#rambly answer that answers nothing

[monstermonger]

bit of a silly question here but have you ever gotten afraid to draw in a journal like the one you recently shared? like the idea of using the pages "incorrectly" or "wasting" them (or running out right before you get inspiration that might have been "better" than what you'd jotted down)? your art is INCREDIBLE and I know the best way to improve is to do it, all the time, but I struggle getting started for those sorts of fears, and I want to know if you have tips for overcoming that ^^

I don't think it's a silly question, in fact I think it's one of the Ultimate Art Questions haha

Yes I 100% struggled with that in the past; i'm happy to try my best, sharing some personal tips in journaling, specifically! :D

TECHNICAL SIDE:

>> Small simple sketchbook = less intimidating to fill the pages. (Also, easy to carry around)

5x7in Moleskin, and a pilot pen

>> My journal ISN'T a place to prove that I can make pretty pictures. I have separate sketchbooks for that. I use journals to jot down ideas and notes of things I like. (yes i shared a few pages that happened to look nice, but there were 100+ other pages after all d: )

Spontaneous observation is messy and imprecise. But not in a bad way.

Rather than seeing the messiness as "bad/unworthy imperfection," try to see it as a miraculous insight to how you, a unique human being with your unique thoughts and art experience, sees the things you like

My journal process (in general): doodle a pretty cake I ate, a funny bird I saw, some weird dialogue I overheard, stickers, stamps, a character in a book that I want to draw as a dragon,......... scatter them all over the page, then look at the random blocks of empty paper remaining. Fill those up next with another lil quote, or words about the week, or some pretty vines/flowers :) etc. It's like making a collage.

Draw what you actually LIKE + what actually sounds FUN to draw. u can always take photos/save pics of other stuff if it's overwhelming.

>> Find your comfort tools. I love ink. how it looks, feels, etc; I hardly ever use pencil. A sketch that I need to ink over is usually too much work for my journal. I'm just trying to get down ideas before I get bored or get inspired by another thing LOL

[But yeah: pencils can be the perfect tool for someone else. Regular pencils, colored pencils, watercolor pencils... play around with a bunch of basic tools to find your fav.]

EMOTIONAL SIDE:

I highly recommend Lynda Barry's book "Making Comics." She has some lovely, and deeply empathetic things to say about overcoming fear of making "bad" art.

My journal scribblings/therapeutic studies --- someone with 10x the skill could do it better, sure, but they probs wouldn't focus on the same details, or be interested in the same monsters, or be thinking the same thoughts as me.

They won't have the same things to say about their day, won't see the same spindly tree growing from a crumbling brick wall on their walk. etc!

Also! imo this POV isn't an excuse to feel like I don't need to improve my technical skill, but it keeps me happy, fulfilled, and motivated as I'm on that road of improvement. AND it makes me appreciate others' incredible art as their own reflection of the things they love/their own experiences, rather than view it competitively/jealously.

"Drawing is so much more than Good or Bad. It is a language from another part of you." - Lynda Barry

[kindaasrikal]

Hey so lets talk about Kai being used as the comedic character and being a lot more sillier than usual in Dragons Rising when you remember that before all this, literally just a few months beforehand, Kai was suffering the horrors tm

i’ll assume we’ve all watched the Ninjago monstrosity trailer, and if you haven’t go forth solider and may your heart crumble to pieces once you do.

In Dragons Rising, Kai’s character tone is similar to the one from season 8 onwards in the original series. Except the silliness factor is a lot stronger. He’s constantly cracking jokes, being unserious, teasing and messing with people. He was just a general menace.

And i know a lot of us, including myself, believe its cause Jay’s not around to be the comedic relief character. But what if it’s also because they’re trying to enforce a sense on unnaturalness with Kai’s attitude within us? To clue us in that the way he’s acting isn’t normal, that he’s wearing some form of a mask?

Because personally i think that would be really cool writing if Kai’s mask starts crumbling the moment they get closer to that land of monsters he was stuck in for who knows how long.

[lazylittledragon]

i think thats supposed to be about sex things but Not One Of Those, this is the fourth, fifth? couple youve given a lil baby and i think you maybe love lil babys

i too, give the Characters lil babys, because i love them

as well as the myriad of Situations it puts the blorbos in

fourth or fifth publicly/in recent memory, i've been doing it for Years in art i haven't posted akfdhdjhd

i do just really love putting them in Situations you're right

[lobotomize-d]

Butter roll cookie if... if he was.... uh. . . Student at the Parfedia Academy ...

[imaginariumwanderer]

I know it's a bit too early but as of now, what are your personally hopes/predictions for silent salt update?I am curious to see how many of them will come true.Jk ofc,I know you arent a fortune teller-

Sorry cheesecakemermaid I got nothing for ya. Similar to white lily I'd say silent salt is the most mysterious beast yet, we barely know what they actually look like much less their personality. My thoughts are the same as what everyone thought in that oh salt is definitely bad BAD news for lily. With them cleaving the moon that's associated with her in half and the fact that lilies irl can die from salt. It'll be... interesting. Crk have always been brutal I'll give it that (flashback to those sailors black pearl killed on-screen in her INTRODUCTION) n beast yeast has been up the ante ever since, I love white lily but oh I so hope she'll go thru it, for the character development.

Some said salt might be based on Authurian knights legend n I'd like it if we see the game expand more on that. I'm always fascinated by how mflour and bspice's motivation and personal philosophies are connected to their respective inspiration (Buddhism and Hinduism or more specifically, Shaivism) even a minor character like peach blossom cookie and the four dumpling kings, I can go on about the myths that may have inspired them. Which is sadly, something I found lacking in esugar, don't get me wrong the references are all over the place like the apple of discord in the title screen, pavlova cookie clearly being a cupid reference, their general clothing and architecture, the final boss of ep 9 having a *venus* fly trap. But I wish we see more of it weaved into esugar's motivations, hm maybe I'm missing something, we still have the other half of the story to go after all!

Silent salt is at the bottom of my beast list rn just based purely on the fact that we don't know much about them (n that I suck at drawing armors) but considering they're the foil of one of crk's greatest written character I'm keeping my hope up. Let the writers cook since there's literally nothing they can reveal would make me feel disappointed in silent salt. If salt turned out to be a beautiful lady warrior? Aw yeah. If salt turned to be a non-binary eldritch knight? Aw yeah. It's unlikely but if salt turned out to have a connection elder faerie, maybe as his alternate self a la white lily and dark enchantress making them a perfect foil to our hero of freedom? I will kneel before peak fiction I will stagger before peak fiction I will cry and proclaim crk to be one of the best piece of literature ever written-

Ok all jokes aside the dev can do anything with silent salt's story BUT rush it, both of white lily's eps (ep1-2 and ep 11-12) are the beginning and the end of the beast yeast saga so there's a lot of stuff to cram in as is. I don't want a repeat of ep 1-2 that's, while serviceable is like a battle royale for who get to have the most screen time. They were supposed to be white lily's big debut but we ended up spending the majority of ep 1 listening to pure vanilla trying to work through his emotional constipation while barely getting any insight on white lily's inner thoughts despite us following through her journey. And then, THEN smilk boy steals the show completely once ep 2 rolls out, the ending to that ep was spectacular n I love the little scenes white lily had with elder faerie/pure vanilla. Not to mention the sweet cutscene art+ominous final words that lily said, but... I came out of ep1-2 feeling like I gained more perspective on pure vanilla instead of the cookie that's supposed to be the star of the show. I got a lot to complain about beast yeast's introduction arc as u can see;;; Hope the writers doesn't muck up the finale, white lily deserve her own spot light *without* her being tied to another character, except maybe silent salt.

One thing I'll say for sure is to not expect the story to be concluded cleanly nor definitively. The writers like to employ a story telling technique I'd like to call drip-feeding. So much stuff is left open in the air in this game. My guess is the ending of beast yeast will be the same. The heroes defeat the villains bla bla bla the beast will not be redeemed but there will be heavy hints that they can be *wink wink* *nudge nudge* Ok there's one thing I dearly hoped will happen after the saga ends, is that the beast will be utilized well by devsis in a way that won't dismiss their threat as villains. The chances of them appearing again next year is low seeing as we'll be moving on to a new arc. The game won't have the balls to kill them off, they're the fandom's darlings after all, I'd give my respect to the writers if they managed to come up with sth that'll decommission the beasts while keeping alive while keeping them threatening AND not doing sth lame like sealing them in another tree again. We've yet to know what the beast binding ritual is, it has been 5 months. And as much as I love the guy.... Pls devsis stop milking the shadow milk he's a dry husk at this point😭

I'll wait until the trailer came out in maybe October/November to give more thoughts on them.

[snogfairy]

now that the show has made it explicitly Relevant that Milchick is a black man (and lumon racist) you really can't help but notice the parallels of dehumanization - the innies "aren't real people," he "shouldn't make them feel like real people," they serve only one purpose (work).... there's so much talk about the innies' exploitation as 'kids' but they're really driving home the image of them as slaves, too, this season (on both an intra- and extratextual level), and with the milchick storyline unfolding as it is i think those parallels are not lost on him. idk just really intriguing where they're taking this, probably him potentially switching 'sides' down the road - or trying, anyways, the grip lumon has on all of them is strong, in different ways

[mariuspompom]

After the avalanche of bad takes inspired by got and hotd I would just like to say that the point of asoiaf is not "feudal power corrupts" and it is not "no one can save Westeros because feudalism bad". I would like to remind you what the function of feudalism in the story actually is, as stated by GRRM:

The medieval setting has been the traditional background for epic Fantasy, even before Tolkien, and there are good reasons for that tradition. The sword has a romance to it that pistols and cannon lack, a powerful symbolic value that touches us on some primal level. Also, the contrasts so apparent in the Middle Ages are very striking -- the ideal of chivalry existed cheek by jowl with the awful brutality of war, great castles loomed over miserable hovels, serfs and princes rode the same roads, and the colorful pageantry of tournaments rose out of a brown and grey world of dung, dirt, and plague. The dramatic possibilities are so rich. ( Source)

Now his notorious statement about Aragorn's tax policy (as much as I vehemently dislike that statement concerning Tolkien, it is still very insightful for GRRM's work) :

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles? (Source)

Moral relativism right? Nihilism, pessimism, every symbol is doomed to fail, every effort for a better future is doomed to fail because the feudalist structure is inherently rotten. Should we even try then? What is the point in showing a ruler genuinely try? If every leader is doomed to fall victim to external opposing forces and/or corruption or other moral flaw, what is the point in trying? Let's see another statement by GRRM where he explains what asoiaf is actually about:

"In a very basic level winter is coming for all of us. I think that’s one of the things that art is concerned with: the awareness of our own mortality. “Valar morghulis” – “All men must die”. That shadow lies over our world and will until medical science gives us all immortality… but I don’t think it makes it necessarily a pessimistic world (...) the important thing is that love, compassion and empathy with other human beings is still possible. Laughter is still possible! Even laughter in the face of death… The struggle to make the world a better place… We have things like war, murder and rape… horrible things that still exist, but we don’t have to accept them, we can fight the good fight. The fight to eliminate those things.There is darkness in the world, but I don’t think we necessarily need to give way to despair". (Source)

The combination of these statements speaks for itself to someone who has read GRRM's work: the sword has a romance that pistols lack, the dramatic possibilities of the medieval setting are rich, ruling is hard, we can fight the good fight, we should not give way to despair. From that to "No one can save Westeros" the distance is huge and the endpoint is extremely deceptive and also deeply reactionary. If no one can save Westeros, then there is no point in trying to save Westeros. Characters that try to save Westeros, or Essos, or the Wildlings, or anything bigger than their own ass, are not morally superior to others that just benefit from the current status quo or passively tolerate/enable it, since no one can actually do shit and every effort is doomed to fail. Yet this goes directly against the point of asoiaf that can be summed up in the phrase: "ruling is hard". It is hard alright, but the thing is, someone has to do it. Whether that someone has been chosen by the people, or by the gods, or by destiny, or by circumstances, and regardless of the political system that allowed them to yield that power, the point is that someone has power ad hoc at any given time, and power equals responsibility. What do you do with it? How do you govern? How do you choose between two equally grievous alternatives? Who do you listen to? Who do you trust? How can you learn? What if everything you've been told was a lie? How do you move on from there? What if the promises you made contradict each other? What if you fail? How do you live with the guilt, how do you go on? How do you instigate a structural change? What if you try to do that and people die? What if you try to do that and it kills you? Was it worth it? How do you use the power you have? How do you fight the good fight? What makes a fight good?

"Feudalism bad" and "no one can save Westeros" are not just incredibly uninspired catchphrases, they are something much worse: a very nice way of avoiding to answer the real, hard, uncomfortable questions that are the driving force of asoiaf, and a very neat way to justify those who tolerate, enable or reinforce the status quo. Coincidentally, these questions remain the same in every single political system. They are universal. That's why this is a good, relevant, applicable story, that's why we give a fuck even if the context is foreign to us. So spare us the moralizing bullshit please, and thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[littlefankingdom]

Dick: The Titans don't want me to be their leader. :(

Bruce *who already has put in the Justice League plans and systems that if anything happens to him, Dick becomes the leader, even tho Batman isn't the unique leader of the JL*: Making mistakes is an important part of growing up.

[flying-fangirls]

I like to think that John's voice turned more "monstrous" over time as he became more comfortable with Arthur. When they first meet, John is scared and unsure of everything, so he reverts to tactics of manipulation. He tries to sound as "human" as possible both because he thinks it will make Arthur more trusting of his manipulation, and because he's afraid Arthur will fear/hate him for being something "different." But as John slowly discovers his identity, and they both become closer and more accepting of who they are, John's voice shifts from performance to its natural state. And eventually John feels safe enough around Arthur to exist openly as his true self.

[halcyon-deluxe]

what do you value most in someone?

At *least* a 2x resistance to ground type attacks. My last partner died due to a 4x weakness to earthquake and it gave me SUCH an ick :/ likeeeee I haaaaate it when my partner gets one-shot by earthquake spammers. its such a turn off.

[mafaldinablabla]

Like not that this show was ever really *good* quality wise okay but at least it was fun as hell, campy and a wild ride, still kinda messy but in a good way. But man this finale sucked major ass and not only for the throuple not happening, although I'm disappointed I'm ngl, but cause in the last episodes the show got boring as fuck. There were basically only max and avery saying the same shit to each other over again, tristan disappeared into a sad spineless nothing, character and development completely casted aside and forgotten, rosie and the other gays disappeared full stop, it honestly just seemed like they didn't know how to handle it cause even the rest of the plot lines and a lot of the weekly medical shenanigans weren't entertaining as much. Personally I think they had to stop the ody3 in the hope of a second season, but still they fumbled it, like they intended on going in a way and had to come up with something fast and mismanage the recovery. I'm curious to see if they will get a second season or not.

[dragon-spaghetti]

Funniest shit about my job is that I have my script memorised so hard it includes hand gestures. Even though we are a telephone helpline and they cannot fucking see my hand movements 😭

[luxmoogle]

I’m sorry … I thought your recent post of Sora was Mickey … I’m sorry 😔

And I'm out here wondering whose Mickey.... The only Mickey I know is the mouse, Mickey Mouse??

[egophiliac]

thank you for blessing us with twst pokemon au i appreciate it greatly. if i may ask you a question

how does one read book 7 without selling their soul to the deep dark web. i've been wanting to read the other parts for a while but i can't find a place with all the chapters. i've seen translations on youtube but i don't think they have all of them?

(also why'd you government name mickey like that on your last post what did he do)

thank you! :D

I'm not really sure where to find up-to-date main story translations, so opening it up to the floor for other people to chime in! for reference, the latest release in JP was episode 7 chapter 6 on December 11th, which covered 7-88 through 7-100. fingers crossed for more in February...but that's where we're at right now!

(Michael knows what he did)

[catzgam3rz]

ACTUALLY

Warden Xisumavoid

Jumped straight to this one because I'd never drawn Xisuma before and this sounded SICK

[vantablackdraws]

Hello, vantablackdraws! Do you have any other favorite pairs from Guilty Gear or other works? if it's not difficult for you, can you tell us about them and how you liked them? How do you see the dynamics between these characters?

That's certainly a tall order of an ask my friend... well let's see, for Guilty Gear pairings, I also like:

Chaos and Daryl: I think Daryl can sorta play at his level and therefore possibly beat him at his own game so to speak. I mean he had Chaos convinced that he was a coffee addict only to be revealed he didn't like coffee. I think Chaos would find him interesting. Plus that line "It's so boring here, I shoulda kept Daryl at least." hmmmmmmmmm

Chipp and Answer: Changing Answer's life for the better and from a situation he was similarly in before aside, Chipp is also kind of a dumbass (a very competent one, mind you, but still). And Answer having the energy of "I would literally kill for you but Jesus Christ you drive me insane-" is funny to me. You got a lot of potential for tender/more serious moments as well as some comedy in there.

Axl and I-No: I don't really know a lot about them outside of Strive and some other lore but every time I think about them I get kinda sad, because it feels like Sol and Jack-o except if it doesn't work out. Like the whole "do you love me for who I am, or because I remind you of someone you used to love?" dilemma (plus I-No's whole doomed situation adding an extra pinch of angst-)

Nagoryuki and Testament: Tbh I'm unsure on whether I like this one romantically or more platonically, maybe I'll just keep it vague because I like that. But I think they have a lot of potential based on their arcade interactions and their similar history. Testament understands what it's like to be controlled against your will, or as they (roughly) put it, "I know what it's like to carry yourself like some sort of demon". I think they could also bring out Nago's more lighthearted and playful side (the dad jokes), maybe they could drink tea and go on long walks, just take time to appreciate life again together as two semi-immortal(?) beings. I think that would be nice.

Aaaand the other ships I also like are KyDizzy, RoboVenom, Mayburi, JohnnyTess, SolJacko, and AbaCelsus. They're just nice <3