#the fine print is important

[grabby-smitten]

[freezebobs]

DBFZ Yamcha and Ten cookies...done!!!

Soo I've been on a mission to recreate the Yamcha and Ten cookies from dragon ball fighterz because they're adorable...and they're finally real!! :'D process and info below! (kind of long lol)

I saw someone share these screencaps from the game a while ago and as someone who never played DBFZ I was so charmed at how cute these things are. I wondered if anyone had ever made cookie cutters for them, did a quick search and didn't really find anything, so just kind of moved on.

A few months later I remembered them again and was like, man, I really would love to see these brought to life lol. And I searched again and actually found someone who made them!!... But they weren't selling them anymore. 😭💔

^Reddit post from user ShadowLord898.

So in the next few days I went into the DBFZ game files, figured out how to navigate them and locate/open the proprietary file types (took...a lot of googling), and eventually found the cookie textures!!! Which I then painstakingly traced over to create vectors.

I thought once I had the vectors, it would be easy to drop them into a 3D program and extrude them to make the cookie cutters. BOY WAS I WRONG!!! It's probably just my inexperience working with vectors in 3D programs, but I tried Blender, Fusion 360, and Tinkercad and had problems in each one before finally figuring out the right approach. (I really almost gave up 🤧 but I hadn't realized that your geometry/topology don't need to be perfect when 3D modeling for print as opposed to, like, something you plan to create a texture for.)

Tinkercad and its extremely user friendly interface, plus SVG import functionality, saved me.

Oh then I realized I forgot to reverse the design, which you have to do for a cookie cutter because of how they work. I thought I would need to flip all the vectors and re-import them, recreate the models... but thankfully there's a "flip" button in Tinkercad. Fixed.

I sent the files over to my friend @.theprocrastinatingengineer on Instagram, who has a 3D printing service, and he was able to print them out for me!

While I was waiting for them to ship I downloaded Cura ("slicer" program for preparing 3D files for print) just for fun. (I was really eager...)

And here's when I finally got them!!!

Despite choosing all the dimensions carefully, I was still surprised how dainty they were when I actually held them in my hand. I wasn't sure if they would work...

So I made the dough and everything, used some 5mm thick chopsticks as guides to roll out the dough to the thickness I wanted. I put plastic wrap over the dough to prevent the cutters from directly touching the dough due to food safety concerns. Here is my first attempt to use them:

After this my mindset quickly shifted from caring about food safety to "what's a little more plastic in my system?" / "I'm here for a good time, not a long time!!" / "welll the dough gets baked anyway so that kills the germs it should be fiiine" **I Do Not recommend others to be so careless... also important note: I was the only one eating these so I didn't have to worry about others' safety 🥴

^The difference between using the cutters with and without the plastic wrap.

This first rolling out of the dough was actually a little too thick; in my design I hadn't accounted for the way the dough squishes up when you press the cutter into it. There wasn't enough vertical space at all, and the dough kept getting stuck in the cutter. It was a bad time!!! (didn't get a lot of photos of the failures here because my hands were covered in flour)

After lots of broken cookie cutouts, re-flouring the surface/cutters/rolling pin, and re-rolling the dough to be a bit thinner, I managed to get these out. I had to support Ten's head like a newborn when moving the dough onto the cookie sheet because the connection to the body was so delicate 😢

AND HERE THEY ARE...fully baked and ready 🥹

For the most part I was going to leave them undecorated like how they are in the game. But @.lamichicuenta made this really cute drawing of the cookies where Yamcha had chocolate decorations and Ten was a salty cracker, and I really wanted to try decorating some to resemble those!! Here are the photos of both versions of the cookies the next day once I was able to get some natural light for nicer pics.

(I meant to poke some holes in Ten's cookie to look more like a cracker but I forgot about it until they were already baking.)

They tasted fine...yamcha was better thanks to the chocolate. 🤭

If you read all this, thank you for following my cookie cutter journey... 😌🙏💖

Oh yeah and I made the vectors, 3D print files, and specs/info all available in a google drive folder here for anyone to use if they want! https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hQ7uq3leYPK64pGgt3LhFw-70IZnkYzh?usp=drive_link

OH and one last thing, i ended up revising the 3D models to hopefully fix the issue of not enough vertical space. ...turns out I hit the maximum for photos and videos in this post, but you can see it on my twitter here! https://twitter.com/freezebobs/status/1875720926840680678

I didn't get to try these revised models, but they are the ones I put in the drive folder. 😊👍

[romans-art]

for those of you who like process pics, here's a few steps in the process for this piece

[garaks-huge-naturals]

the frustrating aromantic representation of chuck tingle's "bury your gays"

i feel like i should preface this by saying that i'm a huge chuck tingle fan and, representation aside, i greatly enjoyed his book. so this is not like, a hate take down. this will contain spoilers for bury your gays, you are warned.

the parts i have issues with will be more towards the end and are marked.

a quick synopsis: misha is a queer horror writer who is told to either kill off his gay characters after getting them together, or let them live and be straight (for the algorithm, ratings, etc). while he is reeling from this he begins being stalked by the monsters/villains of his past works. plot happens and these monsters are really nanobot contractions from his studio's fx company. misha survives these attempts on his life (and his boyfriend's and best friend's), eventually giving a heartfelt award speech about the need for a shift towards queer joy. when he comes back to work the entire studio is like decked out in pride flags and the now stereotypically gay management tells him that queer is IN! even better, it's profitable (according to the algorithm). but these nanobots are still out there. so they go to the fx studio to insert a virus that takes them down, the best friend, tara, being an unprecedented aroace that the algorithm has no information on due to a lack of content, is able to circumvent the nanobots and take them down!! happy ending!! yippee!!

i'll be going in order of the book, touching on the times where tara's identity is relevant

tara's aspecness is established almost immediately when she says "you know i don't swing that way...i don't swing any way, baby." classic aspec joke, i have no issue with this.

its first explicit mention is on page 42, "tara is aromantic and asexual, which has always made me appreciate her take on relationship advice." ok this part is so real. we are so good at that.

ok now we get into the main stuff. Tara says, "do you realize how hard it is to tell your parents you're asexual?" this part is true, and in comparison to misha coming out as gay. and i really appreciate it highlights the strange societal position aspecs are in!! it's hard to affirm an identity defined by a lack. and even harder for baby wanting parents to accept an identity that is largely incompatible with the nuclear family model. as this is in reference to like sex -> having a child, mentioning just the asexuality makes sense. but it is still weird to not mention how hard explaining aromanticism would be considering aces can more easily have straight passing relationships. let's begin a tally: ace mentions: 2, aro mentions: 1.

(!) time skip we are now towards the end. misha is giving his heartfelt speech, "i call on all of you to usher in a new era of stories where the gay, or bi, or lesbian, or asexual, or pansexual, or trans character lives happily ever after. buy those stories. make those stories profitable." we are now entering the territory here i begin to get a little angry. fandoms and drama in shows are so closely tied with romance. they are profitable. they are like, the lifeblood of ao3, etc. people also have this notion that you need a partner to be happy, and that this is a universal goal. so characters and story arcs that stray away from this tend to be, y'know, less profitable. and since this is extremely relevant to aromanticism as an identity and important to debunk, the lack of a mention of aromanticism is frankly stunning. our stories are not wanted, we have no characters to live happily ever after. because we are not profitable. we don't get that joy. so where are we? this is a nitpick but i find it strange that misha would forget to mention like, entirely half of his friend's identity. ace mentions: 3, aro mentions: 1

(!!!) this is the most egregious part to me. when i read this part i was genuinely so stunned that i started crying. ok so i've established that aros have very little representation. it is a fact that there is less aro representation than ace representation. especially in regards to non-ace aros. "there's a hero clad in pink, purple, and blue, the bi one...this continues on and on until every aspect of the community has been covered...tara steps up next to me, her eyes locked on the poster. "there' no asexual hero...they've got everyone up there besides an ace character...every fucking time." ok. so. a lack of representation for aspecs is like a Thing That We All Know. as also established, aros are not algorithm friendly, so i just see no plausible way that there is aro representation but not ace representation. and there's just this like, poetic irony to this. that aros are so forgotten, so uncared for, that the author of the fucking book forgot to even mention them. because there are three ways this shakes out here. either there is an aro in the line up and dr. tingle deprived us of the validation we need to justify our anger for a lack of representation (which effects us all but aros more). or he just straight up forgot to include us. or he's grossly conflating the two identities. there's no good option. anyway. ace mentions: 5, aro mentions: 1

here we have yet another mention of tara being ace, yet not aro, "my name's tara. i'm the asexual in the corner everyone's been ignoring." would be funny if aromanticism hadn't been grossly ignored once again. ace mentions: 6, aro mentions: 1

(!!!) time for tara to save the day (girlboss). "just pull up all the information you have on asexual and aromantic heroes...oh wait, that's gonna be pretty fucking difficult because there are almost no human asexual heroes represented in popular media, are there." like actually like the fuck. what the fuck. there are so little aro heroes that the author forgot about the one he had!! there are so little aro heroes that the author fucking forgot to mention how few there are. incredible. ace mentions: 10, aro mentions: 2 (ace mentions not quoted here but part of the rant)

so. thats the end of the book. it seems to me that dr. tingle might be a little confused. he's been a great supporter in the past of the aspec community. but there is a pattern of aro erasure in this book that frankly, pisses me off! but wait, there is more!

dr. tingle. babygirl. bestie. what the fuck is this? op explicitly said aroace character. and what do you do? you reblog with only an ace flag. do you not remember your character's own identity? or do you not acknowledge aros outside or aces? let's look at some more quotes from this post.

wow thanks for the solidarity dr. tingle (like, actually)!

what is this? whoopty fucking doo! aros totally dropped after their initial mention? again! but there is simply no precedent for this!!

i'd like to end this with a quote by dr. tingle.

glad you remembered the aces. maybe next time, remember the marginalized people you leave behind.

[sysig]

Some possible* Tala stickers :D (Patreon)

[settingorange]

Guess I'll make a bunch of tiny shoes out of clay 😐

[thybrotherskeeper]

(signing the contract)

It’s a banana ball python :D

[It's very beautiful. Oh- thank you. I don't believe I've said that yet.]

[howlingdemon13]

the fact that i don't need a ref to draw polnareff is both a testament to my confidence and also a major tell that i'm probably not okay.

[immaterial-girl]

btw if there are any other young americans out there who are extremely intimidated by filing your taxes and don’t know where to start, i really recommend H&R block. I use the free one because my taxes are pretty straightforward as a single person, and even when ive moved across state lines like 5 times i can still do it with H&R block for free

just go to their website, make an account, and you’ll have to click “yes i want to use the free version yes i promise NO i don’t want to give you money” a couple times but i find it really direct and simple and it walks you through the whole process in one sitting. it takes me less than one afternoon every year

[kirbyddd]

they've kinda always been my muses tbh

[singull]

ahhh the woes of when some rando walks into the shop at work wanting to sell me something to sell i the gift shop out of the blue.

like bruh…this shoulda been an email.

i’m not sure which is worse tho…the ones that come in completely unprepared (like…motherfuckers can’t even find pictures of their product in their photos app because they don’t bother to organize that shit into a specific folder), or the ones that just show up with a big box of their shit and a pushy attitude.

either way, they both suck and i usually ghost them once they finally leave.

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Since I based my TMAGP!Gerry and Needles off their voice actors, I figured I’d do the same for the main cast. Subject to change of course, but I’ve really come around to loving these freaks.

[a-high-femme]

question: has any printer been reliable ever?

[televocation]

i really wanted to do some substantial damage.

"I can recover from this faster than you could ever fucking imagine."

Despite the audible distortion and repressed laughter in his voice, it's a remarkable practice of self-restraint that Vox doesn't immediately laugh way-too-hysterically in Alastor's face, or act like an idiot in some other way. It's tempting, as it always is, to rise to the bait. But getting under people's skin is what Alastor is best at, and like it or not, he's apparently here to stay. It'd just be inconvenient if Vox flew completely off the handle every time they ever interact.

"Hahaha, substantial damage---that's a really good one, Alastor. That's---whew. I forgot you could be funny." The display on his screen glitches, but doesn't ultimately move an inch. Reduce flow of norepinephrine, increase serotonin. The instructions are laid out in binary, but Vox repeats them fervently in his own memory like a desperate reminder. "Well, clearly that's not exactly on the table for now, so why don't you get back to fucking off?"

taskmaster. / accepting.

[hearthtales]

Faint pride fluttered within Bran upon learning he’d answered correctly, though it faded quickly as Sow'in continued. Wonder glimmered in his tired eyes at the sigils that floated and danced around the ghoul’s skeletal hands. The absence of green flames at the corners of Sow'in’s eyes didn’t escape Bran’s notice — it seemed like a good sign, a sign that questioning him hadn’t been a mistake after all, and some of the boy’s tension around the other ebbed away.

He listened closely, and as he listened, his face turned pale and his expression grave. Carving into one’s soul. Extremely painful, and there was still a chance the fae could overcome the spell under the right circumstances. But… there was also a distinct chance they’d lost the belongings they’d taken from him as a child. Several years had passed, after all.

What if the masking spell truly was the best option? What if he spent hours reading all the books, taking detailed notes, only to fail to discover an answer in the end? What if, by that point, it was too late to do the masking spell? He couldn’t afford to waste time.

Bran inhaled shakily and glanced at the girl half-hidden amidst the bundled blankets. She’d gotten lost in the pages of her book again, oblivious to their conversation. Even so, Bran’s words dropped to a whisper as he looked back at Sow'in, quiet but firm. “I won’t hurt Nettie.” Restless anxiety coiled within him. He twisted the ring around his finger again; the skin underneath rubbed raw in spots from frequent fidgeting. “But I… I’ve got a feeling they’re only tracking me, not her. Is there a way to confirm that?”

"Correct. One could say that sigils are intention manifest in written form. The stronger the intention, the more potent an' stronger the spell." Without much thought and with a single finger, the ghoul aimlessly wrote a sigil, the strokes and shapes glowing and wavering in mid-air. Since there was little intention behind the writing besides demonstration, the sigils were harmless and did nothing more.

"The problem with sigils, however, is that they do not last. Whether written in blood or ink, both will fade. Even if one were to brand sigils into skin or carve them into bone, in time all things heal. Cuts become scars an' disappear," the ghoul continued as the glowing symbols fluttered about his open palm and danced about his claws. Though Sow'in's expression remained hardened and unchanging, he was calm. Centered. And most importantly, the green flames had disappeared from the corners of his eyes. It had been a long time since he was able to discuss magick with another (in a civilized manner at least).

"But my masking spell is different. The risk is not in the process but the execution. When I cast the sigil that hides one's soul, it is permanent. It cannot be undone. Nothing in this world, no matter how powerful, dead or alive, can find you." He turned to the boy, with an expression that told him his next words were of grave importance. "Because I carve not into flesh or bone but into one's soul itself."

"Cutting into one's soul... is extremely painful an' not something even the most experienced magick users, let alone humans, can bear." With a flick of his fingers, the floating symbols disappeared into nothingness. "Just as you witnessed with Lady Vassilissa, even if ye both survived the process, one can still be found under the right circumstances. That is the price one pays for such a spell."

Sow'in was what was known as an arcane witch because the manner of their practice was difficult to grasp and for most, largely unknown. Arcane witches were adept in sigils, able to create and rewrite spells on a whim by sheer force of will and intention. Beings like Sow'in, Baba Yaga and even Lady Vassilissa could bend reality to their will. But their kind of magick always had a price, a loophole or a weakness; a preventive measure for any kind of magick from getting out of hand. Chaos magick in general was known for having costs too steep for anyone else's liking. It was the kind of magick one practiced when one had little, or nothing left, to lose.

Seeing the look on Bran's face, Sow'in nodded solemnly. "As ah said. A last resort."

[whats-in-a-sentence]

One of China's greatest poets, whose vision had long been fading, described with joy how

Clear glass from across the Western Seas

Is imported through Macao.

Fashioned into lenses big as coins,

They encompass one's vision in a double frame.

I put them on – things suddenly become clear.

I can see the very tips of things!

And read fine print by the dim-lit window

Just like in my youth.

"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris