#that number is accurate btw

[everythingdnddd]

You wanna know the most 'maybe I should be concerned for myself' thought I've had in a long time?

I FULLY plan to rewatch Vox Machina eventually to pull all my favorite moments. Like, it seems like such a fun, cozy little idea. And then I remember it's 26,860 minutes long. And that doesn't seem like a huge deal.

Have I mentioned that I'm on episode 106?

*melts into a puddle*

[necrotic-nephilim]

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.

and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.

so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.

beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.

because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.

and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.

and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.

and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.

people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.

it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.

[jazzically]

there is a powerful need inside of me to draw them but unfortunately i can't draw so i was suddenly compelled to create these instead (i have homework please save me)

here are the color palettes i associate with some of the main tma cast. the vibes called to me (ft. my awful finger handwriting)

do with them what you will — they just feel right to me (i haven't looked at any fan art yet besides like one or two drawings of john and maybe martin and melanie)

[i-may-be-an-emu]

sfth sketches :)

Father Andrews

Derek (or it’s meant to be lol)

Gareth

AJ

[mildmayfoxe]

❤️‍🔥 BESTSELLERS ❤️‍🔥 top eighteen just for fun!

[montrosepretty]

Day 1,142 of thinking about devo la main. I need to seal him inside of a brick wall like the cask of amontillado

[yaoiadderall]

pls someone help me stop overloading my tumblr app this is how many times i do things on average

reblogging posts: 5 times a minute

liking posts: 16 times a minute

checking my activity: 4 times a minute

searching a tag: 3 times a minute

sending asks: 1 time a minute

booping, super booping, and evil booping people: 837572522 times a minute

please help me my phone is so hot i don’t know what to do

[peculiar-potato]

color change round that only got like one paragraph my beloved </3

[voiddemon]

There are FOUR types of Shadow Kirby interpretations:

EXACTLY like Kirby

Shy and Sad.

Apathetic and an asshole

He shows up

[the-takosader]

So, about that "Marauder" build I was doing...

Breaking news: it is no longer a Marauder build!

For context of the people who randomly stumble across this post without all the lore and shit from my megapost back in August, first of all, hi, welcome to the blog, second of all, this was originally intended as a "recreation" or full copy of a pretty obscure mid-'60s Fender guitar that never saw full, mainstream production - the Fender Marauder.

For further context, the Fender Marauder was a guitar that got a mashup of all of Fender's offsets, plus the Stratocaster, getting the Strat's pickup layout, a pickup selection method similar to the Jag, the Jazzmaster's lead/rhythm circuit, plus a vibrato like the Mustang, and the headstock of the Starcaster, which didn't exist at that point, so it's technically that the Starcaster had the Marauder's headstock, rather than the other way around...

Where was I? Ah, yes, not doing the Fender Marauder. Yeah, no, it's not happening anymore. Instead, the build has, for lack of a better term, "pivoted", thanks to an idea my aunt gave me: doing something original.

Now, in Current Year (2024 is soon to end, and oh dear god it's almost a year since I had the idea for the Tele-Shaped Rickenbacker), originality in the guitar-building world is... not exactly a thing? There's that many Telecaster and Stratocaster copies, combined with the fact that there's only so many ways you can shape a slab of wood into a pleasant experience to play.

My solution? The academic method! And by that, I mean "instead of ripping off one guitar and calling it a day, I'm ripping off multiple guitars," or at least taking from multiple sources, as an academic should.

If you want to see more of this madness, keep reading under the cut.

You still here? Awesome. So, now that you've chosen to read on, let's go through the spec sheet that I made for this exact purpose! Surely, it can't be that incomprehensible, ri-

...oh.

Yeah, I went really in-depth. I even mentioned the fucking fretboard radius, that is how in-depth I went. Now, does this in-depth nature help? Oh yeah, certainly. Is it comprehensible? Nope. Not in the slightest. Not unless you browse Wikipedia for fun or watch way too much of Trogly's stuff.

So, a small glossary of terms, before we get into this shit properly:

Comfort carves: bits of wood removed from the body of the guitar to allow for better playing experience, originating with the Stratocaster.

Trem system: also known as a whammy bar or vibrato, this is how you get those reductions in pitch.

Coil split and coil tap: either factoring out one coil's output (split) or removing the effect of some of the windings of the coil (tap).

That's nowhere near all I've got to explain, but if any of you wanted, I'll put out a "translated" spec sheet that attempts to properly explain the shit. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes!

The build no longer being a Marauder has freed me up to do whatever I want now, which leads me to the body design (further screenshots will come from the translated spec sheet mentioned above):

So, let's discuss why those three specifically. But first, were they the original ideas? Not in the slightest! Originally, this was going to be FAR more Gibson-inspired than this, taking from the Scarred Reaper (a Jagstang style merging of the Les Paul and SG created by the aforementioned Trogly, I would recommend you watch his stuff if it wasn't so Guitar Nerd) and the SGV/ZV (that Zakk Wylde signature thing the Gibson custom shop cooked up), with maybe a single-sided headstock.

That idea's gone, DOA when further thought was brought in. The new idea, as specified in the image, is a hodge-podge of 2 guitars and a bass, all 3 of which I've played previously in some manner or form. The upper horn of a Burns Double Six, which (for those less educated in guitars, or can't just visualise a guitar from memory as soon as it's brought up in a conversation) looks like this:

Yes, the guitar body looks like that. Plays beautifully, or at least the one I played does.

So that's the source of the upper horn, even if it'd be less exaggerated than that. What about the other two? Let's start with the lower cutaway, inspired by the Rickenbacker 4001 (or 4003) bass.

Note how the fret access is incredibly good? Yeah, that's not just a thing on the bass. Rickenbacker also make/made a guitar version of this, the 480 (plus a short-lived version known as the 481 with slanted frets - not fanned, slanted), with at least 21 frets of perfectly fine access to frets, and 24 frets total on the neck.

Finally, the PRS CE24, which is being used for the lower body of the guitar:

I could go on for several paragraphs about how and why I'm going with the lower bout of a CE24 for this, or even that I'm basiclally making this a more PRS-style Strat than the John Mayer Silver Sky. But, I won't. Quite simply, I have neither the time nor the energy. Instead, what I'll do is summarise, because I can't put a second read-more link in here.

So, why is it a PRS-style Strat? Well, many reasons. I'm thinking of putting in a PRS floating trem system, doing a 10-degree headstock angle (enough to have the tension, but not enough to risk headstock breaks - looking at you, Gibson, with your 17-degree headstocks!), and, most importantly, I'm going for a 25" scale length, which effectively gives me the very basics of a PRS guitar, minus the construction and the pickups.

But continuing from there, the only thing preventing this from being a "normal" PRS build or similarly designed guitar is the pickups I'm using. They're not any of the usual fare that PRS use, not by any stretch of the imagination. What I'm planning on using is, as laid out in the spec sheet, a Fender-style Wide Range Humbucker, a reverse-wound, reverse-polarity Tri-Sonic imitator (because I don't want to try and source Burns or Adeson pickups for this, so Kent Armstrong it is), and a Tonerider Hot Classics Broadcaster bridge pickup (it's the bridge pickup specifically because a Telecaster's bridge pickup is tilted with a black bobbin). Now, dear reader, can you guess what positions I'm going to put them in?

If you guessed that I'm going to be sane and normal by putting the humbucker in the bridge, you're entirely incorrect, unfortunately! Instead, I'm going for an at least sane positioning for the Broadcaster pickup, putting that next to the trem system, or at least as close as can be within reason, that RWRP Kent Armstrong Tri-Sonic in the middle position, and the humbucker in the neck position.

The result of that, in concept, should be a fuller sound in the neck, and depending on how I wire the pickups (which will most likely be in series) a really bitey sound in the bridge, the kind that gives some levels of distortion a run for its money. A comparatively "thin" sound is to be expected, as this project is to have 24 frets, and thus a tighter pickup spacing.

The idea is similar to this guitar made for Alex Lifeson by Paul Reed Smith (yes, that's what PRS stands for), which uses an EMG in the neck, and a Signature Guitars single coil in the bridge, with Signature Guitars being a short-lived brand that Lifeson worked with in the mid-to-late '80s until the company's dissolution in 1990.

That's partially what's inspiring me on this specific pickup configuration, as I've heard the tones that this specific guitar's made, going back to at least 1991, for the solo on Dreamline. Considering the guitar's serial dates it to 1990, so it's likely he got it from PRS for the explicit purpose of recording the Roll The Bones album.

But that's not important, nor is it even the point, because damnit, I love rambling about tangential shit! Anyway, to get back to the point of this rambling, this is a PRS-style Strat in the least Strat-like manner. None of the parts I took from are a Strat, or really have any relation to it outside of the Double Six. The CE24 is inspired the double-cuts that Gibson made, and the 4001 was made back when originality was actually a thing in guitar design.

But the result of all that designing, combined with a little bit of image compositing, was this:

Now, I'm aware that this design, for lack of a better term, looks like shit. It's way too stretched out, and nowhere near like realistic. In my full defense, this was made in Paint at close to midnight, so I doubt I was thinking at full brain power. I'll probably de-stretch it at some point, if I can be arsed to do so.

The neck, by comparison, doesn't look nearly as bad, but considering how hard it is to fuck up the look of a neck, it's not that big a deal. The idea of a neck is to give an anchor point for the non-ball end of the string that allows for a tension adjustment point, with the fretboard acting as the point where frets change the note/pitch the guitar plays.

As God Pythagoras Intended.

Side note, fuck that guy! He broke music 2000 years ago, and we still haven't recovered!

Back to the matter at hand, though, my compositing process for the neck was based on inlay style, number of frets, and headstock shape. Now, I mentioned above that I was doing a 2-octave neck, 24 frets total. The "neck" (by which I mean the fretboard) was taken from a Rickenbacker 360, and the headstock shape was taken from a Gibson Firebird, the last remaining relic of this thing's Gbison influences, resulting in this composite:

Please note that the transparency for all this was done in Word, which is the best I can use to get specific bits and pieces of guitars to mash up and weld together like fucking Victor Frankenstein.

The full thing, combining both neck and body composites, came out of this process looking like this...

...as you can see, very squashed, very stretched, which was not the intention, I assure you! So, as a help to my brain, and possibly to the very few people who stumble across this who know good proportioning, I squashed the width down a bit further, albeit at the cost of making the neck feel too short for the body:

I could throw a squashed down version of the body back into Paint, add the standard-sized neck, and operate from there on the image front, but there's a small issue of CBA to contend with. In short, I can't be bothered to do it.

Now, you might note that the headstock lacks tuner tips. Why? Because the Firebird had planetary tuners, what some would term "banjo tuners". The basic idea is that, to facilitate string pull, they made a new headstock design (because before this there were 3 Gibson headstock styles - open book, which was the standard one, triangle, for the Flying V and related models, and hockey stick, which only got used on the Explorer until Aldo Nova came along in 1982). This new design utilises the planetary tuners for... some reason, Idk, I can't find it. Point is, at first, this is what I was going to go with, Firebird headstock shape and all.

However, upon further rational thought, I'm just going to go with a Hamer-style headstock, specifically one like the Hamer USA Centaura, which looks like this:

I was kinda debating on putting a Floyd Rose or similar on this, being influenced by this thing, but they're not exactly cheap to install, replace or repair, so that's why the PRS trem. The one thing I'm still debating on from this is the "sweet switch", which was designed for Carlos Santana by PRS, purely because he was known for using a long cable prior to going wireless. But that's not the point.

What is the point? Fuck if I know. I've been writing this on and off over the past 2 or 3 days, I just set out to make an in-depth Tumblr post about my guitar build, and here I am talking about a Hamer and Carlos Santana. To try and steer myself back to the point, let's talk the unique bits, stuff I've only seen done... 2 or 3 times, total. In this case, I'm talking about unique pickup selection methods.

There's a couple I have in mind for this build: a rotary switch, and individual slider switches. Now, why are these unique? Because both are rare to see on production-level guitars. The former comes from PRS guitars from the '90s, which worked really well, except people couldn't figure out what pickup they were on, while the latter I've only seen in 2 different styles on a total of 3 guitar models.

Style 1 is what I'm thinking of doing: Jag style, where there's a control plate to select what pickup you're using, and you can select and swap on the fly, which is similar to the Red Special, which has 3 pickup switches and 3 phase switches - the top row is pickups, and the bottom row is the phasing. Brilliant bit of kit for a guitar built 60 years ago.

Now, the other style of switching is a bit more convoluted than that, because it's Mustang switching, which is 3-position sliders mounted horizontally above each pickup. Position closest to the bridge is off, central is on, and position closest to the neck is out of phase. Sounds like the Red Special's method but condensed into 3 switches, right?

Well, the fact of the matter is that Brian's design and build was done between 1963 and 1964, and the Mustang didn't enter production until the latter year, so it's likely but not certain to be a case of convergent design/evolution.

Each idea has its merits. While, yes, a rotary switch would be less clunky, not to mention easier to install, you then have to manually wire each and every pickup combination you want. Now, that's fine and dandy with 2 humbuckers, you can do full neck, outer coils, both pickups, inner coils, full bridge, and in fact, that's how PRS did it. The issue is doing 3 pickups, one being a humbucker, and the other two being single coils, because then you need at least 7 positions, by my measure:

Neck

Neck + Middle

Neck + Bridge

Middle

Middle + Bridge

Bridge

All 3 together.

Now, I could be missing the forest for the trees, or at least the wood for the figuring, but I'd rather avoid having to wire up 7 different positions, especially because I'm not doing any fancy pots here. By comparison, individual switching seems more appealing, as there I can just have 3 switches for neck, middle and bridge, and be done with the whole matter.

Moving on from that, we have the aesthetics of it. I don't know what finish I'm gonna go for, considering I've debated at least 6 different finishes in my head for this build since I started it. I've debated on 2-Tone Sunburst, 3-Tone Sunburst, Tobacco Burst, Sandbar Burst, deep ocean blue, whale blue, grey black, all sorts. In theory, any of these 6 I listed could be the one I go with, which is pretty obvious.

Then again, I could go with some mad bastard finish like Faded Whale Blue Smokeburst (diluted Whale Blue stain, add on top a black ring on the front, dark sides, kinda tear drop figure on the back like an old '70s silverburst, the works) and deal with the convolution of doing that on a flame top.

Maybe I'll end up doing that. Who knows.

Oh, I almost forgot! I even gave it a name: the Crusader, acknowledging that a) it's my design, and b) it was based on the Marauder. It's going to be a long road to its completion, possibly a full year (remember, this is with hand tools, no large scale machinery) instead of the 6 months it took to build the Cherry XII. Most of it's going to be either mahogany or sapele, with the odd bit of maple or ash in there, but by the end of it, I'll have something unique to call my own. You couldn't get me to give it up if you tried.

Things I didn't go into detail about:

Binding stuff

Neck heel carve

Locking tuners

Inlay style

Possibly other shit I'm forgetting

Hope you enjoyed reading my ramblings this time!

[hoperays-song]

Assorted Suki Lane Headcanons

She is Aroace and uses she/her pronouns.

Suki ran cross country in high school and college on her schools' varsity teams and she still runs to this day, meeting up frequently with an old friend from college who was also on the cross country team to do so.

Her first job was actually as a babysitter, followed by being a receptionist at her childhood dance studio, and eventually an assistant coordinator for a few charities before she went to college.

While she is not a master chef, Suki is a pretty decent cook, having gotten used to making food quickly for herself between meetings.

She was in a dance class taught by Ryan's mom as a kid, causing her to have known the boy his entire life, especially since she was his babysitter throughout his childhood.

Her ipad has two cases, one that she uses for work that's more protective and a more casual one that's covered in stickers she's collected over the years.

While their relationship is a bit strained, Suki visits her parents every other weekend and they overall have an ok relationship at the moment.

Suki grew up in Tokyo but moved to Redshore at seven for her parents' jobs, leading to her eventually gaining dual citizenship.

Having known Porsha since the girl was a young teen, Suki is more used to her than pretty much all members of the cast, leading to her dealing with her whenever Buster and Mrs. Crawly can't get her to listen.

She went to Washington University in St. Louis for a degree in Communications and Marketing with a minor in Business in Entertainment. She is also currently getting a Masters degree in Public Relations.

Suki's paternal grandfather moved to Japan from Iran for school, meeting her grandmother there.

She was a star student throughout high school and college, graduating both with honors, even if it meant ducking her extracurriculars to get more study time in, much to her friends' annoyance.

Suki started working for Crystal Entertainment straight out of college and rose the company's ranks extremely quickly to chief communication officer.

She is allergic to buckwheat.

The moped she has was actually repainted by her upon getting it to be her favourite colour and she is extremely careful with it.

She is fluent in Japanese and English, and is semi-fluent in both Cantonese and ASL.

Suki is a morning person and does not enjoy pulling all nighters/working late, despite being in a city known for its nightlife.

Due to the events that occurred in Sing 2, Suki left Crystal Entertainment a few days later, and took on the role of chief communications and pr officer for the New Moon Theatre, bringing a lot of her best staff with her.

Suki and Ryan have stayed close throughout their lives, viewing each other as family, and even when Ryan was working for Klaus, they would regularly meet up to get coffee and just catch the other up with everything going on.

She would be a child of Athena in Percy Jackson and in the Oracle and Potions tracks in The Owl House.

[themyscirah]

People need to stop putting Batman in everything this is painful

[detective-piplup]

doodles (this took 233 layers and 7 hours total. not a doodle) a silly reunion scene based off of these doodles (and also somewhat these) by @characteroulette !!! we cannot be stopped

[okayto]

Mushrooms moved to tomorrow on account of 1) not being hungry tonight and 2) not cooking for fear of staying up too late when I need to be up a few hours earlier than normal and 3) must focus on learning to bend Excel to my whims very quickly, for professional reasons (not looking like a dunce in front of my boss tomorrow)

(#3 is the main one. I am going to make this giant spreadsheet filter what I want and let me dissect it or die trying.)

[scattered-winter]

looking to fuck myself up this weekend inquiring top 5 jason comics :)

while there are in fact very many jason comics in this world, asking for 5 good ones is a very tall order. nevertheless I did my best because I love he :]

5: batman: a death in the family

as depressing at it is, it's a great look into the catalyst event that really created jason as he is today <3 it has some.....less than stellar moments (joker becoming an islamic diplomat for some fucking reason, for one. what the fuck, dc) but overall if you're looking for being fucked up <3 that's a good way to go <3 and also a very good starting point for jason comics in general if you're getting into them for the first time!!!*

4: wayne family adventures (on webtoon)

funky and fun :] if you're looking for basic info/characterization on jason (or ANY batman character, tbh) it's a pretty good place to start for people who don't know who they like yet/where else to go. I will say that the character portrayals are VERY surface-level and since the webtoon is more of a comedy/slice of life genre, a lot of the....darker, messier aspects of the characters are left out, and some of the fanon characterizations have some influence on the writing from what I've seen. however it's very good for some fun shenanigans that don't require much brainpower <3

3: countdown: search for ray palmer

jaykyle bible <3 I also really love jason's characterization in this one as well, which is fairly hard to come by because his writing is so inconsistent. if you want clarification on the huge crisis event that this comic is part of, I am the Wrong person to ask <3 I largely ignore the big crises because they're so fucking confusing and I have a brain the size of a peanut

2: red hood: lost days

second to utrh only because of The Unspoken Thing that happens at the end of one of the issues (I.....cannot remember which one for the LIFE of me) that every jason fan has collectively wiped from their memory <3 it never happened <3333 but other than unspoken horrors, it's a good jason read!!! it shows some background on how he grew and changed after his resurrection into the red hood

1: batman: under the red hood

here it is <3 the red hood bible <3 every time someone has an incorrect idea of how jason acts/thinks I am waving this comic under their nose and assigning it like homework. imo this one is essential reading to understand red hood jason and if I had my way it would be required to read before writing ANYTHING about him (both canon dc writers and fanfic writers smfh)

*it's a good place to get into jason if you want to read about him as red hood, since that's the kickoff that begins his red hood journey, but if you want to read more about him as robin it's one of the last things you read. unfortunately I haven't read very many robin!jason comics since (while i LOVE the boy!!!!) he isn't as interesting to me as red hood!jason, but there are people you can ask for recs!!! @/autisticredhood would be a great person to ask for robin jason comics I think <3

ask me my top 5/10 anything!!

[lenteur]

Reading two books in two weeks-ish after months (more like a year) of not finding the motivation to pick up a book? I am so proud of myself :D