#took back the old url and everything... REVAMPED!

[multseybaby]

you guys thought i was gone huh.... resident richardposter multseybaby is back in town !!

[crossfoxbuns]

Keep a Link Garden!

The Internet is Big

Like, REALLY big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is - or how much this intro has been overused since Hitchhiker's Guide has been a thing.

But it is big. Big enough that if you don't have some kind of system for keeping things you want to remember, there's no way in hell that you can remember it. What is a "thing you want to remember" though?

For me, it's everything from interesting blogs and webcomics, to YouTube favorites, to pin on Pinterest, to random shops I'd love to buy things from if I had money, to cool examples and inspirations - that kind of thing.

Each platform kinda has a way of letting you organize your favorite stuff - but it only works on that platform.

Enter the humble bookmark. Remember those? Before revamping my system I had nearly 1000 of them. YIKES.

But bookmarks are just SO GOOD at being the one thing that always works to save stuff for later. No matter the platform, every piece of content has a unique URL - that's how it has to be. And with unique URLs, bookmarks become the best way to save stuff in one place no matter the platform.

Personally this became a problem for me a couple of months ago. Because of my work and general techie interests, I switch web browsers all the time. I've used 'em all. Most recently I was trying out Arc browser. It's generally quite nice! It took the spotlight/global search sort of approach to literally everything, which tickles my brain in the right ways.

There's still a big problem with Arc though - no way to export stuff very well. (Pro tip: before you commit to a software, make sure you can leave the thing easily!) And because Arc's philosophy doesn't really do bookmarks (I just had a space on the side with hundreds of "pinned tabs"), when I finally found a stupid, roundabout way to get my list of bookmarks out, it was just that - a plain old list. The organization was gone. It was just hundreds and hundreds of links all piled together into a bin with no sorting whatsoever.

So I decided that this was the time to really start organizing this pile of links. It's like the inside of my brain, covered head to toe in random sticky notes, half of which don't make sense anymore. To start things off, I found Raindrop.

Raindrop is a place to put my bookmarks that, first and foremost, isn't married to a particular browser. Whether I'm using Arc, Firefox, Safari, on any device, doesn't matter - I get to my bookmarks the same way.

Another benefit is that Raindrop's app lets me share links and stuff to it using the phone's built-in sharing function, which makes saving the bookmarks way easier!

The icing on the cake? You can upload files to it as well. Images, documents, whatever. This got me thinking. I have a rather large collection of images saved on Pinterest...

By the way, Pinterest also sucks when it comes to exporting things. I had to use a downloaded tool that crawls the account and downloads the resources it finds, which felt gross. But with my stuff out of Pinterest, it meant one less corpo-site I relied on, so I'll take it. Uploading all those pins back into Raindrop was nice and simple. Raindrop even has a "moodboard" view mode, which looks suspiciously like Pinterest's masonry look, but without the ads and tracking scripts.

After adding my old pins to the collection, my bookmark garden is now just shy of 2000 links and images. I've been spending the past couple of weeks going through the giant pile and deleting old ones, sorting the rest into fresh categories, and giving things meaningful tags. That's another thing, I love that Raindrop uses and encourages tagging! Regular browsers take note - when there's a lot of something that someone will want to find again - support tags. Please. Not that I'll be doing that since I have transcended browser bookmarks, but you know.

Lots of stuff yet to sort and tag - about 600 links and 1000 images left to go - but it's coming along. And I'm tagging things as I continue to find links to add to the garden as well. Once that process is done, I'll have that nigh-perfect system - never needing to forget something again. If I want to browse some shops, I won't go to Etsy, I'll go the shops section of my private link garden. Carefully and lovingly curated. :)

Bonus points - if Raindrop gets enshittified, they have a couple of great exporting options, including a good old OPML file that every other bookmark manager can use.

[flightrisingitemdb]

Big item database revamp!

Phew this took me a while and there are still things left to do (well I'd never finish) but I think it's in an okay shape to replace the old that was in a very sorry state.

One major thing that I wanted to make sure is that the apparel and skin/accent preview mode that I know users appreciate at Kanojo is working. There are also a few improvements:

Use swipe on mobile or arrow keys on desktop to switch between the details of all search results on the page.

While the Item DB has always had next and previous links (those were kept too). You can now swipe or use the keyboard. Wanted to see how all Skydancer female skins in all of history look on your dragon? Now you can!

The DB saves your last entered preview Dragon ID by breed!

Meaning you can have different preview dragons configured for all skins types (breed and gender). This also translates to apparel preview where it will fill the input field when you switch to view a different breed. You can also paste the whole dragon URL into the field and it will pick out the ID for you!

Improved search

The old DB relied a lot on user input and that was from a time where the game database didn't exist. This is also the part that suffered the most during the last months while the old DB was still online. No chest contents, no item source information. The new pulls everything it can from the official Game Database and you can search for all Hibernal Den items etc. You can also toggle between also viewing private skins or just site items!

Stable urls

I can not guarantee that all urls will work forever but right now your whole search is included in the url, whether you have item details open and when you switch between links inside the database. You can share your search more easily and when you click through the DB like crazy you can use the back button to go back however many steps you want. Item details also have quick links to searches to all items of that category or subcategory or even view all skins from one artist!

And more

Quick links to the Auction House, your Hoard and the official DB entry

Color breakdown of items are shown as a summary bar like in the old DB but you can click to expand it for a more detailed view.

It's now more than ever also suited for mobile viewports. Also all the information for one item are on the same page, no clicking through tabs! (Looking at you game database!)

What now?

Long term

I'd also like it to preserve historic data like one off Baldwin recipes that are now gone on the official Game Database (and that users preserve by posting comments). Unfortunately backfilling this data will be mostly manual and I hope I can get your help at some point. I will probably nuke all user accounts because they were mostly for editing and moderating and that needs a different approach now. If logins come back that will be so you can save item lists and the likes.

Short term

Search results ordering is still missing

Reporting for items that have wrong info. I've already noticed that custom skins often go online with the wrong breed/gender information and gets corrected afterwards. My Item DB needs to be informed to refetch those. For the meantime you can also write me a message when you notice it happening.

As this is a rewrite, not everything might go smooth, in that case please also message me!

Of course you can find the Item DB where it always was at: https://items.kanojo.de

[hellguarded-a]

Morning Anon!! It's been a while, but I see you're feeling a bit down and definitely you deserve praise and admiration!! I've been reading all your cute hc's about Ignis and he's very cute and very inspiring. Tell us about how you came up with such a good concept!? One day I'll stop being shy and intimidated, and approach you for writing! Until then, know that I really enjoy you and your content and art on my dash! Please keep up the good work, you're doing wonderful!

ahah oh well i think that’s a little exaggeration but uhhHH sure history of this character go--

THREE YEARS AGO.  slowly creeping up on four, some fandom drama made me go fandomless, although i felt absolutely idea-less at the time and felt like i couldn’t really come up with a brand-new concept from the scratch, so i actually went through an extensive list of mythological monsters n was like...  what do i want to write...  because i was dead-set on writing a monster boy like the disappointment that i am

so i wanted something...  not just a species, but some specific creature from mythology and settled on cerberus.  so that’s what i originally wrote.  same url and everything.  was more fitting back then i think, but its still alright and i’m attached to it.  especially when i later saw someone using the url hellgvarded so i was like hehe i did it first

so, cerberus, right.  meaning i wanted to do something funky with some sort of split personality thing given the three heads n such.  well i...  couldn’t do it?  but partially i blame the fact that i couldn’t really connect with his muse in general, nor the world i put him in.  my plotting  /  shipping partner at the time didn’t really help that much.  it was very dull, set in a more cyberpunk-ish setting as compared to a modern parallel to today’s world as his canon is now, he was even supposed to have some cybernetic implants and such, not that i ever decided on those.  admittedly, that part then fuelled shinjou’s focus on that, but i digress.  his human alias was still ignis, his lover at the time was called  noctis  ( hint hint as to how i drew inspo for his brother lmao but really the name is the only connection because i liked the duality )  and he was still some sort of secret agent  /  police force thing, although i never decided on how he’s gotten to earth in that incarnation.  basically he really had no background or anything to him besides that.

so i abandoned that blog due to my inability to connect, and also partially because i managed to feel so completely overwhelmed on it within two days as it literally  exploded.  the promo got such immense traction for w/e reason that i had 200 followers within those two days, which sure it stroked my ego a lil but at the same time?  well first off, it barely let me settle in and also made me feel awful because i felt like i owed ppl a lot...  and i didn’t want to disappoint.  so many ppl jumped in on that concept and????  i actually didn’t have any muse for it?????  so rip.

so i dipped after that and made the  kitsune twins.  which stayed with me for another 2-3 years so i’d call that a success.  i still off-handedly write them on discord and at least one of them is actually important to ig’s canon.  or rather, i eventually revisitted ig to make him a plot device for  shinjou.  before  that, however, he still existed in the back of my mind in a prototype of what  the gonchiye  is today.  the gonchiye actually gave me a platform to revamp a lot of my old muses which i’m actually rly happy about, but.  anyway, back then it was a german-based organization called  die jagdhunde  ( same deal lmao )  but instead of being entirely supernatural based it was a group of humans actually hunting the supernaturals due to supersitions and stuff like that.  sometimes they’d capture some of them and force them to work for them, ig being one of those,  kalisha  being another.  it’s what made me lowkey ship them, but in the end ig ended up having a strong male preference so him and lisha are just kinda like bff’s in their current canon.  by then, i simply had ig as a regular hellhound rather than being cerberus himself as i wanted him to be  mine  rather than being a known mythology being, but he had no background nor development beyond the fact that he was  always  supposed to be a  mature, gentlemanly, but somewhat uptight individual with fire and shadow magic and the ability to phasewalk.  that’s all i had on him.

but again, i tend to hyperfixate so it didn’t become much more than a simple concept like many others, as i focused on the order of the lotus and the twins’ story.  but you know.  eventually i reached a stalemate and i had a lot of background for  shinzou,  but not his brother.  so that’s how the gonchiye became to be, being based on an ancient supernatural pit-fighting organization of which jou was once part of.  i involved  lucius  in all that, made him be the big bad, etc etc, and then had jou be bought off by the yakuza so that’s how he was raised.  i then really wanted a plot for him of infiltration and betrayal, but instead of making a whole new muse for that, i just took one of my old concepts and used that instead.  which was ig.

ig’s muse was also spurred by nata’s  ( @hellhunted )  desire to ship him with her falcon splice, which then alone led to further development of the gonchiye and their scientific endeavors.  anyway point being i made ig, as part of the gonchiye, infiltrate shinjou’s yakuza to get him assassinated, and the whole plague thing got added in a bit later, but it worked out alright.  again, one of my older concepts that i had in the twins’ old canon but wanted to reuse because i didn’t want to drop the idea completely.  so that’s how i got more involved in ig’s character, and then i finally lost the twins’ muses completely  ( much to my dismay, i miss them )  so i focused on ig?  it was surprisingly easy to connect to him afterwards and give him some background,  frankly  i don’t remember how i made him be a hellhound  /  fury  crossbreed  ( i do remember it being nata’s idea but i just don’t remember what prompted it ), but i  did  purposelly lowkey base him off of cerberus to stay true to his origins.  maybe it’s a little on-the-nose to have him be the  ‘son of cerberus’  but i’m honestly quite proud of my cerberus hc which makes it very flexible to work with.  similiarly, to how cerberus had an older brother called orthrus, i had always wanted ig to have a brother, so he  always  had a vague concept for one, so  nox  was around for a hot minute but again.  it took me a while to actually do anything concrete with him as a character.  originally, they were both hellhounds.  now ig is a crossbreed and nox is a pureblood fury.

n really then it was just a matter of writing on discord to get him to where he is now ---  i wrote him in private for about a year before bringing him on tumblr, but that’s how he came to be.  heavily inspired by the cerberus as we know him, and then adapted to my impending apocalypse canon.

[sandriinehebert]

say hello to my (revamped) little friend :)))))

lea michele has been my idol and source of inspiration ever since i was 11 years-old. i looked up to her and loved her and supported her. i met my two closest friends because of glee and lea. she’s the reason i got into glee, and glee is the reason why i decided to join roleplay years ago. i owe so much to lea. that being said, i do not support, condone or accept her alleged behavior. i knew about her being self-centered and difficult to work with, but i never thought i would log online some night searching for instagram photos for sandrine and find out all of that. i was reading the twitter thread all night long and watching a decade of my life disappear before my eyes. i know my feelings are worth nothing and are completely irrelevant & meaningless compared to the gravity of the situation that brought out all of these allegations. i also want to point out this is not a representation of mine or sandrine’s views on racism, bullying, performance activism or politics.

one of the first things that came to mine was sandrine and this group. i never bragged about being original, so it should come as no surprise that sandrine took a lot of characteristics from lea. her bubbly and lively personality, the tiny but mighty energy, the italian family background, the singing part, the cooking, the love of beauty, everything from her looks to her voice, it screams lea michele when i think about sandrine. changing her faceclaim was not an easy thing to do, because it implies changing this character i cherish with all of my heart. anyway, here’s a list of things that will change about sandrine from now on / things that will stay the same.

changes:

the faceclaim. lea is sephardi jewish (of turkish and greek descent) as well as italian. try and match that, it’s hard. plus, finding someone who is as expressive and joyful as sandrine is difficult too. i decide to use demet özdemir (who’s of turkish, bulgarian and german descent from what i read). compared to lea, i don’t know anything about her whatsoever. i lurked through gif tags and photos and she seems promising. if i don’t feel good using her, i will change to leighton meester and review, once again, the family background. (shoutout to lina for helping me, a true life saver!!!! <3)

alessandra “sandrine” serafina hébert. her last name changes. it is no longer lombardi, but hébert. (pronounced eh-bert in english, or hey-ber in french because the t is silent, i did some genalogy research and the surname hébert was, in some parts of the province, adapted from german so it fits with demet).

her age. sandrine is 30 turning 31 in september instead of 33 going 34.

her parents’ name. i will not redo the whole family post i did ages ago, but they all get a change of name and history. adamo is now only adam, and he’s 33 instead of 35. christian hébert is her father and monica evans is the mother. corinna remains corinna. christian’s father’s last name was actually esmer, but he changed to hébert when he moved in order to try and fit in the community.  the whole italian family storyline goes in the garbage bin, but since, historically speaking, traditional quebecer values are not that different from family, food and making babies, i’m good with that! i am absolutely not familiar with turkish and canadian history & relations so i have a lot of research to do there just to feel comfortable with this. i knew more about italo-québécois from school and from writing a paper about this community, hence why i felt no discomfort using cultural and historical aspects in sandrine’s story. montréal has the second largest turkish community of canada from stats i found, so, still, it’s not completely off either.

her career in ice skating / the reason she quit. sandrine will still be a successful figure skater who was amongst the best of her province, but i’ll twist things up. i won’t have her quit at 18, rather at 20. because (drum roll) i will give her a love interest. she started doing couple figure skating competitions at 17 and fell in love with her partner. they dated for three years, that innocent first relationship kind of love and he broke-up because he felt like he was too young to commit. hence why she still believes no one will ever love her as much as she loves them.

her timeline will go like this: at 20 she quit ice skating and dropped out of university. from 20 to 24 she stayed at home in montréal with her parents. from 24 to 26, she was roommates with adam in boston. and from 26 to now, 30 going 31, she is living on her own, running her salon in devinstone.

what stays the same:

lea’s voice is sandrine’s voice. when i write dialogues (which means 99% of all of my replies bc i can’t write), i hear lea’s voice. sandrine’ voice and singing voice will remain lea’s. that is unfortunately something i can’t let go of. 

she’s still lea’s height even if demet is 5″7.

she still has 2 of lea’s tattoos: the coffee mug and the musical notes.

she’s still a beautician. that does not change one bit! she still loves cooking. she still loves being annoying.

i will not delete any posts from before. i have so many faceclaim posts and instagram photos queued that some might slip away but those, i will delete them if i notice they get posted on accident. my queue has over 40 posts so it glitches and doesn’t always show me what’s in there.

everything else. she’s still the reincarnation of poppy from trolls, anna from frozen and pinkie pie from my little pony. big dumb dumb energy and all!

a faceclaim change should not be that big of a deal. but i’m a big baby who adored a celebrity for so long and i’m learning a hard lesson right now. i will proceed to changing her icon, theme, url, and to send a whole new biography to the main in the next couple of days. the main will also be contacted when they’ll come back to tumblr. since i don’t have discord, i couldn’t contact them sooner. i need time to process everything and to change sandrine’s muse without losing it. thank you for reading all of this and i am truly sorry if me using lea michele as a faceclaim ever offended any of you. i owed all of you an explanation and an apology as to why it takes so much time to change everything (idk who sent me this anon about me having to change my faceclaim but i was aware i had to do so since the moment i read the first tweets so i hope you didn’t worry about that too much). again, i’m sorry. stay safe, ily guys! <3

[escentia]

How to build an art website

My first attempt at building an art website was in 2016. Back then I didn't know how to write a single line of code. I bought a year's hosting with Bluehost, tried setting up a wordpress site, struggled, decided it wasn't worth it, and got a refund.

One and a half years later, in 2017, I taught myself how to code for a summer internship. I first learnt Python for data analysis, but soon realised that I could also learn HTML, CSS, and the rest while I was at it.

I finished the Codecademy course for website building in three days. Half a year later I tried coding my own Wordpress site. And, at the start of this year, with Wordpress completely revamping their website editor, I fled to GitHub Pages.

Currently my site (quietdistance.net) costs me 15 USD per year since I pay only for my domain name. That's a far cry from my first venture with Bluehost, which would have cost me 120 USD a year!

If you have no coding knowledge, and are interested in making a simple website, here are some steps I would suggest.

Learn some basic website coding. It's not as hard as some might think! Codecamy has a free course which holds your hand through the entire process: https://www.codecademy.com/learn/paths/learn-how-to-build-websites

Learn Git version control. There's another Codecademy course for that, and it can be completed in an hour!

Push your website onto Github. Github Desktop makes the process much simpler.

If you're serious about this art website endeavour, register a domain name and point that to your Github site. This step is entirely optional! Your website will already be accessible via its Github URL.

The entire process is free except the very last step, which costs less than 20 bucks. This is how I wished I had set up my site in the first place -- it would have saved me lots of money anxiety and frantically phoning technical support when I accidentally broke my Wordpress site!

Many artists these days make websites with Wix or Weebly. While these drag-and-drop, what-you-see-is-what-you-get website buiders are popular, I don't like them because:

You have to pay 5 USD every month to remove the website builder branding which is kinda ugly :( And that adds up to 60 USD a year!

Their code is clunky, bloated and slow.

Your creativity is limited to what editing options they offer you. Want links that flash rainbow when you hover over them? Cool transitions? Extra plugins? They're much easier to achieve with raw code.

If they revamp their site builder you'll need to check that your design still works the way you want it to. Since their site builders are constantly being worked on, you never know if an update might break your site.

And why Github is cool:

Github doesn't use your site to advertise themselves. They're run by Microsoft and have other revenue streams, so they don't resort to using your website as their billboard.

Unlimited sub-sites! In addition to your main portfolio site, you can easily make a separate site for every new creative project -- at no cost.

It loads super fast because it's used by professional geeks. My old Wordpress site took 10 seconds to load, and would sometimes not load at all. After moving to Github, everything could load in under 3 seconds.

You can test all changes on your computer before syncing it onto the online repository. No more accidental website breakages! Github Desktop records every file change, and you can undo them at will.

And why make a website at all?

If you post art to more than one platform, you'll realise that the number of likes/shares/comments is rather arbitrary, influenced by how long you've been active on the platform, your posting schedule, whether you've been featured, and other factors.

Instead of reflecting the quality of what you create, these numbers reflect how much value you are to the platform's advertising business. These two criteria can overlap, but often they don't. Yet these numbers can affect how other people perceive your work.

Your own website creates a safe space where you have control over how your work is presented to the world. Instead of conforming to platforms designed to maximise views and advertising profits, you have the power to create a place as weird and wonderful as you want.

It'll serve as a reminder that you're not just a data point, not just a cog in the wheel. That you should draw to make yourself happy, not just to please other people. That you're a precious and irreplaceable human being.

So sally forth and create! And may it bring you joy.

[raionmimi]

Do you have any oc's? I always love hearing about people's oc's

I do but I’ve been neglecting them these past few years

Honestly for the most part, I just use the same damn design and alter it to fit whatever series I want a persona in. Timeline and OC details under the cut, and fair warning I ended up talking a lot more than I had intended because I keep remembering stuff 

2000: Lumina

I once read a kid magazine in my school and it featured something with a sneak preview of the Sonic Shuffle game. I really liked the character’s name (Lumina) and always used it when I played games with my best friend (her character was Danny). We really were out there larping our raw ocs with each other

2008: Yumi

My best friend in high school insisted that I have a Japanese nickname like her (She is half Japanese but still a huge weeb. Her nickname was Kisa) and even had a list of names for me to choose from. I ended up picking Yumi from my head and to this day I have no idea where I actually got the name from. Our senpai, a Chinese girl nicknamed Yue, who helped me with my art told us the animals we represented best, so Kisa got a tiger, and I got both a bunny and a lion since Yue couldnt decide which was better for me. 

I made up “blion” and attached the name Yumi onto it. She became my persona and rapidly took on my chaotic gremlin personality. I decided Blions were a species that devours souls in order to heal/revive others, but it had to be an even balance otherwise the creature would die. When they’re weak, blions turn into a small rabbit with puffy chest fur like a mane (basically picture eevee tbh) with a long lion-like tail. The gem on the end of the tail is where the souls are stored.

2011: Torola Olébul

When we were all huge Homestucks, my friends and I decided to make fantrolls of ourselves so Yumi became repurposed into Torola. Same personality, so not much difference. I eventually redid her so she was nothing like me. She became extremely shy and basically Babey. She’s the ox/cow in my set of Chinese zodiac fantrolls (I have designs and personalities for all 12 but I’m not gonna post them here, I already wrote so much) She’s a sylph of heart, her weapon is pinwheelkind, her chat handle is apothecaryBovine, and her lusus is obviously a giant cow. She’s an amber blood troll (in between rust and bronze) who used to live with a teal blood and acted like a little messenger girl. After the teal blood was murdered by indigo bloods, Torola was forced to escape and live in the middle of a forest, where she was pretty much adopted by a herd of hoofbeasts. Torola has a dancestor Pazvea/The Actress(??) and Torola’s ancestor self is The Guardian. 

Torola is the predecessor to Coryla, which was a fuschiablood.This one is just one huge Little Mermaid reference because she falls in love with a man who doesn’t love her back since he goes for someone else

2015: Onyx

Onyx was a short lived OC compared to Yumi and Torola and I didn’t do a lot of art of her. She’s kind of like a spy/surveillance guard because her gem extends out like bat ears. The other gem on her head is actually fake but she has it there so she looks symmetrical. It stores data though, so it has an actual use and she can remove it. She has wings that fold up on her back, and she uses it to check out a location. Since she’s extremely bat-themed, she uses sonar to check for other gems and stuff.

I also made her companions Sunstone and Obsidian, which make Bloodstone. Sunstone is a very laidback gem that spoils Onyx rotten, so she thinks she can get away with everything. Obsidian is the brooding type that complains whenever Onyx causes mischief. Bloodstone is a bounty hunter that uses Onyx’s surveillance abilities to aid them. They used to live on Homeworld, but they eventually came to earth long before Steven dealt with the diamonds. They have never interacted or met with Steven himself though

2011/2017 or 18: Riya/Tau Kiniun

I once drew a raionmimi character because I was thinking “Hey what if Yue had said I was just a lion instead of a bunny.” I didnt think much of it at the time and only doodled her once. She was a literal black lion that turned into a black lion cub but like with a mane to represent her hair. Years later, I dont know what possessed me to revamp her, but I did. Since I wanted to get away from having fandom shipnames as urls, I decided to go with Raionmimi which is literally “Lion Ears” and used Riya/Tau as my new mascot.

OCs that werent in the chart because I forgot lmaoooo

2011: Euphoria

She’s the oc I had to make for an animation class. We were instructed to make a superhero character to animate on the computer and also with claymation. The art is super bad, but she was supposed to be a terrible hero because she had no intentions on saving anyone!! She’s actually a deity of life that’s come to earth because her brother, the deity of death, is causing problems. Whenever she stops his plans, people praise her for being a hero. It wasn’t her attention at all. She’s expressionless 99% of the time and doesn’t really care much about humanity. Ironically, her brother thinks humans are pretty neat. Her name is actually one of my favorite words of all time, and that’s why I used it for her!

2016: The Witches

I totally forgot about them until now, but I have a set of triplet ocs. I use them for D&D and Pathfinder sometimes. They’re little witch girls that run a potion shop. Euphoria (yes, I repurposed the name from my superhero oc), Celeste, and Cheshire! Hopefully you can kinda read my handwriting to get their personalities

2018: Socks and the succubi

One of my fave monster girl species have always been Succubi, so I made different sub-species of them! I think I may have posted them a long time ago, but I dont remember. Socks is also my mascot for my old lewd art tumblr blog that I abandoned eons ago because having side accounts takes up too much energy for me. I kinda want to make a webcomic about Socks but I haven’t gotten around to it. She’s a platonic succubus who feeds off of intimate energy, and she befriends an agender, asexual college student (I guess you could imagine Haruhi from Ouran)

[democratsunited-blog]

Trump redefined what’s possible in presidential politics; enter Michael Avenatti | Politics

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=8159

Trump redefined what’s possible in presidential politics; enter Michael Avenatti | Politics

GREENFIELD, N.H. — The hamburgers and hot dogs were all consumed by the time Michael Avenatti arrived and delivered what the Donald Trump-loathing crowd was hungering to hear.

“When you are the party of Davids, you cannot afford to show up without a sling shot,” he told several hundred picnickers on a pleasantly breezy Sunday in rural southwestern New Hampshire.

“I believe we cannot be the party of turning the other cheek,” Avenatti went on, pointedly differing with those — including, most prominently, former first lady Michelle Obama — who counsel grace in the face of enmity. “I say when they go low, we hit harder.”

Avenatti, who soared to fame as legal counsel for porn star Stormy Daniels and, not incidentally, a ubiquitous tormentor of President Trump, brought his possible White House campaign to this early primary state in a tableau that seemed to perfectly capture these surreal political times.

He was greeted with curiosity, enthusiasm and no small degree of skepticism.

“I think I want him for my attorney,” said Denise Clark, 64, a semi-retired teacher from nearby Milford, who took in the politicking and picnic beneath a safari hat and dark sunglasses. “I’m not sure I want him as president of the United States.”

The exertions of the 47-year-old Newport Beach, Calif., lawyer could just be another publicity stunt, or a way to buff his ego. “I have not decided whether I’m going to do it,” Avenatti said of a full-fledged run for president.

“My life would be a lot better if I did not,” he added in an interview before leaving Los Angeles for New England, by way of a Saturday night fundraiser for Democrats in Tampa, Fla.

Whatever he chooses, Avenatti’s recent visit this month to Iowa and Sunday to New Hampshire — the states that begin the presidential balloting — has already thrust him to the fore of a Democratic debate over how best to seize back the White House.

“We’re not going to beat Trump by out-Trumping him,” said Jennifer Burton, a Democratic consultant working in dozens of campaigns and legislative contests across the country.

“Voters want sanity,” she said, rejecting Avenatti’s fire-with-fire prescription, “and balance and reason and dignity.”

Bob Mulholland, a longtime California Democratic Party strategist, firmly disagreed.

“Democrats are normally too intellectual and too nice,” he said. “A guy like Avenatti says, ‘Give me the gloves, I’ll get in the ring and let’s start boxing’ and that’s good. He’ll attract some people who normally wouldn’t pay attention.”

Whatever happens going forward, Avenatti has Trump wholly to thank for his presidential prospects.

His nationwide celebrity stems from his representation of Daniels, an adult film star tangled in ongoing litigation with the president over an alleged July 2006 one-night stand. Beyond that, the only reason Avenatti is taken even somewhat seriously as a White House prospect is the presence of his nemesis in the Oval Office.

“At this point in the campaign Trump was a joke, too, and he managed not only to win the nomination but become president,” said Mark Mellman, a decadeslong veteran of Democratic campaigns, who won’t reflexively dismiss Avenatti as he once would have. “Our definition of impossible needs to change.”

Avenatti has taken the first step toward fleshing out his political profile by outlining his stance on several issues, hewing largely to Democratic orthodoxy in support of “sensible” gun control, legalized abortion, a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers” and, tilting leftward, favoring government-run health care or, as advocates prefer, “Medicare for all.”

He has also demonstrated, repeatedly, a Trumpian capacity to grab attention. When the administration began separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, Avenatti immediately jumped into the legal fray.

It was a new area of endeavor for a plaintiffs’ attorney accustomed to suing corporations, but one with political dividends. One client was a 9-year-old boy whom Avenatti accompanied to Guatemala last week to rejoin his mother — a scene his pro bono counsel made certain to chronicle on Twitter.

In a crowded field of prospects, Avenatti’s main distinction remains the fact he is so unlike the others possibly running, in both background and temperament.

“If the Democratic Party thinks they can nominate an experienced politician that is very similar to the other 16 or 17 individuals that (Trump) beat the last time, and get a different result, they’re fooling themselves,” he said in his interview with the Los Angeles Times. “That’s the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

For now, it’s about first impressions, and many of Avenatti’s reviews from Iowa were quite favorable.

Scott Brennan was among a small group of Democratic activists who dined with Avenatti during his visit earlier this month. He said people “underestimate him if all they do is think of him as Stormy Daniels’ lawyer. He’s more thoughtful than that.”

“Objectively, I would say people want the anti-Trump this time around, someone who could actually bring people together,” said Brennan, a former state party chairman who is staying neutral so far. “But in this fractured world, I don’t know if that’s a winning strategy. The old rules are all gone.”

Still, Avenatti faces formidable obstacles beyond his unusual provenance and lack of a ready political infrastructure. (Back home, he is one of half a dozen California Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Sen. Kamala Harris and billionaire Tom Steyer, possibly vying for the mantle of favorite son, or daughter.)

The bigger-name Democratic prospects — among them former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Harris — have yet to set foot in Iowa or New Hampshire.

That makes the going easy, as it always is for candidates in this early, unchallenged phase of the campaign.

David Axelrod, who knows something about ushering an underdog to the White House, likened running for president to a pole-vault competition.

“You can smartly clear the lower bar but each time you clear it, the bar gets raised,” said Axelrod, a senior strategist to former President Barack Obama. “They may see you as an interesting character. They may appreciate your performance on TV. But as they start thinking of you more seriously, they want to know what you know, how you answer questions.”

Avenatti’s legal practice, which has yielded a slew of enemies and piles of unpaid bills, would doubtless face considerable scrutiny.

He personally guaranteed nearly half of a $10 million judgment owed to a former lawyer at Eagan Avenatti, his Newport Beach firm, which emerged from bankruptcy protection in March. Since then, according to the IRS, the firm has defaulted on more than $880,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest owed to the U.S. government. Avenatti and the IRS are negotiating a deal for payment.

Avenatti is unfazed. “Show me somebody that hasn’t had any controversy in their past,” he said, “and I’ll show you somebody who shouldn’t be the president of the United States, OK?”

Trump, for his part, was unimpeded in his march to the White House by half a dozen bankruptcies.

He did, however, enjoy considerable advantages that Avenatti lacks. As a celebrity real estate developer and former reality TV star, he was vastly more famous. His immense personal wealth financed his early exploratory efforts and, for many star-struck fans, enhanced Trump’s appeal.

(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

And despite his popular image as a political outsider, Trump had considerable inside experience, having long navigated the government corridors of both New York and Washington.

Not least, Trump had a message, “Make America Great Again,” and a brace of pugnacious promises — building a border wall, revamping U.S. trade policy, draining the Washington “swamp” — that meshed with his pile-driving personality.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

On Sunday in New Hampshire, Avenatti’s reception was encouraging, his 25 minutes of forceful remarks punctuated by boisterous cheers and frequent applause. Even so, he has some ways to go to prove his political viability.

“I agree with nearly everything he said,” said Becky Hudson, 53, a party volunteer from nearby Lyndeborough, as the ever-quotable not-quite-candidate waded into the inevitable thicket of news cameras. “I think he needs a little experience, though. I’m stuck on that.”

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(Barabak reported from San Francisco and Finnegan from New Hampshire.)

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©2018 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): AVENATTI

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