The best thing would be to go back to the very first step in the process. Even though it's boring and tedious and feels like a waste of time, when it's done and organized, it'll be done and organized and won't be looming over me anymore. And just like with the linework, I don't have to get it all done at once. I just have to get it done, and then it's done. I could literally do it the way Ivuoma does the first few episodes of Vega. Just tell the story. Kitty does this. Kitty sees this, Kitty smells this. Sticky notes. We're gonna buy a lotttttttta sticky notes.

There's too many things to do, there's too many layers all at different points. If I can finish layers so I can set them aside, there'll be less distraction and confusion, less going back and forth.