#this is the design i use for him in zines and stuff :)

[needlepine]

Idk guys, he looks like a trustworthy cat to lead ShadowClan to me!

-Needletail, probably

[kyri45]

✨ShadowPeach Bio Parents Bio AU Q&A! 23/12✨

Welcome to the Q&A! A space where I can answer related or similar question about the Shadowpeach Bio Parents AU! If you submitted your ask anonimously, then you’ll have to check the whole post if it’s answered here, if it’s not, worry not! Your asks might have been used for a future comic or just in the queue~

@boonalina ha chiesto: Question: Why does Wukong's biblically accurate form have two faces? Also, was there some inspiration for you that made you want to design him like that? (Since I know he doesn't have any canonical Kaiju form in LMK) Also also, DAMN that Kaiju fight was so freaking pretty!! The colors were so well done!

thank you!! He has 3 actually, but in the panels you can see 2 bc the third is facing away from the camera aha.

Anonimo ha chiesto: would you make a Shadowpeach bio parents au zine?

yes I would. But it requires an enormeous amount of organization, plus you need multiple people to organize a zine, from contacting, to marketing, to production, to logistic etc… I don’t have the time right now as I’m already working.

@stro-lmk-enjoyer ha chiesto: Head canon that Red Son uses/used to use the ‘rubber duck’ method while working. The rubber duck method is: when making something by yourself you may get stuck/stressed out because you can’t find a solution to a problem. Have a rubber duck on your desk just so you can verbally explain your problem, which could help you solve it by actually hearing it out loud. But a side effect of this is now Red Son will talk to himself while he works, even if it does help it still freaks his parents out hearing him mumbling to himself when they pass his room. Just something I learned recently when watching a video about writing a characters backstory 👍 I thought you might like this too! Bye <3

i know need Red Son just talking about project to a cute rubber duck and MK finding it adorable.

Anonimo ha chiesto: Will LBD come back ? Even if it is just in a dream ?

maybe

Anonimo ha chiesto: how old is MK ? Like 18-21 ???

almost 22.

@haru7110 ha chiesto: IS MEI IMMORTAL LIKE MK AND REDSON IN THE SHADOWPEACH AU??? I NEED TO KNOW!! Fornoreasonwhatsoeverobviouslyhahahahaha (angst purposes)

no Mei is not immortal, but I would guess she has a lifespan slightly longer than average bc of her family.

@cutvdo ha chiesto: When you first draw Red Son in his human form he looked small, but later he looks bigger (probably from you getting more comfortable drawing him). I like to think he changed his human form a bit because he found out MK likes big man

this is the best conclusion ever. He would fr fr

Anonimo ha chiesto: Guess you could say MK got his own personal monkey tree

omfg-

@aizieweex ha chiesto: Hey Kyri!!! I LOVE your art, aaaand thanks for the recent repost of my animatic (or animatik?...I honestly don't know which is more correct, I'm not a native speaker at all), I literally screamed, lol (And still screaming). I wanted to ask, how many parts of the comic are you counting on? Do you already have a certain planned number of chapters? Anonimo ha chiesto: Hello! How long will the shadow peach bio parents au be?

there will be 9 parts in total. I don’t know the exact number of chapters left but I can assume around 30.

@copyrightedbystarkindustries ha chiesto: Love your art!!! Are you planning on putting shadowpeach au stuff on your redbubble in the future?

Yes I do! But first I need to finish my job which will be more or less on the 20th of January.

Anonimo ha chiesto: Does MK use a glamour to hide some scars or something his parents aren’t supposed to find out about ?

yes

@twilight-bai-he ha chiesto: When you said during the livestream that MK will have a new outfit when he is magical girl, What do you mean by that ?

that he will eventually own a new outfit as “official outfit” let’s say. That isn’t his temporary fighting outfit he has now.

@magician-kitty ha chiesto: You think Mac will get more flustered now that Wukong’s more muscular thanks to all that weight lifting from the previous chapters?

a little bit yes.

@whotookfinn ha chiesto: Hey!! I’m absolutely in love with your art, it’s so beautiful and wonderful and IM OBSESSED. Anyway, I’m not sure if you’ve been asked this before, but who’s your favorite lmk character to draw?

macaque and Mk, they fluffy.

Anonimo ha chiesto: I HAVE A QUESTION! after your shadowpeach AU will be finished will you do other lmk Au????

nope.

@cjtuy ha chiesto: My question is about tang and pigsy are they married I've always wondered this

no they are not married, but it’s something they have been thought for a little bit. They known each other for years and got together for one. They know they work very well as a couple, and marriage would only be a more “official” way to show their union. It’s on their mind, maybe they will plan it in the near future

Anonimo ha chiesto: Have you seen that Brandon Roger's clip where he loses his kid? I can just imagine macaque going through that right now with mk being kidnapped. "Mothers adrenaline is kicking in!!" "have you seen my son, he's about this tall, clearly gay but we haven't had the talk" https://youtu.be/dJJUFrENZ_o?si=lbacsYlJr8XpaDQQ (this is the sound just in case)

LMAO I know that video by heart yes absolutely those would be the parents.

Anonimo ha chiesto: In the Bioparents AU, is Redson actually going to be able to court so Mk in the end after the whole celestial situation?

they will have time to do their stuff after the heaven shenanigans.

@ashmeertheimp ha chiesto: I hope you are having a lovely day/night and are healthy and well AND TYSM FOR THAT SPICYNOODLES KISS I LOVED IT AND MY HEART WAS ABOUT TO BURST! Anyway I was wondering if mk and Redson parents are gonna have quality time with there Nephew in spirt/potential son in law?

mm yes. Post heaven shenanigans but yes.

@cpazy ha chiesto: About that,

It means that Mac and MK's powers have to do with the moon cycle, like on a full moon they get stronger or something like that? And if there is an eclipse where the moon turns red, their powers would go out of control?

Yes, but the opposite. On a full moon they are weaker, while on a new moon they are stronger.

Anonimo ha chiesto: Hello! Not a question but I just love and ADORE your shadowpeach bio parents au! ❤️ Recently you had posted about LMK fic recommendations, I wanted to recommend "The Constellations Within Us" and it's sequel "Epilogue: Axis" (ongoing) by cloud_somersault on AO3. It's one of my favorite LMK/Shadowpeach fics! The writing and world building are stellar and it includes similar themes as the ones in your comic, like the themes of reconciliation, shadowpeach angst and repairing their friendship and their joint custod- I mean- mentorship of MK! It's a really good fic and I highly recommend giving it a read! https://archiveofourown.org/works/48308065 And again, love your comic so much! Have a great day! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

aaahhhh I will definetely check them out!

@astro-nomaly ha chiesto: Per ur Bio Parents AU, what happens when a courtnapping occurs, but the person getting napped isn’t actually into the courtnapper, and doesn’t want to be napped? Does courtnapping have a “leave whenever you want” clause or..? (I love ur au akshhenwb)

they are allowed to refuse anytime. If the kidnapper doesn’t allow the he’s a dick

@thecardboardbutterfly ha chiesto: Since everyone is starting to fear for tomorrow, I decided to share my convoluted thought I got yesterday night at like, 3AM to lighten the mood a bit (.3.)~* So Technically, given that Lmk is very much based on Journey to the West, maybe it's not that much of a stretch to call Lmk fan content of JTTW, like some kind of future AU or something. Which means your AU is fan content of Lmk. See where I'm getting at? Because your comic is so popular in the fandom, there is fan content of your AU out there, which is already fan content. Which means we reached a point where we have fan content (fanarts and various inspirations of the bio parents AU) of fan content (said bio parents AU) of fan content (Lmk) of a piece of content (JTTW). The chain is GETTING LONGER BOYS. I personally think it's funny. My apologies for everyone who lost their brain/ last remaining braincell reading this x)

omg. It’s a fan-inception!

Anonimo ha chiesto: Will Red Son and MK ever have a bad date?

I like to believe EVERY date will have would be comically bad. But I think that’s because they still need to understand that they don’t fall under the “typical demon date” or “amatonormativity” umbrella. The best date they could have is just them training and having lunch later, or them playing videogames or netflix and chill.

@sollythesalt ha chiesto: Dumb question but do you remember the scene in lmk where Wukong said he has stage fright? I wonder if you're gonna do something with that knowledge…. Ps: Keep doing your magic queen we love you and your art✌️💅

oh u bet I did

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI art has no anti-cooption immune system

TONIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

One thing Myspace had going for it: it was exuberantly ugly. The decision to let users with no design training loose on a highly customizable user-interface led to a proliferation of Myspace pages that vibrated with personality.

The ugliness of Myspace wasn't just exciting in a kind of outsider/folk-art way (though it was that). Myspace's ugliness was an anti-cooption force-field, because corporate designers and art-directors would, by and large, rather break their fingers and gouge out their eyes than produce pages that looked like that.

In this regard, Myspace was the heir to successive generations of "design democratization" that gave amateur communities, especially countercultural ones, a space to operate in where authentic community members could be easily distinguished between parasitic commercializers.

The immediate predecessors to Myspace's ugliness-as-a-feature were the web, and desktop publishing. Between the img tag, imagemaps, the blink tag, animated GIFs, and the million ways that you could weird a page with tables and padding, the early web was positively bursting with individual personality. The early web balanced in an equilibrium between the plunder-friendliness of "view source" and the topsy-turvy design imperatives of web-based layout, which confounded both print designers (no fixed fonts! RGB colorspaces! dithering!) and even multimedia designers who'd cut their teeth on Hypercard and CD ROMs (no fixed layout!).

Before the web came desktop publishing, the million tractor-feed ransom notes combining Broderbund Print Shop fonts, joystick-edited pixel-art, and a cohort of enthusiasts ranging from punk zinesters to community newsletter publishers. As this work proliferated on coffee-shop counters and telephone poles, it was visibly, obviously distinct from the work produced by "real" designers – that is, designers who'd been a) trained and b) paid by a corporation to employ that training.

All of this matters, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Communities – especially countercultural ones – are where our society's creative ferment starts. Getting your start in the trenches of the counterculture wars is no proof against being co-opted later (indeed, many of the designers who cut their teeth desktop publishing weird zines went on to pull their hair and roll their eyes at the incredible fuggliness of the web). But without that zone of noncommercial, antiestablishment, communitarian low weirdness, design and culture would stagnate.

I started thinking about this 25 years ago, the first time I met William Gibson. I'd been assigned by the Globe and Mail to interview him for the launch of All Tomorrow's Parties:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/transcript.html

One of the questions I asked was about his famous aphorism, "The street finds its own use for things." Given how quickly each post-punk tendency had been absorbed by commercial culture, couldn't we say that "Madison Avenue finds its own use for the street"? His answer started me down a quarter-century of thinking and writing about this subject:

I worry about what we'll do in the future, [about the instantaneous co-opting of pop culture]. Where is our new stuff going to come from? What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger. I didn't see it coming until a few years ago, but looking back it's very apparent.

I watch a sort of primitive form of the recommodification machine around my friends and myself in sixties, and it took about two years for this clumsy mechanism to get and try to sell us The Monkees.

In 1977, it took about eight months for a slightly faster more refined mechanism to put punk in the window of Holt Renfrew. It's gotten faster ever since. The scene in Seattle that Nirvana came from: as soon as it had a label, it was on the runways of Paris.

Ugliness, transgressiveness and shock all represent an incoherent, grasping attempt to keep the world out of your demimonde – not just normies and squares, but also and especially enthusiastic marketers who want to figure out how to sell stuff to you, and use you to sell stuff to normies and squares.

I think this is what drove a lot of people to 4chan (remember, before 4chan was famous for incubating neofascism, it was the birthplace of Anonymous): its shock culture, combined with a strong cultural norm of anonymity, made for a difficult-to-digest, thoroughly spiky morsel that resisted recommodification (for a while).

All of this brings me to AI art (or AI "art"). In his essay on the "eerieness" of AI art, Henry Farrell quotes Mark Fisher's "The Weird and the Eerie":

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

"Eeriness" here is defined as "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something." AI is eerie because it produces the seeming of intent, without any intender:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

When we contemplate "authentic" countercultural work – ransom-note DTP, the weird old web, seizure-inducing Myspace GIFs – it is arresting because the personality of the human entity responsible for it shines through. We might be able to recognize where that person ganked their source-viewed HTML or pixel-optimized GIF, but we can also make inferences about the emotional meaning of those choices. To see that work is to connect to a mind. That mind might not necessarily belong to someone you want to be friends with or ever meet in person, but it is unmistakably another person, and you can't help but learn something about yourself from the way that their work makes you feel.

This is why corporate work is so often called "soulless." The point of corporate art is to dress the artificial person of the corporation in the stolen skins of the humans it uses as its substrate. Corporations are potentially immortal, artificial colony organisms. They maintain the pretense of personality, but they have no mind, only action that is the crescendo of an orchestra of improvised instruments played by hundreds or thousands of employees and a handful of executives who are often working directly against one another:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

The corporation is – as Charlie Stross has it – the "slow AI" that is slowly converting our planet to the long-prophesied grey goo (or, more prosaically, wildfire ashes and boiled oceans). The real thing that is signified by CEOs' professed fears of runaway AI is runaway corporations. As Ted Chiang says, the experience of being nominally in charge of a corporation that refuses to do what you tell it to is the kind of thing that will give you nightmares about autonomous AI turning on its masters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

The job of corporate designers is to find the signifiers of authenticity and dress up the corporate entity's robotic imperatives in this stolen flesh. Everything about AI is done in service to this goal: the chatbots that replace customer service reps are meant to both perfectly mimic a real, competent corporate representative while also hewing perfectly to corporate policy, without ever betraying the real human frailties that none of us can escape.

In the same way, the shillbots that pretend to be corporate superfans online are supposed to perfectly amplify the corporate message, the slow AI's conception of its own virtues, without injecting their own off-script, potentially cringey enthusiasms.

The Hollywood writers' strike was, at root, about the studio execs' dream that they could convert the "insights" of focus groups and audience research into a perfect script, without having to go through a phalanx of lippy screenwriters who insisted on explaining why they think your idea is stupid. "Hey, nerd, make me another ET, except make the hero a dog, and set it on Mars" is exactly how you prompt an AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Corporate design's job is to produce the seeming of intention without any intender. The "personality" we're meant to sense when we encounter corporate design isn't the designer's, nor the art director's, nor even the CEO's. The "personality" is meant to be the slow AI's, but a corporation doesn't have a personality.

In his 2018 short story "Noon in the antilibrary," Karl Schroeder describes an "antilibrary" as an endlessly deep anaerobic lagoon of generative botshit:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/18/104097/noon-in-the-antilibrary/

The antilibrary is a generative AI system that can produce entire librarys’-worth of fake books with fake authors, fake citations by other fake experts with their own fake books and biographies and fake social media accounts, on-demand and instantly. It was speculation in 2018; it’s possible now. Creating an antilibrary is just a matter of investing in a sufficient number of graphics cards and electricity.

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/after-the-internet

Reading Karl's reflections on the antilibrary crystallized something for me that I've been thinking about for a quarter-century, since I interviewed Gibson at the Penguin offices in north Toronto. It snapped something into place that I've trying to fit since encountering Henry's thoughts on the "eeriness" of AI work and the intent without an intender.

It made me realize why I dislike AI art so much, on a deep, aesthetic level. The point of an image generator is to buffer the intention of the prompter (which might be genuinely creative and bursting with personality) in layers of automated decision-making that flense the final product of any hint of the mind that caused its creation.

The most febrile, deeply weird and authentic prompts of the most excluded outsiders produce images that feel the same as the corporate AI illustrations that project the illusion of personality from the immortal, transhuman colony organism that is the limited liability corporation.

AI art is born coopted. Even the 4chan equivalent of AI – the deeply transgressive and immoral nonconsensual pornography – feels no different from the "official" AI porn churned out by "real" pornographers. "Shrimp Jesus" and other SEO-optimized Facebook slop is so uncanny because it is simultaneously "weird" ("that which does not belong") and yet it belongs in the same aesthetic bucket of the most anodyne Corporate Memphis ephemera:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

We call it "generative" but AI art can't generate the kind of turnover that aerates the aesthetic soil. An artform that can't be transgressive is sterile, stillborn, a dead end.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Jake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970s_fanzines_(21224199545).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[vintagerpg]

OK, obviously not an RPG, but Art by Nohr (2024) collects art by Johan Nohr, who is instrumental in the success of MÖRK BORG, which is one of the defining games of the last decade, so it felt appropriate to include this week.

A couple of things here that I find very cool. First is Nohr’s art broadly — I was an instant fan as soon as I got MÖRK BORG rule book into my hands. It’s black metal, but highly designed, bright but dark, grim but very funny. I have an endless capacity to enjoy haunted horned figures in robes and Nohr endeavors to test those limits. I love him for it.

Second is seeing these images big. The book is 11x14 and, for the most part, I’m used to seeing Nohr’s work in zines, so it is easy to be wowed by the size of this stuff. I also like the fact that this book collects a large number of pieces that were used for third-party MÖRK BORG — I’ve long thought that Nohr’s willingness to contribute to products he isn’t developing himself has lent community MÖRK BORG products an unusually cohesive look. And seeing all this stuff gathered in one place reinforces that.

Finally, it is great to see all the MÖRK BORG stuff right next to Nohr’s other work, which displays a range of styles that I think might surprise casual fans. Sure, it’s obvious that the same guy did MÖRK BORG and Cy-Borg, but then you see his Death in Space stuff or the collages from Into the Odd and it suddenly becomes apparent Nohr’s a lot more versatile than MÖRK BORG might have you believe.

This book collects work from 2006 to 2023. Already looking forward to volume two in 2040.

[ny000mdraws]

My pieces for a zine that unfortunately got cancelled. But hey! At least I got to make a piece of my TFsona and my TFP OCs!

And if you’re interested in me info dumping about them, it’ll be below the cut!

This guy is my TFsona, Nyoom! So far, I’ve only drawn him in the MTMTE universe but I want to design a TFP and TFA version as well! Anyway, he’s a wuss. A big scaredy-cat. He remained a neutral during the war because he was too afraid to use a gun and spent most of the war hiding from both Decepticons and Autobots. Instead of being a fighter, he’s an artist who enjoys being lost in his own world and letting his servo flow freely across the canvas. As for why he’s on the Lost Light, he hoped that this journey across galaxies would broaden his horizon and inspire his next series of works. Although, now he’s having second thoughts…

Now onto my TFP OCs (who all happen to be Decepticons ahaha)!

Burn Rubber is a scout. He’s from Velocitron and his alt-mode is a F1 racing car. Out of all the OCs, he’s the most competent and loyal but he still fears Megatron’s wraith. Because of his birth defect that made him have no arms, he relies more on kicks and piercing bots with his pede. After the war, he and Bulkhead form a friendship and grow closer.

This is an unnamed OC. I mainly wanted to create a Transformer OC who 1. Is a cannibal and 2. Is a manipulative POS and genuinely unlikable. His facial anatomy is similar to that of a python in the sense that he can unhinge his jaw in order to ingest large pieces of fuel. His alt-mode is a motorcycle.

Vise is my first TF OC I made (that wasn’t a child of existing characters) back in 2021. I wanted to include a character who was disabled (Burn Rubber was the same way) and I decided on a mech with no optics. Since it’s a birth defect, he’s gotten used to navigating the world and remember others using his other sense. His one flaw is that he seeks validation way too much. It’s one of the reasons why he stayed with the Decepticons for so long despite how harsh they were to him. He always sought out Megatron’s approval like in the beginning of the revolution but as the war dragged on and Megatron started to lose his grip on sanity, the praise became less and less. Eventually, he leaves the Decepticons because his Minicon was afraid of him getting hurt if he stayed. After the war, he becomes conjunxed to Arcee.

Missile is Vise’s Minicon. He was assigned to Vise to help him due to his blindness. Initially, Missile was annoyed with having to potentially babysit instead of help fight in the war, but he gradually started to see Vise as a brother and now they’re inseparable. He’s the more cautious and pragmatic of the two. Even though he and Vise defect, he’s still wary of the Autobots.

Pop-Tart was a joke character. It was based on a quote retweet I made on Twitter where the original post said “your Decepticon name is the last thing you ate + your first car.” Even though I don’t drive, I decided to make a Transformers character named “Pop-Tart” and see what happens. A handful of people liked him so he became an official OC. Anyway, he’s goofy and dumb. The only reason why he’s a Decepticon is because they recruited him first. Now they regret it because he’s the least competent bot you’ll ever meet. All Megatron sees in him is his strength and ability to follow orders. Also he has the hots for a human woman.

And that’s it! I’m like 95% sure I’ve never shared anything OC related before despite the handful of stuff I’ve shared about them on Twitter and Insta, so who knows. If I feel like if, I’ll post them here.

[rustbeltjessie]

I haven’t made a pinned post in a while, but since it’s my birthday month and I’m struggling right now, I figured it’s a good time to make one.

First, let me introduce myself. I’m Jessie Lynn McMains, aka Rust Belt Jessie. I’m a writer (poetry and prose), artist, zine-maker, spoken word performer, occasional musician, small press publisher, and general jack of several creative trades. I’m queer—bi/mspec and nonbinary (I use they/them, she/her, and he/him pronouns). I’m disabled and neurodivergent, and the parent of two kiddos. Politically? Well, I consider myself an anarchist at heart, but I still vote in every election. I think everyone should be able to have enough food, and a safe place to live, and yeah, even a few ‘unnecessary,’ fun things, just by virtue of being alive. As for the rest of my beliefs, you can probably garner a general idea if you peruse my blog even a little.

Now, onto the nitty-gritty. We had about ten days between when our last month’s food money ran out and when this month’s came in. It has been refilled as of today, so I don’t have to worry about that for the moment, but because of that gap, I had to spend money I’d set aside for other stuff on food. I paid our rent and energy bill for the month, but I’m a couple months overdue on our Internet bill, and I don’t want to risk that getting shut off. And then, well, it’s December. I’m trying to buy my kids some Christmas presents, and it’s not just my birthday month—my youngest kiddo’s birthday is four days before Christmas. Because of all this, I’m also way behind on writing stuff. I owe my zine subscribers a new issue (I didn’t send anything at all in November), and I’m trying to finish up some pieces to record for my new spoken word EP, but I’ve had to focus on day job and side-hustle stuff that’s more immediately lucrative, so I haven’t been able to dedicate much time to finishing these projects.

If you’d like to throw some $$ my way so I can get some gifts for my kiddos, keep my Internet on, get back to my writing, and maybe have a less-stressful birthday month than I did last year, I have V*nmo (JessieLynnMcMains) and P*yp*l (coeur.de.fantome [at] gmail[dot]com).

But hey, hey, I’m not just asking for something for nothing! I have a lot of stuff available on Ko-fi (rustbeltjessie), including print books and zines, ebooks and zines, and pins, and you can also hire me as an editor or commission a custom mini-collage. And almost everything is sliding scale/pay-what-you-can, some with a minimum price, others starting at $0.

And that zine subscription? It’s still not too late to get in on it, even though the year is almost over. If you sign up now, you’ll receive all previous issues, along with this month’s when it’s finished, and the final two will be mailed out in January.

Or perhaps you’d like to buy or commission something I don’t officially have for sale. Maybe you’d like to buy one of my existing pieces of art? Or commission a custom pin, designed by me, based on the band/film/fandom/whatever of your choice? Or commission a custom postcard poem/art piece, on the subject of your choice? Or have me write you a custom mini-zine, on the subject of your choice? I can do all those things! DM me, and we’ll work something out!

Oh, and I mentioned above that I was working on a new spoken word EP? Go check out my full-length spoken word album, Self-Portrait With Ghosts and Trains, which was released by Hello America Stereo Cassette in July 2021. You can find it at helloamerica.bandcamp.com. (I do get royalties from that release periodically, but it’s not as immediate as if you purchase something directly from me.)

All that said, I know times are tough for most people right now, so please don’t feel obligated to purchase anything or otherwise send money my way. And, as always, even just a few dollars helps, as does reblogging/boosting this post. 🖤

[theinstagrahame]

It's a bad day, and I've been dragging my heels on this. But, I got a bunch of neat new TTRPG stuff in October, so here's what landed in my mailbox.

Break!! - A few years ago, I stumbled on some art on Twitter. It was fun, it was vibrant, and it felt inviting. I wanted to know more, looked into the artist, and discovered it was spot art for an upcoming RPG called Break!! So, I kept an eye on it. The book is beautiful, well laid-out, and really cool, so maybe one good thing came from Twitter*.

The Electric State - Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood have been pretty high on my "To Play" lists for years. A follow-up, set in a similar (or the same?) world was kind of an instant pickup. Not as interested in the movie, but the game seems pretty rad.

The Geologist's Primer - I picked up the Herbalist's Primer when it came out, and was really impressed with the quality and care that went into it, so when I saw "That but for rocks" was in the works, I was definitely already in. Also excited for the follow up "Mushrooms next time".

Starkhollow Hall - I accidentally fell into a Gothic Fiction kick over Spooky Month, so the timing of this was perfect. I don't know a ton about the GUMSHOE system, but I do feel like what I know about it makes it a perfect fit for the genre. Gothic heroines (and I guess heroes) are at their best when they know there's a dangerous mystery at the heart of what's happening around them, and go looking for it anyway.

Forsaken - Kyle Tam is, honestly, a designer to watch. I picked this up because it was part of an Afterthought Committee project, which is a team I've also really enjoyed work from (my game Water Landing is built off of their game Cast Away). Does a better job of establishing a sort of grimdark/Soulsbourne vibe than some stuff that explicitly tries to.

Iron Edda Reforged - The pitch for this caught me immediately: Cyberpunk Norse Mythology. Tracy Barnett is another Designer to Watch, and I really like all of their stuff--haven't played the original Iron Edda, but have heard it on Party of One and really dug it. Was really hyped to see this come into being.

Electrum Archive v2 - I went through a Weird Sci-Fi phase this year, and the original Electrum Archive was an early pick for it. I really loved the world, the way each class worked differently, and the magic/currency/MacGuffin that it used. Obviously I wanted more, because the second book is here.

Alice is Missing - Silent Falls - My friends and I have been talking about the prospect of another Alice is Missing game since playing the first one about two years ago. It was a really memorable experience, partly due to the game's really compelling design, and to some of the in-moment decisions we made (I played the facilitator character, who starts the game having returned after a long absence, and another player immediately got pissed at them for sorta abandoning the group. it created an interesting play dynamic for the whole session)

Kill Him Faster - I picked up a previous Kovidae Games book as a lark: a collection of exercise-based RPGs. I nearly ignored their other stuff, but this had a pretty compelling pitch: What if time-travel was invented mostly so people could speedrun murdering Hitler. Since Eat the Reich came out, I've thought a bit about Hitler Revenge Fantasy as a genre, and honestly, I'm kinda into it. He was a loser, and deserves to be reduced to a video game villain and killed over and over again; so, yeah. Let's kill him faster next time.

Splat (issue 5) - I'm not usually one for essays and interviews, but this is a zine featuring and by some folks I really like and respect, and this one is packed with thoughts about the state of the indie TTRPG scene and industry from a diverse and immensely talented group. It's honestly a must-read.

(Already getting a few things for the next edition, but also feeling too garbage after the Clusterfuck Election to think about doing anything else today...)

---

footnote: * Technically, two good things came from Twitter. I also once expressed sorrow that I'd missed out on a limited T-shirt from a web comic artist that said "Sorry, Glenn, the only Beck I listen to has two turntables and a microphone", and the creator saw it and had an extra in my size.

[obikin-obsessor]

It's been a year already it seems! Welcome to the mental illness!

A year ago my friends introduced me to star wars, and it wasn't the original trilogy that made my autism go brrrrr, no it was the prequels with it's windows XP background fight scene in TPM that got to me.

Not long after, today in fact, is when I discovered Obikin and now every time I see fanart of them together I kick my feet and giggle at how much I love them.

To personally celebrate one year of being in this fandom I have decided to show y'all just how bad it's gotten lol. I will be going over my book collection as well as my pin collection. (Help my wallet is screaming at me)

Now you might notice that book five of Jedi apprentice is missing from this, that's because I currently have it out and have been staring at it for MONTHS at this point because I absolutely despise Qui-Gon in this series and I know he's going to for some reason abandon Obi on a civil war torn planet instead of taking him to space Mcdonalds!

Despite the fact that I'm more obsessed with the prequels if I see a book I don't have at thrift stores or second hand book shops I can't help myself but grab it, especially since one character in particular really fascinates me, and that's good ol' Anakin Solo and the sadly less talked about Ken. I wanna know why Leia decided to name her kid off of the father she never knew and the father that also tortured her. And I just really like Ken, he never appears outside of two books but he will forever be canon in my head because he's Palpatine's GRANDSON. And he also says he's just Ken (Barbie flashbacks)

Now these, these are all the ffg ttrpg books I own for star wars! There's one of the saga edition and I've also been using the essential guides for ideas when I GM our campaign. Should anyone want information that one of these books has feel free to DM me and I'll send what I find! (Not seen is my Forces and Destiny core rulebook and chronicles of the Gatekeeper, both out because I'm using them for ideas lol)

These are the two zines I own! I was lucky enough to come into this fandom when nightfall was doing preorders and I managed to snag one! Found is a found family based zine I actually found on Ebay!

Oh boy...Welcome to what I can only describe as a pure concentrated form of my obsession with Obikin. Admittedly this idea wasn't an original thought, it was inspired by discovering @aigoos pinboard design and it inspired me to make my own! The board is actually handmade by me! I bought a pinboard at Michael's and then went to a local fabric shop where I got this beautiful fabric! It isn't the most clean cut well put together board but it's mine! :3

These are hilariously up there as being my favorite keychains! They're from Nightfall zine!

Look at my boys cuddling, look at them, this is the cutest most adorable enamel pin I own and I would slaughter all the younglings in the temple for them.

And as you can see this is the very same pin I posted about days ago where I was concerned that it might be a scam or that the seller was no longer active, great news they are! They hadn't uploaded anything since last year but now it appears they're back! The back of the pin actually says "I loved you!" and I did in fact squeal like a school girl when I saw that! 🤣

This is the brotherhood 2 pin by Foundling mercantile and I wasn't originally going to buy this, I had originally woken up to get the starfighters and Bunnywan/Nyanakin pins which while currently unavailable on Foundling you can still get from RussianRita on Etsy! (They're also who I got the boy's cuddling from!)

Here we have my boys, just chilling, killing, and while unfortunately my phone camera doesn't show it Obi-Wan's lightsaber glows in the dark! (It was very important that I mention this I absolutely adore glow in the dark stuff!)

So really fun fact about these! I had messaged the seller, Deileeart, on Etsy because they hadn't gotten a review since last year so I was worried that they were no longer selling, only for them to immediately respond and next thing I know everything's 75% off! I obviously had to grab them, they're so smol and cute!

Then up top we have my plushies/figures! The first three plushies are by @mouyashii and they're incredibly soft! Padme especially and I don't know why lol! Anakin also has darth vader's helmet underneath his robes!

The one's on top of each other are their tsum tsums! Poor perpetually splitting Anakin, the second Obi gets removed he'll just kill me.

Then the last two are by @saeuchelle! They're connected by a keychain and it's so incredibly satisfying to spin them by that chain in between my fingers!

Also Obi has just a wee bit of a "tabard" problem, it never goes down! 🤣

And that's all of them! (for now) I'll probably start showing off new merch I get in the future because I gain great joy from talking about them! They're my favorite lil guys after all!

Thank you for reading my rant, have a lovely day! 💜

[strangerthingsfanworkrecs]

I want to nominate hawkinsleather (on Tumblr and Bsky) for their art!

Some of the pieces I really love by them - https://www.tumblr.com/hawkinsleather/769804322781511680/hi-its-my-version-of-fae-daddy-eddie-from?source=share; https://www.tumblr.com/hawkinsleather/763350765646561280/p-is-for-pumpkin-bong?source=share; https://www.tumblr.com/hawkinsleather/755198310866993152/stevieweek-day-two-gender-euphoria?source=share

I love that their art style is so unique and colorful! The faces always look so cool. Also love the frequent trans rep.

Questions for them - what is some inspiration for your style of art? who's your fave ST character to draw? have you done art in any other fandoms?

This week, we're highlighting @hawkinsleather!

Here's the pieces that @fkinkindagauche highlighted. Their art tag is here

see the original post here, here, and here HawkinsLeather answered some questions about their creative process and inspiration under the cut

Why Stranger Things?

i could talk about how i’ve been faithfully watching the show from the start, like i think i watched it the day it came out. rewatch every new season and so on, but let’s be honest, the reason is Eddie Munson. that’s why i got involved instead of just watching the show like a normal person. but i genuinely have loved the show from the start cos it’s that 50 shades of brown real 80’s, and i was actually alive in the 80s so i vaguely remember that and recognise stuff despite not being american. we often joke that it was still the 80s in like 1995 in finland where i grew up.

Who's your fave ST character to draw?

it’s that bitch Eddie Munson. they say that artists should find a blorbo to draw a million times and he’s that guy. I do try to draw other things too but i keep going back to him. and Steve with his huge square head. there’s a reason why I draw them a lot. but i've also found myself drawing a fair amount of Carol Perkins. i have a secret stash of unpublished Carol art because it's for something that's currently on hold. her hair is just… fun! 

What's your typical drawing process like? Are there any tools you like to use?

the process is: i have a stupid idea, find a reference, do a crude doodle, draw over it again and again until it stops sucking, have a meltdown and cigarette, redraw the hair at like 5 times and have a crisis about whether it’s gonna be all pink again haha.  i use procreate. i have a go to brush but it changes about every four months, but at the moment i’m obsessed with chromagraph pencil brush from true grit texture supply that i got in their black friday sale. i very much take advantage of any free sampler sets that brush designers/companies have available. (retro supply also has a good sampler set)

What has been your favorite project so far? Why?

i think my favourite is the page i made for Transger Things zine back in 2023, i rammed so much detail into that bad boy and i was really happy with how it turned up and i bet you won’t notice all the references or silly things i included. i'm also really proud of what i drew for Sapphic Things zine, it's similarly busting with details, i just like doing that. that's why i give Eddie so many silly tattoos and then curse myself when i have to draw them again and his limbs are in awkward positions and it's hard. i do have a ’my personal favourites’ tag on my tumblr for my favourite pieces.

What has been your hardest project so far? Why?

there’s a lot of things i’ve abandoned cos they’re not working but i don’t think those count. there is a Tom of Finland inspired piece i’ve been working on since probably early 2023 and it’s working but i’ve also not had enough practice in certain things so i’ve not managed to finish it but i also refuse to give up or half ass it cos it’s important to me. i was just thinking about picking it up again once i���ve finished my stommy bang fic, as a treat.

Have you ever had a creative block? How did you get over it?

oh god all the time, but usually it’s a few days of bad mental health or task paralysis and then i’m back but… you know what. actually i think i might be in a bit if a block right now cos i feel like i've not finished a single thing this year (but maybe there's like one) i'm still figuring out how to actually get out. it'll just happen on it's own, i gotta trust the process no matter how slow and annoying it is.

What is some inspiration for your style of art?

This is weird but the original inspiration to my art style was the doodles in the cover booklet for le tigre’s self titled album all the way from 1999. i remember getting my copy and thinking they were neat and i just started giving all my drawings that weird nose and the big eyes, i think even the hair. i've made all of those elements more mine over the years but that’s how that started. i’ve tried drawing normal noses too but it’s just more fun this way! though side profiles are a nightmare! unfortunately i think i’ve lost my copy over the years and you can’t find good quality pictures online. (ps. listen to deceptacon!) punk music and zines have just in general always been a big influence on everything i do, i’ve been making zines since the late 90s so it makes sense. other things: moomins, other children’s illustrations, vintage ads, album art, horror movies and old b-movies. oh and straight up vintage pornography.

Have you done art in any other fandoms?

not really. this is kind of the only fandom i’ve been properly involved in since the early 2000s when i was involved in some livejournal fanfic communities i don't want to mention by name but if you’re that curious you can find crumbs in my ao3. THOUGH i did edit a Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few years back and i drew a couple of things for it including her sick af dagger. so i guess that counts?

Is there an upcoming project you're particularly excited about?

i always have a gazillion WIPs on the go, but i'm just adding finishing touches to my stommy mini bang fic which is exciting, cos i'm usually on the artist side and it's been fun! i've also been organising the bang. it's only little but we've had fun and i'm really proud of what we've been up to 💘 i'm also doing steddie bingo this year and it's my first time doing a bingo. i'm also cooking up something secret maybe with one of my past bang collaborators and i'm helping with Stranger Things March Mating Madness and Stranger Tales. and i've signed up to Steve Harrington bang and I'm sure ill do too many bangs again and I'm also doing some art for the Steddie Classic Art Zine ���� always doing too much.  oh yeah and Sapphic Things zine is currently in production, not sure when the pre-orders for that will be opening. i'm really looking forward to people seeing it.

Is there anything we didn't ask that you'd like to add?

idk but i suppose i should promo myself a bit and tell you where you can find me / support me if you so wish, including financially:

bluesky: https://hawkinsleather.bsky.social

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkinsleather

tumblr: http://hawkinsleather.tumblr.com

pillowfort (for nsfw archives I think) https://pillowfort.social/hawkinsleather

just the tip: www.ko-fi.com/tukru

zines & stickers straight from me:

print on demand t-shirts etc merch:

print on demand prints:

or just go to hawkinsleather.carrd.co cos these might change or update at some point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[candycorncremator]

Unfortunately lower visual quality than I wanted be because Tumblr only allows 10 images so I smushed them into three canvases instead of two post. Anyway beta trolls Headcanon and some thoughts below the cut.

Aradia

Aradia is the design I probably have the most experience drawing of the beta trolls purely because of how many zines I’ve drawn her in the last year. I like thinking of her hair similar to Pinkie Pies’ in g4 of mlp, where it’s very curly bouncy in her alive and godtiered forms but straightens out more when she’s ghosting up the place and in Aradia-bot form. I didn’t realize until a recent zine I had been drawing her horns ways too low for comic accuracy but I am a creature of habit so I keep drawing them like that.

Tavros

I’ve grown to love this kid because of my recent reread but I do not like drawing them. Between the Mohawk and the long, straight horns, I don’t care to draw their most important traits so he unfortunately only gets drawn in these group drawings. As for the one ear being pierced, it’s kinda a reference to cow tags but also I think it just fits them.

Sollux

Sollux a pretty easy character to design. I just have to imagine a greasy nerd kid growing up too fast for him to put on weight, add his troll bits and voila. The snake bites are definitely a hold over from the humanstuck I made for him last year but I think it just kinda add to his whole vibe. The undershirt comes from someone who also sits in a hot-ass room most of my days and will wears a second layer so leaving the room won’t feel like stepping out into a frozen wasteland.

Karkat

Karkat for me has always been short and stout guy. Other than that most of his facial features are taken from me, being someone who also over exaggerates their faces and nearly always is squinting a little.

Nepeta

Between all my designs of Nepeta the only thing that ever changes with any consistency is her hair. Like giving her cleft lip scar because I gave it to my fan-descendent of her and it’s cute.

Kanaya

Like two months ago I saw a post on here saying give that girl a nose (in reference to Kanaya) and it was the single most true HC I have ever seen. I also like completely throw out any references I have of her when I draw her hair because I think she should have 1930’s waves and curls. I typically only have to draw the super simple eyes so the only thing I had to change was giving her actual eyes.

Terezi

Got pretty comic accurate but probably would erase some of the chin to imply she’s fat a little better if I wasn’t doing this more rigid style.

Vriska

Also pretty comic accurate with the exception of the snake bites which is probably because I don’t draw her a lot and I don’t think about her much enough looks wise to have any specific head canons.

Equius

Goodness his hair gave me a struggle, kept on looking like a balding metal head until I added the pushed back stuff. Also returned back to drawing pseudo animal ears by giving him horse ears only angle to better fit a humanoid head.

Gamzee

I hate their make-up but every thing else about drawing them is a dream; goat ears, not straight hair, simple horns, silly little guy. What more could I ask for.

Eridan

And I’m almost done but unfortunately this doofus is next and requires the most detailed bust even in canon. Due to drawing them in this year’s 413 countdown I know how I like styling their hair and fins so I basically just chop the hair up since this is suppose to be during comic hcs and then follow their canon and Pesterquest designs with a few added features and boom. I was drawing everyone with the dark grey lips but I forgot for Eridan so I’ll just say they use concealer on their lips.

Feferi

Yippee! Back to ignoring canon and just giving her the biggest eyes on account of her glasses and cute piercings. I originally based her fins off of lion fish fins but they’re definitely more based off of betta ventral fin now.

[slightly-sigilant]

About

adult - he/they - one of many - not straight - not cis - not white - not human

Call me Phosphor!

I’m just here (very reluctantly, given tumblr’s Everything) for my friends and my fandoms, and I read much more than I post. I expect that I’ll mostly post Fallen London stuff (namely my OCs and my fanmade sigils) but who knows. I may occasionally post things on my headmate Lark’s behalf, including stuff about his own FL OC. (You can find him on his own blog as well, at @lutekeeper.)

Anyone who’s not a TERF/Nazi/etc is welcome to follow. I believe in good faith and in caring about people despite their messiness; I have no fondness for exclusionism, puritanism, or the slapfighting that passes for “discourse” on social media. Do with this information what you will.

Tags/posts of interest:

My Correspondence sigil art

My "what even is Fallen London" guidepost

References for canon Correspondence sigils

(more info below the cut)

Other links:

My system’s website

My account on the fediverse, where most of my personal posting happens - instance is set to allowlist only because I got tired of Nazi whack-a-mole, but if you want to follow me and your instance isn’t allowlisted, let me know and I’ll add it. (If you don’t have a fedi account but want one, here’s a few instances.)

My blog, where I keep many of my longposts, including some that I don't put here or on fedi.

FAQ

Are you still drawing Correspondence sigils/taking requests?

Yes! I go long periods where I don't draw any because I'm prone to getting deleted by seasonal depression and other health woes, but it's always okay to send in requests as long as you understand that it may be a while until I get to it.

Can I get a tattoo of one of your sigils/use it in my Fallen London fanart/brand it onto my Fallen London OC’s back/(some other personal noncommercial use that doesn’t involve blockchain or AI)?

Yes, go ahead! No credit needed.

Can I make NF*Ts of your sigils/use your sigils to train my AI/(some other techbro junk)?

No. Fuck off.

Can I use your sigils in a non-techbro commercial project?

Ask me first! If it’s something like slapping my art onto T-shirts, almost certainly no. If it’s something like “I’m drawing my Correspondent OC for a Neathy charity zine and want to use one of your designs,” then it’ll probably be fine - but again, ask me first!

[grandpa-spooks]

Oh, hey there

☩ James, he/him ☩ minor (18+/NSFW blogs DNI) ☩ disabled + cpunk ☩ queer ☩ German-American, Scottish-American, Irish-American, and a few others that will occasionally be mentioned ☩ Agnostic waiting to convert to Judaism

Tag series’ ☩ “legacy of being alive”— about my journey leaving Christianity and de-programming my mind from the psychological torment I (personally) suffered ☩ “james’s self-help files”— important or helpful posts to save for later. Help myself, help a moot. Contains a variety of practical tips for us all to enjoy on many many subjects ☩ “holy fuck this is iconic”— for the sillies and the whimsies ☩ “feel better my love”— positivity, love, all that good stuff for when you need a pick-me-up

Things to keep in mind ☩ I do not consider queer to be a slur. ☩ If you are not disabled and you use the word 'cripple', prepare to die by my blade. ☩ I am neither anti-theist or anti-Christian. All faiths are welcome here! But the same way I respect your positive experiences with faith, please respect my negative ones when I share them. ☩ My queue may have things from when I was Christian. I tend to delete these but you may find them first. If I am professing Christian faith, it’s old (this goes for old posts as well). ☩ I am not a woman, but I support women's rights. I am not a POC, but I support POC rights. You can imagine the rest.

Interests/Fandoms ☩ Taylor Swift ☩ Harry Potter ☩ Mental health ☩ Jewish culture + life ☩ Environment/sustainability ☩ U.S. politics and government ☩ Writing, singing, voice acting, graphic design, cartography ☩ (I will reblog from my music account periodically) ☩ Pokemon ☩ Wingfeather Saga ☩ Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons ☩ Ed Sheeran ☩ Picturesque (band) ☩ A Series of Unfortunate Events ☩ Gilmore Girls ☩ Mario ☩ Lizzie McGuire

Rules ☩ Do not ask me for money. Nothing personal, but fundraiser accounts that ask for my donations will be blocked by default. ☩ Misinformation, insults, aggression and cruelty will be deleted from my comments. This goes for arguing as well, regardless of if you started it. Needlessly antagonistic people will be blocked.

Important posts/resources

[lixxen]

can you tell us about the worldbuilding of your new au?

Why of course!

To start this off though, let me tell you a fun little thing about the Blog AU that is built in!

We made this AU with the idea that people who read it can put their characters into it. You know the Cafe AU that everyone is sticking their OCs in? You can do something similar! The fic is going to be canon to y'all but y'all won't be 100% canon to the fic so you guys can interact with the canon! So we genuinely encourage you guys to make outside content and make your OCs blogs or designs for this. Go crazy with it and join in! I will eventually need usernames and a few other things for the blog/forum skins. If you make anything, make sure to tag me on here (and if it's on Instagram, I'm Lixxendraws). I want you guys to be able to draw/write your characters in this AU because it'd be such a fun thing to do!

Anyways.

There are a few doodles of their official outfit designs but I don't like how they look. But I will post them eventually!

Here is the world building Under The Cut

Branch's Kismet identity is Bass while his in person one is Lapis for the sake of his safety and privacy.

Technology:

Napbug: digital audio sharing website whereP3 files are shared. Mostly for music rips and downloads

TOL: the internet hosting. Mostly known for the chatroom they speak on. You need to know the person's connection code to directly connect to them. You can chat on it and view forums/blogs directly from their TOL. You can have up to four identifications per computer

PHP (personal homepage): the blog domains they use. They can be reached outside of TOL, along with personal forums

Trollums: the nicknames for forums. You can find people's TOL & PHP on trollums and it is how people mostly find blogs

BeeperBugs (beepers): little hugs that act like pagers. They will send and receive messages somehow (they never figures it out). You will hear them beep and they can carry codes; you can put them onto landlines and they will put in the numbers. They also can use Morse code to send messages instead of needing calls.

Computers: dial up computers. They are simple and can connect to CD drives (not built in), VHS players, floppy disks, cassettes, and can burn CDs/DVDs. They're big and chunky; no laptops. Internet cafes and libraries are popular due to not as many people having them. People learn coding to break and customize them

Cassettes and MP3 players: they are popular and do not have earbuds. Only over ear headphones that are wired.

Very basic printer/fax machines that run off landlines

Televisions: tube/box TVs. Podbuster is a popular VHS and DVD rental/store. DVDs are barely used due to being new

Film cameras are very much still used and popular. People will develop themselves or take them to the library to be digitalized. There's services to develop photos still

Zines exist! They will be produced by a group of fans and sent out. They will trade items or find ways to collect money to pay for them. You will find forums dedicated to zines and posting zines months after print release. There is big fan culture

Blogs are every big. Normally personal blogs will interact with each other and have fun; but then there's fan blogs. They only post about their interests and will post some personal stuff. They're almost always anonymous unless you directly know them.

Blog lore:

PinkBandLyfe is a popular BroZone and Kismet blog that always has the best images, videos, and MP3s. They've nicknamed the blog owner Pinkie and know her bias is Clay, but since she is around Bitty B’s age, she has a soft spot for him. Bass in Kismet is her bias. But since Bass is a private person she promotes healthy boundaries and privacy. She preaches for Bitty B and Bass’s privacy. She's speculated a few times but that's it. Everyone gives her her privacy and keep her identity secret since she is big on that and they respect her (and fear her disappearing). Her blog is chaotic but well organized and out together!

BatterBug is a survival/doomsday blog that people learn survival skills from and it talks about literally everything and anything about tragedy and skills to use in them. They call the owner BB and call him paranoid. But it's useful so he has a following

ReverbFan27 is a Bad Hair Day blog that isn't as in-depth as PinkBandLyfe. The blog is run by the user who has been nicknamed 27. He tends to be more practical and people enjoy watching him ramble about the technical aspects of the performances. They know his older brother, who is nicknames Ef, was into them first and got 27 into it. They only know that, he is a Billy Reverb bias, and he is the youngest child. The rest is a secret. They speculate who he is because sometimes he has the best pictures of BHD. But they haven't figured it out yet. He's VERY organized

Everybody knows Pinkie and 27 are friends and they helped each other get popular. Sometimes you will see them give each other content to post! 27 somehow has never before seen BroZone stuff or will mention he has rare collectibles that Pinkie lives for

People ship Pinkie and 27. They laugh and brush it off

Misc story lore that isn't spoilers:

Bergens made peace 10 years earlier when Poppy accidentally ran into Bridget when she ran off angrily. She helped Bridget on her own and it creates positive political ties!

The kingdoms live how they are post Trolls World Tour due to (unspecified) events happening! It is noted to happen a generation ago with King Thrash and King Peppy taking thrones

The kingdoms now have bigger populations and are more spread out! They have multiple cities and towns. Neighboring troll tribes now touch, but you must put in effort to travel

Royals freely live amongst their people in society due to respect from the people. They're big on “humanizing” the royals. Royals are not big on public appearances outside of their kingdoms. The ambassadors are the only ones seen in the wild

Branch spends his free time reading/writing in the coffee shop or in a library. He normally has his headphones on with a Walktroll (walkman). He lives to write his blog posts by hand first, so he writes them in the coffee shop. He also carries around a camera to take pictures of things. He develops them himself in his pod and put them on the walls if they're good then in albums if they're okay or bad. He has a TON of childhood photos from Rosiepuff, who died a natural death before he joined Kismet. He uses her camera. He so takes a ton of pictures of Kismet and sends them to Pinkie!

[feline-evil]

HEY HI HELLO

M'names Jay, i'm the dude/cat-thing who blogs nonsense on here and who you may have seen the work of if you're in The Hotel Fandom (i do graphic design for The pinup calendar and The guestbook zine!!), and i'm here to make a very different post than my usual!

THAT'S RIGHT FOLKS, I'M HERE TO TALK ABOUT MONEY

TLDR: CLICK HERE TO HELP ME MAKE BACK MY LIFE SAVINGS SO I CAN AFFORD TO MEET MY LONG DISTANCE BOYFRIEND MORE OFTEN!!

REBLOGS/SIGNAL BOOSTS MASSIVELY APPRECIATED!!

But read on for full details and for information on a commission type i'm also open for! :D

Recently i got to meet my long distance boyfriend for the first time and it was the best time of my life!! I would like to be able to meet him in person many more times! Now, of course the thing is this costs MONEY, and i spent my life savings on accommodation for us this last trip; i do not currently have a standard job, i have been an artist since i was 18 but my own health issues mean i cannot really work like i used to, so making that life savings back is! A big task for me! To cut a long story short i have permanent damage/a strain in my dominant hand that means i cannot draw as much as i used to, and i deal with general pain and fatigue issues that also impact me; so it's a big ol' tricky situation! WHICH IS WHERE THIS POST COMES IN.

I would like to make back my life savings if i can, i would like to save to help with the financial costs of seeing my boyfriend again, maybe even more often, i would like to in general be able to save for and afford a better life in many regards!! So if you are willing and able to do so, i have a ko-fi goal you can pop a few quid towards! Its a £500 goal, which covers my life savings; consider this like a tip jar, if you've ever enjoyed my work- be it my art or graphic design work- and you've wanted to drop me a lil somethin', here's where to do it!

-> CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE TIP JAR <-

And while i can't take on full comms due to the condition of my arm and fatigue i can do these little chibi comms if you'd prefer to commission than donate!! £10 GBP each for these, can do anthro, human, closed species, p much anything you want!!

(And psst, hey for £5 extra i'll render your chibi like this!)

-> CLICK HERE TO COMMISSION A CHIBI!!!! <-

If you read this far thank you so so much!! :D I hope to keep working on cool stuff both in my independant projects and my fanworks, and i truly appreciate any all all support no matter if it's tossing a few quid my way or just reblogging and signal boosting!! THANK YE THANK YE!!

[arecomicsevengood]

TRIP REPORT: SPX 2023

I went down to the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland this past Sunday. While I lived in Baltimore for a number of years, and it was essentially a local show, this is the first time I've been since moving to Philly in 2019. It took a year (or two?) off on account of COVID. I don't have much to say about the show itself, I enjoyed walking around talking to people, I probably didn't see all the stuff I would've liked, I'm not really in a good place to judge trends. I missed some people I would've liked to have met, like Drew Lerman, who left before I got there. He won an Ignatz though, and good for him. I do believe that the thing about SPX and the Ignatzes is that everyone essentially occupies very different spheres of interest and sets of influences. As I walked around, seeing little cards on people's comics saying they were nominated for an Ignatz, I would ask them if they had heard of or were familiar with the thing that won, they almost never were.

At the one panel discussion I attended, about drawing detailed backgrounds as a way of of establishing worldbuilding, Rosemary Valero-O'Connell cited Taiyo Matsumoto's approach as an influence, and as I sat in the audience thinking "Yes! Let's talk more about that!" everyone else on stage, quite reasonably, talked about their own influences instead - which for Daria Tessler, who I came to see, included Mark Beyer and Jim Woodring. The panel was generally good and interesting, and it's not meant as a slight to the moderator Rob Clough to point out that the best questions came during the Q+A from the audience. One member asked the question, how do you handle tonal shifts when you are using detailed visuals for plot purposes, and everyone agreed that that at emotional climaxes or at moments of more interiority they reduce the level of background detail.

Daria Tessler was the artist I was most excited to meet of anyone at the fest. Since my local shop, Partners And Son, is on top of it, I had already read her newest comic, volume 2 of Cagelessness, which absolutely rules, and so I had to shell out the big bucks for a copy of her fully-silkscreened book Dust, that uses multi-color collages as a backdrop for the cowboy characters who, in Cagelessness, move through ornately designed drawn worlds. Her work is beautiful, another high point of the panel discussion was her talking about how Marc Bell calls the tiny details cluttering up the backgrounds of his comics "chicken fat," and while Clough cited the term as originating from Will Elder, Tessler described chicken fat as "what you put in the soup to make it taste better, if you're not vegan," perfectly capturing what makes these artists work such a delicious meal for the eyes.

A similar "I already have all of these" experience was behind my purchase of Tales Of Old Snake Creek, by Drew Lerman, which collects his anthology contributions from recent years and adds watercolor to them. I love these comics in their original formats but I'm not going to say no to the convenience of this, which is also printed at a size larger than the digests in which some things ran.

Shout-out to Bread Tarleton, who pointed out to me the Paradise Systems table, where everything looked good and lavish, but what I picked up was Cry by Yan Cong. I believe Paradise Systems to be a reprinter of self-published comics from China. Cry features cartoony figures in a charcoal textured world, and follows a man having a sexual experience with a prostitute with a weird visual punchline.

Adam Szym directed me to the Strangers Fanzine table, where I picked up Shony Glassware 2 by Manning Coe, which is in some ways probably the sort of zine a lot of people go to SPX to get. Pretty funny stuff, maybe Ben Jones influenced, by a 26-year-old who lives in Osaka. Drawing himself in a Beat Happening shirt but with a bio where he talks about listening to 100 Gecs, there is a definite vibe at work here and while I don't remember the price point of this one I feel like it had to be cheap because it's that kind of comic. If you're ordering the new printing of Bhanu Pratap's Dear Mother from Strangers and want something else that's not too genre-y make sure you throw this in there.

Adam Szym's Their Use Continues is a horror short about the current trend towards reviving dead actors as CGI phantoms in movies currently in the news. Feels nice and relevant, I think I would've liked this to be a little bit bigger (it's printed digest size) and hi-res. Adam uses some digital collage elements for backgrounds and borders that I mostly felt was making the book smaller and fuzzier still.

I nonetheless liked it better than another horror comic I picked up, issue 1 ofJenna Cha and Lonnie Nadler's The Sickness, published by Uncivilized. Both people are more mainstream-comics, which I think is fine, but this does something I really associate with the dumbest kind of attitude that can be present in horror stuff, the kind of tonal miscalculation the comics I like avoid: Presenting a mid-century American setting where characters nonetheless are using a high degree of vulgar language, of a sort that would be stylized and off-putting if it were depicting the modern era but really just completely pulls me out of something set in the past. The second printing changes the color palette on the cover in a way that makes the drawing better, but this is not the sort of thing I would recommend anyone track down, which is sad, because it's likely far more readily available than anything I liked.

Tim Lane's Happy Hour In America 1, from a few years ago, was available at the Fantagraphics table. Presumably because Tim was signing, but I never saw him. I haven't read the big books collecting his short stories, but I like his contributions to anthologies. He's a guy who can really draw, in a way that you don't often see at small press shows, or that feels more appreciated by a mainstream-comics crowd. If his stories aren't as psychotically involved on a plot level as Mack White, he's nonetheless interesting as like a Gen X'er talking about American masculinity and what animates it. I would gladly read it in single issue comics format, though I missed these the first time because it wasn't what I felt I was in the mood for.

Another thing I picked up as a half-off copy of David B's Incidents In The Night, volume 2, from Uncivilized. I think volume 1 did pretty well, and is now sold out, but now that that's unavailable, volume 2 is a harder sell. David B is one of those dudes, like Joann Sfar or Christophe Blain, that got the big bookstore push like fifteen years ago but now no one wants to put out their books in the U.S. David B is also a guy, like GIpi, who had a comic put out by the Ignatz line Fantagraphics had. I bought issue 1 of Babel at the time and didn't care for it, and would've told you I didn't iike David B's work. But lately I've been tracking down books in the Ignatz line I skipped the first time (along with the First Second books of Gipi and Sfar from roughly the same time) and enjoying them, and this fits into that trend as well. A pretty involving plot, involving booksellers, the occult, criminal organizations. I both want to track down a copy of volume 1 and am frustrated that the volume 3 advertised at the end of this book was never translated into English.

Yasmeen Abediford's Death Bloom won an Ignatz, for best minicomic. All of the Ignatz awards are really ill-defined categories, and this is one is a $25 risograph thing, which to me seems like it should exist in a different category than cheapo xerox stuff, but whatever. Anyway, I believe Abediford will also be in the new issue of Freak, which I have seen Instagram posts indicating contributors got an advance copy of but have yet to be for sale online. Abediford is from the Bay Area, but this book was printed by Lucky Pocket Press, based in Baltimore, but from people who either moved there or didn't have the press going until after I left there. They sold me the comic in a little printed bag, which included a family tree for their little mascot guy, citing the "onion peow guy" as "(father, deceased)" and "(comics legend)," which is interesting to me insofar as I don't think of any of the Peow stuff as being interesting to me, though I'm happy it found its audience and made a mark. I don't really get this one either but whatever, I'll reread it tos ee if my opinion changes.

I would also put the output of publisher Silver Sprocket in a similar category to Peow - Not for me, seems like it's for younger people, in a way that dominates SPX as it's currently constituted. I have the deepest sympathies for them not being able to dominate SPX this year though, due to a misplaced/inaccessible pallet of books that they didn't get until halfway through Sunday. They had flown out Leo Fox from England, to debut his new book Prokaryote Season. I had seen Fox's stuff on Twitter last year and thought it looked good/interesting, but was also frustrated by the fact that he had apparently released a comic that was only for sale for 24 hours - maybe a way to create demand so that people actually order a thing, but in an artificial scarcity kind of way I resent. Anyway, I bought one of his self-published things, My Body Unspooling, and yeah I think it looks really cool and interesting, though the approach taken, a sort of simple narrative about the notion of the self rather than something that seems interested in having characters interact is again the kind of trend I blanch at in work made by people younger than me. I nonetheless liked the comic, and thought it was cool, and am going to read his book soon.

I bought issue 9 of Mike Centeno's Futile from the Radiator Comics distro booth. It is explicitly labeled as No Previous Readin' Necessary, so while there were two older issues of Futile at the table, printed at smaller dimensions, I didn't pick them up. This was cool, a mostly black and white (but with pages in the middle in color) comic about a musician taking mushrooms . It looks great on a flipthrough, though Audra Stang, working the table, tried to close the center-spread of my flipthrough so that the burst into full-color I was admiring didn't spoil the story's progression and surprises. Format and cartooning kinda reminded me of Nate Doyle's series Crooked Teeth. (Nate had a larger-formatted barbarian fantasy comic available from Strangers Fanzine, which I passed on.)

I also bought Beth Heinly's Girls Named Meghan from her, though Heinly is Philly-based and I've had plenty of chances to pick it up before. It's a memoir of her teenage years, growing up in Delaware County, which is where I went to high school, and the friendships she had that veered into rebellion and her apprehensions about being around people more "troubled" than she was. It is basically black and white but there's little red-pencil edits throughout, like maybe the wrong PDF was sent to the printer or something, sourced from a file where she was noting what she wanted to fix. I don't think of the other copies I have seen were like this though. Again, I think this is the sort of self-published autobio thing that many people go to SPX to find. I can see the places there this could be stronger or more impactful but there is still a fine sense for who all the characters were, and what the era was like.

I got a few other things but this is all I have read so far, at this moment when I felt like writing. Andrew White gave me a copy of the new Yearly, and a name I recognized from his writing for The Comics Journal, Henry Chamberlain, gave me a copy of his book George's Run, a biography of a Twilight Zone writer published by Rutgers University Press. I also got issue 3 of a comic called Cat Scratch Fever by a woman named Emily Zullo, and Soumya Dhulekar's Flash Valley. Both of these are in the classic digest sized minicomic format with black and white throughout, though Dhulekar opted for a a cardstock cover. This is the sort of thing I am most happy to buy from a stranger at a show and basically not even care about the quality as long as the price is right, though of course the price for both of these is higher than it used to be. I also bought and haven't yet read Leo Fox's Prokaryote Season, the theoretical "book of the show," although another contender for that title, the collection of Liam Cobb comics, What Awaits Them, looked great but I will pick it up when it comes into my local shop.

[cavalierious-whim]

Golden Hours (XiaoAeXiao)

When casting a location spell to find his sister, Aether accidentally brings back someone back from the Abyss instead. Written for Aliferous, a XiaoAetherXiao Zine.

Read the fic here on AO3. You can also, follow me on Twitter, and here on Patreon!

Leftover Sales for Aliferous are still open and you can grab a copy here!

--

The book sits on his desk, the yellowed pages dingy in the low lamplight. Aether drags a finger down the spine, pressing it flat. 

“Useless,” he mutters, flipping a page, then another, the crinkled parchment crackling in the quiet of his home. “This shouldn’t be that difficult.” He groans, pressing his hand to his brow. “A location spell—that’s it. This is beginner stuff.”

Perhaps if he were trying to find apples or oranges. The spell is simple enough depending on the application, but it’s not as though it was designed to find people. In theory, it can, but Aether is still working out the kinks.

“You’ve never made anything easy for me, have you?” he murmurs, thinking of Lumine. It’d been an accident—a spell gone wrong. Lumine was sucked into the ether, blipped right from this existence. Aether spends his moments outside of work looking for her. “Well, wherever you are, you’re giving them hell, that’s for sure,” he finishes, voice tilted by amusement.

And so, the spell. 

Something that is alike. Aether fiddles with a bundle of Lumine’s hair, pilfered from an old box she’d stashed underneath her bed. 

A stone that is alive. Mr. Zhongli was a curious man who didn’t have much in the way of money, but Aether traded a spell for a rock that pulses with Geo, tuned to the ley lines of Liyue itself. 

A feather, even slightly crooked, will do. It’d taken some coaxing, but Fischl eventually agreed to let him pluck a few from Oz, much to the chagrin of her familiar. 

Aether reads over the spell again. “Won’t know unless I try, right?” He rubs his brow. At worst, the spell fizzles out and he’s back to square one. It’s nothing so powerful as to cause an actual issue, but magic is finicky at its best and fickle at its worst.

“Alright then.”

Aether falls quiet as he concentrates. He plucks at the universe and draws power from the ley lines. He’s used this spell before. Just like all the other times, he thinks. Focus and think. We’re finding her, that’s all—just look for Lumine.

The ley lines are sleepy, sluggish, almost. He tries to focus his search through what looks like muddy water. There’s nothing, no inkling of Lumine; no sight of her, or the sound of her pealing laughter. It’s like slogging through a marsh.

So, he pulls harder. Aether sinks into the power as everything else fades away. He no longer stands in his home, he walks those lines personally, edging closer and closer to the Abyss. Worth it, he reasons. The risk. A moment near the edge of the world won’t do any harm. Near the veil is one of the places that he hasn’t looked. 

Darkness creeps closer and Aether skirts it—but then, a tendril reaches out and curls around his arm. Everything shifts. No longer is it the warm magic of the earth, it’s the bitter cold grip of the Void. Something beyond the barrier cries out in a wrenching, warbling noise. Whatever grasps him digs in with its claws. 

Aether panics. He yelps and pulls away, scrambling against the ground as he tries to remove himself from the magic. He falls through the frozen air and trips. His back hits the ground hard and the air is no longer crisp. A fire blazes to the right of him, and the kettle that hangs over it whistles. 

He rolls over to find the worn wooden planks of his cottage. Aether presses his forehead to the ground and sighs. He could kiss the floor. Too close, he thinks. Far too close to the edge, but—

There’s a rattling breath that gasps beside him. Aether jerks, snapping to attention, clambering back against the wall, a hand outstretched with magic swirling about his fingers. “What—”

“Where am I?”

Aether blinks. The man that stands before him is unearthly, slender, and lithe, with choppy hair like an oil slick. He watches back with a piercing, golden-eyed gaze. Aether opens his mouth and says, ineloquently, “Um, Liyue?”

“I had thought…” The man closes his eyes and inhales, nostrils flaring. “It felt familiar. It has been…”

“It’s been?”

“A long time.”

Aether’s gaze then turns curious. He can feel that power that thrums through the other man’s veins.

“Apologies,” continues the man. “I’m unused to sharing conversation, not that I’ve ever found it easy. You—” His eyes narrow, and suddenly, the air turns sour. Aether’s arm doesn’t shake, but his toes curl in his boots. “What were you doing so close to the veil? That isn’t a place for—” He pauses. 

“For?”

The man sighs. “It doesn't matter.” He stands but tilts, unsteady on his feet. “I need to—there’s work to be done. I have to—”

Aether should send him back. He certainly doesn’t think straight when he reaches out to pull at the ragged shirt the man wears to help steady him instead. The man pulls away as if he’s been burned. 

“Don’t touch me!” His hiss dies out in a soft whine. “It isn’t safe for you. Can’t you feel it? The karma that bleeds from my veins?”

Aether blinks. “No?” He feels power that is no doubt old and ancient, but nothing so implicitly evil.

The man blinks back at him, his brow furrowed. “What kind of sorcerer are you? Are you so unskilled you cannot see that I’m a yaksha?”

Oh. Well, that certainly explains things. Old warriors who fight off our evil, only to become it themselves, read Lumine once. Definitely not the type of story most children fall asleep to but they were always an odd pair.

Aether rights himself. “Yaksha or not, you’re in no shape to go anywhere.”

“I’m—”

“Barely able to stand. You should rest for a bit.” Aether doesn’t know why he’s offering. The last thing that he should do is let a man he dragged from the Abyss stay in his home. He sighs and says quieter, “I’m Aether. At least let me get you some fresh clothes.”

“I’m…” The man looks at himself awkwardly, dragging a bony hand over his ragged shirt. “Xiao.” When he pets the fabric, it crumbles away. His flat expression turns into a scowl, lips curled into a sneer.

Aether thinks it is cute. 

#

Xiao is an awkward man both when it comes to being back in the normal plane of existence and when engaging with others. “I’ve never been good at it,” he mutters.

Aether is busy cleaning his desk, putting away spelling materials, and dusting off books. “I’m not saying you need to be friendly, I’m just saying…” Aether shrugs. “You’re stuck here for the time being, so you might as well make the most of it.”

As it turns out, Xiao is tethered to Aether. He did as was suggested—he rested and took an outfit of Aether’s before being on his way, only to step outside the door and wind up right back in the kitchen. He tried again. And again.

It is a week later and he still tries when he thinks that Aether isn’t looking. 

“You are not my friend,” hisses Xiao that day, reminding Aether of a feral cat. 

Aether just glances at him. “Do you feel better?” Judging by Xiao’s frown, no. “Look, I’m not trying to be your friend—”

“No, you insist upon it.”

“—wouldn’t it be easier if you just… settled? The Abyss was a terrible place, right? Relax.”

Xiao cannot relax. He fidgets when in place for too long. “Those old gods,” he starts, “I can feel them. They’re still deep in the ground, leeching evil as we speak. I have to go fight it off.”

Aether has never met a yaksha before Xiao but he’s impressed by the level of dedication he’s seen thus far. “Because that’s what you used to do, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then why were you in the Abyss?”

The question catches Xiao. He sits on the stool and tilts his head, discomforted. “It is where we go when we…” He trails off and Aether can assume the worst. “It is meant as a mercy.”

Aether turns to him at that, leaning against his desk and shooting Xiao a curious glance. “And was it?”

Xiao takes so long to answer that Aether thinks that he won’t. But then, ever so quietly: “No.”

Aether hums and returns to his tidying. “Well, you aren’t there anymore. My house, my rules—which are simple. Consider this retirement.”

Xiao looks at Aether as though he’s mad. And maybe he is. But Aether has grown attached to the strange yaksha, and he’s curious to see just what some peace might do for him.

#

The rapport they build over time comes with startling ease. 

Xiao is touch-starved, friend-starved, and generally, just starved. It doesn’t take long for him to grudgingly accept Aether’s friendship. He helps around the cottage, picking up things and doing chores. He isn’t a good cook but he makes a mean pot of tea, which eventually turns into him boiling up potions for Aether’s day job as a sorcerer for hire.

After some time, Aether tells him about Lumine. “She’s my other half,” he says one night as they're tucked into blankets to keep out the biting fall chill of the coming winter. The fireplace roars and they watch the embers, shoulder-to-shoulder and comfortable. “That’s what I was doing that day when walking the ley lines. I was looking for her.”

“That wasn’t smart,” says Xiao.

“No,” agrees Aether.

Xiao’s mouth parts to speak but he hesitates. “I am… glad that you were stupid. Otherwise, I’d still be…” He gestures vaguely.

Aether leans over and nudges him. “I’m glad too. It’s better with you here. I’m not so lonely. Are you enjoying your retirement?”

“As much as one can when brewing up spells every day.”

Aether’s mouth curls into a grin. “Xiao, was that a joke?”

“No.” Xiao grins back, though, which leaves Aether in a fit of roaring laughter.

#

Weeks pass into months. It takes a crisp winter morning nearly a year later for Aether to realize he’s abandoned his search for his sister. 

He thinks of Lumine, yes, but his thoughts are preoccupied with the newfound life he’s cultivated. Same old cabin, same old place; but the person is different, and Aether finds himself thinking of sharp golden eyes, and a subtle smile hidden behind a palm. 

Xiao has figured out retirement. He’s found value in his simple life here, and Aether thinks that he can do the same, instead of clinging to the past.

“What’s with that look?”

Aether jumps at his voice and turns to find him leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom. “Nothing, I just… lost in thought.”

“Lumine?”

“The both of you.” 

Xiao crosses the room then to pour himself a cup of tea. “Sounds like a punishment.”

Aether snorts and sips his own cup. “Nothing like that. Just… I think that finding her isn’t necessary anymore. I realized this morning that I hadn’t thought about it recently. I’m too busy with work and with—” Aether grins, “—you, of course.”

The energy in the room shifts. Lately, Xiao watches him with lingering stares that creep into his soul, and for a moment, it’s easy to think that, perhaps, he might feel the same. 

“You’re happy, then?” asks Xiao quietly.

“Yes.”

Xiao licks his lips nervously. “And there’s nothing more that you’d want?”

A year ago, Aether would’ve said his sister. But at that moment, in the cold kitchen with a steaming mug of tea in his hands, the answer is clear. 

Xiao closes the distance between them until Aether’s settled between his arms. The counter digs into the small of his back, but Aether forgets about it when Xiao kisses him. It is sweet. Lingering. A little awkward and fumbling.

Aether laughs as he sets his tea aside in favor of wrapping an arm around Xiao’s neck. Then, he learns that kisses are the perfect deterrent for any cold and blustery day.