#took me an hour-ish to find all the refs

[jakeranda]

i went crazy instead of doing the work i was supposed to do and compiled some chuuya nakahara references

i have plans to do dazai next but the procrastination has to end somewhere

use at your own risk fellow stray bungo doggers, and enjoy my pain

[shaniacsboogara]

...maybe i will 😈

The setting description and the voices Shane was built for this 👏👏

[littledigits]

Hello..

Not sure if this is going to makes sense..... but

How does one approach studying Timing and Spacing in animation ?

Like, how would you go about taking notes/

Or observing and studying Spacing and Timing of an animated scene mindfully, so you could apply it to your own work.

Do people just watch an scene they like on something like youtube, and go frame by frame, noting down how many frames have past between each keyframe as well as the spacing by thumbnailing them down ?

I'm honestly kinda overwhelmed, and frustrated cause I have a hard time nailing down the kind of timing I want (specificlly getting that 'snap' kinda feel)...

I don't like how 'floaty' or 'smooth(?)' things tend to turn out when i try to animate ;-;

IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. My friend I give you big support vibes cuz I had such a hard time understanding timing and spacing. It comes easier for some but not others and thats ok. I had to learn how to be boring with it before I got comfortable enough to experiment and I can still easily get stuck in my box. I would say that reference is a HUGE PART of making animation work. Over time you can build up your mental library and you may not need as much and just go off of your own thought process but thats something you build up to. And most people when they start will find things either can be jittery or too even, and thats just part of training your eye! Snappy animation can be tough too ! but thats why learning from it is GREAT. Gosh theres so much you can learn from frame by framing things - especially classic hand drawn stuff. So i 100% would recommend finding some ref of the style you want to emulate and just try it out and 100% -figure out how many frames in between , seeing just how much they manipulate the pose, anything really! Its not about getting it all right, its just about breaking it down and learning a few things at a time and going 'OH maybe ill try that out next time' I think you going ' hey this feels too floaty and isint the vibe' is you exactly describing what the problem is. Your in-betweens are probably very evenly spaced out- but thats a really common problem when people first start. But the solution is just as you said - REF. And in animation that is more of a part of the job then anything honestly, same with storyboard. and learning a lot from eachother. I FEEL YOU THOUGH. I was there too, and it took me longer then others to be able to get what I want. But you're on the right track , just dive in to doing that good good frame by frame and then trying it out yourself ! here are some links that you may find useful as well ! https://gingercatsneeze.tumblr.com/post/145037677357/1-ah-fai-was-a-chief-animator-for

HOPE THAT HELPS ! <3

[rankuros]

KINNGGGG i wanna hear ur SINGINgf also how do u do it on the internet ND SHIT

aw i'm so sorry i was asleep when you sent these. also i'm answering publicly because i worked really hard on this and i'm an attention whore <3

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/JtKieEFCV7BtZAXS7 here is my favorite solo ever but it's like eight years old hhhahha (in jp)

https://twitter.com/r4nsetsu/status/1499543423942017027?s=21&t=TymQWkkhekI-WtIskXK4tQ here is one of my karaoke songs since you said i had good taste JFJKEFJ (in en)

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/riJe3tAc3wCJwdbbA here is my comeback from last year (i failed at mixing this so i think i will re-mix it when i am better at doing that HFJKSJFJFK i do love shrieky vocals in my voice tho) (in jp)

https://twitter.com/r4nsetsu/status/1500281411185647619?s=21&t=giIbl15LU9WmTbn1hWY86g here's an emo mili song bc i am soo dramatic (in en)

https://youtu.be/onhI9oNXu7c here is my favorite collab ever!!! i am second from the right (in jp)

logistically how do i sing on the internet? i use:

1. blue snowball USB mic. many people will tell you to get an XLR mic, which is better quality, but also requires extra hardware to actually connect it to the computer so it's a higher price point. i wouldn't necessarily recommend that for just getting started! if i manage to record again when my current life situation is resolved i will probably upgrade tho because i am trying to learn to mix better so i want sexier mic quality. I HAVE ALSO USED THE MIC FROM ROCK BAND FOR THE NINTENDO WII which works SURPRISINGLY WELL. it was a USB mic i already had lying around and it gets the job done! in theory a mic is the only thing you might need to purchase to get started so it is a pretty low cost of entry hobby, i think my snowball was $50 ish but there might be better recommended USB mics these days

2. reaper to record and mix (technically paid software in the same way winrar is paid software, i have run it on an "evaluation license" for thousands of hours) it is unfortunately SUPER unintuitive and if you are open to p*rating adobe products i 100000% recommend adobe audition over reaper. however i am lazy and have never tried to get my hands on audition since i grew a pair and stopped paying for it :) reaper also has a built in manual TUNER which is soooooo nice because melodyne, while easier to use, is expensive (🏴‍☠️)

3. straight up just youtube and google for the instrumentals i need (i always make sure i can find them before i record bc most things have an instrumental available somewhere, but not all!). sometimes you can also find a reference for the harmony lines of a song and go really ham and record those too! or some people can just harmonize by ear but i am usually not very good at it so if i can't find a ref i just don't do it HAHA

4. soooooo many tutorials on youtube! i most recently learned how to time vocals without making them choppy, like how to stretch or shrink a syllable if multiple people are singing so they are more in unison. it's a lot of fun to learn things! (except EQ. learning EQ is part of why i'm on hiatus because it made me hate myself. all the homies hate EQ)

5. various video editing software which not everyone prioritizes anymore! the youtaite community specifically, which is where i have been on and off for almost 12 years holy shit, is youtube based so video is a big part of it. you can also usually charm ppl into making simple videos for you (i know this for a fact bc i am the ppl getting charmed into making simple videos for others)

and most importantly, i have

6. a ✨big fat ego✨ about my voice to allow me to sing on the internet because it can be really daunting!!! i used to perceive some really unpleasant tone in my voice and it took me a long time to come to terms with it, and i used to compare myself to everyone. karaoke and musical theater have done a lot for my relationship with my voice <3

[i was going to talk even fucking more about my Process here but i feel like i am writing a book. idk how much ramble you signed up for!! but if you think this is for you i would love to answer questions or help out]

ALSO IT IS SO MUCH FUN TO WORK WITH OTHER PEOPLE! oh my god! i did a chorus battle last year and most of my team was in GERMANY! that's so far away we would NEVER have met and we worked so hard and made something together!! talk about human connection!

also you can sing literally whatever the fuck you want. i have not joined the choir in my community because i do not want to be stuck singing what the choir sings. i have not done any musical theater since RENT because i do not care about most musicals. i want to sing whatever i feel like singing and whatever is most fun and meaningful for me. it's my voice and i get to decide what to do with it etc

in conclusion: singing on the internet can be so rewarding and there is a pretty hoppin community of other people who sing on the internet who will be nice to you and offer advice/answer questions and sing songs with you. and it is really goddamn time consuming but i like it a lot. bye

[scrawler-jay]

of mice and artblock

So, midterms happened and I abandoned this blog for a while. But now I’m back, and I come bearing mice.

*

I’ve been really struggling with finding subjects I like to draw. I’m happy to work on skeleton studies until Judgment Day to better understand anatomy, but I know I need to balance “homework” art with “for fun” art, or else risk losing motivation for learning to draw -- and I’m so used to writing fiction at this point that no subject really appeals to me artistically unless it’s got 5,000+ words of story attached (or at least some narrative/character ideas, yanno -- something for my brain to pick at). The obvious solution is to draw concept art and characters from my written stories, but I feel really intimidated by that because I’m such a beginner artist that nothing I create now will do justice to the vision I have in my head.

I need art OCs and concepts – things that I will only draw art of, and have never written a story about. Stuff that doesn’t have to match a previously established, written story, and that I can change as I learn more and my skills improve.

I ended up drawing a bunch of mice.

This was initially just a whim. Human anatomy requires a lot of skill to pull off, especially faces and hands, but mice felt more beginner-friendly to me. Admittedly, I was going for a more cartoony style as opposed to photorealism, so if you’re looking at this from a realism perspective then these are pretty poor mice. However, I don’t feel ashamed of them, which I am taking as a good sign.

I kept drawing one mouse over and over. I ended up calling him Leo just because it was funny – “leo” refers to lions, but here Leo is just a little mouse. But of course, giving him a name (and a gender, incidentally) is the start of a story. Via a flight of fancy, I got it into my head that I wanted to do a painting of Leo trying to catch a big snowflake. I made some thumbnails of what I wanted the scene to look like, and then cut out a roughly 7 inch x 7 inch piece of watercolor paper from a big sheet that I had under my bed, sketched the scene in pencil, and then finished with watercolor pencils (and a white gel pen for the snowflakes). The process probably took 2.5 to 3 hours.

So, now the lore is that Leo is a mouse living in a little house in an old tree at the edge of the woods, and he wears a red scarf. I did not like this painting. It seemed over-saturated and the colors didn’t quite work the way I wanted them to. I ended up watching a tutorial on color theory, and decided to redo the painting using my newfound knowledge of color schemes. I used this color palette tool to get an idea of what kinds of colors would look good together, and settled on a complementary scheme with bluish green and brownish red.

And then, everything went wrong.

I tried to redo the painting, still working traditionally. I rushed the sketch because I was so eager to get right into working with color. This time, to avoid over-saturation, I used watercolors out of a pan rather than in pencil form. Mixing the colors in the lid of the pan took a really long time because I was so picky about shades, and because I continued rushing I didn’t allow the layers enough time to dry. Leo’s scarf (now green instead of red) bled into his russet fur, and the mailbox was the wrong shape, and I tried to erase a pencil line and created a dark blotch over an area that was supposed to be white with snow – and then I gave up.

I had downloaded Krita, a piece of digital drawing/painting software, a while ago, but hadn’t had any success using it because my desk isn’t big enough to accommodate both a laptop and my small tablet. Using my lap to hold the tablet was an exercise in frustration, and I knew so little about how digital art works that I just felt really overwhelmed and lost whenever I opened the program.

However, Krita (like most digital art software) has an undo button that I find very alluring, so I decided to try it again, now on a shiny new desk from Ikea that is actually big enough to support tablet and laptop together. I think just the space on the desk really made all the difference, but also I was determined to get this artwork of a mouse to a place where I felt satisfied with it.

I spent a solid 5 hours working on what ended up being a very simple colored drawing of a mouse catching a snowflake outside his little house. I barely blended anything at all, and there’s no light source that required me to shade anything – it’s just flat color. However, I really like these colors, and I think I did well (for an absolute beginner). I want to go back and add textures/shading to give an impression of depth, but I'm not sure how.

Leo – like all of my figures – feels really stiff, so I also want to work on gestures/studies of mice doing things. And, thanks to the popularity of mice as lab animals and pets, there are way more reference photos of mice than I expected! Most refs depict the house mouse, Mus musculus, but I did find the work of a wildlife photographer named Dean Mason who spent 15 years photographing harvest mice (micromys minutus).

Unfortunately, all of the prior artwork in this post I had drawn almost purely from imagination, and I think it shows. I studied two mice from photos in pencil, then erased the lines until they were barely visible and tried to do the fur texture in ink (with a dip pen, so there is some unevenness when the pen was extra inky).

Left is my first attempt doing the fur texture. I was more cautious with layering pen strokes, so you can see the lines of strokes fairly evenly. Right is my 2nd attempt, where I was bolder with the pen. I like these mice more than the one I created in the digital painting; these ones (especially the right) feel more Beatrix Potter-ish, which is a vibe I like.

Do I want to go back and fix the anatomy in my digital art of Leo? Yes. I also want to take another stab at doing this piece traditionally, but this time, I'd go monochrome and try to do everything in brown. However, part of me is exhausted from drawing ten million snowflakes and does not want to relive that experience with a gel pen -- I've already done it once with a tablet pen, and that was enough.

I have a hazy, far-off goal of creating a comic of Leo having adventures with another mousy friend, but that’s so far in the future that it’s not worth spending time considering right now. In the nearer future, however, Leo’s friend might become a reality – I know he’s an albino mouse (name TBD) who either escaped from a drug-testing facility (I loved The Secret of NIMH movie as a kid) or else is a pet who was dumped into the wild by a human owner who no longer wanted him. Leo is outgoing and adventurous, and this friend is shy and cautious.

[kewltie]

i got most of the skeleton format for social media au ch 3 done which wouldn’t be as dificult if i had stuck to the general sns platforms i already used (i.e. twitter, tumblr, youtube, etc) but i decided in this ch im going to push it a lil further and see what i can get away with /o\. SO i ended working on a few new formats and that occupied my time up the end of july.��

it was A N N O Y I N G and extremely F R U S T R A S T I N G but i ended really like how it all came out eventually. i feel like every new ch of this ‘verse i push and push just to see if i can make myself cry of anger when i hit roadblock after roadblock bc many of these took hours and hours to format but less than a min to read through.... but SO WORTH IT for me. at the end of the day it’s what make me happy that drives me forward with social media au. also, my sense of being completely anal about getting THINGS RIGHT. like, all the server icons for discord??? i designed them all and they literally have no use beyond that but it pleases me bc im strickler for details and I COULD NOT HAVE IT EMPTY. 

the majority of the problem i often run into is the fact that there’s no ref i can pull from or i can lean on anyone for help. i dont know how to code. like for real, i only know basic html like how to change colors, insert links, etc but everything else that have to do with css i have to google around and when i hit a problem i have to solve it by myself or find a way to work around it. I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO CHANGE A TABLE BACKGROUND COLOR until like several months ago. a lot of it is me just screaming and crying as i tried to figure out to how to solve it like the podcast format??? man that sucked MY SOUL bc i wanted to add a scrolling bar but that somehow didn’t work bc it keep messing up with the top section and i couldn’t get it right no matter how much i tried. i was so mad and frustrated that i wanted to cry but then i realize i can just get rid of the scroll bar and replace with an infinite loading symbol which works out just as well to hinted at “more episodes” hidden on the player bc that was my point in having a scroll bar. SO YEA a lot of the tiny annoying details is what trapped me the most but once i get passed the sense of pride and relief is so great it’s like a high lol. 

now, im mainly focusing the meat of the fics like chatlogs, filling up the details, and writing up psuedo essays, etc that drives the story forward. so hopefully less formatting and crying from now and until the end of august lol :P. so it’s going semi okay so far?? i estimate we’re like 30% ish there but at the same time i might get some crazy idea that increase my workload... like i didn’t plan on doing any podcast BUT THEN IT HIT ME suddenly so here i am. most of social media au is just me winging it and panicking about it lol. im just honestly hoping and praying for the best here!! thank you so much for all your patient with me!!!! i’ll be back with another update in a week or so. hopefully it made more progress by then. 

[dcmidivine]

onwards and upwards | rosie & graves

Rosie traps Graves somewhere he can’t escape for an interrogation.

Knocking on Graves' door would ruin the point of a surprise attack, so first Rosie slowly tested the handle to see if it was locked– nope! What an idiot. She slammed her body into the door as she opened it and tumbled into the room, finding her footing within seconds and launching herself onto where her brother was sleeping peacefully. "¡Despierta!"

It wasn't until 3 AM that Graves finally fell asleep, mid-reading, his tarot deck strewn across his comforter. He was sprawled in the middle of his bed, out cold, without a care in the world. A card was stuck to his cheek. He was drooling - that is, until Rosie landed on him and yelled right in his ear. Graves sat bolt upright, eyes wild, his mind taking a second to wake up. "Gods, Roz. A simple knock wouldn't have worked?" He looked at his sister, using his arm to wipe drool off his cheek.

Rosie rolled off of him and onto the floor. She sat up and grinned at him, reaching forward to prod one of his cheeks. "Gross. You're drooling." Scooting backwards away from him, she clambered back up to her feet and started to look around his room. "Nah, boring as fuck. Wanna go for a drive?"

"I know I'm droolin'. I was asleep before someone barged in. " Graves stuck his tongue out at his sister, before grinning. He ran a hand through his hair in a failed attempt to tame his bedhead. "Oh hell yeah, where to hermana?" He rolled out of bed and started rummaging through his dresser.

"Oh yeah? Who?" Rosie snickered and leaned against his dresser as he began to go through it. "So rude of them. I want somewhere to stretch our legs! Somewhere out of the way. And ice cream, I for sure want ice cream."

"My punk ass sister, that's who." Graves snapped a t-shirt in Rosie's direction, but made sure it didn't hit her. He resumed his search, digging through a second drawer to find a pair of pants. "A hiking adventure! I'm in. And you know I never turn down ice cream." He laughed, "I never turn down any food, let's be honest. Alright, give me two minutes." Cam shooed his sister from his room and quickly got dressed. When he opened the door again, he was in his usual ripped jeans and tee, a flannel tied around his waist. His boots were in his hand. "I gotta put these on, do you wanna grab some snacks from the kitchen?"

Rosie yelped and skipped out of the way of the t-shirt, continuing on out the door as he ushered her out to change. When he emerged, she feigned a yawn as though she had been waiting for hours. "Yeah, yeah, make me do all the hard work. Meet me in five." With a laugh, she spun around and dashed to the kitchen.

Graves let out a loud laugh as he sat down to pull on his boots. "I'm not makin' you do the hard work, I'm lettin' you pick your favorite snacks!" He called to her retreating form. He tied his shoes and pulled his phone out of his pocket, looking up nearby hiking trails. "Am I drivin'?"

"Whatever!" she called back as she gathered armfuls of snacks and started shoving them into her backpack before scampering back to her brother. "I can drive if you want a thrill!"

He waved his keys in the air. "I'll let you drive when I want a heart attack. You're navigating. C'mon, Loretta's parked over by the vans." He grabbed his water bottle and backpack before standing. With a smirk on his face, Graves looked over at Rosie. "I'll race you there."

“Coward,” Rosie teased, slinging the backpack over her shoulder. As soon as he mentioned the word ‘race’ she shoved him, then took off in a sprint.

"Woah, hey! False start ref!" Graves stumbled, laughing, then bolted after his sister. "I'll get you back for that, Roz!"

“Gotta catch me first!” she yelled back, ducking her head and maintaining speed. “You’re too slow!”

"C'mon, I haven't played lacrosse in two years. I used to be faster!" Graves could see his truck in the distance, his sister a few yard ahead of him. Laughing, he ran a little faster until he was just behind Rosie and reached out for her backpack to slow her down.

Rosie yelped as she was yanked backwards and dove to the side to try and slam into him as he passed her. "Fucker!"

Graves lost his footing when her shoulder crashed into him. "Shit!" He righted himself, watching as Rosie reached his car first. "For the record, Roz, I let you win." He was laughing and reached out to ruffle her hair before tossing his backpack into the truckbed and swinging himself into the driver's seat.

Rosie grinned and ducked her head when he touched her hair. "For the record, you're a fucking dick. I'm faster." She hopped into the passenger's seat and put her feet up on the dashboard as she got comfortable. "I got a question for you once you start driving and can't escape."

Graves exhaled, "Oh gods, I don't like the sound of that." He turned the key in the ignition and buckled his seatbelt, looking over to make sure his sister did the same. He tossed her his phone. "You're navigating and interrogating, don't forget to tell me where I'm going."

Rosie rolled her eyes but fastened her seatbelt anyway. She flicked her sunglasses down over her eyes and caught his phone, tapping in the passcode and pulling up google maps. "I can multitask. Head towards the highway first."

Graves flicked on the radio and followed her directions, driving out of camp and onto the road that would take them to the highway.

Rosie waited until they were on a stretch that didn't require directions for a while and twisted in her seat to face him. "Alright, tumbitas." She pointed at him. "What's your relationship with the wicked bitch of the west?"

Graves gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and flicked Rosie a cool look. He'd anticipated the question but hoped he'd been wrong. "Sorry, hermana, I've never been to Oz." He tried to flash her a grin but her expression was unreadable through her sunglasses.

Rosie raised her eyebrows, still casually sprawled across the seat despite the edge in her voice. "I'm talking about Cleo Bancroft." She pronounced the name with disdain.

"Ah." He said, tapping the steering wheel with his index finger. "I...don't know? Relationship feels like a strong word." Graves shrugged, acting indifferent.

"Are you friends?" Rosie crossed her arms.

"We..." He squinted, trying to think of the right word to describe what he and Cleo had. "We're friend-ly? Ish?"

With a scoff, Rosie sat up, pulling her feet off the dashboard. "That's it? I don't believe it."

Graves shrugged again, visibly uncomfortable. His expression said he was calculating any possible escape route from this situation: there were none. He glanced at his sister again. "I don't know? Gods, Roz."

Rosie scowled. "Oh my gods, I'm not going to flip shit on you. I just want to know."

"Is it that big of a deal if we are?" He asked, getting defensive.

"Uh, kinda? Since the rest of us hate her?"

"For something that happened, what? Five years ago?"

Rosie threw her hands up in the air. "Yeah! 'Cause it fucking sucked and was a shitty thing to do!"

"I-" Graves looked at Rosie. "I wasn't even here for it, Rosie!" He pressed his lips together. "I'm sure it sucked and it was shitty but...I'm just supposed to hate someone because y'all do? What is that?"

"Yeah, kinda!" Rosie frowned at him. "I'd hate anyone you wanted me to."

“I wouldn’t ask you to hate anyone!” He fired back. “I-sorry. That totally wasn’t the point.” Graves sighed. “It’s just- I don’t know. I’m being a dick, aren’t I?”

Rosie blew a piece of hair out of her face. “Ugh. Shut up, you’re so fucking-“ she motioned towards him. “Nice. I just wanna be annoyed.”

Graves chewed his lip. “Nah, I’m not that nice. I know she hurt you cari. You have every right to be mad.” He glanced down at the maps just to make sure he was going the right way. “If I said we were friends, what happens?”

Rosie kept half an eye on Graves’ phone. “Still five mins until the turn.” She slid down further in her seat. “I dunno. I guess I just wanna know. Are you?”

He nodded, appreciative of her directions. “I honestly don’t know? She’s not awful and we talk sometimes?” Graves offered vaguely.

“Erre es korakas,” she cursed at him, her momentary calm already gone. “Just answer the fucking question.”

Graves winced when Rosie cursed. When he answered, his voice was quiet. “If I said yes, are you going to tell all our siblings to hate me too?” He stared at the road, expression tense.

Rosie rolled her eyes again and leaned against the window, pressing her temple against the glass. “You really think I’d do that?”

“If I called Cleo my friend, yeah. You hate her so much. Miranda too. I don’t know.” Graves ran a hand through his hair.

Rosie hunched her shoulders defensively and looked back at him. “I wouldn’t. And even if I told them to, they wouldn’t.”

He glanced over at her, not believing her fully. “I don’t want you to be mad at me. I know how long you can hold a grudge, Roz...”

Rosie frowned at him. “I can be fucking pissed at you and still love you to death, idiot.”

Graves’ expression was filled with doubt. “Do you want me to stop talking to her?” He realized he still hadn’t answered Rosie’s question.

“Yeah, no shit.” Rosie looked back out the window. “But I’m not gonna ask you to. I’m sick of pulling you guys into this shit, it clearly just fucking spirals.”

“I let you down at Cyrus’ party, fuckin’ losing my walkie talkie. And inviting Cleo. I don’t want to let you down with this too.”

Rosie was silent for a few long seconds. “You invited her?”

“I-“ Graves racked his brain, trying to backtrack. “I didn’t invite her, exactly? Invite us a strong word. Nah, I-uh, I ran into hear that day and uh, we were talking and I said I had to go get ready and she asked what for and...” He trailed off. “A party for Cy is public knowledge, right? He’s the party king. Everyone knew......right?”

Rosie slapped a hand to her forehead since she couldn’t smack him without causing a car crash. “Are you fucking serious, Cam? She wasn’t invited for a reason! Because it was Cyrus’s fucking birthday and obviously a fight was gonna start with her there! It wasn’t just a party, it was a party for his birthday and because she was there I almost fucking ruined it! None of us wanted her there!”

"It wasn't on purpose, I swear!" Graves looked at Rosie and shook his head, eyes wide. "I didn't think about it! Also didn't think she'd show up, that's insane! And," he paused and sighed. "You didn't ruin it. If anything, I did. I was too busy flirtin' with Casey, I didn't even see Lisette hit you."

Rosie felt like tearing her hair out or bursting into tears, she couldn’t tell which. “You’re not helping your case here.”

"It was a game!" He said, exasperated. "You came up with the game, you hit Lisette, she hit you back.  Isn't that how the game worked? I'm pretty sure yes because I hit Tai and he fuckin' wailed on my jaw. Hit for hit!" Graves could feel the hole he was in getting even deeper." I don't even know how to help my case."

“Oh my fucking gods you don’t get it!” Definitely leaning towards tears now. Rosie could feel herself getting choked up, which only made her more angry. “I don’t care Lisette hit me! Good for her, it was part of the game, which I said at the time if anyone would just fucking listen to me!” She pressed her fingers under her eyes. “I know everyone thinks I’m some fucking psychopath who’s gonna snap at anything but I said it was fine, I told the others to back off, I didn’t hit her again or yell at her or anything! I just wanted to keep going with the game and everyone else was making it worse but of course it was Rosie who lost her temper and interrupted the game, and had to be told to calm down and have the water gun confiscated, of course.” She slid her hands down her face, exhaling hard. “I’m not fucking mad I got hit. Okay?”

"Ah...shit," Graves wilted as Rosie got choked up. He was not good with crying so he hoped Rosie didn't cry, especially because it would have been his fault and he would officially win 'Worst Brother of the Month.' He looked over at her, eyes full of concern. "No, Roz. Rosie, I-I know you're not mad you got hit. I know you told everyone to stop and I know no one listened to you. I also know it's my fault. Cleo and Lisette wouldn't have been there if I hadn't opened my big fucking mouth and I-I'm sorry..."

Rosie turned her head to face the window when he looked over at her and rolled it down a crack. The breeze was bracing, and gave her a chance to catch her breath enough to clear the lump from her throat. She looked back at him. “Whatever. You didn’t know.” Deciding to risk it, she punched his shoulder. “Fucking look at us. Ridiculous.”

Graves had been prepared for Rosie to hit him since the conversation had started, so her punch only made him swerve a little. He made a face, "I forgot how hard you can hit, damn." He exhaled, watching Rosie look out the window. "Ridiculous," Graves agreed. His next words came out in a rush. "Do I make it better or worse if I say that we're kinda friends and I feel bad hiding it from you and Miranda but I don't want to hurt you by being friends with her and I don't want to her by lying and saying she's not...my friend." He bit his lip, afraid he'd escalated the situation again with his confession.

Rosie would have laughed if she wasn't still upset. "You could've started with that." She looked back at the window. "I'm pissed you're friends with her but I'm not gonna make you stop. Just... it's not all me, okay? She's really fucking good at playing the victim card and making me look like the villain in this whole shit, but it's not just me."

"I didn't want to start with it because I honestly...didn't plan on telling you yet. But I just feel like a fucking dick." Graves shrugged, he looked like a kicked puppy. He could tell Rosie was still upset with him and he didn't know how to fix it since all he was saying were hurtful things. "I never thought it was all you, Roz. I promise. She doesn't talk about you either, if that helps. I mean," he chose his words carefully. "It's not like we hang out and she shit talks you. I think I'm the only one that's ever really brought you or Miranda up and it's to tell her that I don't want to upset either of you. Which is true. I don't and I've never wanted that. But leave it to me to befriend the one person you hate the most. Great fucking brother, huh."

Rosie half smiled. It was hard to keep being mad at him when he seemed to be doing her job for her. "Leave it to you," she agreed. "Fucking terrible taste in people. You're not crushing on her, right? Honestly."

“She’s not terrible,” Graves laughed and shook his head. “We’re just friends. Gods, don’t worry about that. Don’t joke about that. I’m sorry, again.”

Rosie pointed at him. “Hey. You’re still on thin fucking ice.” Despite her words, she was smiling. “Take the next exit.”

Graves smiled back at his sister, taking the exit as directed. "Thin ice, got it. How do I get to solid land? How do we...navigate this?"

Rosie pushed her sunglasses back on top of her head. She had wanted to clear the air not have a discussion, but it did seem like the mature thing to do. "Ugh. Just... don't invite her to the cabin, okay? I don't want to have to go full hippie cleanse mode and burn some sage."

"Do we even have sage in the cabin?" He laughed. "I don't picture you as the hippie type."

Rosie made a gagging sound. "I'm not. I burned that out of my system when we broke up."

Graves rolled his eyes. "Well, thanks to Gran, I don't have sage, but I do have crystals, so if you really need to cleanse the cabin, I'll let you borrow them."

"Turn left up here." Rosie rolled the window down the rest of the way. "Good to know." She glanced over at him. "You got anything you wanna say to me?"

He took the turn Rosie instructed, pulling smoothly into the parking lot of the hiking area. Graves looked at his sister. "I'm sorry again. And I'm treating you to ice cream after this."

Rosie laughed and sat up to unbuckle her seatbelt. “I was asking if you’re pissed at me about some shit but I’ll accept free ice cream.”

Graves unbuckled his seatbelt and slid out of the truck in one fluid motion. He shut the door and leaned over the truck bed to look at Rosie. He rested his chin on his arms. "I don't know. I just figured you were pissed at me and that I'd be kicked out of the cabin or something."

Rosie snorted and hopped out of the car. “I’m thrilled you’re that scared of me. C’mon tumbitas, I’m always pissed at you and you still got a bed!”

Graves fished his backpack out of the truck bed and slung a strap over his shoulder. “Only an idiot wouldn’t be scared of the Hermes girls.” He grinned. “Is there anything I should be pissed at you about, since you asked?” He waited for Rosie to grab her bag before walking to the trail.

Rosie followed after him, skipping to catch up and walk beside him. “Nope! I’ve been an angel, as always!”

Graves snorted. “Right, I believe that. What’s the most recent wild thing you’ve done?”

She pulled a baseball cap out of her bag and put it on. She winked at him. “Forgiving your terrible judgment.”

Graves bumped her shoulder with his own. "My judgement's better than yours. I didn't date her." He stuck his tongue out and grinned, making sure she knew he was only teasing. "Honestly, I fully expected you to punch me once we go out of the truck. Loretta could only protect me for so long."

Rosie laughed and tugged his sleeve so he would stop for long enough for her to clamber up onto his back. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You’re such an idiot,” she said fondly.

"I know I am. You still love me, hermana?" Graves adjusted his arms so he could carry her properly and set off on the trail.

“No shit, tumbitas.” She rested her chin on his shoulder. “Onwards and upwards.”

[deitiesofduat]

I was wondering if u can do a bunch of random facts/headcannons for the main cast?

Oh man, I mean, I’m happy to try, but I’m not sure where to start for the entire cast of 10… well, now 11 gods. I know have some that are scattered around the blog’s tags, and also in places other than tumblr, but It’ll take me a bit to find them or think of new ones without revealing spoilers, hmm…

So here’s what I’ll try that’s similar to the 1 Like 1 Fact meme I did on twitter a while ago: for every note this post receives, I’ll add a DEITIES-related headcanon or fact about the main cast. The main cast includes Set, Horus, Anubis, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Bastet, Sekhmet, Thoth, Ra, and nowwwww Sobek – and maybe the Set Spawn and the big bad serpent too, if relevant. You can add a note by +liking this post, and if you’re interested in learning about a particular deity, you can mention their name in a comment (and it’s not necessary to reblog this, unless you want to!).

This should help give me a bit more focus and time to think of some decent non-spoiler headcanons/facts to share. I’ll come back to this post in a few hours and add any many as I can, depending on the amount of notes it receives, and I’ll bump and place them under the cut for easy access. So yeah, go for it /o/!!

[1] Been playing with a headcanon where Horus’s Eye can see an object’s or person’s weak spots – though only for like, a moment once it’s activated, cuz I’ve wanted to avoid him being OP (but then again… he’s a literal god… so >>)

Also a related-headcanon where he can see a person’s past injuries thru his Eye too, including the hidden ones that have long-ago healed and left no visible scar. I’d like to draw the ones he “sees” on others one day if I keep it…

[2] Set is the only one of his siblings that doesn’t have an avian sacred animal, and for a while I wanted to keep it that way and literally keep him “grounded” compared to his family (sans Anubis). But I found that he’s sometimes also associated with crows (and falcons??? interestingly enough), and even though I haven’t found solid evidence of this yet, I also like the idea of him being associated with bats even before I read about it in Kane Chronicles I swear– So those 2-3 animals are probably some alternate animal form that he has but just rarely takes.

[3] Actually while I’m at it– aside from the Sha Animal, here’s a list of 30-ish animals that I keep as Set’s canon forms in DEITIES verse (based on a combination of historical speculation, recorded myths, and personal headcanons), and would love to eventually draw him as one day:

Aardvark, African Wild Ass (and Donkey), Giant Anteater, Baboon, Bat, Boar/Pig, Bull, Camel, Crocodile, Crow/Raven, Dog (some sort of sighthound?), Fennec Fox, Fish (Eel?), Gazelle/Antelope, Giraffe, Goat, Goose, Hare/Rabbit, Hippopotamus, [Spotted] Hyena, Jackal, Jerboa, Okapi, Oryx, Panther, Rat, Scorpion, Shark, Snake (Viper), and Zebra/Quagga.

[4] RELATEDLY… I REALLY REALLY like the idea of Set somehow acquiring a Thylacine form even tho it’s in no realistic way in the current timeline because thylacines weren’t native to Africa let alone Egypt. BUT… I JUST… THEY REMIND ME OF SHA ANIMALS SO MUCH o)——–

[5] When I was considering the color schemes for the main cast, I once briefly envisioned a purple/violet scheme for Nephthys, but decided to scrap it because (1) I wanted her colors to contrast with her sister’s and match a bit more with her husband’s and son’s and (2) I found that purple was nigh impossible to find in AE wall art and admittedly worried “maybe it won’t look authentic if I use those colors;;;”

Even though I’m happy with her orange/black/red scheme now, I’ve recently found that purple is a common association / kemetic UPG (or doxa?) with her?? SO THAT WAS INTERESTING… I don’t think I’ll change her color scheme for DEITIES, but maybe I’ll draw her in an alternate purple outfit one day to see how it looks on her >>

[6] One of the reasons why I like Horus, Anubis, and Bastet as their own casual friend group in DEITIES verse is that, because they’re all relatively young gods, they all share the experience/pressure of being measured up against their older royal relatives – Horus being seen as both his father and mother’s legacy and feeling the pressure to restore his family’s throne; Anubis being know for his infamous father, and even having his paternity questioned (via rumors and “myths”); and Bastet being the youngest of Ra’s daughter, sometimes being compared to her sister’s roles and achievements.

They’re all really good at masking any pressure they feel, but they also probably confide in each other about it more than with others, cuz they’ve all “been there.”

[7] Relatedly, one of the earliest version of DEITIES Project, before it was known as “Deities Project,” had Horus, Anubis, and Bastet as the main trio. That’s been changed “for reasons” since then, and their characters were quite different back then, but it might be fun to explore a story that focused on the 3 of them someday.

[8] Okay ya’ll know the part during The Contendings where Horus and Set are racing in stone boats and Horus “wins” by painting his wooden boat to look like stone? I have ideas for how that entire race happens in DEITIES verse that would be fun to explore as a side story, but in order for me to give Horus a “legit” way to win without outright cheating, he covers his boat with stone casing/accents, and after he wins and is confronted about it… well…

HORUS: “The rules we agreed on were to sail a boat made with stone. They said nothing about it needing to be made entirely out of stone.”SET: “…”HORUS: “ :)c ”SET: “…” *Internally raging*

[9] I’ve headcanon’d that Nephthys has her own set of ~7 Shabti who act as her personal assistants while she’s conducting her nightly duties, or working around her home, but I haven’t decided much more past that (still debating on how she acquired them, and if she more-than-likely named them…).

The concept and number were loosely based on how many of the other goddesses had their own sets of 7 as extensions of their power and/or control (7 Ribbons of Hathor, 7 Arrows of Sekhmet, Isis’s 7 Scorpions), and I thought it’d be neat if the Goddess of Service had her own Shabti that exemplified that part of her domain.

[10] Thoth is an avid lover of puzzles, trivia, and strategy games, and he’s also exceptionally skilled at games of chance. He doesn’t gamble or make bets often because he understands the risks, but when he does he tries to be calculative about it… and also has a natural knack for luck going his way (EX: That one game of senet that he won to help assist Nut with having her children… which is another story for another day)

[11] Ummmmm Isis is the only one of the main cast who I haven’t drawn a ref of her sacred animal form yet… or at least, not digitally. Her animal is the kite, but I’ve been debating on a while for what species to base her design on. I like the idea of her kite form looking like the Black-winged Kite, although those species aren’t native to Egypt… but some are native to Africa… and they’re so fricken pretty and they fit her colors so well so I might cave on this ffffffffffff–

[12] While we’re on the subject of sacred animals (and to help me get somewhat closer to the note count lmao I’m trying guys–), Horus’s falcon form is based on both the Peregrine falcon and the Lanner falcon, with more simplified markings for my own sanity when I draw him in dozens of panels.

At one point, I considered making his falcon form leucistic to contrast more with Anubis and Set, buuuuuut I also liked the brown colors on the falcons’ normal coloration, so I kept it. (That and more leucistic birds of prey are hawks, so… maybe for Khonsu tho if I don’t change him to an owl, hmmmm…)

[13] Okay continuing thoughts on animal forms, Bastet is able to shift her cat form into nearly any coloration or breed she desires (aside from her eyes, which remain green), but for the purposes of DEITIES I draw her as a brown cat with light gradation markings. I knew of the Egyptian Mau but also realized the spots would take a lot of effort to redraw in the panels where she appears as a cat (much like the spots on falcons for Horus). I also personally really like solid-colored coats on cats, and in particular I liked the coloration of the Havana Brown, so it may be a little less authentic but it did factor into her colors as well.

[14] I'm still debating on Sekhmet's main hairstyle and want to play with it a bit more -- not the arrangement per se but whether to keep it as locks or to make them more obvious twists -- or perhaps a combination -- since I can see her with both style at certain points in time. Either way, at full length Sekhmet's hair is very long: if she were to loosen her tie and let it fall, her longest locks would reach past her hips.

[15] I initially gave Set yellow eyes because even though he's often depicted with red eyes, I didn't want to over saturate his design with just... well, red -- especially in his animal form where his entire body is covered in red fur (red eyes + red sclera would have been, a lot). I like how his yellow eyes provide some contrast, and I've since found some story-related reasons where his eyes might play some role in the plot… but anything further might be spoilery 8')c

[16] It took me a while to settle on Osiris's "resurrected" skin tone because there were a lot of sources that describe his skin as being green, or blue, or black in coloration. I even tried them out in an earlier color test that I shared on patreon, but I eventually went with black since the color has had various meanings in Ancient Egypt that include both life and death. (It also gave me some opportunity to give green skin to Ptah and blue skin to Hapi to help vary the designs for each of those gods).

[17] Relatedly, Osiris's mortal form is a naturally dark skin tone, but following this death he can no longer appear in that form. He is also unable to travel to the overworld / realm of the living, though I'm still debating on how restrictive this is (if it's limited to his physical body or if he can split his soul under special circumstances, or with assistance). Regardless, most of his correspondence with other deities have to be arranged within Duat for this reason.

[18] I haven't made any plans to designate a spouse or romantic partner for Ra. I understand that there were a number of goddesses that were associated with him in the myths and often said to be his wife, but for that reason it was hard to settle on choosing one -- or multiple, and I realized that for the purpose of the main story it might not be necessary. I also kinda like exploring the idea of this high king and powerful creator deity who's also a happily single father, and where it's not for tragic reasons like the separation from or death of his spouse (not to knock that trope at all tho sdjfdsf). I'm not opposed to him being shipped with anyone though, I just don't think I've been inclined to do it myself lmAO;;

[19] RELATEDLY, while Ra's daughters (Sekhmet, Mafdet, Hathor, Serqet, Bastet) don't have a biological mother, I like to think that they were raised in an environment with a lot of parental figures and mentors to go around, aside from just their father. I haven't quite settled on how it was organized though, but I know that the daughters regard Thoth as something of an uncle/secondary dad (tho their dynamic with Thoth is can vary a lot from the one the have with Ra), as well as their teacher and mentor. I can also see where other gods like Khnum, Khepri, and Bes, and goddesses like Neith, Seshat, Taweret, Ma'at, and Mut, might also have played some direct mentor role in the daughters' upbringing and sense of self.

[20] (squick + implied nsfw) I uh… have this minor gag headcanon where Horus, Isis, and Osiris just don't eat fish. They just… don't. And it's entirely based on that one part of the myths after Osiris's death, where a certain part of Osiris's desecrated body ended up in the river and was swallowed by a fish 8')c (should be noted that I'm not saying that event did happened in DEITIES canon, but I'm also not disputing it either >>).

Apparently that was considered a bad omen, and I still find conflicting information on whether consumption of fish was taboo for some or all in Ancient Egypt (I think "for some" makes better sense, cuz why would an entire society that resides near the Nile river pass up on a perfectly available food source?? But I digress, I might need to review this again so take my thoughts with a grain of salt--). I also admit that I've seen it mentioned that fish are not ideal food offerings for Isis and Osiris?? and I can imagine that maybe Horus adopts the distaste for them as well. Either way, I go with the DEITIES canon that while most people and deities happily consume fish, Horus and his parents will not, and they don't enjoy it as offerings either.

I’MMMMMM gonna end it here for now cuz my headcanons have run dry for the time being, thank you guys!!

[brianna-lei]

Butterfly Soup Asks #17

The squad playing Overwatch, yaoi hands, and more! man I still have a lot left in my inbox after this... 

I’ve spent an obscene amount of time playing Overwatch so I have many thoughts on this Neither Diya nor Noelle have ever played a first person shooter before, but Noelle studies many strategy guides and videos to prepare beforehand.

Following her research, Noelle chooses Symmetra after memorizing the optimal turret and teleporter/shield matrix placements for each map. Symmetra is a good hero for inexperienced players because she doesn’t require aiming skills, but secretly, Noelle likes her because she is focused and serious. She’s scandalized by her default outfit, but can’t afford to get the Vishkar/Architect skins

Diya sees the dog helmet on Pharah’s Anubis skin and instantly unlocks it, automatically setting her as a Pharah main. Diya is the type to happily choose Pokemon based on cuteness instead of practicality, so this is typical Diya

Min ONLY plays these 4 attack heroes, in this order of preference: 

Reaper (cool and edgy)

Genji (sword is a long knife. only chosen if the above is taken)

McCree (cool. only chosen if the above is taken)

Soldier 76 (a soldier, cool. only chosen if the above is taken)

She’s mechanically very skilled, but in her 100+ hours in game she’s never even ONCE selected a tank, defense, or support hero, not even in skirmish or training, not even when she’s the last one to choose and there’s no healer. Literally 0 minutes on her career stats. 

Akarsha is an ironic Torb main and also a useless Sombra. During their first game together:

Akarsha, selecting Sombra: (affectionately) it's me

Noelle: How is that one you?

In spawn, Noelle can see Akarsha as Sombra with the Battletag “RedFart”

Sombra: (smugly) Hack the PLANET. 

Sombra: (annoyingly) Miss me? 

Noelle: .......... (the game hasn’t even begun yet and she’s already seething)  

Diya manages to get a triple kill with concussion blast through sheer luck before accidentally killing herself with her own rocket. Min constantly spams “I need healing!” in impossible to heal locations, or when she's already being healed but doesn't notice. Whenever she dies she goes “res me”. Akarsha is nowhere to be found. In the kill feed, Diya has managed to accidentally kill herself again with Rocket Barrage. Noelle switches to Mercy and Min blames her for “not healing fast enough”. Eventually, infuriated, Noelle just screams into the voice chat “FINE! DIE ALONE, YOU FOOLS!!!!” and lets her teammates at critical health perish at her feet 

the match ends in defeat but Diya got POTG for her triple kill

Noelle: Akarsha, what were you doing this last match?

Akarsha: Turned invisible

Noelle: YOU'RE NOT ACCOMPLISHING ANYTHING WHILE INVISIBLE

Akarsha: There should be a card for “time spent invisible”

Only Min and Akarsha consider themselves gamers. Diya and Noelle will play Mario Kart at other people’s houses but don’t regularly play games Akarsha: besides DS games like Ace Attorney, she’s particularly addicted to MapleStory

Min: plays more console+pc games, likes CoD and Team Fortress 2

Sakura, Yuki, and Akarsha have all watched magical girl shows at some point. Akarsha’s favorite one is Madoka Magica.

Akarsha likes a lot of Ace Attorney characters and her favorite is Phoenix, she finds him relatable. However, if you ask her, she will answer “Spark Bruschel” (below) 

She dreads it starting from the night before the presentation and have trouble falling asleep from anxiety. As the time to present approaches she’ll get more and more nervous and sweaty to the point that she won't have an appetite and her stomach hurts

As she's presenting, if she has note cards or a powerpoint to read off of, she stares at that the whole time and reads at lightning speed. Diya has to write down what she's going to say word for word, she can't just put chunks and phrases on note cards because she wont be able to construct a coherent sentence. her life flashes before her eyes whenever she stutters or messes up a sentence

If she doesn't have anything to read off of, she stares at inanimate objects instead of the audience, completely blanks out, and sometimes when she can't recover from that she panics and tries to end the presentation prematurely by suddenly going back to her desk. just bad all around 

Noelle has good posture, the others are all pretty eh and slouch sometimes. In particular, Diya slouches a lot when she’s with Noelle because Noelle was taller than her in elementary school and Diya still isn’t used to the fact that she outgrew her. 

It’s similar to how Min’s brain actually can’t fully process that she’s way shorter than Diya. When confronted directly with the fact Min will acknowledge it, but it hasn’t really sunk in, at all. Diya was only a little bit taller when they were kids, so in her gut that’s how it’ll always be.  I experience this with my childhood friends too LOL I still instinctively feel like I’m taller than my friend who’s now like 5′8″ (I’m 5′2″) 

THIS IS INCREDIBLY SPECIFIC ASJKDHFA

I feel like Diya and Hayden have long-ish hands because they’re big, but not yaoi hands level i dont know what to say 

--Tumblr wouldn’t save my post after this, so I copied it into Word and pasted them back in. It worked, but now some of the asks ARE THE WRONG SHADE OF BLUE.....

(For those who don’t know, the song lyrics say “Her name is Noelle”)  Yes, and this also reminded me that whenever Christmas songs say “Noel”, Akarsha annoyingly points it out like “it’s you Noelle” 

It came from leftover dinner from the night before, which Noelle’s mom cooked

I have, I also love seeing all the different ways everyone writes the characters! Thank you fanfic writers!! ;u;

Hayden: 5′11″

Jun: 5′8″

adding this to the FAQ, thanks!

It’s not mentioned why she has a bandaid as a teenager. I have something specific in mind but it may come up in the sequel so I won’t say anything else about it

Here’s their birthdays from oldest to youngest:

Noelle: January 18

Akarsha: April 20

Min: July 4

Diya: November 26 I haven’t come up with the birthdays of other characters yet (except Jun, whose birthday is the same as Min’s haha)

Yes, stay tuned :>

Yup, that pose was reffed off of Trucy’s surprised sprite! I love how over-the-top it looks 

OMG...I hate miscommunication as a cause of conflict in stories so don’t worry, there’ll never be a choice with disastrous consequences like that in any of my games! 

I’m really glad to hear this, I sometimes wonder “should I have made them older?” but this is ultimately why I made them the age they are! I think a lot of people in their 20s instinctively feel 14 is too young because they’ve forgotten what they themselves were like at 14. I kept journals so I have evidence haha 

You’re welcome, I’m really glad she was relatable!! Noelle has a Chinese name and goes to Saturday Chinese school, but I haven’t decided on what it is :( Maybe someday...

I REALLY want to sell Butterfly Soup merch like charms/prints/diya’s hoodie but bc I’m busy I haven’t had a chance to set it up yet >_> It’s my goal to accomplish this by the end of the year

It’s currently only available for the computer, sorry! There’s nothing questionable in this for 14 year olds -- there’s profanity, but there isn’t any explicit sexual content or nudity in it!

I’m glad that detail resonated with you!! I’m also self conscious of my hair (opposite problem, it’s EXTREMELY coarse) so I added it ^^;

A few were drawn from scratch, but most of them are at least partially drawn over photos I took

You can download it here, it’s a creative commons free song! 

Yep this was fixed! I was so appalled this wasn’t caught before the game was released haha

Aw thank you!!

You’re welcome!!! The game hasn’t even been out for 2 months yet, I can’t believe people love it enough to replay it already ;u;

[markoftheleviathan]

miiikaelson replied to your post “It’s almost four in the morning, and I’m too busy drawing our...”

ref shots ain't bad at all and i'm impressed at your ability to draw from sight!! thats reaslly hard, and the perspective is super duper well done

also impressive the fact that you went to so much trouble to get an in-game reference. i dunno how much of a reference u used for emily but whether from sight or original its a fucking + and i cant wait to see the finished project

the wrinkles are nice, and so are the blood dripping and the little details above her mark (that i nearly missed!!) it all looks really nice and her face looks like HER face which is another hard thing. its nice.

ok, compliments done. im reblogging it to my art favorites and emily tag now. bc its so good and i cant wait.

wait compliments not done. the bodies make nice details bc they like direct TO emily and u got some design techniques with the behead guy. i had to take a lengthy design class. i now see design in everything. u did well.

First of all, you’re an absolute DEAR, and I adore you oh my god. I was going to reply to this last night but it was around 5am and I just ended up falling asleep whoopsies.

2) MAN THE PERSPECTIVE. DON’T EVEN GET ME S T A R T E D. It took me about an hour to set up the damn picture I wanted for the reference because I can draw Dunwall pretty decently without a reference but Karnaca’s got a really, really, really specific look whereas Dunwall is just sort of “London steampunk-ish.” And THEN it took another twenty minutes to take the damn photos because leading lines and balancing the foreground vs background, and negative space blah blah blah I’ve studied art basically my entire life, and a part of me wants to go “Fuck it” and ignore the basic principles of design, but it’s ingrained in me and I can’t. I’m getting off topic. PERSPECTIVE. RIGHT. I had to redraw the entire background around ten times because all of my ref pics were from drastically different positions and I was screaming trying to figure out where the focal points were but I think I kinda sort of got it in the end.

3) I’ve only drawn Emily about four times or so before so I have a decent understanding as to how her face looks (it helps that her moles happen to be in the same places my moles are, which is kind of freaky and creeps me out a bit) so those little details are pretty easy to figure out BUT, because I wanted to  get things perfectly right I used a couple dozen refs from different sources to figure out how I wanted Emily to look. (She looks so different in every single version that I wanted to find a middle ground.) And @ominousdeer ‘s dozens of photos of Em were amazing (I did use a direct ref of ominous’ for the pose because I couldn’t be bothered to sit down for four hours scouring the internet, or fiddling with sketches), as well as my eight billion screenshots of Em during the first cinematic trailer for her (the one from the E3 announcement) ‘cause I feel like that’s how Arkane wanted her to look if she was hyper realistic, and it’s also the only one where she decently looks biracial and goddammit, I want to preserve what few biracial characters there are because I sure as hell never found any characters that were biracial in the media when I was growing up that I saw myself in. 

4) The Mark!!! I didn’t give her a sword because the whole point of the piece is “blood on my hands” etc etc etc, making her crimes a little bit more personal, and in my original version of this, she was also weaponless (but her hands were covered in a LOT more blood), but narrative wise it didn’t make sense as to how she’d kill them 100% bare handed, and then I remembered that the Mark glows when it’s being used so tadaaaaa glowing, smoking Mark

5) Ahhh thank you! There was a lot of careful body placement when I was setting up my ref (which is HARD because you either fucking launch them across the entire map but they ragdoll which is nice for randomization of body placement, or you gently sit them down and they just rest in a sort of loose T-pose which is so unnatural looking and doesn’t at all make it seem like they’re dead.) I had to end up throwing bodies from down the alleyway and off of buildings (the scene is actually the Overseers’ offices where Mindy sends you to go get a body in Mission 2 of D2) so I cleared all the Overseers and threw them off the top of the building hoping it’d work... it wasn’t... fun. (Yes it totally was. Especially since I left the civilians alive so there was a lot of chaos.)

[fatalis-writes]

That Detailed Post About How I Met Michael Rooker And Sean Gunn And We Talked About Sexbots

You guys seem interested in how my weekend went (I’ll only focus on the Actually Exciting parts, aka Rooker and Gunn so I don’t bore you with my life lol) and I’m still reeling from how this might have been the most fun I’ve had at a small (ish, sort of, maybe I just think of it as small because it’s local for me) con, so I’m going to ahead and writing a big old post about it. So strap in, because this might not actually make any sense since this is the first chance I’ve had to breathe in like two days. (Also notice that my wifi is on!)

So rewind to like a week and a half ago. I’ve been planning on going to this con for a while since it’s close to me and I’ve been going for the past few years, so it’s sort of a situation where if I have the weekend free, I just show up (I cosplay a LOT so I go to tons of cons mostly to just hang out with people). I can’t remember the guest list at all and I don’t really care, because the people I CAN remember are from things I don’t really watch/read/whatever, so I’m planning on just going and hanging out and maybe shopping. I’m planning on just going for Saturday, and wearing a Star Wars thing. 

WELL. 

After seeing vol 2 a *few* times, I’m like okay, yeah, I think I especially love Michael Rooker now. So I follow him on facebook and twitter and instagram, and “related events” things start coming up as things that he’s going to, you know, to advertise, and I see THAT CON. So now I’m like....???????? Excuse me???? So I checked and yep, he’s right there on the guest list, and I’m an idiot who doesn’t actually pay attention to anything. So now I’m like well, shit...what do I even wear to see him? Because I HAVE to at least meet him, and I just CAN’T do that in a Star Wars cosplay. And then I realize that I’ve been putting some stuff together for Gamora ever since I saw vol 2 the first time, and I’ve got a wig and paint on the way (and this isn’t a big deal, because paint is kind of my thing, so I’m like yeah okay I can just throw this together the day of and probably things will not go wrong). But a week is not enough time for me to put together any of her canon outfits, especially because I really want time to make them nice. So I pull out a pair of black pants, a white tank, and a leather jacket from my closet and it’s like...okay, whatever, here we are, this is fine. So then I bought myself a little baby Groot with a Ravager jacket because I needed some kind of SOMETHING to carry around, and didn’t have time to make a sword or gun or anything (he was a hit by the way).

Then late last week I get the vol 2 art book and I’m super excited because of all the Iron Lotus girls in it and I’ve been super needing exactly that because I’m going to be making one over the summer so I’ve been STRUGGLING to find refs. So now I have refs...and a centerfold of a sexbot. So now I have exactly what I need Michael Rooker and Sean Gunn to sign. (Spoiler, they did. I will post it).

Now fast forward to yesterday, which was Saturday of the con. I’m in a Star Wars cosplay because folks were expecting that and it felt wrong to back out of it so soon before the con, and it was SUCH a struggle forcing myself not to go up for autographs because i HAVE TO WAIT until I’m wearing Gamora. BUT, they did a panel, which I waited an hour and a half in line for and sat just behind the VIP rows which was pretty good. And let me tell you, that might have been the best panel I have ever been to in my life, and I’ve been doing this for like 6 years now. 

Sean Gunn (who plays Kraglin and also did the onset Rocket where he wore a green morph suit and crept around on all fours, I saw a print of it at his booth, it’s absolutely incredible) was there right on time, and Michael Rooker was late, so we got like 20 minutes of what he just called “coherency” where he did the q & a by himself. Memorable points include:

The first song on Kraglin’s awesome mix would be Jukebox Hero by Foreigner. He said this immediately, with no hesitation at all, so he’s definitely been thinking about it. 

Sean’s favorite non-gotg MCU character is the Silver Surfer

He doesn’t know how much of his own whistling at the end of the movie was actually used and how much was just edited in, but he is an amateur whistler and he’s just started, so give him a break, okay??

They played around with a LOT of ideas about what kind of a character Kraglin should be. Originally he was supposed to cackle a LOT

On Gilmore Girls he was constantly afraid that he would be out of a job, because his character was never supposed to be recurring 

Michael Rooker is the world’s biggest Gilmore Girls fan

Then Rooker finally snuck in, and stood behind Sean to get everyone to cheer for Sean, and then the HOLLERING

THIS MAN IS LOUD AND I LOVE HIM 

His greeting was I’M MARY POPPINS, Y’ALL

He is, in fact, the world’s biggest Gilmore Girls fan

If he could play any other GOTG character it would be Kraglin, and again, this was said without any hesitation (Sean said he would play Yondu, because the guy who plays him SUCKS, which Rooker agreed with)

They went to the same film school

Michael Rooker says he can walk down any street anywhere and talk to ANYONE and make friends

His favorite line from GOTG 2 is “my underwears” because it isn’t underWEAR, it’s underWEARS 

He just says whatever pops into his head at the time and goes with it

He likes to believe that Yondu turned into stardust and went to another galaxy to kick some more ass 

Then there were still a lot more questions to get through, so they had to lightning round it, in which Rooker jumped up and walked down the middle aisle, put his mic in the face of whoever was next in line to ask a question, and answered YES to every single one

“How was it to work with Stallone again after--” YES

“What’s it like to--” YES

And then they went back to their tables and I didn’t see them again until Sunday (today). I spent like 45 minutes speed-painting myself, used my bf’s shirt as an umbrella in a torrential downpour, and managed to remember both my art book and Groot, and I got my ass in line to see Rooker and this was the most rewarding day of my life. I think I had to wait like 20 minutes, but I paid for a photo and an autograph, and when I pulled the book out everybody working at the table was super interested because like nobody (except Michael Rooker????) knew that it exists, so while I was up there everybody was just flipping through it and that was cool and all but my heart was going like 70 mph 

And then,,,,,,,it’s my turn, and I get a big ol HI, SWEETHEART (and for those of you who don’t know from anything else he’s done, he does sound exactly like Yondu, like that’s just default Rooker) and I’m just kind of hi :D and he said i looked good,,, and then he saw that I wanted him to sign the centerfold and he was pretty Happy with that and was like “Where should I sign?? OH, RIGHT HERE” at her entire pelvic/upper thigh region

Which is indeed where he signed it 

And he wrote YONDU WAS HERE

And then he was like “Oh yeah, i love this book, this is a good book” so we flipped through it some and it was A+ High Quality Content

ANd then he had to stand up for the photo because it was one of those deals of the security or staff guy on hand just takes one with your phone, which is a LOT cheaper than doing the official photo ops and tbh sometimes the phone ones come out a lot better, and you can actually talk to him which is neat. So he stands up, and he’s like ‘alright, c’mere baby’ and i’m like :D again 

and he put his arm around me which was A++++ 

And he rubbed my back which was like,, the BEST

And he was SO NICE

And he said sweetheart like 17 times 

And he’s just SUPER FRIENDLY and so easy to talk to so overall 10/10 will repeat this experience 

Then I was like okie doke, time for Sean Gunn, so I went over to his booth and stood in line and because EVERYBODY wants to see Yondu but less people want to see Kraglin it was a lot shorter and I could talk to him longer, so he signed the same centerfold and we went through the ‘where tf to put it’ struggle because Rooker took up the Good Spot, so now I’ve got KRAGLIN next to it, but he also hadn’t seen the book so we got to flip through it and talk. And I told him that I got it because I needed refs of the girls, and he was like wait why? and i was like well,, cosplay,, and he was SUPER interested in that so we talked about how I’m planning on making a sexbot cosplay (to go with a Yondu, that’s a long and different story but I’m Very Excited because he’s a Very Good Yondu) and then Sean asked what the girls are credited as, because on set they called them Sexbots, so uh, CONFIRMED. I told him that I’ve also been calling them sexbots, but they’re in the book as ‘lovebots’ which is just you know, the same fucking thing but family friendly

So he’s interested in my cosplay, and everything was fantastic, and also a lot of little kids really liked my Gamora, and also I got a free print out of it

And everybody loved Baby Groot

So it was a really good day

(if you want to see the centerfold and also the Me then I’ll post them)

[noxrynne]

this week i have to  get bloodwork done set up an appointment with my endocrinologist, so i can get my gender marker paperwork signed and also to explain im going to be moving (I might also go from injections back to the pills since i... can’t do the injections on my own, i get tense and shake too much and ultimately i hurt myself with no progress over the course of an hour since im a really big baby... also the angle is really hard for me to work with alone -- for ref, last time i did it on my own i was drunk and watched an action movie and kept saying to myself “if daniel craig can get shot and keep going i can give myself a shot and not die”) talk to another doctor about a separate surgical procedure my mom mentioned, which im currently unsure of, but there’s a chance i could change my mind pending on what the answers to my questions are and whether or not the recovery period would impede my ability to actually function (ie: go to school since i imagine, if i went for it, it’d likely be closer to November-ish -- i also want to know before/afters) i really should go to group on thursday i keep not going in the end because i get stomach pains and anxiety the day of but i should push through it b/c the next day i always feel really shitty i didnt go go to the pharmacy to pick up more pills remember to take these extra two pills daily (they’re vitamin pills to help regulate my hormones, was told it’s supposed to help calm the moodswings some and also would help when it comes to my ongoing laser hair procedures) possibly also go to group on Saturday (different group, same place, more open social than structured) also need to register for classes to take still, more stuck on that since i cant find the link to it and need some help finding the webpage to do it go to the gym and continue to try eating healthier, since i sort of dipped under that during my birthday (i... i really liked the cake ok) and i mean all this would be a lot easier if i could consistently wake up around 8/9AM and function, so im gonna go work out tonight and probably try to sleep a bit earlier so i can get up earlier tomorrow to do bloodwork/get my prescription from the pharmacy tonight i want to set up my endocrinology appt but my mom kinda accidentally took all the paperwork with her i need (the # to call, doctor’s name/information, my information) since it was in a stack of papers on the counter that slowly became 90% her work stuff so she probably accidentally took it all when leaving and after i get my gender identification information underway for that to be changed, im going to work alongside the name change information as well. it’s a lot easier for me to do both of these things since my mom’s a lawyer and actually knows exactly where to get the exact forms and information i need and understands all the legal information i need/the legal steps i need to take (which is a lot nicer to have than just google, though there’s also a lot of help for trans people up in Denver with this stuff, too, so even if i wasnt born lucky to have a supportive parent who already knows all the legality there’d still be a group that could help for low/no cost).  bad side is with moving out/school and everything im basically gonna be out of money. my mom offered to help me through for as long as i need, but i feel like i really should also get a job alongside school so i can pay for things on my own and become more independent (i just dont want to work with food again, and im also nervous of whether or not ill be able to find jobs as a trans woman since, in the past when i interviewed for places in my current area, id either get inappropriate questions or basically asked to leave after i gave my name) im just hoping i can do all this and not suffer breakdowns/attacks

[shelleyrobbinsus]

Pro boxing in the Philippines

Living abroad, I end up having some incredible experiences, ranging from inspiring to good to just plain old challenging. But we either win or we learn, right? In fact, experiencing things outside of my comfort zone is part of what I love about living overseas – and especially the Philippines, which is as chaotic and nonsensical as it is shrouded it musical “magical realism.”

One such experience recently was witnessing a professional boxing event in Manila, my new adopted home city, in the Philippines.

It wasn’t the usual process of just seeing that there was a boxing match, buying the ticket, and enjoying it as a spectator. This story goes back a little further, to when I stopped into the Insider Gym in a gritty neighborhood of Makati in the shadow of the Red Light district there. I wasn’t in the best of shape at the time, but I was big and could throw a punch and move a little, so the trainer enjoyed dragging me around the gym and introducing me to the others working out there. One mutual foreigner was a woman with short blond hair who was obviously jacked and training crazy hard. Canadian by descent but living in the Philippines now, she was introduced as Dead Aim Amy – a badass nickname.

Over the months, as I later moved to Manila, I touched based with Amy on Facebook out of respect for not only her boxing acumen (I love the Sweet Science even though I’m nothing special in the ring), but also her mission in life, as she was working with underprivileged girls and doing a whole lot of other positive endeavors in Manila.

So, I also followed her struggle as she tried to pursue her professional fighting career, as she fought before in South Korea where she used to live. However, fights kept getting canceled at the last minute, so after three fights were previously scheduled, getting her hopes up, she was let down and left off the cards.

But finally she got a fight that looked solid this December, and it became official after her license came through from the Philippines Pro Boxing Commission.

Of course, as a new friend of Amy and a big supporter of what she’s doing (and wanting to see some boxing!) I was eager to go see the fight.

On a rainy, soppingly-humid Saturday, I took a Grab (their version of Uber) to the far-off neighborhood of Paranaque, a place I couldn’t even pronounce it, yet alone find on a map, as it was tucked between local slums and maze-like congested barangays (their independently operating neighborhoods).

We finally found the Elorde Sports Complex where the event was taking place, a massive concrete structure surrounded by (of course) a confusing series of entrances and side streets.

I thought I was in the right place as I ascended a wide staircase to the ticket window that was bustling with Filipinos coming and going, and the roar of the huge crowd inside spilling outside.

However, I found out quickly that I was actually in the wrong place as that was the entrance for the rooster fights they were holding within, which drew that epic crowd. A nice young man helped me out by walking me around to a small side door that was the entrance to the boxing gym part of the complex, where the fights were taking place.

Inside, I was met with something far more humble than a stadium full of adoring fans. Instead, I was inside the Elorde Boxing Gym, which was a uncharacteristically spacious boxing and MMA gym that had several rings, few windows, heavy and speed bags scattered throughout, and ceilings so low that you felt like you were in a maze.

Instead of big crowds, there were only about 25 people milling about, and half of them were wearing blue shirts with bow ties – the uniform of the referees and also fight judges. In a side area, all of the fighters waited with their coaches and cornermen, getting their hands wrapped, shadow boxing loosely, and trying to stay relaxed.

And there were only a handful of spectators, a few sitting in plastic chairs lined up by the ring or just walking around. Little neighborhood kids came and went, play fighting and chasing each other, as there was no ticket office or even anyone working the door.

I took my place on the side of the ring by a speed bag and waited. And waited. And waited. The fights were supposed to begin at noon but it was about 2:30 pm when the refs and judges congregated and it looked like the fights would begin.

The energy in the place quickened, as if the promise of violence radiate out from the fighters like the sweat that now started to drip off of their chiseled physiques. The announcer, a tall guy with baggy eyes wearing a tuxedo, got on the microphone and announced the contestants for the first fight, after a back-and-forth comedy routine introducing not the Ring GIRL, but the official Ring Gay, a 20-ish Filipino guy with a goatee crammed into a cocktail dress holding a card with Round 1 on it.

Soon, the first fighters squared off – both closer to 5 foot than 6 and one taller and lean while the other was squat and muscled.

Ding ding!

View this post on Instagram

The Elorde Sports Complex in Manila – a crazy experience watching some really good boxing in the Philippines!

A post shared by AllWorld.com (@allworldonline) on Jan 14, 2019 at 10:01am PST

The fight bell almost broke our eardrums and the fighters were in action. Over the first thirty seconds, I thought I’d be disappointed, as they danced and threw a couple half-hearted jabs. But it was just to measure distance and get a rhythm for their opponents, because soon they clashed in what would be an epic fight. The muscled guy, who was a southpaw, actually caught the taller guy square on the cheek with a flurry, sending him staggering to the canvas, semi-conscious. Somehow, he managed to pull himself up on the ropes, eyes groping for some clue as to where he was as he flexed his jaw and tried to take a step on wobbly knees. He pulled it together with not a second to spare and the flight continued.

Over the four-round bout, incredibly, the taller, lean, and once-knocked down fighter actually started to put together flurries, and then dominate the tired-out and less technically savvy muscled fighter. It ended with a unanimous decision after four rounds, with the fighter who came within one second of a KO winning the fight!

Next up was my friend Dead Aim Amy’s fight, as she gave me a dap wither her boxing glove on the way by into the ring, her blond cornrows as tight as her concentration. Her opponent was a physically smaller but far more experienced pro-Filipina fighter with plenty of big league wins under her belt. Both weighing in at 108 pounds, the Filipina fighter naturally carried that weight, while Dead Aim had to drop about 20 lbs in the two weeks up to the fight (although she was always muscled and lean), including an unhealthy 8 pounds within the last 24 hours.

Ding ding! The bell rang again, and the two warriors rushed to the center of the ring, briefly connecting hands to acknowledge the battle they were about to share.

I slipped out after a few hours of boxing. It was pouring rain outside now, and I knew it would be hard getting a taxi or Grab back to my neighborhood from this dark and downtrodden part of the big city. I had seen some great boxing that day, and every single fighter showed the heart of a champion. My friend Dead Aim Amy didn’t come out with the win that day, but it takes so much courage and dedication just to get to that point, I take off my hat to her – and all of the boxers.

She’ll be back fighting pro again – maybe at the Elorde Center – and I’ll be there to cheer her on!

The post Pro boxing in the Philippines appeared first on AllWorld.com.

Via https://www.allworld.com/pro-boxing-in-the-philippines/

source http://allworldus.weebly.com/blog/pro-boxing-in-the-philippines

[christophervanhorn]

Pro boxing in the Philippines

Living abroad, I end up having some incredible experiences, ranging from inspiring to good to just plain old challenging. But we either win or we learn, right? In fact, experiencing things outside of my comfort zone is part of what I love about living overseas – and especially the Philippines, which is as chaotic and nonsensical as it is shrouded it musical “magical realism.”

One such experience recently was witnessing a professional boxing event in Manila, my new adopted home city, in the Philippines.

It wasn’t the usual process of just seeing that there was a boxing match, buying the ticket, and enjoying it as a spectator. This story goes back a little further, to when I stopped into the Insider Gym in a gritty neighborhood of Makati in the shadow of the Red Light district there. I wasn’t in the best of shape at the time, but I was big and could throw a punch and move a little, so the trainer enjoyed dragging me around the gym and introducing me to the others working out there. One mutual foreigner was a woman with short blond hair who was obviously jacked and training crazy hard. Canadian by descent but living in the Philippines now, she was introduced as Dead Aim Amy – a badass nickname.

Over the months, as I later moved to Manila, I touched based with Amy on Facebook out of respect for not only her boxing acumen (I love the Sweet Science even though I’m nothing special in the ring), but also her mission in life, as she was working with underprivileged girls and doing a whole lot of other positive endeavors in Manila.

So, I also followed her struggle as she tried to pursue her professional fighting career, as she fought before in South Korea where she used to live. However, fights kept getting canceled at the last minute, so after three fights were previously scheduled, getting her hopes up, she was let down and left off the cards.

But finally she got a fight that looked solid this December, and it became official after her license came through from the Philippines Pro Boxing Commission.

Of course, as a new friend of Amy and a big supporter of what she’s doing (and wanting to see some boxing!) I was eager to go see the fight.

On a rainy, soppingly-humid Saturday, I took a Grab (their version of Uber) to the far-off neighborhood of Paranaque, a place I couldn’t even pronounce it, yet alone find on a map, as it was tucked between local slums and maze-like congested barangays (their independently operating neighborhoods).

We finally found the Elorde Sports Complex where the event was taking place, a massive concrete structure surrounded by (of course) a confusing series of entrances and side streets.

I thought I was in the right place as I ascended a wide staircase to the ticket window that was bustling with Filipinos coming and going, and the roar of the huge crowd inside spilling outside.

However, I found out quickly that I was actually in the wrong place as that was the entrance for the rooster fights they were holding within, which drew that epic crowd. A nice young man helped me out by walking me around to a small side door that was the entrance to the boxing gym part of the complex, where the fights were taking place.

Inside, I was met with something far more humble than a stadium full of adoring fans. Instead, I was inside the Elorde Boxing Gym, which was a uncharacteristically spacious boxing and MMA gym that had several rings, few windows, heavy and speed bags scattered throughout, and ceilings so low that you felt like you were in a maze.

Instead of big crowds, there were only about 25 people milling about, and half of them were wearing blue shirts with bow ties – the uniform of the referees and also fight judges. In a side area, all of the fighters waited with their coaches and cornermen, getting their hands wrapped, shadow boxing loosely, and trying to stay relaxed.

And there were only a handful of spectators, a few sitting in plastic chairs lined up by the ring or just walking around. Little neighborhood kids came and went, play fighting and chasing each other, as there was no ticket office or even anyone working the door.

I took my place on the side of the ring by a speed bag and waited. And waited. And waited. The fights were supposed to begin at noon but it was about 2:30 pm when the refs and judges congregated and it looked like the fights would begin.

The energy in the place quickened, as if the promise of violence radiate out from the fighters like the sweat that now started to drip off of their chiseled physiques. The announcer, a tall guy with baggy eyes wearing a tuxedo, got on the microphone and announced the contestants for the first fight, after a back-and-forth comedy routine introducing not the Ring GIRL, but the official Ring Gay, a 20-ish Filipino guy with a goatee crammed into a cocktail dress holding a card with Round 1 on it.

Soon, the first fighters squared off – both closer to 5 foot than 6 and one taller and lean while the other was squat and muscled.

Ding ding!

View this post on Instagram

The Elorde Sports Complex in Manila – a crazy experience watching some really good boxing in the Philippines!

A post shared by AllWorld.com (@allworldonline) on Jan 14, 2019 at 10:01am PST

The fight bell almost broke our eardrums and the fighters were in action. Over the first thirty seconds, I thought I’d be disappointed, as they danced and threw a couple half-hearted jabs. But it was just to measure distance and get a rhythm for their opponents, because soon they clashed in what would be an epic fight. The muscled guy, who was a southpaw, actually caught the taller guy square on the cheek with a flurry, sending him staggering to the canvas, semi-conscious. Somehow, he managed to pull himself up on the ropes, eyes groping for some clue as to where he was as he flexed his jaw and tried to take a step on wobbly knees. He pulled it together with not a second to spare and the flight continued.

Over the four-round bout, incredibly, the taller, lean, and once-knocked down fighter actually started to put together flurries, and then dominate the tired-out and less technically savvy muscled fighter. It ended with a unanimous decision after four rounds, with the fighter who came within one second of a KO winning the fight!

Next up was my friend Dead Aim Amy’s fight, as she gave me a dap wither her boxing glove on the way by into the ring, her blond cornrows as tight as her concentration. Her opponent was a physically smaller but far more experienced pro-Filipina fighter with plenty of big league wins under her belt. Both weighing in at 108 pounds, the Filipina fighter naturally carried that weight, while Dead Aim had to drop about 20 lbs in the two weeks up to the fight (although she was always muscled and lean), including an unhealthy 8 pounds within the last 24 hours.

Ding ding! The bell rang again, and the two warriors rushed to the center of the ring, briefly connecting hands to acknowledge the battle they were about to share.

I slipped out after a few hours of boxing. It was pouring rain outside now, and I knew it would be hard getting a taxi or Grab back to my neighborhood from this dark and downtrodden part of the big city. I had seen some great boxing that day, and every single fighter showed the heart of a champion. My friend Dead Aim Amy didn’t come out with the win that day, but it takes so much courage and dedication just to get to that point, I take off my hat to her – and all of the boxers.

She’ll be back fighting pro again – maybe at the Elorde Center – and I’ll be there to cheer her on!

The post Pro boxing in the Philippines appeared first on AllWorld.com.

source https://www.allworld.com/pro-boxing-in-the-philippines/ source https://allworldus.tumblr.com/post/182470242587

[allworldus]

Pro boxing in the Philippines

Living abroad, I end up having some incredible experiences, ranging from inspiring to good to just plain old challenging. But we either win or we learn, right? In fact, experiencing things outside of my comfort zone is part of what I love about living overseas – and especially the Philippines, which is as chaotic and nonsensical as it is shrouded it musical “magical realism.”

One such experience recently was witnessing a professional boxing event in Manila, my new adopted home city, in the Philippines.

It wasn’t the usual process of just seeing that there was a boxing match, buying the ticket, and enjoying it as a spectator. This story goes back a little further, to when I stopped into the Insider Gym in a gritty neighborhood of Makati in the shadow of the Red Light district there. I wasn’t in the best of shape at the time, but I was big and could throw a punch and move a little, so the trainer enjoyed dragging me around the gym and introducing me to the others working out there. One mutual foreigner was a woman with short blond hair who was obviously jacked and training crazy hard. Canadian by descent but living in the Philippines now, she was introduced as Dead Aim Amy – a badass nickname.

Over the months, as I later moved to Manila, I touched based with Amy on Facebook out of respect for not only her boxing acumen (I love the Sweet Science even though I’m nothing special in the ring), but also her mission in life, as she was working with underprivileged girls and doing a whole lot of other positive endeavors in Manila.

So, I also followed her struggle as she tried to pursue her professional fighting career, as she fought before in South Korea where she used to live. However, fights kept getting canceled at the last minute, so after three fights were previously scheduled, getting her hopes up, she was let down and left off the cards.

But finally she got a fight that looked solid this December, and it became official after her license came through from the Philippines Pro Boxing Commission.

Of course, as a new friend of Amy and a big supporter of what she’s doing (and wanting to see some boxing!) I was eager to go see the fight.

On a rainy, soppingly-humid Saturday, I took a Grab (their version of Uber) to the far-off neighborhood of Paranaque, a place I couldn’t even pronounce it, yet alone find on a map, as it was tucked between local slums and maze-like congested barangays (their independently operating neighborhoods).

We finally found the Elorde Sports Complex where the event was taking place, a massive concrete structure surrounded by (of course) a confusing series of entrances and side streets.

I thought I was in the right place as I ascended a wide staircase to the ticket window that was bustling with Filipinos coming and going, and the roar of the huge crowd inside spilling outside.

However, I found out quickly that I was actually in the wrong place as that was the entrance for the rooster fights they were holding within, which drew that epic crowd. A nice young man helped me out by walking me around to a small side door that was the entrance to the boxing gym part of the complex, where the fights were taking place.

Inside, I was met with something far more humble than a stadium full of adoring fans. Instead, I was inside the Elorde Boxing Gym, which was a uncharacteristically spacious boxing and MMA gym that had several rings, few windows, heavy and speed bags scattered throughout, and ceilings so low that you felt like you were in a maze.

Instead of big crowds, there were only about 25 people milling about, and half of them were wearing blue shirts with bow ties – the uniform of the referees and also fight judges. In a side area, all of the fighters waited with their coaches and cornermen, getting their hands wrapped, shadow boxing loosely, and trying to stay relaxed.

And there were only a handful of spectators, a few sitting in plastic chairs lined up by the ring or just walking around. Little neighborhood kids came and went, play fighting and chasing each other, as there was no ticket office or even anyone working the door.

I took my place on the side of the ring by a speed bag and waited. And waited. And waited. The fights were supposed to begin at noon but it was about 2:30 pm when the refs and judges congregated and it looked like the fights would begin.

The energy in the place quickened, as if the promise of violence radiate out from the fighters like the sweat that now started to drip off of their chiseled physiques. The announcer, a tall guy with baggy eyes wearing a tuxedo, got on the microphone and announced the contestants for the first fight, after a back-and-forth comedy routine introducing not the Ring GIRL, but the official Ring Gay, a 20-ish Filipino guy with a goatee crammed into a cocktail dress holding a card with Round 1 on it.

Soon, the first fighters squared off – both closer to 5 foot than 6 and one taller and lean while the other was squat and muscled.

Ding ding!

View this post on Instagram

The Elorde Sports Complex in Manila – a crazy experience watching some really good boxing in the Philippines!

A post shared by AllWorld.com (@allworldonline) on Jan 14, 2019 at 10:01am PST

The fight bell almost broke our eardrums and the fighters were in action. Over the first thirty seconds, I thought I’d be disappointed, as they danced and threw a couple half-hearted jabs. But it was just to measure distance and get a rhythm for their opponents, because soon they clashed in what would be an epic fight. The muscled guy, who was a southpaw, actually caught the taller guy square on the cheek with a flurry, sending him staggering to the canvas, semi-conscious. Somehow, he managed to pull himself up on the ropes, eyes groping for some clue as to where he was as he flexed his jaw and tried to take a step on wobbly knees. He pulled it together with not a second to spare and the flight continued.

Over the four-round bout, incredibly, the taller, lean, and once-knocked down fighter actually started to put together flurries, and then dominate the tired-out and less technically savvy muscled fighter. It ended with a unanimous decision after four rounds, with the fighter who came within one second of a KO winning the fight!

Next up was my friend Dead Aim Amy’s fight, as she gave me a dap wither her boxing glove on the way by into the ring, her blond cornrows as tight as her concentration. Her opponent was a physically smaller but far more experienced pro-Filipina fighter with plenty of big league wins under her belt. Both weighing in at 108 pounds, the Filipina fighter naturally carried that weight, while Dead Aim had to drop about 20 lbs in the two weeks up to the fight (although she was always muscled and lean), including an unhealthy 8 pounds within the last 24 hours.

Ding ding! The bell rang again, and the two warriors rushed to the center of the ring, briefly connecting hands to acknowledge the battle they were about to share.

I slipped out after a few hours of boxing. It was pouring rain outside now, and I knew it would be hard getting a taxi or Grab back to my neighborhood from this dark and downtrodden part of the big city. I had seen some great boxing that day, and every single fighter showed the heart of a champion. My friend Dead Aim Amy didn’t come out with the win that day, but it takes so much courage and dedication just to get to that point, I take off my hat to her – and all of the boxers.

She’ll be back fighting pro again – maybe at the Elorde Center – and I’ll be there to cheer her on!

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source https://www.allworld.com/pro-boxing-in-the-philippines/

[paradoxnbstuff]

okay so i need to talk about this for a minute

because usually i can find some shit about this on youtube or a transition blog somewhere but i cant for some reason this time? and its one of those difficult things to think about that I’ve been putting off for like years. so. anyways. top surgery stuff.

so first of all I have this habit of mine that’s taken a while and lot of shit to notice. it was probably a left over from growing up with my abusive dad and trying to survive that. but basically I’m very good at putting something aside in my head and so thoroughly convincing myself it’s not something that’s bugging me (subconsciously) that when it comes time to actually think about it I legitimately cannot tell how I feel about it. I’m talking about sitting and thinking about it for hours, plus research, and actively taking stock of my reactions as they happen to try to just. logically deduce what’s actually going on in my brain based on physical symptoms of emotional reactions I can’t actually feel. and obviously anyone can see how that would be incredibly useful in a situation like my parents where I had no choice in the matter for 18 years, and i could either constantly wallow in misery and agony and hurt and stress and confusion and terror at just living in my house 24/7, or i could section it off. and create like. a new baseline for myself. ex my baseline became that state and then went up or down based on negative or ‘positive’ things that happened from that baseline. looking at it objectively it was all obviously still horrible and stressful and traumatizing but i wouldn’t have been able to get through it if I was consciously aware of that the whole time. So that’s where that developed.

But weird backstory aside this has carried over to certain things in my life on my own since I moved out too. It’s why it took me so long to figure out gender shit and why I still haven’t figured out my sexuality even though I don’t lack the vocabulary or even really experience to. it’s affected my relationships with people, but I’ve been practically religious about trying to make sure I identify it when it happens and dedicating a lot of time and thought to unraveling whatever’s going on and stopping it, because fuck that I refuse to let it mess with the people I care about. There’s certain markers but it’s not like most things where you experience negative emotions and there’s a natural pathway from point a to point b. the markers are me having to stop and look at the past few months or longer and pick out patterns of times when i acted illogically in similar way, and cross ref it to see if it came with a feeling of abstractness where i couldn’t identify what emotions i was feeling. but like. its like trying to identify nothing. anger or happiness or w/e is easy like hey im feeling that but trying to notice when you’re feeling nothing or something unquantifiable? much fucking harder. and the trigger for me to start wondering if something is going on is when it starts to impact my quality of life negatively in some way. so. a really fucking stupidly difficult logical approach to untangle some very complicated emotions. which is sadly necessary.

so that’s the method I use to realize when this is happening. hasn’t really gotten any easier but i can do it i guess. and this is what’s happening now with me and top surgery? it happened with the decision to start testosterone, (’but im happy with how i look and sound!’ god no ur not u fucking disaster ur brain just didn’t want you to be miserable 24/7 and tricked you into thinking u were) and i think it’s the same thing with this. but i don’t. know??? for sure???? so I’m having to figure out this incredibly difficult and emotional decision with only purely factual patterns to go on and my emotions, which im not sure are fake or not, plaguing me every step of the way. so im just gonna fucking write em down and hope it helps.

fact 1: i never wear a bra. ever. it’s always either a binder or binder-adjacent like a sports bra. it’s been like that for 3 ish years now and it’s not stopping any time soon. i’m violently uncomfortable wearing a bra. 

fact 2: i dont like touching my chest or nipples. (tmi ish warning w/e) when I’m having sexual relations with another person im again, violently uncomfortable with the other person touching my chest. i will repeatedly redirect or say no if they start to with absolutely no doubt about it.

fact 3: i don’t like wearing tight clothing if i can’t bind. when I go to the gym and work out I wear a sports bra and wearing tshirts that show that fuckin. again feel nearly ill.

fact 4: i don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror? like. I have/had a lot of dysphoria about my body, specifically my hips and the kinda hourglass dip in between ribs and hips and the way e gives fat distribution around the upper hips around the waist and thighs and butt. that’s mostly gone now due to a combination of T and working out, but I still don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror. that’s possibly because I’m literally like 3/4 of an A cup at max but. yknow. this is also one of those things that is COMPLETELY based on feelings. and it feels suspiciously like when I’m trying to gauge my reaction and get ‘yeah I feel neutral about this actually’ but is really just very skillful repression. and I can’t tell. so. that’s great. it is a subjective fact, as opposed to the previous 3. 

fact 5: if i stretch my arms up it looks like i have a flat chest (bc i i have like no boobs to begin with) and the reaction I get to that is a definite. reaction. it’s an adrenaline based one. but another issue i’m working on is i can’t tell the difference between happy excited adrenaline and panic adrenaline and therefore when i feel happy excited about something i start fear panicking instead and it sucks but yknow. so I get an adrenaline thrill. that I can’t identify as fear or excitement. so that’s. there? fuck

fact 6: i’m not male. I figured that out a long time ago but it’s become important again recently that I am n o t a trans man. I’m solidly nonbinary. T was and is the right decision for me. So is building muscle. So is my decision now to grow out my hair again. So is my clothing that is decidedly not masculine fairly often and my makeup (that can be either to help with the masc or just to make me feel hot, or feminine sometimes). But this is something that’s....like. It would make me look a lot more masculine. like a lot. like it would be looking in the mirror and seeing that (without the big scars you see a lot underneath, i wouldn’t have that) and I don’t know if that’s something I want. but at the same time, that’s what I want to look like in clothes. I don’t fucking know.

fact 7: i know there’s probably some underlying fear in there of like societally ingrained disgust for non-cis bodies. and I know for a fact I’m attractive as a feminine person. and doing this means that I’m committing myself to a permanent non-cis state. I’m in no way saying there’s anything actually wrong with that, I’m saying that I know there’s things in the way I’ve been raised that inherently shy away from that still. It’s not something I want and it’s something I have to deal with but it probably is playing a part in my fear in this.

fact 8: currently, my main reason for tentatively starting the application process is my health. I love being active and healthy and exercising and I know that binding long term hurts your ribs and lungs, and I also know that I’m not going to stop binding any time soon if I don’t have top surgery. And getting it just for health reasons is a perfectly valid reason to do it. And if I am actually neutral about my chest and not just tricking myself? I’m totally happy with this being the deciding factor.  

anyways. yeah. the problem with dismantling a mental block you’ve set up for yourself is it involves actively unlocking self hatred and pain that you can’t put back in the box once you’ve opened it until it’s dealt with. so there isn’t a ton of incentive to. ngl it didn’t happen with testosterone fully until after I’d been on it for a few months and realized how fucking desperately I needed this to be happening. but I don’t think that’s how I want it to go with top surgery. I want to know before I go through with it what I’m feeling and what I want. and it is. VERY fucking difficult. god. yeah. anyways. that’s where I’m at. thanks for coming to my ted talk.