#maybe in another 4 years I'll make something else and post it

[bestill-mygayheart]

[valevntine]

spotting ai generated art:

hi everybody! following @metaphoricgibberish's post on how to recognise ai generated fanfics, here's how to spot ai generated drawings. there's been an enormous amount of those lately in the pedro fandom. they're mostly on instagram, but a few here on tumblr as well.

what i've been seeing a lot is ai generated "watercolour portraits". i acknowledge that for professional artists ai might be easy to recognise, but maybe for some it isn't. i'll gladly give you some examples and guide you. today's victim will be this picture of pedro:

now, for the purpose of this post, i had to ask chatgpt to create a few images. please avoid doing so if you can, every prompt put in chatgpt is like wasting a whole bottle of water, just in case you don't know.

here's what comes out when you ask "can you make a watercolour portrait out of this image?". anything you may see in this style is ai generated. let's try the same picture but with a different prompt, making it a pencil portrait:

again, anything you may see like this is ai. also, they're just weird. it looks like pedro but it's some uncanny version of him. i'm not saying my drawings look 100% like him all the time, but these are just oddly soulless, i don't know how else to explain it.

chatgpt is also able to create drawings out of nothing. i tried asking again:

now who is this. 😭 once more: it's pedro but it isn't? i simply typed in "make a pedro pascal pencil portrait", but i could ask anything. i could put in whatever i like and whatever my mind comes up with, which can easily turn dangerous if it goes into the wrong hands.

let's try with more. as an example i'm taking this image, which comes from an IG account that is now deleted after the author got called out - and that's the only reason i'm using it! do we think it's ai generated?

it is, 100%. first of all, like i said before, his features look off. another giveaway is the fact that the author of this claimed it to be an artwork done in coloured pencils. i can assure you that no coloured pencil works like that. so, even if someone is telling you what they used, how they used it, how long it took, etc. it doesn't give you the guarantee that it's not ai! in fact, it just makes it worse! you're a hypocrite! also, there's this consistent, almost cloudy pattern on the drawing that is *not* the texture of the paper, but it's ai that is trying to replicate it.

what are other easy ways to spot ai generated "drawings"? the thing is, ai usually gets confused. some lines look weird, some elements might not make sense. you just have to zoom in onto the image. i'll use one of the portraits from before + another image i found on the internet as examples:

pedro's ear looks weird. the lines around him on the background also are oddly drawn, there's no direction to them, they seem to be thrown there haphazardly. his shoulders also aren't drawn clearly, in a way only artificial intelligence does. the second picture is a promo poster taken from a comic fair. look for the details: the hand is just wrong, and the butterflies are all oddly shaped. hands and backgrounds are almost always something that ai will not process clearly, so look out for those.

if you have any doubts, there's this website that spots ai images and seems pretty reliable. i tried putting in one of the ai generated pictures i created and an actual drawing i did myself:

if you're ever in doubt that what you're seeing is ai or not, i guess you can try and put it there, or you can even ask me, i'll gladly help. i don't want to sound cocky or pretentious but hey, i did attend art school for 4 years and have been drawing by myself for much longer, so i guess spotting an actual drawing from one that isn't is the least i can do.

obviously chatgpt is not the only tool you can use, there's maaaaany of them. i tried looking around for others for the sole purpose of making you see them and understand how generative ai works, but some of those apps are behind a paywall - which honestly is absurd. you're *paying* to fool people, basically.

and that's what bothers me the most. beyond the environmental issues, the ethical issues and whatnot - the lying. you want to use ai? okay, fine, but you're not even able to admit it, because you perfectly know that what you're doing is wrong. what i've been seeing from people that use ai, especially in this fandom, is that they're trying everything to prove how they're not using it. more often than not, they're just shooting themselves in the foot. remember, showing process does not guarantee something is not ai, actually every time i see someone posting it, there's always something that gives them away. pasting an image onto a sketchbook does not guarantee it is not ai. an author showing themselves drawing does not guarantee it is not ai.

i think that the reason ai "art" is running so rampant in this fandom is because pedro is a great fan of fanarts - he reposts them continuously. of course everyone would like to get noticed - i'd die if it happened to me.

but to rely on them so blatantly, and even lie... how disgusting and disrespectful to all those who are actually putting in the work. it's hours upon hours of our time, years of practice on our backs. and to claim "this took me 12 hours!" when no, it took you seconds because you just tippy tapped your fingers on your keyboard and waited for whatever app you used to spit the image out - shut up, just shut up. you're just so afraid of trying and failing (when it's just what learning is), that you'd rather settle for this ugly excuse instead. i swear, there's nothing i despise more, and i'm so incredibly close to calling people out for it because it's getting ridiculous.

i expressed myself more here - there's also a few links on the ethical and environmental issues regarding ai, and how generative ai steals from artists.

thank you for taking your time to read this.

[timeslipcamp]

obligatory theory about the kyklos and what i think is happening.

literally every time i finish an episode i go and jot notes down in my lil mental notebook of theories and laugh like yuri in his lab

spoilers through ep 15

so i've seen this idea tossed out but no one really went in depth on why they thought it so i'm going to list off MY reasons why i thought this is what's happening.

fair warning: this is going to be long, i've got about five million thoughts on this and it's only going to get worse as more episodes get released. get comfy and grab a snack

i think mc and the ghouls are trapped in a time loop

it's a trope that when handled well can be really really cool, and with how many moving parts and ghouls there are to distract from what's happening, it's super plausible. the only reason i'm hesitant to say this is 100% what i think it is is because it's still only episode 16 and we know next to nothing about the clash and anything that happened last year. plus the game's only been out for a year, we've barely scratched the surface of the plot.

that being said, we're getting about 3-4 episodes per every couple months, which means by like episode 20-24 we'll be coming up on a year since mc was cursed. maybe. i'm bad at math. (EDIT: someone else did the math and it will probably be closer to 40 that we hit the year mark lmao) is the story going to be over then? i don't think so. i think the following chapters would follow us through the time loop as we finally work to solve it

if i had to guess, this is how i think the general timeline goes: mc, despite the ghouls best efforts and someones sacrificial jump into flames from a balcony, turns into the kyklos. to stop the teachers/school-aligned ghouls from killing her, someone sends her away--and accidentally sends her back in time instead. taiga, however, has been told by mc that if she were to turn, kill her before she hurts anyone. taiga goes back with her to stop her.

crazy concept: the one eyed sleeping beauty murder was the trigger event. the kyklos has one large eye. this part is still muddy given that we literally don't know shit about any of this, but i think it wasn't a one eyed beauty that was killed, i think the one eyed beauty killed someone while those other ghouls happened to be present. we got the five suspects based on them either being in the wrong place at the wrong time or by reputation (a la alan and jiro.) i think this is how zenji died as well, but i have zero basis for that other than vibes.

future!taiga continues to chase the kyklos, runs into his past self and explains (or maybe he's always known, or maybe whatever's going on with his brain makes him able to remember every loop, OR something is actively working against him remembering all of it) past!taiga does something that triggers the clash, and eventually, the kyklos finds her way to mc on the train. the following chapters would then begin to follow mc at the beginning of the loop again

this is literally all me guessing. i'll make an updated post once we finally know more about the clash and the one eyed sleeping beauty murders. and literally everything else smh

another quick note before i forget: i do think it's interesting that everyone who lost a day to the casino anomaly had their memories replaced of a girl in a tower in the woods. rapunzel reference? orrrrrr in early versions of the sleeping beauty tale, she was said to be in a lonesome tower waiting for someone to wake her up. coincidence? probably! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

anyways

"how did we end up here?"

SUPER compelling that this is one of the opening lines. the whole intro is generally a vague "humans avoiding darkness" spiel, but i do personally think its alluding more to the coming together and working as a team theme than an actual darkness. to me it feels like it's implying (based on the story so far) that working together is the light that can drive away the darkness (her curse)

one of my big things that made me wonder right at the beginning was how it almost immediately dropped the line "if we could do it all again" (paraphrasing). the whole theme about doing it again and would we do it again kinda made me think repetition was going to be a theme in the story, but once i got a few chapters in, i was definitely hurtling towards the time loop theory.

mc starts off talking about how she's sad it's over and we come to see she's talking about a band breaking up, and one by one the group chat members leave until she's left alone with just mina.

now mina itself as a name is an interesting choice. it's a fairly international name with a couple different translations. one translation has it meaning love, one says it's the same word as a mockingbird (a bird that can imitate human sounds) and in japanese, mina is a name meaning lovely/beautiful while min-na is a term sometimes used to mean "all of you", like saying all yall in english. fun play on words there if the time loop theory is correct and the kyklos we see at the beginning is in fact mc (aka all of us)

mina's profile picture is also a red spider lily, commonly known in popular media as the death flower

it's often planted in graveyards to ward off evil spirits and help guide those who have passed to the afterlife. another meaning for the flower is reincarnation: yet another implication of a cycle.

(it's also a popular flower in hanahaki disease fics, which is a fic trope where flowers bloom in the lungs of someone whose love isn't returned, but that's unrelated)

actually now that i'm really staring at that picture, it looks more like a red surprise lily, which is even funnier imo. apparently it's just a sister flower of the spider lily

mina says it must be destiny and that she's been waiting to meet us. spooky. we haven't really seen any other anomalies do anything premeditated like that, they're all mainly reacting to their environment, other than mr long legs i guess. but his felt more like predatory i need to eat intent, not "i'm tracking down this specific person" type of deal. definitely correct me if i'm wrong on that, though. i'm super interested in the "intelligent" anomalies vs the reactive ones. i'll make a post on that later

i've seen a couple other posts talk about how kyklos means circle in greek (aka another point in the time loop basket) but it's also interesting to note that kyklos comes from kuklos, whose root word kukló was often used to describe something that encircles. broke out a couple of my old humanities research packets and found this:

"a group of people...positioned around a central point"

whether that's intentional or not, i do think it is interesting that the whole time loop could be centered on this group of people that are positioned around a central point: the kyklos and mc. everything always revolving around the main character and the curse that started it all.

almost immediately after, mc is swiftly taken to darkwick and told that she'll die in a year (which we later find out is a lie) and sent off to live her life

taiga is the most suspicious person in the WORLD to me. fuck the traitor shit i wanna know what taiga knows

our brief introduction of him (and a scene on campus) tries to convince us he's insane

fairly compelling

but it's in the small cut scenes we see with the other ghouls that really get me.

TAIGA knows something!! the second one really gets me, especially in the context of a time loop, and even more so if taiga is aware of the loop. the second screenshot reads to me as either he's 1. about to make a deal with either haru or whatever he's summoning with a coin, or 2. he's like "fuck it, i've seen this loop a hundred times. there's ways where they survive and there's ways where they die. pick one, we'll try it again and see if it changes anything this time."

i don't think he's actually lost his mind. i think he's putting up an act to throw someone off his scent (namely the traitor and whoever the traitor is working with.) i also get the feeling, especially after rereading the auction chapter, that there's something actively working against taiga having all of his memories. it might be the pact he made with his demon, but i almost wonder if it's someone else's stigma or ability preventing it. we don't know what all the ghouls can do yet, or even the teachers.

maybe it's the time loop itself that's keeping taiga from keeping all the timelines straight. maybe he's done this so many times he doesn't know what's real anymore. additionally, if you pick him in the beginning, this is what he says:

once again, i'm getting the vibes that he's trying to figure out what could possibly be different about this loop that might finally break us out of it.

anyways, those are my basic notes on why i think this is gonna center around a time loop. given that haku's flute can transport and subaru's stigma has to do with memories and we dont even know half of the stigmas yet, i think it's entirely possible. but we'll see!

feel free to comment your own thoughts on what's happening :) ask box and dms are always open

[fullofwoe5321]

Hello Weylers!!! Better late than never! - WS2 Part 1 - First six minutes.

a lot happened but I couldn't be here earlier because I had to prioritize (Sorry, Tyler!) some activites... BUT HERE I AM AND LET'S CUT THE CRAP AND TALK ABOUT WEDNESDAY SEASON 2 AND WEYLER!

I decide to organize everything in different posts. This is the first one: First six Minutes. I just want to inform this is a THEORY. You know how much I love talking and conspiring, but none of this is confirmed! I MIGHT BE WRONG... OR NOT LOL Let's just theorize and have some fun together.

1- I loved how they misguided us!!!!! The airport and the dolls are in a different context! lol And I'm sure they misguided us even more with those teasers. We cannot trust anything anymore and I like it! The only thing we can rely on FROM NOW ON is those first 6 minutes!;

2- Wednesday is kinda hot with this outfit?? Which really makes me think that Wednesday has grown up and yes, we're gonna have more mature scenes with her. The fact she's showing too much skin expresses how she is getting comfortable with her appearance. Not that she was uncomfortable! Don't get me wrong! But I supposed she is turning 17 now? And things are getting more interesting with her body and self knowledge. I've once read the show want to humanize Wednesday and this is a good way to show she is also a teenage girl who want to feel fine with herself as well. WHICH also reminds how they are showing off a shirtless Tyler so often! This show is hinting something.... good!

3 - She says she is mastering her psychic ability using Goddy's book of spells. AND HERE IT LIE THE FIRST RED FLAG: she is doing it ALONE. On the episode 5, Morticia says "[...] without the proper training, they (her powers) can lead to madness." and also "[...] we're not trained by the living. Somebody from our bloodline reaches out from beyond to help us when we're ready." BUT SHE IS TRAINING HERSELF ALONE!! GURL... and to make things worse: SHE THINKS SHE HAS HER ABILITY UNDER CONTROL and she decides to prove it hunting her favorite serial killer!;

4- It's fun the show started in less than 1 minute to show how Wednesday is obsessed with serial killers since 6 years old. Hm... I guess I've seen this plotine before! lol I'll be right back to this point because I know you all want to know more about it! lol

But anyway, she can FINALLY touch an OBJECT and have a vision who can guide her to the right direction!! YAY! This is amazing! it will help her a lot!;

5- The airport scene!!!! LOL! Kinda nuts but I didn't know Wednesday was afraid of flying in a plane! LOL

The showrunner on a cameo.

This is when I realized we were misguided (and it was only the beginning!). Wednesday wasn't going to visit Enid or travel somewhere else, she was going to hunt the KILLER! And Thing was a prosthetic hand! lol

6- And then she finds America's most elusive serial killer: the Kansas City Scalper. and here it comes the most important detail of the video I've noticed:

When a person touches her, the vision is RELATED TO HER. It shows the perspective and/or the intentions of another person where she is in an imminent danger. You can see she saw herself tied up in the basement with the dolls. So I assumed that now she can see also how her future is attached to person who touched her, but she is a RAVEN! Her psychic ability resides on the spectrum of who she is. She sees the world through a darker lens like she said. it means she won't see anything positive about herself, she will only see BAD THINGS. AND MAYBE... I SAID MAYBE.... she will see her death will be in one of those visions. BUT the real question is: ARE THOSE VISIONS RELIABLE? Because if her meeeting with the killer was supposed to be death, it didn't work properly because she managed to survive his attack.

7 - This is creepy ( and AMAZING) af:

The killer is lunatic, but she is not scared. Lunacy is entertaining for her! But the point is she was kinda disappointed. If she had been fascinated or even subconsciously admiring this figure since she was six, she may have built up an image of the killer as a worthy adversary — someone dark, intelligent, and intricate enough to challenge her. So when she finally confronts or uncovers him and finds he’s actually not that clever or dangerous (at least not to her), she could feel let down. That disappointment wouldn't just be about his lack of threat, but also about the mismatch between the myth she built up and the reality she faced.

Wednesday is someone who thrives on intellectual challenge and darkness with depth — so if the killer ends up being crude, clumsy, or just driven by petty motives, it would make sense that she’d feel both emotionally deflated and maybe a bit cheated. That kind of disappointment can be powerful because it reveals what she really values: complexity, cunning, and perhaps even a twisted sort of respect for someone who can play the game well.

And Tyler must be on the top of her favorite serial killers now!

I said that because I've some people saying she was a vigilante, but I'm not sure. I understood she didn't go after the killer to make justice or because she empathetic with the victims (She wouldn't need any power if it was the case). She wanted to prove something to herself!

Wednesday is deeply confident — even arrogant — in her intellect and instincts. But underneath that, there’s a subtle, constant need to validate her identity as the one who’s always right, the one who sees through the mask before anyone else does. Catching the killer becomes proof that her intuition, her darkness, and her intelligence are not just quirks — they’re powerful, real, and effective.

Especially with Tyler — she let herself get close, maybe even feel something. And when that turned out to be a lie, it shook her. So going after the new killer is, in a way, her trying to reclaim control. To prove to herself that no one will ever fool her again — that she’s sharper now, less naive, untouchable.

So yes — it’s not about being a hero. It’s about reaffirming her own identity. Every clue she uncovers isn’t just part of the mystery; it’s a mirror she’s holding up to herself, testing who she really is.

But also something came to mind: is she looking for a way to get over Tyler subsconsciouly? And when I say that, I mean in an emotional way as well. As I told you, she wants to prove something for herself, but I know if she is doing that, she is not even aware of the range Tyler has deeply hurt her. And the fact she chose a killer whom she admired since she was a kid means a lot.

8- I told you that the S2 is gonna be more mature:

9 - Minor psychic glitch?

We know Wednesday very well and it's not gonna end well for her! The most she uses her powers, the more her well being might be worse. I assume she's gonna use those powers so badly that she will lose touch of reality, but this is for another post....

I know it sounds a lot and I have to develop some ideas further and I will. What do you think? I promise I'll try to make the next post shorter, but there's a lot going on.

Please tell me what do you think? I'd love to read your thoughts. Tomorrow I continue with more theories...

[nunca205s-art-gallery]

[Enters the room pushing a mobile white board full of words, drawings and sticky notes.]

Ok, so. I've been working on something for the past few days... It's a Gravity Falls AU I called "The magic of sight AU" and this is the premise: "Stan gains the hability to predict the future when he has been around 4 years in the streets by a spanish witch in Colombia."

But before I say anything else, I'll show you the last drawing I made about it.

Ok, this will be a semi-long post explaining the base that I have planned already (because I'm a lunatic and I've made three alternate timelines for this AU, but I'll make a separate post about that).

How does it work?

Thanks to what is technically a curse Stan gets suddens glimpses of the future. It usually has to do with him, but sometimes he sees other things (that he can take advantage of, like, a lottery number or someone hiding something valuable somewhere he's close to, etc). The info is always useful, one way or another, but it can be misinterpreted (or acted bad upon). They can be about immediate danger or something that'll cause a chain reaction that'll affect him (negatively) in weeks/months.

His first vision was about being run over by a car two days after getting the power.

When he gets the visions his pupils shrink like crazy and a mark appears on his chest.

(This one's the mark. It doesn't glow, it looks more like a tattoo than anything.)

At first it was very noticeable that he was getting a vision by the way he acted right after. But with time you wouldn't be able to tell if not for the eyes and mark.

– Some fun-facts:

Every time he tried to end it all he got a vision about his next happier time. (That, or the poor disturbed soul that would find his body.)

He got the ability right when he got to Colombia (it hadn't been even a month). The witch gave him that power because he helped her with something and she saw how miserable he was.

This ability has saved his life more than once, but it has also put him in danger (better don't think about that cult he started).

• STORYLINE

After he finds out he's been blessed he's kind of in denial and thinks nothing of it. But after it happens a few times with insignificant stuff, and then wins the lottery (not much, maybe like 500 dollars from a scrape) he finally accepts that maybe something's up.

After that he tries to "control" it for a bit, but quickly realises that it is at random.

He's already a bit involved in iykyk (drogs), but thanks to his new power he manages to avoid bad people's attention.

After some time he lets himself get carried away thinking that he's untouchable. That's when he hits his head against a wall (metaphorically). He misinterpretes the vision and fucks up in a deal, making someone important mad at him (not Rico though). He has to flee and hide for a bit.

And that's mostly how he spends the next few years, he manages to live comfortable for a while, amassing money and meeting people, sometimes the good ones others the bad ones. Then something happens and he has to leave, sometimes he can take his money with him, others he can't (cuz he had to use it to pay back to someone, or to escape).

Most of the times things go wrong because he misinterpreted a vision, but it also is because there was nothing he could really do.

One time he got involved in some messy stuff (houman traffic) by mistake, and the only way he found out he was taking kids to somewhere horrible was thanks to, you guessed it, his power. He called in some favours and got the kids to a safe place, then he ran away from South America for good (he just crossed someone really powerful), but not before tipping off the police about that particular gang, with luck that mess would distract them from him getting back to the US, and if the universe feels generous, get them in jail for a while. Even though if it probably meant that they would look after him after they sort everything out (they did).

After some time back in the US he, unintentionally, really, joined/reformed a cult (it was more like a bunch of people adored him cuz of his power). It started because he decided to help someone after getting a vision, and then he realised he had just saved someone important in the weird church of a small town (practically everyone in there was involved in some dark stuff already thanks to that church). He got invited, and since he was on hiding he thought that this could be a good hiding spot for a while (and he was offered a high position in the "church").

He realised pretty quickly that something was off, but it took him longer to realise what exactly (he knew he was in some kind of cult, but not how bad it really was). And when, a year and a month after he joined, he came across some kind of basement destined for very disturbing rituals he flew the hell out of there the same night. (And he obviously called the cops on them.)

(They hadn't proposed him to join them yet cuz he was a newbie, he had to have at least five years of experience in the church to join the heavy rituals.)

After he got involved the church, he started using his visions to maintain his status, everyone there started seeing him as some kind of Messiah. So they respected him a lot, that's one of the main reasons he didn't leave earlier.

(He may or may not have eaten human meat on his time here. If he has, he has no idea.)

After that he went form place to place, amassing money again. But this time he kept himself away from the drugs stuff (at least for a good while). He mainly went to fight rings to bet or participate in illegal boxing fights.

He pulled some more scams, this time on individual people instead of making products. He learned his lesson.

He was living good, or as good as one can. But then he mistakenly interpreted a vision and fucked up big. The guys he crossed back in South America had send a few people after him after they escaped out of prison and managed to regroup. And they found him.

He almost dies and had to lay low again for a good while. He was almost out of money when Ford asked for his help.

He got there, and before he knocks on the door he gets a vision of Ford getting sucked into the portal. He doesn't know what the hell that means, but he says to himself that he has to keep his cool and, even though he doesn't understand how the hell that vision could happen, he'll try to make it not happen.

He can't keep his cool. It's hearing Ford send him away and crash out.

The fight goes the same until Stan sees the open portal. He gets a flashback to the vision (but not a vision) and stops mid speech. Ford realises that the portal is open and goes to close it, he trips (cuz mf is fucking sleep deprived) causing him to start getting pulled. And Stan tries to save him.

–—–—–—–—–

Aaaand, the would be all for now. I'll post the timelines tomorrow, because I'm falling asleep as I write.

Also, here, have some drawings I made.

(I made the little doodles in class, just so you know how obsessed I've been.)

[acatalepsy-and-tea]

Doctor Who - The Reality War Thoughts

I never do episode reviews, but this episode pissed me off so bad that I have to scream about it into the void. I'm apologizing in advance if this comes of bitter and mean, but I feel bitter and mean. I have never been so upset about an episode since somewhere in 11s era probably. I'll try to structure my thoughts as best as I can though:

1. The Episode was really messy: So much happend, but nonetheless it somehow managed to drag enormously. Maybe bc the villians were already defeated by the halfway point and what followed was even more annoying

2. The Villains: I absolutely loathe what they did to Omega. There aren't even words for it to be honest. The Rani was written like she's the Master again, what a surprise. The way both of them were defeated was so underwhelming it made the Suthek debacle from last year look good

3. The Companions: Belinda got sidelined for Ruby. As a lot of people have pointed out, that appears to be a pattern for RTD and it's fucking shit. As for Belinda herself, it felt extremely icky to me that she now suddenly has a child and her whole personality/motivation revolves around that completely out of the blue. I may be reaching, but it had vage undertones of "the most important thing a woman can be is a mother"/"a woman's happy end will always be having a child". I recognize though that I might be too sensitive here - one friend agreed with me that it seemed like that, another one didn't take it that way. I just hate hate hate when a female characters story ends with settling down with a child/a family (when it hasn't been established that that is what they want of course, when it's clear that those are her desires then I'm fine with it) especially when there haven't been any indications towards that. And no, showing how Belinda actually wanted to go home for Poppy all along in this episode doesn't count, at least not in my books. (Though again, I might be unfairly harsh here because at that point I was already so deeply annoyed)

4. Regeneration: I hoped 15 wouldn't regenerate, I really did. But if it happened, I was hoping we'd get a female Doctor again. They somehow managed to cast pretty much the only woman (excluding obvious things like actresses that are genuinely bad people) that I did NOT want to be the next Doctor. Obligatory I-don't-have-anything-against-Billie-Piper, which I don't, she's great, but I don't want her to be the Doctor. Both from a pure fandom point of view because it will make the people who think Rose is the core of the Doctor Who universe (to be clear I'm not talking about people who like her/whose favorite companion she is. I'm talking about the people making her out to be some godlike figure) even more insufferable, and from a show point of view, because I find it weird that you would regenerate into the face of a 19 year old girl you were inappropriatly in love with (my thoughts on companion × Doctor ships could fill a whole nother post, so I'll keep it short - I hate them and find them creepy, not even because of the age gap (though that's...questionable too) but more so because of the vast power imbalance) centuries ago

5. To say at least something positive: I did like the 13 cameo (minus the Thasmin line, for reasons mentioned in the point above), didn't expect it and was really happy to see her. Also, the Doctor's regeneration was very pretty

That's all I can think of for now, and I'll have to stop here because I'm literally getting a headache from how upset I am. If I remember something else I'll add it

[deepdreamnights]

Hey there, saw your post re: harassment around artists using gen ai and thought it was great esp with the debunking of data usage myths. Would you share your thoughts regarding concerns that models are being trained to copy specific art styles and thus pose a direct threat to the artists whose art styles are being used?

Well, there's several levels to that.

The main one is that on copyright grounds, styles are explicitly non-copyrightable. Moreover:

No one's style is unique

No one's style is unimitatable by analogue means.

The second point is important, because anyone can go on Fiverr right now and and find someone to replicate any given art style, and every competent draftsperson has to be able to do it to some degree or another. No major animation house, art studio, or comic company has ever hired someone because they couldn't find someone else that could imitate the surface-level aspects of their style.

The first point is just a matter of basic reality. Ex-nihlo creativity either doesn't exist or is so rare as to be a once-in-an-epoch thing. Everyone builds on the influences that they learn from, and if you think someone has a unique style what they really have is a different media diet than you.

For example, Don Bluth. Born 1937, aged 15 in 1952.

Same year Time released this this picture of Burlesque Performer Dale Strong.

Someone made an impression.

Marilyn Monroe was also a national sex symbol when Bluth was a teen, putting some context to most of his other ladies, but especially Goldie Pheasant (or maybe she's more Jayne Mansfield, hard to tell through the bird-ness). His art style has obvious roots with Tex Avery and I would guess he read Mad Magazine a lot as a kid.

And Not to hang the guy out to dry alone, I was a teenager in the 1990s, and most of my sexy fictional ladies are 9/10 some combination of Dana Scully, Peg Bundy, and Rhonda Shear.

The point being that style isn't something you create intentionally so much as an accumulation of influences, drawn from the commons. Attempting to claim ownership of such a thing is by itself an act of theft in my view, and allowing them to be protected under the law would mean a judge being shown exactly how many pieces of prior art the Walt Disney Corporation owns that your work superficially resembles. Why, they'll even run it through a style recognizing AI to make sure they catch them all.

But let's talk about style matching.

It just takes one image now, and doesn't require training.

Which I'm sure sounds frightening, but this has been the situation since February for Midjourney, and it was available in the Stable Diffusion ecosystem long before that. If the threat were as pronounced as feared, we'd have seen the impact by now. And we haven't, and we're unlikely to, for several reasons, several of them listed above.

The largest is that style isn't even close to the be all/end all of what an artist brings to a given project. And the kinds of execs who are making a 'replace 'em with a robot' kinda decision aren't the kinds of people who care about art style beyond how much it looks like the most recent successful thing. And nobody's ever needed a robot to ride coattails.

But the next largest part is that AI style imitations aren't really accurate because the robot doesn't see style in the same way we do. It's all just math to the robot, and it prioritizes what it notices, not what we do.

I'll demonstrate.

Jack Kirby will be my example, for several reasons.

He has a bold and identifiable style, he's arguably the most famous artist in western comics history, and he has many analogue imitators and homagers.

Using Midjourney and prompting "an illustration of dana scully by jack kirby, 1968, in the style of 1960s marvel comics --ar 3:4 --s 15"

Using the base model, on the first roll we get three complete style mismatches and one that's kinda close, though I'd say that's way more Sal Buscema or John Byrne.

Kirby's women had a certain, difficult to describe oddness about their faces that the robot doesn't seem to grok, and it doesn't touch on the kinds of wild patterns and bold black/white swatches that make Jack's work feel 'jack'.

Tom Scioli's take on Kirby is a sort of lovingly flanderized parody, but it captures the spirit of Jack's art much more directly even if a lot of individual details aren't period-accurate. He draws Kirby the way you remember Kirby from your childhood, but I don't question whether the page above is trying to be a Jack Kirby homage or one to Sal Buscema.

But Midjourney has style reference, so we can inject the Kirby right in. Using the picture of Sersei dancing from above with the same prompt, we get:

Well, the work is more convincingly period, but again, we're not terribly close to being on-point. In fact, they're not very consistent between each other. Top left is any 80s marvel fill-in artist. Top right is maybe Kirby-esq. Bottom Left is flat out Jim Lee, bottom right is very Byrne-y.

Using three reference images to give the best shot, I'm also moving to using images of a similar color style, and all with a woman as the central focus. I have included the infamous Crystal pin-up shot because as I said, Kirby women have a certain oddness to them (fondly).

Results (MJ 6.1 on the left, Niji 6 on the right):

It all says 60s-70s Marvel, but I don't think Kirby would be the first guess for any of them. Maaaaaaybe the lower-left Dana in image #2 if you squint.

And that's Jack Kirby. Massively popular and prolific with a career spanning decades. If anyone in the comics space should be impersonatable by this thing, its him.

I'm sure you could train a LORA to get closer, and sure, the tech is only going to get better from here, but by the nature of how the system works no generation pulls just from what is referenced. Every generation is both blended with other concepts and emphasizes only what the machine catalogs as relevant, not what we might.

There's not much to stop someone from imitating your style with a machine, but there was nothing stopping them from doing the same with an underpaid freelancer. The results are likely to miss the mark regardless.

If the client wants you, they'll try and get you. If they just want something kinda like you, they've always had an avenue to that.

Fortunately, you're more than your style, and whatever anyone can do with the machine, you can do better because you've got access to both.

[hayasakri]

⠀ ░ ♬ ʕ⁎̯͡✭ lessons i've learned about shifting: some simple things people tend to forget

‘ as someone who got into shifting at the time of it being a trend somewhere around mid-2020; there's a lot of stuff i had to learn (and also unlearn).

but something i'd like to say is that even after 5 years i still don't know it all. this post isn't really to tell everyone the secret to shifting, or if there even is one. i mostly just want to share what i've learned (even if it's been said again and again on this site), and maybe it can help someone else too!

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so,

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ㅤ۫ㅤㅤ𓈒❤︎ lesson 1: there is no secret to shifting

‘ there is no EASTER BUNNY 😡, NO TOOTH FAIRY 🙄 , and there is no QUEEN OF ENGLAND! 🤬.

but on a serious note, if you read this, or any other shiftblr post expecting to find ‘the thing that will inevitably make me shift’, then unfortunately you probably won't (��人＜;)

i keep relearning this lesson every single time i find myself stuck, not being able go shift, that if i go through every single reddit, amino, tumblr post i can get my hands on, something will click and i'll suddenly get the ability to shift.

but then i remember that, there really is no secret, all you need is you.

everyone has the ability to shift, and the process is mostly the same for everyone, but just like how everyone is different— the way everyone shifts is different too; so there's no ‘one size fits all’ solution to shifting.

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ㅤ۫ㅤㅤ𓈒❤︎ lesson 2: all you need to shift is yourself

‘ i already said this, but it really is true… the only thing that could possibly hold you back from shifting is you, whether you have limiting beliefs (but i've also heard that thinking you have limiting beliefs about shifting is a limiting belief in itself so… beliefception…?) or something else, you are the only person who can decide whether or not you shift.

the universe or some kind of higher being isn't stopping you, only you are!! Σ( Д ) ﻌﻌﻌﻌ⊙ ⊙

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ㅤ۫ㅤㅤ𓈒❤︎ lesson 3: stop overconsuming shifting advice you won't even use/apply

‘ you could already be doing this technically by reading this post but shhh… 🤫

it's okay to compare advice and tips to see what truly works best for you, but i think constantly seeking out info then not applying it feels like progress, but if you don't actually use that advice then nothing changes.

and i know some of you may find a post that makes you think "omg wait.. i think i got it!" only to go back to reddit, tumblr, or whatever website trying to find more info. (i would know because i've also fallen victim to this...)

i also think there's a thing of having too much information, especially because a lot of it is conflicting (ex. the argument of whether shifting is shifting your awareness to your desired reality vs shifting your subconscious to another reality, if that makes sense.)

so instead of seeking endless advice, it’s more beneficial to apply only what truly resonates with you!

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ㅤ۫ㅤㅤ𓈒❤︎ lesson 4: caring more about posting about your dr vs. actually shifting to your dr

‘ this is more to the shifters who also like making content about their dr.

is posting about your dr bad? no! Σ(･o･;). i, like many others, like posting and sharing things about my dr, and i also love seeing other peoples drs!

but i think it really gets to a point, where some people are more concerned about posting about their dr and fantasizing about it, rather than actually wanting or trying to shift there.

so if you find yourself burnt out because you keep trying to find things to post, please take a step back from your socials (〇o〇；)

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     ͟ ͟ ͟⬚͒͟͟ ྀ͟͟ ͟ ͟ ͟ ⠀⠀ ꫶      

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this is pretty short, but but i only wanted to include what i think are the more important things i learned over the course of my shifting journey.

please remember to consume information wisely, and happy shifting!

⠀ ⠀🎼🎵°.⠀⠀〜⠀⠀❤︎ divider credits to ＠dollywons & ＠roseraris !

[dw-flagler]

Case 53 Emma? Apologies if you have done so already

see, now this is a good one! Everyone, do asks like this one!

Emma is honestly the easiest non-parahuman to write as a cape, because her whole backstory is that she should have triggered but didn't. So in order to make her a cape you have to change very little. In fact I already did that for a fanfic that i'm writing but haven't posted.

However, this particular ask is really challenging, because I think that any version of Emma that's different has a very different life, so what I'm going to do is powergen every possible iteration of Emma. Yay me.

This is going to be extremely confusing.

So first, we have Canon Emma, who is literally the canon one from canon worm. I'm going to call her Emma 1. Next is natural trigger Emma, the smallest deviation from canon Emma. That's Emma 2. Then comes Cauldron cape Emma, or Emma 3. After that is Case 53 Emma, the most different version of Emma. She'll be called Emma 4. I'll also mention an Emma 4.5, but she doesn't have powers and is mainly there to avoid confusion, because she'll be from an AU version of Earth Bet in the Emma 4 Universe but not from an alternate earth in the same AU, like Emma 4.

So Emma 2 is the natural trigger cape, and I can't elaborate much on her or else i'll spoil my super cool fanfic. So I'll just say that she triggers during her (canonically-not-a) trigger event in interlude 19.z, and gets a power that way. This Emma (emma 2 for reference) is from Earth Bet, so she's still friends with taylor (Taylor 2 for reference), but things butterfly after she triggers. I'm not sure if it would be more interesting if she met shadow stalker (Sophia 2) after going back to see the alley like in canon or if she didn't. She probably wouldn't bully taylor 2 in either case, though.

Emma 3 is the non-mutated (or only minorly mutated) cauldron vial trigger. I think she would purchase a vial from cauldron some significant time after The Alley (& meeting Sophia (3)). Maybe a few months after, maybe a year after. I'm not sure. Despite having a different name, this Emma (3) would probably still be from Earth Bet, so she'd still be friends with Taylor and then meet Sophia later. (Every AU version of) Emma's dad is a lawyer but she's never Super Rich (definitely not mcmansion level at least) so she wouldn't be able to afford a strong (and expensive) vial, but she'd still get a pretty strong power cause she's lucky.

If I had to gen a power for this emma (3), I'd say a flight + striker power that makes her basically into an alexandria type without the brute rating. It'd be fun! Even though brandish already exists, I'd say emma 3 should get a power that's essentially a laser sword (or laser knife?), so emma 3 would basically just be Slightly Better Brandish (Brandish 3). I think this Emma 3 would bully Taylor (taylor 3), but not quite as much as Emma 1.

And now for our final one, the actual Case 53, the most different from canon Emma: Emma 4. Emma 4 would not willingly take a cauldron vial because she'd be from another earth, where you can't get cauldron vials. Most case 53s are kidnapped from alternate earths on the brink of death (I made an exception for case 53 victoria but that's normally not the case) but cauldron would not kidnap a person from earth bet at random for no reason, so she'd have to be from an alternate earth. On earth bet I think Emma 4.5 (from earth bet, but an AU version of earth bet. Unlike Emma 4 who is from an AU version of some other earth) either straight up wouldn't exist at all, or she would just be friends with taylor (taylor 4.5) uncomplicatedly. Like in Impurity.

So Emma 4 went through the alley incident on an alternate earth (i'm going to call it Earth, um, Yod). But she wasn't from earth Bet so she wasn't rescued by Sophia (because she's from an alternate earth where sophia either doesn't exist or isn't a cape). She was probably rescued but lost her eye or something. But that's unimportant.

So Cauldron kidnaps Emma (4) like a week or so after The Alley Incident, when she goes back to the alley to see it again. When she's off the main street and secluded from view they kidnap her. I guess they had a brain fart moment because even though nobody saw them take her, people would be suspicious that a 13 year old just went missing one day.

Anyway, Emma (4) is kidnapped and given an unstable vial, mutates, gets wiped by The Slug, and gets dumped on Earth Bet. I would assume they wouldn't dump her in Brockton Bay, but because she was from the northeast they'd put her somewhere vaguely near Brockton. Maybe a mid-sized town like Hartford.

But her actual power, I think it'd follow the same general lines as Emma 3 (the unmutated cauldron cape one), but, you know, more mutated. So she still has a movement power, and still has short-range abilities, but it's not as, like, artificial? as Emma 3's brandish-style laser sword. My first thought is that Emma 4 has a very short range beam or blast kind of attack. Even shorter than damsel's 10 feet (that's 3 meters) blast. I'm talking about basically fisticuffs range. I feel like it would be a really weird organic thing, maybe she has like biological plasma cutters growing in her forearms? Or bone swords like that dude from mortal kombat? I looked him up his name is baraka. Like baraka? It could also be more hand-based, like she has alexandria level strength and durability only her arms and the rest of her is just squishy not-human (except the bones which is also reinforced just to make it so using her strength doesn't fold her spine like wet paper). Which actually I like the most. So probably that one? I like the idea of her palming some dude's head like a basketball and then crushing his skull like a clementine. Oof, mixed metaphors.

Oh motherfucker. That's just the gorilla arms from cyberpunk! Well I'm keeping it because it's funny.

Since her super-durable arms would be a bit of a brute rating (she could parry or block stuff with her indestructible arms), maybe her mobility power is weaker. It could still be flight, but slower and less maneuverable? Or maybe big jumps. Her legs are also really strong and really durable, but her torso isn't. She's like a reverse achilles. Her one weakness is the place that literally everyone shoots her in. I like this idea because it really does sell the "striker also counts for rare edge cases of capes with super strength but no durability" thing that I like. (she has some durability but not much)

So for her form, I think this Emma is, despite being extremely strong, not a hulking silhouette character. Maybe the gimmick of a "pint sized powerhouse." I like the idea of leaning into the accidentally cyberpunk way i've been taking this. Emma looks too human. You know that one bit of jerma where he reads a chat message that says "you look like you're made out of plastic"? Or--to keep the cyberpunk branding, you know the promotional posters about those random like nighclub dancers who went cuh-razy and killed a bunch of people with mantis arms in the trailers, who have obviously fake perfectly symmetrical and focus-tested-to-be-beautiful-to-most-audiences faces? She looks like one of those.

I also like the idea that she has, like, a comically impractical number of eyes (from an evolutionary standpoint. She has 8 eyes like a spider but they don't actually do anything helpful) but it does absolutely destroy the uncanny valley vibe thing I had.

Which actually kind of makes me like it more? Emma 4 is uncanny valley creepy, except for her having 8 eyes, which completely deflates everything and makes her look ridiculous. You'd never see it but she also has pitch black bones, and her body also has parts that are similarly pitch black. I think her hands go in a gradient from "normal human skin" at the shoulders to metallic black at the tips of her fingers.

There's a lot of reasoning and stuff I had to leave out to keep this from being even longer, so ask me if there's anything you're curious about.

[hotasfahrenheit]

my top 10 ql shows of 2024

we're a week into the new year already so i guess i should finally get this list posted 👀👀👀

to make this list, i kept an ongoing note in my phone all year of all the ql shows i watched, and then i sat down a couple days ago (*cough*a week ago*cough) and rearranged them to figure out which ones were my favourites. i didn't have any kind of ranking system going through the year (besides being very sure by the beginning of february what was going to be my absolute favourite of the year- and i was right) so this was all based on the vibes i was feeling about all these shows as i made the list, thinking back on them over the year.

i had JUST finished one of these shows so that's part of why i wanted to let it sit for a few days- make sure my ranking wasn't skewed by the feeling of having finished a show then immediately making the list right after while it was fresher than anything else. a week on, i'm still solid on these. i think. i keep looking at this list and being like "wait, did i really love that show more than this other one? did i? how is that one not in the top 10? wait but the ones above it are also just so good" and if i don't just post a list then i'll never stop fidgeting with it, so here we go!

10 - 4Minutes

was 4Minutes perfect? no, but i enjoyed the twisting layers of narrative and the speculation and discussion around this show so much. there were multiple times i thought i had things about the story figured out, and i kept being close to correct, but it kept finding ways to surprise me anyway.

9 - Love Is A Poison

this show was an unexpected delight in so many ways. it was funny, it was smart, it was wild, it was bonkers, i hope they get to make more of it.

8 - Jack & Joker

the longing, the heists, the shenanigans, the friendships, the everything about this show. it got a lil shaky towards the end but on the whole it was such a fun time, and it's still so incredible and such a triumph that they even got this show made, and i love it forever.

7 - Meet You At The Blossom

ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF A SHOW. so pretty. so splendid. so many long sleeves being waved around. so much nonsense and adventure. a fantastic pairing of characters, a fun side couple, just all around perfection.

6 - Love Sea

does this show get a biased boost in the ranking because i love Fort and Peat so much and even an imperfect show with them in it was going to be something i loved? maybe. possibly. probably. Peat spent the whole time looking expensive and pretty, and Fort spent the whole time looking like he was going to devour him, and they're just so good together. sorry not sorry.

5 - 1000 Years Old

this show gets two gifs, because they're my gifs, and i loved it SO MUCH. definitely a weird little show, but it had so much heart, and the way the story built was incredible, and it was just such a warm, beautiful show about found family and embracing your weirdness and being yourself and also love. all about love. the deepest love, and patience, and being willing to try again no matter how many times it takes. also soup, and so many umbrellas.

4 - My Stand-In

(this gif is from this set i made)

this show. THIS SHOW. the acting, the story, everything about it was absolutely insane and was all-consuming especially towards the ending of it. i love stories with complex, nuanced characters, and i love actors who can make you angry with how good they are at playing terrible people. this show had me shouting in the group chat all the time and it was just such a wild ride. an EXPERIENCE from start to finish.

3 - Love In The Big City

an absolutely stunning work of art. i watched the first two episodes with @poetry-protest-pornography when it first released then we both got busy with life for a bit; i listened to the audiobook at work the last week of December and immediately slammed through the rest of the episodes compulsively. i couldn't stay away. i had to inject it into my being. i'm aware that i interacted with and experienced this story differently than a lot of people i've seen talk about it on here because it didn't resonate with me in all the exact same ways as i am a straight person, and i saw a lot of people talking about how deeply it spoke to them about the queer experience, but the themes of loss and loneliness and searching for purpose and meaning and love were universal enough that this show did a number on my heart and soul and still is echoing in me now.

2 - Let Free The Curse of Taekwondo

another stunning, emotional show. this story had me in its GRIP from the first episode and has still not let me go. it was a rollercoaster and was such a deep tale about forgiveness and finding ways to just live life and how it's never too late for a new beginning. about how sometimes you can't let go of people, and you shouldn't. about being able to find and keep love and joy even through the darkest times and places.

1 - Love For Love's Sake

aslkdfjhalsfkdjhafd obviously. obviously this was my number one. an absolute powerhouse of a story about love and acceptance and being willing to not only help other people take second chances on life, but allowing yourself to as well. about being willing and open to loving and caring for others, and loving and caring for yourself. about taking control of your situation and writing your own future. about love, for love's sake.

THAT'S THE LIST.

everything here is obviously my opinion, if there's a show you're curious about that you loved that you don't see here, comment and i'll tell you where it ended up in my longer list (unless it's something i didn't get to this year!) and let me know how my list compares to your faves!

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Bonus round: honorouble mention - Knock, Knock, Boys!

listen, as much as i loved all the other shows here, i considered making this a top 15 list instead of 10 because i loved this show so much and it didn't feel fair that it wasn't included. it was goofy, it was heartfelt, it was fun the whole way through and i really loved it a whole lot. 15 would have been too many tho, so this just gets an honourable mention at the end instead.

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any gifs in this post that don't have credit under them are ones i made! i don't have the time or energy to make new gifs for every show so i just pulled from things i'd already made and had on my hard drive, or used ones made by others where needed. thanks to the other gif makers whose stuff i used!

[greenplumbboblover]

Lyra's Yearly Recap - 2024/2025

I actually forgot I did this quite a few times the last few years, but this year I wanted to look back of what I accomplished from my resolution list.

And then see if In can make some of that true this year! (and what else to add!)

2023/2024 Resolutions:

(See: https://greenplumbboblover.tumblr.com/post/738067930777059328/accomplishments-of-2023)

I'm not answering all of them, but I do want to set some record straight!

Finishing LISISV

Haha... yeah I misjudged that completely lol. I got to a point where I lost complete motivation on... well, everything. I had no motivation for personal projects, CC making (one of the reasons why some of my mods in this year were so riddled with bugs), playing games... hell, even interacting with others. Now you could call that depression, but I wasn't showing those symptoms properly either. I found myself in a weird place where, on the one hand, I felt guilty of that I just couldn't do those stuff that I wanted to do, and that then causing me to feel super overwhelmed... yet telling myself constantly that "adults don't feel overwhelmed on those tiny silly things!". I was pretty mean to myself this year, honestly... But all that sad stuff aside! I have made some personal changes in December that are helping me a lot already, before getting also some mental help for other things. But I'll save you from those details. 😉 --------------- The second thing that didn't help was that I would at some point feel a HUGE disconnect with the characters I had in my head and my actual writing. I would make impulsive thoughts, without realistically navigating how it would work out in the future. I would introduce characters, without really giving it a thought on how I wanted them to come across... how to fully tackle certain cases. So! I spent a majority of that time researching a lot of the ways writers actually attempt those issues and solving those. I was hoping to make a post to help others with that soon, since It's really awesome insight at times! And... then there was the whole posing. But I resolved that with the Pose Add-on IMO already! Chapter 10 however, is actually taking a long time because I do struggle a lot with the fact that I consider it my "old" way of writing, and I REALLY want to move on to my 'new' ideas and style. So the willpower is simply not always there.

LISIV PLANS:

Alright, now that we have all that out of the way, here are some of my plans for this year and the story: Splitting certain stories into sub-stories: My current personal problem I have with the story, is that there are some really cool characters, but with the current format, I can't explore their characters as intensely as I'd like to. I also know that I love to jump back and forth from one story to another.

How that would look like is:

Morgana will have her own "Sub-story"

I am pondering of doing the same for Dustin and Zelda.

We travel 5 years into the future, where I want to do more with Mortimer and Bella. But also the Landgraabs and the Alto's.

I am also thinking of making a separate (short) storyline for Gunther and Lolita. The moment I was making the flashbacks, I really have been wanting to write more about it.

Same as 4, but maybe for some other townies! They will be short, but I think it can be fun! :)

Figuring out what to do with Interests & Hobbies

The infamous mod of being delayed... again :p.

I guess you all are probably exhausted of me hearing "no wait! I will finish it!", and then another mod gets released, and another year passes... and personally I have that same thought.

So I am putting the mod entirely on ice. There might not be a chance that I even finish it ever.

However I do want to add something here:

I will be working much more with Stories be told

I am going to be making more hobby items in return! I have been craving that "small but cool" modding projects a lot the past few years. I just like to be ambitious and unrealistic I guess, lol

However, I will be modding WAY less this year due to other factors.

My 2024/2025 Resolutions:

I think I've mentioned this now a lot of times, but never properly done it...

Wanting to write more. Whether it's for the sims, or even personal!

Wanting to get more into 3D modeling. Mostly for myself, but here and there I could probably release some CC pieces! :)

Keep up with Simblr.cc of course!

Post more of my thoughts on LISISV and Character stuff (@nocturnalazure suggested this a while back, but the more I thought of it, the more fun it sounds!)

Doing more Sims photoshoots!

Either way! May this year be your year! Where issues get resolutions and love is all around you.💖

[altraviolet]

Thank you @spicedrobot for the template! (template HERE)

My stats are kinda wonky because Echo Garden took 4 years to write but since it ended in 2024, all its stats go towards 2024's totals.

Other than TEG, I only wrote 2* other fics and I love them all equally tbh so I chose Nucleus Memory simply because it isn't TEG and was a really fun big bang with Sync :)

The numbers for the fics at the bottom are total comments and total bookmarks (AO3 distinguishes between comment threads vs total comments and public bookmarks vs total (public + private) bookmarks so I went with total for both).

*I also wrote my secret solenoid fic but it won't be published until tomorrow which means it'll count towards 2025's stats!

Long post!

This was a challenging year for many people, for sure! Personally, there were a lot of things that took away the energy/time I need to write. Family things (2 funerals and a wedding) and my day job (which is killing me, sometimes fast, sometimes slow). TEG ate my brain completely and so even though it ended in February, I haven't written very much since then. But I've decided to try to take a healthy view of this and not be mad that it's taking so long to recover xD but I do hope it hurries up! I had an initial goal to move on to original writing after TEG, but I think I'll try one more Really Big Fic as practice before doing so.

Since I only wrote 3 fics in 2024, I'll do a lil list of my thoughts:

The Echo Garden: massive fic! thanks so much to all the new readers and to everyone who's drawn art or left comments or rec'd it to new folks. it's astonishing to me that it's still drawing new readers :u I'm very happy overall with the fic. it was hard to write, sometimes, but I'll keep it positive here! there are so so so SO SO many posts about this fic, and comments, and the whole last chapter of it is a giant author's note with even more info. honestly I don't know what else to say about it that wouldn't either be a repeat of information or extremely long. it's very probable that if you're reading this post, it's because of TEG, so thank you for reading! :)

Nucleus Memory: reverse mini bang project with sync! they drew a pic and had a pitch, and I and another writer each wrote a fic about it! sync had some awesome ideas, I'm really happy I was selected to do their prompt. they did some beautiful art!! be sure to check it out if you haven't!

Bismuth: this fic was done for a Soundwave-centric zine! in Jan 2024 I read The Locked Tomb series and it had a big effect on my brain. this fic was an attempt to write something in an inspired style: disjointed, parallel timelines. scenes out of order. purposeful confusion to make the ending reveal rewarding. plus I got to jam another rarepair into the TF mire

In 2025 I hope to plan and post another big Rodimus/Soundwave fic, as well as any little idea that comes along, and also maybe participate in the TF big bang and secret solenoid events again! I'll probably abstain from zine events, but, I say that every time and then apply anyway xD

2020-2024 will always be the TEG years for me, and it's honestly strange to leave it behind. the 5 year anniversary of posting chapter 1 is in a couple months (holy moly :u) and that's wonderful and humbling. I don't think anything else I ever do will resonate so much with people, which is good in that I'm glad it gained such a happy audience and helped so many people. But it does make the idea of working on future fics to less reception a little less appealing.

There's nothing to do but keep going, though. I mean, the alternative is to not do anything? Nah. I do think unless another TF One style canon production drags a bunch more young people into the fandom, there probably will be a slow decline of new readers throughout 2025. Eventually it'll become less of a daily reminder for me, and it'll become more of a Past Thing and less of a Now Thing. If that doesn't make any sense, don't worry. It's like... idk. I get a lot of reminders of its existence every day. Which is fine! I think it'll peter off, though. And I'll work very hard again to make something to share, and I hope people will love it just as much =)

Anyway!!!!

Thanks for reading! I hope 2025 will be a very fun and productive year for all writers! 🎉✍️✨ That will mean so much good stuff for readers! Be sure to encourage your favs with comments!

Wishing you all the best in 2025!

[marshallpupfan]

If you seen my latest Weekly Wipeout post, then you likely read that I plan on stopping once I reach video #250. The latest was #240, so expect at least ten more (the final one will be March 26). I may yet change my mind, but we'll see.

I wanted to offer an explanation, for those who might be curious as to why I'm stopping. In truth, it's not that I'm not losing interesting... rather, it's starting to become difficult to post them now. There's a few reasons as to why.

For starters, I post these Weekly videos on multiple sites, one of which being Youtube. They're...

...starting to become a lot more picky. It seems that clips from certain seasons, such as 4, 5, 10, and especially 11, all seem to get "partially blocked". This means it's viewable only in Canada, thus most of my followers on Youtube can't watch them. This can get a little frustrating, not to mention it also limits which seasons I can pick.

I could ignore the seasons that get partially blocked, but that leads to another problem. The fact is, I've nearly exhausted all of the wipeouts from the first three seasons, and most of them from season 6 onward are very brief and don't always make for great videos. When my intro + outro combined are longer than the wipeout, it just doesn't work as well. I can sometimes remedy this by adding extra clips, which is what I did with my latest video (Pups Save the Floating Goodways), but depending on the episode, that's not always an option.

It's becoming more and more of a struggle, so I feel like #250 is a good stopping point. I kept it going for nearly five years without missing a single week, which isn't bad for an unofficial account! Still, I apologize if this news disappoints anyone, but it just feels like the right time to stop. Maybe I'll try to come up with something else to replace it, but no promises. (I do have an idea for something though...)

And again, this only applies to the Weekly Wipeouts. I don't plan on stopping my Daily Marshall Pics! You guys will keep seeing those for many more years to come! :)

[accio-victuuri]

follow up clowning related to gg’s weibo post from here. a reminder first that i don’t think everything has to mean something and most of the time what they post is just plain and simple. we are clowns, so we will speculate but that doesn’t mean we have to find some candy for every content they post before we can enjoy & appreciate it. for example, we also think that the reason GG is doing these solar terms right now, while he is filming LoZ is in the synopsis of the drama, his character is the son of the “director of the Imperial Observatory of the Great Yong Kingdom” , that’s the english translation. but the key here in the original text is this word: 钦天监 [qīn tiān jiàn].

what is it? thank you to good old baidu for always having the answer:

Qin Tianjian is the signature of an official whose function is to observe celestial phenomena, calculate solar terms, and formulate calendars.

calculating solar terms. so that could be the connection he is hinting at that is somehow significant to the character he is playing. makes sense right?

this is not me washing anyone’s candy. i’m only laying out alternative explanations cause that’s how i do things. lol. the addition i have seen going around is kadian related and i’m not a kadian girlie so i was blocking it out when i first saw it. 😅😅😅

okay, now let’s go to the cpn. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

the post he made is his 1085th on weibo. oh what a good number, like a mashup between their birthdays. and the kadian that was used 191919. which means still still still. or you can concentrate on the repeated use of the number 999 ( In Chinese, nine is pronounced jiu, which also means “long lasting.” As the highest single digit, it represents the maximum level of mortal happiness, longevity, and good luck. A perfect ten is reserved for the gods. Case in point: in respect to the Heavens, the Forbidden City in Beijing has 9999.5 rooms, just short of a flawless 10,000. )

who is saying still too? forever with who? wang yibo. based on my first post about it, his use of that word 谷雨 that also came up in LTS lyrics.

another coincidence is that in the song itself, the word comes up in the 0:19 mark. 👀

commemorating the anniversary of when he followed yibo on weibo, 4/20/2018 so he posted on the eve of that day. maybe he is celebrating something else that only the two of them know and it’s not necessarily something as mundane as following a person on weibo. who knows. however, it’s on the bxg calendar so we are marking that down as a possible reason. 📝

i love this explanation tho, that goes back to that actual day years ago and what happened. it was the 5th day of filming CQL and they did not have scenes together, so why did he pay attention and followed him? he was filming the scene in the burial mounds, WWX was drunk and reminiscing about when he first met LWJ. WWX misses LWJ cause he is not there. Was XZ also missing WYB that time? to the point that he went to his weibo account and followed him?

it’s not a secret that XZ prefers it when WYB is there, not only to act with, but just there for him. plus this level of attachment on the 5th day of filming is not surprising when it comes to them.

finally, the imagery of the rain when it comes to them is one that holds some meaning. much like how we fixate on the stars and moon. photos below to show some of those relations to the rain. ☔️

and that lrlg conversation they had that went:

XZ: "I'm waiting for you"

WYB: "I'll come and have dinner with you when it rains”

XZ: "Tomorrow's meal"

WYB: "Then tomorrow"

before we end, i’ll add this quote that seems to fit the whole subject of rain:

"Because it rains so often, many important things in life seem to have happened in the rain. Those memories are now uncovered and still feel wet. Even if they dry, they are like a book soaked in water, with ripples on the paper that are difficult to calm down."

sources aside from the ones directly linked: one / two / three / four 💛

[normal-paldean-student]

Muse Mixup Madness—March 1, 2024

(If you don't know what this is, see this post)

welcome back to the second round of muse mixup madness! the first time around went great, and i'm hoping to see people have just as much fun with this one!

starting this month, i'm going to begin marking prompts as high or low fantasy. low fantasy prompts should be compatible with any blog canon, while high fantasy ones might inherently involve things that more grounded blogs might prefer to avoid, like eebydeebies, sapient pokémon, hybrids, or crossovers. there will always be at least one low fantasy prompt.

(note! these labels are completely arbitrary, and there are no rules in muse mixup madness. if you're a low fantasy blog and some interpretation of a high fantasy prompt appeals to you, go for it.)

with that out of the way, let's get into this month's prompts!

1. The Road Not Taken (low fantasy)

Everyone has had decisions to make in life, some of them more impactful than others. With this prompt, you'll be looking into what may have happened if your muse chose to pursue a different path in life from the one they did.

2. Rags to Riches/Riches to Rags (low fantasy)

A character's socioeconomic status growing up has a huge impact on how they interact with the world and the person they become. If your character's family was richer or poorer, how would that affect them?

3. Another World (high fantasy)

If your character was a Faller originating from somewhere other than the Pokémon multiverse, where would they be from? What would they be like? If your character is already a Faller, explore who they'd be if they'd been a Pokémon character from the beginning.

(For a lower fantasy take on this one, you can remove the crossover element and focus on the effects of being or not being a more canon-compliant Faller.)

4. I've Got a Type (high-ish fantasy)

Does anyone else remember typed humans? They were a minor character trend around a year ago before they died out, and now with hybrids around they've been more or less forgotten. I liked them though, so this prompt is for an AU where your character is one of them! If they already have a type due to being a Pokémon or hybrid, give them something unconventional for their species instead.

5. Bonded Rivals (high fantasy, requires partner)

Maybe it's coincidence that your character and your partner's keep meeting, or maybe it's fate pulling them to each other with some sort of invisible (or visible) tether. But whatever the reason, and whatever the level of supernatural involvement, every time they see each other there's some level of fighting or competition involved. After a point, they do have to have built up a mutual respect through that... right?

(Or in other words, this one's a soulmate AU, but for rivalry instead of romance. You can sprinkle in any trappings of that you like, or keep it wholly mundane for a more low-fantasy take if you prefer.)

a little note on that last one—it's entirely possible it appeals to you, but you don't have anyone to do it with. if that's the case, you can make an open invitation post on your blog or use the notes of this post to coordinate.

and once again, for my records, please answer the poll! again, it's not binding, this is just so i can gauge popularity for the prompts.

(also, please reblog this post when you see it instead of just scheduling it for day of so more people have a chance to see it while there's still time to prepare)

[coldbycrossfade]

this comic makes me so fuckin mad

spoilers for The Dead Don't Talk #4 under the cut

i don't have the energy like i used to to type out full analysis well articulated explanation on Why I Hate Something And How It Is Shit For The Following reasons, but i need to like. at least loudly vent about how much this shit blows

like man. where do i even start with the absolute void of development for their relationship. why should i care about this? should i care about this? it.....they have no no chemistry. it doesn't even feel like he really likes dragonfire all that much????

how much time has passed? what are we not seeing??

also i'm ngl there's something. vaguely racist about her. there's a whiff of bad optics here. i need to collect my thoughts on it. something something Exotic Dragon Lady something about that shit she said last issue about "tiger men being highly sought after" and it's. this Blond White Man. do you get me? am i making sense?

i'm too mad about this whole thing to be articulate.

anyways everything is happening and nothing is happening at the same time, don't know how they managed this.

these pages make me want to turn into a resident evil-esque body horror bio-monster and wipe out the population of a small city

maybe it is my radicalized homosexual tastes, but if i see one more Man And Woman With No Chemisty And No Reason For Me To Care Lay In Bed Post-Coital And Try Really Hard To Inject Reasons For Me To Give A Shit, i might commit ✨️Atrocities✨️ like at this point never show me straight people again. i don't want this. i'm putting an embargo on this bullshit. the narrative is so doodoo and heavyhanded that ALL THIS DOES IS PISS ME OFF

WHY DOES HE FEEL THIS WAY. YOU NEVER SHOWED ME AT ANY POINT THAT HIS FEELINGS WERE DEVELOPING THIS WAY AT ALL!!!! WHAT HAPPENED TO "SHOW, DON'T TELL"???

ALSO THE SHIT WITH THE SAVAGE LAND LIKE WHAT ABOUT YOU IS SAVAGE, DRAGONFIRE? PLEASE EXPLAIN THAT TO ME, INCREDIBLY CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE WOMAN OF COLOR #6384737!!!!!

👏🏾and👏🏾then👏🏾she's👏🏾fuckin'👏🏾dead, another woman of color shoved into the fridge as a flimsy excuse for development of a male character in the year of our lord 2025, another woman whom we still know fucking nothing about outside of her being from k'un-lun and her relationship to victor. of fuckin' course. wow. awesome. good job. we did it team, pack it up. another banger.

i'm sick to bastard death of it.

OH AND Y'KNOW WHAT ELSEWHILE I'M HERE? WHY ISN'T VICTOR DRESSED PROPERLY FOR THE TIME PERIOD. WHY IS HE DRESSED LIKE THAT. WHY IS HE NOT IN PROPER ATTIRE. THERE'S AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COMIC WHERE HE DRESSED CORRECTLY (it takes place in the 20s). LIKE LOOK AT THIS.

yas bitch, make a scene!!!

IN FACT THERE ARE SEVERAL COMICS WHERE HE IS DRESSED FOR THE TIME PERIOD. AND STYLED!!!

so what in the goddamn is this.

don't get it twisted, i love when the titties are poppin' but i also love historical accuracy ESPECIALLY on long-lived characters

everyone else is dressed relatively correctly, why isn't he??????

and i'm not even going to bother getting into dragonfire's costume. they coulda done something real cool what with k'un-lun being in tibet. but they didn't.

and while i'm at it, i'll be a bitch, you can catch these hands too—

aht aht, i see them copy/paste panels baby

we all got deadlines, i get it, but unfortunately i'm a mean gay on a rampage now and you WILL be getting hit with the spray

i think i'm done. thank you for bearing with me if you read this✨️🙂‍↕️✨️