#my july has only had 6 Good days on my year in pixels with two of them being dragcon bc i missed her so bad !!!!!!!!!!

[urmomsfavelesbian]

daya daya daya daya daya daya daya daya daya daya

[therucrap]

RPDR 13 Episode 1 RuCrap

Hello dear internet! I just started a new page for my first ever RPDR RuCrap so please share and follow and I’ll continue if they catch on! Hope you enjoy!

The lucky 13th season of RuPaul’s Trauma Spectacular launches with the promise of “all new surprises” and a brand new twist that will leave you wondering how you ever sat through a boring old premiere with a coherent intro, climax, and conclusion when you could be enduring a dizzying hour and a half of WOW presents Happy Death Day 3: Covid Edition!

We open up on the trusty trauma center - I mean Werk Room - and the first to enter is NYC’s “Dominican Doll” and human drag lingo See ‘N Say Kandy Muse in an elaborate bejeweled patchwork jean mini dress and MATCHING DENIM BOOMBOX and she immediately informs us that we may know her from the now former Haus of Aja which was recently deconstructed like the pair of Wranglers that Kandy is wearing as fingerless gloves. Kandy is no longer alone in VIP because the befeathered Joey Jay arrives and half-heartedly delivers her intro line. “Filler queen!” We discover that Kandy is likely going to provide our Greek chorus confessional this season and all in a soft smoky eye when she informs us uncultured swine that Joey is wearing the cheapest variety of feather - chicken. Kandy didn’t construct an entire outfit from the remnants section of a Joanne Fabrics and not learn a thing or two about quality, sweetie! Joey is determined to beat viewers to the punchline and immediately clucks around branding herself as “basic” and “filler.” Joey is from the city of Phoenix (and possibly the online University as well) but she’s here to rise like a chicken!

Thunder mysteriously rumbles as RuPaul appears on the digitally enhanced Werk room TV but what could this be?! For all you newbies this is one of the several instances in every season where Ru mixes things up and gives us what we really want: a twist that is equal parts confusing, fucks up the natural order of the competition, and is ultimately unfulfilling! Come on season 13, let’s put a bunch of queer people through even more turmoil in a pandemic! Ru has a surprise but they’ll have to head to the mainstage to get the full story that they’ll be recounting to a mental health professional later!

We’re merely four minutes in and here comes Ru down the runway dressed like a glitterdot jellyfish! Our tour guide on Trauma Island introduces us to the main panel of judges for the season - Disco Morticia Addams and the two human Trapper Keepers who are now separated by glass because for the first time in Drag Race herstory we’re in the middle of a international health crisis, mawma!

Now let’s get down to trauma! Ru explains that the queens will be pairing off to lipsync unexpectedly as they enter! What could possibly go wrong? Well if you’re hoping that someone comes in wearing blades on their feet well just stick around because I have quite the treat for you! Our Dungaree Diva and the Chicken Feather Filler hit the Mainstage looking as confused as Shangela researching CDC protocol on her way to Puerto Vallarta last week. The judges interview our test subjects and immediately bring up the Haus of Aja and Kandy clarifies that she’s now an esteemed member of The Doll Haus along with last season’s ever-gorgeous Dahlia Sinn. I personally prefer not to say that Dahlia was eliminated first but instead that she was season 12’s brocco-leading lady! (Writer’s note: if you’re thinking “there’s a drag show called The Doll Haus in my hometown... is it THAT Doll Haus?!” No, there’s a drag show called The Doll Haus in almost every city in America but now, like with the former Sharon Needles, Kim Chis, and Penny Trations of the world, this one’s been on TV and alas, the others must now rename themselves)! Joey also charms the judges with her plucky demeanor and it’s already time to lipsync feather they like it or not!

Gay anthem Call Me Maybe by Canadian legend Carley Rae Jepson begins and Kandy immediately pushes a fake button on her DENIM BOOMBOX to start the party. Honestly... crown her right there on the spot. We will ALWAYS give points for prop work and the Carrot Top of the Bronx does not disappoint. Both are energetic but it’s The Dutchess of Denim who wins by infusing humor and our feathered friend is given “the Porkchop” but before we can even wrap our head around what this means for the state of the competition we snap back to the Werk Room to meet our next unsuspecting victims!

Now dear reader, this is the part where I’m just going to cut the shit. The set-up they’re selling us is that the losers of these premiere lipsyncs will be eliminated from the show but they are obviously not about to Porkchop half of the cast on day one so just stick with me while we suspend disbelief and go on RuPaul’s Totally Twisted Trauma Adventure as she convinces 6 gay people who just spent upwards of $10,000 on clothing, jewelry, and hair and then meticulously packed it into regulation suitcases to travel here during a pandemic after probably not making any money for the last four months (this was filmed in July) that they are going home on day one! This herstory-making twist, like so many before it, exemplifies the show’s worst qualities: a lack of empathy for its contestants, an underestimation of viewer intelligence and ability to decode heavy-handed editing witchery, and its love for completely dismantling its own format every year for the sake of drama. Whatever keeps the Emmy’s coming, baby! When you’re on the other side of one of these twists you usually feel like you just finished your morning coffee only to find out that the barista gave you decaf. Your mind will be blown when it’s happening but the payoff is usually at the expense of the show’s own legitimacy. With that said... this is the punishment we come to gleefully endure every year and we’re not here to complain, we’re here to watch gay people break down, dammit!

It’s deja Ru all over again as we snap back to the Werk Room where Chicago’s Denali walks in on ice skates and immediately ruins any chance of a deposit return for the bumpy, rented roll-out vinyl floors and declares “Let me break the ice!” She’s wearing the expensive feathers that Joey Jay didn’t spring for. Denali might not be the first ice skater on Drag Race but she’s the one I didn’t watch shit on a dick on Twitter last week so let’s give credit where it’s due. Ugh I wish Trinity the Tuck could block THAT from my memory! Next up is Atlanta’s Lala Ri whose white blazer, body suit, and unteased hair is immediately called basic by an icy Denali in confessional. Denali is confident but we know something that she doesn’t and Lala is wearing a sensible dancing ankle boot not two blades on her feet so let’s see how this turns out!

The lipsync song is “When I Grow Up” by Nicole Scherzinger and her assistants who were accidentally given microphones a few times! Denali struggles to conceal her wayward nipples during some ambitious dance moves and all while in skates but Lala gives us a good old fashioned drag performance and a big finale split unbothered by an elaborate costume and ultimately ices Denali who signs off with “Feeling icy, feeling spicy!” Asking these queens to lipsync upon entering is one thing but asking them to improvise their exit lines 10 minutes in is just cruel!

Denali heads backstage devastated where SURPRISE... Joey Jay is sitting alone in a sad room made of plywood walls featuring a bunch of pictures of first eliminated queens, an ominous “Porkchop Loading Dock” sign, and some cocktail tables with no cocktails (how dreadful).

Before we get the full picture and God for bid our bearings on Mr Charles’ Wild Ride let’s leave this plywood hellscape and jump back into the familiar comfort of the Werk Room’s pixelated neon pink faux brick walls where LA’s modelesque Symone stomps in wearing a dress made of tiny Polaroids of herself. She’s stylish, her energy is fresh, and she’s clearly one to watch. Then dear reader life as we know it changes. A breeze comes through the room and God herself blesses us when living legend and matriarch of the Iman dynasty Tamisha Iman from Atlanta arrives in a pointy-shouldered red power suit and proclaims to us simple townsfolk “Holler at me, I know you know me. Holler at me, I know you know me. Tamisha is here!” The sea parts, the crops are replenished, and all war stops on Earth. On stage Tamisha reveals that she’s been doing drag for 30 years (which seems like a long time to us mere mortals) and that she was originally cast last season but was diagnosed with colon cancer two days later and had to stay home for chemo. The lipsync gods wisely choose The Pleasure Principle by Janet Jackson and Tamisha gives us exact Janet arm choreo while Simone is sultry yet commanding as she shakes her Polaroids. The judges determine that Simone was picture perfect and American hero Tamisha Iman is sent to Porkchop’s Shipping Crate of Horrors to join the nest with the fancy feather option and the chicken feather option.

We begrudgingly crawl back onto RuPaul’s ever-circling carousel of doom and plop back into the workroom where accomplished LA celebrity makeup artist GottMik stomps in wearing a wacky toile dress and a full face of white makeup declaring that it’s “Time to crash the system!” GottMik is Drag Race’s first trans man contestant (and first knowingly cast trans contestant at all) for which we cheer excitedly and then immediately look at our watches because that took too long. Next up Minneapolis’s towering Utica wriggles in with a sneeze and declares “She’s sickening!” which is just the pandemic humor I came here for! Contaminate me, mom! This gay scarecrow is wearing a series of crazy patterns and a big strawberry on her head and the two of them appear to be from the same traveling circus. These two Big Comfy Couch characters slink over to the main stage where Utica explains that her cranial statement fruit symbolizes tackling obstacles because she used to be allergic to strawberries as a kid but she grew out of it. In RuPaul’s heavy universe of heart wrenching struggles that contain chronic illness and societal rejection, Utica’s animated world that suffers only of outgrown childhood strawberry problems is a welcome one. These two lanky rag dolls will be lipsyncing to Rumors by her majesty Lady Lohan of Mykonos and the vibe is instantly wacky. I wouldn’t say that either of them are the next Kennedy Davenport but they did complement each other well on the invisible obstacle course they were both miming through. Utica’s hair flops over her eye, there’s galloping and floor humping, GottMik does a split, there’s elbows and knees aplenty, and all that’s missing is dancing poodles. The judges are tickled by the kookiness of both of these human windsocks but Gotmikk snatches the win. Neither of these two are going to win So You Think You Can Dance but luckily this is RuPaul’s So You Think You Can Trauma so we’re in luck!

Our homosexual Groundhog Day continues back in the Werk Room where we meet NYC’s Rosé who gets the Brita treatment where she’s presented as a legendary New York queen and then the editors quickly get to work making her look delusional. She’s accomplished, confident, and Drag Race’s favorite personality type to dismantle and then trick into returning to All-Stars for a redemption only to dismantle again. Rosé’s fresh-faced foil Olivia Lux enters and lights up the place right away in a velvet pink and yellow gown. She’s a humble NYC newby who has competed in shows hosted by the established Rosé and we already know what’s about to happen here. The lipsync is Exes and Oh’s by Elle King which which was a choice. Olivia strips off her gown to reveal a bodysuit so she can really articulate and Rosé does the world’s least exciting split that looked like me trying unsuccessfully separate wooden chopsticks. Olivia triumphs and Rosé fizzles as she heads to the It Didn’t Werk Room aka Porkchop’s sparsely decorated storage closet to be with the other Have Nots.

We’re almost to the finish line and we limp, slightly disoriented, back to the Werk Room where we meet Tina Burner, another NYC theater kid with the confidence of a thousand Patti LuPones who is dressed like a Ronald McDonald firefighter. What she lacks in nuance she makes up for in nonstop fire puns. Next Chicago’s glamorous Kahmora Hall saunters in glowing and is clearly unimpressed with Tina’s constant Joan Rivers impression but maintains a full pageant smile. No choice but to stan. Our final queen is the refreshingly optimistic Elliott with 2 T’s who busts in wearing a bolero jacket, some red pants from the store, and a short pink wig that screams “Sorry I’m late! Here’s my flash drive! I can go on whenever!” Elliott dances in sing-talking her entrance line like the TGIFriday’s server she is: “I’m the queen you want to see. Elliot with two T’s. Okay! Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh! Okay!” Elliot is a dancer from Las Vegas and has the unhinged camp counselor energy of someone with snacks in her purse at all times.

On the Mainstage Tina cycles through the last of her introductory fire puns and tells the judges she was in a boy band which honestly tracks. Tina and Rosé share a similar NYC gotta-get-a-gimmick energy but for some reason production has decided to give Rosé the womp womp edit and Tina the superstar edit. The song is Lady Marmalade because we haven’t been though enough and Kahmora serves subdued sexy glamour, Elliott does the splits, and Tina bobs and weaves between the two with full play-to-the-back-row comedy queen energy. Tina extinguishes the dreams of the other two and RuPaul sends the final two losers to the chokey.

The worst is over (we think) and our frazzled cast of hopefuls finally gets to know eachother in their two very different groups. The winning queens in the Werk Room are celebrating and as blissfully unaware of the doom around them as Miss Vanjie and Silky Ganache at a Puerto Vallarta circuit party during a pandemic. Over in Porkchop’s Junk Drawer the camera looms unnecessarily close to the crestfallen losers’ now disheveled wigs and sweat drenched makeup. Ru’s voice bellows over the speaker to tell this motley crew to get out and then as the last bit of light leaves their weary eyes she checks back in to tell them that she wasn’t serious! Oh good! Finally a moment of mercy for these once hopeful queens on their first day of RuPaul’s Wipeout! She then reveals that the full twist is that she is only going to send one home but they have to vote amongst the group of losers to decide who it is! Yes, that’s correct! This group of broken queens who just met and mostly have never seen eachother perform will now be expected to turn on eachother and give up their last bit of dignity to either grovel or just straight up fight with eachother! This must be what the Donner Party’s last night looked like. The queens look around broken and wounded but still hungry, their eyes barely open, their lacefronts only partially attached to their heads, and start deciding which of their own is about to get consumed. Her highness Tamisha Iman reminds them "Well, I'm the only black girl so don't vote me off” and just like that we are TO BE CONTINUED!

Thus concludes our first headspinning episode that despite being reliably frustrating has once again sucked us in and against our better judgement entertained us to the fullest! As for our 13 queens- you can use code HERSTORY on Talkspace while relaying tonite’s events to a sickening liscensed therapist!

[karasunonolibero]

2019 writing self-evaluation

so i did this over on my main last year, and since i had what i felt was a productive year, i wanted to do it here! i’ve included all works, from every fandom i wrote for, so there’s definitely a variety but also a clear distinction of when i stopped writing 1d and started writing for haikyuu, heh. anyway, i’m proud of all the work i’ve done this year, so here’s to 2020!

ALL FICS MUST HAVE POSTED ON AO3 IN 2019

1. Number of stories (including drabbles) posted to AO3: 50

2. Word count posted for the year: 147,038

3. List of works published this year (in order of posting):

two loves have i (5 january)

it’s only your imagination again (25 january)

the pain’s only temporary (8 february)

blow a kiss, fire a gun (9 may)

waiting to be found (14 may)

a swim with a shark (6 june)

sweet and lowdown (19 june)

one more time as if we planned it (24 june)

always be my thunder (23 july)

will your mouth read this truth (30 july)

tumblr drabbles & prompts (last updated 3 august)

I’m on my way up (’cos you make me bliss out) (completed 4 august) (collab with Rider_Of_Spades on ao3)

even mountains crumble into the sea (7 august)

we’re on each other’s team (14 august)

dangerous, tainted, flawed (20 august)

life can do terrible things (25 august)

the night before life goes on (1 september)

when the letter says a soldier’s coming home (17 september)

when the air ran out (19 september)

something missing tonight (21 september)

built castles from sand (26 september)

underneath the stars we came alive (8 october)

sweet talk and sugar (10 october)

got my name on this treasure (11 october)

just a little taste, babe (14 october)

iwaoi horror week drabbles (completed 1 november)

don’t let the tide come (31 october)

daisuga week drabbles (completed 24 november)

how (not) to put on a condom (26 november)

taste the tension, now i’m begging (2 december)

kiss the boy (7 december)

till tonight do us part (11 december)

i wish i could be there now (13 december)

on our way to twenty-seven (15 december)

for the dream far away (24 december)

a collar full of chemistry (25 december)

fall down and commune with me (28 december)

a little of love’s electricity (31 december)

the city is at war (last updated 31 december)

4. Fandoms I wrote for: (stats pulled from the ao3 filter feature on my works)

haikyuu!! (41)

one direction (9)

the legend of zelda: breath of the wild (3)

all time low (1)

crystalline (1)

5. Pairings: (i didn’t count side or past pairings)

iwaizumi hajime/oikawa tooru (14)

sawamura daichi/sugawara koushi (13)

oikawa tooru/sugawara koushi (4)

azumane asahi/nishinoya yuu (3)

kuroo tetsurou/sawamura daichi (2)

kuroo tetsurou/yaku morisuke (1)

akaashi keiji/oikawa tooru (1)

sawamura daichi/sugawara koushi/terushima yuuji (1)

sawamura daichi/terushima yuuji (1)

sugawara koushi/terushima yuuji (1)

link/revali (1)

mipha/zelda (1)

louis tomlinson/harry styles (5)

louis tomlinson/zayn malik (1)

alex gaskarth/louis tomlinson (1)

liam payne/louis tomlinson (1)

zack spade/pixel fade (1)

6. Story with the most:

Kudos: two loves have i (275)

Bookmarks: two loves have i (34)

Comments: two loves have i (25)

9. Work I’m most proud of (and why):

on our way to twenty-seven! i was digging into some identity and sexuality issues that i myself have dealt with in the past and writing about it was the first time i’d really dove into some of that stuff, so i really enjoyed writing it and i think it’s some of my best.

i’m also really proud of i’m taking back the crown and i wish i could say why. i just really like the way it came out. writing oikawa as this desperate dethroned prince trying to reclaim his kingdom at any cost only to be beaten at his own game in his own home was just...ugh. it was so much fun to write.

10. Work I’m least proud of (and why):

one more time as if we planned it, definitely. i just felt super rushed writing it. it was for the one direction rarepair fest, which was super fun, but i had Just finished a longer fic a few days before this one was due and i initially tried to drop out because i thought i wouldn’t be able to finish it, but i did, but i still feel like it’s rushed and just not as good as it could have been if i’d planned better and given it some more time.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

im gonna do what i did last year and post more than one, because 1. i can’t decide and 2. i quite honestly am pretty proud of a lot of what i wrote this year

from when the letter says a soldier’s coming home —

Tooru’s squealing somewhere behind them, and Hajime’s gruffly trying to get out the door, and he’ll have to call the school and make up something about being sick so he can spend the day catching up with Daichi, but it can wait. It can all wait. Because Koushi’s waited long enough. It’s about time the rest of the world waits for him.

from strawberries on a summer evening —

Suga hums against him, licking strawberry seeds from between Daichi’s teeth, like he’s just as intoxicated by Daichi as Daichi is with him. Daichi could live here, in this feeling, ignoring everything except how Suga sounds (like bliss personified), smells (like sunblock and sweat), tastes (like sugar and salt). He’s the hottest part of the summer, high noon in mid-August, just this side of too much to handle, but addicting in how it leaves you at its mercy.

from on our way to twenty-seven —

“Sorry, what was your name again?”

Tetsurou opens his mouth to say his American name, but he catches Daichi and Suga looking at him, and he swallows it down. “My name is Tetsurou. Tetsurou Kuroo.”

“I thought you wanted people to call you Tyler,” Timothy says.

Tetsurou shoots him a glare and says it again, feeling his confidence start to grow. “My name is Tetsurou Kuroo. Tetsu is fine, too, but I don’t go by Tyler anymore.”

12. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

any time tasteofsummersnow left me a comment, it made my heart go doki doki!! her comments are so in depth and so very sweet and it’s so much fun to see her real-time reactions to my writing. i go back and reread them like once a week they’re so nice ;_;

13. A time when writing was really, really hard:

the spring/early summer in general was tough, like from march to june. i didn’t post anything between february and may, and i feel like i was struggling a lot creatively around like may/june of this year. i think it’s because a lot of stuff in the 1d fandom was really turning me off at the time and that’s when the burnout fully hit.

14. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

definitely sugawara in the city is at war. i was writing that first chapter and initially i just wanted to see him step up when daichi wasn’t around but he very quickly turned sadistic and ruthless and scarily sharp, which is just so much fun to write him as. and his relationship with daichi is just—ugh. love that violence-fueled romance. they would kill a hundred men for each other and be turned on once they were finished.

honestly, all of the city is at war has surprised me. the idea came to me in a dream on a long bus ride, of all the clan leaders having a meeting and being attacked, and i woke up and banged it out in 36 hours. i meant it to be a oneshot but as i wrote it, i realized i loved the au so much there was no way i could leave it at that. so now it’s got a whole plot and all that. fun!

15. How did you grow as a writer this year:

last year i said i felt i grew writing angst and exploring different emotional themes, and i think i built on that even more this year. i did a bunch of shorter pieces this year and i feel a lot of them really explored emotions and characters more than plot, and that’s been so much fun. and then as well, like i said before, i’ve branched out into the crime-action genre with the yakuza au. and! iwaoi horror week was my first real attempt at spooky/creepy/horror-type writing, and, it was a fun challenge for sure.

i also said i wanted to just keep writing and be spontaneous and i definitely did that this year. i posted so many fics not caring how long it had been since the last one—sometimes it was less a day. numbers stopped mattering to me. i posted just because i wanted to put my writing out there and share it with the world, knowing there had to be someone out there who’d like it.

16. How do you hope to grow next year:

i feel like 2019 was a year of trying a lot of new things, so in 2020 i’m hoping to explore some different ships and tropes. the sheer number of characters and ships in haikyuu means there’s a ship for just about every trope and au out there, and i want to play around with some dynamics i’ve never written before.

17. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

as always, a shoutout to the loggies, who have been a fantastic source of inspiration and support all year even after i retired from 1d fic. and i would also like to thank the people i met via various hq discord servers—you know who you are!! thank you for the sprints, the encouragement, the inspiration, and the friendship. as someone brand new to the fandom, the support and sense of community has been nothing short of amazing, and you guys are part of the reason i felt so comfortable in this fandom so quickly.

18. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

actually, yeah. even mountains crumble into the sea was written the night before i broke up with my ex. i wrote it as an exercise to get all my feelings out, lay them all on the table where i could see them and pick through them, and then imagine the best possible way the scenario could go.

19. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

honestly—just write! write what you’re happy with. write even if you don’t post it. write, because everything you do is practice that’ll help you improve.

and don’t be afraid to write out of order or write more than one project at a time. i know that won’t work for everyone, but for me, if i didn’t immediately write what was on my mind, i probably wouldn’t have posted half of what i did this year.

20. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

hey remember last year when i said i was gonna finish the breath of the wild au?? L M A O i’m really gonna finish it next year i swear!!

i have a fic posting in the spring for the nsfw big bang which i’m ALSO very excited about! i’m lucky to be working with such a talented artist and the end result is gonna be amazing and i’m so so excited.

i also want to keep going with the city is at war, because that plot was a pleasant surprise. and there’s an ever-growing list of fic ideas and aus that i’m so excited to write—some of them were originally for larry aus but i’ve repurposed them for haikyuu pairings and that’s helped breathe new life into some old ideas.

21. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read.

anyone who sees this and wants to do it! just tag me, i wanna read your answers!

[nibscribs]

So uhhhh I drew a lot of RWBY this year... only two of these are non RWBY and tbh I could have just as easily put something RWBY for June Template

Retrospective under the cut bc it’s LONG 

RETROSPECTIVE January: First piece of the year! I still like this piece and I think it shows how much I improved from the original version of it. Also I just like looking at it bc it's soft content of my rare pair. I do think I made the rose look photorealistic which looks... bad esp with all the other more stylized flowers, and I got lazy with the bleeding hearts by just drawing one set and flipping them. Emerald's hair also could look better. February:  I made this around GNG week, which was a fun, good time, long before the server imploded on itself. I got really lazy with the backgrounds, obviously, but I do like the poses in this one, tho it helped that I based it off of screenshots from Young Justice. I also just really like how Merc looks in this one. March: March wasn't a very prolific month for art, I don't think I produced much besides this and one comic piece for GNG week. I'm not sure why exactly, I can't find any specific reason why I would be unproductive that month. I'm gonna just assume I was drained from work all the time and didn't have the energy to put out good art, and also I was getting into a slump bc all my art was starting to look same-y. This piece isn't very good, but I chose it because I did it without a reference, and at this point that was going out of my comfort zone. It's obviously not super dynamic, but at the very least you can tell I intended there to be motion to it. April: This also wasn't a very prolific month for art, not as bad as March, but for the same reasons. I was also really starting to feel burnout from the RWBY fandom, specifically wasps and conflict within the GNG server. This was also when the Art vs the Artist meme was popular, and I realized I didn't want to do that meme because my art was too similar and boring, which also brought me down a peg. Though I put out a few good chibis in April, I chose my Mercury redesign bc I was really proud of it. I could never get the Emerald redesign to mesh quite right, but I can say I'm really proud of how Mercury's came out. May: May had me bounce out of my art slump and in full force trying to expand my skills! Specifically exploring painting. Although May was about as prolific as April, what I did create I put a lot into. It was difficult to pick between this and my app of Edison, because I'm really proud of both, but in the end I went with this commission of Mercury because I pushed myself to try and use an interesting perspective for the piece instead of my usual stand still and face the camera pose. Because I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, this was one of the best things I made all year, and may be my favorite piece of the year. June: TIME TO STRESS OUT ABOUT CONNECTICON! So if you follow me on twitter, you might have noticed I made a lot of posts at the beginning of the year low key throwing shade at myself for drawing my oc's instead of more "important" art. Well, that important art that I was procrastinating was con merch, and con was the second week of July, so I really had to get my ass in gear to finish merch on time (spoiler, I didn't finish a lot of it on time). This piece and July's piece are both posters I made for Connecticon, and while I like July's much better, that doesn't mean I find this piece bad. I really should have known that no one at con would realize it was a goonies reference tho -_-; I also lost a lot of love for this piece after season 6 of Voltron, which I watched while I was about 60% of the way through this piece, so I had to force myself to finish it. July: I love this piece!!!! Don't get me wrong, I know it has flaws, but look at it! The lines are so crisp, the colors look good, Roman and Merc's expressions are mwuah chefs kiss, and I just love all of them!!! ... except for Neo. I really didn't do her justice in this piece, her hair is too fluffy, her head is way to oversized to the point that she looks like a bobblehead, and her eyes are too close together. Really if you take out Neo's head that whole problem goes away. I also love all the tiny details I put in this one, from emerald's chaps to roman's rose to Neo's lace parasol. You can tell I was way more passionate about this piece than I was about the Voltron piece.  August:  pretty sure this is when I quit my job cashiering, and thank god bc customers suck. If I was going off of sheer popularity, Chibi Pyrrha would have taken this slot no contest, and while I love chibi Pyrrha, I don't think it was the best of the month. I chose this little princess and the pauper au doodle because I tried a year ago to draw these two dancing, and it looked like dog shit. It was flat and ugly. But this has motion to it, and even looking at it now makes me feel warm and happy inside. It's just a good cute drawing of my otp. September: My piece for the RWBY tarot project! I have a lot of mixed emotions about this one. on the one hand, I love how mercury looks, his expression, the lighting, the visceral gore from his legs (ESPECIALLY THE VISCERAL GORE ON HIS LEGS) and the hands of the undead, all look stunning and I don't think I could be more happy with how they turned out. And then we get to the background. The caduceus isn't the worst thing ever, but it's severely lacking in quality compared to the rendering on mercury in front of it, and a lot of it is clearly pixellated from me trying to stretch and squash it just right. And the fire is a hot (no pun intended) mess. It's flat, incoherent, and doesn't lead the eye anywhere. It's a shame too because I wanted to do more with it, but I a) didn't have enough time or patience to figure out what I needed to do to fix it and b) didn't want to go outside of my comfort level, so I gave up and decided to be satisfied with what I had. October: October was another good month for art, I made a turnaround sheet for Moss, painted a full body (and slightly lewd) Rudy, and made a decent attempt at inktober. Ok, so I got like 2 days in, but I improved a lot on inking from last year! Fun fact! this piece was originally going to be fan art of Lindsay Jones, but after I did some thumbnails to figure out a pose, I thought it would suit White Diamond better, and I could also sell it as merch. I love this piece. I think I captured the sinister mood well, and conveyed the story I wanted to without any dialogue (at least the notes on Tumblr make me assume I did a decent job, lotta people really wigged out lol) I really worked hard to get the lighting right on this one, and I think it shows. My absolutely favorite thing about this piece funnily enough, is Amethyst. I think I just did a great job drawing her and I'm proud of myself ok. Stevens bubble and my trouble figuring out how to get WD's leg just right are the only things that I dislike about this piece, but I might go back and fix those. November: IM SO PROUD OF THIS COMMISSION!!!!!! I worked so god damn hard on this chef's kiss poifect,  and it really shows. I started using a new brush at this point, the Ojing series on Clip Studio Paint, which I recommend and have been using a lot since. I've also been using this shading technique since drawing this. I love how it sort of fades out but it's still really crisp. I also love all the little details that give this piece character, like her shoes and the stripes on her jacket. This piece really takes a lot of the stuff I learned over the year and combines it into one piece, and I could not be prouder of it. I have absolutely no problems with this one, though I do find the weapon a bit plain, but it's what the client described. December: AND NOW IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!! I had been working on this piece since August, going back to it every now and then and getting frustrated. I'm really glad I came back to it and finally finished it, since I love this pair and I put a lot of effort into it back in August. However, I'm also really glad I completely overhauled a lot of it, specifically the flowers. Though I'm not 100% happy with the mums in this one, they look a thousand times better than the mums I had originally sketched back in August, and were part of the reason I had such a hard time finishing this for months. I also thought it would be nice to end the year on the same note it started; with a flower couple. I've definitely learned a lot since January, and I hope to continue growing in 2019! 2019 GOALS!

Work on backgrounds for the love of god

Draw more stuff that isn't RWBY

Perspective

Make more speed paints and post more to youtube in general

[ttstranscripts]

Transcript of The Talk Show Episode 2

Title: iPhone Initial Impressions

Hosts: John Gruber, Dan Benjamin

Release date: 3 July 2007

Description: We share our initial thoughts and impressions about our just-purchased iPhones.

Dan Benjamin: So this is a supplemental podcast to our regular weekly podcast just because we have to talk about our iPhones. So John, you got an iPhone, I guess.

John Gruber: Yeah, I did, I got one about 6:20 on Friday.

Benjamin: Yeah, I think you had a little bit of a shorter line than I did. How long did you wait?

Gruber: I got there around 11:30, and the line was about 50 or 60 deep, but I had a friend there and sort of [?] in line around space 45.

Benjamin: Nice. We had about — I heard the news say we had 300 people here in Orlando, in the Millenia Mall in Orlando. I think we had more like 400 or 500, I’m not sure. I got there at about 10:30 AM and probably got 70ish in line. How did the activation go for you?

Gruber: It went great for us, really. My wife and I, we each got an iPhone, we already had AT&T phones, but we were out of contract, we were month-to-month from a contract we had like 2.5 years ago. We have a family plan with plenty of minutes. No data plans because our phones were totally old, non-data phones. We upgraded, we just added two $20 iPhone data plans to our current account. It adds up to about — seems like no matter what you do, it adds up to about $60 a month per iPhone. I think we’re going to actually come out a little bit ahead of that. But AT&T’s family pricing seems like it’s fairly consistent, like, everybody with a reasonably recent family plan, it’s about $40 per phone per plan and $20 per iPhone.

Benjamin: Not outrageous, not too much more expensive.

Gruber: No. I don’t think so.

Benjamin: See, I have a family talk plan, I had a phone on this plan, AT&T customer, and activated it around when I got home sometime around 7:30–8 o’clock, and I was one of the people that saw the message that said, “You’ll get an email when you’re activated”, and I thought, what’s that? And just about midnight, when I had pretty much given up and said, all right, I’ll just let this thing sit here overnight, I got the email, clicked the link and it activated, but there are some other people I know who were not so lucky, and actually it took them even till the next day, and they had to take action and diligently call AT&T and Apple —

Gruber: Yes. It seems like the one and only really serious complaint about the iPhone is people whose activation was left in limbo, and it does seem like there are some people whose activations require — you have to call AT&T customer support and get them to fix it; otherwise, it’s never going to be activated.

Benjamin: Yeah, if you don’t take any action, you’re just not going to have an activation period, and how do you know if you’re the person who’s in that situation, you need to intervene vs. the person who’s really in a legitimate queue and you will get activated.

Gruber: Right, and it seems like a big problem because they’re selling so many iPhones that their customer service is just swamped. I mean, Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba wrote a thing on their weblog about his and — when he called them and spent like 45 minutes on hold and talked to them — more or less the problem was, for some people activation requires manual processing on AT&T’s end and whoever handled his just didn’t do the last step. There was like a final button, “Activate”, and they just never clicked it —

Benjamin: Wouldn’t it just kill you if you found out that literally a guy just forgot to click an OK button?

Gruber: I especially feel bad for the people who waited all day Friday because obviously if you’re that hepped up — I mean, even you, even you having to wait till midnight, that would’ve killed me. One of the big reasons that I did it, waited in line Friday, number one, I was afraid that they were going to sell out right away.

Benjamin: Totally.

Gruber: Well, that proved not to be the case. But I wanted to write something for Daring Fireball for the first day, just use it for a couple hours, drop a list of first impressions and notes and stuff like that and publish it, which I got to do. I probably wouldn’t have been able to do that if I had to wait till midnight to activate.

Benjamin: No, because all you could’ve done would’ve been to slide the slider and dial 911.

Gruber: Right. And that’s also the other thing that sort of stinks, is that I don’t know if it was Apple or AT&T, but somebody led people to believe that even before activation is complete, at least if you go through the iTunes part of registering your phone and waiting for activation, everything else would be active, and that’s not the case. Until the AT&T sends the signal to the SIM card, the iPhone is literally a brick, the only thing you can do is call 911.

Benjamin: Right. So what do you think, you’ve got the iPhone, is it not the coolest thing that Apple’s ever made? Is it safe to just say that, to say it’s the best Apple product maybe all around?

Gruber: I don’t know, it’s got to be close. I really do think — I mean comparisons to original Macintosh are completely legitimate. Really, just in terms of moving the state of the art forward in terms of what people can expect. And I think it’s funny because I think The New York Times had a story today about the Korean and Japanese electronics companies’ reactions to the iPhone, and that when they first announced it back in January, they were like, “Ahh, big deal, that’s just silly Americans getting excited about this, we’ve had these advanced cell phones that do cool stuff for years.” I think what they were doing was looking at it in terms of like a checklist: email, web, video on the phone, music playback on the phone, check, check, check, check, check — our phones already do all this stuff. Whereas it’s not really what the iPhone does, it’s just the way that it works, the way that it’s just so seamless.

Benjamin: 100 percent of the success of the iPhone, I think, maybe not 100, but 90 percent is going to be not the features, but the implementation.

Gruber: Exactly.

Benjamin: The way that people interact with the thing.

Gruber: And I mean, for example, if you call web browsing a feature and you just say, “Well, my phone does it too”, you’re totally missing the point. By far and away, the best app on the iPhone is Safari. I probably would’ve paid just as much money and waited in line for an iPhone that only had the phone and Safari.

Benjamin: [laughs] I think that’s key to it, but I’ll tell you what, that’s more important I think to people like us, but what’s funny is — and I had told you this but I think it’s worth mentioning here — I had an eye doctor appointment today, and while I was in the waiting room waiting, brought the phone out to check email. Interestingly enough, it found their wireless network, and I jumped right on that, which is just the coolest thing in the world, and so one of the people came up to me who worked there, and she’s like, “Oh, is that the new phone?” “Yeah, yeah.” Immediately I had a crowd of about 10 people who wanted me to just demo it, and the thing that I saw, they had the biggest reaction to, the thing they thought was the coolest — they loved the virtual keyboard, which really surprised me because that’s something that I would’ve thought people would’ve right away said, “Oh, that won’t work”, but when they saw me two-thumb typing on it really fast, they all just kind of looked at each other, like, oh wow, that’s cool. But the thing that got the biggest reaction wasn’t the webpage, it was flicking the photos back and forth and zooming in on them and rotating. That is like — people, they loved that, that was like the coolest thing they’ve ever seen.

Gruber: Right. My son, a 3.5-year-old boy, he’s totally picked up on the phone, and that Photos interface is just so — the flicking, he loves it. I have a couple vacation trips, folders from iPhoto synced to it, I’ll just bring one up and he’ll just be, “Let me see Christmas pictures”, and I’ll just bring up Christmas pictures and I’ll hold the phone and he’ll flick through — because that’s really all you do, you just flick, it really is nice. And it’s so fast.

Benjamin: It’s so fast.

Gruber: I just can’t express how you never have to wait for anything on the iPhone.

Benjamin: There’s no waiting and I think that is something that Apple has really gotten right. Every single feature on that last phone that I had that ran the miniature version of Windows, everything was waiting. I think it’s the instantaneous responsiveness of the iPhone — everything that you want to do, whether it’s — yeah, if you’re on the EDGE network, which, by the way, is much faster than people were saying, not as fast as broadband, of course, but not slow, I don’t think — with that as an exception, everything is pretty much instantaneous.

Gruber: Yeah, exactly. And for example, comparing it to iPhoto on the Mac, I mean, iPhoto has gotten a lot faster over the years, but if you’re just going through pictures, just like, hey, bring up this one group in iPhoto and just go through the slideshow, it’s usually pretty fast, and it caches the next one, but if you go fast enough, a lot of times you’ll get the beach ball, and you’ll have to wait because you’ve gone ahead of where it goes. Of course, the iPhone doesn’t have to show the full — it’s only a 480-pixel wide screen, but whatever they’re doing to cache them, to make them smaller, whatever they’re doing, it just works, instantly. It never looks like a low-res version is loading and then it’s high-res — you just immediately flick and you get the version of the picture that’s as good as it can possibly look on this screen.

Benjamin: Right, it’s just there. And it makes you feel like you’re actually manipulating the picture itself or whatever it is you’re doing on the phone, you feel like when you touch it, you’re actually moving the thing around. And I think some people have some legitimate complaints about things that are missing, one of them — and we’ve talked about this and James Duncan Davidson has a great list, a lot of people have really good lists of things they like and things they feel are missing. People talk about copy and paste, but I think your point earlier today was like, you can see why it’s not there because how do you actually implement that with this type of user interface? It’s a hard problem.

Gruber: Here’s my thinking about that, the more I think about the lack of copy and paste and selectable text, is that maybe they have an idea of how they’ll do it, maybe they had it in previous — while they were developing it, you know, versions — I think Craig Hockenberry had a good point on his weblog post where he said, you’re probably wrong if you think that they didn’t build a bunch of different UIs for this and threw them away before they settled on this, even though it’s a 1.0 product. The thinking behind the whole UI, the metaphors — I think they probably experimented a lot, and I think with the cut, copy and paste and the lack of text selection and that they agreed upon this simple interface that doesn’t have it — it reminds me of the fact that the original Mac in 1984 didn’t have arrow keys on the keyboard, and the reason for that if you read Andy Hertzfeld’s book or his website folklore.org with a bunch of stories from the original Mac, the idea was that they didn’t — whether it was Jobs personally or the overall team agreed — but more or less the people who were pushing for the radical GUI interface — which was totally radical at the time — didn’t want arrow keys, because they wanted to force people to use the mouse, and they wanted to force application designers to design applications they made you use the mouse.

Benjamin: It was almost forcing a new kind of mentality.

Gruber: Right, so if they don’t have cut, copy and paste, it’s like an enforced — there’s a limitation in place that forces them to create an interface that lets you work without it. And of course, we’re running into the fact that they haven’t covered all the cases, and there’s so many little places where you’d like to be able to like, ah, if I could just cut that, copy that URL, and go to the other page in Safari, so I could paste it into this Twitter field, so I could paste a URL in there, it would be so nice. But overall, the fact that we miss cut, copy and paste — we miss it but you still get so much done without it, and the fact that it’s not there is like, it’s just a way to force them to make it as good as they can without it.

Benjamin: Right. Well, jumping ahead a little bit, I was talking to Mike Davidson, who a lot of people would know from Newsvine, and he and I, we were talking, and he was going through and saying, “Here’s some things that I miss, here’s some things that I really need”, and one of them that he was saying was, “A friend of mine took a picture of a person that was good that I wanted to use as a contact picture, and there was no easy way for him to get that to me. He could email it to me, but then how could I use that, the [photo] which I just received in the email on my phone, how can I use that as the contact picture for the person here?” And I said, “Well, that’s easy, when you get the email, you just drag it on your Mac, drag it into your contact in Address Book.” And he said, “Well, I don’t use Address Book, I don’t want to do that on my Mac. What I want to do is to be able to do that on the phone, and what I really want is a file system so that I can browse the file system, I can save things out of Safari or that people send me.” And I realized that in a way, the last thing — and I’m an old-school UNIX guy, so if anybody should want a file system, it should be me, right — but I actually don’t want a file system on my iPhone, or the fact is, I want there to be one, I just don’t want to know about it. And in a way cut, copy and paste would have solved that problem for him if he had been able to copy that image and paste it into his contact right there, that would’ve solved that. But in a way it’s like, I think one of the big arguments about Macs way back in the day, especially with, like, system 7 time period or even 8, was that some people felt they didn’t have enough control over the operating system of the computer. And on Windows you could tweak every single little thing, and on the Mac you couldn’t, and I think with OS X that’s kind of gone away because you can now do even more on a Mac than you can do on a PC from a technical level behind the scenes — people are going to flame me for saying that — but in any case, the last thing I want on my phone is a file system, or even access to it. What do you think about that, is that nuts?

Gruber: I think that everything that you think of, from a computer science perspective, what makes a computer computer, the file system, the idea of processes, it’s all sort of abstracted away on the iPhone and that’s clearly part of the overall design, and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. So you never, as the user of the phone, never actually get to see the file system. You don’t quit or launch or close applications, you just go back to Home, click them. It’s still not clear to me using it, when they quit and when —

Benjamin: Do they quit? Do they ever quit?

Gruber: I don’t know, it seems like Safari sometimes quits, because when I go back to Safari and I click — say, I have three or four pages open in Safari, and I click the little button to let me list them, instead of showing me previews, they’re all blank. It remembers the URLs.

Benjamin: It’ll reload them, you’ll see them kind of coming back.

Gruber: But if you switch to one of them, you have to wait for it to refresh. Whereas if you do it right away, if you switch out of Safari and come back, they are all there and you just click on them and they’re already loaded. Whereas eventually it seems like Safari quits and when you switch back to it, relaunches, but it’s all abstracted away, you as the user never have to worry about that.

Benjamin: I’ll tell you what I think the philosophy — it’s one of those things where if you come into the iPhone looking for a small portable computer, you will not find that. But if you come to the iPhone looking for essentially — and I’ve heard somebody, I forget who it was, but somebody was calling it almost like it’s a satellite of the computer, or a portal to the computer. That’s a much better way to think of it. It allows you to sort of extend your computer, extend your desktop to this sort of portable device. I never really looked at my iPod as being like, that’s where my music lives. My music lives on my computer, and now I can take that music with me. And I think this is the same way you might think of it: my contacts, my calendar, my email, my browsing — that lives on the computer, but this is a way for me to take a lot of that and maybe even most of it with me wherever I go and be able to use it anytime. Is that fair?

Gruber: I think so, and I think it’s the single biggest philosophical difference from the Newton. I mean, to me the big problem, the core problem with the Newton back in the day was that the Newton was — and obviously some Newton people might disagree with me, this is obviously subjective — but my opinion is that the Newton was designed as a big new thing that completely replaced, ultimately would completely replace the need for a Mac. And whether it was egos, like, the Newton was developed after Jobs had left the company, and Sculley was running it, and the Mac was still seen as Jobs’s baby, and Sculley wanted something that was his Macintosh, his stamp on the industry. But anybody who actually used a Newton back in the day — Newton syncing was really bad, I forget the name of the app you used to sync, but it was like, almost nothing synced, the Mac didn’t even have standard address book and calendar apps at the time, so when you put events in the Newton, where did they go on your Mac? It was how you did downloads, if you wanted to add a new app to your Newton, you’d download it to your Mac and you’d fire up the Newton sync thingy and connect it with a serial cable and drag it over or whatever. It was really sort of a different universe, it was not really a satellite to your Mac, it was like something that, I think, ultimately if it had succeeded, would’ve replaced the Mac in Apple’s product line. And it was brilliant in so many ways, and so far ahead of its time. In so many ways it was just as far ahead of its time as the iPhone is. But the problem is that, it was so ambitious because it was meant to be a complete stand-alone all-by-itself thing whereas the iPhone is clearly meant as the satellite to your PC. And I think it’s more like the Palm Pilot, the original Palm Pilot, which was such a sensation in terms of its ambition in that regard. I think that’s why the Palm Pilot was so much more successful than the Newton because it was clearly a PC peripheral, not a PC replacement. That’s what I think.

Benjamin: I think you’re right. So we should probably take a second to say why, if there’s all kind of sound artifacts that people are hearing, why is that, John?

Gruber: Oh, I’m down at the shore. I’m on vacation for a couple days, and somebody forgot to pack my USB microphone.

Benjamin: So you’re talking into your MacBook.

Gruber: Yeah, this is just me talking — I don’t even have a MacBook, I’ve got an old, uh —

Benjamin: That’s right, a PowerBook.

Gruber: No, it’s an old Mac Portable from 1993.

Benjamin: Right. [laughs]

Gruber: It’s the size — I pack a suitcase and then I pack my Mac Portable, it’s about the same size.

Benjamin: I just have to say one more cool thing about the iPhone that happened today. My friend Ryan Irelan had called me, and he wanted to try out the conference call feature. So he conference-called, added in, which was so easy to do — I barely know how to use three-way calling on my regular home phone line, I’m almost sure how I use that. But on the iPhone it’s even easier and — so Ryan conferenced in Dan Cederholm, but Dan wasn’t there. So then Dan called back on Ryan’s other line, and Ryan then merged the two calls. And then you called me on my iPhone, and I said, “Hold on a minute, John”, only because I looked at the phone and there was this little “Merge calls” button that just showed up, and I clicked that, and now we were having a call with you, me, Ryan, and Dan, none of whom we had intentionally conference-called, just clicking this little “Merge calls” button.

Gruber: I didn’t even know that it would work that way where you and Ryan started the call, then Ryan conferenced in Dan, and you conferenced in me, so it’s not like one person has to be the person who does all of the adding new people.

Benjamin: And the sound quality, I thought, was great!

Gruber: It was phenomenal, I have to say. To me, the audio quality on the call so far ranges from amazing to at worse — ah, pretty good. But that call in particular, I thought the quality was outstanding.

Benjamin: Kind of amazing what they’ve been able to do. Even just the basic calling features, the way that things work — I didn’t even know if my old phone had a flash button or if I could use three-way calling. The other thing that’s certainly cool is visual voice mail and I think you said to me earlier today, the visual voice mail is so good that you don’t ever want anybody to call your regular home line again.

Gruber: No, I don’t, because to me the biggest pain is when you go somewhere and you come back and you’ve got five-six messages on your phone or whatever. Half of them are from people who then went ahead and emailed you or contacted you on AIM or called your cell phone or whatever, and they’re already out of date. Or if you go away for a couple of days and some of the calls aren’t even relevant anymore, and you still have to sit down and listen to them all and hit delete, blah blah blah, it’s awful. Half the time I just delete them all and assume that if any of them were important, they’ll just call me back.

Benjamin: This one — pick the call that you want to hear or the message you want to hear, tap it, listen to it, stop it, pause it, delete it — whatever you want to, right then. It was great.

Gruber: The two great apps on the iPhone are the phone app, which includes the call management, merging calls, that type of stuff and the voice mail — because the other cool thing about the voice mail is the way that when you want to set your greeting, you do it all on your iPhone, you don’t have to call into your account on AT&T and listen to a bunch of voice menus and click and record. You just click, there’s a big “Greeting” button at the top, you click “Greeting” and you can either choose between the default, which is to have the AT&T lady say, “This person you’ve called is not available, blah blah blah” or you say “Custom”. And when you say “Custom” then there’s a “Record” button. You hit “Record”, if you like it, you hit “Save” and that’s it. That’s your voice mail.

Benjamin: You can re-record it 10–20 times right there on your iPhone before it ever actually processes and uploads because you’re in control of that. Very, very cool stuff. And we were all talking earlier using the little headphones.

Gruber: Oh, I was actually on the phone itself. I’ve used the headphones, they’re great.

Benjamin: And the microphone is built right into the little plastic piece that you squeeze to control stopping or whatever and the funniest thing — Dan Cederholm said to me, he said, “Now people are going to think we’re all really crazy because now we’ll be just walking around with headphones on, white iPod headphones, talking.” And people are going to think we’re totally crazy because at least with the headsets that stick out of your ear, have the big flashing light on them —

Gruber: People are used to thinking that is somebody on the phone. Whereas this, you just look like an idiot with an iPod, talking to yourself. I should go back and say that iPod app is also a phenomenal app. The three apps — I should go back and say, there’s three absolutely, insanely good apps — the iPod app, the phone app, and Safari. I won’t list Mail in there yet, I think Mail needs a lot of help. You mentioned it, Duncan Davidson mentioned it, but to me the one thing that’s glaringly missing is a master inbox view where you get to see all new messages from all of your inboxes. Like on Apple Mail on Mac OS X, all of your inboxes, if you want to look at them one by one, they’re all within that one master inbox, but if you just click on that inbox, it shows you all of your incoming mail.

Benjamin: The fact that that’s missing, that kills me. It’s the one —

Gruber: We can fill up an hour with my complaints about the Mail app, and maybe we will later this week, I don’t really have time now.

Benjamin: Because this is just the supplementary podcast right now, this is not the podcast. My analogy was, if there was some kind of really big news item, we’d have to talk about it, and this is it, this isn’t our weekly podcast, this is a supplement.

Gruber: This is just a special edition. Hey, Jonas, you want to say hi to our podcast?

Jonas Gruber: [makes an indecipherable noise]

Gruber: This is our podcast, we’re talking to about 10 million people right now.

Benjamin: [laughs]

Gruber: You know, we’ve got so much good feedback from last week’s show, but there were a bunch of people griping about, and some people saying, “Hey, it’s great, sounded great, blah blah blah”, and then you get, I guess, the audiophiles who’ve complained about the audio quality, they’re really going to love my recorded in the PowerBook built-in microphone episode here.

Benjamin: I didn’t hear any complaints about the quality as much as the — some people would write in to say, maybe the pacing wasn’t good or whatever. So screw those people, I guess.

Gruber: Exactly. Lot of people complimenting us on the elaborate website design, too.

Benjamin: The website is actually — that is 100 percent me, that’s a really — I think we would make Tufte proud looking at that site because it’s only what’s actually needed.

Gruber: Right. No, I mean, you know — I think we’re probably going to have a nicer website at some point in the future. But I like the idea, and it’s very different from my typical way of working — we agreed to do this show more or less two weeks ago at WWDC. Craig Hockenberry, we were out having drinks after the Thursday night beer bash and Craig Hockenberry —

Benjamin: Incredibly tall.

Gruber: — more or less said what you’ve been saying to me for a while, which is, you and I should just do a little show every week. And I thought, you know, if it’s good enough for Craig Hockenberry, that’s good enough for me. And pretty much all we did, we said, okay, we’ll do it, we need a name, we took the most generic name we could think of, we spent an hour looking at domain names that were available. We clicked record, we recorded for 30 minutes, we needed a place to put it, we did the least we could possibly do and we put it up. Now, my typical way of working would’ve been to spend the next six months selecting a name and then, I don’t know, another eight or nine months going through about four or five different designs for the website and —

Benjamin: Each of which, the only noticeable difference in what you call the design is that the logo has shifted five pixels to the left or right.

Gruber: Right, right.

Benjamin: That’s a full redesign of Daring Fireball is that the logo is now five pixels to the right.

Gruber: Do you remember that time, the one time I redesigned daringfireball.net, I bugged you on AIM pretty much every 15 minutes for about two weeks.

Benjamin: Yeah, you’d say, “What will the ramifications of this redesign be?” and I would say, “How is this different from the other day?” You said, “I have a new Daring Fireball logo.” And I went to the site, and I thought, oh, maybe this is the bearskin rug t-shirt design up there, like, I don’t see anything different. “Dan, how can you not see it, there’s the whole new logo!” And I said, “What are you talking about?” Turns out, you had changed — instead of, like, “Mac nerd” it said “iPhone” or something, that was your redesign, under the logo, the logo text, the little 3-point text.

Gruber: But admittedly, that only took me about 30 seconds. But, you know. I’m kind of digging this “just click record for 30 minutes at a time and go”.

Benjamin: Well, hopefully the listeners will appreciate it too. We have a theme, we’re sticking to a theme.

Gruber: Yeah, definitely.

Benjamin: But you said you only had five — you gave me such a hard time, you said you only had five minutes, and now we’ve been talking for 30 minutes. This time we’re going to end it, because last time I had to try to figure out how to cut 10 minutes off. We’re trying to keep it to a 30-minute show, once a week. We did two times a week, that’s okay. But once a week, 30 minutes and I say we just end it. It’s almost 30 minutes, let’s just end it.

Gruber: All right, let’s do it again later this week.

Benjamin: We’re going to definitely do — and it will be a different topic though, it has to be something different. Maybe not even — because people are going to be sick of iPhones.

Gruber: That’s going to be old news by the end of the week.

Benjamin: Yeah, we’ll have to talk about something completely different. And so when do you come back from the shore, are you spending the 4th there?

Gruber: I don’t even know, nobody tells me. I’ll know it’s time to go when I wake up and my wife has our bags packed. I think later this week.

Benjamin: Well, good, have a great holiday.

Gruber: Yeah, you too.

[grunklejam]

For the benefit of that one anon, I guess.

1. Name

Jordan.

2. Nationality

British.

3. Age

Ancient. (27)

4. Birthday

28th July.

5. Zodiac sign (or your primal zodiac sign)

Leo.

6. Gender

Male.

7. Sexuality

Heterosexual, but biromantic through the hizzow.

8. Your looks (add a picture or describe yourself

I am a 5′6″ tall man with very deep set, tired blue eyes, a large nose and soft cheeks, perpetually unshaven with huge sideburns and indents in my cheeks where the fatigue has hit. I’m extremely pale and tend to look a little bit ill 99% of the time.

9. What do you/did you study?

I did a BTEC in game design. It was useless.

10. What's your current job like?/What job would you like to have?

My job is alright. I’m a copywriter. Moving to a different company on Monday with a significantly higher wage. I’d love to pursue novel writing more after the release of my first book, but that’s a terrible idea of a profession and is exceedingly unprofitable.

11. Your birth order

Only child.

12. How many siblings do you have?

Only child.

13. Do you have good relations with your family?

Eh, kinda.

14. How many friends do you have?

A surprising amount considering I’m about as social as a solitary murder hornet.

15. Your relationship status

Engaged. Yes, really.

16. What do you look for in a SO?

They have to be @kyolicious

17. Do you have a crush?

@kyolicious

18. When did you have your first kiss?

I can’t remember how old I was, but it was a cuban musician who was off his face on rum.

19. Do you prefer serious and meaningful relationships or casual dating/one night stands?

I prefer being with @kyolicious

20. What are your deal breakers?

Racism, homophobia, lack of interest in history, lack of interest in learning, thinking cartoons are crap. Fuck you, cartoons are great. Oh, and feet stuff. Foot fetishists are degenerate. 

-

21. How was your day?

I have no coffee. It’s terrible. 

22. Favourite food & drink

Sirloin, cooked rare with a cocktail bitter garnish. My favourite drink is Plum Porter by Titanic Brewery, one of the best beers I’ve ever tasted.

23. What position do you sleep in?

Fucking all over the place. I’m terrible at sleeping. 

24. What was your last dream about?

Probably @kyolicious

25. Your fears

Since I was a kid, I’ve had an obsession with maintaining a legacy and being remembered. My biggest fear is being irrelevant or forgotten.

26. Your dreams

To drive more steam engines. To marry @kyolicious. To have my own home. To get recognition for what I create. To be able to smoke cigars again. To write another novel.

27. Your goals

To drive more steam engines. To marry @kyolicious​. To have my own home. To get recognition for what I create. To be able to smoke cigars again. To write another novel. 

28. Any pets?

Two cats. Karl Isambard, and Punk Maxwell Barnaby D’artagnan. (we couldn’t choose a name)

29. What are your hobbies?

Reading, writing, drawing, pixel art, baking, cooking, collecting antiques.

30. Any cool places in your area?

There’s lots of really cool historic sites in West Yorkshire and I feel blessed to live in such a prime place of Industrial Archaeology. My favourite by far was an abandoned railway line near my birth village of Horbury, which still had the rails in place and was beautifully overgrown. It was my safe place for years.

31. What was your last awkward situation?

Probably waking up.

32. What is your last regret?

Probably waking up.

33. Language/s you can speak

I am abysmal at languages. English is all I know. @kyolicious is teaching me Swedish, though. 

34. Do you believe in astrological stuff? (Zodiac, tarot, etc.)

Not particularly, but it’s fascinating.

35. Have any quirks?

I’m pretty much a giant ball of quirks. 

36. Your pet peeves

Chewing with mouths open, bare feet, loud noises.

37. Ideal vacation

It probably involves steam engines somehow.

38. Any scars?

Far too many.

39. What does your last text message say?

People still text?

40. Last 5 things from your search history

‘Keep reading tag tumblr 2020′ GPCS Firebox steam jets  Gravity Falls Wiki British Bangers American (long story) Amazon UK Saturnus Glogg

41. What's your [device] background?

Gorillaz.

42. What do you daydream about?

Probably story ideas!

43. Describe your dream home

A countryside cottage, with exposed wood beams, a bit of stained glass and a superb internet connection. A bath is a must.

44. What's your religion/Your thought about religion

I’m atheist. I generally believe religion and faith in general is a heavily important part of the human condition, and if it makes it easier for people to live, so be it. However, I’ve no time for it completely taking over people’s lives and views. Your view on what’s moral and what’s just should be based upon human perspective, not what’s in a mistranslated ancient book.

45. Your personality type

I honestly forget.

46. The most dangerous thing you've done

Probably a brief stint urbexing. 

47. Are you happy with your current life?

It’s always a work in progress. Always moving forward to an extent, but my cynical 

48. Some things you've tried in your life

Uh. That’s a very vague question. I’ve tried most things and disliked many.

-

49. What does your wardrobe consist of?

Lots of jumpers, tight fitting jeans, tons of band T-shirts, a selection of waistcoats, tailcoats, top hats and button up shirts.

50. Favourite colour to wear?

Red and / or black.

51. How would you describe your style?

Outdated, and anachronistic, no matter the occasion.

52. Are you happy with your current looks?

I hate how I look.

53. If you could change/add something to your appearance - impossible or not - what would it be?

Strip it off with a potato peeler, replace with Vincent Price.

54. Any tattoos or piercings?

Nope and nope.

55. Do you get complimented often?

More than I’d ever accept.

56. Favourite aesthetic?

Victorian Noir.

57. A popular trend that you dislike

Ear stretching. What’s all that about? I don’t understand.

-

58. Songs you're currently obsessed with?

With Love to an Ex by Gorillaz - Ft. Moonchild Sanelly.

59. Song you normally wouldn't admit you like.

Paris to Berlin by Infernal.

60. Favourite genre?

Punk.

61. Favourite artist/band/genre?

Gorillaz, easily.

62. Hated popular songs/artists?

I can’t stand Ed Sheeran. Most musicians I can dislike and go without hating, but I categorically despite the man and everything his work stands for.

63. Put your music on shuffle and list first 5

I don’t use one of those shuffle-doo-hickies.

64. Can you sing or play any instruments?

I can, but I’m exclusively terrible.

65. Do you like karaoke?

No.

66. Own any albums?

Over 1,500 at last count. About 250 physical.

67. Do you listen to radio? What stations?

I don’t.

-

68. Favourite movie/series?

Oh god, I love so many movies.

69. Favourite genre of movies/books/etc

Animated, detective, mystery, noir, horror, psychological, period.

70. Your fictional crush/es

I don’t have any. Genuinely.

71. Which fictional character is you?

M. Gustave from The Grand Budapest Hotel. With a sprinkling of Stan and Ford Pines.

72. Are you a shipper? List your otps, if so

Dipcifica from Gravity Falls. So much so that I’ve written a fairly successful series off of it.

73. Favourite greek god?

Gotta love Zeus. Lightning flinging prick.

74. A legend from where you live that you like

None very locally, but the Legend of the Chained Oak in Staffordshire is very close to my heart.

75. Do you like art? What's your favourite work or artist?

I fucking adore art, especially in comic books. Kev Walker is one of my all time favourite artists, matched very closely by Ben Willsher. I’d kill for that level of skill.

76. Can you share your other social media?

Instagram: Jamooneyart Twitter: Jamooneyart Deviantart: Jamooneyart That was easy.

77. Favourite youtubers?

Jim Can’t Swim, Ashens, Down The Rabbit Hole, Guru Larry and Internet Historian.

78. Favourite platform?

Platform 2 of York Railway Station. What?

79. How much time do you spend on the internet?

The majority of my fettered existence.

80. What video games have you played? Which one's your favourite?

The Civ series, Sea of Thieves, OpenTTD, Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, Railway Empire, Anno 1800...

My favourite is probably OpenTTD. I’ve pumped obscene amounts of time into it. Can’t beat the classics.

81. Your favourite books (manga also counts)

Gorillaz - Rise of the Ogre, The Disney Studios Story, The Hound of Baskervilles, To Kill a Mockingbird, Notes on Noses, Judge Dredd: Satan’s Island, Judge Dredd: Origins - Day of Chaos, Judge Dredd, The Lion’s Den, Judge Anderson of Psi Division: Fallen Angel, The Ultimate Guide to British Comics, Tank Girl: Odyssey...

82. Do you play board/card games?

If I’m in the mood.

83. Have you ever been to a night marathon in cinema?

No.

84. Favourite holiday

Christmas.

85. Are you into dramas?

Oh yes. But I do love drama mixed into a more evocative genre.

-

86. Would you use death note, if you had one?

Na.

87. What changes would you make in the world, no matter how impossible, if you had the power to?

Erase bigotry.

88. Could you survive a zombie apocalypse?

Na.

89. If you had to be turned into a paranormal being, what would it be?

Cleuricaun. Those guys have a great gig.

90. What would you want to happen to you after your death?

Flytip my corpse, so I can inconvenience people one last time.

91. If you had to change your name, what would be your pick?

Albert.

92. Who would you switch your life with for a week?

One of those twats who’s a millionaire from advertising shit on instagram.

93. Pick an emoji to be your tattoo

Skull.

94. Write 3 things about yourself - only one of them must be true

I’m 178 years old. I know how to juggle antique glass Tiffany lamps. I find these types of question very tedious.

-

95. Cold or hot?

Cold.

96. Be a hero or be a villain?

Be a neutral evil.

97. Sing everything you want to say or rhyme?

Sing.

98. Shapeshifting or controlling time?

Controlling time.

99. Be immortal or be immune to everything aside from natural death?

Immune.

100. ..... or .....?

Wot.