#wasn’t going to post this lawl but. i changed my mind!

[starspilli]

old donna doodle 🌀

[friskyjackalope]

Dragonheart :: Buildertopia Project Journal 2

Well well well…here we are again. I actually remembered to do an update…it’s not a HUGE one (I hop between projects, and also did all the tablet targets between last post and this one.), but it’s still something, so…GOOD JOB, ME! *butt pats*

First up, is the ‘Hub’ which is pretty much my favorite thing here. I love the blank white blocks. Works well for minimalist/modern, and since I’m just building for function and not form for this, blank blocks are perfect, and white isn’t eye bleeding.

I kinda have a builder boner for storage systems. Like, can we all just talk about how freeing it is to have an empty inventory and go to an explorer shore—and it doesn’t matter if you take your golem and level the place—you have room for 40bajillion stacks of swampy soil. >.>

Like, it’s basement wetting, alright?

…I play this game too much.

ANYWAY, if you want to know more about how I broke down this Hub and what I put in it, leave me a note—if not, no big.

Keep reading to see what I’ve been up to!

The Warehouse District

This is the over arching shot of both finished buildings, the groundcover, and some decorating. I still have a few more buildings to add, but the town’s lively hood is done! Fucking nuts that these two relatively large structures made it to 100% so fast, but thanks to years of Minecraft training giving me Storage ideas I don’t mind the trek to grab different decorations.

On that note, anyone else habitually steal the crates/barrels on the docks at every Explorer’s Shore? No? Just me? Ok, moving on

Wood Mill

So, this was the second building I worked on after the Stone Mill. I think that I like this one a little less, too…mainly because all the little things that make this build cool, I figured out doing the Stone Mill. There’s a small toilet under the stairs, and if you go to the second floor (how I got the inside shot), it’s got a balcony over the work area.

Not sure what I’ll name it, just yet, but the devil’s in the details for this one.

Draven Dragonheart’s Stone Mill (DD’s)

This was the hard one. I wasn’t sure starting out what materials to use…I don’t especially enjoy the concrete block, but for a basic structure for a budding town, it would have been perfect, and I cannon this building is the oldest in Dragonheart.

I know I keep mentioning Minecraft, but…dammit—I learned so many good concepts there, that are amazing for DQB2! Like using depth in your builds…it’s a lot easier to do in DQB2 because you’re not JUST dealing with square blocks and imagination. You have actual items, and it’s…oof.

There’s another builder boner.

The inside shot for this building is my favorite out of all of the inside screenshots. The piles of earth and rocks, the furnaces in the back and the grass. it looks worn down, and well worked.

BIG CHUNGUS aka The Technicolor Dream Cave

Yup…built the mountain. Another mountain. (Friendship mountain in my friend’s town is still in progress, I digress.) Again, it’s hollow, but I’m working on filling it with pathways and fishing holes for the elders.

Most of the cave was made using colored chalk, and then I used the trowel to replace with Umber. Now…I’m all for the ease of this method, but this was before I got the buildnoculars, and I had to remove the chalk that didn’t get changed one by one after nerd poleing up to the roof….which you can see from the inside shot, is kinda high. >.>

Next mountain I build is getting made once—not three freaking times.

((Also, for those of you who watch streams on Twitch—I do stream my building on occasion. Now I’m not saying ‘lawl subscribe’ because I’m trying to “get rich”. I don’t even have a schedule on there. I literally only stream when I feel like it.

I just want people to talk to in chat while I play, because as you can tell, 695 words in, I kinda love this game!

If not, no pressure, I’ll still update here! ))

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Estonia to Eurovision with a lowkey tribute to Avicii soundwise I guess

I’m not one of those people to go all their way out to overdefend Eesti Laul as “THE most diverse NF to ever exist songwise”, but even I was disappointed in this sudden rush of radiofriendly pop music that I would rather refuse to describe if I had to endure any of them ever again all at once this year. Remember - Netta won with being CRAZY! Why can’t Estonia be CRAZY even more! Was this secretly a bigger demand from the new producers or so that Estonia would need to out-radiofriendly the Latvians whose goal actually was to find a good radiofriendly song that’s enough for qualification????

Also, I kind of wanted to watch Eesti Laul, but I haven’t really settled with it, as I didn’t have enough patience to watch it one time it wasn’t on Saturday (!!). Even with Eesti Laul usually taking the live tweets from foreign fans into account and displaying some of them on the national Estonian television for good measure. And often showcasing their weirdness through crude animations every so often. But I already saw my Twitter timeline being full of that stuff, and for that I’m happy.

I did have some favourites despite being tired of all this pop stuff, and one of them was the ever-so-gender-ambiguous INGER (I say so cuz I thought it was a guy, turns out it’s a she, yeah), and I kind of wanted to see her win after the lowkey last minute interest towards her? But the televote didn’t seem to want any of it during the final public say, and didn’t even want Kerli (not the Spirit Animal Kerli) through despite of her being “hot” (are we now choosing ESC NF winners based on their looks??? tighten up ffs). Instead the final’s televote thought it’d be a good idea to fuck up the international jury’s expectations by putting through an act that got 2(!!!!!) finalised points from them jurors overall and making it win the superfinal. That televote 12 the act got beforehand was just enough for the guy to last-minute qualify over another act of 14 overall points, and who knows, maybe if it wasn’t for that 12, the winner would’ve been someone else. But it didn’t and we have a last minute qualifier victory because televote superfinal is a thing.

And in the literal sense of the way Estonian minds thought their victor that was unfairly treated by the juries was a Swedish singer Victor Crone and his song “Storm”, which was written by the one and only Stig Rastafarian~ err I mean Rästa. Stig is one mythical human creature that never rests a minute without really wanting to appear in the Estonian delegation somewhere every year - whether as all by himself, with someone else, as a songwriter for someone else, or even as part of a band (remember Traffic, anyone? Now that I think of it, the whole band looks like a puppet-act just for Stig to get to Eurovision and the other band members didn’t even want any of it in the first place). Just exactly what is Stig’s aim here? To "take it back to Tallinn”? To meet new people in Europe because he’s too lazy to travel otherwise? To boast about the many Estonian entries he contributed to? Beats me.

That and Victor Crone being Swedish, therefore a man more suited to Melodifestivalen (where he actually once participated in) and only on Eesti Laul because Stig really wanted to save his voice for this one and tag some randomer along with him just for the sake of yearly input to Eesti Laul. Well, at least Victor is historically joining Sahlene and Sandra Oxenryd as “a Swede represending Estonia for a year because what do we know for the Estonians that weren’t chosen instead”. Let’s check his song out.

First and foremost, as the title obviously states, the song reminds me of the late Avicii’s music style, especially around 2012-2013, when he was just starting to get bigger post-”Levels”-release. Just with a bit more singing surrounding the song because... well, maybe to fill up the song some more in order to not look awkward on stage during an instrumental part of the drop being as long as would be one you hear on the radio.

Then he has this easy-listening generic male radio voice that the audiences can not necessarily reasonate with, but it’s memorable, together with the chorus, whose purpose is to be memorable - you don’t need no message that’s special, you just need a melody to hum in your head for the next few weeks, and that’s basically what Stig was able to achieve with this little ditty. Then there’s the amazingly easy song structure: verse - chorus - verse - (extended) chorus - bridge - chorus (+ song ending). That’s a structure that works on basic songs to make them more user-consumption-friendly and not too overbearingly dragged out. And I enjoy it, just like I did “Light Me Up” last year, which was also sung by a mediocre-live-vocalist-Swede that could have easily ended up 6th in Melodifestivalen edition with such song, sadly. I do acknowledge that it’s basic, but I enjoy it.

The problem the Eurofandom finds with this song is that it’s too basic of a song from Eesti, Victor’s proven himself to be a dull live singer, and the chorus rhymes “like this” with “like this”, and all the self-rhymes are automatically shite. And it’s fine if a song I like has its flaws, but it automatically worries me that its live potential is automatically down the drain because of the singer’s lack of vocal compassion or strenght. That begs the question, why choosing THAT kind of song if it’s totally going to underperform live in Eurovision if the singer wasn’t sick in the NF at the time???

...oh I get it now, you Estonians must have thought Stig deserves another year in the Estonian greenroom. Or you found Victor hot. Or you find it great that a song about a storm actually was originally staged to look like Victor’s in a storm. At least for the televiewers’ eye. Because all that they see in the real arenas is the singers’ backs if they don’t turn around in time.

With visuals like these, why even need a music video! (except that there already is one, look at the beginning of the review)

All in all, all condiments are there: just the sugar, spice and everything nice there’s needed for a song like this to break a fandom like this. You can practically smell the Hesburger grease from this song. I don’t care if that’s a bad thing - if you like the song, that’s fine, just shut up and enjoy... but if you dislike it, welp, there’s no way I can change your mind then.

And a random backing singer. Not that she’s helpful as the one for Ott Lepland or anything, she just strikes like thunder and leaves no lasting impact whatsoever.

Greta Salóme’s imaginary cousin, is that you????

Now excuse me while I contradict and repeat myself some more in the next few paragraphs:

Approval factor: As you might have seen me shading Elina a lot last year, I can safely say that at last I’m spared from her vocal practice entrapped in a porcelain-and-silk dressing!!! I like “Storm” myself so I’ll sheepishly approve the hell out of it, lolol. :-)

Follow-up factor: I would be lying if I didn’t say that after a risky-ish way to get all out opera and then coming back to a safe song after doing well with that opera number weren’t a complete nosedive into an empty pool. Subjectively it flows way better for me, but objectively, and the same could be, once again, said for Eesti Lawl [sic] 2019, it is rather interesting of a letdown? But hey, maybe it was finally time for the Estonians to chillax a bit and cave in to send an Estonian-Swedish pop number after the opera stuff, after the 80s synthpop stuff, after the smooth and slightly orchestrated and a little bluesy number, and heart-grabbing ballads... just so they could keep up their ‘variety’ in case Hungary runs out of ideas and starts sending cop-outs of themselves. They already did it with rehashing one artist and one lyrical idea already this year (the catch is that the father’s alive!), honestly. And oddly enough, they have yet to send something a little more modern/electro-influenced that appeals to the common crowd... (”Running” may not count because not everyone can relate, whereas there are more cases of broken-off love (as if in the other half being a heartbreaker or the first half missing the other half so much that they feel “incomplete” than abusive fathers. Just what I think there is? If I’m wrong I obviously expect to be @’ed in the replies section lol) For this conclusion though I’ll say that my opinion says it’s a ‘’’decent’’’ follow up, but for Eurofans, it’s not very much so of such, idk.

Qualification factor: you may think it’s dead while going to perform in between the more badass entries AND mediocre live vocals, but it won’t at least be the worst Stig entry to ever place - around 14th in the semi at the very worst and maybe in the lower half of top 10 at very best imo. Nothing more, nothing less.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

I actually barely even bother with Eesti Laul since they don’t accept my Twitter comments live on their television anyways. Say, were there any Twitter comments live on their television this year? No one on Twitter boasted about it if they saw theirs from what I’ve seen, but what I’ve definitely found from the eager Eesti Laul watchers were some casual and usual Estonian oddities thrown on the broadcast, such as:

• The soft and warm but also random and deranged yearly transitional postcard animations (that were refered to as “crude” earlier in this review), which I commonly know now as “my last two braincells”. Even if the graphical theme itself of this year’s Ee-Lawl were oddly-shaped birds coming out in forms of letters, they didn’t really show up much in the broadcast I suppose, and the best fuckery with my mind this year definitely happened when I saw some of THOSE pop up on my Twitter timeline:

We now return to your regularly scheduled news programm~ wait why are you saying that the scheduled programme should be Eesti Laul

• Even if the most acts themselves weren’t that kooky musically, they were obviously interesting performance-wise. We were greeted with an impulsively quirky crazy cat lady Kaia Tamm who bemoaned the absence of the fluffy creatures in German somehow (you know Germany’s a terrible track-record keeper when the only song in German this year featured on Estonia and the only German in Eurovision this year was gonna be sung by an Ukrainian entrant if she was alowed to), as if a song in full Italian from last year wasn’t enough. Not only did she dress up as Alice in Wonderland with kitty ears, but her costumed dancers were entertaining, the violinist was FIRE and a cute large teddy bear looked cute on stage. Not to mention, someone have rightfully noticed that some costumed felines in the audience looked like as if they were to kill someone:

• Lumevärv too is an interesting thing. Never forgetting Lumevärv. This Inga woman, the fiery orangehead she was, used her 3 minutes on stage the best possible way with dancing with her back turned on at the audience and only looking at the camera, while millions of lights (which is sadly not what the songtitle "Milline päev" means) shone in the audience, creating an amazing mood.

• Hey everyone, the 10 years challenge is back! This time it’s with the violin virtuousess(???) Sandra Nurmsalu, the lead of Urban Symphony, who deserved much more than a 3rd place. Unfortunately the Estonians did not bring her back to get her desired revenge, which meant that they thought that they woodn’t need no magic tale fairy that’d grant them tree wishes and let her magic wand our out the wondrous [sic] sawdust. I’m already seeing myself out for how terrible this sounded. And it’s a bit saddening about this not doing as well as some hoped, considering she would have brough out the new and the better Jacques Houdek teas:

• Other favourite act of mine from this year, besides the aforementioned “ever-so-gender-ambiguous-looking INGER” with her indie-folk jingle “Coming Home”, was the charming disco-haired Sissi Nylia Benita with a wholesomely radio bop “Strong”, and they both actually looked like they stood a chance in the superfinal vote-up now that the actual Eesti Laul fan favourites, pretty cute pop boys like piano-indie-pop-driven Stefan and electro-pop-and-Kirkorov-driven Uku Suviste, were not receiving enough support by the juries I guess??? I’ll show a video to INGER if anything and link you all to the rest so you could judge these young and beautiful souls to yourselves in a way!

• Other note-worthy acts include another song about the notorious instrument horsefly in Ee-Lawl’s history that stood even less chance than “Parmupillihullus” but is still fun regardless, and the united forces of Tanja (EE 2014) and Birgit (EE 2013) trying to compose a bigband talk show anthem and dedicating the lyrics for them being ladies with their high heels out on. And honestly, that’s all I’m gonna talk of acts-wise because most other songs were THAT of a radiofriendly-radio-filler that they don’t warrant anything else exciting for me to say.

• No but for real, the voting to the superfinal was completely off-rails. Instead of Victor, juries were there to support that Kerli woman that wasn’t from 2017 (and her soft acoustic song too), as well as Sissi and INGER (but you already know that because I barely read my write-ups before I finish them, hence lots of redundancy). At least that’s all to my knowledge. But everything definitely changed when the televote attacked! And turned the top 3 all male, lol. This voting was rather random simply because the juries didn’t really love Victor, but it definitely took the televote to convince them that “lol Victor is definitely worth of Eurovision!!! screw that he’s non-Estonian!!!” (the difference is that Victor doesn’t have a big social media following unlike Bilal and didn’t win an obnoxiously people-powered talent show unlike USNK from A Dal 2018 - it’s just that he’s more backed by Stig Rästa, and Stig is love, Stig is life.) Honestly, I am all up for unpredictable voting, but if it looks unpleasant to me, then I feel like tuning out.

We’re over with this write-up, thank-fuck-fully, so that you won’t need to hear me lamenting how supposedly cheap “Storm” is ever again. But before that I will have to leave you with some Eurovision 2019 facts coming on: Estonian delegation can be lucky for once - instead of having had to panic for spending an egregious amount of money for a staging detail, this year they don’t have to worry, as the organizers were so shook by Victor’s stormy sky effect, they offered to pay for it themselves!!! Crazy, huh??? (reported for favouritism)

And now I’m done. And we’re moving on to another review and I end up wishing Victor Crone the every best of luck out there. Storm out with a good time well spent! (Whatever that might mean.)

[erinhime83]

To go along with the fifteenth anniversary of Mirror Image, I figured I’d go ahead and post up some designs I’ve basically been sitting on for a few years, because I’m trash like that.  Keep in mind that these designs are basically for a version of the story that’s not a collab, so they’re kinda how I would design them now. Well, obviously, since I was the one who designed them.  ^^;

This version of MI goes back to the roots of the story, where they’re all in England for various reasons when they get summoned, and just sort of flail around for a bit, not having a clue wtf is going on.

Jennifer Hannisen/Shizuka and Ryu: Considering this is my character, not much has changed about her.  Every time, I keep trying to give her more traditional clothes, just to go back to something like this.  I was going to give her those weird thigh highs she originally had, but…the skirt is a little too long for that, and the capris make a little more sense.

Jennifer is about to start her senior year in high school, and her parents decided to take her on a trip overseas to celebrate.  She’s a bit of a dreamer, and wishes something exciting would happen just once in her life.  She embraces the summoning just a bit more than everyone else before she realizes that this isn’t the sort of adventure she was looking for.

Ryu is her Guide, and he’s a Dragon Tamer, but just barely.  His dragon is the tiniest to ever be tamed, and the rest of the Tamers don’t think too highly of him.  Except they have to respect him because he’s the Sumikian Guide.  He’s sort of out to prove himself, because he’s been looked down upon his entire life, even after it was discovered he is the Guide.  He and Jennifer get along really well, because they have similar personalities.

Lance MacFarlane/Sethos and Kiya:  Lance’s background a changed a lot, but I think it’ll make sense once I explain it.  Lance is from Scotland, but moved to the US when he was about fourteen due to his father’s job.  He attended the same high school as Jennifer, and actually befriended her to a degree. She’s about the only girl he was interested in dating there, but because he absolutely hated the entire move and knew he was going to be going back home the moment he could, he didn’t want to really attach himself to the place.  She’s the only person he friended on social media, and he sort of regrets not pursuing her. 

He’s a bit of a delinquent, although he’s basically the straight man in his group of friends.  He doesn’t have any real aspirations at the moment, since he’s basically catching back up on his old life for the time being. The reason he was in Stonehenge was for the lawl of it, honestly.  Also, I didn’t really change his design too much, because I really like it a lot.

Kiya is his Guide, and she’s an instructor for the royal family of Azibo.  Most people don’t take the fact that she teaches the princes swordfighting because she’s a woman, but she ignores most of the criticism about it. She’s the motherly one out of all of them, taking it upon herself to take care of these ‘children’ from another world who are just really confused about everything.

Elena Guerrero/Evangelia and Antigonus: Elena is Argentine/Canadian, and out of all of the Chosen, she’s the most popular. But, she is actually just as introverted at the other Chosen; she just happens to benefit from the introversion that allows her to enjoy social gatherings for a short period before she has to recharge again.  She’s the most freaked out about what’s going on, refusing to believe any of it at first and only wanting to go home.  She’s in England because of her grandmother who recently moved in with them who has an obsession with Eva Perón.

Her design isn’t anything like any of her other designs, but rather something I tend to do with my Greek/Roman inspired characters.  But I really like it!  But then again, I guess that would make sense, wouldn’t it?  I did keep her hair from one of the old designs, so I guess that’s something, right?  I don’t have a real handle on her character other than the fact that Evangelia and Shizuka end up getting rather close despite the differences in personalities.

Antigonus is a bit of a rebel as far as the Guide as concerned, although he himself isn’t a rebel. Guides are always the around the same age as their Chosen, but the current Guide died before the Chose crossed over.  Antigonus was a former Guide before the new generation took over, and he took the position temporarily while they hunted for the new Guide.  Except Evangelia showed up before they found him. So Antigonus, despite being old enough to be their grandfather, is forced onto this adventure.  He was the former Emperor of Caelestis, having given up the position to his son so he could enjoy his later years.  Melohdia is a peaceful country, so most rulers just give up their thrones in their old age.

Desiree Dahlquist/Freyja and Nannin:  Desiree is the one I have the least handle on, but that seems to always be the case.  All I know is that she’s a photographer, she’s from New Zealand, and that she’s the oldest of the Chosen at twenty-three.  Oh, and that she’s most definitely bi, although I’m not sure who she ends up with, honestly. 

I do really like her civilian design, but I also really like the edgy undercut look, so there’s that. I love the idea of her having dyed her hair teal at one point, but it’s growing out now.  And the only reason I changed her sleeves like I did was just because her old sleeves, while looked cool, was a pain to actually ink.  >.<  (And yes, she does still have the feathers on her circlet and her boots, I was just too lazy to put them in.)

Nannin…okay, Nannin is the true rebel of the Guides. See, one of the rules of the Guides is that they’re always the opposite gender of their Chosen.  However, Baldurnan in the time since the last Chosen came to Melohdia, became excessively matriarchal, and they refused to accept a male in such a prestigious position. Nannin, for her part, didn’t really want to take over for the guy, but she was sort of forced to.  The others really don’t have any idea – the other Guides are sort of confused at her presence among them, but don’t really say anything – until they come to Baldurnan and accidentally meet the guy. 

Freyja is given a choice at that point, and she ends up deciding to keep Nannin as her Guide, since they’ve been through a lot at that point, and formed a bond.  It also turns out that the original Guide isn’t exactly the best sort of person, and they’re left wondering if maybe this was supposed to happen.  But that’s one reason why Nannin has colored hair while the others don’t – she wasn’t born a Guide.  She’s actually got the most gentle personality of the Valkyrie, which is the governing body in Baldurnan, but she’s a perfectly capable warrior.

Dimitri Kaminski/Drustan and Raelin:  Dimitri is the only truly foreign one of the Chosen, being Russian whose studying in England.  He’s a wanna-be novelist, and his divining powers sort of leaked into our world s he’s been constantly writing about Melohdia.  Most of his stories are about Chosen from the past, so he has the most knowledge about what’s going on.  At first, he thinks he’s accidentally taken himself into the world of his novel before he realizes what’s going on.

As Drustan, he’s the soothsayer of the group, although his powers are sporadic at best, and only really through dreams.  His combat skills are about on par with Frejya’s, though, so it’s not like he’s completely useless.  He’s biggest boon, though, is just knowing shit that the others don’t, and more or less helping them understand what’s going on.

Raelin is a princess of sorts, being the daughter of the chief of the biggest tribe in Frelic. She’s definitely rough around the edges, and tends to clash with the other Guides because she wants to rush off into battle all the time without thinking.  She’s pretty much spent her whole life trying to prove herself, since she’s one of many children her father had and is forced to compete with them to succession.  She might not want to be the next chief, but she hates people looking down on her because their perceive her to be weak.

I suppose I should explain the whole colored hair thing.  See, I had this random idea to give Shizuka pink hair, just for the fun of it, and got to thinking how it would be neat to make their hair our favorite color (with Drustan having red hair because his color is red).  And once I started doing it, I liked it.  I wanted to make all of them have colored hair, but I couldn’t think of what color hair the Guides should have, save Nannin, so just stuck them with natural hair and colored eyes.  Basically, the people of Melohdia aren’t really restricted like regular humans are, so they tend to have anime features.

The difference in skin tone comes from the idea that they actually have different bodies in Melohdia. I played around with making this a straight isekai, but considering there are parts where they go back, I couldn’t quite do it that way that they’re different people.  It’s a bit more complicate then their souls being transferred, because their bodies don’t exist on Earth when they’re in Melohdia, but I figure I can think about that later. ;P

It’s always fun to think about this story, and sometimes I do wonder if I should just…go ahead and tackle it someday, because it is rather interesting, even if we never go anywhere with it.  But I think I’m hesitant to do so because I feel it’s not really my story to do that to.  But still, its fun to go back every now and then, and I am shocked it’s been fifteen years now!  Feels like not that long ago and ages ago at the same time. :D