#just copying this off twitter for myself to refer back to

[libracorpvs]

"I urge you to think very carefully, not sloppily, on this issue. Lives are at stake.

Yes, social isolation is one risk factor for suicide. We agree on that; we disagree on how this should be interpreted and applied.

The typical trans narrative looks like this: because social isolation is a risk factor for suicide, we must all rearrange society and bypass our instincts to make sure trans people feel included everywhere, even at the expense of safeguarding women and children, and other human rights issues.

But how far can this be carried out? Some trans rights activists (TRAs) would take this so far as to say that lesbians should accept males as partners. Is this what we’re willing to give up in the name of “inclusion” so this special class of victims doesn’t die of suicide?

And how can this be compared to parallel issues? In therapy, when we have patients struggling to feel accepted and loved, do we always hold their social environment accountable and reinforce the narrative everyone else is to blame for their feelings of rejection? Or, do we hold our patients at least somewhat responsible for how their choices affect their social lives? Are there times when we must challenge or temper their expectations of others, or help them discover ways to make themselves more appealing as potential friends, partners, or employees?

The truth is, trans people do face social isolation, and higher rates of singleness and childlessness. Their dating pool is substantially narrower, and comprised in large part by people with fetishes. Their capacity for sexual functioning or pleasure is often altered or destroyed by the medical procedures they’ve endured. Many have lost their fertility and are therefore not eligible partners for those looking for someone to have children with naturally. Oftentimes, according to the current models of healthcare I object to, this fertility was sacrificed at young ages, despite the fact we have zero evidence base for the assumption that people can accurately predict in youth whether they will want children by midlife. All of these are reasons that I take the stance I do. Why should we allow doctors to give drugs and surgeries to people that limit their relationship and family potentials when we know relationships and family play such a huge role in wellbeing and reduce the lifetime risk of suicide?

I am simply unwilling to accept the sloppy, daft thinking behind the idea that the social isolation trans people face is (a) everyone else’s fault or responsibility, (b) not a reason to think twice about promoting transition, and c) a reason we should all be celebrating trans-ness. I argue that the latter creates a social incentive for identifying trans, and encourages more people to put themselves in this same exact position, with these same risk factors. I am more concerned that the social isolation factor needs the sort of complex analysis I’ve given it here. It should not be weaponized to silence critics like myself.

The long term suicide risk of postoperative transsexuals has been found to be upwards of 19 times higher than age matched peers. If social isolation as a suicide risk factor could really be reduced to matters of identity-based intolerance, then we’d see similar suicide rates amongst all marginalized, oppressed, or persecuted peoples. But we don’t see that. We see resilience. Throughout history humans have endured much greater hardships, and not on the basis of belonging to a category one could simply choose to opt in to, and use the latest first-world medical technologies to inflict upon themselves. If “trans” as an identity is really so persecuted, why are people choosing it anyway? When Jews were persecuted in WW2, they hid their identities to survive. I’d be curious to see the suicide rates amongst people facing such levels of historical hardship. Can we really truly attribute suicidality to oppression, and make a sound case that the solution is to push acceptance, no matter the cost to other human rights, and even if “trans” is glamorized in the process, leading to more people opting into this permanently medicalized category of synthetic sex identities?

Social isolation is just one risk factor, though a big one. We need to also factor in the role of illness, injury, and incapacity in increasing the risk of suicide. Trans related medical “care” is full of iatrogenic harms. I argue it is incredibly irresponsible to inflict optional, medically unnecessary, iatrogenically harmful procedures on people with young, healthy bodies, whose young minds cannot possibly grasp what this entails for their futures. Try living with chronic pelvic pain, chest pain or numbness from lost breasts, bladder infections, an exposed and enlarged clitoris that rubs against your pants all day, being forced to do painful dilations daily in order to keep a wound open, the flesh of your arm missing, or peeing through a plastic tube that keeps getting infected… trust me this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s painful, costly, debilitating, and humiliating. It leads to increased risk of opiate addiction, starting with prescribed post-surgical painkillers. I believe doctors have stepped way outside of the bounds of medicine and should not be doing these things to anyone.

So don’t blame the likes of me for the social isolation trans people face, or the higher lifetime risk of suicide in those who’ve followed through with these supposedly “life saving” procedures. Don’t try to force males on lesbians and into women’s sports, locker rooms, bathrooms and prisons. Think honestly about human nature and what most people want in terms of love, partnership, family, life, and health. Think about the fragile mental state of the young and vulnerable, and how long life is, and how little capacity we have at age 12 or 20 to anticipate our futures. Consider whether we should really be normalizing or glamorizing such a novel and debilitating lifestyle, given what’s at stake."

- Stephanie Winn

[zexapher]

Vacuan Nights, Like Vacuan Days

They’re just so great together! I’d love for Jaune and Weiss to get a little downtime in Vacuo to live out a moment like this. They really deserve it, and I’d love to see Jaune’s guitar make a reappearance.

The comic here was inspired by u/Silverstar1243’s excellent piece of art, A Serenade Under the Moonlight. Send some love to them on their twitter, commission some art if you’re willing and able, they’ve made some great stuff.

You folks may have noticed I threw in a couple of references for those in the know; the Golden Oreos behind Yang (double stuffed, I might add) for the trio’s ship, Weiss liking it rough for Mallobaude’s great fic, and of course I made a whole theme around the Arabian Nights Disney song. A song, along with its Aladdin compatriots, which I spent the better part of a day finding covers for just to listen to on repeat while I worked.

This one’s now officially my longest comic project, with 14 panels, two over the past record since I added the White Knight kiss at the end. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Not sure I’d say it was more difficult than my Vanity of Vanities post, but for this one I actually knew how to use my editing software going into it (at least somewhat).

Put a lot of work into this one, been working on it on and off since February. Took a few breaks for vacation, to make my memorial post for Rooster Teeth, and another five meme edits or so, but I came back around to it. First half was pretty easy, relatively minor edits inserting characters into scenes and so on. The second half with Jaune and Weiss was tougher though, with color correcting, merging poses, redrawing features, drawing Jaune’s entire head to fix some lighting issues, etc. Really like how the edit to make Jaune strum his guitar turned out.

The time it took to make the whole comic got me down a little, until I did a bit of math. Including my side projects since starting this, all the scripting and editing and all, I’ve been pumping out a panel every two days. That seems pretty good to me, that kind of accomplishment makes me a little proud of myself.

Really need to get around to watching the second part of the Justice League Crossover movies. It’s got a few Vacuo scenes that might make things a little more authentic instead of me just using Saphron’s house and pretending it’s a suite in Vacuo. I do love taking yet more character stills from Jaune and friends experiencing deep trauma and turning it into something positive, been making that a bit of a personal habit. And I’ve got to say, the background for Jaune and Weiss’ scene is really beautiful, pulled it from when Sun and Neptune hear Ruby’s message about Salem. That’s just a really good shot all on its own, I even saved a copy for my computer’s wallpaper after editing out the two.

Posting a big RWBY White Knight edit, watching not one but two RWBY Beyond episodes, and all on the trail of the news that RWBY’s found partners that they’re negotiating with and that the creative team is expected to stay on. And I'm sipping bubble tea. Life is good.

Anyway, pardon the long write up. I’m invested in this one, and am quite pleased with how the comic turned out. I hope you all get a kick out of it as well!

[thebibliosphere]

I saw your post about ingram, and out of curiosity, is there some advantage to going through the whole self-publishing thing with retailers when you're just starting out? like I mean the way that fandom zines work is that they don't even bother going through ingram or amazon or whatever. they just set up a social media site (usually twitter) to gain followers, open preorders (usually 1-2 months in length) to generate the costs of printing upfront, and then sell anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred copies of their books (usually artbooks, but anthologies exist too). I've seen some zines generate over a thousand orders. they're kind of like pop-up shops, except for books. maybe the sales numbers aren't so impressive to a real author, but the profit generated is typically waaaay more than the $75+ apparently needed for Ingram Spark, so I still feel like new authors could benefit from this method too, especially if they just need some start-up cash to eventually move to ingram if they want to for subsequent runs of their book. I think authors would also have to set aside some of the pre-order money to buy an ISBN number to have printed on their book, and I'm not really sure what other differences there are, but I just wanted to ask about it in case there's some huge disadvantage I'm missing!

So, popup zines work well for some people, and I know some authors who kickstart their work successfully. But for a lot, it's just not feasible as a long-term stratedy. Or even as a means to get off the ground.

Fanzines succeed primarily because an existing fanbase is willing and ready to throw money at something they love. They’ve got a favorite writer or artist they want to support. Supporting all the others is just a happy by-product. They also take a HUGE amount of short-term but intense planning that just doesn’t always jive with how some of us work.

I, for one, would never offer to organize a fanzine. I’ll take part in them as a creator, but I’d rather throw myself off a cliff than subject myself to wrangling that many people and dealing with the legal logistics.

When it comes to authors doing anthologies, it'svery much the same. The success of the funding often hinges on having other big-name authors involved whose existing fans will prop up the project. Or having a huge marketing budget.

Most self-pub authors have zero marketing budget. I’m one of them, and I’m under no illusions that my work would not be as popular and self-sustaining as it is if I didn’t have a large Tumblr blog.

When I thank Tumblr in my forewards, I am utterly sincere. Tumblr brought fandom levels of enthusiasm to an unknown work and broke the Amazon algorithm so hard, that Amazon thought I was bot sniping my way to multiple #1 spots and froze my sales rankings.

That’s not the norm. And while I could probably kickstart my own work as an indie creator, that’s because I’ve put literal decades into building up a readership. I’ve been doing this since I was 16 and realized people thought I was funny. I didn’t know what to do with it or if I’d ever actually write anything, but it meant the groundwork was already there (thank you, past-me). I basically fell upward into my success by virtue of never being able to shut the fuck up and wanting to make people laugh. Clown instincts too strong.

New or first-time authors trying to sell their work without that will find it infinitely harder.

All of that aside, even if an unknown author somehow gets lucky and manages to fund their work, there’s still the question of shipping and distribution logistics. Are you shipping everything yourself? Better hope you’re able-bodied and have the time for it. (for reference, it took me months to ship out 300 patreon hardbacks because of my disabilites. It damaged my back and hands. I couldn’t type for several weeks after I was done.)

Are you going to sell primarily at conventions? Better hope you’re able-bodied, have the time and don’t have cripling anxiety about being in large groups...

Also, will selling a dozen to a few thousand copies in one burst be sustainable in the long run as a career? Not for me. Doing things via Ingram and Amazon means I earn a steady trickle of sales for the rest of my life provided the platforms remain and so long as I keep working and can generate interest in the series, not just when I have funds to pay for physical copies to sell. The one-time (in theory) cost of $75 to distribute through Ingram gets paid off pretty quick that way. And it doesn't require the same logistics as doing the popup/crowdfund.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you are capable of but also the type of work you’re doing. If you’ve got an extended network of fellow creatives who will back you or you’ve got a large following elsewhere, doing it like a popup might work for you.

If you’re an exhausted burnout who can’t fathom the short but intense amount of organization that sort of thing requires, not to mention doing it over and over and over... Ehhhhh. No thank you.

[catprinx]

I know art is all about practice and trying out new things and not being afraid of using references, but do you have any advice for newer artists about areas to focus time on? Especially for learning digital art/colouring? I've always loved your art style so any advice you have would be valuable.

hi anon!!! Thank you for the kind words :)

There's no one good answer to this because art is about a lot of things. So rather than give you clear-cut actionable items to do, like a checklist, I'll just write down my own philosophies about art exploration. I've also been thinking a lot about this in terms of my own improvement.

(Also for everyone reading this I am by NO MEANS a teacher so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I'm simply someone that just enjoys thinking about art)

I think art is a lot about the combination of technical skill + visual language + concept.

Practicing technical skill, as you said, involves using reference and doing studies. I think an important thing to remember is you need to know what you're trying to learn. Here's a good example the former is a traditional still life of grapes, the artist probably intended to make a piece with a good composition and an impressive rendering technique. While the latter is definitely more of a value/color study. I'm certain this artist could have gone into detail rendering those grapes but being realistic isn't their intention/style. So when you're doing your studies I think simply asking "what do I want to work on?/what am I trying to communicate" can be helpful.

If your goal is working on color specifically I think it would be important to practice values, hues, and temperature control. Those things are the basis of color and after that you can play with more stylistic color. In the end my advice is to do a lot of studies, and look at a lot of art! Doing these studies digitally is just a matter or practicing and familiarizing yourself with the art programs (it takes time). If you have an artist you like you can probably look at their work and breakdown what you like about it. For example the narumitsu art I was working on here is kind of a study of @/rei_17's art (from twitter). I love her use of non-local colors and colors that are very close in value but the depth comes from the hue/temperature shifts in color. It's so masterful to me!!! So, now that I know what I'm looking at it becomes easier to break down and put it into practice for my own art.

Visual language usually refers to "style". To me, it can mean a lot of different things but for the sake of this long ass text post let's say it's just about "art style". My tip is to...copy! Copy what you like and figure out what it is you like about it. I feel like your hand will guide you towards your own art style in the end. I don't view myself as someone with a particularly interesting or unique art style but I can breakdown my influences a little. I'm someone who grew up with anime/shoujo influence but also copied a lot of popular tumblr styles back in the day lmao. I want my anatomy to "feel" correct even though it's rarely realistic and I don't really exaggerate form too much because I don't have a preference for it. I'm someone who values drawing speed and clarity of form over details. And all those things added up are the reasons I draw like I do. You can totally make a style by more intentionally riffing off others, and you can also develop a style just by doing your own thing. Your art will always have an identity of its own even if you don't know it at the time!!!

Concept is just your idea/intentions/narrative etc. I really think concept can be anything you want. Some people can go really in-depth with their concept with studying and research and etc, and other people can make something visually interesting simply by going "I want to draw a cute girl". Everyone is different! I wouldn't take concept advice from me personally because I don't make original illustrations. Fanart is easier to work with because usually you're interpreting someone's existing narrative and you can churn out something cool from that. Maybe my advice is draw more fanart???

[veinsfullofstars]

hey just wondering, how do you draw daroach? i wanna figure him out for myself but dont feel like i get down how he looks well enough. thanks for the help if you have any, if not then thanks for just answering

Thank you for the question! And, yeah, I totally get it - that rat can be a nightmare to draw sometimes, haha. I definitely struggled with him a lot at first (you can kinda tell if you compare my earlier works to my recent ones). I think it’s because so much of him is obscured by his outfit in official art? The way the brim of his hat dips over his face or how his cape likes to defy physics - all in service of a cooler silhouette, sure, but taking away a lot of readability and foundation to work from in the process. I’ll try to offer some tips that work for me (though I’m hardly an expert on this, and teaching's not exactly my strong suit, so please bear with me if things get muddled, haha).

The main piece of advice I can give is gather and study as much reference as you can. Official art, concept art, promotional stuff, sprite sheets - whatever you can find, just grab ‘em and put ‘em somewhere you can easily pull up when you’re drawing. I get most of mine from Wikirby, Spriter’s Resource, and official sites like the Kirby JP Twitter, as well as screenshots taken directly from the games (a great way to get in-motion poses and back views, I’ve found). Here’s what my ref sheet for Daroach looks like (I also have a separate one for color swatches):

Kind of a mess, yeah, but very worth it, I assure you. The more visuals you have to work off of, the easier it will be to detect consistencies in design. Which brings me to my next point: shapes!

Most Kirby characters are, at their core, just a buncha simple shapes. It can be hard to tell sometimes when they wear clothes (like with our rat buddy here), but they still have similar foundations of circles and other rounded features. A way I've found that helps with this is to try redlining (that is, take a piece of reference and trace over it for the purpose of study, learning where lines connect, how silhouettes look, how different parts overlap, what shapes are used, etc.). Here’s an example:

This is a great way to find those design consistencies I mentioned before. I did these a bit messy for a better sense of movement (and ‘cause I’m practiced enough to sketch a little quicker), but you can always start slower and cleaner if it helps you see the shapes and layers more clearly. You can even do them multiple times to familiarize yourself with the design and eventually try copying them without tracing, like doing gesture drawings or life studies.

In Daroach, I’ve found that his head isn’t a perfect circle shape, but more like a rounded diamond, with his ears connecting at or just above the “points” on the sides. His body is a bit smaller than his head, and his snout smaller still, each having sort of a teardrop-like shape. His eyes are bigger than I expected them to be, half circles tilted down slightly, often cut off by his snout and hat to create a shaper angle (meant to make him look more intimidating perhaps?). His ears are taller than his hat, though they can tilt back to look shorter. There are also a lot of arcs and triangles present in his design, especially in his cape when it sits across his form or flares out, and the brim of his hat pointing down from just past his ears to right over his snout. Also, unlike many Kirby characters, he does in fact have a neck - it's just hidden behind his collar and bell most of the time (don't ask me why I spent so long verifying this, no I don't have ulterior motives, don't look at me).

Of course, these observations aren’t set in stone. Kirby characters rarely stay perfectly on-model (see Dedede for proof of that), and Daroach is clearly no exception. I mean, just look at these official pieces (all collected from Wikirby):

Even the folks at HAL Labs are not immune to style inconsistency. And that’s not a bad thing! We love a little personal flair in this house. There’s nothing wrong with altering the design a bit to fit your own style - in fact, it’ll probably happen naturally the more you practice, especially once you’re comfortable enough to work without a guide. Here’s some studies I did recently, no tracing, just observation (with different colors used to help me figure out layering):

I’ve seen other folks take their own designs even further than this, adding more fur or sharper shapes or even realistic rat features to our favorite thief. Nothing like stretching those creative muscles once you’ve got the basics down! On that note, don’t be afraid to be inspired by unofficial sources as well. If an artist you like draws Daroach (or any character) in a way you find appealing, ask yourself what it is you like about it, study it as you study official works, and find ways to incorporate elements of that into your own art - “steal like an artist” as the saying goes.

Another thing I recommend for Daroach specifically is studying how real top hats and capes look, especially from various angles and poses in motion. I find it helps to see exactly how fabric sits on a figure or what sides show at different positions. It might seem weird to use human reference for a cartoon rat, and it might take some finagling to get proportions right, but it’s surprisingly effective. I do this with fighting and athletic poses all the time to help figure out weight distribution and line of action. Don’t be afraid to expand your art repertoire into other fields - you never know when it might come in handy!

And, of course, the key thing to hammer home here is practice, practice, practice! Do studies, do gestures, draw with and without references, build muscle memory, do sketches you show to no one, draw memes, draw angst, take your time, fill pages with messy doodles or just drop one in a corner and call it a day. The more you draw this smarmy rat, the better you’ll get. That’s the long and short of it with any skill, creative or otherwise. You gotta try in order to get good, you gotta make mistakes in order to improve, you gotta be kind to yourself in order to do what you love.

Anyway, I think that’s all I got for now. Forgive me if this got a bit rambly or incoherent - I have trouble putting my thought process in words sometimes, haha. I sincerely hope this helps, and I wish you the best of luck with your own future rat-creating endeavors!

Sketch started and finished 06/14/24.

[world-of-eibon]

Introductions

Copy-Pasting this from twitter dot com as an introduction to this blog and what kinda content is going to be featured here!

Gonna start tweeting about my #ttrpg setting in a hopefully not-unhinged matter. Especially since things are happening quickly again. I'll pin this so everyone know's what's up. Let's talk about Eibon.

Eibon is the setting that I've been working on consistently since 2018. As far as rpg settings go, that's pretty young, but Eibon hasn't exactly come out of nowhere, since as my friends could tell you, it's several hundreds of pages of lore now.

Yes, some of it is stuff that I really just loved a lot from older rpgs. I can't lay claim to that. But also, Eibon isn't meant to be this completely original thing that came exclusively from me.

Eibon is meant to be a reflection of my experiences and my beliefs, as well as the things that inspired me to take up the pen in the first place. That's why there's things that to so.e would feel out of place. Because if you love something, I think you should reference it.

I've lost a bit of my point here. Eibon started before 2018, back when I was in middle school, and being introduced to 4th ed d&d from 40k. There wasn't a setting for me and my friends, the places we went to were just places in the world.

But I got older, and as 4e ended, I got more into fantasy and world building. As well as history. The world didn't come from nowhere, life isn't a vapid fleeting thing that ends when you look away. Legacy is everywhere in our world, good and bad- shouldn't it be true in fantasy?

I decided on a name first, before I knew what I was really doing, because every place should have a name. At the time, I picked Eibon. Partly because it rolled off the tongue well, and partly because i was inspired by Soul Eater. A few years ago I learned it came from lovecraft.

In high school, I kinda lost myself, and found myself, and lost myself again. I lost loved ones, and for the first time in my life I started to think about the future. That's kinda when I realized that the history we're taught in school, it doesn't end.

All the bad things I learned about as "ancient history" for my country happened just a lifetime ago, and worst of all, things weren't getting better for us. It's also around this time that I realized the religion that I was born into was a vector for hate in our world.

This had a impact on me, and on Eibon. After that, I graduated high school, went to college, dropped out of college, and started working full time. I wouldn't really recommend living at the poverty line, but doing so has given me perspective that my relatively cushy youth didnt.

Which leads me to 2018. I had been playing CoS with some college friends and my partner asked if we could play d&d. They were living in LA at the time, which was on the opposite coast from me. I had never heard of a vtt, but decided that we could give it a shot thru discord

It was here that our rpg group of the last 6 years began. And what a journey! These people who form the core of our group are my closest friends now, and they began as strangers, or even antagonistic to me. Now one of them will be moving in with me.

Eibon has been on a journey to. At first it was lifting things from module books. Then it became "I have an idea for a town". Then my friends asked to make their characters in this world we were making. Before realized, we were excitedly talking about some of these made up places

It wasn't much later that we realized that we didn't like what other games were doing. Other RPGs are fine, but we wanted to chart our own direction. When we realized that we started to divorce Eibon from preexisting fantasy copyrights. Then we started Project Starwyrm.

A lot of people are talking about one singular generic rpg system for everything. with respect, it's a little silly. But Starwyrm is the system that me and my friends want, for Eibon. Not everyone will like it the way we do. That's fine. That's what makes it special.

It's been 6 years and Eibon is still an infant to me. But it's got a point. Like our world, Eibon has cycles and legacies. Some are good. Some are bad, so many are dangerous. These cycles and legacies don't stop whenever, they keep going until we end them.

Eibon does have a cycle of empires. Because dead civilizations are everywhere in our world, why wouldn't they be in a fantasy world? Unlike what pseudoscience will tell you, the cycle of empire isn't the life of civilization, it's the life and death of institutions and tyrants.

Eibon has horrible monsters of nations that have scarred the world, permanently, from their abuses of magic, science, and people. Some are gone, some are here, and some are yet to come. That's part of the point of it all, see? History isn't one great battle against a single evil.

Instead, history repeats like an endless waltz, which each beat repeating forever. Simultaneously, Eibon explores how what is new is old, and vice versa. This probably stems from the fact I played Guild Wars a lot when I was younger, but technology is an important part of Eibon.

Just like how ancient peoples proved the basic principles of science before we really defined what science was, in the current "age" of Eibon, people are (re)discovering science, knowledge that in ages past was common-place, but lost through that endless cycle of abuses.

Eibon will explore technology, its intersection with magic, and how that will look- since I don't believe that magic and tech are opposites clashing from two sides with chaos in the middle. I think they are more like a coin. Additionally, Eibon will explore industry and just how awful industry actually is for people. How technology and magic improves some lives, and makes some lives worse. How disparities form between people, and how people with discriminate against those without. And maybe how we can solve these problem.

Eibon wont shy away from problems- but unlike cringe weirdos, Eibon isn't going to be a place where violence against minorities is celebrated. Instead, Eibon is going to be a place where the oppressed will actually inherit the earth, and then celebrate the death of bigots.

Should take this time now to talk about the group- I won't be using names since it's rude to do that without permission, but I'll take the time to say that me and my players are a pretty diverse group. Ethnicity, sexuality, class- we're kinda all over the place. And proud of it.

Because of that, Eibon is going to be about cultures and how they intersect to. There's already some exploration and celebration of real-life cultures planned in the future of our writings, but as time goes on, we will be talking more and more about this.

I say the future, since so much of the now is what we do on a week-by-week basis in our group play. But this is kinda starting to come to an end. Not our group, we'll probably keep going until we die and leave the world, but a day is coming where everyone can explore Eibon.

I'm slowly going off and doing a generic "the future..." thing, so I'm going to be more specific. Right now Eibon is the realm of me and my friends, but there will access for all eventually. By my estimates, Starwyrm is still a few years out from being complete.

When Starwyrm is done, the core rules for it, as well as access to Eibon will be available to the public. Everyone should have equal chance to play around with something, and have an opportunity to learn if they like it, which is why the core stuff is going to be free.

Also, we're not really doing this for money either. We're writing Eibon and Starwyrm for ourselves. It's just that we feel that if you think you might like it, you should get to use it too. Will there come a time where we release books or supplements you have to pay for? Maybe.

But I don't want the rules that everyone uses to be behind a paywall. So if anything Eibon/Starwyrm related is paid, we'll tell you why, every time.

Eibon will be available to the public's eyes before Starwyrm launches though. It's hard to tell when exactly this will be, since I'm currently stuck trying to move and get a new job, but we do want to do a podcast game for those who like such things.

We're gonna keep the cast and crew reduced to our circle of friends for the time being, but probably some time within this year or the next year I'll announce a proper podcast that will stream on youtube. We're gonna do our best to make the podcast all original content rather than say, other people's modules. Will we end up running modules? Probably eventually. The podcast, like the rest of Eibon, isn't going to be done for money. It's going to be done for fun, we just want to share our creativity with the rest of you, if you'll have us.

This is all kinda ground-floor stuff. The big announcement of what Eibon is, and that we want to show everyone what we've done, and eventually let everyone play with our work. Right now, there's kinda nothing. Me and my group work 9-5s (sorta) and this is what we do for fun.

I scrolled up and saw that this thread has accrued more views than my normal tweets and reposts, which is cool. Maybe once the podcast is out in the wild, I'll make a community discord or something, if enough people notice what we're doing and want to talk about it.

the big thing with this is that in sharing Eibon with everyone, I (specifically) want to foster a community. Because by making and fostering communities, we make the world a better place.

This whole thread has kinda been my off the cuff, rambling thoughts about the work we've been doing in private, and finally just wanting to kinda shout out into the void of twitter about it. I want to try making a post a day now about Eibon, for the one or two who might be a little curious about what exactly we're up to and want more details about things. Don't like, expect big art or anything, since all I myself can really do is paint minis and write, and the artists in my friend circle don't do work like that for free.

but definitely expect little factoids, or me talking about whatever I can for this made-up world we've been working on. When the time comes and we are ready to announce the podcast, and the public release of Starwyrm, I'll be loud about it, promise.

That's kinda it I think! Hey thanks for reading all of this. I'm really shy, and being autistic I don't always communicate clearly. So if you have a question, just reply and I'll see if I can make a good response. This was just kinda me rambling on twitter, so I've probably lost a thought or two here and there no doubt. If you're interested in hearing more about Eibon, please just follow or like and I'll try not to disappoint. If you're the kind of person who likes to support indie stuff, also please just follow or like.

[manyblinkinglights]

Late reply re: AnyTaur raw chicken creature, but i did get it to work and the forelimb locomotion is absolutely gorgeous! I cannot laud your framework enough for how well it manages to handle a diversity of bodyplans merely through tweaking with the script! holy shit! 10/10 would reccomend to anyone with a quad or taur they wanna skip around as in vrc

(sorry for the low quality image, I'm away from home right now and all I've got is a really crunchy Twitter video of him walking around)

I'm apparently having problems with the chair/station for riding on the thing's back? I don't have any way to test it myself, but according to my friends, attempting to sit on the thing throws them off the map and into who-knows-where. if you have any idea why that may be happening..? idk a damn thing about stations in vrc, and worst comes to worst the option to turn off the chair works fine, so if this is actually probably just a me problem, no need to mull over it.

Additionally: the sit/lay/stand up poses in the radial menu seem to be Supremely Fucked. i know in some of your older YouTube anytaur videos,(back when the orrery appeared to be called helpers) there looks to be stuff like sit offsets and angles? is there any modern equivalent to that, or is sit like. automatically calculated from the leg chain response angles? once again not a huge deal because every other pose and option works wonderfully (including all the absolutely delightful dances, highlight of my life) and I don't see myself using stuff like the sit radial poses often, but I can't help being curious nonetheless.

Anyways. Thank you again for this tool; you really are doing witchcraft when it comes to this stuff and i cannot praise you enough. (I'll see to getting you a donation thru itch to express my gratitude more tangibly, as soon as I'm home and i remember to set up an account or whatever, because god damn do you deserve it imo. value of service or whatever.) Best of luck to you with all your endeavors! Yippie!!!

Okay lol the chair I know exactly why and I keep forgetting it’s turbofucked. I just CANNOT get the script to autogenerate a working chair. What you’ll have to do is FIND the chair, and then fix it yourself; you need to refresh the enter/exit references I think? Right now it’s trying to reach back to an anytaur that doesn’t exist but you need to put YOUR anytaur’s references in there. That’s the basic issue. Bad references in the thing. It’s been a while since i looked at it so idk what they are just. fix all of them in the chair itself. which is in the Orrery somewhere??? Which is unnecessary??? But that’s where it is (for reasons) (irrelevant to you) (shapeshifting/legacy and organizational reasons). You could just put a permanent chair directly on your BEND bone yourself and be fine (or hind.spine if you want your passengers to have a slightly smoother ride).

Yeah your custom poses will have to be retailored per-avatar. I think the script TRIES to walk you through it but you may wish to simply remove menu references to them if it’s too much to deal with. Basically copy your working avatar, hide your original, use the script to put the copy in POSE CLONE MODE, and then you re-record the custom poses moving ONLY the poseclone .001 bones! Your real bones should move with the poseclone .001 bones so you can see what you’re doing; this is the purpose of POSE CLONE MODE. Once the existing custom pose .anim files have been recorded over to suit your particular avatar, you can delete the copied av and reupload your main one. It will use the anims you just fixed and should work fine. A note: all custom pose animations are ROTATION ONLY, except for iirc hind.chest and hind.hips, which DO keep position information, since the constraints to those body parts are parent constraints. These are also the main culprits in making you befuckt, especially hind.hips.

The slow trickle of people actually up to working with my project is like the northern lights to me. You are all aurora magic and I am blessed to behold your journey. I’m so glad your little guy is working correctly!!!!!!

[rennyji]

America, lets go to new heights...

On Super Tuesday 2024, Trump won. With Nikki Haley, I saw an America like the 1979 Spider-woman series On Disney+ i.e. people being part of the process or workings of American government. In the clip in the Twitter link (video uploaded to that site/as unable on Tumblr), Jessica Drew(Spider-woman & a reporter), her co-reporter, and her young nephew, are invited to go see a secret government base, to see the progress that the government is making with time travel. ( I know. Very Sci-Fi, but still...) Imagine if a regular American felt part of the workings of government. Wouldn't that make people feel valued/involved, and give them a sense of pride and accomplishment, through the achievements of their country's best and brightest representatives/scientists?

This is the link ( Tumblr has issue with embedding videos in posts, so I'm including this link with the clip I'm referring to. Because, again, its Tumblr, you might need to copy/paste link to your browser, if in case you can't just click it)

https://x.com/RennyJi/status/1765245684159017260?s=20

I posted the previous thought on Twitter because I really wish America would be transparent & inclusive of citizens, in decisions/progress, like with the inclusion of a teenager and two reporters, in the 1979 Spider-Woman cartoon.

I feel at the time of The Brady Bunch, like in the 60's and 70's, people felt pride in America, from a sense of belonging, in the workings of the country. Since then, the country's government and citizens, seems to be lanes apart/estranged.

But Nikki Haley lost the GOP primaries. She gave her speech, stating she's ending her campaign. I cannot imagine the grief, in losing over something she firmly believed could be achieved. I say "believe firmly" because she was out/about daily/all day. But while Trump spent most of his time in court cases, though Nikki Haley did campaign, regrettably, the message was predominantly: "ending chaos, Trump is chaos, let's return to normalcy." More of the feeling "was female empowerment" (which is great), but the feeling with Trump is "we're going to come back with a vengeance", which is incorrectly summed up, under the words "dictator & retribution." What Donald Trump means by "vengeance" is in terms of the ferocity in which he will assure success, in bringing back America, to some form of glory.

In my weird, surreal "SITUATION," during times, where fortunate people evolved with normal evolution of accomplishments, from news channels to White House Positions, like Nikki Haley herself,

I had a suspicion, my writing or my speech, in my house was heard.

I felt if I talked aloud in the dining room of my old house, people would "hear" my ideas, in the same way I'm now thinking, people are "reading" my ideas, as I'm writing, probably to myself.

In 2016, to an invisible crowd, I said Trump is the best option. I said aloud in my dining room, if he can find the best quality material, the best workers, the best lawyers (quality all around), he'll find the best way to Make America Great Again. And now, against all odds, facing-I think-91 criminal charges, Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. One thing is for sure: Trump is a fighter and fighters do come back with a spirit of vengeance.

It's always through trial/error, with crazy things like talking to myself in my own house, that I find a cause/effect relation, between things like what's said/what could be heard.

When it comes to Trump and Biden, what pissed me off, personally, was that the most powerful men in the country, couldn't end my situation. Is it because it has some root with government/military?! I mean mind mind reading? Takes intelligence gathering to whole new levels.

-And doing it to me for around 16 years, while making me think I'm crazy.

Overturning Roe v. Wade, regarding Abortion, doesn't affect my life. Removing green jobs for coal jobs, doesn't affect me.

The Presidents help American prisoners in Russia. They help Israel. From Obama, to Trump, to Biden...I just don't get why no one helps me.

In Nikki Haley, I saw compassion/heart/spirit. Selfish though it is, after 16 years of confinement, with no life, no social contact, I thought maybe she could make a difference "for me."

Isn't what makes America great, the idea that even one American life is valuable?! Why don't I matter? I was born and raised in New York. Renny George is my actual name...what's the issue?!

Trump just came off as a guy who'll side with the powerful, big handed/tall/strong military men, probably doing "this" to "me."

But my issues aside,

at the stage we're in now, where its between Trump and Biden,

The choice is so obvious. You have to elect Trump. Only Trump makes sense.

Why?!

When people say: respect the flag, honor the military, it's a level of indoctrination. People need to be taught these things. But Donald Trump? People naturally gravitate towards him. His message doesn't get into specifics, but his inner fire is felt by America. He wants to come back with a vengeance.-Revenge for all the catastrophe and disruption in The States, though people read into it as something to spite other human beings.

On his aspiration on being a dictator "just day 1/the 1st day"? You can't misconstrue that or distort that. He didn't say "I'm going to be a dictator." What he means is "on day 1, I'm going to get to work, and, with utmost urgency, enact change, regardless of how lazy Congress is."

Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Joe Biden, all agree: country is on fire. I think during critical times, the Office of the Presidency has inherent elevated privileges.

I would always say, in my SITUATION, that I achieve the fruits of optimism, by taking the route of pessimism. I assume the worst, so nothing surprises me, which gives peace.

Likewise, perhaps the next President needs to be strong & decisive, like a dictator, to achieve the "fruits" of democracy, rather than harping on the "word": democracy. This is already happening, first, before America, in El Salvador. A dictator took charge in chaotic El Salvador, by name of Nayib Bukeles. He stopped crime by enforcing strict changes quickly, without remorse. And now his country's citizens are enjoying what's like democracy, or the fruits of democracy.

With all those gravitating to Trump, there is growing unity within the country. Maybe in this one small way, it's not bad that people don't care on what/how it's going to be done. People just want a guy who "gets the job "DONE." People want a guy that "JUST DOES IT." They're too preoccupied with their lives, and basically want to hire someone else, to clear their grievances/problems.

What could unity within a country do? What could minding our own business for a period accomplish, by not getting involved internationally? What could getting our own house in order do for our capability towards helping other nations, down the road? Green energy/jobs is the way to go. But in these urgent times, what if we did use gas, and drill in Alaska? But "simultaneously," it is imperative that you "actively" find renewable energy sources. Our lives may not depend on it, but the lives of our children and grandchildren will. We owe it to them, like a parent who sets up a house/education for their child's future. Today's America, needs to pave the way for tomorrow's citizens and green card holders.

While taking the time to get our house in order through Donald Trump, we need to follow Kevin McCarthy's advice about rebuild, restore, renew. But also definitely "retribution" in the sense of the fire that fuels us, in the sense of getting revenge against "THE TIMES" we're in, and rising from it.

Our houses need to stop using cheap materials like sheet rock, when the British use bricks. Heating costs/air conditioning costs need to come down. If electric cars are the way to go, we need rebates or vouchers or exchange programs that are government funded with for our current cars. (Like in Back to the Future II, where everyone gets a free Car HOVER conversion, in the spirit of modernization). We need an exchange program for dryers/washing machines. We need to better the United States Postal Service, as everyone knows they're unreliable and slow. We need to modernize infrastructure, in terms of homes, workplaces, and government buildings/attractions.

To Trump's credit, his speech on Super Tuesday was humble, good spirited, and...civil?-I felt in that moment, that I could talk to the guy, unlike the retard doctors, police, family, and orchestrators of my situation, who just spew nonsensical & random/mechanical one liners, in response/and oblivious to everything you tell them.)

Trump even did a little dance and made a couple of jokes.

There was one snide remark on COVID being the China virus. It risks retaliation against East Asians. Maybe it is a virus like SARs, rooted in China, if I remember correctly. Regardless, spend less time criticizing/pointing fingers, "just settle down and "solve the problem" ", as they say in the space program and movies about the space program. From solving one problem, jump to solving the next problem.

Yes, both Biden and Trump are old. But it's one of those quality vs quantity type of things. In terms of quantity, yes, both are similar in age. But quality? Trump's old age is a sign of an energetic, focused, willful, frontal cortex in his brain. Biden fumbles and stammers and looks like he's forced into pushing through, for another four years. He should Rest and relax and Gain satisfaction from time as Senator, Vice President, and now President. Biden? You've done it all. You're in your 80's-Play with your grandchildren.

Something that can be learned from Trump, these is a time to move/think fast/strategize vs. going about saying "feel good" speeches, shaking hands, holding babies. He didn't campaign. He put people in powerful positions, lawyers here/there, went to the right meetings/places; strategy. Maybe the times are urgent enough, to just acting quickly and strategically.

In the Bible, there is the story of the Tower of Babel.

The story has some conflicting messages. But one things certain: when people come together, speak 1 language, talk/listen/understand each other, work together, they can use building technologies from 2-3000 years ago, to build a tower, reaching the heavens/maybe even space.

-------

To step away from Trump for a moment:

(SIDENOTE: Why the tower was destroyed, and people scattered, and one language split into many? It would've hindered spiritual growth by having too much too early. People need to learn the value of working together and the value of learning from differences. Like the mind readers/mind controllers w/the fMRI's and brain mapping, people were trying to be a god, without mastering human decency and mental strength. We'd have been like stereotypical Reptilian aliens, who act on instinct and impulse, constantly seeking physical strength/power, instead of growing heart and having a conscience.)

-------

To get back to Trump:

Congress is divided. Everyone's trying to get their way by having side issues put into a package, advertising the dominant issue. Because of the side issues raising controversy, the dominant issue even gets cancelled/ignored. Under Trump alone, the Republican Party is united. Instead of stop gaps with pay and vacations, Congress might actually get something done under Trump's guidance. He can unite the country, and help us reach the sky, so that we'll at least be among the stars.

There are instances where I find myself just thinking and thinking. When I was in school and in a circle of endless pondering, a stimulant like coffee, gave me focus/tunnel vision of sorts, to break out of the loop and ACT not think. Trump seems to have mastered the art of ACTION, and if it's between him and Biden, electing Trump is obvious. We already have Biden's report card. There are areas he failed. Let's give Trump a chance to get an "A" in politics.

[kewltie]

final countdown: day 12

so i skipped a day bc i wasnt feeling good yesterday. coming back, i didnt want to go hard, just worked on the little things and im pretty happy with most of the format i done on twitch so far. it's starting to all come together.

i said it before i tend to set high expectations and goals for myself. it usually go something like this want a twitch landing page -> look at reference aka the actual twitch landing page -> looks fucking hard to replicate -> groans and say it's impossible, do not want to do it-> request denies -> tries to figure how this fucking thing work to meet my visions -> a lot of bumps and groans but eventually comes up with solution -> figures out many of the parts but a few tricky things idk how to do but it's a big part of the fic -> this is my roadblock which i keep hitting against the wall over and over again till i find the best tool to smash through -> eventually my persistent pays off and problem is semi-fixed and i get what i want like 95% of it.

that's a pretty good percentage so i cant complaint. i cant like make AN EXACT replica of twitter/twitch/tumblr because i HAVE NO CODING SKILL to do that but make it come close as possible with WHAT I KNOW. this got me this far so it's what work for me. i do not recommend for anyone else. if you ever look at my htlm/css it's a fucking mess but idk how to fix or make it cleaner/simpler bc i literality do no have the actual coding knowledge to it. the entire fic is made out of tables, color fonts, screenshot image and free graphics lol. it's very hazaredly made but it works.

anyway, i was working on something benign and probably forgetful. i wanted the streamer's avatars to show up under each of their video stream on the landing page and i couldnt get it quite right but i figured how to resolved it and that what i was working on.

im not sure what i plan to do after this. theres not many social media sites for me to do tbh lol. so i probably wont do anymore formating when i can just copy & paste the reference into the next part so thats one of the thing once you have all the coding set you can just c&p to the next part and just rewrite the text. less work, yet i kinda ok maybe miss just formating and figuring how coding works. it's fucking challenge and make me want to smash my head but the thrill of solving a problem is so satisfying.

[blogaliesa]

Though there's this one in particular made go "Huh 🤨?"

Like okay I understand how they don't like fans' treatment towards the characters but their statement of "you can't ship self inserts of people you don't know if they have feelings for each other!" is baffling to me.

I do understand being weirded out shipping characters that are based on irl people but then their statement can't be applied to one of the pairing since we do know in irl that they are married. Wouldn't make them the only ship that are fine in their perspective? (Like did they forget or don't know?)

Weirdly they only reference Stew and Parl duet in air island trying to deny that the lyrics aren't actually towards each other by inserting a theory that has never yet confirmed in game or any other handlers in a live stream (though I won't deny that the theory is pretty sound plausible as I myself feel it strongly applied to cold island specifically as it aligns with the backstory of the cold collosal and their celestial prodigy)

Plus the social media team uses those lyrics many times between Stew and Parl during the season of love promotional even back when they first appeared for the island in the 2019 trailer. Like this year they used the lyric for a 50% off sale to buy them.

"Take a chance, just take a step, and take a leap of faith with me!"💘

I copy exactly those lines from the official twitter and they put a heart with an arrow emoji with it and I don't think anyone is dumb to not know what that represents but in case anyone that legit doesn't know, here's a thorough answer.

Like come on they both hold hands, the math should be mathing. And look at some of the official pics, how can you look at this and be like "totally platonic" (the first pic references Romeo and Juliet)

What do they mean by spreading misinformation about real people? I could understand the confusion between Stew and Parl as the irl couple rather than the other pair as they push them as one in the promotion but I haven't seen anyone being weird towards the voice actors (I have been in a fandom at that level of toxicity before cough*aph///mau*cough)

In my opinion that indeed they are a reference to the irl voice actors but they aren't a 100% full reference as these guys has their own personality and relationships. So it isn't weird to ship any one of them with each other or other monster species.

A week ago I saw a reddit post about people's dislike of one of my favourite monsters (which is quite tough to read but I understand why it may not be their cup of tea)

This is the only response that I like overall.

[lwt28brave]

LT2 masterpost

If it was up to me, we would get an autumn or winter EP. Since it’s not up to me at all, here, enjoy this post with everything we know so far of LT2, which is to say, not much at all. Everything here is hypothetical. I’ll be updating every time I see something relevant. A little disclaimer that while this is a masterpost (kinda), it could be read as discourse (duh, it’s also a theory), AND it’s also by me, and you shouldn’t expect me to be serious at this point.

Due to me restraining myself, there’s no reference to any of the times he’s mentioned his guitar skills and him improving but I hope you know I cried every single time.

I’m also linking my old pinned here. It was written before AFHF and around the free merch thing that didn’t lead to much, but I still think I made some good points.

Possible tracks:

Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Change

Faith in the future??

369??

Possible names:

369

Faith in the future

When is the album coming out?

Your guess is as good as mine

Friday 28th of January 2022. Almost two years after Walls. It’s a Friday. It’s a 28th. What else can I say?

Here you can find @want-to-be-loved timelines for every month.

Here you can find @berlinini’s timeline of what Louis has been up to this year (2021).

The rest is under the cut. And here you can find a PDF version where Tumblr can't tell me how many pictures I can add.

2020

He said back on May 2th 2020 he wasn’t writing anything new yet.

(x)(x)(x)

Interestingly enough, he’s said many times after that that the album’s not ready cause he has no new experiences to drawn from. I won’t call him out because he does it himself.

May 4th. He liked a tweet from DMA’s Johnny Took saying they had to go write together again. Louis has been credited as an influence for them and (kind of) participated in their previous record, so I’m assuming he meant for their music and not his, but you never know.

Nothing(literally nothing??? how did we survive) until 11th of July. We all know what happened that day. We all celebrated it. Nonetheless, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

(x) So, by the beginning of July 2020 he was working on concepts and ideas for the new album. That was fifteen months ago. I know perfection takes time but…

Brief summary of important things that happened from then until the next mention of new music:

Louis left Syco!!!! 10 days later he rescheduled the tour for the first time. He followed Matt Vines on Twitter, probably so we could publicly shame him into doing something. Also, the 10thanniversary. He followed more people I wish he hadn’t.

Then more nothing until September. Not even a single tweet. The first merch drop was on the 28th of August but he just RT’ed the tweet. He first mentioned Free my Meal on the 25th of September. Then on October 1st Walls hit #1 on a lot of countries and Louis was incredibly happy and excited about it ^^

And then, that same day, October 1st, 2020, he dropped this bomb:

(x)

He also said it was too soon to be sharing new lyrics with us (x)

And, obviously, this tweet which is actually what made me start this whole post. I would hope you know mate.

(x)

He also told us he was cooking "banger after banger" and that he was incorporating more social themes into his music (x)(x) (I believe any social issue is a political issue but that’s not the point rn).

COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY?!?!

These next paragraphs are brought to you by my mind not remembering things and me not having any links. I’m assuming COACOAC came from those writing sessions that supposedly happened in October. Or in LA but I have no idea if he actually was in LA at any point other than a Daily Mail article putting him there on December which would have been too late, but I do remember that someone said he was in the studio in LA last autumn???? A rumor. Maybe. IDK. Did I mention already all of this is very hypothetical?? Well, this is it. I can’t even remember if this was October or November or what. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I’m also… taking the liberty to assume, if you must, that Copy wasn’t meant to be a Walls reject because it sounds more mature and darker and it has a vastly different tone that Walls songs. I know he’s said that song probably isn’t getting into the album, but I want to have faith (in the future) that I’m getting a studio version. (But also, Louis, if you’re reading this, first of all GET OUT OF MY BLOG second of all, please don’t ever feel pressured again to add a song to the album because we have already heard it before. It’s your art and it should always be under your own terms).

So yeah, I believe that Copy is either one of those four songs (then imagine the other three??!!) or was written around the 1st of October date.

---End of the Intermission---

Then not much important (other than sharing more about Marcus Rashford fight against food poverty and the 2nd merch drop) until he announced the livestream on the 24th of November. (x)

It wasn’t until a few days before the livestream date we even thought again about new music (jk, I know we’re always thinking about new Louis’ music). So, December 9th/10th, 2020. Nine months ago. We got our first taste of new music!

He made sure we knew Copy of a Copy of a Copy isn't a cover! (x) (x)

(x)

Ok, so that’s it for 2020. (I feel like I’m missing something from September 17th because tweet was deleted but maybe he was still talking about cucumbers. We might never know. Unless I understand how Tumblr tags work). Expected, cause Walls was released in 2020. We needed to let it sit for a while.

2021

Another Summary: Louis third tweet of the year was telling the UK government off. So was the fifth. What a good beginning. On the 26th of January, he said he prefers pancakes over waffles. I hope he meant pancakes other than his own. More importantly, he tweeted the infamous “you lot read into things too much”. Don’t get me started, Tomlinson. Don’t. Then the 31st came around and Walls was one. He tweeted this. How wise. And Project Defenceless happened!!

15th of February!! Who cares about Valentine Day when the next day we got this? ♥

(x)

(x)

So…AN EP?? AN EP?? PLEASE RELEASE AN EP.

“I’m sure I will have something out this year but unlikely that will be the album”. Unlikely but not impossible. Also. A single would be good. This is the second time he mentions releasing something in 2021 and he sounds surer about it than the first time around.

He also said that he isn’t sure we will get a studio version of Copy. And that the best bridges from Walls to LT2 are Walls, OTB, KMM and Copy. Can’t wait!

Then we jump to March 6th when he announced he was going to create his own management company. “Sometimes action is needed first to encourage the motivation and belief”. As we can tell he was already manifesting some stuff which will lead us to the numerology stuff/Tesla… kidding. Or not. We might never know.

On the 22nd of March he answered some questions:

He told us music was still his main focus ♥ mwha. (x) I included this tweet to guilt-trip him into giving us music in case he’s reading this even after I told him to leave. ILY.

(x) I’d love to get a visual EP this autumn. Just saying. It sounds like a lovely concept.

(x)

…next (I will get into it, I promise. I’m just mad).

On the 25th he left for Mexico until April 10th. You could assume it was just for the documentary where we got ten seconds of footage or admit the obvious: LT2 its a Mexican baby!!

On the 26th (so, not so far apart from that first 369) we got the first Faith in the Future mention: (x)

Back then we were innocent people who had no idea what was coming upon us. We still have no idea because what the fuck does he mean with these. Please explain. I have one braincell and I don’t use it enough for this. I’m linking some theories.

On the 30th of March he confirmed he was already working on the documentary. So AFHF was already on the works. Will it take this long for us to get the Veeps numbers? We also got this tweet: "Got a decent chorus idea down" (x).

Same person that got the “something out this year” exclusive. If you know something share with the class. Also. Is this Change? I feel like this could be Change but I also assume he wrote Change after hanging out with his friends or being in Doncaster. But who knows.

(x) And the second mention to 369.

(x) 15th of April. The second "Faith in the future".

On the 19th of April he announced that he had something BIG for us later on the year which turned out to be the Away From Home Festival ♥♥ (x) I love him so much.

Then on the 28th he announced the 369 merch drop (which it’s probably the Walls drop? Except that the TOU and KMM ones were “drop 1 and drop 2” and this was drop 369 which, again, makes no sense) but we still don’t know what 369 means.

Into May’ 21 we go.

He rescheduled tour again. And dropped another bomb (x).

He announced he has signed with BMG as an independent artist by RTing this tweet on May 10th. The article also says that he’s already working on writing and recording LT2. The timing… we don’t know. What this deal involves… we don’t know either. Bear with me here because I have a lot to say about this.

I think the deal is only a distribution one, but that BMG are interested in Louis and what he (us) could bring to the table. They were either present at the festival or watching it, but officially they had no involvement at all with it (everything is credited either to Louis own company, 78 Productions, or Charlie Lightening’s company). That’s the case for both giveaways too; the vinyl one and the tickets for the festival.

I think it would be an unbelievably bad move not to test the waters with BMG now or soon-ish. At least a single, to see how it performs. Due to the circumstances, it’s obvious there’re certain limitations on place but I want to see how they push it, whether the radio play exist this time around and if the song is playlisted and promoted and all that… I would also love to know, since it says he signed with BMG UK, but it also states it’s a global deal, how things are going to go on the US and other countries.

Yes, yes. I know those are all questions and no answers. But I know the same as you, sadly. If any of you know more than you’re letting on… again, share with the class.

Where was I? Yes, on the 25th of May Louis had a great day writing (x). Since the first time he had mentioned he was officially writing to this date there’s almost eight months. And I believe he was writing before October’ 20.

He followed Robert Harvey that day and, on the 28th of May (why is it always the 28th???) he was spotted at the studio for the first time.

June was an interesting month for the fandom ♥. Lots of LHL content which I will love and cherish for the rest of times. On June 4th, June 9th, and June 10th he was spotted at the studio, but I believe he was there more days.

(x)

This was posted on June 6th and captioned Studio. Charlie also shared it with “Mega tunes being put down, can’t wait for this @louist91 #louistomlinson #LT2” as the caption. This gives me 2019 (Elton-Joint) vibes. I like it. Feels like we’re getting closer to something.

He added the Milano date on the 9th too which I’m mentioning because I’m going alone. Anyone wanna go with me please? I’m nice and I never eat anything before a concert so you can have my food. On other news. It didn’t come home.

During July he was at the studio at least three days too. Probably more. Feels like more with all the fan pictures we got. Or was that June? Anyway, July 1st and 9th we got some videos from Robert Harvey and wearesuperhi, which is who Louis has been working with the most, that we know of. I don’t know for sure they’re from that day. And on July 5th we got an article and lots of pictures of Louis looking really good outside the studio.

On the 12th of July the first fans started getting the free, 369 bucket hat and print. We still don’t know what the purpose was other than to thanks fans. Maybe that was it. I want answers and I still think it relates to a future project (see theories above), but it could also just be a bridge with the Walls breaking.

He didn’t tweet about anything interesting for a while, mostly because he lost his phone (he either throwed it in the air or smashed it who knows). Then on the 29th of July he announced the festival!

I’m glossing over it because there’s already been a lot of talk about it (rightfully) and while it was a wonderful thing, it doesn’t have much to do with LT2.

Let’s talk Change!

On August 3rd he tweeted this about the setlist.

(x)

And this (x) on the 28th! I can’t stand him.

We didn’t get it, obviously. Because who was going to get that. But we read too much into things. Alright.

On the 16thof August Dave Gibson shared this post tagged #LT2 with the eyes emojis 👀👀👀. I believe this has to do both with Change but also with whatever else came out of that Mexico trip.

(x) Last relevant tweet related to LT2 is this one.

So, on the 30th of August we got Change and we cried, and we know that Change is going in the new album. He said it. With those exact words. He also said he was “getting a feeling for it”. This has to meant he already has a general idea of the vibe of the new album and what’s going in it!!!!!! (Right? RIGHT?).

Anyway, let’s go back a few weeks because some other things happened on August. He was at the studio a few more times. Or it was suggested that he was there. On the 17th and the 18th. (Why was it so time-pressing to be at the studio instead of rehearsing for the festival? There was no studio at all on the documentary. Which makes sense, but again, then why?).

On the day of the festival we got another mention of Faith in The Future that made me feel part of a cult ngl. The words were flashing on the screen for less than a second. Okay.

And then he tweeted those words again after watching the livestream/documentary on the 4th of September (x). This is what makes me suspect it's either the name of the album or of the single.

On the same day, we got some interesting quotes about LT2 on the documentary.

“Soon I’ll have to think about me second album, which in my head I’ll get the tour out of the way and then I’ll address that. So, I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest”.

“When every day is the same is hard to feel creative and it’s hard to have any kind of proper inspiration”.

“As season started to come back, I started writing again and it was great and some of these songs turned out alright”.

And I think this is it. I might be overlooking some important details but that’s what we know and what we don’t know.

So. Conclusions. That’s what you missed on Glee. I do believe the album is, if not mostly done, partially there. And yes, this post is pointless and never-ending but it’s all in here if you need to tell Louis “Hey, you said this, mate”.

[jungshook69]

.:☆.°☾.Jealous.☾°.☆.:

DISCLAIMER: This doesn’t represent the members’ actions or the army’s actions in any manner it’s pure fiction. This is an original work, do not copy.  The taglist is open if you want. Taglist is now closed.

WORD COUNT: 1044 words

PAIRING/S: Yoongi X female reader

GENRE: Established relationship au ; Oneshot/Imagine

WARNINGS: None

ABOUT: This oneshot is part of a 7 part BTS imagine called “Jealous”. This oneshot is a reaction imagine of how each member would get jealous of their s/o in a given situation.

7 PARTS: Namjoon || Seokjin || Yoongi || Hoseok || Jimin || Taehyung || Jungkook

STATUS: Complete

☆.。.:*・°☾.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☾☆.。.:*・°☾.。.:*・

You sat back on the couch of you and your boyfriend Yoongi’s apartment, accompanied by the other members sprawled out along other spots in the giant living room. You had all gathered to watch a movie, which was long forgotten, playing in the background as everyone got pre-occupied in other activities.

You panned your gaze over the sight before you. Jungkook and Jin were bickering over a bag of chips, Jimin and J-Hope were giggling over something on their phone, probably a meme, RM had completely tuned-off as he was immersed in the music playing through his headphones as he scrolled through Twitter. You leaned into Yoongi’s arm that was draped on the couch behind you and observed that Taehyung, who was sitting on the other side of you, was the only one watching the movie, with boredom flashing through his eyes.

You too were going through Twitter, and something had caught your eye, which made you doubt yourself. You were going through the heaps of comments shaming you for being revealed as Yoongi’s girlfriend, as your heart clenched with pain. Yoongi had told you not to worry too much about it since the more accepting part of the ARMY fan base was larger in number, than the toxic part.

You didn’t blame Yoongi’s nature. He was a bit of a tsundere, and you had worked hard over the years to try and break his walls. He did open up to you, but when it came to comforting you, or anyone, he was still a bit hesitant and uneasy. So you decided to keep the hurt to yourself.

You felt Yoongi stir beside you as he got up. “Want coffee? I’m making some for myself.” He asked me.

“No I’m good thanks…” you said watching him walk towards the kitchen. “…babe” you completed your sentence after he was out of earshot.

You looked down sadly at the comments still flashing on your screen, unable to resist a pout from forming on your face.

“What’s wrong?” Taehyung asked concern written on his face.

You always thought of Taehyung as a really good friend. He remained quite most of the time, but was secretly skilled at observing and reading people around him.

“Nothing” you said turning your phone off and turning your attention back to the movie with a stale plot.

“I know something’s bothering you, and I bet you a thousand dollars it’s more interesting than the climax of this distasteful movie.”

“Who chose the movie?” you said teasingly raising your eyebrow.

“I know I know… I thought that I should invest myself in more mature movies, like pre-historic war movies, but in reality I know I’ll never stop re-watching Home Alone.” He said earning a stifled laugh from you.

“No but seriously, what’s wrong?” he asked turning to you.

“It’s just… I know I’m supposed to ignore the hate I’m getting… but I can’t help but doubt myself when I read them. Maybe they’re all right, maybe I don’t deserve to be with Yoongi. He’s also been kinda cold ever since we revealed we were dating.”

“I’ve known Yoongi hyung for 6 years now. He’s always been a bit reserved. But ever since you guys revealed the news, he’s been working really hard and cooperating with our manager to take down those comments. All he does is brainstorm possible ideas to decrease the back-lash. I know it may not seem like it, but he really does love you, I’ve never seen him happier.”

Taehyung’s kind words hit you hard as you find a glossy sheen beginning to develop across your vision.

“Awww” Taehyung says as he engulfs you in a warm hug and threads his hands through your hair and ruffles it. You hug him back and dry your tears away as you get up to see what’s taking the coffee so long.

You enter the kitchen and you find him drinking his coffee. “You already drank yours? I thought we were gonna sit together on the couch and enjoy the coffee.” You asked puzzled by his actions.

“Oh sorry I thought you were busy ogling Taehyung, so I thought I’d leave you be.” He said, a sarcastic undertone lacing his voice.

“What are you saying? He was literally just hugging me.” You say in disbelief at his accusation.

“Yeah sure” he said rolling his eyes.

“I felt bad about reading the comments against me, and I know if I approached you, you would brush it off and tell me not to worry too much about it. So I just wanted to hear some comforting words, that’s why when Tae asked me if I was okay, I poured my mind out to him.” you said clearing the misunderstanding.

“Oh… you know… I can cuddle with you too… if you want that is…” he says murmuring enough for you to catch his words.

“Pinch me” you say immediately.

“What?” he asks confused.

“You’re actually asking me to cuddle with you? Am I dreaming? What happened to the whole ‘ew get away from me woman, you smell’?” you ask, your eyeballs nearly popping out of your skull.

“That was one time, you were sweaty from working out, it’s not my fault.”

“Still… I never expected you to be the one to ask me for cuddles…”

“Heyy! I didn’t ask you for cuddles, I’m not a simp. I just said if you wanted to cuddle… I’m here too…”

“Wait wait wait hold up… Min Yoongi are you… jealous?”

“Ew god no… cringe ugh” he said looking away.

“Oh really? Then maybe I should go cuddle up with Tae some more, do you know how warm his chest is?” you said teasingly testing the waters, holding your laughter in.

Then Yoongi did the unexpected and started laughing.

“What?” you asked him pouting.

“Your cute… thinking you can make me jealous” he said closing the distance between you, caging your petite figure with his hands, your lower back hitting the counter behind you. “Remember princess, you’re mine.” With that he plants a chaste kiss on your cheek, his hot breath still ghosting your jaw.

“You might wanna drink that coffee before it gets cold” he says full of himself on seeing your flustered reaction, as he leaves the kitchen.

☆.。.:*・°☾.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☾☆.。.:*・°☾.。.:*・

A/N: Here I wanted to show that firstly, Yoongi may be called lazy, or always be referred to be always sleeping, but he’s the most hardworking man I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t half-ass anything. He gives it his all. And secondly I wanted to show Yoongi as a bit of a tsundere because even though Yoongi might seem cold or unbothered on the outside, I know he has the warmest heart made entirely of gold. I also wanted to stress on the point that even though Taehyung might seem quite, he’s very observational and good at reading people’s intentions.

Don’t forget to follow @jungshook69​ for more content:) You can check out more works of mine here. Have a great day:)

TAGLIST: -

[arandomassortmentofbytes]

But "Guys" they cry, "AI doesn't store the images so it's not theft."

"if it were real infringement or theft, it'd be storing the images and reproducing them when you give a prompt, since it doesn't return the original and the original is nowhere to be found, where's the problems?"

Another good argument. Again, one I find myself agreeing with for awhile, fundamentally AI doesn't keep a copy of everything it sees, it's like reading someone's credit card number, remembering it and passing it back to them. You could make the argument that since you never held onto the card after taking it, you never "stole" it.

Unfortunately, this falls short as well.

It is certainly a more reasonable defense but the issue is, the image is still being remembered and referenced when making "new" art. Again, I've linked this before but a previous post describes why an AI referencing a piece of artwork is fundamentally different to how a human might.

The importance here is how AI works versus how humans work. If you tell me "theoretically AI functions the same as a human", you are forgetting that AI, as it stands now, is not equal to a human in any real capacity. This can obviously change with something like Artificial General Intelligence or Artificial Super Intelligence, and in those instances I would actually take a different position, but we are nowhere near that yet.

A quote from Judea Pearl will demonstrate this point, “All the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting.” As Judea argues, and the article explains, AI is not fundamentally intelligent, it just finds patterns. This amounts to essentially saying that whilst the AI does not physically store the images, it does algorithmically store them in a curve fitting function.

In laymen's terms, and in the terms of the post I linked before (the twitter thread), the AI is not capable of original thought as it does not think. Therefore, it must use the images as definitive and exclusive references which *is* the same as just reading a credit card number, remembering it and handing it back. The AI does not exist without those definitive references, just as I can't commit credit card fraud without your exact card details.

If from here you say "but the output is still different from the inputted images", then you are forgetting that if you were to decompose the curve fitting function, into a reverse of itself essentially (more complicated but not impossible), and inputted your AI output images, you would just get the exact initial input data (the original images). This, however, would be completely different for a human. If you were to ask someone where they got inspiration or references for a particular piece of artwork, they could likely tell you a few but they would not be able to tell you all of them. Again, therefore, humans and AI are not the same and another reason why AI does not transform images like humans do to create original artwork.

Moreover, and more of an economical point than computational or legal, automating an industry (during the industrialisation period of history and onwards) has categorically always replaced the original industry. If you say "but artists won't be replaced completely, they'll co-exist, people aren't going to stop being artists or stop creating art", that's true, it's human nature to be creative. However, the problem arises when you consider that people make a living off of making artwork, they go to galleries to appreciate it, they buy lots of it to decorate, etc. Fundamentally, when an industry has 2 or more competing supplies to fulfill demand, the lowest-bidding supply capable of keeping up with demand will always win.

You can think of this like knitting machines replacing human knitters, sure, people still knit, people still sell knitted clothes/accessories but for the majority of the population (and companies), they buy from mass manufacturers like buying clothes from Primark, GAP or any other of the clothing companies. None of these use human labor to make the clothes, they use human labor to run the machines, unless they're using underpaid, undervalued (potentially even children) labor in exploited countries. Those that still knit on places like Etsy are likely to tell you they barely make a profit, have other jobs or just do it for fun. Very few will make good money.

Now replace knitting with artists and machine-made with "AI"-made. I'm sure a lot of artists don't like their art being used without consent but a large number of them are more worried that people will pay a small subscription fee to somewhere like Midjourney for a month's worth of AI artwork instead of commissioning them for a few pieces which will cost more. It is hyperbolic and fear-mongering to say this would kill all human-made artwork but a vast majority of it would be replaced. If you're already saying AI art is transformative, fair-use, worth looking at or even use it occasionally, you are like the cogs in industrialisation, moving people from watermills to steam power.

Personally I don't make art of any kind, however if my livelihood or even just my hobby was mass produced and essentially pushed outside of viable market boundaries, I wouldn't be very happy either, especially when art specifically is one of those things humans are known to do without any given reason, just a desire to create or imagine something else.

It would be cheesy to quote Einstein here but "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination".

Die hard AI users are like "AI should have Unequivocal Access to the Entirety of the Internet"

And then have the audacity to complain about the plague of pornbots and how they've become more of a problem

Like

No Way? Really? Are you saying they're more Intelligent than they used to be?

Almost..... Artificially...... Intelligent???

That's such a coincidence 😱😱😱

[snowfallen-nymph]

Regarding the harassment, rumors, and false claims…

So here I am once again having to come out to defend myself against this person, because it seems this certain serial art thief, scammer, and bully once again cannot leave my name out of their mouth and has gone through extensive measures to not only stalk, keep tabs on me, and avoid block altogether and attempt to spread lies, cause drama, harass, and slander my name because they simply cannot put this to rest. I’ve tried my best to avoid this mess and ignore it altogether because it is tiring and the amount of proof against you is enough to rest my case, but the moment the rumors of ‘p*do pandering’ and ‘targeting young girls’ or ‘teenagers’ came into play next to my name is when I must and NEED to put this shit to an absolute stop. How fucking dare you or anybody even attempt to consider such a gross accusation! Talk about whatever salty bullshit you want but to spread false rumors of that regard is absolutely serious and disgusting beyond belief when there are actual unfortunate cases that have and continue to happen in this community!

I’ll say it again, Kharma Shade, @/darlasboobs, @/sprusillas on Twitter, and wherever else you might be hiding just so you can continue to keep tabs and perpetually stalk me, leave me and my friends the fuck alone!

For anybody uninterested in this please feel free to ignore and scroll on, and once again I apologize for having to bring up this old tiresome shit…

First off, you’re a grown ass fucking adult, not some ‘young girl’ or ‘teenager’ you literally informed us at the start of this thing a year ago that you were 23 and engaged. If you are younger or older than it doesn’t matter outside of being fucking weird you would even lie to begin with as if to use your age or youth as a method of not being held accountable for your actions. Here is you admitting that when you apologized to my friend for your actions on A&C when this shit first started with them:

You’ve made it so terribly obvious that you will post on that damned secrets blog pretending to be multiple people when it is literally just you, as well as vague about me on your Twitter, as you’ve done this numerous times in the past. Do whatever the fuck you want with your OC and RP the biggest fucking issue I had with you was not only did you steal my commissioned artwork(and others) to be referenced for your own OC and copied, but you literally took my own personal artwork I made without permission as well as my friend’s artwork gifted to me to have referenced and essentially carbon copied into your own.

Here is actual proof of you admitting all of this before deactivating your Tumblr:

There are even more receipts of you scamming a smaller artist out of two colored sketches which you never paid for!

Not only that but you and your ‘friends’ were literally threatening su*cide and harassing me for days if I refused to take down my original post calling you out and at one point you even ‘disappeared’ while these ‘friends’ were constantly bullying me and crying wolf that you actually did it! You even posted that shit on your Tumblr prior to deactivation!

As a reference here is a link to my previous post since you seem to have forgotten all of the former evidence against you and why this whole thing started to begin with:

Leave me the fuck alone! I haven’t even thought about you nor mentioned you since that whole ordeal and I have no fucking clue what possible ‘iconic traits’ and plagiarism you are even talking about. What plagiarism??? I don’t have any descriptions of my OC made public unless you are seriously digging through years of archives of my writing on here which is both CREEPY and STALKING! Considering I have you BLOCKED on every platform I know you on and don’t want you anywhere near me!

I haven’t made any changes to my OC in years aside from hairstyles and eyelashes and maybe just my art style progression, and all of that is documented on my social handles/DeviantArt which if you were actually any good and not entirely selective you would fucking know.

I have artwork that dates years back and we’ll before I even knew who you are or when you were known to pull shit like this! The only changes that have been made to my Amora’lei outside of hairstyles were her ‘white eyelashes’ which my friend, who is known as the other ‘albino elf’, and I have discussed as we’ve long since hashed our issues yeaaars ago and are incredible friends. We even inspire each other in our art and writing all of the time; I don’t know how many times this needs to be made clear.

[unforth]

Rules of the Gusu Lan Clan

Since I wrote my fic about junior Wei Wuxian trying to follow every rule, I’ve been wanting to compile a list of all known rules across multiple sources, and apparently today is the day for that.

General notes:

According to the MDZS novel, there are 3,000 rules at the time of the lectures, and 4,000 rules 13 years later after Wei Wuxian is resurrected. According to CQL, there are 3,500 rules at the time of the lectures.

These rules are presumably numbered, as when Lan Wangji is being beaten, Lan Qiren asks him “what is the 52nd doctrine of the Lan clan?” However, they are given in a different order in different sources so establishing how they are numbered is impossible. Since we can’t know the order they “belong” in, I’ve organized them by grouping them thematically. For the few I know numbers for, those numbers are included in parenthesis.

I don’t know how these rules are referred to in Chinese; in English they are translated as rules, principals, doctrines, or laws. Based on contextual clues, it’s possible that the rules are sorted into different categories (ie, principals vs. doctrines vs. rules)

I did my best to consolidate the rules listed duplicatively over multiple sources, but as I don’t speak Chinese and therefore cannot say which are identical in the original, there is likely some redundancy. This is exacerbated by a lot of rules apparently being given in both “do not” and “be” forms - ie, “do not disrespect elders” and “be filial” and “be respectful to teachers” are all rules. The reason I opted to leave these areas of redundancy is that this compiled list is around 175 rules. There are 3,000 plus of these things. If just ~175 have this much duplication the amount of redundancy in the actual list must be insane, so I think these overlapping rules are intentional and consolidating them would be inappropriate.

Crossposted to AO3

Sources I used to compile this list:

The “Book of Righteousness” notebook, as translated by BigBadRedPanda. They did two translations, posted on Tumblr and on Twitter, which don’t always match on translation choices.

The inscribed wall is shown in the donghua, as translated by my-otp-list, based on a list transcribed by an unknown Weibo user.

The MDZS wiki, which draws on multiple sources.

The Netflix translation of CQL: I watched through the episodes of the lecture and transcribed these myself. I do not have time to rewatch the whole series for those that might have been listed elsewhere. I specifically rewatched: the fight between WWX and LWJ and WWX arrives at Cloud Recesses in episode 3; the “NHS has a bird” scene in episode 3; the “putting a turtle on LQR’s back” scene in episode 4; and the scene where LWJ is punished in episode 43.

For anyone with a lot of patience and a working knowledge of Chinese and English, in CQL episode 3, timestamp 23 minutes on Netflix, there’s a carved stone with the rules on it. Also, in episode 4, timestamp 2 minutes on Netflix, Wei Wuxian is shown sleeping amidst the copies he’s made, there are more rules visible then. Same episode, timestamp 3:30 or so, a disciple opens a pamphlet of the rules and some are shown. (I expect there’s much overlap between these three sources). Information there might be able to expand this list? Or it might be entirely redundant. I don’t know. I’m sorry.

Interpreting the list:

“Source” indicates which source(s) include this rule. (this isn’t exhaustive and there is a fair amount of overlap between CQL and MDZS)

notebook - “The Book of Righteousness” translation by BigBadRedPanda

donghua - the translation of the list in the second episode done by my-otp-list

CQL - the Netflix translation of CQL

MDZS - the Exiled Rebels translations of the novel.

“Also translated as” is a different translation from the same source (ie, two different translations of the Book of Righteousness)

“Alternate” is a similar rule from an alternate source that overlapped so closely that I lumped them together (ie, overlap between Book of Righteousness and donghua)

THE RULES:

Rules pertaining to appropriate behavior and comportment:

Lan clan disciples must follow the principles of the Lan (source: CQL)

Do not work after 9 pm (source: notebook)

Do not rise after 5 am (alternate: wake up at 8 am (??)) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not go out at night (also translated as: venturing out at night is prohibited) (source: donghua)

Those who come at night should not be allowed in until 7 AM (source: CQL)

Do not be late (source: CQL)

Do not enter Cloud Recesses without permission (source: CQL)

No one is permitted to attend the lectures without an invitation (source: CQL)

Do not enter the back hills without permission (source: CQL)

Do not fight without permission (alternate: fighting without permission is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not create damages (source: donghua)

Do not take life within Cloud Recesses (alternate: do not kill within the premises)  (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not stand incorrectly (also translated as: do not stoop while standing) (alternate: have a proper posture) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not sit improperly (also translated as: do not slouch while sitting) (alternate: do not sit with a disgraceful pose, sitting improperly is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua, CQL)

Do not make noise (alternate: do not make an uproar, causing noise is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua, CQL)

Do not hurry rashly (also translated as: do not rush while walking, do not walk too fast) (alternate: do not act impulsively; running is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua, CQL)

Do not move arbitrarily (source: CQL)

Do not smile for no reason (also translated as: do not smile foolishly, do not laugh for no reason) (source: notebook, donghua)

Sneering for no reason is prohibited (source: donghua)

Do not drink alcohol (alternate: alcohol is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua, MDZS, CQL)

Do not consume meat (source: MDZS)

Killing livestock within the area is prohibited (source: MDZS)

Do not be difficult with food (alternate: do not be picky about food) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not eat more than three bowls (alternate: eating more than three bowls is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not talk during meal times (source: MDZS)

Pets are not permitted (source: MDZS)

Change clothes after a shower (source: CQL)

Wear a headband to discipline yourself (source: CQL)

Do not touch others’ headbands without permission (source: CQL)

A headband is not to be used for any other purpose (source: CQL)

Only a spouse or child may touch the headband (source: MDZS)

Do not bribe a law enforcer (source: CQL)

Do not use a concealed weapon (source: CQL)

Do not hide an edged tool (source: CQL)

Do not wear any jangling objects like beads (source: CQL)

Do not wear more than three accessories around your waist (source: CQL)

Do not alter clothes secretly (source: CQL)

Never hurt insects or plants (source: CQL)

Do not borrow money (source: CQL)

Rules related to personal virtues (virtues in the English sense, not the classical Chinese sense):

Love and respect yourself (source: donghua)

Behave yourself (source: CQL)

Be respectful (alternate: be courteous) (source: donghua, CQL)

Be modest  (source: CQL)

Arrogance is prohibited (source: donghua)

Hide your wisdom (source: CQL)

Do not show off your skills (source: CQL)

Be humble (source: donghua, CQL)

Do not be supercilious (source: CQL)

Be amicable and united (alternate: be cordial) (source: donghua, CQL)

Be strict with yourself (source: donghua)

Have a strong will and anything can be achieved (source: donghua)

Diligence is the root (source: donghua)

Morality is the priority (source: donghua)

Harmony is the value (source: donghua)

Be ethical (source: donghua)

Uphold the value of justice (source: donghua)

Be just (source: donghua)

Shoulder the weight of morality (source: donghua)

Perform acts of chivalry (source: donghua)

Have courage and knowledge (source: donghua)

Have courtesy and integrity (source: donghua)

Do not be ill-mannered (source: CQL)

Have affection and gratefulness (source: donghua)

Be compassionate (source: CQL)

Be generous (source: donghua)

Frugality is a moral (source: CQL)

Give more, take less (source: CQL)

Do not expect rewards after giving (source: CQL)

Do not be miserly (source: notebook)

Do not regret after offering (source: CQL)

Accumulate virtue and merits (6th rule) (source: CQL)

Make sure to act virtuously (source: donghua)

Be grateful (source: donghua)

Be grateful when praised (source: CQL)

Stop bad habits (source: donghua)

Destroy the five poisons (the five poisons are desire, anger, ignorance, pride, and jealousy; references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Poisons; http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php/Five_poisons) 

Do not indulge in pleasure (source: CQL)

Do not be promiscuous (alternate: do not commit acts of promiscuity; promiscuity is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not indulge in debauchery (source: notebook)

Do not wallow in luxury and pleasure (alternate: do not live extravagantly, do not be luxurious) (source: notebook, donghua, CQL)

Be peaceful when insulted (source: CQL)

Do not succumb to rage (also translated as: do not get angry) (alternate: do not be over-the-top; do not be aggressive) (source: notebook, donghua, CQL)

Speak meagerly, for too many words only bring harm (source: donghua)

Do not be haughty and complacent (source: notebook)

Do not be of two minds (alternate: be of one mind) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not exult in excess (also translated as: do not be overly happy) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not grieve in excess (also translated as: do not be overly sad) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not covet the property of others (source: CQL)

Do not steal (source: notebook)

Do not be greedy (source: notebook)

Be careful with your words (source: donghua)

Do not use coarse language (source: CQL)

Do not tell lies (source: notebook)

Do not take your own words lightly (source: donghua)

Do not sow discord (source: CQL)

Do not use flowery writing (also translated as: do not write about love and sex; do not use frivolous language) (alternate: do not spread empty line (sic) ) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not say one thing and mean another (alternate: do not break promises; do not go back on your word) (source: notebook, donghua, CQL)

Do not boast about your own strengths (source: CQL)

Believe sincerely (source: donghua)

Do not be suspicious (source: CQL)

Do not be wasteful (source: donghua)

Do not break faith and abandon right (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not be unreasonable (source: CQL)

Rules for training, studying and learning:

Learning comes first (source: donghua)

Train your body and your mind (source: donghua)

Maintain your own discipline (source: donghua)

Organize work properly (source: donghua)

Do not neglect your studies (source: CQL)

Do not give up on learning (source: donghua)

Do not lose your life goal (source: CQL)

Nurture aspirations (source: donghua)

Rules for interacting with others:

Love all beings (source: donghua)

Embrace the entirety of the world (source: donghua)

Honor good people (source: donghua)

Appreciate the good people (source: donghua)

Good people will be esteemed, blessed by natured, and accompanied by good fortune (source: CQL)

Respect the filial ones (source: donghua)

Be fair, and they will follow you (source: donghua)

Be trustworthy, and they will believe you (source: donghua)

Be mighty, and they will die for you (source: donghua)

Be loyal (source: donghua)

Earn trust (source: donghua)

Win friendships with kindness (source: donghua)

See friends as neighbors (source: donghua)

Steer away from bad men (source: donghua)

Correct others by correcting yourself (source: CQL)

Do not fear the strong (source: notebook)

Do not ignore others and be undisciplined  (source: CQL)

Help the lonely (source: CQL)

Take pity on the desolate (source: CQL)

Do not despise poverty (source: CQL)

Do not bully the weak (alternate: do not bully others; bullying is prohibited) (source: notebook, CQL)

Do not mix public and private interests (source: notebook)

Help the underprivileged (source: donghua)

Care for the weak (source: CQL)

Lend a hand to those in need (source: CQL)

Rescue those in danger (source: CQL)

Do not take advantage of your position or connections to oppress others (source: notebook)

Do not build wealth by using others, for this wealth won’t last (source: donghua)

Do not curry favour (also translated as: do not flatter) (source: notebook)

Do not go tuft-hunting (source: CQL)

Do not be a social climber (source: CQL)

Do not form a clique and exclude others (alternate: do not form cliques) (source: notebook, donghua)

Do not insult people (alternate: do not slander others) (source: notebook, CQL)

Do not use bad words to hurt others (source: donghua)

Do not tease others (source: CQL)

Do not praise yourself and slander others (source: notebook)

Do not jump to an unfounded conclusion (also translated as: do not make assumptions about others) (alternate: do not judge others quickly) (source: notebook, CQL)

Do not judge people behind their back (alternate: do not speak ill of others; talking behind other people’s back is prohibited) (source: notebook, donghua)

Speak not about other people’s weaknesses (source: CQL)

Be easy on others (source: donghua)

Be sad for other people’s sufferings (source: CQL)

Rejoice in other people’s blessings (source: CQL)

Regard other people’s gains and losses as your own (source: CQL)

Do not hold grudges (source: donghua)

Have wins and losses (source: donghua)

If others win over you, do not envy (source: donghua)

If others lose to you, do not look down (source: donghua)

Do not take apprentices excessively, nor pass ordinary people (source: CQL)

Interacting with Wei Wuxian is forbidden. (added by Lan Qiren at some point post lectures...yes, really...heck of a lot of good it did anyone...)

Rules for respecting those in authority:

Respect the elderly (source: CQL)

Do not disrespect the elder (source: notebook)

Do not disregard the younger (source: notebook)

Do not forget the grace of the forefathers (source: donghua)

Be loyal, filial, friendly and dutiful (source: donghua, CQL; donghua only lists the first two)

Be a filial child (source: donghua)

Do not argue with your family, for it doesn’t matter who wins (source: donghua)

Honor the teachers and respect the elders (source: CQL)

If your senior is standing, you may not sit until they have done so (source: CQL)

Teachers have extensive knowledge and are examples of moral integrity (source: CQL)

Disturbing female cultivators is prohibited (7th rule) (source: MDZS)

Rules on cultivation, good and evil:

Concentrate on cultivating (source: CQL)

To suppress and eliminate ghosts and monsters, liberate them (source: CQL)

Stay on the righteous path (source: CQL)

Take the straight path (alternate: follow the righteous way) (source: donghua, CQL)

Reject the crooked road (alternate: do not take the crooked ways) (source: donghua, CQL)

Eliminate evil and establish a just law (source: CQL)

Do not associate with evil (source: CQL)

Do not befriend the evil (52nd doctrine) (source: CQL)

Do not fall to evil (source: CQL)

Resist evil (source: CQL)

Promote good (source: CQL)

[ivory-sunflower]

Arty Art Things ✨

Hellooo!

I've decided to post some of the arty things I've done either recently or in the last few years, well the pieces I'm somewhat proud of at least. All my posts tend to be a lot more wordy than they need to be but hey it's what I do here!

Conchúr White

Anyone one who's been on this blog for a bit will have probably have seen me talk about this lovely Irish fella. The pencil drawing is actually a year old as of yesterday, I only know that because screenshots of me flipping out about Conchúr following me on twitter popped up in my memories yesterday. I think I'd sent it to him at about 3 in the morning (I was not in a good head space at that point in time), so probably not what he was expecting to see when he opened his phone in the morning aha

The biro version is much more recent: I got bored while sat at my desk and doing research about university courses, saw a biro, saw my old drawing of Conchúr, had an idea. I revisited my GCSE art techniques and here we are. Again, I put this up on Twitter and now (at the the time I'm writing this) when you google "Conchúr White" it's the third top image of him which is a bit mad really. I think I spent all of about 20 minutes on Conchúr but another 45 minutes on the words behind him. The words are the names of the songs on his EP 'Bikini Crops', he doesn't just really love the idea of Channing Tatum driving him around at night in a daisy print bikini... Well maybe he does but what he does in his spare time is none of my business...

TechDif

So I mentioned that the pencil drawing of Conchúr came from a rough patch in my mental health and this one is no different! In fact this one came from an even worse circumstance so we love to see it. I had a bad, bad time in July and this started as a way of distracting myself from what was going on in my head. Without it, I can't honestly say I'd still be here so even if the final product of this had been a terrible mess I would still love it for keeping me alive. However, it did not turn out to be a terrible mess!

Now that the origin of this is out the way, where do I start with TechDif? Unlike Conchúr, I haven't really talked about them on here (unless you count one brief post about Citation Needed) before so I guess I'll do it here. The Technical Difficulties are a wonderful group of 4 British fellas who have had their fair share of fun online and even before. They did a radio show at university together, which went on to become their Reverse Trivia Podcast, later moving on to a panel show called 'Citation Needed': and a game called 'Two of These People Are Lying'. All of which I would thoroughly reccomend, they're one of my go to things when I'm having a rough time. All 4 of them are excellent! Tom Scott (red top, blue jeans on the picture) has his own YouTube channel which does content aside from TechDif. If you're quite nerdy and like science, linguistics, computers, or any number of other things you may enjoy Tom's channel. He is probably best described as "The Moderator" of the group, much like a tired teacher he tries desperately to keep everyone on track with what they're meant to be doing, but usually it does not end well for him. Then we have Matt Gray (space top, holding an ice cream) who also has a channel away from TechDif stuff, he does techy electronic things and has a series called 'Will it Soft Serve?' where he puts all kinds of strange things through a soft serve machine. Matt brings a very specific energy to TechDif and I can't fully describe what that vibe is but I love it. Matt and Tom also share a YouTube channel where TOTPAL is posted and they had a series called 'The Park Bench'. Moving on to everybody's favourite Gary Brannan: Gary Brannan (SATIRE hoodie, glasses) and can I just say, what a fella he is! He's just excellent! He is the one that will argue and rip into Tom the most (not in a malicious way) and hilarity ensues. There are some episodes where he is absolutely on it, getting all the points and others where he very clearly has no idea and that's where some of his funniest quotes come from. Given how badly I was doing at the time I made this, his response to it on Twitter was so so lovely. I specifically remember one tweet where he said I'd made him happy and although it was probably a flippant comment, it just made feel alright for a bit. Yeah I might be feeling awful right now, but I've made someone else happy so that's a nice feeling. Then last but certainly not least, we have Chris Joel (buffalo check shirt, beard)! I would be lying if I said he isn’t my favourite... His sense of humor is the one I vibe with most, he can get rather dramatic in parts and can chat bollocks like a champion. He has absolutely no online presence away from TechDif and, like Rens from Temples, I fully believe he’s a cryptid and lives off in a tree somewhere. 

The picture took me about 4 days to complete, well 4 nights because I did most of it between the hours of 12 a.m. and 7a.m. - I remember watching the sun come through my window each morning. It’s made up of lots of little pieces, all cut out and stuck on; even the sky and hills are made of separate pieces of paper. Nothing was actually drawn on the piece of paper it’s all stuck on, it’s not how I usually do things but if I messed up one little but I could just redraw it rather than ruining the whole thing. The most tedious parts to make were Chris’ shirt because I had to draw each square individually and then join the as well, and cutting out the ban-hammer in the bottom right was surprisingly hard. Every single detail of the picture is a reference to the podcast/shows, I still have the plan sketch and reference list knocking about somewhere. I listened to a lot of true crime videos while making it to the point that certain parts remind me of different cases: the brandy now reminds me of Peter Tobin, and the big spiral thing reminds me of Tim McLean (very harrowing case) - sorry that fact is a bit morbid but interesting nonetheless. 

I did post this for a little bit back in July, but I received some rather awful messages so I took it down. Generally, Tom Scott/TechDif fans are lovely but there’s been a few that have taken a disliking to me for some reason so I’m hoping they don’t resurface again. I’m in a better head space now though, so even if they do I’m more equipped to deal with it this time.

Hozier

This was a quick sketch I did in April, I was getting bored with lockdown and decided to summon the bog man himself. There’s not really much more backstory than that, no poor mental health story, no fun twitter story - he’s just here. He’s vibing. I will say I’m particularly proud of his nose, I just think it’s one of the best noses I’ve ever drawn. His hand is okay, but I think that the hands on my Conchúr drawings are better. So there is the Hozi-Boi...

The Corpse Bry

I’ve talked about Bry on here before as well, I love him, he’s excellent, top lad. He is a living Tim Burton character, he’s 6′6, very skinny, and his legs are longer than my will to live. I was watching ‘The Corpse Bride’ a few weeks ago and suddenly had an idea and so ‘The Corpse Bry’ came to be. I gave him a little panda friend because the panda has always been his animal - he used to wear a panda beanie all the time and his album had a panda on the cover. Again, there’s not really a fun story behind this one, I guess it’s somewhat fun because it’s the first art I made after finishing my psychology exams in October so it was nice to actually have the time to draw.

James Bagshaw

Ginger talking about Temples for the third post in a row? it’s more likely than you think! I did this one last week, I’d had a bit of a wobbly day and had group therapy on Teams in the evening and I just couldn’t concentrate on what was going on and I ended up doodling Mr James E. Bagshaw, the glitter crying fraggle man himself. It’s a bare-bones drawing that I could definitely work into more but I’m happy with it as it is to be honest. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit and add the individual bits of fringe to his jacket, just thinking about doing that makes me tired. Maybe I’ll get around to drawing the whole band at some point...

Alice in “Wonderland”

This one is from about 5(?) years ago, it’s not my typical style and was a “study” based on another artists work (basically i just had to copy this fellas work). I’ll be honest, this one has a sketchy backstory that I won’t go in to because it’s not exactly a nice one, and because of that I also won’t say who the artist is that it’s based on. Despite this, I’m still really proud of this one and I’m so sad that I never got this piece back after I got taken out the class. I’ve considered trying this style again, I’ve even joked about doing another Conchúr drawing in this style as a nod to my progression through GCSE art, eventually leading to Conchúr drawn in ink on music manuscript and stained with neon paint and dyes - it would be quite the project!

So this has been quite a lengthy post so apologies about that but life goes on. Similar to the vinyl post, I’ll probably add to this as and when I make more art. Even if no one is reading these posts, I’m enjoying making them so that’s the main thing. It’s just nice to document things and the feelings that go with them. 💕

~ Love Ginger xx 

29/11/2020