#not to say I've lost interest in it though lmao; VERY far from that

[marsprincess889]

Not all that glitters is gold

Style vs Substance

Why are Chitras known as "messy"?

Or gossipy? Manipulative? Chaotic? Deceptive?

Are they all bad though?(spoiler: OFC no👁) but why are they famous for being messy and triggering?

Note from me: I've expressed multiple times the chaotic nature of this nakshatra, and figured it would not be out of place to explain why. I think some ppl thought I had only bad things to say about it(even though no nakshatra is good or bad come on guys grow up lmao, i only have had good or bad experiences with their natives, and that's just my experience, others have different stories). And while it's true that I have had not great experiences with Chitra natives, that does not mean that it's inherently bad. I think you guys will get it once you read my point. So, I have put my personal "beef " with them aside for this one lol.

To start with, I want to say that all nakshatras have their place within the wheel and therefore, are all nessecary partz of the whole, just like the zodiac signs and just like every living being.

Nakshatras also are points within the whole journey. They are all unique, and while they relate to others in regards to certain themes, in the end, none are the same.

The chaos of the mundane

The placement of Chitra is very interesting. Each nakshatra opposes two nakshatras. Half it opposes one, the other half opposes the other. Chitra is opposite the last and the first nakshatras: Revati and Ashwini(one ends Pisces, the other begins Aries), marking it as the opposite end of that division point, ending Virgo and beginning Libra, the nakshatra that is arguably the most immersed in the material world. To make that point even stronger, its gunas are Tamas-Tamas-Tamas, the unaware/chaotic guna.

The sign of Virgo traditionally rules the sixth house. They deal with the "mundane" world, the everyday matters, the nitty-gritty, the details. Virgo is also the ruled by Rahu(and Pisces is ruled by Ketu). So, the material world goes hand-in-hand with the themes of rahu: the outward manifestation, anxiety, nervousness, paranoia and deception.

Chitra's symbol is the gem💎 the precious rocks that are sculpted and manipulated to suit the demands of society(6th house) or the agreements with others(7th house). Chitra is Mars(distraction, triggering, energetic output) filtered through Mercury(precision, manipulation, discernment) and Venus(love, beauty, agreements). It also therefore relates to the law of the written word(is that how you say it?), law in its everyday sense, like how defendants need good lawyers to argue and get all the details right, even if they're innocent, because this is not about "the ultimate truth", or who's innocent or wrong, it's about who wins the argument. And that's where the chaotic element comes.

Society has a lot of opinions, doesn't it? And different people have different points of the view. Chitra goes from the 6th house to the 7th house, so its task is to find out the truth in all the drama and bring a harmonious end to the situation, to achieve equilibrium. The trap is getting lost in all the mess yourself and not even noticing how much of your energy it has taken from you. In a way, it's about getting down to business while trying not to "get triggered".

So, that's why natives of this nakshatra have that energy.

I've also heard a lot of very opinionated remarks or argumentative expressions from Chitra natives(sun, moon, asc, ketu too) and if you point it out to them they will deny it immediately lmao. Tamas is the unaware guna.

The thing is that they have a great potential to see the truth in messy things, but often it's biased and therefore still far from the real truth(6th house, Rahu). This triggered energy, when channeled through harmony(libra, active venus) becomes an energy of peace.

The girly girls, fashion.

Ik a lot of this sounds like a teen drama but to me that's genuinely the vibe of this lunar mansion. Feminine/female Chitras also LOVE that kind of aesthetic. If not, they have a thing with aesthetics, and how things appear. They also isually love the colors pink and/or red.

All is not how it seems, and the appearance should be morphed according to substance/truth, because the truth can't be changed. That's the lesson of Chitra. Venus nakshatras love aesthetics in a different way. They moreso have an innate appreciation for all things that they find beautiful and develop a unique "aesthetic" that is specific to them individually, and they're usually not the ones who are concerned with "aesthetics" as most of the society views them, like "Parisian chic" or "punk rock", etc. Chitras tho, directly relate to those, they WANT to fit into certain aesthetics, and the personality of Chitra women(feminines) is often what people probably think of when they hear the words "girly girl". It's bubbly, snappy, moody, coquettish and sometimes ignorant. They, I've noticed, are very particular and opinionated(or they present themselves that way👁, rahu/illusion) about fashion and appearances in general. Again, the lesson is to fit the appearance to the truth of the matter, not the other way around, you can't really do it anyways. The truth always comes out, and it might bring drama, but the confrontation will happen one way or another, that's life. What matters is that it leads to peace and harmony. Until then, the drama is not over.

And so you gotta learn to see the good side of this: an opportunity to really sort things out, and to enter the sign of Libra(equilibtium, partnerships, harmony) with grace.

The sacrifice of the craftsman

We all know the lament of the artist, the eternal search for perfection that always seems out of reach(hi purva ashadhas). I think of Chitra more as the craftsman, because ultimately, its creations are nessecary for the functioning of the material world. In a way, this nakshatra is about learning humbleness and sacrifice as it's also associated with vanity.

The god Hepheastos in Greek mythology is described as a disabled man, and I've seen this archetype of the disabled craftsman many times. I think it's symbolic of the sacrifice for their creation.

I think everyone who has created or wants to create something wants appreciation for their work, and to know that somehow, it's useful. At their best, Chitras are no frivolous tricksters, they are the craftsmen, serving others, providing something beautiful and valuable, but that's not how many of them are or how everyone sees them. When you go to a jewellery store a lot of things might catch your eye, you might even be tempted to splurge your money(energy) on one or two of them, but then, if you are more mindful, come the questions: "are they really worth it?", "am i being conned?", "what if I find this or something better in a cheaper price?", and then you go through all the details of this and that. That's sort of the energy of Chitra.

When Chitras know the value of sacrifice and channel their energy towards harmony, they are on the side of truth and integrity. Otherwise, when you go that jewellery store, be careful to not get conned👁

[unforth]

How did it feel to go from the 80’s to the explosion of acceptance around the 2010’s? In terms of being queer?

hm, interesting question. First, a couple disclaimers: I am not an expert in queer history, I was not involved in queer activism in anyway growing up, and no one in my family was queer. I was born in 1982 and am currently 42, and my mother had a lot of gay friends, but she intentionally sheltered us (my brother and I) from a lot of that once they all started dying from AIDs. For my own queerness, I worked through a lot of identities because I was an extremely confused asexual who didn't actually learn that asexuality existed until I was 30; I'm afab and was already married to a woman before I realized I was ace (I now ID as aroace, agender.).

All that said, I grew up in New York City, in a very accepting city and with a very accepting family. I knew queer people from a young age and my mom was sick of watching her friends die and got involved as she could (she was a New York City public school high school teacher; a lot of queers gravitated toward public schools because it was a stable job with decent pay and no one would care if they weren't married, in fact it was often considered a plus in the 60s and 70s for teachers to be single, and when mom got pregnant with my brother in 1976 she says multiple other teachers pressured her to quit because okay fine she was married and a teacher, but married and a teacher WITH KIDS? Appalling. needless to say she didn't quit.)

Anyway. Sorry. I lost the thread.

Honestly, the answer to this question is: utterly unbelievable.

If you had told 1990s about-to-start-high-school me that this is where we'd be in my lifetime I'd have thought you were out of your goddamn mind. I was obsessed with To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. I'd walked in AIDs walk and raised money with my mom every year starting in 1990. Mom and I saw the original off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and the original Broadway production of Rent. I was about as in-the-loop and accepting as a kid in that era could be, and I spent my college years thinking I was bi (I feel the same about everyone! that's bi, right? lmao, so young and clueless). And I never, never thought that nationwide gay marriage was even in the cards. I never dreamed that trans people would be able to live as openly as they do now. I didn't even really think we could do much about AIDs beyond slowing the spread.

I am only 42. I don't even consider myself middle-aged yet (though I'm definitely getting close to that particular tipping point). I grew up with my mom's even older stories, about being friends with the gay men at Cornell when she was in college in the early 60s, and her discussions of how far things had come in HER life (she's 80 now) and yet I was the one who pointed out that my great uncle, who died before I was born, was clearly mostly definitely bi and maybe gay (the look on her face when I said that and she realized I must be right. I keep meaning to post some of Natie's photographs.)

When my wife and I got married in 2013 we planned where to live, where we could travel, where we'd have kids, all around where it would be safe. My wife has health problems; if we traveled and something happened to her, we had to be sure that we were in a state where they would recognize our marriage and let me visit her, or else we wouldn't go there.

Sorry. I'm not holding the thread of narrative in this post well, I've been pretty sick with strep throat and my brain is just refusing to make this very coherent, and also it's just... so much. The amount I've seen, how far we've come, since I was a kid, is so fucking much.

I still sometimes don't believe how far we've come, nor how quickly we've done it.

And that's exactly why conservatives are shaking in their boots. These trends challenge all the things they believe true about the nature of authority and societal control. If they let up for an instant, then they'll have to accept that cis hetero white christian men actually have never been any better than anyone else, and their whole worlds will crumble, and that scares them to death because they're also old, most older than I, and they remember exactly what every queer person when I was a kid lived with. They remember Matthew Shepard, and all the hate crimes that the queer community survived, they remembered all the slurs that we've strived to reclaim and how they were used such that we had to reclaim them, and they really think that equality is a demotion for them, and that true equality would mean they're subject to the same things they've subjected us to, and that terrifies them.

Ugh, sorry, rambling again.

What I think about the changes is that they're fucking amazing, and that if I could somehow convince 13-year-old me that any of this would happen, she'd have sobbed with joy. Especially about the asexual part lmao.

We're in a down-swing of acceptance now, but the pendulum still won't go back to where we were during the AIDs crisis, much less back to where things were a hundred years ago.

We've come so far.

We're not going back.

[dmbakura]

I've been doing the evil run in bg3 and I can say it's very much not worth it from a story perspective 💀 but I feel like it does a very good job of making your actions have consequences. The new combat encounters it provides can be pretty interesting, though I also fucked myself over for one of the boss fights lmao. So my run so far has been:

-I did NOT side with the goblins, so I was able to recruit Karlach, Wyll and Halsin. I honestly regret this because it makes 0 sense for them to stick around for the other evil shit I've done and every dialogue with them is especially scathing. They are MISERABLE in my camp

-followed Kar'niss to moonrise and didn't kill him for the moon lantern. This turned out to massively bite me in the ass because it turns out if you don't kill him earlier, he WILL appear in Ketheric's boss fight at the top of the tower and I wasn't equipped to deal with that so I temporarily lowered the difficulty from tactician to balanced to get through that fight 💀

-killed Isobel and lost the last light inn (after doing associated quests in it, karlach's engine and thaniel) which was bad enough on its own, I then LIED TO JAHEIRA that I didn't do it, which again felt more awful than if I had just killed her outright. Now I can recruit her for act 3 and she'll be non the wiser that I got all her harpers killed for new jim jams (the only upside to this is the slayer form is pretty awesome, pictured below)

-in addition to the above point, literally everyone else in the party thinks you're a dumbfuck for killing Isobel. Even Minthara. Everyone Disliked That

-had Shadowheart kill Aylin and become a Dark Justiciar. Literally why would you do this. I mean it did give her some pretty sick buffs but I fucking felt the loss of Aylin in the later boss fights, and the cutscene you get in the shadowfell is vastly inferior to the freeing Aylin cinematic. Overall do not recommend this

I just reached act 3 but rest assured my bad decisions will not stop here. You already know who I'm ascending 🤪 anyways my advice for an evil run is to just go full murder hobo and sacrifice some of those companions/their extra story content. The psychic damage is not worth keeping them around.

[setsuntamew]

Welcome back to "Icon Making With Killian: An Intro to the 'Lost' Art of LiveJournal Icons"

aka, you didn't think I was one and done, right?

This tutorial was written in Photoshop 2020, but you can probably recreate it in as far back as CS2-ish (since I still use the same sort of techniques I've been using since then, lmao). It also assumes basic understanding of the software, though I've tried to be as clear as possible throughout.

I was possessed with a need to both make an icon of Madara's new event card and then write a tutorial, so let's all be proud that I busted it out before Halloween 💪

I started with the bloomed art of Madara from The Howling Forest★Lupine Halloween event (image from the Halloween 2024 campaign announcement, because the event hasn't started yet).

Since there's a lot of extra text & etc on this, I knew I'd be cropping it pretty close. I started with a blank 100x100 canvas, pasted the original image in, and then resized + rotated it until I liked the composition/crop.

First up, I wanted to get some cobwebs in here (for Halloween!), but didn't want them to overwhelm the whole icon. I used a texture from lookslikerain, set to Lighten, and rotated it a bit before erasing anything covering his face.

Next, I used another texture from lookslikerain and set it to Darken. There's a lot of green in the images for this event and I wanna pull some of that back into the icon, since it most got cropped out.

Time for light textures!!! I used a bunch in this icon~ I started with one from lookslikerain (can you tell I love their resources?), rotated it, and set the layer to Lighten, before deciding that it was too harsh. I used a small, soft brush set to 30% Opacity to erase most of the texture from his face, as well as softening the edges of the light.

The next few light textures are kinda subtle, but overall add to the icon. I'd say sometimes less is more, but I'm a maximalist at heart XD For the next few steps, just assume that the light textures were rotated/resized/moved/etc as I saw fit. I used yet another texture from lookslikerain, set to Lighten, and tucked in the bottom right corner.

This light texture from Sanami276 is also set to Screen. I moved it around to get just a bit of orange in the top left corner- gotta keep those Halloween colors in there!! :D

I wanted some more depth/texture in the upper left corner, so I decided to use part of a texture from Sanami276.

However, it's way to harsh to just throw in there like that...at least not for my purposes. I decided to invert the colors and recolor the black parts orange. My go-to method is with a Gradient Map adjustment layer. The easiest place to find it is in the Adjustments window.

I then used these colors for the gradient itself: #e7b676 at 0% and #ececec at 100%.

And it left the texture looking appropriately orange! I then pasted it into the actual icon, moved it so the rectangles were in the upper left corner, and set the layer to Darken.

Now for more light textures!! I used a couple from ianthinae, set them to Lighten, and went to town. I cut them up, moved them around, rotated them...just about anything to make them fit where I wanted. I love playing with light textures in general, and I find that even when I use similar ones a lot, they can look very different depending on how they're place.

Finally, I used part of a large grunge-y texture that I've unfortunately lost the source to D: I inverted it and set the layer to Multiply, before moving it around a bunch until I found a spot that looked good.

And with that, it's done! You've now got some new skills to make icons with~

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, and I'll answer as best I can- as long as it's not about making icons in other software D: I only know Photoshop (and Paint Shop Pro, but I don't think anyone uses that anymore). If there are any other icons of mine you're interested in seeing tutorials for - or even just specific techniques! - just lemme know. I love helping :D

Also, I'm happy to share where I get icon resources from. I have a whole post dedicated to that on my DW graphics journal, though tbh that's the best place to talk to me about making graphics in general. But I will absolutely answer asks/replies/etc about icons here on tumblr, don't worry!!!!

[hannimals]

writer questions

thank you for the tag @soliadiaz!

1. How many works on AO3?

Just 9 so far!

2. Total AO3 word count?

27,770

3. Top 5 fics by kudos?

Three's a Crowd

Genuinely Pretending

In Case of Emergency, Break Glass

Start the Day Lying and End With the Truth

I just keep you in the kitchen (while I burn)

4. What fandoms do you write for?

Just 9-1-1, so far! I never, ever, ever thought I'd write anything, but this is the show/ship that made me start

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yep!

6. Angstiest ending?

Probably Speaking Through Powerlines, since it's just a few angsty scenes from an otherwise unfinished fic. Or my first fic, you're coming up short and you never know why, just because it's got an open/ambiguous ending.

7. Fic with the happiest ending?

Any of my getting together fics, really: Genuinely Pretending is my fave, but In Case of Emergency and Start the Day Lying are also both pretty fluffy/happy

8. Do you get hate?

Nope!

9. Do you write smut?

I have no plans to, but never say never I guess lmao

10. Do you write crossovers?

No

11. Ever had a fic stolen?

No

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Not yet, anyone interested? ;)

14. All time favorite ship?

Buddie, at the moment, and tbh they probably get the top slot since they've compelled me to do all this. I was big into hualian and wangxian a few years back though, and read a lotttttt for them.

ALSO I don't usually engage in rpf (lmao that's actually so not a claim I can make *cough* 1D *cough*) but I am a secret Jihope truther if there are any BTS fans in the house

15. WIPs you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I had a whole Eddie-in-El Paso sequel to Genuinely Pretending in the works that I just lost steam on. I did publish a small piece of it (Speaking Through Powerlines), but there's so much more, particularly lots of dialogue that I'm fond of, that I hope will make it into a different fic someday.

Also working on a fairly self-indulgent coffee shop au that is FIGHTING ME

16. Writing strengths?

I've been told that I'm good at getting a lot across in an economy of words, which is apparent in my fairly low word count. I also think I'm good at bringing a sense of levity to serious scenes without undermining the emotional stakes (pretentious way to say I think I'm funny lmao?)

17. Writing weaknesses?

Doing it? Jk, jk, but also... No, I think sometimes I actually say too little in my effort not to be too wordy and end up moving things along too quickly instead of letting them breathe.

18. Thoughts on mixed language dialogue?

Love it when it's apparent that the author has firsthand knowledge of the languages in question, love it less when it feels gimmicky or done with little thought/research

19. First fandom you wrote for?

9-1-1 is my first and only (so far) - I published my very first fic in January of this year!

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

I really, really love my 8x10 coda, Wishing I Was Rolling Back to You which unfortunately FLOPPED as far as hits go, but them's the breaks I guess

no pressure tagging @luins @sofa-king-lame @poppypickle @unlifeira and anyone who wants to participate!

[canmom]

I would love to hear your takes on ratfic if at some point you are interested in sharing!

i've read very little of it because HPMOR was bad and well, my relationship with the rat subculture has historically been... mostly wanting as much distance as possible lmao, though I've chilled out a degree on that front these days. the time I got into LessWrong was not a good time in my life, let's put it that way.

nevertheless, I read Worth The Candle a year ago and enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, that had some meat on its bones, though honestly more bc it was a well-written therapyfic and played around in fun ways with TTRPG stuff than because of the 'rationalist' elements. and accordingly, the epilogues is where it lost me.

I read WtC while in a pretty terrible place (combo of a lot of bad things including quitting SSRIs cold turkey), so it was honestly the perfect time to have a ginormous serial fiction to throw myself into to distract from all that. I wrote about it at the time. calling it 'Baru Cormorant: When They Cry' was a pretty corny description lmao, but I think what I said back then wouldn't change much!

otherwise, I only hear about it over @azdoine's shoulder from time to time! I might give The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere a shot at some point? I have it sitting in an open tab. The title makes me think of The Flowers of Evil - I admit I haven't read the poems in that collection, but they did serve as inspiration for the criminally unrelated anime Aku no Hana. ...which, well, I doubt this other Flower has anything whatsoever to do with that, but it's a good excuse to post the ED...

anyway I'm afraid that's most of what I have to say about ratfic! I'm not sure if it's intrinsically a genre I am interested in, a lot of it seems to kind of require you to be a singularitarian true believer on some level and if you don't buy into that it can leave you pretty cold, but it does evidently have potential if it's treated as an interesting set of ideas and aspirations to examine critically, rather than just wish-fulfilment propaganda for lesswrongism. if I read any more of the rat canon I'll post about it on here no doubt, it's just... quite a commitment as far as reading goes to take on one of these millions of words long webserials ^^'

[autumnalfallingleaves]

Since I’m currently in a Star Wars phase, I was thinking…. How about a WondLa trilogy AU set in the Star Wars universe?

:D!!!!

It wouldn't be me if I didn't have a crossover or a couple for things I'm currently interested in, so I absolutely have a few, lmao.

I've been thinking of a post-WondLa canon SW AU wherein SW isn't in our past; rather, it's in the future and is currently set in the Prequels/Clone Wars era (my favorite :) ). I'm fudging with both canons a bit and putting WondLa several millenniums ahead of where it is in canon to fit in with the SW timeline and also saying that the galaxy is not far, far away. It's the Milky Way. SW humans are from the humans that abandoned Earth via the Dynasty Corporation and affiliated and just. Never came back.

(Continued under the cut because this got long lol)

It's been three or so years since the Battle of Solas, so Eva is around 16. My thinking is that Orbona is out in Wild Space, so it's been lost to charts and maps for a while, thus explaining why the people of SW don't know that the human home planet still exists, or even that there is a human home planet. During the War, the disaster trio (Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka) end up crash-landing on Orbona on the salt flat near Lacus and find themselves trekking from the now-broken Twilight to what they can see as the nearest civilization, which seems to be a mix of species, most of which-- barring humans-- the Jedi have never seen before. Let's say, for consistency's sake, that the aliens who ended up colonizing Earth/Orbona where from farther out, potentially the galaxy Ezra ended up in, so they're not present in the SW galaxy. Thus, the Jedi can't understand them. They, of course, manage to encounter Eva and co. and, since the humans speak Basic (or English, as the humans of Orbona know it), manage to get a rundown of where they are. (Obi-Wan's nerdy ass is incredibly excited to learn that Orbona/Earth is the planet of human origin. Think of the fossil records.)

And thus, through a series of shenanigans, Orbona is introduced to the larger galactic stage. A selection of beings from Orbona is chosen to go to Coruscant in order to present their planet to the Senate. This includes Eva, Vanpa, Rovender, and maybe Huxley? And others. Redimus is protection.

The Jedi have no idea what to make of Eva. She's extremely strong in the Living Force, but it presents itself in a way none of them have ever seen. I think she and Yoda would get along very well, to the horror of everyone else. She and Anakin would also eat bugs together.

One of the things I've been thinking about the most for this is Eva and the clones, because she, herself is also a clone, just of someone else. I can imagine they bond over that fact as well as personhood and being a second-class citizen in a place that doesn't really care for you. (Say what you want about New Attica, but Eva's status as a clone and her unique experiences were totally brushed over by the Atticans and I don't think she was super happy about that.) I think the vod'e would hear that Eva is still using her designation as her name (Earth in Vitro Alpha, ninth generation) and encourage her to find a name for herself, if she wants to. Eva Nine thus becomes Evelyn "Eva" Kitt :)

This somehow leads to Palps getting outed and ousted because I am all about fix-its in this house.

Other ideas I've had are SW characters in the WondLa setting, which I think is also very fun, but I've thought less about. For instance, the "Eva" would likely be either be Ezra or Omega due to the "naive little kid sees the world, grows up, and develops some pretty serious skills while also finding a family" thing. Ezra works thanks in part to already having similar powers and his relationship with his mentor/dad figure is similar to Eva's. Omega also works because of weird-little-girl-ness, vibes, being a clone, and a similar arc of losing a loved one and having to learn how to move on, though, in this AU, I feel like the person she loses- her caretaker- would have to be Nala Se and not a brother. (You can also insert Batcher in as Otto quite nicely. Maybe Ezra could get a Loth-Wolf?) Hunter is the Rovender, though I'd make it so he had a falling-out with his brothers instead of them being dead and that's why he left.

This also means that it's easy to insert Emerie as the Eva Eight figure, but also means that, in order for Ezra to work, there'd also have to be a bunch of Ezra clones running around. Lmao.

[hikennosabo]

trigun multiple bullets random thoughts

if you thought you saw the last of me in the tag... think again!!!

let's fucking goooooo... it's been a little while, so i feel like i'm rusty LMAO...

showdown with the dodongo brothers at honeycomb village (parts 1 & 2):

wow that's a mouthful of a chapter title. anyway.

seeing manga vash with fully blonde hair is... a little strange, now.

OH, SAME WITH SEEING WOLFWOOD... y'know... alive... i fucking MISSED HIMMMMMMM (<- i literally just saw him, i've been rewatching 98 again)

this is so fun i love it so much

oh there are SO many good expressions but if i post them all i'm sure i'll hit the image limit

vash's pout is so cute and funny but i NEED to draw attention to meryl in the corner... i love her sm

vash is twiddling his thumbs... he's so cute...

well these sure are names

even in the black-and-white manga... even though her hair was brown on the color page... we STILL get a blonde milly jumpscare?!?! really?!?!?

AAHHHH... HIS SMILE.... TOO BRIGHT......!!!!!!

they're so silly :( i missed this... waaaah...

oh my goodness, i am in LOVE with this page.

i love wolfwood scolding vash too, lol. it's a conversation they've had many times before, but it feels... idk, lighter than usual?

i love this page soooo much... their expressions are cute. i'm getting "he's an idiot, but he's MY idiot" vibes from wolfwood, lol :') they're in love your honor

and the cliffhanger reveal... i don't have that much to say about the plot tbh... hmmmm, i'm not separating these chapters in this post anyway.

they :)

it wouldn't be a nightow action scene if it was easy to follow, but i'm glad i examined this page in detail instead of letting my eyes just pass over it because

i LOVE this panel... the one in the middle of the spread is great too but i LOVE the angle of this... vash reaching over wolfwood to shoot, while wolfwood shields him... ugh... thank GOD for vashwood

oh my god...... he's so cute.......

GIRLLLLSSSS I LOVE YOUUUUU

OH YEAH, VASHWOOD, BABEY!!!!!!!!!! vash holding on to the punisher... :D

is vash shooting the rockets so they change trajectory... that's so fucking insane. i love it

THE SILLIES

man this was a fun one. i loved seeing vashwood being a battle couple again and just having a relatively low-stakes/light-hearted romp was a really nice thing to read after the horrors. which i am now a few weeks removed from, but they still haunt me...

trigun: the lost plant:

as someone who had (has!! i still love it!) an enduring dr stone obsession in 2021-2022, i am IMMUNE to boichi's art!!! this is significantly hornier than dcst though, not that i'm surprised in the slightest, dcst does have its own horny designs/moments unfortunately... this is the difference between shonen and seinen i suppose--hold on, that's not what this post is about!! *deletes entire other paragraph talking about dr stone*

60 years post-canon... vash's lifespan has been significantly shortened, but i do wonder how much he has left in him. he lived 150 years without any visible black appearing in his hair, so even if he has just a few strands of blonde left, they might last him a long time... well i don't think any of these stories are canon anyway so it doesn't matter LOL

as far as the plot goes...

the explanation for how plants produce matter is interesting but why did it manifest as a child and why is it a black hole and why this specific plant and how did vash even--oh, WHATEVER!! i suppose there is a reason boichi was the artist for dr stone and not the writer.

very cool to see vash drawn in boichi's style though! it's pretty similar to the early dr stone manga, even though dcst came 5+ years later... and the art style of dcst changed over time, although--wait, no, that's NOT what this post is about!!!

the denizens of the sand planet:

okay, this one is by... *googles* wait, this is the guy who did lucifer and the biscuit hammer?? and planet with??? HUHHH... i've only watched planet with, but i've heard VERY good things about biscuit hammer (manga)... anyway

this is a cute story. the found family is cute.

okay sorry this doesn't matter but it is bugging me (ha) a bit. these post-canon stories don't like... actually show us how the world changed after the battle. because it's something i've been wondering about... like, they show a guy cleaning a plant bulb, but would there even be any plants left in bulbs at this point?

and like, this...

wouldn't the exploitation end. like i suppose plants would still get "worn out" eventually, but i would expect more of a symbiotic relationship at this point. so what's with this imagery?

I'M OVERTHINKING IT!!!!! OKAY!!!! JUST ENJOY THE CUTE FOUND FAMILY STORY!!!!

les enfants:

i. am. in. LOVE!!!! WITH THIS ART STYLE!!!!!!

THEY ARE SO FUCKING SHAPED!!!!!!

legato?!?!?! :D :D :D :D :D

ohhh i love this redraw!!!!!! oghhhhhh!!!!!! oooooooogh!!!!!

i love this art!!!!! i love this art!!!!!!

EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP HE'S SLEEPING!!!!!! ohhh i love this. i like the wording too. "decided to slumber"... he's fucking eepy. he's cozy.

ALSOOOOO

RAZLO (i'm assuming)!!! HE'S SO FUCKING. SHAPED. his GRIN!!! IS SO FUNNY. i'm in tears... i love him...

WAAAHHHH COUCH JUMPSCARE... I DONT NEED THIS WHEN I'M EXPERIENCING SUCH JOY GUSHING OVER THE ART...

the art outside the storybook is also lovely, it's very detailed and delicate...

i would like to believe merylmilly got married and grew old together... yeah...

DUDE, I'M GONNA CRY...... vashwood image... this is a really lovely story. definitely my favorite of all of them.

milly/meryl satellite tv:

so they chase him around for 24 hours straight once a week... poor vash LOL

hey hey hey hey hey this is supposed to be a silly goofy fun time why are you showing me this. i'm so sad. i'm glad the family is being fed at least.

i always assumed that "eriks" was a name vash chose for himself but this is way funnier

there is so much going on here

LIVIO LMAO......

yeah that was very silly

raijin: rising:

incredibly jarring tone shift from the previous story lol... i really enjoy the rai-dei focus though. he's cool but he didn't get a backstory in the manga so i appreciate this a lot. i wouldn't mind more stories like this focusing exclusively on side characters tbh.

it gets pretty brutal... i don't know what to say about this story besides that. it's an interesting look at what could've made rai-dei the way he is.

cutting is fighting:

we're ending this not with a bang but with a whimper... swapping meryl in for the haircut scene is... blegh. whatever. and they exaggerate her crush on vash too much. like yeah she's kind of tsundere in canon (moreso in the anime imo) but she's not a teenager yknow? the satellite tv story did that too but that one was supposed to be goofy and exaggerated so it was whatever.

the most interesting thing here is the lack of dialogue. that's a fun creative choice. and i like the gag with vash's hair being too nasty to comb LOL... and the haircut options. that's all...

overall i'd give this a... 6.5/10? 'les enfants' was definitely my favorite by far and nightow's story was a lot of fun too. the others ranged from "meh at best" to "sure, it was good" lol. i liked seeing the different art styles... i don't have much else to say.

[spinnysocks]

wolfquest ramble incoming :3

not playing wolfquest rn but having thoughts™... two of the current pups of the year's coats are the same as those of pups we've lost..... Serenity has Vitality's coat but much darker and less orange, and Nobility has Luck's coat— they were a first litter pup who we lost to sickness before i started wolfblogging. just interesting to me

that being said, Wish and Treasure have the same exact coat with very little difference in tint. if i had names off i wouldn't be able to tell them apart, unless i paid extremely close attention to their personalities lol

also... i still have six pups and we're in Growing Pups.... by my knowledge the pups of the year have to be capped at 5. i am scared to say the least i'm so attached to all of the little guys aaaggaahhhh

and, since we're in Growing Pups, the Young Hunters quest isn't far away. i have a sinking feeling that more of the older pups will disperse in that time, considering that we have three subordinates and five yearlings. until some pups disperse, i estimate we're gonna have a pack of 13 pups, with 15 wolves altogether hfgdjdj

although, i wouldn't be overly upset if a few disperse. we already have two dispersal males still kicking around out there, and two first litter females who are pack leaders! so now there are four other packs on the map, one of them with only one leader.. i may have to go on a teeny tiny bit of a killing-the-leaders spree to get that one achievement where all the packs on the map have your pups as pack leaders. nothing personal yknow /silly. but i will say there are a few pups i would be so sad to see disperse including Peace (the only first litter pup left in the pack), Honour and Pride. i wouldn't want any of em to go but it's inevitable :(

speaking of my pups as pack leaders, my territory is so large that i've been allowing Love's pack to expand their territory into ours. they're only in one tiny corner after all. i think i've been a bit too kind though because she keeps hex invading when i have no sleep and i can't be bothered to fight her. she's smart, i'll give her that, but i'm wondering whether we're gonna quarrel with her and her new pups once Young Hunters arrives. as for Durability's new pack who literally just founded, i'll likely leave them alone since they're only two wolves strong, and are in the south west corner where their territory doesn't border ours

the only packs i really care to attack are the ones who don't have my pups as leaders. the Sugarloaf pack have been a pain in my ass even though i wiped out three of their leaders, and the only one left is a wolf formerly from another pack that i got disbanded. lol. i don't care to kill em, at least not at the moment, because they're small and struggling and they haven't hex invaded for a while so they're... okay right now. the pack that i'm gonna check out is the new one, Secret Spring, who i haven't met yet. i have that gut feeling that they're gonna be a massive pack who i'll have to reduce the numbers of; good thing i will likely have a massive pack by the time i meet em in battle otherwise i'd fear for my pups' health. might get them disbanded simply so Love's pack and Durability's pack can have some territory space lmao

okay ramble over. i love overanalysing this game hehe

[time222pretend]

ok i've been hype as hell for opening day but i wasn't smart enough to draft an intro so apologies bc i'm writing this as fast as i can to get it out on the dash. anyways this is yang hyein aka the yang canon and under the cut is a tl;dr (that's actually long as hell) about hyein (tho tw abuse) and please give this a like if you're interested in plotting!

ok so important part first: libra sun, aqua moon, pisces rising

now the rest: only child of yang sihyuk the current patriarch of the yang family and bc she's a girl she's the last of the yang line so like imagine growing up with that pressure

and tbh her dad like lowkey (highkey) resents her for being born a girl and like tbh bro didn't want to marry her mother anyways so like really was just another strike against her as far as her dad was concerned

and like bro also was very much in competition with park i's father so like the yang vs park competition was INCREDIBLY real in his mind so like again having a daughter by a lady he didn't even fucking want like it was like he lost in a way so like def punished hyein even tho like bro it was your sperm that determined the biological sex but anyways

so like idk growing up her dad def used the bible to enforce his will but also justify his actions and like explain away his like shitty behavior (ie cheating on his wife like abusing his family emotionally and physically bc he's frustrated with his own life)

and like tbh hyein tried very hard to be a very good girl and like present that way bc like if she did she kind of sort of gained her dad's approval but like also she was raised in a way where like ok your dad treats you like shit but also constantly reminds you that you're better than the rest so you need to act like you're better than the rest and be the girl they think you are

and tbh it was a lot easier to be that way as a kid bc she had a mother who like tbh had nothing better to do so she just fully invested into her daughter and was super overbearing

but her mom passes away when she's 12 and like idk the whole illusion kinda like starts to break apart from there bc part of it is like going from always being monitored and like having too much attention to just having none and her dad not giving a shit about her so long as she's out of sight out of mind paired with starting puberty and feeling rebellious and stuff

but like her dad is not about to be actively publicly embarrassed by a daughter he didn't want so like kinda does the whole double life thing where as like you know publicly she's still a good church girl sits in the front pew whatever and like idk outside of church though she starts hanging out with kids she shouldn't (s/o jeongbin, park ii, bae, and moon) and smoking and drinking and whatever and like a dumb part of her kinda thought like ok this is how life is gonna be and in a fucked up way she can be like her dad and present one day and have her private life be that

only like shit kinda never works out that way bc we all know what happens to jeongbin and tbh she never talks about that but like safe to say she was actually in love with jeongbin though their relationship genuinely was kind of fucked up and one of those things where like when you're raised by a bad man you seek out shitty men but she did love him

and idk after her went "missing" i think tbh part of her went missing with him like she got a lot colder and tbh she hardly ever talks about him ever again and like lmao gets engaged to his cousin and keeps it like business is moving but like idt she ever like processed the trauma she just moved on the way she did and the way she knows how to do things is pretend everything is fine and good

only she kinda girlbosses to close to the sun bc like a couple events happen simultaneously, she and park i get engaged, and like her dad has a stroke (which tbh probs from the stress of her getting engaged to the son of his rival but WHATEVER), and she starts having these honestly terrifying dreams of jeongbin being PISSED at her and they feel so real the shit is starting to scare the fuck out of her

and it all culminates bc one day like a little before the wedding she finds this dead fox on her doorstep and it's been mutilated and like tbh i think it was the straw that broke the camel's back for her and pushed her over the edge and she literally was just like "fuck it" stole some money from her dad and just skipped town

and then the subsequent 8 years as far as hyein is concerned are redacted like no one needs to know what she was up to, or what she did or why like if you ask her what went on while she was gone she's just like "huh? what are you talking about" like let me gaslight u into thinking nothing happened even tho like girl you came back even colder than you were before and like you seem more concerned with your position in life clearly something happened

and the something that happened is like a girl who got catered to her whole life had to meet the real world and it was a fucking rude awakening

but anyways she FINALLY comes back to goero in january of 2023 even though she'd been back in korea for a few months and tbh she came back bc like jeongbin's official funeral but also like tbh idk if you've been treated like shit for 8 years suddenly all the shit you went through growing up doesn't seem so bad and like it feels nice to be home

even tho home is like worse in some ways bc her dad has had a few more strokes since she's been gone and her stepmom (we don't have time to get into that girl) and aunt have been "running" the family business and by that like bro running that shit into the ground so like hyein is happy to be home but also like coming in on a fucking mess and at the end of the day it's HER inheritance they're fucking up so like she literally has just stayed in town and like took her dad's spot on the elder council and been fighting with members of her own family to like get control of shit so she can fix it

and tbh incidentally like her taking over for her family's timber business actually ends up helping a bunch of people working at the mill which cool for them she was just fixing the business bc she's been a broke loser for 8 years and she's fucking done with it adn the company was super mismanged but i guess it's nice some people benefit

but tbh like even though she's benefitting people and tbh fr stepping more into her power and the role she has people like def resent her bc girl you've been gone all this time and now you're just gonna run shit like nothing happened? and hyein who in goero was never told no is just like "yeah i am" and not apologize for it

bc if she were a man it'd be fine but she's a woman so like anyways yeah probs has a reputation for being a bitch and like judging by her actions in the past like they're def not wrong like lmao she def takes what she thinks belongs to her no questions asked but like tbh she actually means well and like what not so yeah

i could've added more but this is long as hell so hmu for plotting and i apologize for talking too much i'm just excited

[artofmimi]

Hi idk if you ever go on here but Twitter confuses and scares me . I saw you retweeted some art of Sethos, and I really like that guy and I also think ur opinions on stuff are really interesting, so I wanted to see if you'd said anything specific about him. However, Twitter confuses and scares me, and I scrolled through some of ur tweets and realized that i'd only made it to June 30th and did not have the mental fortitude to keep going. All that to say, if you have any particular opinions on Sethos I would like to read them here on Tumblr. Obviously ignore this whole thing if you just don't want to respond , and sorry that this is weird

hello there! first of all, i don't think this is a weird ask at all. there is nothing wrong with asking questions so please don't apologize :)

secondly, i really like sethos – a lot! i feel like i don't talk very much about cyno but he is, in fact, one of my favorite characters from genshin. the opportunity to learn more about cyno's backstory and the fact that he gained a new narrative FOIL really excited me. juxtaposing the physical and personality differences between both of them (sethos with his green eyes/brown hair/inviting smile/sociability vs cyno with his red eyes/white hair/resting bitch face/social awkwardness) really highlights their character traits, i feel.

one of the things that drew me in lot about sethos (and this may be a tired comparison so apologies in advance) is that he reminds me a lot of claude from fe3h. not just the physical similarities or the fact that he's an archer, but it was mostly his sense of curiosity and his disposition towards other people. the lines he says, i can see coming from claude's mouth. he gives off a strong sense of intelligence and cleverness.

but honestly that's really as far as i can do for (admittedly very surface-level) analysis for sethos! i haven't played cyno's second story quest yet so i don't know anything regarding the temple of silence plotline or what role sethos plays in it other than what the version update trailer teased. i know that sethos is a reference to the egyptian god, set, and he juxtaposes with cyno, a reference to anubis. i know that set is the god of disorder, violence, foreigners (out of many things) and one of the main stories he is known for is how he usurped his brother – so i have my guesses as to how the genshin storyline goes. however, obviously, my knowledge of egyptian mythology is very shallow so i don't want to make too deep of an analysis unless i really know what i'm talking about haha

anyways, i'm glad that you find my opinions interesting and that you at least tried to scroll through my twitter LMAO i do check tumblr semi-often bc i do still like reading the tags people read on my posts. i still find tumblr's askbox system and archiving system by far the best out of the "big" social media platforms these days but i've gotten really accustomed to just saying out inconsequential thoughts on twitter and rambling out analysis threads on there. they do get lost very easily though so alas. once i do finally finish cyno's story quest, i promise i'll come back to this post and share my thoughts on sethos, just for you anon <3

[cy-cyborg]

hi! thank you for writing your posts about writing/drawing disabled characters and amputees. my ask might be kinda niche so if you don’t feel comfy answering i understand!!

in the story im writing (its contemporary fantasy, like magic exists in a modern setting) one of my characters gets severely injured in a battle/monster attack and loses his leg above the knee. he’s not the protagonist but the close friend/love interest btw. a lot of the story takes place during after his injury heals and he starts using a prosthetic (there’s a time skip so we don’t see all of his healing journey but some of it will definitely be there).

his character arc isn’t really tied to his disability at all, its just there. he copes with it and moves on pretty easily. my protagonist, however, feels a lot of guilt over it because he got in the battle/attack because of her. a lot of her arc has to do with overcoming trauma because she got her sibling killed in a monster attack and feels a lot of guilt over it. a lot of that same guilt comes up because my protagonist and her li got in a fight about her keeping secrets from him and it resulted in the battle/attack that caused his amputation.

i want to emphasize in my writing that the protagonist isn’t guilty because he lost his leg — but that he got hurt at all. she was raised to protect people from monsters etc and she failed, and not only that but she failed her best friend. she doesn’t think of him as weaker for it once the initial wound heals, just guilty that he had to go through any pain at all. and i want to make sure that my writing doesn’t portray him as weaker because of this either. disability doesn’t make you weaker, it just means you have to adapt to situations a bit differently than another person might. my story includes a lot of fighting both physically and magically (though he isn’t a magic user) and he’s one of the most talented characters when it comes to fighting so i want to make sure that’s emphasized

im actually disabled myself, though my disability is very much invisible. so im still unsure of how to approach this because i want to be as respectful and realistic as possible. im sorry if my rambling didn’t make any sense, but if you’re able to give me any guidance at all (not just my specific ask, but anything else generally you haven’t covered in other posts yet) id greatly appreciate it :)

I am so sorry, I could have sworn I answered your question already but I think I just typed something out and forgot to post it lmao.

So what you described sounds fine to me, the only thing you need to be careful of is not going too far in the other direction and making the LI's amputation have no impact/too little impact. Disabilities like amputation are still disabling, they will have an impact and make some things harder, just not to the extent/not in the ways most people expect. It's about finding a balance!

On top of that, you also have to be mindful of how non-disabled people will read those interaction too. This goes against a lot of standard writing advice, but I've found, if you're going against a trope about disability specifically, becuase most people are so uneducated about the topic and yet have very strongly-held opinions anyway, you really have to spell things out lol. You might intend for it to be read as "she feels bad he was hurt at all/that she failed her job" but a lot of non-disabled readers do tend to add the "becuase he's disabled now and that means his life will be shit" onto it even if that's not at all what you were saying. It's very frustrating, and something that took me a really long time to learn how to avoid when I used to post my writing online lol. Beta readers and sensitivity readers are a good way to measure if you were clear enough there though.

and to be clear, not saying either of these things are something you're doing, just things to be cautious of.

[yiangchen]

something that i've never been able to figure out is why i enjoy the build up to rory's relationships but can never get fully invested in them once they actually happen. with dean, it was really cute and wholesome for almost the entire first season, but then he tells her he loves her and lashes out when she doesn't say it back. at this point, he had officially become the typical "nice guy" who's not actually a nice guy at all once he doesn't get what he feels entitled to. ew. immediately gave me the ick. and it just got worse from there. i never shipped them again after that moment.

then in comes jess! and i was like omg yay! dean is awful and jess is so cute. i was so excited about it. even though i enjoyed early dean/rory, imo she had far more chemistry with jess and the build up was immaculate. i honestly didn't even mind that she cheated lmao because it actually made sense in the story and they were just young kids making mistakes. plus, it was a very good kiss soooo yeah. i was completely on board, even through the drama that followed, right up until they got together. it was so good initially. and then almost immediately, i lost all interest in their relationship because jess was just such an asshole a lot of the time! he was cringy. he was annoying. he treated her awfully. i couldn't enjoy them at all anymore. and then the relationship deteriorated, progressively getting worse and worse.

a bit later and in comes logan and i was even more excited for him! i was like yes this must be what i have been waiting for! it's the third romance trope. let's fucking go. and the build up was even better than jess/rory imo!! they made me go insaneeee before they got together. like. fuck. i was so so soooo invested. but their first kiss was somehow so meh to me. a lot of the time, i could still enjoy them together and i thought they had a lot of cute moments, but the magic that i felt before they got together was just kind of gone. sometimes i could still feel it and other times i just didn't. so, between that and some really bad writing decisions/ooc behavior (such as their breakup in s6 and all the drama that lead up to it and came after it), i could never fully ship them either.

i prefer rory/logan over the others because overall they had the healthiest relationship, but there's just something missing with every single one of these boys with they way they were written. it just doesn't feel like any of them are meant for rory. it feels like there's someone else out there for her that she hasn't met yet. am i the only one that feels this way? i feel like i am because all i see is team jess and team logan and i'm just team rory over here ig.

i will say though. i think there was a chance for me to fully get on board with jess or logan in the revival had things been different. both have second chance romance potential, but they didn't go there with jess/rory because they decided to give rory/logan yet another unsatisfying storyline. the writers clearly had a bias for jess, so i don't know why they didn't have a romantic storyline in the revival. it's just kind of weird. ideally though, i wished they'd just gone about rory/logan in a different way. if they'd had logan working at luke's inbetween jobs and rory comes home to visit and doesn't know and she comes into the diner expecting luke and sees logan waiting on tables?? and then there's all this build up to them rekindling things??? maybe they kiss and then after rory is so flustered when she sees him again in the diner and she runs into something and almost falls over, just like lorelai did because of luke once upon a time?? it would have been so cute! rory/logan have the chemistry. they just needed a better storyline!

[leonsrightarm]

books i read in june!

I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume - literally has been sitting on my bookshelf for about 15 years and i have no excuse for not finishing it until now because i've read the first 50 pages at least five times and loved it every one of those times. anyway i love this book and i definitely recommend it. even though it was written in and about the meiji era, it's really timeless.

A Scanner Darkly by PKD - another one that's been sitting on my shelf for a few years. another really good one. i was gonna say that i think the feeling of being estranged not only from yourself but also from others and, more painfully, from others' perception of yourself is probably a unifying human experience but this may be one of those 'your experiences are not universal' moments. there was a passage that reminded me a lot of the wind up bird chronicle and the experience of the well but i didn't mark it like an idiot and now i can't find it. but i do think they unexpectedly have a lot in common on an existential level.

Qiang Jin Jiu Vol. 1 by Tang Jiuqing - my beloved...

Society and the Supernatural in Song China by Edward L Davis - really, really interesting although i might be too dumb to understand the last chapter. i basically get the concept of a pluralistic religious subculture being resistant to centralization and subsequently government control but the rest of it truly lost me....... oh well.... i'll figure it out once i've read enough probably... stay humble lmao...

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix - my favorite of his books that i've read so far. he's really a master of pacing i think. definitely one of those authors whose plots don't necessarily stand up under long contemplation but which grab you and hold you fast in the moment. also the radical puppet collective sounds cool as fuck. where do i sign up.

The Question of Palestine by Edward Said - foundational read on this subject

On Palestine by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe - both deeply disheartening and a source of unexpected hope. the exact same shit has been happening for decades, the exact same playbook and the same rhetoric used to sell it. but on the other hand the massive shift in public perception and the us's attempts to strong arm that perception back under control demonstrates that this can't and won't go on and that something must change.

anyway i don't want to speak too much about palestine here but i really recommend these two books. they're short and easy to understand, even if you don't have a very strong background regarding israel and palestine.

[yesterdayiwrote]

Hi! I’m still pretty new here and so wanted to get to know those I follow a lil better so thought I’d ask some q’s!!

Feel free to answer 😌 (or ignore.. that’s fine too heh)

What’s your fave ice cream flavour?

Who’s your fave driver?

What is it about your fave driver that makes them your fave?

Face holiday destination you’d like to visit?

Fave driver pairing?

Dream job when you were a child? Is it your job now?

Dream f1 team driver pairing?

Do you have a special talent?

If you could decide an f1 track anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Fave animal?

Top prediction for the 2024 season?

☺️

Hey, sorry it took me a few days to answer this! For some reasons questions about me are harder to answer!

What’s your fave ice cream flavour? My favourite ever Ice cream flavour was a Ben and Jerry's one called Birthday Cake but they discontinued it and I'm devastated! It was a cake batter ice cream (so vanilla basically) and had cake pieces, a strawberry sauce running through it AND a pink frosting ripple and it was DIVINE. I'm always partial to a mint choc chip though, it's usually pretty fool proof.

Who’s your fave driver? It's between George and Alex. George is more of my ride or die but Alex has been making serious catch up strides recently. Lewis was kinda my first 'fave' out of the current drivers so I'll always have a soft spot for him. (My first ever fave was Jacques Villeneuve though, lmao. Young me wanted to marry him and got very jealous of Dannii Minogue at one point when it looked like she might. Older me... not so much)

What is it about your fave driver that makes them your fave? Sakhir was when I really looked at George and had a real 'I shall call him fluffy and he shall be mine and he shall be my fluffy!' Moment and jumped feet first back in to fandom. I kind of relate to the awkward, maybe slightly repressed, brit vibe he gives off? Which I think Alex also possesses but in a different font? The sarcastic, dry sense of humour that also gets misconstrued. Their friendship is also very dear to me. Idk that you always choose your favourite driver as much as they choose you!

Face holiday destination you’d like to visit? So I am a terrible traveller to the extent I kinda hate holidays. I'm a bit of a homebird and just get in an anxious mess when I travel. I see loads of things to do online or on TV and then I get there and get put off by the price or the effort and so do nothing 🤣. In an ideal world where none of that happened and I was an effective traveller though.... I'd like to see Sydney in Australia. I've also wanted to go to Amsterdam for the longest time and it's not even that far, I just never have for some reason?

Fave driver pairing? In terms of combined ability, I still think it's George and Lewis. I don't know that they're always my favourite to watch interact, lmao, but if I was a TP, I think that's still the lineup I'd go for.

Dream job when you were a child? Is it your job now? When I was younger I kind of desperately wanted to work in TV as a TV presenter, not even for the fame aspect, it just looked like a really fun job and I was obsessed with TV and the media and just wanted to work within it. I studied media obsessively for quite a long time, then I hit my late teens, lost all my confidence, realised the TV industry could be fkn hell to get into and needless to say it is NOT my job now.

Dream f1 team driver pairing? From a purely selfish perspective it would be George and Alex, although I fear I'm headed for an Icarus type fate by wishing for that. VERY cursed by the narrative.

Do you have a special talent? Talking shit? Overthinking things? Lol, I'm not sure I have a definable talent? I have things I'm quite good at, but nothing that would make people go wow!

If you could decide an f1 track anywhere in the world, where would it be? Somewhere affordable with decent facilities, good access for fans and a good circuit that makes for interesting racing! I think it would be great to have a GP in Africa, but I think they're still a long way from anywhere being suitable and really the only viable place right now seems to be Kyalami or somewhere within South Africa. That said, given where the FIA gala is this year, I'm fully expecting some kind of Kigali street circuit to suddenly be announced... /s

Fave animal? I am decidedly not an animal person I'm afraid. Not sure why, they just freak me out. I love a cute animal photo or video, but actually being in the vicinity of them I always get a bit... tetchy?

Top prediction for the 2024 season? Boringly, I'm expecting more of the same, although f1 is one of those sports where you can't predict much until the first race and you've seen where everyone stands. I'm hoping for a second George win. I'm kind of expecting Lando will finally break his victory curse this year too at some point, although I kind of think it's funnier if he doesn't?

[argoxnautilus]

FANCOMIC REVIEW: Fire in the Sky by akapen011

So @akapen011 recently released his Transformers fancomic Fire in the Sky, which is, in his words, a "gayer, angstier" of the G1 episode of the same name. I've been excitedly following the development of this fancomic for a few months, and it was finally released as a physical copy last week during the 2023 TFcon, and digitally this Sunday!

I have been asked to review the comic, so I'll do my best. Please keep in mind that I'm not a professional and that this is a casual review :)

With all that over with, let's get started!

Plot

The fancomic loosely follows the plot of the original G1 cartoon episode, which goes as follows:

Earth is rapidly cooling down

This kinda freaks out the Autobots, bc there is fucking snow in the American Southwest... that's not very poggers!

They head over to the Arctic, and guess what? The Decepticons are syphoning Earth's energy from a green crystal in the ground! Somehow!

Meanwhile, the Decepticons found a Really Big Guy in the ice, and Starscream recognizes him as his old colleague Skyfire

Starscream explains that he and Skyfire used to be scientists/explorers before the war, Skyfire got lost in a storm and Starscream couldn't find him

Skyfire wakes up, joins the Decepticons out of loyalty to Starscream

Skyfire attacks the Autobots, then rescues the human characters who tagged along for some reason (Spike and Sparkplug)

He takes them to the Decepticons to prove that they're not the bad guys

They're the bad guys

The humans are imprisoned, which troubles Skyfire

When some of the Autobots are captured, Megatron orders Skyfire to kill them. He refuses, and is shot by Starscream in a fit of rage. Starscream then shoots the Autobots...

But it's okay! They were just pretending to be dead :) they repair Skyfire and head on their merry way...

But the Decepticons attack! Prime and Megs fight. When Megs orders Skyfire to attack the Autobots, he refuses and attacks the Decepticons instead!

Him and Starscream have an aerial fight which ends in the crystal destroyed and Skyfire buried in the Arctic ice again, presumed dead. The Decepticons flee, and the Autobots mourn Skyfire's sacrifice at least until they resurrect him 2 episodes later lmao

Now, as with many things in the G1 cartoon, there's a lot of issues. The episode, though it has a lot of potential, is written haphazardly, and a lot of potential outlets for emotional exploration are left untapped. Not to mention that some characterizations make no sense; why would Starscream, who is shown to care deeply about Skyfire when he is first found, shoot him when he disobeys the orders of Megatron, who he despises? Why didn't the Autobots just dig Skyfire out? Etc., etc.

However, in his rewrite of Fire in the Sky, Akapen makes some minor tweaks to the plot that, in my humble opinion, make the narrative far stronger. I won't spoil too much of the story, but suffice it to say that the characters and their motivations--especially Starscream's--are a lot more well-rounded and complex. Plus, I can promise that the comic certainly delivers on its promise of angst--the ending had me turning off my monitor and pacing around the house with a blank expression muttering nonsense under my breath for a good five minutes, and I guarantee that is the greatest honor I can bestow.

Writing

I've put this in a separate category from plot, because while plot and premise are the meat and potatoes of a good story, the way it is written--the dialogue, the ways characters interact with each other, the subtle intricacies of symbolism--are the spices that can make or break the meal. The original 1980s Transformers cartoon is notorious for having an interesting premise (what could be cooler than an eons-long civil war that's ripped a planet apart?) and incredibly bland spices (shoddy animation, poor writing, and staunch refusal to actually explore any of the implications of the aforementioned eons-long civil war), which overall leaves its value as a story based mostly on fan interpretations and nostalgia.

Akapen's Fire in the Sky, however, is abundantly seasoned with vibrant and intriguing spice. In sixty-eight pages, it manages to fit in superb character interactions; actually engage with the implications of the war; and portray the characters as three-dimensional, interesting, and overall enjoyable people to study.

Visuals

For most of this review, I have kept up a veneer of professionalism. This is the part where that shoddy disguise falls away. Akapen is one of my favorite artists, and it's obvious why--his art style is absolutely delicious eye candy! His line art is soft without being washed out, and I feel like I don't see enough traditional TF art....It's so Fucking Good...

Anyway, the comic is black & white with grayscale shading, and it looks amazing! The panel layouts are amazing too--there are so many pages with incredibly dynamic layouts, and I love them so much! Examples below:

These are the three best examples of dynamic page layouts in the comic, at least in my opinion. Akapen does an amazing job of using shape and design to highlight the emotion of the current scene, and boy does it show!

Also the way he draws faces is just....ough...OUGH..OUGH..!! *takes 15 screenshots and runs away*

I AM GOING FERAL.! THE EXPRESSIONS ARE SO FUCKING GOOD I AM GOING TO PUNCH A WALL

This is a really long post so I'm gonna wrap this up here. Please check out Akapen's work, and of course his comic!