#just reposting the official art so the details are easier to see

[glambots]

@ Steel Wool Studios (Official Twitter/X)

[mgsdays]

Thank u for always being so sweet and insightful with your asks!!! i love you 🥰

AnYWAYSs, I wanted to ask you a question particular to the timeline of 19days. We have about 300+ chaps of current flashbacks and present time. Do you think, little by little, we will see more present time dynamics? I know this is the SLOWEST of slow burns and I’m wondering that maybe this is how OX wanted to write; maybe they wanted to show that the past is a reflection of their current present selves? Idk im just rambling here but I think that the past connects to their future selves; it explains to us WHY ZZX and JY have that dynamic in the current time, why MGS and HT still banter, etc. i think OX shows us flashbacks from the past to let us understand how these characters really FEEL about their love interest. its a very interesting way to show character development. I think all these flashbacks are building up to something- I don’t know what but they seem really important and we still dont know HOW JY and HT left so yah thats my theory. What do you think? Another question; how do you think MGS and ZZX will realize their feelings in the future time? A lot of the OX art, as you said, shows these boys comfortably loving their partners so Im wondering as well 🤔 We even see HT and MGS with the couple rings so will we see that too?? I hope we do :(( I think it makes sense that we’ll see them as partners eventually- I mean, we have seen a lot of character development till now with only 300 chaps. Little by little, I think we’re gonna get the end product ☺️

I just hope Im alive to see it happen!

Hey love! Thank you for the message, you were so sweet 😊

I am… more pessimistic about future chapters. More than you, in either case haha

I believe we are building up to the boys leaving, but I do not believe we will see much of a future where the couples have figured things out. I’d love to be proven wrong, just to make it clear, but I don’t think so.

I love your point about the past being a reflection of their futures selves. My theory is that the past chapters serve as a way for Old Xian to give us enough info to presume what happens in the future. Kind of a ‘fill in the blanks’ kind of thing. The past chapters show us the boys’ desires and fears and they explain the motivation behind the boys’ actions. The little snippets into their lives allow us to understand a lot about the characters.

They also give Old Xian a way to write a BL without ever really going there.

Chinese censorship is strong. I don’t think we understand the extent of it from the outside. Some BL authors have been sent to jail. There’s a news story from Nov. 2020 that Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, author of the novel for The Untamed, has been sentenced to 3 years. The details of the case, if true, were not disclosed and we don’t know if they were found guilty or not. A woman who wrote a gay themed novel was sentenced to ten years, that one we know for a fact. China allegedly decided to pull The Untamed from streaming services and to halt production of shows that were being made based on BL books.

This is serious deal. Nothing even happens in those stories. The Untamed is based in a romance novel but it completely removed all explicit romance references for the show. Nothing happens it was still pulled! (after it was done! You make zero yuans by censoring a show that already exists. And yet…).

It really sounds like China is cracking down on content that goes against their morality code. Imagine you’re an artist there. Would you risk everything to make your characters date?

For Old Xian, their art is their livelihood. They make 19 days for the exposure and then use their official platforms to post ads that they draw through Mosspaca Advertising Company. If Old Xian explicitly drew the boys in relationships they’d be risking that platform and could even be putting themselves in danger. (Sometimes Old Xian draws relatively tame art and still deletes and reposts an even tamer version. Old Xian is impacted by censorship. The exposure they have doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be safe. Imagine them drawing two explicit relationships.)

TL; DR:

Or, TL;DR: HT and JY leave before the boys have enough time to figure things out. The past gives Old Xian plenty of room to write a beautiful story without crossing censorship laws, and leave us to fill in the blanks about their future.

About how I think it happens, I answered earlier today about zhanyi. For tianshan, I think they get together without Mo ever confessing, exactly. In the future Mo has been aware of He Tian’s feeling for forever. Mo knows. I’ll die on this hill. He knows. When Mo really goes through puberty, really starts experiencing desire himself, I think all of his wants unavoidably circle back to HT. Mo would be somewhat aware of his own feelings for years. 

After HT comes back, one day Mo is just so tired of the frustration, the tension between them, He Tian’s years apart, everything, that Mo just kisses He Tian.

He Tian’s surprised for five seconds. 

Then he catches up. 

He pushes in until he has Mo pressed against a wall. Mo’s gasping, a filthy sound echoing low in the space between them, Mo’s fingers sink into He Tian’s hair for the trouble, pulling tight against He Tian’s scalp. It only spurs He Tian on, He Tian groans against Mo’s lips and presses in even harder- rest is history. Mo allows their dynamic to shift from there. 

I think the sexual part may be easier for Mo to deal with in the future than his own feelings. They stay in this kind of relationship for a long time. 

I imagine X many years into it Mo blurts out his love like it’s obvious, like they both have know about it for forever. I loved this text post. I imagine something like this, Mo says he loves He Tian while cursing He Tian out for whatever and saying a million other things. He Tian freezes in the doorway. He knew but still. Hearing it out loud makes his heart race in his chest. Mo loves him, Mo loves him, Mo loves him. He Tian would be whistling to himself the rest of the year. Mo would find it the most annoying thing ever.

(But, secretly, he’d like it. Mo would like being able to make He Tian feel this way, a warmth blossoming on Mo’s chest at the thought.)

[chappybird]

How to Get Roleplay on F-List: A Guide

Hey all. So I’ve had a few people ask me how on earth to get RP over F-List, or for those that have tried, say its too confusing. While F-List is a much different format than I think a lot of people are used to, it’s a pretty reliable source of RP once you get used to it. So I’m going to walk you through, step by step, how to start from nothing and get a profile set up to start RPing. F-List is 18+ Only and is a Restricted To Adults® Verified website. You can learn more about it by clicking the RTA logo at the bottom of f-list’s main page.

F-list’s main landing page can be located at https://www.f-list.net/.

Note that my f-list may look different from yours because I’m using dark mode (which can be set in the account tab) and I’m a subscriber, so I don’t see ads.

Step One: Make a Profile

Making a profile, or as they’re known on F-List, a character, is your jumping off point for getting started. There are three main factions on F-List: Anthro Characters, Canon Characters, and Original Characters, with subcategories of each. You also have hub profiles. There is a right way to make a hub profile, but that’s not something I’ll be talking about on this post. Hub profiles are pretty universally disliked on F-List and are often seen as a mark of laziness, and I do not recommend making one to look for RP on. You should make a separate Profile for each character you want to play as. If you have a normal account, you can make up to 150 different characters. If you’re a subscriber, you can make significantly more than that depending on your tier. 

Choosing a name for your character is very important! You want something attention grabbing, but since each character has to have a unique name, this can get a little tricky. Today I’m choosing to create a Link from the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. As this is a popular character, it can be difficult to track down a good name. You can be clever with naming conventions, while making it obvious who you’re playing, or you can add in underscores, hyphens, numbers, etc. It’s really up to personal preference. I advise not getting too abstract with your character name. Just pick something easy to read and to the point. Once you’ve decided on a name, click the create character button to open up the character editor.

Step Two: Holy Fuck Dude That’s a Lot of Shit To Fill Out

Take a deep breath. The character editor is very intimidating to those that haven’t used F-List before. Perhaps you have used F-List for it’s old intended purpose, just to list your kinks to link people to when RPing on other sites. Your first instinct might be to scroll down there and start picking kinks willy-nilly. Stop. In the grand scheme of things, this is not as important for getting Roleplay and if you do it incorrectly you might actually hurt your chances.

Now that we’ve calmed down you’ll notice two things at the top of the page. A big white text field, and this guy:

This, more than anything on your profile, is the most important thing. If you have this on profile, you will almost never get any roleplay. This is your character icon, and it’s the first step on your journey to doing this whole thing correctly. All you need to do is find an image that’s 300x300 pixels or smaller and upload it with the Choose File button. Then scroll down to the very bottom of the page and hit save. Search on google, and if you have a hard time finding something of that size, A great site to use is https://lunapic.com/ to edit pics if you don’t have Photoshop or Gimp. Choosing or creating an image with some sort of transparency layer is recommended because it makes your icon look more polished, but you don’t really need to do that. This isn’t an image software guide so I’ll leave that to you to figure out. If all you can do is crop an image into a square, that will do perfectly. But you need to have something here. Besides your character name, it’s the first impression you’re going to give to people when using the site. I have honest to god had people message me on empty profiles that having nothing but a character name and an icon. 

Sourcing your images is a bit of a grey area on f-list. It’s not really an art sharing site, but if you choose fanart that someone doesn’t want to be reposted, it can be removed by the mods if you’re reported for it. So we’ll just use some official art that already has a transparency channel and crop it using Lunapic.

Step Three: How To Set the Profile Up

If you’re following along, you should have something like this by now. This already gives us an idea of who you’re playing, and what they look like, and while you might get a couple of weirdos messaging you already, there’s still a lot to do. So let’s go over what to do next.

Now that you’ve already created a character, it will be listed under the character tab. Further characters will be listed in alphabetical order. Navigate to your character and click the “Edit” button underneath their icon.

We’re back to the big scary page. Remember that big text field? We’re going to ignore everything else and focus on this first.

F-List uses standard BBC code tags with [square brackets.] You can find some buttons that will give you tools like bold, italics, color, hyperlinks, and quote blocks. There are many different ways to create eye-catching descriptions. I would say the three basic ways are minimalist, inline based, and heavy BBC code. We’ll go through the first option in detail but if you’re interested in the the latter, there is actually a few F-List profiles that teach coding and even have a few templates to use. User beware, though. Many F-List users use these templates and they can sometimes look a bit generic as they are overused.

Templates: https://www.f-list.net/c/profile%20templates

Coding Help: https://www.f-list.net/c/profile%20references

If you want to make an inline based profile, having access to software like Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, and similar content is good to have as well. You can also make a blend of the three styles of profiles. I’ll link some examples of my own profiles for reference. Some of these have text included in the inline. Some of them just have an image with the text written out underneath. Again, it’s really up to your personal preference.

https://www.f-list.net/c/Rival%20II/

https://www.f-list.net/c/Lion%20Heart/

https://www.f-list.net/c/The%20Fire%20of%20Tamaran/

Now would also be a great time to familiarize yourself with the rules. Keep an eye on these, especially if you play contentious content.

https://wiki.f-list.net/Code_of_Conduct

Some big things to look out for and not to do: Photographs and realistic images of animals are not allowed. Even Nonsexual ones. Photographs and 3D renders of minors (even nonsexual images or nonsexual profiles) are not allowed. If there is even a hint of the character being a minor, do not use photographic or 3D renders. (For example: Tom Holland’s depiction of Spiderman. Even though Tom Holland was an adult when he played the role, the character is a minor.) Sometimes these can run into a lot of grey areas, but it’s better safe than sorry!

Step Four: Creating A Minimalist Profile

We’ll start with a short description. It’s really important to make sure your character’s name is present in your descriptio, especially if it’s not the profile name. If you’re feeling particularly lazy, you can copypaste something from a wiki or official description. Let’s start with something like this.

Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.

Shoving this into the Description box and hitting save will generate something like this.

You might notice that this looks like crap. And it does! however, we can very easily fix that with the power of just three simple BBC tags. Those being [center], [color], and [sub]. plus a little something extra I’ll explain in a moment. Let’s add those in like so.

[center][color=green][sub]Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.[/sub][/color][/center]

Instead of hitting save at the bottom of the profile this time, we’re going to click “Preview BBC Code” to get a look at what our coding has done.

Fancy.

But it could use a little work. When I’m making minimalist profiles, I like to make the lines of text a little shorter so it’s a little easier to read and looks nicer. Make sure each line of text is about the same length as the previous (minus any BBC tags)

[eicon]blank[/eicon] [center][color=green][sub]Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.[/sub][/color][/center] [eicon]blank[/eicon]

You’ll also notice that I placed an eicon tag with a “blank” body. Eicons are essentially image macros that can be used all over the site. Using the blank one here is a good way to put a block of empty space on the top and bottom so the text isn’t too crowded by the frame of the description box. Another couple to keep in mind are [eicon]under construction[/eicon] or [eicon]WIP[/eicon] if you want to save your work now and get right to chatting and exploring the site. This signifies that you’re still working on your profile and more will be added later. You can create your own eicons by going to Account > Icon gallery. Keep in mind each eicon must have a unique name across all users. Inputting this into the description and checking how it looks in the preview, we end up getting something that looks like this:

Looks like we got a bookmark while we were setting the profile up. That means someone saw us while browsing new characters and decided they want to keep an eye on our profile and are likely interested in RPing! If you like, you can disable bookmarks per character in the character editor under settings. Generally speaking though, bookmarks are your friend and it’s how people will find you to RP later.

Optionally if you want to add an inline, just upload an image of your choice in Account > Inline Images. You can then add it in the character editor using this button.

This isn’t a tutorial for creating inlines, but a general rule is to make sure it’s sized well, and transparent images tend to look better than non-transparent images.

Step Five: Character Details

Opening the Character Editor once more, a couple basic things should be filled out. We will take this section by section.

Settings: Some general tweaks to change and edit. Personally, I like to turn my timezone off, and besides that, I like to have my Guestbook and Bookmarks turned on as well, but all of these settings are up to you. A big one a I suggest turning on is “Custom Kinks Sort First.” This will come up later but it’s good to turn it on.

Character List: For now, you can ignore this part. You can use this to have certain characters grouped together and will show up in the sidebars of these characters. I haven’t run into any limits for how many character lists you can have, but keep in mind a character can only belong to one list at a time.

Images: If you have any images you want to upload, this is the place to do it. Headcanons of body types, additional art you’ve drawn or found, can be added here. You can add descriptions to each image that will appear when a user hovers over the image. Keep in mind, again, that usage of fan art is a grey area on F-List. It’s not an image posting site, but some artists do not want their art reposted at all.

Profile Info: You don’t need to fill out every single detail here. Bits that aren’t filled in will just not appear on your profile. It’s a good idea to fill out your gender, and in many cases, your orientation. Both are under General Details. Filling out RPing preferences is also a good idea. It’ll keep people from approaching you IC using first person posts if that’s not your thing.

Step Six: Kinks and Custom Kinks

This is probably one of the most overwhelming parts of the process. My first tip: Ignore the Kink section for now. Instead, skip ahead to the Custom Kink section.

Custom Kinks are a good way to tell people what you really want. Click the Add +1 Custom Kink button to make a new custom kink. You can fill out the basic title of the kink, and a description. Or if you prefer to leave the description blank, just press the spacebar. Select what category you want the kink to appear in (Fave, Yes, Maybe, No.) Try to avoid using inflammatory language against different races, genders, identities, and don’t kinkshame. This is a site based primarily around finding rpers that have the same interests and kinks that you do. Save the profile when you’re done and we’ve got something like this.

And really, you can probably start roleplaying like this. Maybe add a couple of images, and tweak a few things. So if you like, skip to the next step. But for now, I’ll go over the kink list.

The most important think to remember is you don’t have to add every single kink to your profile. Try to select the most relevant things, and avoid redundancies. 

For example, I’m not interested in Vore of any kind. So I can put the kinks Vore (Being Predator) and Vore (Being Prey) Into my No category. Or, if I want to make it even more simplified, I can add a custom Vore kink and put that in my No category. Likewise, if I don’t want to do any sex driven play, I can probably go ahead and just put sex driven there and ignore most of the kink list. Kinks that are not relevant such as Vaginal Sex (Receiving) on a cis male can also be ignored. Kinks are broken up into sections, and while it is a lot, just take your time, go through it sensibly, and take a break if you want to. Remember you don’t have to add every single one to your profile. This will ultimately be easier on you and make your profile easier to read. 

After a bit of editing, this is what my kink list ends up looking like:

You can try exploring the Subfetish editor but it’s a little confusing to navigate and isn’t very necessary. And now, your profile is done!

Step Six: Using F-Chat

 So now that we have a profile set up, it’s time to find some partners. Regardless of what way you want to connect, if you prefer script or para, the main place you’re going to find RP is through F-Chat. There is currently both a desktop and mobile client. if you select Chat you’ll see the option for both, and clicking on them will take you to instructions on how to set those up. We will however be using the Browser client in this example. Go ahead and select F-Chat 3.0.

You will be taken to a landing page with a drop down of your characters, with the first character you created selected as the default. (You can change your default character in your account settings.) You can have up to three characters online at once. Keep in mind this goes by IP address, so if you have a roommate that also uses F-List, those will count towards your total number of online characters. If this becomes a problem for you, just use a virtual machine or connect to the internet via a different method, such as with data. (F-List is not that much of a data drain.)

Here is what you’ll see when you open F-Chat. You’ll see I already have people in my friends list and my bookmarks (that I’ve blurred out for courtesy.) These will appear the same on all the characters you sign in as. I will be notified whenever one of my friends signs in or sets a status. You can set these notifications to show only on the console if you’d like to in the settings. Let’s set a status first.

Here, you have the options of selecting from the default Online status to Looking, Away, Busy, and Do Not Disturb. These all do what you’d expect, with Do Not Disturb turning off the sound that would play when you get notifications from personal messages or pings.

The Status Message is an optional addition, and it’s great for if you’re looking for specific things or want your friends and bookmarks to know what you’re doing. Be careful not to post anything that breaks F-Lists code of conduct. F-List does have an aggregate of every status you ever posted logged on their server, so throwing a temper tantrum and posting something inappropriate and then taking it back later might still get you in trouble.

While the Character Search Option is available to you, I’ve personally never found it very effective. You can search users by kinks, but keep in mind it doesn’t search by gender or orientation, or what species or even if they’re canon or original. Instead, we’ll go right to the settings tab.

General: Just your general settings. You have a few options here to tweak and while most of it is personal preference, I’ll highlight a few to keep in mind.

Disallowed BBC Code Tag: good for if you find a particular colour particularly garish as a text colour, or if you find an eicon that you no longer want to see anymore. Enter Sends Messages: I have this set to off so I can avoid accidentally sending a message for when I post. When this is enabled, just press the send button on screen to send messages. Otherwise, if you want to linebreak in one post, just press Shift + Enter. Animate eicons: If you’re running a slow computer, or have a slow connection, turn this to off. Eicons are used as memes a lot in F-Chat, and some of them can get a little ridiculous. (Someone has compressed the entire Shrek movie into an eicon and uploaded to the site in very poor quality for example.) There can also be bright flashing colours or even nsfw images. In general these eicons are all 100x100 pixels in size, but some users like to tile them together to create bigger images so it can sometimes get out of hand. This is something up to personal preference, and while I have Animate eicons turned on, I can see why some people wouldn’t like it. Idle Timer: If you are the kind of person that walks away from your computer without changing your status, or you have fallen asleep with F-Chat open, it’s good to set this to a reasonable time. If you’re in Online or Looking, after you’ve been inactive for the depicted number of seconds, your status will be set to Idle. This is so other users know that you’re not ignoring them if you don’t respond to their messages. A downside to this is if you’re tabbed out or multitasking, it’ll set you to idle when you may not intend it to and going back to the window switches you to Online again. It can be a little spammy if you’re constantly switching between Online and Idle. Font Size: If you find F-Chat’s font too big or too small, you can edit that here.

Notifications: While this section is pretty self explanatory, I’d like to specifically go over the Custom Highlight Notify Words.

Now, because each profile has to have a unique name, you might want to select additional pings. For example I might want to add Link,Zelda,Hyrule,Hero,Hero of Time to my list. Everything is comma seperated and not case sensitive. There are a few things to keep in mind.

Common word pings: If I add Link to my list of pings, I might get pinged whenever someone talks about a url link, or a chain link, or any other common use of the word link. It therefore might be better to not use the word. If you have a profile name that is a common word, it might be better to also uncheck the option for Notify Messages Containing your name.

Similar Profiles: If there’s another Link in chat, then I will be notified everytime someone refers to him by name as well. This is less of a problem on more niche characters, but it’s something to keep in mind! You can set pings by room, so perhaps a solution to this is using Link as a highlight word in the Canon Characters room, but not using it as a highlight word in the Nintendo room. More about how to do that later.

Hidden Users: Pretty self explanatory once click over. If you keep seeing an ad you dislike, you can hide all advertisements from said user (re: character) going forward. Keep in mind this is not your block list.

Import: If you make two profiles and want to have these settings copied from one to the other, just log into the profile you want to import to, and select the profile you want to import from. Make sure to go back to change your pings if needed.

Lastly, we’ll be looking at the channel section. 

You might be starting to be overwhelmed again, and that’s okay. There are a lot of options, but most of the time, you’ll only want to select the options that are relevant to us. Check off the list of rooms you want to open a tab for. These will begin to be added to your sidebar. the number in brackets signifies the number of users thats joined that room. By default, this list is most popular to least popular, but I personally prefer alphabetical. There may be some channels that you find inappropriate, offensive, or contentious, but your best bet is to ignore those parts of the site. It’s an Adult site that is heavily moderated by a mixture of paid and volunteer staff. Every effort is made to ensure that no real people get hurt, but it is understood that as an adult, you are responsible for curating the content that you consume. This is one of the fundamental principals that F-List is built upon.

For now, I’m going to go with Canon Characters and Canon Characters OOC from this list.

You will also notice an Open Room tab. Unlike the Official Channels which are moderated by F-List staff, Open Rooms are chat rooms created by the userbase, and moderated by the userbase. While the standard F-List code of content is applicable to all areas of the site, special rules may apply in these rooms, and you’ll find things like rooms dedicated to certain kinks, species, and fandoms. I can try searching for a few things I think might be applicable to me, such as Hyrule, Zelda, Nintendo, and Elf. Some of those get hits, and some of those don’t. I can also check them off to add them to my list. (Note that search terms have to be entered one at a time. I cannot search for multiple things at once.)

Once you’ve selected the channels and rooms you want to join, you can click and drag on the tabs to reorder them on the sidebar. If you’d like to pin a chat, You can just press the little push pin symbol, which will then turn green. (You can do this for User Messages as well.) This means when you sign out, these chats will still be there when you sign back in. Note that settings and pinned chats are device by device only, and furthermore, channels and logs will not carry over between characters.

Make sure to read the description of each room you join. There are often specific rules (such as no ooc talk in the canon characters room, and no male characters in the lesbians room.) Clicking the gear will allow you to change settings on a per-room basis.

Step Seven: Actually Finding some RP

Now, after all that effort, we’re finally ready to find some RP. You have a few options on how to do this.

You could just join a few rooms and set your status to looking with a status message on what you want, but this is considered very passive. You may get some people that reach out (As you saw, someone had bookmarked my Link less than an hour after I made the profile before logging into f-chat.) But your best bet is one of three options.

Look at the Ads: Whenever you’re in a room that allows ads, you will sometimes notice a differently coloured message fly by looking for roleplay. This is an ad. If you see one that seems to fit what you have to offer, you can right-click on their username and select “Open Conversation.” A chat window will be open under the PMs section on your sidebar. You can view this conversation like you would a channel. Keep in mind that users are not notified if you open a conversation with them, only if you send them a message.

Create an Ad: Make sure you are in a room or channel that allows ads by checking the description, you can select the ad tab in the lower right hand corner above the text input box to write an ad instead of a chat message.

Making a normal chat post saying “hey does anyone want to roleplay with me” is considered spam and could result in the mods having a word with you.

You have similar tools to what you do in the character descriptions, and clicking each one will automatically place the tags in the text box, with the eyeball being a preview and the question mark being a how to. You want your ads to stand out, but you don’t want them to be too obnoxious. Take a look at what kind of ads other people are posting to get an idea of what’s expected.

Talk to Others: And lastly, you can just play in public rooms or chat with people in ooc channels. This is a great way for others to sample what you’re like to play with and vice versa, or even just to get to know potential partners. In my general experience, you’ll have more luck finding people to play with long term in the user created Open Rooms than in the Official Channels, but ever case is different. There are a vast number of styles, methods of RP, and types of partners you can find.

That’s basically the ins and outs of F-List! The more you’ll use it, the more you’ll understand how it works and the social etiquette on the platform. Like many sites, it certainly has it’s share of dark corners and flaws, but all in all it’s a pretty good website to find people to play with! Have fun!

[terrascookiejar-archive]

Terra has a Chat with a REAL Moderator this Time

In lieu of my original post that gained a lot of traction, and me talking about being “contacted” by someone claiming to be a mod.

An ACTUAL mod from the Official Cookie Run discord managed to contact me and  set the record straight on a few things, as well as discuss a few things regarding what happened. So it seems that this whole situation has indeed caught the attention of the mods of the Cookie Run Official Discord, and even MicMac himself. So what’s been done?

I do wanna talk about it in greater detail, so I’m gonna put everything in a cut, starting now. If you want the TL;DR version, skip to the second picture of Chestnut with Walnut at the end.

First things First, the person who I talked on the moderation team was someone by the name of Zayder, who contacted me on anon with their details. Using some help from friends We were able to background check and confirm, yes this person is actually legit. So I was reassured I wasn’t walking into some kind of trap.

(The photo given to me to prove authenticity by a friend. I blurred out their Discord number myself just for the courtesy of privacy)

What’s Being Done to Protect Artists on the Discord, Moving Forward?

I think this is the big question on everyone’s mind since I made my original post and all eyes are on the moderators and MicMac to make the change.

There seems to be a genuine admittance to the fact that the previous way fanart was moderated was ineffective and caused issues such as the theft and reposting to happen. 

So they’ve gone ahead and added stricter measures to prevent this from happening again. Including preventing new members from posting until they get the “Cookie” role, a cooldown on the channel to allow for easier moderation and viewing of said artwork, and heavier infractions laid down for art theft. 

I mentioned that the cooldown also allows for time for people to appreciate genuine artwork posted. So considering the magnitude of its members I’d say that’s a great first step in moving forward towards protecting community fanartists. I got confirmation from members in my own discord that the cooldown IS indeed already enacted and even increased from 10 to 30 minutes, so I have reassurance that what’s being told to me is true. 

They DO have a report system on their bot, but it seems most people prefer just messaging mods so that system in itself is rather flawed, but only so much you can do there. 

(^ This one’s my own artwork, btw!! ^) Zayder also asked me for my own feedback on what could be done to help protect artists, since I am an artist myself. It seems most of the moderation team are not artists and this probably lent itself to making moderation there so weak. 

In summary my main suggestions that were noticed were being mindful of traced art, and a dedicated section or post explaining art theft and how it harms artists and the importance of crediting artists. As not everyone understands how it hurts us, some people genuinely are uninformed. Which Zayder stated he would forward to Mic Mac. (Not sure how I feel about my own suggestions going directly to MicMac himself, but you know!!)

Fawn’s Situation happened so Long Ago that most of it is Lost (or worst case scenario, was deleted by a member of the moderation team) 

While the general consensus now is indeed “Yes, Fawn created Nutmeg Cookie,” there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of evidence towards who the perpetrator was (We had their username, hazbinalastor666, but not their ID and they’ve since changed it to cover their tracks) and the moderators involved with Fawn’s “Ban” to be found on the Official Cookie Run Discord. At least not anymore.

Zayder has confirmed that Fawn “left” the server in December of 2019, which lines up with Fawn’s own statements on the situation. However Zayder stated that whoever kicked her didn’t actually put her on the banlist. So either they kicked her manually, or they used the bot and then used it to erase all evidence of it and pretend nothing happened (which he certainly HOPES is not the case, and I do as well). It did not help that Trial Mods were not a thing yet by this time (They were not introduced until February of 2020), according to what Zayder told me. So things on that Discord were essentially pretty gun-ho. It’s not as simple as looking up a term and going to “Oldest” to track down stuff from the time.  Plus a good chunk of it seemed to have happened through DMs so... Good Luck getting that evidence.

Zayder informed me that Fawn is welcome to come back at any time. Though speaking with her she’s chosen not to, and considering her situation I don’t think anyone can blame her. I would like to believe that the version of the Discord that Fawn had to go through is not the same as the one we have now but something like isn’t essentially going to wash away what happened.

As for evidence that Fawn created Nutmeg first? Yes I do have it. The original incident,  hazbinalastor666 claimed that they created Nutmeg in November of 2019, However there’s evidence in our own discord showing Fawn creating Nutmeg as early as September of 2019.

As well as the day Fawn came forward on our discord about the situation after keeping quiet out of fear of backlash, ignited by seeing the thief get a commission of Nutmeg. However, I don’t plan to post that publicly unless I have Fawn’s okay. 

Yes. The First “Mod” That tried to Contact Me was Pretty Undeniably Someone Posing as a Mod From the Official Discord

“I'm also really curious on what you found false on what the "moderator" said to you. Nobody on the mod team ever told us they were gonna contact you, so I wouldnt know who that is.”

So that was my first sign that clearly the original person who contacted me at least wasn’t doing so without the consensus of the other mods, and neither did they consult the mods afterwards... So very, very likely they were a fake from the start. Some of the things that were off that I told to Zayder, and that we found through conversation were as follows:

The first person contacted me on a throwaway and refused to disclose who they were. Zayder gave me the ID of his personal discord and we could verify who they were easily.

The first person blew off my own suggestions for helping improve the fanart channels with statements like “We’re already cracking down on it.” Zayder asked me for my own suggestions as an artist without even being asked.

The first person kept trying to get me to get Fawn to use a VPN in order to get back into the Official Cookie Run Discord. Despite being told repeatedly that’s not how a VPN works. That’s just fucking weird. 

The first person couldn’t track anything down regarding Fawn’s situation years ago, Zayder was at least able to actually pinpoint the date in which Fawn was kicked, and rather quickly too I might add.

Zayder had pretty proficient knowledge on the bot the Discord uses for moderation and how it works. Which he explained to me a few times. The first person said to me at one point, and I quote, “For all I know the bot gives messages when infractions are laid.”

So seeing how talking with a real Moderator like Zayder was, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that someone was trying to dupe me here for some reason. Was it revenge? Did they want some sort of blackmail? Did they want me to proverbially “back off?” And if they ARE a mod why wouldn’t they give the info and such that I gave them to the other mods? Who knows. 

TL;DR:

Long Story short, it does appear as if the Moderation Team and Mic Mac have heard the artists of the fandom and are going to be working hard to lay down stricture rules regarding posting and doing their best to make sure credit goes where credit is due.

Fawn’s incident happened so long ago there’s not much evidence to be found on the Official discord, but we DO have proof that Nutmeg Cookie belongs to UpsetFawn!

The First Person who claimed to be a Mod was a fake and talking with Zayder proved it.

Overall, my talk with Zayder was very pleasant and enlightening and I believe Zayder would say about the same! I never meant to cause such an uproar, but I’d like to think things will change for the better now that we’ve all spoken up on behalf of our fellow artist. 

What we need to do now is watch how the Cookie Run Official Discord moves forward and if they’ll stick to their word towards protecting fandom content creators from theft and uncredited reposts. Though after my talk I’m certainly optimistic they will.

Always have your back for your fellow fandom artist, TerraTerraCotta

[theonyxpath]

Here we are in almost the last week of the Deluxe M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter, and like all KSs, we’re at that time where pledges start to slow. So we’re thinking about this KS, and our previous ones, and the roster that’s coming up.

What works, what doesn’t, and what just makes us wonder. Like, should we continue to portion out sections of the complete text during the KS, so at the end backers have pretty much the text as it’s going to be before being formatted during layout. (Which makes it a lot easier to read in most cases!)

We like that model, as it shows prospective backers just what they’re getting so situations where folks expected one set of information but got something else don’t occur any longer. And it shows that the text being finished won’t be a factor in the final project delivery to KS backers.

Those are two pretty good things, in our estimation!

But, does that kill the fun for folks? Like, is there value in being, well, surprised by your new book when it arrives? So far, we’ve been betting that the surety of information is more important to more backers than those who might miss a surprise, but we could be wrong.

Similarly, if we say this is the text and if you don’t like it then you can drop your pledge before we finish, we see that as a valuable option for backers. We want folks who back to enjoy the Kickstarter and the material we’re releasing. We hope they enjoy the chance to help create one of these books by backing, or going further and taking one of those fancy, upper-tier rewards that let them add characters or be part of the art.

Lunars art by Gunship Revolution

Yet, we can only hope we’re pleasing folks as it is often hard to tell if our methods are not delivering our intention since the vast majority of backers don’t interact with KSs Comments section. Whether because of a general, well-earned, fear of Comments sections throughout the internet, or of KS Comments specifically, my impression from talking to backers is that they don’t need the stress.

Who can blame them? It’s why I always try and suggest other ways for folks to communicate with us – even here, I’ll suggest adding to the Comments for this blog, but whenever I do I also get direct emails. And they usually start off with a variant of: “Hope you don’t mind my contacting you this way, but I didn’t want to get involved with any drama in the Comments.”

Like I said, we tend to think a lot about how we do things, and particularly Kickstarters since they are one of our most public display of our processes.

In some states, public display of your processes can get you arrested!

To get back to the M20 Technocracy Reloaded KS, here’s some links to fun and informative programming that will be reposted in the Onyx Path Media section below:

Tune in to hear words of wisdom from the Technocratic Union live on Twitch, Tuesday, May 19th at 9 PM EDT on the Onyx Path Publishing Twitch Channel. twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Plus, Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of Technocracy Reloaded right here: https://youtu.be/RtdW0znt7GU Please give them your support!

And also, Travis Legge’s M20 Technocracy Reloaded actual play, featuring a stellar cast including the one and only Satyr Phil Brucato: https://youtu.be/ALnD1nwuTis

TC: Aeon Jumpstart art by Aaron Riley

Our Next Kickstarter:

Of course, as we’ve been thinking about Kickstarters, we’ve been thinking about the best time to bring back the Legendlore Kickstarter. This was the KS we cancelled as we launched it right before the Covid-19 lock-downs, and we just didn’t think it could get the sort of attention it deserved.

But as we have considered the situation now, it seems like our lines of communication are, if not perfect, working far more closely to expectations. I’m getting regular notices from backers of our previous KSs again, for example.

So, without further ado, and not wanting to sit to long on Legendlore, we are going to Kickstart it next after M20 Technocracy Reloaded!

Expect most of our approach to be similar, but knowing that we already have a wonderful group of backers from the first go, we’ll be aiming at putting the KS together in a way that doesn’t just make them go through the same things again, and that appeals to folks who didn’t back the first time.

More on that as we have some actual examples!

Lunars art by Yiyhoung Li

Things We’re Doing To Try and Help During All This

On Wednesday, we’re opening up Dystopia Rising: Evolution Community Content on the Storypath Nexus. This is a chance for anyone to work with the templates and art packs we provide to create new projects for DR:E. As a creator, it’s a way to both publish your ideas, and to get a little extra cash during these difficult times.

That’s pretty much our feelings for any Community Content site right now. Plus, for players, the projects posted on these sites are PDFs that usually aren’t that big or expensive, and they very often are focused on useful additions to our official stuff. Adventures, deep dives into specific topics we’re not really set up to put together – just great ideas to add to your playing enjoyment.

Just wanted to chime in here to remind folks that we released Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras 2 on DTRPG last week, and besides the big book itself in PDF and PoD versions, we released each chapter as an individual PDF. If you’re into a particular line and/or historical period, but can’t indulge in buying the full book, these individual chapters are a lot easier on the budget with the job situation being what it is.

Also on DTRPG right now is the Shelter in Play Bundle containing about $180 worth of PDFs, including the Vinsen’s Tomb Jumpstart for Pugmire and A Light Extinguished, the Jumpstart for Scion 2e, plus a ton of other delightful games for playing while we’re all stuck in together – all for $10, and the proceeds go to two worthy charities! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/312564/Shelter-In-Play-BUNDLE

Our friends at IPR, Indie Press Revolution, are running sales of our books over on their site (link below in the sales partners area) and are planning to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If you’re looking for our traditionally printed hardcover books and screens, Deluxe and otherwise, now’s a great chance!

We made the decision last week that we wouldn’t be attending gaming conventions until we feel like our folks would be safe from Covid-19 if they attended. Considering that “con crud” is a thing that we expect to get after major conventions during a normal period, we just can’t send our people into a convention right now. Unfortunately, that includes our industry biggie Gen Con, which still has not announced whether it is postponed or cancelled. Regardless of their decision, ours is: we’re not going.

Finally, speaking of conventions: Thanks for the support and interest in an online Onyx Path Convention I received in the blog Comments and elsewhere all last week. It was heartening, and a little scary, how many of you would enjoy virtually playing our games and meeting with us. Actually, all kidding aside, it was great to hear!

No news yet, but you gave us even more to think about. In this case, expect that we’ll be acting pretty quickly on running something like a virtual convention. We want to commit, if we’re going to, before the enormity of it has a chance to sink in!

So, thanks to your feedback, we’re a few steps closer to arranging a virtual venue where we can talk about and play in our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

The M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter funded in 43 minutes and at with just over a week to go has passed 1800 backer operatives, is over 400% funded, and has achieved Stretch Goals consisting of a Storytellers Screen unlock, an unlock of more original Mage PDFs, Backers’ Exclusive T-Shirt, Wallpaper, and building the Technocracy Reloaded Player’s Companion PDF: sections on Constructs and Symposiums (and then expanded by a later SG), Digital Web 3.0, Technomancers’ Toybox 20 and the Q-Division bonus section, Unlikely Allies 1, 2, & 3, Mission Statement short scenarios, and the expanded Digital Web 3.0.2. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/m20-technocracy-reloaded

Highlights of M20 Technocracy Reloaded include:

An Operative’s Handbook that provides a detailed overview of life in the Technocratic Union, describing the organization of the Union, the Conventions, and the roles that sympathizers, extraordinary citizens, and Enlightened Operatives play in the overall structure of the Technocracy.

An examination of Technocratic initiatives on a global scale.

Devices, procedures, and hypertech used by the Technocratic Union that explores the Enlightened Science, allowing operatives to apply similar effects in the field, if they have sufficient understanding of the principles that allow these gadgets to function.

A comprehensive list of citizens, cyborgs, operatives, progenitor creations, and allies to use as NPCs.

Storyteller support that explores story seeds and metaplot to shape a chronicle for their needs.

Next Kickstarter: We return to The Realm of Legendlore!

Onyx Path Media!

This week Impish Ian Watson returns to delve into the Trinity Continuum, specifically the recently announced Trinity Continuum: Anima, VtM Bloodlines, and the happy wonders of managing Onyx Path social media with the Terrific Trio!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Tune in to hear words of wisdom from the Technocratic Union live on Twitch, Tuesday, May 19th at 9 PM EDT on the Onyx Path Publishing Twitch Channel. twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Join the Consensus and watch the stream.

Plus, Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of Technocracy Reloaded right here: https://youtu.be/RtdW0znt7GU Please give them your support!

Come tune in to our Twitch channel for a schedule including:

Vampire: The Masquerade – Blood on the Tamesis

Vampire: The Masquerade – Chicago by Night Noir

Pugmire – Paws & Claws

Storytellers with Coffee

Scarred Lands: Chronicles of Calastia

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale

Mage: The Awakening – Occultists Anonymous

Scarred Lands – Purge of the Serpentholds

Dark Eras Werewolf: The Forsaken

Chronicles of Darkness – Tooth & Claw

Deviant: The Renegades – A Cautionary Tale

Good heavens, that’s a lot of games for you to watch!

You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed!

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale: https://youtu.be/fx_UEKY6moE

Scarred Lands: Purge of the Serpentholds: https://youtu.be/9YC0qb29vjk

Mage: The Ascension – Technocracy Reloaded: https://youtu.be/ALnD1nwuTis

Hunter: The Vigil – Hometown Heroes: https://youtu.be/LJs8Q6KVu1o

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/SXYLA9rCjKk

Vampire: The Masquerade – Blood City Chicago by Night: https://youtu.be/NmDv9Sq_wKA

Chronicles of Darkness – Seattle by Streetlight: https://youtu.be/6CwozhRpUNo

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Did you miss 307 RPG interviewing Matthew Dawkins regarding everything from They Came from Beneath the Sea! and They Came from Beyond the Grave! to upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade books? Give them a listen here: https://307rpg.com/?p=265

Further to that interview, the 307 RPG Podcast released an episode all to do with the Archetypes in They Came from Beneath the Sea!:  https://307rpg.com/?p=282

That’s not all! Vorpal Tales commence an actual play of They Came from Beneath the Sea! tonight over on their Twitch channel! Find them here: https://twitch.tv/vorpaltales

Utility Muffin Labs, home of the 25 Years of Vampire: The Masquerade podcast, have released a glowing review of The Chicago Folios right here: https://utilitymuffinlabs.com/25-years-of-vampire-the-masquerade?author=51a88e2ee4b035d1810e13fe

Occultists Anonymous are here with a new special Mage: The Awakening series:

RV Mage 07: Reversion  With Orphean mages no longer on the field of battle, the Pentacle mages work to undo the warping of the Gauntlet. The werewolves threatening the Supernal Being is going to make negotiations a little difficult. https://youtu.be/iUZKuh0G5sI

RV Mage 08: Excursion Following the Supernal shenanigans in downtown Richmond, Vicar, Drifter, and Amanita begin the search for further Orphean agents. An attempt to restore relationships with the werewolves goes as well as you might expect… https://youtu.be/YUcXnQwB-vM

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This week, the PDF and PoD versions of Oak, Ash, and Thorn the Changeling: The Lost 2e Companion bolts from the freakish Hedge on DriveThruRPG on Wednesday!

Oak, Ash, and Thorn as a companion book to Changeling: The Lost Second Edition, expands on what’s in the core book. It contains:

Expanded rules for freeholds and a selection of seeds for sample freeholds in four international locations.

Rules for creating new court Bargains and an introduction to non-traditional Mantles, including free companies, traveling bands, and Lost dynasties, with a playable example of each.

Entitlements, the titles of nobility that changelings assume to inherit mystical legacies from the Lost who came before them, including three full examples with accompanying tokens and Merits.

Expanded rules for tokens, including two new types with examples, guidelines for creating your own, and a system for ripping out one’s heart to become unkillable.

Also on Wednesday, we open the Dystopia Rising: Evolution Community Content section of the Storypath Nexus! Expect template and art packs you can use to create your own supplements to the DR:E tabletop RPG (and even get a royalty for your work!) Check it out for community-created supplements to further expand your fun with DR:E!

Conventions!

Though dates are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s our current list of upcoming conventions:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

V5 The Faithful Undead (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Anima

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Second Draft

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

Dearly Bleak – Novella (Deviant: The Renegades)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Development

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Manuscript Approval

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Post-Approval Development

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Book of Lasting Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Scion Titanomachy

Tales of Aquatic Terror

WoD Ghost Hunters – KS final art: One more piece coming in.

Aberrant – Contacting and contracting. Signing off on sketches.

Pugmire Adventure – All sketches in.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant – Dividing up among current artists.

Legendlore – Back to KS prep.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Happening.

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

Scion: Dragon – Waiting on art notes.

Masks of the Mythos – Waiting on art notes.

Scion: Demigod – Waiting on art notes.

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (KS) – Sent out notes for fulls and splats for KS.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch

TC Aeon Terra Firma – Over to Josh.

V5 Let the Streets Run Red – Working on it.

Pirates of Pugmire Screen – Getting charts from dev.

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart – New artist taking care of finishing missing art.

Pirates of Pugmire – Errata input.

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – Inputting backer errata.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Gathering Backer PDF errata.

Scion Companion – Just waiting for two tweaked pieces, expected today.

Contagion Chronicle – Corrections going over to Josh.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

Duke Rollo Book – Finishing gathering backer errata.

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Magic Item Decks (Scarred Lands)

Yugman’s Guide Support Decks (Scarred Lands)

At Press

Night Horrors : Nameless and Accursed – PoD proof on the way.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution Community Content site – Opening on the Storypath Nexus this Weds!

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

C:tL 2e Oak, Ash, & Thorn – PDF and PoD versions on sale at DTRPG this Weds!

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Please welcome Aaron Voss to Onyx Path! Aaron is old White Wolf and was my print buyer in the years before the merger with CCP, and has expertise in every stage of the game book creation process, and is specifically going to oversee getting our projects printed and shipped (and help Mirthful Mike Chaney out where he is needed).

[hysteriamodes]

Coloring in grey scale

So, hey, this is somewhat of a tutorial for those curious about some of my coloring and blending. I made this especially for anyone younger than me and is exploring digital art, but this is also for others who are curious about what I do. I love reading other artist’s comments and looking at their WIPs, so why not.

Another reminder: if you’re looking for my artwork, please follow @rainbow-illness and not this blog. All of my finished stuff goes there; usually, my works in progress (WIPs) or Angry Doodle Corner go here. Sometimes I use this blog to repost my art, but that is my official art blog, no this one. Not unless you like nonsensical posting and metal, then have at it. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to hit me up, I love talking about art.

So I can’t always sit down and talk about my processes and how I go about doing them, but I was able to sit down and take some screencaps while I was working on my iPad Pro. Using the iPad is actually my first choice to draw on because of the convenience of carrying it around like a sketchbook, whereas my laptop isn’t always easy to carry around--it’s a big laptop. While I use my iPad, I also like to go back and correct things, recolor, re-proportion, or spend more time privately working on a drawing. I have my iPad with me, all the time, so I’m out in places usually like Starbucks doing this. I also struggle with pretty bad PTSD and agoraphobia, so having my iPad out with my headphones on gives me an excuse to put my mind elsewhere to calm down.  My family just usually looks at me and goes “oh, she’s working on her art again”; I did this as a kid, too, only with sketchbooks.

I do not have a Cintiq either, though I would absolutely love one. This laptop is capable of using a stylus, but I think I need a better one to do it with. All I’m using is a cheap Wacom Bamboo tablet that I’ve had for five years, that’s it. Everything I’ve done on this blog has been on a small surface. So if you’re just dabbling into art, don’t beat yourself up for having the small stuff, I’ve worked with small stuff and still do. The only thing I have that’s not small is, well, the space and processor on my laptop are much faster than any other laptop I’ve owned, bought especially for graphic design classes and my artwork. 

So, that being said lemme just forewarn some of you guys. My artwork is all done in two to three layers! Yes, you read that right! Why? When I was 16, I didn’t have a Wacom tablet to mess with, so I had to use a mouse and learned from there. When I turned 18, I got my first Wacom tablet while working my first official job and the family computer didn’t have a good processor. So when I got my first official laptop, it was basic and not made to run anything beyond the web browser and such, it could barely handle Photoshop. It did, however, run Paint Tool SAI with no issue (which is why I still prefer it over anything I use), it just couldn’t handle more than five layers. After losing my drawings constantly and not being able to do anything in the prized software I’ve been eyeing since my Sophmore year of high school, I found a workaround with it. 

And that’s what I’m going to write about here. With that in mind, no, you do not have to limit your layers! I’ve taken traditional art classes so my first instinct is to literally paint over my stuff like I would on a canvas. If you don’t want to do that, you don’t have to! Yes, I am nuts. 

That being said, let's do this.

If you haven’t taken traditional art classes, that’s cool! I’m going to be using some art terms you haven’t heard of, but you definitely will when you take your first ever drawing class. These terms are foreground, value, negative space, contour, and weighted line (I’ve seen it called line weight too). For the more experienced art students who are likely groaning over that stupid contour practice from that book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”, I’m sorry, guys. Newbies, you are going to know this. 

And you are going to hate it. While I still hate it and, yeah, my eyes are rolling into my skull right now just even talking about it, there are some useful practices in here that I... actually use. Who would have thought? At least we’re not talking about still lives.

Anyway, here’s what I’M going to say that some art teachers will not tell you but I want anyone to read this to know:

- Do not obsess over your drawing to look exactly like your reference. Just don’t. Forget this completely, worry about it later or don’t even worry about it at all. This is your style, your interpretation.

- Digital art is hard. Art is hard! Practice makes perfect and you learn over time just by studying (looking at) other pieces of art. It took me like well over 10 years to find my own little niche and I’m still playing around with coloring styles. I have a lot.

- If you’re just starting to draw with a tablet of any kind, play around with it. My first official program was a cheaper version of Paint Shop Pro and when I first got it when I was 14, I sat around and experimented on layers to see what it would look like. Explore!

- When you start drawing figures or faces, try not to think of it as, well,  face or a figure. Reduce it to basic shapes, like squares, triangles, and circles.

Greyscale can establish light source, value, scale, and negative space.

I don’t always use greyscale for my art, but when I do, I appreciate it because it makes my life easier. For example, Alphonse Mucha’s pieces here from his “Slav Epic”.

Chances are, you’ve seen Mucha’s art nouveau on prints, fanart, fabrics, and all of that. But Mucha did so much more and he is a huge influence on me for a reason. By the greyscale we see here, we can see foreground/subject with each illustration. Mucha is using value (that’s shadow) to emphasize this, in addition to negative space (background) to draw you in, just by using black and white. Notice how the other subjects don’t have such a powerful contrast and light source versus the other, especially the woman on the left. Mucha made his art pop by his understanding of contrast.

For this first part of this entry, I’m going to be using Papa Emeritus II from “Ghost”... who is a good example of how to draw faces, too. Huh. Regardless of what drawing program you’re using, keep your opacity low, at 50%.

Simplicity at its finest

Instead of focusing a lot on Emeritus’ face, I’m going to focus on the negative space behind him. I’m using this to define his figure. This is a good picture because of the stark contrast, though, it’s a little tricky because it is really contrasted and you can’t see where the light source really is. But that is okay!  I am going in and just using this negative space, the contour of his head and torso. Before I even think of a face, I want to softly go in and use black (or grey) to fill up that negative space. Keep it simple and work your way up.

After I lightly fill in the negative space around him, I can start lightly going in and establish his face by blocks of shadow.  And this is why Emeritus II is such a good example for this kind of work. I don’t usually start going in and drawing eyes, I rely on the shadows of the face to see where their eyes, ears, lips, and such lie. 

Here’s another example (though, it’s old):

This is in my maroon style underpaint, which is what I post most of the time. For their faces, I just used basically eye sockets to start working on their faces, like Papa Emeritus II down below. Again, this dude is a great example.

Here is where it may get a little funky.  I created a new layer and set that layer to Multiply, still keeping that opacity low. Since I have no light source and I just want to create a really dramatic lighting, I made a vignette with a simple airbrush tool.  

With that little vignette, you can create a new layer (unless you’re me, I just merge it down because of that constant fear of nonexistent software crashing) and I’m using the color pick tool to go back and forth to start using greys to really get into Emeritus’ face, especially his wrinkles. I’m painting over it constantly, switching back and forth between a paintbrush tool and color pick tool to blend. Again, keep your opacity low... unless you’re me and you’re feeling adventurous. You’ll also notice here that I have more than one photo reference. I use several for a lot of my art, so I encourage you to do the same. I had no idea what his jaw looked like, so I grabbed a second photo. Now that I have a better idea of where his hat ends on his forehead and how his nose looks, I start doing a weighted line.

Weighted line and Contour

Now is the dreaded talk. Of contour.

Welcome to Drawing I hell. This cursed image is from the book “How to Draw on the Right Side of the Brain” and if your teacher does not talk about this in your first drawing class, I am going to eat my hat... I have a hat lying around here somewhere. ANYWAY, the contour line exercise is basically you just using a neverending line for a drawing. I don’t know who drew this (and tbh, thanks a lot for every single boring assignment I’ve done in drawing classes), but this guy used contour lines for his drawing. I’m having war flashbacks over here, but I managed to find an art teacher’s page talking about different types of contour. My god, they are evolving.

Going back to our dear friend Papa Emeritus II, I used weighted line to start adding in little shadows to his face.  Weighted line goes hand in hand with contour; it is a great technique to not only add details, but add little bits of shadows.

This is a simple example; the thicker line is adding to the shadow of the apple, giving it value!

Papa Emeritus II is such a good reference... I used him as inspiration for King Melwas here.

Gwenhwyfar is also a good example of weighted line. Gwen is essentially a very, very pale character. In contrast to Melwas, who is in darker clothing, Gwen is soft, she is the focal point in this drawing. For the little pieces of her hair, the corner of her lips, eyelashes, and her fingertips, I used a weighted line to establish these things, otherwise, Gwen is so pale, she’ll easily be washed out completely.

This drawing of Alice, which I’m still messing around with, is another example of how effective a weighted line can be with depth. The lines I added into her face, eyelashes, creases, hair, and fingers add those little details since everything I’ve done before like Papa Emeritus II was so soft with a low opacity on the brush settings.

Layer masks and curves

There are two ways you can color greyscale images.

You can do this by going into Layer > Adjustment Layer > Curves (this is how it looks like in Procreate).

This gives you a neat ol’ base color! I am playing around in the blues, adding soft hues of blue in their figures and the white in this picture can either turn blue, cream, or even green. You don’t have to use Blue, you can use any of the other colors. For me, I’m always drawn to blues. Another cool thing to play around with is Color Balance, which is underneath the same function as Curves.

But if you don’t have any of these, you can add a new layer, and do Multiply.

The only drawback to this, of course, is how destaturated (the lack of color) it looks. And yes, that’s an issue you will have and I did run into this while doing this. How I combat this is using additional layer masks. Believe it or not, Alice here was once at a grey scale, looking even more desaturated than Gwen.

For Alice’s face, I went in and use:

- Soft Light because she needed more peach and roses in her skin. Omri’s original drawing gave her a light rose blush so I wanted to do the same.

- Overlay to mask out the black lines from the greyscale I had.

- Lighten which I used to make her lips pinker, her apron’s shadows lighter, and parts of her hair brown.

The same went for Gwen, who is, again, very pale. But while she’s supposed to be pale, I didn’t wash her out completely. To add more saturation, I used a combination of Soft Light over my Multiply layer and Overlay to start working at the highlights on her hair, nose, and shoulder. 

This little walkthrough isn’t as visual as I like, but with limited software like Fire Alpaca, GIMP, or Paint Tool SAI that don’t have the abilities of Photoshop in terms of color correction and playing around with colors, I really encourage you, readers, to play around with these tools. Using the color picker back and forth, especially after using layer masks, gives you an ability to mix and blend colors. The reason why I work with greyscale or a maroon under paint is that you can create brilliant colors and make a new palette; the trick is to constantly mess around with them. I never go in and flat out color anything, with the exception of things like “angry doodle corner” which is basically what I call my lazy drawings, drawings where I’m just honestly goofing off with.

So in summation...! Or me trying to summarize this.

 Experiment and explore with layer masks and adjustments. Whoever says that using these tools isn’t real art, they’re wrong. And please don’t ever be afraid of using references of any sort!  Alphonse Mucha is saved ten times over on this computer.

[notdeadjusttrash-blog]

My Friend has been Falsely Accused of Tracing So I Will Defend Him

Okay I accidentally deleted the blog I posted this one because I’m a dumbass, so I’ll just repost it here even though I don’t use this blog anymore, but apparently I still have followers. Bless caches because I was able to get this back from google caches so I don’t have to retype everything. I added further evidence and refutes to claims that were not in my original post btw.

Anyways, I am making this post to help out my good friend @5ru9 aka Falco who has been recently accused of tracing/copy pasting other people’s / official art!

I’ve known Falco for over 3 years, and we’ve grown as artists together. Once in a while we give each other advice on art (thanks for the mech and armor advice and teaching me how you line and color!), but most of the time we just meme each other.

Anyways, a lot of people have pointed out that they’ve seen him livestream before, and he’s already posted some of his block outs and other wips as proof that he does not trace in his post here:

http://5ru9.tumblr.com/post/168277137427/hello-i-have-been-informed-about-a-callout-post

To further prove his claim with solid evidence, I shall present to you!

Times he’s asked for advice on his art, or I randomly decided to mention things I notice in his WIPs!

Exhibit A-1:

A Tenkai Knight he made up! I pointed out a few things I thought were awkward about the perspective in his WIP.

Exhibit A-2:

He started working on this way back in July and didn’t finish it until much later because he was working on several other pieces at the same time. I suggested lowering the eyebrows and drawing the eyes a bit narrower to get more of the playful expression he was aiming for. In his final piece here, you can see that Falco continued to refine the piece.

By the way! The reason he sometimes posts a lot of detailed artworks one shortly after the other is because he sometimes works on multiple pieces at once! And then finishes coloring them around the same time.

Exhibit A-3

Falco and I spent good time trying to figure out why he felt like something was wrong with his sketch! I thought maybe it was the trapezius and I decided to red line (or blue line i guess) it so it’d be easier for him to see approximately where i thought the line should go to fix it.

Exhibit A-4:

The gif-ing process turned white bg into blue… anyways! Falco showed me an early version of his Tenkai Knights OC that he eventually used in an April Fool’s joke to pass off as a new character in the series. He mastered the tenkai style enough that at first glance, people really did believe it was official! Like you had to get a good look to realize Shiyu was not really a real new character! Btw I had to go into my old twitter acc to find this…. (Edit: the gif wasn’t working bc it was too big so i had to make it smaller… and choppier and stuff to fit the mb max)

Well now that brings us into!!!

Exhibit B

Some of his old art!! (I’m so sorry falco i’ll be exposing your ancient art to ppl now)

Here you can see his progress from 2014 Tenkai fan art to early 2015! It starts looking more and more like the official art, which is what he was going for.

For reference, here’s what the character Ceylan Jones/Washizaki looks like:

I blocked out fan art by everyone except falco (which i marked) that shows up in this google search. Everything else is official art. The two fan arts by falco you see here are more recent, the angel one being from 2016 and the chicken one from 2017 (i think he also made a version with sonic instead of the chicken? lol). They’re both on his dA accounts btw! The 2017 one really looks like official art, doesn’t it? But it’s his artwork! He practiced a LOT to reach that point, and I hope the earlier arts I showed above this one are enough to convince you in his art progression! Side note: i only used images w/ceylan because 1. i’m biased because ceylan is my favorite character and 2. he drew ceylan a lot because ceylan is his favorite character Also you can see his handle change from s3iwashi to burningbraven. 5ru9 is is a pretty recent handle.

ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN IN THE TENKAI FANDOM FOR A WHILE CAN VOUCH FOR HIM!!!!!

And now for the last one,

Exhibit C

WHAT? WHO IS THIS???

This is my favorite character from a Chinese series called AOTU World! His name is Grey, or 格瑞。I commissioned Falco to draw Grey for me, and let me tell you it would be IMPOSSIBLE for him to have copied any of this. Why? Because the donghua is 3D and the manhua’s art is very inconsistent!

Let me show you the reference pictures I gave him to work with!

They’re all in my gdrive folder here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CqwH5KS-pHX0ZqLHQpoIZBi6W-gsU_Tz

This is all official art from the manhua, except the 3D model is from the donghua. Look at how inconsistent the references are! There’s no way he could have copy and pasted or traced this! Grey doesn’t even do this particular pose anywhere. lol. I told Falco “give him a cool sword pose”. (I’m sorry for being so vague, Falco! But it turned out great!!) The style he ended up drawing in was a mixture of all of them.

Btw!! here’s the blockout and the sketch he sent me before I sent my payment for the commission!! You can see his construction in the block out!! The arm construction and leg construction is light, but it’s there. You can also see the block out below the sketch. Notice he actually fixed the leg length from block out -> sketch?

ARGUMENTS AGAINST SPECIFIC ACCUSATIONS

LOOK, thte actual drawing doesn’t even match the sprites that closely. Pay attention to the collar especially. The whole frankensteining the image and then painting over it thing is just way more effort than drawing it himself. They don’t even match that well in the overlays. Like wow it’s such a crime to try and stay on model.

WHO WOULD EVEN NEED TO TRACE A MOUTH LIKE THAT? IT’S SO EASY TO DRAW. I CAN DRAW IT PERFECTLY JUST BY LOOKING AT IT. (well i AM an animator so I also do style mimicking)

Doesn’t the fact that you have to edit the sprites to match his artwork prove that you’re just a tryhard in making up fake evidence and not a tryhard enough at art since you think it’s so impossible for people to draw characters on model?

Yes he referenced the broom and possibly the heels from this image, but your overlays for the leg and arms are disingenuous and you know it. The leg positions are different, and the overlay doesn’t even match up. Face tracing also makes no sense. You literally stretched the mouth to try and make it fit but it still doesn’t fit. Do you really think it’s that hard to draw mouths and eyes in the DR style? DR faces are really simple to emulate. Also you fool, if you follow Falco’s artwork enough, you’d realize the way he draws bodies is actually rather consistent even as he does different styles. Especially when it comes to hands. His way of drawing hands is how I recognize his art and know right away it’s his art and not official art or a trace (also his coloring style). The heels he drew are also reminiscient of how he typically draws shoes/feet. he draws them bulkier. The other art has dainty heels. At most he referenced how backside works because he’s used to drawing sneakers.

Also come on, if all you referenced from an image was a broom because you liked the style (his is also clearly drawn by himself since you can’t overlay it on the other one. like i said he mostly used the style as a reference for how-to-broom) and you referenced pieces from many other images, are you going to list every single thing you referenced? While yeah it’d be nice to, it’s a little ridiculous to expect all 5-20 references whenever they post the image. It’s a thing where, if someone asks, you’d tell them, but it’s too much to list all of it. This isn’t a 20 page thesis.

If it’s such a crime, then holy shit sue all those people who parody other people’s comics and sue everyone who dares!!! to ever draw something remotely similar to someone else. Dang.

Art doesn’t live in a vacuum.

Okay, this one is just plain stupid. You distorted the sprite to match it up with his, but what would be the point for him to distort it just to trace? Also if he traced, can you explain the rest of the fingers that are drawn nicely but clearly different from the sprite? Also the thumbs don’t even match up. His faces more downward while the sprite is facing more forward. Also explain the turned body in Falco’s sketch, then!! And the hair! OH WAIT YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT BY ANY OTHER WAY THAN HE DREW IT HIMSELF!!! BECAUSE NO SPRITES MATCH IT AND YOU CAN’T FIND ANY SPRITES TO DISTORT ENOUGH TO EVEN GET CLOSE TO MAKING FAKE EVIDENCE FOR IT.

By the way, the style he drew it in is closer to the drv3 than this sprite. while it’s pretty much the same style as the older games, drv3′s art is more refined than the older games. Falco’s art is also more refined as you can see. (wow not only did falco’s art improved from back when we first met; even professional artists improve. shocker. /s)

Dude what the hell? The overlays don’t even match up even ifi you tried to frankenstein them. And these are really common poses at really common angles, and once again, must every single thing we reference from be listed in the description of every place we post an image? Let me just list all 30 videos and 50 images i used as reference for one of my prints. jfc.

As for the saihara animation based on the digimon opening animation? It was pretty clear to everyone that it’s some kind of parody. Many people when making parody animations don’t mention the original video either?? It’s a fun thing for fans of the franchise to recognize the reference themselves. Yes he could have said it was the digimon opening on the description, but at least he didn’t say he thought of the idea himself? And if you talk to him about the animation, he will openly tell you it’s from digimon. And the fact that you think it’s a trace despite how much the overlays do NOT work out is practically proof that you’re just doing this maliciously and hoping that saying he traces enough with shoddy evidence will make people believe you.

ALSO PEOPLE LITERALLY TRACE ANIMATIONS TO MAKE PARODIES OF, DOWN THE STYLE WHERE ALL THEY CHANGE IS THE HAIR AND OUTFIT, AND YET SOMETHING WITH DIFFERENCES EVEN DOWN TO THE STYLE LIKE THIS IS SOMETHING YOU THINK IS A TRACE? Do you need a new pair of glasses?

I was gonna ignore this one because it was the same as a lot of the others, but you literally erased Falco’s face line so it would match the sprite, and you covered the bigger boobs Falco gave her, and totally ignored that the angle doesn’t even match properly. Like you covered parts of his sketch in your overlay just to make it look more like it matches, but if you actually fucking overlayed it correctly, even with squashing it, it won’t fit. (Also sorry to point this out Falco, but the circles on your goggle lenses are too small compared to the sprite; Maybe if you actually traced like this person claims you’re doing, they’d be perfectly like the sprite. OH BUT WAIT YOU DREW IT YOURSELF SO OF COURSE THERE’S SOME DIFFERENCES. JUST LIKE HOW EVEN THOUGH ALL YOUR OTHER WORKS ARE REALLY CLOSE TO THE STYLE AND PRETTY MUCH ON MODEL, THEY’RE NOT EXACTLY THE SAME WITH THE SPRITES! SHOCKER...!)

HOLY FUCK. I already pointed out and gave evidence that Falco started on the Nier Automata drawing waaaaaaay before he posted the actual picture. The 2 sketches are sketches! They don’t take a super long time. I busted out 10 inktobers in 1 day. (thumbnails of my artwork below)

Look I even even lined and colored 5 fairly detailed chibis in 1 day (i did the sketches earlier though. btw i hand drew the plaid on ray. it was annoying)

At the moment I have 5 wips. They’ll likely all be done around the same time. I know Falco often has multiple wips as well, and sometimes he also finishes some of them close to each other. Some artists (like my friend Fish) can pump out extremely detailed paintings in less than a day. WOW some artists can draw at a fairly fast rate. WHO KNEW? (manga artists in weekly magazines pump out 15-20 pages of manga in a week)

He’s still developing a style; he’s mostly doing style mimics of series he likes in the mean time.

At the moment he’s mostly experimenting with the drv3 style, but he was practicing p5 earlier. By the way, he DESIGNED a phantom outfit for mishima. Who the heck would he copy that from? He made it up because he loved mishima and wanted to make him part of the gang in some AU fan art. Mishima doesn’t have artwork like this for him to trace, so it should be obvious it’s his own work.

And the pokemon and crash bandicoot ones are actually not that close. The pokemon one looks like a good attempt at imitating the pokemon style, but since he hasn’t practiced it enough, you can tell it’s a little off model because, well, he drew it himself and doesn’t practice the pokemon style a lot. Same with the crash one. Had it been a trace, with his level of control over his lines (which you can’t refute), it would have been much closer.

And you act like it’s a crime to imitate others’ art style. It’s really not. What is wrong with you? Do you want to slow down animation production by only letting the character designer draw everything? Or do you want animation where the art has 0 semblance of consistency because all the artists draw in vastly different styles? lol. What do you have against artists that try to stay on model?

LOL THIS IS ONE IS SO STUPID WHERE DO I EVEN START?

Oh, I KNOW. Why don’t I do that same pose with my own hands?

IT’S A MIDDLE FINGER, YOU IDIOT.

Just because YOU don’t know basic anatomy and can’t tell a middle finger from a pinky, doesn’t mean everyone else is as incompetent as you. He wasn’t doing the rock-on hand pose (sry idk if that pose actually has a name lol), and he’s drawn the rock-on hand pose properly before.

Closing statement

I believe I covered a lot of things and provided a lot of evidence here that Falco and his other friends did not cover in his defense against the false accusations.

I even added more counter arguments in this repost because apparently my original post wasn’t enough to convince people.

Perhaps the person calling him out meant well (no, I doubt it because they made a new side blog just to diss him because they knew if they did it on their actual blog, they’d be called out for being a jerk), but they did not do enough digging to find out if their claims were true or not (and they probably know well enough that they MADE UP THEIR EVIDENCE).

If you’re going to make a call out post, please make triple sure sure of everything before you accuse people. Talk to them first. Talk to those who know them too.

Many jobs require you to be able to draw characters exactly in the style given. Animators for example! There are multiple animators working on one series, and they all need the skill to draw consistently! Some games also have teams that need to be able to draw in the same style so they don’t have to leave everything up to one person. Comic artists often have assistants that help them draw background characters, but those background characters can’t be too different from the main style either.

As for the people who believed the call out post before, it’s perfectly understandable. I am also guilty of falling for similar posts in the past. Due to that, I decided it was best to double check before retweeting (i say retweet because i use twitter far more than tumblr these days. heck i almost never post anything on this blog) things, and if i wasn’t sure, I would just leave it be.

I hope my post was able to convince you on Falco’s innocence and all his hard work. And if you already believed him but checked out this post anyways… Thanks! ObligatoryPleaseWatchAotuWorld.

And again:

Art does NOT exist in a vacuum. All artists are influenced by each other and MANY artists, especially professionals, use a lot of references, whether it be from photographers, their own pictures, others’ artwork, life, or whatever. We all use many different resources. If you’re going to say that’s wrong, you just dismissed millions of artists in the world.

[videnox-archive]

A very descriptive and detailed profile of your muse. REPOST WITH THE INFORMATION OF YOUR MUSE, INCLUDING HEADCANONS, ETC. if you fail to achieve some of the facts, add some other of your own!  when you’re done, tag other people to do the same!

TAGGED BY: @antimundi ( ty~ ) TAGGING: if u do it, blame me

GENERAL

NAME: Ravus Nox Fleuret FULL TITLE: His Highness Ravus Nox Fleuret (first of his name), Former Prince of Tenebrae, Sorcerer of Niflheim, Fenrir’s Chosen. AGE: 28 ETHNICITY: Tenebraean (French) NATIONALITY: Tenebraen SPECIES: Human GENDER: Male ORIENTATION: Demiromantic and Demisexual PROFESSION: Verse dependent ; either recently regained his title as a Prince, or a triple agent working with Ardyn, Lucian and Tenebraean officials.

PHYSICAL ASPECTS

BODY TYPE: Ravus is still as muscled as he is in XV, though a little leaner due to a slight preference for magic rather than weapons. Tall as he is, his limbs are long (proportionately so), and he still has the broad-shouldered hourglass shape. EYES: A pale, almost ghostly shade of silver with no visible iris. Before the self-inflicted blindness, they were a pale blue-grey colour. HAIR: Silver-blonde. He keeps it just past his shoulders, cut in feathered layers and worn loose, parted to fall more down the left sound. SKIN:  Pale ‘porcelain’, with freckles across his cheek and upper shoulders. Scars are scattered over his body, and he has Fenrir’s brand centered on his upper back. HEIGHT: 6′4′’ WEIGHT: Around 190lbs

FAMILY

SIGNIFICANT OTHER :  None CHILD(REN):  None SIBLINGS:   Stella Nox Fleuret, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret (verse dependent) PARENTS: Sylva Nox Fleuret, and an unnamed father ANY PETS ? None

SKILLS

PHYSICAL PROWESS:  Ravus has maintained his fitness as much as possible, for both health and survival in combat. His strength is nothing to mock, nor is his endurance. Assuming his magic isn’t bound, he is also able to ‘see’ to a certain extent, so he tends not to be too limited by his blindness. This ‘sight’ however is quite tiring, so he tries not to rely upon it too much. SPEED: Ravus can move quickly when necessary, though he tends to only rely on that when in familiar areas. Otherwise, he can be limited by how much he can ‘see’ with his magic. Open spaces are generally preferred. EDUCATION: Ravus was given the education expected of someone in line to inherit Tenebrae’s throne - he was tutored in politics, history (modern and ancient), the arts (with a focus on piano, violin, painting), Tenebraean ceremonial traditions (the songs and dances paying respect to the Astrals, with a focus on his patron Fenrir), diplomacy, etiquette, hand-to-hand combat, sword and lance skills, healing spells, and a certain amount of knowledge pertaining to legalities (with a focus upon treaties and maintaining peace with other nations). He can also speak fluent Tenebraean (the modern dialect, and some of the older), fluent Common, and is mostly proficient with Niflheim’s Common dialects. Once he became a part of Niflheim’s forces, Ravus was also trained in weaponising his magic, furthering his sword and lance knowledge, how to operate some of the Niflheim programs (though his skills in this are limited due to blindness ; speech-based programs are far easier), decoding using Niflheim’s particular choices of code, and he had a brief period of being taught braille, which he has furthered his knowledge of in the years since.

LIKES

COLOURS: Blues, purples, and neutral tones SMELLS: Rain, fresh flowers, healthy plants, clean air FOOD: Sweets and most fruits (especially grapes and apples) DRINKS: Sweet wines, icy water, fruit juices

OTHER DETAILS

SMOKES ?  Yes, though very very rarely DRUGS ? No DRIVER LICENSE ? Yes, but he no longer drives EVER BEEN ARRESTED ? Technically? I suppose Niflheim taking him into custody and imprisoning him counts?

[aishiteruitsumo6]

Aoi Shouta LIVE 2017 WONDER lab. ～prism～ Osaka/Tokyo 2017-02-04/2017-02-12 - Report

*DO NOT REPOST*

Two reports in one post! The majority of the live was similar ✨ Osaka parts will be in italics, Tokyo in bold, plain text means it happened in both lives! Most the official photos I've used here are mainly from Tokyo.

As usual not 100% accurate!

At Tokyo Live

*Thanks to those who responded to my post! ^^* So I got to my seat and after I was ready I messaged @jeanette-ting seeing if she got to her’s ok (we applied for tickets separately so never got to sit together 😢 ). And not long after she told me she spotted Chiharu!!! Here are screenshots of our convo 😂Thought it’d be easier than trying to explain it all lol Hopefully it’s not too small and you can all read it! (Probably better to read on mobile devices since you can zoom in!) Please excuse the spelling mistakes, as you can tell I was really excited 😂😂

And~ then the live started!

If only I could have recorded him 😂 It’s not in the convo but I also saw Agematsu Noriyasu, BROCCOLI’s composer (third photo) he was sitting next to Naru, Shoutan’s kouhai in S Inc (second photo). And I couldn’t tell who it was next to Agematsu-san, but since they were next to him and Naru, I guessed it must be Satou Hiromi, S Inc’s president (third photo). Araki Hirofumi, Kento’s actor in Smile Mermaid was also there (last photo)

I seen Japanese fan reports saying that Onoken was also there but I never seen him.

Video

The live started with a video of painter/artist Shoutan in an art studio. His Budokan Prince outfit was also displayed in the room ☺️ He was drawing a white, space-like outfit. He then turns and look straight to the camera with this expression (noticing us)

(ok not 100% this expression, he was more happy looking) and then he smiled beautifully~

Suddenly he sees something unusual and wiped his eyes to check that he wasn't seeing things. Sparkles started coming out from the drawing, he then smiled again Then Shoutan appeared on stage in that white outfit!!!

North Star

“Please don’t be afraid, one day surely it will get brighter~” Shoutan: HEY! Fans: HEY! HEY! HEY! If anyone has seen his performance in T-SPOOK, the way he performed was about the same ^^ The dress part of his outfit flowed really beautifully

DDD

I really, reeeeeeally love this song! Most of us chanted along to the “Wow wow wow” parts

Zessei STARGATE

There weren't many people who did the short choreography for both lives :(( But we all chanted "3, 2, 1 LET'S DIVE!!!!" really loud and clear!

Talk

Shoutan welcomed us and he looked round happily seeing how his live was full ^^

He said that the theme of this live is to make everyone's dreams come true~ He said that they've asked for fans to send in postcards with their dreams handwritten/drawn on it. Shoutan: Who has sent one in?! Fans: YAYY!! I also cheered since I sent one!

He said even in the video he was painting his dreams, like the outfits, and magic was casted making it come true~

As usual we asked him to spin XD Shoutan: "I was prepared for this lol" He spinned slowly to show us the beauty of his outfit

He said he wanted to be a robot when he was young which inspired this costume Ai-chan? lol, plus the outfit reminds me of his 5th Stage outfit but even more elegant and over the top. It was so beautiful, he suited it SO well.

Every now and then he went back to drink water XD Fans: OMIZU OISHII??! (Is the water nice)

Fans: SHOUTANN!!! Shoutan: Hai~ Shoutan desu~~

Fans: OMIZU OISHII??! Shoutan: Omizu desuka? (The water?) I'll~ leave it up to your imagination~ XD

After thinking, I realised we never got him to spin in Tokyo...

Innocent

I’m always amazed when Shoutan sings this live. Because he properly hits the “Get away!!” notes and doesn’t sing them softly.

UNLIMITED

Just before the song started he took off the dress part of his outfit! So kakkoi!! It really does look like a battle plug suit XD I wasn’t sure whether to mention this or not. Shoutan stood in the middle of his dancers, as the music started, a ball from the stairs rolled down towards Shoutan. Shoutan didn’t see since it was behind him. A dancer noticed it and went to roll it away behind them straight away, then got right back into the dance, preventing an accident. I couldn’t see who he was from where I was sitting. I want to thank him for his fast reflexes and for making the performance run smoothly! The ball is really big, the size of his palm, it also looked heavy.

Shoutan's dancing gets even better and better by each live! His dancing was so slick and smooth!

Video

Painter Shoutan went to sit down, rocking his body side to side, kicking his legs back and forth, he was super adorable here! He wasn't sure what to draw, then he looked out the window and decided to draw the beach (Smile Mermaid????)

He drew a tail near the shore MARINASAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He went to get a pot of water for going over the watercolour on the drawing. He looked at the little owl ornament sitting on his desk, smiles cutely and bopped its nose with his brush XD

He painted over the drawing and then focused on the tail.

Then the waves of the painting started to move. Shoutan who was amazed by it, smiles~

Endless Song!!!

Shoutan wore a outfit what was a mix between Marina-sama and Kaguya He wore long black hair extensions which again suits both Marina and Kaguya He had 2 blue feather rings on his right hand

He appeared at the top stage The shape of the Japanese style trousers made it look like Marina's tail He did hand movements (spin/twist) like he did in Smile Mermaid

He's so beautiful!!!!

Shoutan appeared floating above stage!!!!

He's so elegant He started to float forward and then I looked up and noticed the extension goes all the way to the bottom of the stage! 😳 He- he- he's going to come all the way over?!?! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

He slowly made his way to the end and was lowered down

During the instrumental part he waved to everyone really elegantly *MARINA-SAMAAAAA!!*

Near the end of the song he was lifted up again and was floated back to the top end of the stage and landed there.

There was a long silence before the next song

*??? Is Shoutan ok?* Everyone else was also whispering to each other

He's taking too long before Ai No Sasamaki Goto (compared to Osaka) I can hear faint noises coming from his mic.

*looks through my binoculars*

!!

I think he's stuck or something!? >< Since it was dark I couldn't see clearly, but I seen his silhouette and he was struggling fixing something >< *me whispering* "Ganbare! Ganbare! Shoutan ganbare!"

Shoutan speaking calmly and softly: Minna-san

He said something else which I've forgot >< And then the lights came on

Shoutan: I always ask for costumes to be long, and you can't turn round with long costumes. *looks at his back* Mawaranain desu yo ne. (You really can't turn round in this)

Ai No Sasameki Goto

He stayed at top stage and he sang in a dome(see photo above), the effects were so beautiful, the dome rotated to open up. I was really, really happy to hear this since it's one song which I really love and was a little disappointed when he never sang it at Budokan. During the instrumental part he waved to all of us really elegantly

Sora Wa Toumeina Chika

Shoutan was still at the top and he walked down during the first verse of the song.

Talk

He said that he showed us umi no sekai (sea world) again~ He was really formal and elegant with his words when he started to talk XD Lol he said even his way of speaking has changed with his outfit XD He mentioned about his outfit and talked about the extensions, he said he also got to design the outfits this time again

We asked him to spin, as usual XD He slowly spinned round and stopped to show us the details of the back✨ He said he selfishly wanted a train for the outfit (for Marina) ii yo Shoutan!! It's beautiful! ^^

There was a slight pause again before the talk.

Shoutan: I'll be honest with everyone. We are having some technical difficulties just now, I'm really sorry.

Shoutan: During my second live, there was 2 performances, afternoon and night performances. And during the afternoon performance we had technical trouble too, so I ended up singing Tenshi No Inori in acapella.

Shoutan: Ah, chotto matte... (Wait a second) *bends down to the floor to pick something up*

Shoutan: ...re's a... *holds mic properly* There's a ladybug here

*The camera zooms in* He used his two index fingers to pick it up. He was trying so hard! But it kept falling because he had no nails!

After so long, Shoutan gave up and swept it away with his hand instead!!!

He was trying to save it at first but looks like he may have ended up killing it instead 😂😂😂 Poor ladybug

Shoutan got up and he talked a bit more about his outfit

He walked round in a huge circle so that he could turn round without getting tangled in his train.

It looked so funny and we all laughed XD

Shoutan: Nani waratteru no? (What are you laughing about?)

Shoutan: So in December last year I starred in a Stage Play, a story about a Mermaid Princess Shoutan: Aoi Shouta wa otoko de wasurenai yo ne (You guys haven't forgotten that Aoi Shouta is a guy right?)

Shoutan: There were some who've said/thought, "ah, that's right, Aoi Shouta is a guy" Shoutan: Yes, Aoi Shouta is a guy 😂😂😂

Shoutan: Ja otoko rashiku utaimasu (Then, I'll sing like a man~)

Murasaki

Shoutan: Mairimasu!! “Hito yo~ hito yo ni hitomi goro~” He never did Murasaki dance again this time either, the end of the song was the same a the MV where he twirled his hands

We all changed colour from red, blue to purple well✨

I seen the wire coming down and the fabric behind and under him *is he going to fly again and like Budokan?!?!*

Turns out it was just to raise all the fabric, but it was truly beautiful! *__*

Ai Uta

He held his mic like he did in Budokan again while singing

He also went down to perform on the extended stage, at the last chorus, he laid down in the middle of the circle that his dancers made. The camera shot a aerial view and the effects along with the dance were amazing! If I seen correctly, that part of the stage spinned him round

Video

Dancers and band members intro In the video, Painter Shoutan wrote each dancers’ name on the screen and introduced them one by one as they did a short solo performance It was the same for band members

RUN!! RUN!!

He wore a purple hoodie with checkered shorts and orange trainers. His hoodie had 29 on it for his age XD Pompoms were attached to his back it looked so cute like a tail XD He then took them and danced with them Half way/three quarters through the song he threw the pompoms away and took a huge prism flag (it was taller than him), he spinned, threw it up and caught it when it came back down! So amazing!!! Seeing him perform this live made me love this song even more!

START!!

He sounded even cuter in the way he sang this! And he looked so adorable waving the flag around in his outfit! We chanted “Let’s START!!” in the chorus. The flag looked really heavy though and you can hear him getting a bit tired from time to time ><

Talk

Again we asked Shoutan to spin XD He jumped and spinned to show his outfit XD

He spinned and then made a peace sign XD

So there's 29 on this outfit Yep, I'm 29 until August this year! He talked about Hajime (keyboard player) lol his hair is still amazing as ever XD Shoutan: I'm going to be 30 soon~

So there's a number written on my outfit, what is this "29"?? Fans: Shoutan's age!! Shoutan: This number, is my age until August 11th this year!! XD I'll be even more otona- otoko like!! (Lol otona is adult but he wanted to say be more manly otoko 😂)

Shoutan: Daisuke na minna san he(To everyone who I love)

Zutto...

Shoutan: Douko ikouka? Fan: Nani tabeyouka? Shoutan: Koko ga ee na? Fans: Kore ga ee na~

The lyrics is "ii na" but he changed it to "ee" because that's Kansai dialect!! So cute! ^^

Shoutan: Mada neteru no? 
Fans: Sakki okita toko Shoutan: Chikoku suruyo? 
Fans: Heiki dayo ^^

Usually we only sing the second verse with him! I was so happy to sing the first and second verse too!

He gave us a chuu~ at the end ^^

He turned around after he finished singing and stayed still for a while Touch To Take Trico?? And then I seen a staff handing him the flag Yes it is!

Touch To Take Trico

I managed to get my glad ready in good time and so did everyone else “Lalalala lalalala lalala~” Shoutan: Oh you all managed to properly get ready!

*music starts* Already had my flag ready~ Shoutan: "Jyaa!! I'm going to sing close to every one!!!" Ehh what?!?! 😳 He runs to the right side of the stage and gets on a cart!!!!!!!!!!

He sang and waved to everyone in all directions while slowly going round! Wait, wait, wait! Is he? Is he going to come here too?!? >___< *thinking back to 5th Stage, because Saitama Arena is too big, you can't make it round the arena in one song* he's going to come here!! 😭 I think he looked over to my direction when he was at the bottom right of the stadium 😭😭😭 When he made his way over to my side he was so close!!!

He looked like he was about to fall at one point!! *Shoutan be careful!!!* O__________________________O

He travelled on !! *REMEMBERS CHIHARU IS SLIGHTLY FURTHER UP!!!*

OMG! CHIHARU HAD HIS LIGHT ON YELLOW TOO AND HE WAS WAVING AT SHOUTAN LIKE MAD!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂 Chiharu: "YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!" *Waves frantically* 😂😂😂Chiharu the best 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Shoutan being professional as he is, never seemed to react, I don't even know if he looked at Chiharu or made eye contact since he had his back towards me

Oh yeah, I looked over to Chiharu every now and then from the start of the live, and he was actually pretty chill throughout the whole live and didn’t wave his light stick much lol. Guess he is sitting at the special section after all, he’d attract too much attention with no one else waving their lights XD

At the end they extend the music and Shoutan got us all the song the “lalala” parts a few times ^^

Video

Painter shoutan couldn't think of what to draw and was pretty down 😢 He starts working out doing stretches, sit ups, then he tried weight lifting but couldn't do it, it was so cute 😂

Then he finally came up with an idea and started drawing and painting the outfit He had a big satisfied smile He was drawing a prince outfit

Shoutan goes to sleep. Wakes up and sees the sparkles coming from Budokan prince outfit and sparkles from the drawing mixing together The magic sparkles gathers on Shoutan Once again, he showed a really beautiful smile

The stage was dark and he appeared at the top of the stage in that Prince outfit.

We all cheer and then it was silent while he made his move, slowly but coolly. He walked to the right side of the stairs. He sat at the top of the stairs

He walked a bit further down before sitting

Kimi No Kotoba Ballad ver

The music starts Shoutan slightly missed the start of the song because he walked further than he was supposed to 💦*me whispering ganbare!* He forgot some of the lyrics near the start *ganbare Shoutan!!* but he picked himself back up

The performance was so beautiful and I was so touched by it once again

Himitsu No Kuchidzuke

As usual, fanchanting to this was so amazing and fun!!!

*Saying this fast*"Fukaku... "karemete ageru?" He said ageru in a higher register sounding like a question

He gave us 3 kisses instead of the usual 2! And we got to hear them loud and clear 💕

He said the lines more aggressively than usual, he was too kakkoi!!! 。・゜・(ノД`)・゜・。

If I remember correctly he came to the bottom of the stage for parts of song!

Couldn't quit hear his kisses here, the same happened in Budokan

And the ending instead of a kiss, he held his index finger to his lips (like shhhh) >///<

S

Now, chanting to this was also amazing!!!!! We were all so hyped up! Shoutan was extra kakkoi, and aggressive as he said in his blog ✨ He performed part of the song at the bottom of the stage.

Talk

Shoutan: *sighs* Boku mo ningen datte, tsukareru toki mo aru (I'm also human, there are times where I'll also get tired)

*Ganbatte! Otsukare!* >__< rest if you must!!

Fans: Omizu wo nonde!! (Drink water!) 😂

Shoutan: I always will be/want to be everyone's Prince (can't remember which one he said)

Shoutan: For the girls... Please always let me be your Prince For the guys... Hime-sama ni... Zettai narenai (I'll definitely never be able to be your princess) 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I was so tempted to shout "HIMEOUJISAMAAAA!" 😂

Shoutan: This part is called the first floor right?? Fans:Yeah! XD Shoutan: Jyaa! First floor! Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Second Floor Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Third floor!! Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Girls! Fans: YEAHHH!! Shoutan: Guys! Male fans: YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!

The guys were amazing and that's when I noticed there was a guy sitting not too far from me. His cheering was amazing XD

Shoutan talked about the band members Shoutan: Everyone loves curry and only eats curry We usually have lunch box meals prepared, even today the meal they had was curry.

Shoutan to Taka-nii (drummer): What did you think of the fans? Taka-nii: Yappari dansei no koe ha sugokatta (The guys’ voices were amazing after all XD)

Shoutan spoke to Masu papa calling him papa as usual XD Masu papa: Papa wo yamete (stop it with the papa) 😂 And we all shouted papa XD He talked about Shoutan's talents again and also mentioning how Shoutan had 4 outfits

Shoutan: Even years ago I wouldn't think I'd be here like this like this, it’s really thanks to everyone. We all cheered and thanked Shoutan too Shoutan: No, I mean, without everyone I wouldn’t have been able to hold a live! You can’t hold a live with no one attending!!

He said he won't let go of us

He said that time really flew by and its time for the last song :(

Shoutan: I'll sing another song Shoutan: Keep following me

Checkmate

The dance!!!!! It was SOOOO kakkoi! and then it went cute and girly during “Everybody go~ Everybody now~” parts!! Choreography during instrumental part: he walked from left to right in line with the dancers, each dancer stopped one by one as Shoutan walked on.

Shoutan: I said before that the time will fly by and the time has really gone by, it's nearly the end

flower

He performed it the same as his MV and it was perfect!!

Encore

We chanted: Shoutan! Shoutan! It felt really long and it was tiring, but 3/4 through it I decided to cheer even harder!! The girl to my left cheered from time to time, but when she did she was loud and clear (have more confidence and don't be afraid to cheer for Shoutan!!!)

Not many people around me cheered, but even when it went quiet where I was, I never stopped once (apart from when I kinda choked a bit lol). It felt long but not as long as Osaka.

SHOT A LOVE

Shoutan came back! And of course in the Live Tshirt! He wore the same bottoms and boots as his Prince outfit And... WHAT IS THAT ON HIS HEAD?! XD He wore an Optopus hat, he looked SO cute!!

Everyone's postcards showed on screen! They’re all so cute! 90% of them drew illustrations and wrote a message. My Japanese friend’s one was shown! ^^ I didn’t see mines appear, maybe in Tokyo!

I can hear Shoutan but where is he???? HE’S ON THE CART AGAIN BUT THIS TIME BETWEEN 1ST & 2ND FLOOR!!! So high up! The cart has so many of our postcards stuck on it!! Not many people did short choreography, but we all chanted “SHOW TIME!”

TRUE HEARTS

Half way through SHOT A LOVE, TRUE HEARTS started! Towel out!!

Summer Dreamin’

The song switched to Summer Dreamin’!

There's also a short dance to Summer Dreamin which @moirica taught me before hand (thank you!) and I did noticed quite a number of people knew it as well which was good!

Back to SHOT A LOVE!

As usual, he ran round stage really cutely during the instrumental part ^^ I didn’t see my postcard here either, but I may have missed it as I was looking back and forth between Shoutan and the screen ^^;;

I can’t remember which song the confetti bursted and fell down. I tried really hard (1. because I promised some friends that I would try to catch one 2. because I never got any from Budokan and I wanted to get Prism’s for the memory) but I managed to catch ONE strip!!!

@kuroitsukinohime I’ve been so busy that I can’t even remember if I told you, but I got us one!!! I’ve already split it all between all my friends and don’t have any left ^^;;

Talk

He said he heard us calling Shoutan Shoutan and thanked us

He said it’s his first time performing a live in Osaka and he's really happy and glad.

About his hat, he said he went looking for something with Osaka in mind, he found the big one first, then he found the smaller one and decided he had to put them both together (on top of each other) XD At first he said takoyaki (it's a food) and then he corrected himself and said he meant tako (octopus) instead 😂 He said he wanted to sing close to everyone so he road a cart, and even asked to be on the 2nd floor, the staff helped moved him along. He said everyone’s dreams (postcards) was stuck on the cart and the ones that couldn’t fit in got shown on the screen.

Shoutan: It's my first time performing a one man live in Osaka, and to be able to participate in this theatre. Shoutan: Let's take a photo!

At first he said to do a peace sign Then him and the staff got into position and he turned round again, and asked us, we said we wanted to make an "S" instead for Shouta ^^

So we went with that again ^^ Cameraman: Hai! 3, 2, 1, cheese~ *Silence~* We took about 3 photos or so and it was the same each time 😂😂😂

That’s the Octopus hat lol He said that last year he got to perform in Anime Kouhaku Utagassen, and it was in Yoyogi too, he thought it'll be nice if he could hold his own live there too one day~ And he's here!!

Shoutan: Then to celebrate/for the memories! (I can't remember which one he said) let's take a photo together!! I don't want do be alone so let's take one with the dancers and band too! As usual, let's make an "S"!!

They got into position Shoutan: Ah, a bit further back?? *moves back more*

Shoutan: Make sure your right hand is on top! If it's left we won't know lol Shoutan: Ok 3, 2, 1~ *shoots*

Shoutan: Oh we'll take about 3 shots *picture gets taken while he turned round to tell us that* 😂 Shoutan: 3, 2, 1~ *shoots* hai okay~~

Thankfully I’m not cut out in the photos, but you still can’t see me. Shoutan, thank you so much for letting me be in 3 photos with you (including Budokan) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀) (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀)

He took off his hat and fans expressed their dissapointment. Shoutan: I can’t wear this anymore~

He made announcements which I’m sure you’ve all seen: Tokyo Prism Live will broadcast on TBS Channel on 03/26! 2nd Full Album will be release this year! 2nd Fanclub Event will be held in Yokohama PACIFICO on 08/12!

Shoutan: So this is really, really the last song Fans: Ehhh ><

Shoutan: Kiite kudasai, Melodia (please listen)

Melodia

I started tearing up during the instrumental part after the second chorus He sang "Minna ga ireba" just like he did in Budokan instead of "Kimi ga ireba" ^^ The music to Melodia played in the background and Shoutan introduced all the members once again. He lined up in the middle of them, hand in hand *Without a mic*Shoutan: TRULY, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TODAY!!!!

His voice cracked so much because he was shouting so hard! Poor Shoutan!! Some of us laughed. Shoutan waved and said thank you to all of us, he went to every side and every direction, thank you Shoutan!

He blew us all a kiss before he left for good. Once the live ended they played the instrumental of flower.

This Live lasted just under 3 hours (shorter than Budokan). I’m not sure how long Tokyo Live lasted as I never kept a tab on times.

Some things I’ve forgotten when it happened

Shoutan was meant to say he changed outfit, but he made a mistake and said something else which sounded similar and it was so cute!

Instead of getting each floor to cheer, Shoutan got: everyone, girls and guys. Again the guys’ voices were amazing, and again there was one guy really close to me XD Some guys on the 1st and 2nd floor on my left cheered really hard at times and they REEEALLY love Shoutan 😂

Thoughts

It felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO short!! Both times as well! As soon as he said it was the last song after S I couldn’t believe it!! Both lives were amazing, but I wasn’t quite feeling it in Osaka for some reason? I couldn’t remember much very well either :/ I was able to enjoy Tokyo Live a lot more and felt more emotional (which is normal for me) Poor Shoutan though, there was so much trouble at Tokyo!! But things like that makes it more fun and interesting! Fav performances: DDD Endless Song Ai No Sasameki Goto Murasaki RUN!! RUN!! Zutto... S Checkmate flower I was disappointed that he never sang Brilliant Moon (super grateful he sang it at Budokan!) and Why, pessimistic? It would have been the perfect set with Checkmate and flower!! But I guess 3 dance songs in a row would be too much ^^;;

Fav parts of the live? It’s the same no matter what event it is. It’s to be able to see Shoutan’s smile. I always look forward to that and he gave me another happy day to remember ^^ I would still say that I love Budokan Live the most. Prism was amazing but that happiness I felt at Budokan cannot be replaced. Every single moment was precious and I received so much when I expected nothing. Even when I received Shoutan’s sign at Hatsukoi Monster Event, I was extremely happy of course, but Budokan is still the happiest day of my life.

Tagging for people to read ^^ @showta0811aoi @chiyamabunny @gloriouscrowncreator

Also thanks again to @kuroitsukinohime because of you I was able to go to Osaka Live!! Cheering for Shoutan together was the best!!

So I’ve changed my style a bit and tried to make it more report-like than my usual personal ones. I skipped out way more of my reactions and thoughts compared to my Budokan report. I skipped out about buying goods and things in between. Haven’t included much photos of my own.

If anyone is still here reading this (lol) please let me know your thoughts, and what you’d prefer :)

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

8 influencer marketing statistics that will guide your strategy in 2019 and beyond

Remember Beanie Babies?

These stuffed toys inspired perhaps the quintessential collector fad of the 1990s, giving Gen-X and millennial consumers their own little taste of Tulip Mania. All the enormous hype and eye-popping price tags got a big boost from a then-innovative source: one of the first real blogs, maintained by parent company Ty, on which different Beanie Babies would “post” their ghostwritten updates to an online diary.

The Ty blog entries showcased the early potential of influencer marketing, the practice of building brand awareness, cultivating an audience and shaping purchase decisions via the power of well-known and persuasive personalities. In that case, it entailed personas modeled on highly sought-after toys, meant to drive word-of-mouth about their appeal in lieu of conventional ad buys. Today, “influencer marketing” as a term is nearly synonymous with the recommendations of peers and online content creators, as well as celebrity endorsements.

You wouldn’t be mistaken to think that influencer marketing is as much about the messenger and their chosen medium – whether that’s a blog or, increasingly, a social media platform – as it is about the message in question. So does it actually work? We’ve put together these influencer marketing statistics to help answer this question and guide you in incorporating it into your marketing initiatives.

1. 70 percent of YouTube viewers trust YouTube creators more than other celebrities

Everything from an in-depth product review to a quick how-to video has a natural home on YouTube, making the platform an especially versatile channel through which influencer marketers can reach and affect their audiences. And those audiences are huge.

The above number, taken from a Google-sponsored study, indicates that literally 1 billion+ plus individuals place YouTube stars among the foremost trendsetters and tastemakers. Popular channels like those of fashion reviewer Grace Helbig and podcaster Joe Rogan have millions of subscribers apiece.

More importantly, their followers are highly engaged and likely to act on what they hear. Six in 10 YouTubers would give more weight to a content creator’s advice on what to buy than they would a traditional celebrity endorsement.

A successful influencer marketing campaign on YouTube could take the form of a hands-on demo, careful product placement or daily vlogging. There are so many ways to build and monetise an audience on YouTube for marketing efforts within your particular niche, whether that’s beauty product recommendations or power tool guides

2. Instagram topped 1 billion active users in 2018 – and most of them are millennials and Gen-Z

If we had to point out where influencer marketing crossed the Rubicon from “oh this is kind of a neat idea” to “wow there is serious power here”, it would be Instagram’s launch in 2010. Instagram took influencer marketing mobile, dramatically expanding the potential audience.

Its distinctive aesthetics and user demographics, which skew younger than the general population, also made it an ideal platform for posting the aspirational content so conducive to building brand awareness and loyalty. You don’t have to take our word for it, though – 87 percent of influencers cited Instagram as their favorite platform in 2018.

Between 2016 and 2017, the number of Instagram posts bearing the FTC-required #ad or #sponsored hashtags for sponsored content surged to 1.5 million. These updates generated over 1 billion likes between them that year. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story, as influencer marketing efforts on Instagram are often subtle and organic.

Almost two-thirds of the top-performing Instagram posts feature products and find their audiences through carefully selected hashtags, filters and additional details such as geotags and video captions (these are very important, and a lot of people don’t even know they exist). The Instagram users who engage with influencer posts are relatively young millennial consumers; over 60 percent of them under 35. That puts them squarely in the lucrative 18-34 segment that many marketers target.

Bottom line: Almost any modern influencer marketing campaign will be #blessed to have a strong presence on Instagram. As much as three-quarters of purchasing decisions by Instagram users are influenced by what they see on the platform.

3. Nine in ten Pinterest users use their pins to plan purchase decisions

Other than Instagram, no platform is so closely associated with influencer marketing as Pinterest, the image-centric social network that launched in 2010. Pinterest’s pinboard-inspired design lets users assemble collections of pictures, GIFs, videos and other items, many of which serve as blueprints for future purchases.

If services like Pocket and Instapaper offer the web’s version of a “Read It Later” button, Pinterest is a close as it gets to a “Buy It Later (Probably)” button. Ninety percent of Pinterest users saying they use it to make purchasing decisions and 60 percent buy something from a brand after seeing a promoted pin.

To influencer marketers, Pinterest offers a great balance of branded content opportunities and organic reach. To Pinners, the site is a much more trusted source of product recommendations and exposure than search engines, other social media or even friends and family.

Pinterest offers greater flexibility than the other major influencer marketing platforms. A Pinterest campaign might entail curating a special board that mixes products from top brands, using promoted pins or participating in the official Pin Collective program, which pairs businesses with content creators who are experts in producing beautiful, high-engagement pins.

The long half-life of Pinterest pins also allows for highly protracted marketing efforts. The typical pin takes 3.5 months to generate half of its engagement, compared to 90 minutes for a Facebook update and only 24 minutes for a tweet.

4. Twitch averaged more than 3 million unique monthly broadcasters in 2018

A Netflix executive once identified the hit game “Fortnite” as a bigger competitor than Hulu or HBO. That’s because on top of actual playing time, users collectively watch billions of minutes of lengthy live playthroughs of “Fornite” and other games, along with non-gaming content. Influencer marketers are capitalising on the platform’s notably high levels of engagement.

Users who spend only a few seconds engaging with marketing content on Instagram or Facebook might spend minutes with it on Twitch, since they are giving the live video their full attention. There are plenty of effective ways to reach an audience on Twitch via an influencer campaign, including:

Unboxing videos.

Product shout-outs.

Sponsored live streams.

Giveaway contests.

While it’s not as well-known an influencer marketing platform as Instagram, Pinterest or YouTube, Twitch is an up-and-comer with undeniable potential. Partnering with an influential content creator on a live stream is a relatively low-cost way for a brand to incorporate video into its marketing efforts and increase its chances of sustained engagement.

Don’t mistake Twitch for a gaming-only platform, although that does remain its most prominent vertical. The platform has dedicated categories for hobbies and crafts, food and drink, art, science and technology, special events and more. With more than 9 million channels up and running, there’s endless variety across Twitch and plenty of room for you to reach the right audience.

5. 43 percent of Americans get their news from Facebook

No discussion of today’s social media-powered influencer marketing would be complete without a few words about the Social Network itself and its more than 2 billion members. Facebook’s sheer size makes it an important forum for influencers, despite it lacking the curatorial design of Pinterest, the cultivated aesthetic of Instagram or the video-only format of YouTube and Twitch.

The stat above shows just how wide Facebook’s reach is across digital life. It’s a local and national news site as much as it is a place to like vacation photos or reply to questions in someone’s status update. The massive number of eyeballs focused on Facebook means that reaching even a small sliver of its active users can generate considerable return on investment (ROI). Marketers as a whole see Facebook as the best social network for ROI on ad spend. What about influencer marketers in particular?

Facebook has gradually made it easier for influencers to team up with organisations looking to reach certain audiences. Dedicated tools such as the Brand Collabs Manager simplify the process by which brands can find, contact and collaborate with content creators whose audiences overlap with their own.

Even without using these specialised services, influencers can get plenty of mileage from Facebook by reposting and sharing assets originally posted elsewhere, such as a video or infographic. Influencer content on Facebook has a higher click-through rate than ads, although its cost per click is also higher.

6. 40 percent of Twitter users have made a purchase in response to an influencer’s tweet

Twitter has likened influencer marketing to the digital equivalent of a Wheaties box. That cereal brand became notable for the athlete portraits that appeared on many of its boxes and indicated the star’s endorsement. The fast-paced, conversational nature of Twitter makes it a powerful engine for generating word-of-mouth via comparably high-profile endorsements, albeit ones that can attract thousands of likes and retweets within a matter of minutes.

Twitter users who see tweets from brands experience a 2.7-fold jump in purchase intent. Add influencer tweets to the mix, though, and the boost nearly doubles, to a 5.2x increase. In fact, Twitter’s researchers discovered only a narrow gap between the share of users who sought out recommendations from influencers (49 percent) and those who did the same from friends and family (56 percent).

On Twitter, as on the other platforms we’ve looked at, the best approach to building brand awareness and converting users is usually to combine influencer and branded content. That way, you can reach an audience at different parts of the sales funnel while presenting them with varied content, from video testimonials to tweets optimised and tagged to gain traffic from current events and holidays,

7. Word-of-mouth generates twice as many sales as direct advertising

We’ve talked a lot about specific social networks and how they let influencers connect with their audiences. YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter are undoubtedly powerful tools, but what does success look like when using them? Start with high engagement, which leads to increased word-of-mouth activity.

An effective YouTube explainer video or a strategically placed pin can generate the consumer-to-consumer recommendations that often provide much greater ROI than simply buying an ad. According to McKinsey, recommendations of the iPhone during its first 2 years of availability in Germany drove six times as many sales of the devices as Apple’s own paid advertising.

Very little if anything in the marketing world compares to a direct recommendation from a trusted source. Whereas display ads often lose out to ad blockers and video spots are either ignored or skipped, word-of-mouth suggestions reliably hit home. Friends and family are high on the list, and so are content creators with large and attentive audiences, as Twitter found in its research on how the platform shaped buying decisions.

8. Brands average a $6.50 return for every $1 of influencer marketing spend

At the end of the day, influencer marketing efforts must do more than build an audience. They must also show tangible ROI and prove that they’re worth investing in, even at the expense of possibly bypassing more traditional routes such as direct advertising.

Evaluating an influencer marketing campaign is complex, with many possible KPIs to look at, including:

Brand mentions.

Comments, likes and shares.

Overall audience reach.

Form completions and other conversions.

Changes in sales.

Inevitably, results from influencer marketing vary widely by company and platform. They’re generally positive, however – 70 percent of respondents to an Influencer Marketing Hub survey reported an ROI of $2 or more and the average ROI was $6.50 per dollar. Some companies saw as much as a 20-to-1 return!

In 2019 and beyond, influencer marketing is a critical area to focus on, alongside other similarly proven practices like SEO and email marketing. While the days of using a humble online diary to generate a huge bubble in the prices of stuffed toys – and an ensuing cultural phenomenon – are long gone, you have a more sustainable opportunity in front of you: The chance to cultivate audience trust and admiration, all at the massive scale of the web.

from http://bit.ly/2KKZzXI