#novel extract

[edenjacobs]

My first draft is chaotic and nonsensical but oh, how I love these characters. (My favourite bit from tonight's chapter)

“Fall back to the second barrier!” Cliod bellowed, holding his sword aloft. I ignored him, instead opening a rift under five feral vampires who were attacking one of the warriors, having pinned him against the barrier. They fell into the void, and I reached across the trunk of the fallen ash tree to grab the boy’s arm and haul him over. He was injured and shaking but alive. Blood poured from bite wounds on his arms and hands, his tunic shredded by the ferals claws. I handed him off to Fhion. “We have to fall back!” he shouted, propping the boy up with an arm around his shoulder. “Emma, please! You can’t take them on alone!” I threw a fireball at the head of the nearest feral vampire and then a lightning bolt to the clump currently trying to tear their way through on the other side of the road. Both defensive spells exploded several heads and rent the air with the smell of offal and cooked meat. “I’m not on my own. I have Kai. And oh, look, Molly!” Molly appeared behind two ferals who were climbing over the barrier. Her hands sunk into their backs, tearing their hearts out. The ferals ashed out, the organs in Molly’s hands disintegrating too. “Ha!” I clapped my hands and whooped, forgetting momentarily we were in a life or death situation. “That was awesome!” Molly grinned, taking two more out in a row. “Isn’t it? Almost makes up for being dead!” she tore a third out as she spoke.

[artved]

— Self-Portrait as Allegory of Painting by Elisabetta Sirani, 1658 (detail)

The goal of art is one’s self-giving, And not the racket of success. To be a fable with no meaning Retold by all is shamefulness.

— Boris Pasternak, 1956 (translated by Andrey Kneller)

[shytulipghost]

Extracts of Chapter 11 and 14

Original:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 14:

Translation:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 14:

In case anyone was wondering, I'm not insulting my own story in Chapter 11 (If I really hated it, I would have abandoned it a long time ago). That is one of the scenes that is meant to convey Orange's hatred for her creator, as she absolutely dislikes being part of a story she didn't want to participate in (she had no choice) and she will take every opportunity she gets to insult the author and/or the book. For Orange, the only way to be free is if the author gives up and abandons the story.

[tyrantwombat]

No, but seriously, can you imagine how utterly surreal it is to be Song Taewon and have two of the most unhinged people on the planet both decide to become intensely invested in your life and health after knowing you for like five seconds? One of them uses aggressive mob tactics to try and get you to let them chauffeur you around, the other is a little guy you could crush with your pinky on accident who hunts you down in the middle of a pit of monsters with a packed lunch convinced you will starve if he doesn’t personally feed you. You have to play an intense game of de-escalation at literally all times to keep this same random guy from calling and yelling at your boss about your sleep schedule, and this is still an improvement on that time you barely convinced him it wasn’t necessary to utterly annihilate your place of work to get you more vacation time. The other one has probably historically attempted to set your closet and/or you yourself on fire so he can buy you clothes.

You just want to live your corporate slave life and resist the dark yearnings of your soul in PEACE but instead you’re having to dodge two very powerful men who both desperately want to take care of you.

[charbroiledchicken]

the art of imperfection

nothing in the world is broken, 

just incomprehensibly beautiful.

too perfect in its imperfections,

that only the immortals can see its etherealness. 

-by charbroiledchicken

[popsicle-stick]

its been several weeks and im still thinking about the hard switch by owen pomery im crazyy. im going crazy. the most striking thing about such a short graphic novel for me is how harsh the world was depicted as yet how badly i wanted to be immersed in it. god. man

[soulsforsales]

"And you're sure?" He asks, his long, moon-colored hair falling over his face in a way that shows just how many times he's run his fingers through them. It's new, in a way, cracks of doubt and anxiety seem to seep through his usually calm and collected demeanor today.

"Positive," I reply, keeping a close eye on him, noticing the furrowing of his brows as he probably plays out the given situation in his head.

"Hmm," comes the reply, his gray eyes growing even more distant and clouded showing how deep in thought he is,

"What does "hmm" stand for?" I ask, my tone not as annoyed as it is amused. It's entertaining to watch someone who's always five steps ahead of me to be confused for once.

"I'm thinking," he mumbles, eyes narrowing softly at my face as he realizes he's been caught looking more confused than he'd like and that I am enjoying it more than I should.

"Oh, so that's your thoughtful grunt," I reply. It's not really a question but more of an observation. A hint of a smirk tugs at the corner of my lips as I match his annoyed gaze with my amused one.

His brows furrow at my words and he huffs softly through his nose, "My what, now?"

I scoff with a shrug as if the answer is obvious, "you make different sounds depending on what's going on in your head," I explain, pointing a finger to his face before dropping my hand to rest at the table between us.

His lips quirk up in a faint, amused smile that catches me off guard for a moment, "Huh… I hadn't realized," he mutters, eyes drawn downwards to the sheets sprawled on the table before meeting mine again with an intensity that wasn't there before. "What's your favorite?"

I raise my brows, not catching the meaning behind his words, "what?" I ask with another scoff.

"What's your favorite sound that I make?" He asks with that deep look in his eyes that makes them appear darker than they are and before I can register it, he's walking from across the table towards me. My heart quickens inside my chest as I try to keep a blank face when I look up but he continues before I can, "Because I could tell you mine..." He adds, standing right in front of me now, his long, pale fingers brush a strand of hair away from my face and his touch lingers longer than necessary, sending a shiver down my spine.

"I could tell you my favorite sound that you make," He whispers, leaning closer until his breath tickles my ear with each word that leaves his lips, "I could even have you make it right now, for an example," he rasps with a low chuckle that makes my stomach do things I am too embarrassed to admit.

[izumaki-naruto]

chapter 90

That's a pretty useful description of how chakra works, and not really one I see portrayed? Though tbf that could also just be the series retconning it.

But from Ebisu's explanation it looks like what Sakura's really outstanding at is building chakra (that is, mixing her spiritual and physical energies together in the right amount), since Sasuke and Naruto are inferior to her in that regard. Her chakra control (putting the correct amount of chakra into a jutsu) is perfect too, but so is Sasuke's, so that's not unique. Also, Naruto's issue is putting too little chakra into his jutsus, not too much, and what he has in abundance is stamina, not chakra, so he'd also be freakishly energetic at taijutsu.

[do-you-know-this-dw-story]

extraction point (novel: 2023)

[vyllaynark]

i always end up defaulting to just a couple brushes and characters, but since i made this blog specifically for experimentation. here. a tree made with a bunch of Awez's incredible krita brush bundles. (seriously check them out)

does it make any sense? no! and i don't give a shit! because i'm the vyllayn here and i do what i want!!!!11!

[t-jfh]

Fyodor Dostoevsky — Russian writer (1821 - 1881)

(Colourised [original B&W] photograph by unknown author)

•

[shytulipghost]

So I'm 85% done with the expression drawing sheet and so far the file is over 600 MB. Unfortunately, I can't delete layers to free up space because Krita immediately crashes, so I'm trying to get this done quickly so I can share everything I made.

I just need to do recolour everything for the possessed version of the character and add the fonts I used on Halloween (thankfully, not all 100 of them).

I will delete the .kra file once it's finished to have more space more on my computer.

[mangocoal]

how do you extract BB story mode sprites? I’ve been trying to get my hands on these sprites of Mu/Noel(?) for so long but no luck(not in it’s full body glory but yk..), all I know is that it appears in BBCS and maybe BBCP and BBCF too??

The files for this version of her story portraits were not in CF. I did find them in CS though. However, like all of the other story portrait files, they're broken up between a main body with no face and the facial expression images that they overlap on top of the body. So if you want a proper image, you'll need to use an image editor to layer the face on top of the body yourself. However, I'll save you the time of extracting the files at least and simply did so myself and put them in a .zip in a Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e4zvkqXY8PH2XI5_XN-LA0snxglb0tMj/view?usp=sharing

However, if you actually are curious on how I extract files, I use this tool called, GeoArcSysAIOCLITool.

Found the story mode portrait files for Mu-12 in this directory within the game's installation folder: "BlazBlue Chronophantasma Extend\data\Story\Avatar\mu" Took the .pac files in that folder, put them in "GeoArcSysAIOCLITool\Batch\PAC\GeoArcSysAIOCLITool - PAC - Unpack Recursive.bat" to unpack all of the .pac files. And then that should produce a folder called "mu_unpack" which contains even more folders with .hip files in them, the image format ArcSys uses in BB games.

Then I placed that folder in "GeoArcSysAIOCLITool\Batch\GeoArcSysAIOCLITool - HIP.bat" to convert all of the .hips into .pngs. Then I just used the Windows Explorer search option to find all of the .pngs, pressed Ctrl+A and then saved them all into a .zip to put them into one place instead of digging through each folder.

[gallifreywhere]

Spoiler for Doom's Day - Extraction Point

The second Doctor doesn't appear until page 206. The book has 227.

[cassmouse]

~Arica POV~

Brief extract from my sapphic WIP in which Arica's friends are having an aggressive online debate about where chicken tikka masala comes from

Based on an actual conversation I had with my maths table at school

I'll be posting regularly (hopefully) about bits of my story I particularly enjoyed, so look forward to that

This is definitely one of them

[blue-eyed-author]

Chapter 41 available now. Read for free on Wattpad.

I post 3 times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week.

If you choose to check out my stories, Thank-you. It means the absolute world to me and I appreciate you. ♥️

Click here to check out this novel. Thanks.