#this is kind of my relaunch

[felsicveins]

I have a Patreon!

Hello!! I have a Patreon where I stream via my Discord server once a week and take drawing requests! It's a really fun time and you can see stuff that I don't post on Tumblr! ❤️

[handweavers]

Will you take photos of your work that you are bringing to the market? Doubt i will be able to be there (am in the gta but am not a carhaver) but i would love to see them nevertheless!

absolutely!! once i have my pile of goods assembled i'll take some good photos ☺️

[bumpscosity]

63 cent build a bears lets goooooo

[boyfeminism]

this is kinda dumb but does anyone know how to force a program to not open into the second monitor? i already double checked that my laptop is still screen 1 and the other one is screen 2 and ive never had this problem but minecraft's launcher loooove screen 2 suddenly

[ms-demeanor]

I would like to address something that has come up several times since I relaunched my computer recommendation blog two weeks ago. Part of the reason that I started @okay-computer and that I continue to host my computer-buying-guide is that it is part of my job to buy computers every day.

I am extremely conversant with pricing trends and specification norms for computers, because literally I quoted seven different laptops with different specs at different price-points *today* and I will do more of the same on Monday.

Now, I am holding your face in my hands. I am breathing in sync with you. We are communicating. We are on the same page. Listen.

Computer manufacturers don't expect users to store things locally so it is no longer standard to get a terabyte of storage in a regular desktop or laptop. You're lucky if you can find one with a 512gb ssd that doesn't have an obnoxious markup because of it.

If you think that the norm is for computers to come with 1tb of storage as a matter of course, you are seeing things from a narrow perspective that is out of step with most of the hardware out there.

I went from a standard expectation of a 1tb hdd five years ago to expecting to get a computer with a 1tb hdd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd to expecting to get a computer that came with a 256gb ssd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd, to just having the 256gb ssd come standard and and only seeking out more storage if the customer specifically requested it because otherwise they don't want to pay for more storage.

Computer manufacturers consider any storage above 256gb to be a premium feature these days.

Look, here's a search for Lenovo Laptops with 16GB RAM (what I would consider the minimum in today's market) and a Win11 home license (not because I prefer that, but to exclude chromebooks and business machines). Here are the storage options that come up for those specs:

You will see that the majority of the options come with less than a terabyte of storage. You CAN get plenty of options with 1tb, but the point of Okay-Computer is to get computers with reasonable specs in an affordable price range. These days, that mostly means half a terabyte of storage (because I can't bring myself to *recommend* less than that but since most people carry stuff in their personal cloud these days, it's overkill for a lot of people)

All things being equal, 500gb more increases the price of this laptop by $150:

It brings this one up by $130:

This one costs $80 more to go from 256 to 512 and there isn't an option for 1TB.

For the last three decades storage has been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, to the point that storage was basically a negligible cost when HDDs were still the standard. With the change to SSDs that cost increased significantly and, while it has come down, we have not reached the cheap, large storage as-a-standard on laptops stage; this is partially because storage is now SO cheap that people want to entice you into paying a few dollars a month to use huge amounts of THEIR storage instead of carrying everything you own in your laptop.

You will note that 1tb ssds cost you a lot less than the markup to pay for a 1tb ssd instead of a 500gb ssd

In fact it can be LESS EXPENSIVE to get a 1tb ssd than a 500gb ssd.

This is because computer manufacturers are, generally speaking, kind of shitty and do not care about you.

I stridently recommend getting as much storage as you can on your computer. If you can't get the storage you want up front, I recommend upgrading your storage.

But also: in the current market (December 2024), you should not expect to find desktops or laptops in the low-mid range pricing tier with more than 512gb of storage. Sometimes you'll get lucky, but you shouldn't be expecting it - if you need more storage and you need an inexpensive computer, you need to expect to upgrade that component yourself.

So, if you're looking at a computer I linked and saying "32GB of RAM and an i7 processor but only 500GB of storage? What kind of nonsense is that?" Then I would like to present you with one of the computers I had to quote today:

A three thousand dollar macbook with the most recent apple silicon (the m4 released like three weeks ago) and 48 FUCKING GIGABYTES OF RAM with a 512gb ssd.

You can't even upgrade that SSD! That's an apple that drive isn't going fucking anywhere! (don't buy apple, apple is shit)

The norms have shifted! It sucks, but you have to be aware of these kinds of things if you want to pay a decent price for a computer and know what you're getting into.

[blacktabbygames]

A small content update for Slay the Princess just went live — The Voice of the Skeptic now accompanies you on the Deconstructed side of Happily Ever After instead of Voice of the Paranoid.

I’m not sure why I originally settled on Paranoid for that branch of the story. Maybe it was because Skeptic already felt overrepresented in The Pristine Cut between his presence in the Den, and his major role in The Cage split across three routes. The Cage in particular was a very emotionally taxing chapter to work on, so maybe I was tired of writing him.

But post release, it’s felt like:

Paranoid’s in HEA was just kind of there. At least, none of the things he does in the chapter felt important for his character.

Every voice gets an opportunity to truly shine somewhere except Skeptic. In fact, to push players to the cage, we wound up taking away one of his weirdest moments to shine from the base game (pushing you to take The Prisoner’s head with you.) Localizing the game means that redoing any dialogue is very burdensome, since I’d have to have it retranslated in all 12 of our supported languages, but upon looking more closely at the script for Happily Ever After, I realized that all but one or two lines felt more like they belonged to skeptic rather than the paranoid anyways.

And that when given to the skeptic, those lines don’t feel like he’s just kind of there the way it felt like Paranoid was just kind of there. The small wins Paranoid can get in that chapter — deducing the identity of the shadow; pushing you to blow out the torches — they’re big wins for the Skeptic, and the route seemed like it would be much more rounded if he was swapped in.

And beyond that, I couldn’t get the following line from the Shifting Mound’s monologue about the Deconstructed Damsel out of my head:

“Love melted into skepticism, and you pulled back layer after layer after layer until all you were left with was the knowledge that you did not know me.”

We couldn’t just use the word skepticism to describe the route’s entry point and not include our lil’ over-analytical guy. So we took some time this month to re-record those lines with Jonny and make the changes to the game, and now that itching need to fix “just one more thing” is finally gone.

This is probably the final content update for Slay the Princess (though, never say never I suppose.) Ever since we started work on The Pristine Cut, I wanted to end my work on the game with the conclusion of Happily Ever After. I’m grateful for the opportunity for that to finally be the case.

I hope to see you all tomorrow with Scarlet Hollow’s relaunch, but even if I don’t see you there, thank you all for the life-changing support you’ve given us. I hope our game means as much to you as it means to us.

All the best, Tony

[mortalityplays]

You need more free art.

I quit my job yesterday. Well, actually I quit my job eight weeks ago, but they finally released me yesterday for good behaviour. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do - but I do it for the wrong reasons. Working for major charities, you learn very fast that 'I want to make the world a better place' is a phrase you use to ask people for money, not to give them things. I was an ass-backwards fit for that world.

You need more free art. I need more free art. Everyone has felt the shift in our media landscape over the last ten years, away from access and towards nickel-and-diming the human experience. That lack of access is making life and culture worse for all of us, across the board. Paywalled news sites leave us less informed, attacks on the Internet Archive leave us less capable of research. Algorithmic social feeds and streaming walled gardens trap us inside smaller and smaller demographic bubbles, where we are increasingly only likely to encounter ideas that have been curated for us by marketing departments. Hasty efforts to resist AI commodification have only led to more artists locking their work away and calling for even more onerous systems of copyright law. This is not good for us.

We all need more free art.

So what am I going to do about it?

This is a question I have been asking myself for years. It's easy to sit here feeilng frustrated and thinking 'boy I hope SOMEONE does SOMETHING'. It's harder to take action in a world where I still have rent to pay. But hard doesn't mean impossible. Sometimes hard just means time-consuming, frustrating and slow. And sometimes it's worth doing something time-consuming, frustrating and slow because...I want to make the world a better place.

I'm going to do this:

1. From April 1st, I am relaunching as a freelance writer and editor.

This is the one that will (hopefully) help to pay the bills. I am a very good and experienced editor. I've worked on hollywood movies, I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, I have clients who have been coming to me exclusively for more than 10 years.

Alongside bigger contract jobs, I am going to refocus on offering my services to small-press creators at a reduced rate. That means you, graphic novelists. That means you, itch and amazon writers. I want to help you develop your work, the same way I help large organisations. You can learn more about what an editor even does and what kind of pricing you can expect here.

2. I'm also going to start giving shit away. Like, constantly.

Next week I'm going to launch a new free shop. If you're unfamiliar, a free shop, giveaway shop, swap shop, etc. is an anarchist tradition of setting up a storefront where anyone can take what they like for no cost. Offline, this often means second-hand clothes, tools, furniture, food etc. Online, I am going to be giving away digital art. Copyright-free, no strings attached. It will (eventually) feature everything from print-res posters to zines, poems, tattoo flash, t-shirt designs and anything else we come up with.

Yes, I said 'we' - while this is a curated collection, it will feature work from a variety of credited and anonymous artists and activists, all of whom have agreed to give their work away to the public domain. Some of it will be practical, some of it will be political, but a lot of it will be decorative or personal. This is, in part, a response to recent difficulty I had finding somewhere that would print a one-off joke poster for a friend that featured the word 'faggot'. Enough. No middlemen - no explaining ourselves. Just print our shit and enjoy it.

I'm very, very excited about this project. I'll have more to say about it closer to the launch, but you can expect it to go live on March 27th.

2.2 I forgot to mention the ACTUAL LAUNCH GIVEAWAY

To celebrate my launch, I am going to be giving away a ton of physical prints. When I went looking for my old stock to see if it was worth setting a new (paid) storefront up, I realised I had way more old work in storage than I thought. This will be announced in its own right on Monday, but this is why I've been hinting you should go follow my Patreon.

On April 1st, I will pick 8 random patrons (from across all tiers including non-paying followers!) and mail them a bundle of assorted prints and postcards. The prize pool includes A3 and A4 posters, packs of A6 postcards, and printed minicomics that I've previously sold for up to £12 each.

You don't have to be a paying subscriber to enter - this is strictly no-purchase necessary. It is purely and entirely a celebration of the concept of GIVING ART AWAY FOR FREE.

3. PORN, YOU PERVERTS

Because I still have to pay to stay alive, I am going to be subsidising all this free art with the introduction of Fuck You Fridays. Starting from March 29th, I will drop a new 18+ short story on the last Friday of every month, over on itch.io (yes I know my page is desolate right now, don't worry I'll get there).

The first edition, Go Fuck Yourself, is about, well - telling your boss where to stick it. Julia has had it with her millionaire man-child manager, and is just about ready to let him know what she really thinks. It's a short and steamy 5k words, with a gorgeous cover illustration by @taylor-titmouse, and you can pick it up for $3 starting from March 29th.

4. ANOTHER BIG SURPRISE

I'm keeping this one under wraps for now, but April 1st will also play host to one more (FREE) launch. If you've been following me for a long time, you might remember the other significance of this date (no not April Fool's day, though that is certainly thematically relevant to this entire effort). That's all I'll say right now. Watch this space.

tl;dr: I'm sick of paywalls and career ladders. I'm literally putting my money where my mouth is. More free art for everyone and I'm not kidding around!!!

[maxwellatoms]

In one of your last answers, you said “series reboots are usually pretty gross and sad”, and I was wondering if you could expand on that? Assuming “reboot” covers any kind of continuation of a currently cancelled or finished show (and maybe that’s the wrong assumption!), from the outside looking in it feels like a pretty mixed bag. On one hand, if I love XYZ Show, it’s cool that I get more stories with these characters and another chance to support XYZ Show and its creators. On the other, it definitely feels like a lot of ideas can only get funding if they’re tied to something already, meaning creatives are having to now tie whatever cool idea they have to some reboot/relaunch/retread, which can feel pretty disheartening if you don’t want to do a reboot/relaunch/retread. Is that a similar feeling from your side of the industry?

Thank you so much for all your answers and insight!

Usually reboots and spin-offs are just cash grabs. It happens a lot in animation. In fact, I would argue that the entire industry is just one big cash grab now. In the 80s, everyone complained that cartoons were just half-hour commercials for toys. And they were right. And we're right back there, but now that you can't legally push toys all day, it's just general "IP". Mugs, posters, more spinoffs, whatever.

I was offered three show running gigs over the pandemic. All reboots that I would consider unwise to pursue because they were "of a different time" and didn't (in my opinion) have anything more to say. Two of them were properties created by notorious sex pests, so there's also that. The animation industry loves to prop up its sex pests.

I turned all of them down, partially because I didn't respect the original creators but also because none of them had anything going for them except just being "more of the same".

I don't think any of those projects survived the intervening years, so in retrospect I maybe should've taken the job. I'd probably feel a bit gross, but at least I'd have floors in my house.

The entertainment industry is in a bad spot. The whole thing. I've had I don't know how many pitch meetings in the last few years, and they all start the same way:

"Hey! Before we start, we just want to let you know that we're not actively producing anything right now. We think maybe soon, but we won't be picking anything up today..."

And then later:

"The little we are doing is IP, so if you have a new take on our IP or a new IP you're connected to that you can bring in, that'd be great."

I always wanted to make original stuff. There came a time when I'd had my fill of Billy & Mandy and wanted to do something else new and original. That never manifested, and I was constantly being offered IP to produce. I turned too many of those down, maybe, before deciding that it was probably better that I run the IPs that mean something to me rather than having some hack do it.

But now those jobs have all gone to celebrities and fallen live-action writers, who are also slowly being eaten by the system. WB was hot for Scooby stuff a few years back, so I pitched some ideas. A few of them were turned down for being "off-brand" in a variety of ways. WB has now made (I think) all of those off-brand shows (or something close) with celebrity show runners.

I was going through a whole Midlife Impostor Syndrome thing recently where I was wondering if maybe I don't just suck. Like, it's weird that for a couple of decades I'd have people calling me trying to get me to run shows, and now nobody will call me back about the possibility of a design job.

Talking to some friends and realizing that they were in a similar situation helped me feel like I wasn't alone. That was nice. Talking to some of the most talented colleagues in my industry made me made me realize that those people weren't getting jobs either. That was unnerving. Talking to complete strangers in other parts of the entertainment industry now has me thinking that the whole house of cards is coming down. That's real concerning, yo.

It's hard not to think it's purposeful, when deranged billionaires own the entirety of our media and want to shape a society where they can't be criticized. We're letting wealthy tech bros firebomb the very heart of our culture, and it's weird that no one is talking about it. Because (for now) we still have that capability.

[largeworm]

It's genuinely kind of upsetting how quickly social media's keep shooting themselves in the foot to just have something to show to higher ups and making their sites more and more user unfriendly. It reminds me of the Oreo CEO skit from College Humor/Dropout TV.

The new Discord update for mobile is genuinely disheartening by how little they seem to care about people hating the new layout. Which honestly, the DMs now being at the bottom and no longer swipping to see server members is annoying. But as someone who very easily gets god awful headaches from heavy contrast and light, the new "default" themes are... very unfriendly to people like me. Let me show you the difference in old Discord's dark mode vs the new:

Like, holy shit, it's Bad. The new one on the right is barely usable for me, it was giving me strain after only an hour or two of use. And it's not even their darkest mode, which is pure black, but it's their only other option aside from pure white in Light Mode.

If you don't want eyestrain, you'll have to pay the 10$ a month nitro not to get migraines. I have the 3$ version, and I can not change the theme with it to their other options. I was able to fix it by fighting all of my settings for an hour to get it back to the original color palette, but jfc. I shouldn't have to reset all my phone setting, open and relaunch discord, and pray that it decides the "automatic setting" is the non-eyeball burning classic dark mode.

The world and social media is just slowly getting more and more unuser friendly, especially towards people with light sensitivity (I can rant for hours about car headlight luminosity regulations). Just kinda disheartening to see Discord so adamantly against changing any of the new UI stuff, especially is they decide to no longer have the class color palette accessible in the future :/

[neo-kosmos]

hi all, shelby here! sorry for the total lack of activity on this blog for the past few years. we have been working diligently behind the scenes on our discord server as we wrote the drafts of the novels

if you haven’t heard, danny broke up with me and brian. we are getting neokosmos in the divorce as it has always been my baby and brainchild and brian has done virtually all of the prose writing since 2020. danny has wanted to step away for quite some time, and we are super proud of him for following his own path in life. the two of us will always be best friends but our time as partners and creative partners has come to an end.

we will be changing the name of neokosmos because danny is no longer working on and it is just not the same project that it was back in 2015. its a lot more adult, its a novel, the story and world is so much more developed and honestly we need a fresh start. as soon as we can we will be relaunching everything with the new name and posting the first five chapters for free for everyone to read to see if you wanna join us and make it happen. both brian and i are too disabled to work normal jobs so we need to make writing and selling artwork as our main gigs or we will be kind of fucked.

thank you to everyone who has believed in us over the years and especially our loyal patrons. its been hundreds of thousands of words and concept art and prep over the last 9 years and im so stoked to finally share what we have been cooking with more people. i started this project as a 23 year old recent grad with no idea what i was doing in life, and now at 32 i finally feel confident enough that what i am making is ACTUALLY GOOD????

so yeah, stay tuned, the whole project is about to enter Phase 3. love y’all

-shelby

[persuasivetfs]

A Favor

Muhammad Al-Khatib saw himself as a pretty good guy all around. Easygoing, generous, always willing to help a friend out.

So when his childhood best-friend Rajesh asked if Muhammad could take 4 days off from work to help him with a work emergency, Muhammad didn’t hesitate. Though when Muhamaad got to his friend’s apartment he was less sure he could provide Rajesh needed.

For sprawled out unconscious and half-naked on Rajesh’s bed was The Ali Gomaa, an internationally ranked Egyptian body-builder, and Rajesh’s boss. For half a second Muhammad became worried that his best-friend had accidentally killed the man, before the massive man released a loud snort in his sleep.

“Alright so I fucked up bad, I fucked up real bad, man. Bad enough to cost me my job,” Rajesh began, pacing at the foot of his bed. Mr. Gomaa meanwhile seemed to be sleeping peacefully, a grin plastered to his face.

“I was supposed to put the order in for 300 units of the new Wolf Muscle Powder my boss is promoting at the Santa Fe Bodybuilding convention tomorrow and I only ordered 30.”

“So?” Muhammad asked, easing into a comfortable spot in a chair by the door.

“So? So, I’m fucked. My boss was insistent that this new muscle wolf powder was going to relaunch his career. How the fuck is he supposed to do that when I only ordered 30 of the fucking units to sell?” Rajesh panicked.

“Well mistakes happen. I mean is he really going to fire you over a little mistake like this,” Muhammad asked, absentmindedly twirling his friend’s baseball cap in his hand.

“Yes, yes he would, because Mr. Gomaa is a perfectionist and I’ve already fucked up twice this month on this order alone. He’s already warned me once that if I kept making these kinds of mistakes that he’d find someone to replace me. I can’t lose this job, man, I just can’t,” Rajesh reasoned. Muhammad frowned.

“If he’s that much of a pain in the ass to work for, why do you even want to be his personal assistant? Not like you need the money or the bodybuilding experience,” Muhammad answered with a shrug.

Rajesh was a popular athletic model and professional bodybuilder in his own right, having won two local championship trophies in the last year alone. It made more sense when Rajesh was just starting out after high school, when he still needed all the help he could get, but that was years ago. How long was he planning on staying attached to this man by the hip?

“This job was never about the money. Ali Gomaa is a legend in professional bodybuilding. I still have so much to learn, and it's only under Mr. Gomaa that I’ve advanced so much in such a short period of time,” Rajesh said, gazing with what Mohamaad imagined as pure admiration at the perfectly sculpted body of Mr. Gomaa. He then briefly smiled at the thought of Rajesh under the man’s older and heavier body.

Muhammad was careful to keep such thoughts to himself. Rajesh was straight and the last time he cracked a joke about the two men together, his face had gone scarlet and they hadn’t talked again for a month. He’d do anything to prevent a fight like that again.

“Then what do you need me to help with? Ordering a new shipment for this Muscle Coyote Powder?” Muhammad asked, giving the cap another spin on his thumb.

“No, I already handled that. No, what I need from you is more hands on,” Rajesh explained.

He took out a silvery blue pill from his pocket.

“What am I even looking at?”

“The future of professional body-building, my friend. That and possibly the future of athletics in general,” Rajesh said with a sense of wonder bordering on pride.

“This is Splindifferin,” Rajesh introduced with the air of a professor giving a lecture, “A marvel of medical science that allows one person to enter the body of another and control it from the inside.

For after a person has taken Splindifferin their body and mind enter a mutable state, where both become fluid. This then allows another person, presumably a coach or fellow teammate to enter the host’s body where the two become one. Once inside, the second person is given complete control over the original inhabitant’s form allowing them to overcome any mental or emotional challenges that may inhibit the host’s functioning. Then after a period of several days, the intruder is ejected from the host body and the patient returns to normal functioning. Watch,” Rajesh then poked Mr. Gomaa’s knee, creating a ripple effect of moving skin that moved from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.

”That’s incredible. But do you really think I can pass as your boss for four days? I don’t know anything about him or bodybuilding,” Muhammad pointed out, scratching at his round stomach.

“That’s where the process of ‘doubling’ comes in. For the longer you remain within Ali Gomaa‘s body the more of his memories, mannerisms, and knowledge will flow into you. By the end of four days, not even his wife or adult sons would be able to tell the difference,” Rajesh explained with a grin, patting Mohammad warmly on the shoulder.

“Besides, I’ll be with you every step of the way coaching you through this. That is if you agree to help me out.” Rajesh then flashed Mohammad a look of his soft, pleading brown eyes, making him melt like butter into his chair.

“Alright, alright. If you say we can do this, then I trust you. I’ll help you out,” Mohammad agreed.

“You’re amazing! Thanks so much, man. You have no idea how much this means to me! Okay, now get undressed. We can’t do this unless you’re both nude,” Rajesh said, shifting his tone of voice from appreciative to authoritative so quick it made Mohammad’s head spin.

He got up from his seat and began to disrobe. Rajesh instead of leaving as Mohammad expected, took his place in his chair.

“You sure you want to stay here and watch?” Muhmmad asked, taking off his shirt. He remembered how squeamish his friend had been with his undressing near him after their fight.

“Bro, I need to stay here and make sure you enter Mr. Gomaa’s body the right way. So just take your dick out and let’s hurry this up,” Rajesh said, crossing his arms and leaning back into his chair.

“So why did Mr.Gomaa need a drug like Splindifferin to compete anyway? Hasn’t he been a professional body-builder for like 20 years?” Mohammad asked as he took off his shirt.

“Ever since 2017, as great as the man is, Ali Gomaa has suffered from acute stage fright. The result of mild heat stroke and anxiety that struck him while competing in the Summer Cairo heat. So to compete, he has been relying on others to literally take over for him.”

“Has Me.Gomaa ever let you enter his body before?” Mohammad asked, kicking off his jeans.

“A few times, but never for more than a day, and the whole time I was under constant watch by other members of his support team. Guess they were fearful of me trying to run off in his body or commit some felonies. This time however, we’re doing this before we arrive in Santa Fe, so we don’t have to worry about them knowing it's you in there,” Rajesh explained.

Once fully naked, Muhammad walked to the side of the bed. Mr. Gomaa was fully naked except for a dark blue jockstrap.

Now, Muhammad always knew he was on the heavier side of things and the hairer side but he’d never really been insecure about it. Plenty of gay guys loved bears. Still, next to this muscular behemoth Muhammad felt tiny and petite.

Unsteady, and with trembling knees, he got on the bed and attempted to ease himself into Mr. Gomaa. Once his ass cheeks hit the man’s waist, the bodybuilder’s eyes opened wide, nearly scaring him back off the bed, when Rajesh stood from his seat and eased him back.

“Easy man! He’s still asleep. That just happens sometimes,” Rajesh explained, his hands comforting and firm.

With another breath, Muhammad leaned back and laid himself fully into the bodybuilder’s body as Rajesh looked him over.

It was like the body of Mr.Gomaa had turned into a thick, heavy wad of gelatin, and the more Muhammad pushed in, the more the man’s flesh sucked him in further and further.

Wet muscle and skin enveloped him, flooding Muhammad’s skin with a thousand pinpricks of pins and needles. Then as his head merged with the bodybuilder’s his vision went dark and for a brief second it was hard to breathe.

Muhammad awoke with a start, sitting up in bed and gasping for air, his eyes going from one side of the room to the other.

“Easy, friend, easy. Deep breathes,” Rajesh soothed, holding onto his chest.

Muhammad looked down. His chest was Mr. Gomaa’s chest, big and powerful, radiating heat like a furnace. Shocked and not quite believing what was happening, Mohammad tried to stand up and run to the bedroom mirror but nearly fell, his heavy legs stumbling underneath him.

Rajesh went to hold him back, but Muhammad found he could push away his friend easily. He staggered to the mirror.

It was in the body of The Ali Gomaa standing there before him. Thick neck, bulging triceps, biceps so big they’d literally won awards! He flexed an arm and the reflection did the same.

Already Muhammad was a little drunk on power. He wanted to push this body to its limits.

To lift every weight and crush every goal just to prove he could. His hands were shaking but not with fright but excitement.

Rajesh came around the corner, wrapping a still muscular but not as thick arm around Muhammad’s shoulders.

“You ready to compete bro?”

[living-in-the-pokemon-world]

Hiya! It's, uhh, it's been a while. A little under three years to be exact. How's everybody been?

Anyways, I've been kind of missing this blog lately, so I figured I'd take another swing at it!

I can't promise the same activity as before, where I was updating multiple times a day almost every day, but I do have some posts sitting in my Drafts as well as some unanswered Asks that I'm hoping to get out there. Hopefully I'm not too rusty!

But yeah, thank you to everybody who's stuck around (even if it's just because you forgot you were following), and I hope you all enjoy this kind of soft relaunch of LitPW!

— Laur

[positivelybeastly]

One of my bigger issues with the All-New X-Men era is how in spite of the whole time travel thing being kicked off by a Beast vs Cyclops framing, the more consistent and upfront framing was Cyclops vs Wolverine. I get Wolverine is popular. I get he had an iconic rivalry with Cyclops. But the actual buildup to revolutionary Cyclops was much more focused on Hank being the one to stand against him and have opposing ideas, and I feel like that was tossed away to boost Wolverine again. After the time travel, Hank just kinda stuck around to occasionally be yelled at but he wasn’t at the forefront of that conflict anymore. His character was a vehicle to get to the new status quo of the O5 kids being in the present.

So how would you have approached this era as a more direct continuation/exploration of Scott and Hank’s falling out? You can choose to keep or discard the time travel elements if you want.

Ahh, then you and I share a very similar outlook on one of the many reasons why All-New X-Men blows chunks!

So, yeah, this is a problem endemic to X-Men comics of the late 2000s and early 2010s, where they wanted to duplicate the success and storytelling possibilities of Civil War by manufacturing a conflict between various X-Men, and then splitting them apart.

On the face of it, it's not a bad idea, there's mileage there, and if we acknowledge the fact that the X-Men are essentially a paramilitary political activist group agitating for change, well, leftists literally can't stop fighting each other long enough to mount a proper opposition to most right wing governments, so, that's just on brand, isn't it?

Unfortunately, while I don't think stuff like Schism is quite as damaging to a lot of the X-Men characters as Civil War was to, say, Mr. Fantastic or Iron Man, it really is unfortunate that the other thing they decided to lift from Civil War was that it wasn't particularly good.

Now, as you've intimated, one of the main problems with Schism and All-New X-Men is that by this point in time in the comics, Wolverine was THE X-Man. If you've read X-Men comics from the 00s and 10s, you know that the writers did still centre other characters, most notably Cyclops, Emma Frost, a few others, but because of the nature of a lot of these characters' development paths by this point, it made way more sense for Wolverine to stick with them, and vice versa, because their moral codes were slowly drifting more and more into alignment by now.

But this presents a problem, because Wolverine is the only X-Man who you can sell as being the other side.

He was the only X-Man with a solo series that ran consistently, for years on end, and was always relaunched when it ended; he had been added to the rosters of several high profile teams, including the New Avengers; and there was a notable bump in popularity to any comic that featured him, just as a matter of course.

So, if you're going to split off the X-Men and give them two leaders, he's pretty much the only candidate, because you need to sell comics. Doesn't matter what's best for the story or the most natural choice, you need to sell comics.

Despite the fact that Beast was right there.

It makes sense for Hank to break from Scott. It's consistent with his character - not just because he's still a heavily moral character by this point, but because he has a history of breaking from the team anyway, he's done it multiple times before. He is not dependent on the X-Men to give him meaning, and he's got enough bonds with other characters in the Marvel Universe that he can go and be in whatever and it isn't weird. He went on to be on the roster for S.W.O.R.D, Secret Avengers, all kinds of fun little things.

But there are two problems with making Beast the head of the opposition. 1) He is not a leader; every attempt he's made at leading a team in 616 canon has gone merely okay to downright poorly, if he doesn't just leave the team fairly soon after its inception anyway (as with X-Club). But, more, pressingly?

2) Beast does not sell comic books. He simply doesn't. What's that, you say? He's had three solo series by this point? Well, yeah.

Except, he hasn't, really. He had a three issue series in the 90s that was more about Karma, a three issues team up series with Wonder Man, also in the 90s, and then a succession of back-up stories in other comics through the late 00s that would come to be collected as Endangered Species. Marvel knows he is not a sales magnet.

So, instead, we have Schism. Wolverine makes the decision to split the team, and Hank is pulled in on some fairly tenuous grounds.

In another world, Hank's fourth series, S.W.O.R.D, with Abigail, succeeds, All-New X-Men never happens, or at least, it happens completely differently, X-Force blips out of existence, and I spend months talking about how cool S.W.O.R.D vol. 1 #43 where they all go to the tap dancing planet is.

But, alas, this is not that world.

Hank is dragged into Wolverine and the X-Men, and it's fine to pretty good. I'm fairly happy with the Hank we get there, where he's still fairly pissed off with Scott, but it doesn't consume his life and he's happy to just exist in his corner while Scott exists in his.

Then, Avengers vs. X-Men happens.

Aaaaand then All-New X-Men happens as a direct result.

There's that Beast vs. Cyclops framing you mentioned.

But, the problem is fairly evident once you really think about that final panel.

There's no actual argument here. At least, not as Bendis can conceive it. Because there's a narrative tension here, between what X-editorial wants, and what Bendis is willing to write - what most of the X-writers are willing to write, in fact.

The X-writers are, broadly speaking, unwilling to write Cyclops out of character, and they are unwilling to write him being wrong. How is that, you say? Because everything that Cyclops is saying here is just normal X-Men stuff, and this is being treated as some kind of political treatise when it isn't. It's pure fluff.

Bendis' choice of opposing points for Beast, Storm, Wolverine and co. is: we don't like Cyclops. That is where it starts and ends. They don't have a political viewpoint, apart from, I guess, just stay in their school and keep doing what they're doing . . .

Which is normal X-Men stuff. There is very little that Cyclops and his team do in the course of Bendis' Uncanny storyline that any X-Man wouldn't do, because Bendis is unwilling to commit to Cyclops doing anything actually morally wrong.

And because he also just doesn't give a fuck about the things that Cyclops has done that are, factually, morally wrong.

Such as the use of biological weapons.

The creation of a black ops kill team known as X-Force.

And all of these things, while morally wrong, are, arguably? The correct choice, the choice that was required of him to get mutantkind through. But that doesn't absolve him of guilt, of culpability. These are actions for which he cannot blame the Phoenix Force's influences, and they are actions which are conveniently ignored, so that Scott can be the saintly revolutionary.

Now, that's an awful lot of context, but it's important to set up the conflict as I think it could have gone down.

The version I've thought about previously, the version I've written the outline I'm going to share with you now, goes broadly along the same lines as All-New X-Men up until issue #5, but, with some key differences.

For starters, you take out the stuff with Hank talking about what he's about to do, you basically start right where Ororo, Bobby, Hank and Kitty are talking at the jet, and Bobby has the idea.

Hank is visibly ill, but it's not explicit what's happening - then suddenly the O5 are on the lawn, Hank is having his heart attack . . .

And in my version of the story?

He dies.

And suddenly young Hank has to deal with the trauma of watching his eventual death, so that it isn't just a Jean Grey goes psycho story, suddenly it makes sense that the teenagers are freaking out, because what the fuck.

And Hank didn't make it clear what he was doing, you cut all the bullshit about a mutant genocide, he just kept telling them that they NEEDED to come with him, so suddenly there's a core question of, okay, why DID he think this was a good idea? And it's not like adult Hank DOES anything of value in ANXM, so making it a philosophical debate, a talk about grief, a discussion about Hank's legacy with the X-Men and his leaving them during Utopia, about the way he drifted away from Bobby . . . suddenly, this is an actual character piece.

Suddenly there is a point. Hell, you can even make it a good character piece for Scott and Emma by making it that the Phoenix's presence was what triggered Hank's failed mutation, and suddenly there's a cost to what they did, there's a cost to the mutant race coming back.

Suddenly what they did with X-Force, driving Hank away, and their gamble on the Phoenix comes back to bite them, because this is another mutant body thrown on the pile. Collateral damage.

Now it's not just a ton of faceless Skrulls.

Now it's not just Nightcrawler.

Now it's Hank, too.

Hell, teen Hank and teen Jean hooking up even makes a degree of sense now because they BOTH know they die and they're simultaneously desperate to avoid it and also to make the most of what time they do have because suddenly they became aware of ACTUAL mortality at the age of 15-17.

I'm also going to quote the inimitable @brw with whom I've talked about this concept before:

"A little more mystery, a little more complexity. I quite like the idea of this Hank almost being martyr'd? Like how Magneto and Scott was, some young mutant kids who are understandably traumatised canonize yet another flawed figure into a saint-like position. It adds another layer of grief onto many of the X-Men, particularly Bobby I imagine who gets more and more frustrated seeing the friend he grew away from being misinterpreted like that, but then has to ask himself, did he know Hank well enough in the past few years to make that claim? Did he actually make an effort to know his friend? It just adds to the different layers of the idea of Hank's legacy, what it actually was, and how the figure of him is getting pulled in all different directions to justify their own means. I wouldn't put it past that era of Scott to potentially use Hank's memory to further his own goals, too, as an opportunity to further radicalise and collect more mutant youth, which would add hopeful an actually interesting layer of the conflict between Scott/Emma/Magneto and the school. Additionally, something about young Hank especially being required to deal with all this sudden grief aimed now at him. Yes, he's not the one who died, but I imagine when the inevitable funeral happens and he ends up meeting the Avengers and Fantastic Four, a lot of those complicated, ugly feelings of mourning end up directed at him, and he doesn't even know who half of these people are."

Honestly, it just opens up so many more doors, and, like, especially knowing what happens with Hank's story after that, killing him here to maybe be resurrected in Krakoa is such a rich story to be examined, so much more interesting than pretty much anything that you have in its place.

This way, you have to actually engage with his moral position on X-Force, his hypocrisy in joining the Secret Avengers, the Ghost Box laser strike, THRENODY; suddenly, we have to engage with the stuff that isn't war crimes or obnoxious corporate pandering decisions, we have to engage in actual CHARACTER analysis.

Side note: I absolutely hated this handwave that made Hank look like the most awful hypocrite about X-Force almost as much as I did him joining the Secret Avengers, but it's canon, so, in my version of events, we engage with this double-standard and it brings texture to the point.

Because here's the thing - if someone has a moral stance, and then they go back on it, yes, that makes them a hypocrite, but it doesn't suddenly make the moral stance that they stuck to originally wrong. If Hank is, textually speaking, against Scott's X-Force, but okay with Logan's, guess what, he's a hypocrite (I hated this decision, I hated it so much, it was literally JUST done to maintain the rotation of books at the time), but that doesn't mean he was wrong to oppose the black ops kill squad in the first place!

But yeah, let's dig in! It'd be especially interesting because you have to imagine that Hank was an icon and a role model for a lot of physical mutants, people like Beak and Broo, and especially if you do this story now, before Nightcrawler comes back, you have to examine what that means, that both of the most obviously mutated X-Men are gone.

What does that say about Xavierism? What does it say about Scott that he didn't just use Xavier's name for his school to 'honour' him, but now maybe he's saying that he's doing things that Hank would've wanted, and NOW suddenly Bobby Drake has a fucking story role because he DOES NOT AGREE WITH THAT, and he's the ONE person left alive who can say that to Scott's face.

And oh my god, can you imagine the funeral? Can you imagine what it'd be like for Simon? Can you imagine what it'd be like for Hank's parents? For them to have to bury their son, and for that son to be existing, right there, probably having to hide in the Mansion, just watching them memorialise a man he doesn't recognise and doesn't understand.

The pressure of that. St. Jean, St. Hank. Suddenly it makes sense. You almost don't ever have to answer the question why Hank did it, because it almost doesn't matter, what matters is what other people's answers are.

Again, quoting brw:

"How would you deal with people your age mourning the older you, the you who was a teacher who they loved and looked up to? People you know as villains like Wanda and Pietro apparently having grown into close friends? People who you've never met in your life being almost inconsolable over the death of a stranger who happens to be you? It would also enhance young Hank going off to study magic, rather than being yet another "Because Old me sucks and I don't want to be like him" situation, it's instead "Because I can't even do this work without reminding people and myself of what they lost and I need to make something my own.""

Suddenly, this is a character piece. Suddenly, this is a storyline with a point. Suddenly, this is actually a proper continuation of the conflict we had on Utopia, AND you can still have your Logan vs. Scott confrontations because Hank isn't alive to fight that battle. Easy, donezo. Bish bash bosh, fixed your problem.

Probably not the answer you expected, for me to just say, nah, kill the fucker, but I really do think it's a much more interesting and sensical way to handle the conflict.

[igglemouse]

The State Of The Iggleverse 2025

The Iggleverse, a term I've used since starting my tumblr to simply explain my style of play. That is, everything I post is connected, from one sim to the next. The first iggleverse, that dated back to my first sim, Lourdes, went on for a few years and everything was connected.

I soft relaunched that iggleverse, which was easily done since, little did the reader know (since I never got that far) Telah had become the holder of the Watcher's Key (something I referenced then every now and then) and since I was literally the Watcher (well who else could it be!?) I used that little device to restart it even again. Dalton, Telah's son, who was the main heir in one of my darkest runs, had battled with Lovecraftian monsters and ancient deities and it had destroyed his universe...which was sort of explained by the introduction of his daughter who said she had escaped a destroyed universe...

Long story short, I still had connections to the first Iggleverse in even this latest one. For example, Gracelyn's mother was explained to be from another universe and her father was a traveller of different planes of existence...and her mother was a blood witch. Did this get mentioned? It might be mentioned in a post I have queued...but the term blood witch brings it all back to Dalton's story and a certain evil spellcaster that had summoned an ancient deity into his world...

All this to say. The iggleverse is kind of complex. I like that. But I try to tell a story with the intention of someone diving in at any moment and sort of getting right into it. It's why I always tell new readers, oh just jump in. To me, a story can be as complex as rocket science as long as the reader is focused on one thing at a time and is not overwhelmed. The past is a reference and the future is unknown.

After all, the beginning of any story is where you decide it is, but the ending, well, that's a lot more final.

The truth is, Frida, Zer, Gracelyn, and Teresa (who was cursed being 4th because of my fascination with odd numbers) have run their short course.

I hate doing this again but I only do it because it must be done. I realize that the way I was producing them and the past few set of heirs was completely wrong.

It took too long to even play one day of their gameplay because of how much I over thought things, over planned things, and then what made it worse is that I was still playing the game and so every time a sim did something different it meant rewriting the present and changing the future. For anyone that's tried to write a novel you know how much changing one thing can just cause a domino effect of you having to rewrite the whole thing...and this is what was constantly happening.

Example...I had a heir named Kyoko. Some of you may remember her, she was in Sulani and she had once met a sim that was supposed to be her romantic interest, don't remember his name, but they go out on a date and it was going well until one argument flipped her relationship with the guy. I was like well that sucks, I had like so much planned for this couple! But, I do not force my sims relationships, that would be boring! In the end, she end up becoming a mermaid and bleh...

Long story short, this is what was going on with my latest heirs and has been going on since maybe...I forget the last time I completed an actual heir maybe like 2021 or something?!?!

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What Now?

Well, I do this for the love of the game! So, I still enjoy doing sim legacies and you will meet THREE new heirs very very very soon. Today, actually!

The Iggleverse must be made new and whole and beautiful and I hope these three heirs are the ones to bring it home and actually have a 2nd generations.

But who is to say you won't just do this again a few months from now?

Well, no one is to say, not even I know that! But, one of the big issues I had with the past one is how slow things were going. I was playing Frida for most of 2024 and she just now had a child! Like I mentioned, the production of my recent legacy attempts has been so slow. A whole episode was a lot of hours of work and then it'd just be like 3-5 days.

Back then I would have had multiple generations in a year like 2 or 3 and daily posting was easily done because I was usually sitting on like 70+ posts. I want to get back to that and the best part, I think I know how!

How?

I must put the legacy ahead of the story, for the longest I was putting story before legacy. It took some enjoyment out of the game because what was happening is I was planning out days for my sims for whatever the story I had planned for them.

Okay, but why not just do all the above and bring back the heirs I've read?

Because its just not how I work! I also have advanced the stories further than read and I don't like them. I feel like because I tried to do this mix of storytelling and plotting while doing gameplay it made me write my sims into arcs I didn't like. Kyoko's Mermaid...

Well, okay, but when will the new legacy start?

I don't have a date, could be tomorrow, could be a week from now, it just depends on when I feel like I am ready. It literally could be tomorrow though because the christmas week, the week I planned on posting Frida, Teresa, Zer, and Gracelyn, because I had time, I spent making new heirs and writing them and I have content ready to post! More than one might expect but that is because I've gone back to my old style of production. Which was legacy and gameplay first and story to tie it all together.

No big scrivener file with all the plots I have going (and there were A LOT), nothing but what the next sim day might bring!

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TOO LONG DID NOT READ!

Well! Just know that I am still around and starting fresh (again), for those that were attached to the previous four heirs, well, I am sorry and like usual, if anyone wants spoilers I'll post them! I think I'll just post pictures and explanations of what I had planned actually!

Because I want this iggleverse to be completely fresh, no connections at all to any previous iggleverse!

So. New year, new me, but also still the old me! I hope that is good enough!

[killermanatee]

Could I read any of the 20+ books that are on my "new books shelf"?

Sure.

But could I also reread the Voyager Relaunch novels and settle down in this deep, deep rabbit hole of J/C love?

I mean...

What kind of question is that, considering paragraphs like this one:

[ffverr]

hello I come to you with a request. I watched x men 97 recently and was saddened by how little time the whole magneto in charge of the x men storyline got and I know he does this longer in the comics (I can't say why but the phrase "its seven in the morning max..." lives rent free in my brain) so I wanted to ask if you have any recommendation for comics from that era / any recommendations for comics with mister magnet-os because I want to get into x men comics but comics as always are so daunting

It is my great pleasure to answer this!!

Disclaimer 1, I am still going through a lot of the issues of this era but I will try my best to make it as clear a guide as I can for you!

Disclaimer 2, Headmaster of the school and leader of the X-Men are quite different positions that they kind of fused together in the 97 show so I do want to make it clear that magneto in the "seven in the morning" era is headmaster of the school, teaching young kids, while Storm is leading the X-men team and Scott is leading the X-factor team, so with that said:

Magneto's teacher arc starts in uncanny X-Men issues 199 and 200 (iconic issues containing the trial of magneto that was adapted in the show!) And then he is headmaster of the school in the book "The new mutants" by Chris Clermont, from issue 35 to issue 75. It is A LOT I admit and he gets a more minor place considering the book is about the kickass young class of new mutants that he's teaching. But it is worth checking out! Many consider this to kind of be peak magneto because.... he's trying so hard to be a good teacher and to handle all these kids and it's very humanizing for him!

I mean look at him and his 8 kids!

Now, how to get into Magneto overall? Let's get into it:

I believe it is impossible to get into Magneto without reading his ultimate origin story, Magneto: Testament by Greg Pack. It is a quick intro, it barely features his powers (not an action comic) and it is a very very emotional read. I consider it essential magneto reading!

Next up: Two One shots if you want to get a quick primer on the character pre moral arc instead of sitting through his few appearances in the Stan Lee comics:

A classic one: X-Men: God Loves, Men Kills by Chris Claremont. It is an iconic comic book one shot that can be read out of continuity just to see what his deal is when he's not necessarily on the side of the X-Men but fighting for his own ideals! It's overall a brilliant comic book!

If you want a more recent retelling of the first appearances of magneto you HAVE to read X-Men Mythos that retells magneto's major first appearance in the 60s in quite a beautiful and amazing way! It also has an absolutely insane magneto scene that is very memorable! (So this would "chronologically" come before God loves men Kills)

Now for his switch from cartoon villain of the 60s/early 70s to complex guy in the 80s, read the issues 149 and 150 from the run Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont. This is THE pivotal moment for "good guy" Magneto

(know that after issue 150, somehow he falls in the ocean from asteroid M, is rescued from a shark attack by Scott's girlfriend Lee Forester. They have a quick relationship where he struggled with his change of morals then he comes to the new mutants)

if you want to continue chronologically you read the issues 199 and 200 that I recommended at the start then go to the new mutants book I talked about earlier!

If you want MORE MODERN comics, then I advise you get right into what's happening at the moment!

House of X powers of X are two series that intertwine (you'll easily find them in the right order) by the same writer, Jonathan hickman!

It serves as a status quo change/relaunch of the X-Men universe. Magneto plays a big part of the story as he is directly involved in building a mutant nation. I'd say it's a bold but quite functional intro to X-Men comics!

Then he appears as a major character in the GREAT series X-Men Red by Al Ewing alongside Storm, a character that meant a lot to him in the 80s, so it's really nice to see again.

In this he is- epic, depressed, suicidal, sassy, it's great magneto stuff! This series is widely regarded as the best X-Men comic out right now!

(if you want context for this book read the event X of Swords, or I could explain if interested)

That's about all I will lay on you ! If this is hella confusing, don't hesitate to dm me! I can detail more cleanly exactly what you have to read and when!

Good reading!