gilraina

[gilraina]

Do you have tips on how you draw mind flayers? I cannottttt get a handle on that anatomy (especially the head) and your art is so impressive! 😁❤️

of course! I threw this together pretty quickly, so it's not exactly comprehensive, but I hope it helps (and please, feel free to ask if you need clarification on anything)

I take a fair amount of creative leeway with how I draw illithids (and god knows that has been a process, please know I'm honored that anyone would ask this lmao), but also keep in mind that no two are the same. For example, I draw Thyneron and the Emperor broadly similarly, but some key differences that I keep in mind are that Thyneron is both shorter and more slender than the Emperor, and in turn, I prefer to draw the Emperor slightly more built (larger biceps, broader shoulders, etc).

However--I do also have a ripped model from the game that I use for reference. It's a fully configured fbx file (shoutout to @arcandoria for both supplying me the model, and helping me figure out how to get it to work in clip studio!), so below I've included some basic head angles, as well as a few trickier ones

As always, reference reference reference, and never be afraid to trace things for practice. I spent a lot of time just tracing the Emperor's head shape to get my hand and arm used to the motions of drawing something so alien. I rarely need to do so today, but if I'm drawing the Emperor's head from a particularly weird angle, you bet I'm loading the model in and grabbing exactly what I need. Thank you so much for asking this (and for the compliment <3), I hope this is useful!

[gilraina]

 I got a couple of movies from Netflix and they had these cool Halloween-themed mailers. Maybe I’m easily amused, but they’re kind of nifty!

[gilraina]

Not to be a bitch but sometimes people engage with fiction in the most boring way possible, and nowhere is this clearer than in videogames. Like what you mean you hate a character just because they were kind of abrasive when speaking to the player character? "They were mean to me" and it didn't occur to you to wonder why? Like, what might their attitude toward you reveal about the world? About the social dynamics within it? About their own perspectives and backgrounds and personalities? Does it even occur you to ask? Would you only have liked them if they bowed to your presence and talked about how great you are? Like I'm sorry but you're so boring. How boring fiction would be if it cathered to you

[gilraina]

Notable of course how in romance scenes Gale only ever seems confident at all when the Weave is involved, and becomes noticeably more insecure and self deprecating whenever something romantic is happening in, sorry I was about to call it "meatspace". The mortal plane or whatever.

[gilraina]

kids these days don't even know how good they have it. they don't even know about the final fantasy 14 artificial housing crisis

[gilraina]

Girls with swords are great but there aren't enough girls with flanged maces or morning stars to go around. Give me a woman who does bludgeoning damage

[gilraina]

Sketchy comm for the lovely @prrp 💛

[gilraina]

disco elysium inspired portrait of wyll <3 commission info | art tag

[gilraina]

Typing on my typewriter like the shining get your pussy up get your money up get your pussy up get your money up

[gilraina]

Got some flowers for Karlach 💕

[gilraina]

[gilraina]

I'm kind of obsessed with the way sheep are handled. So efficiently. It always looks kind of unpleasant at first and then you notice the sheep are fine with it. They're always being flipped upside down and rolled down a chute or some shit. A shepherd will be tossing that thang in the air and spinning it like pizza dough & the sheep just lets it happen

[gilraina]

Dear Laura, I do feel we'll be such good friends. THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970)

[gilraina]

My brain.. i thinkign….Wjat if therobors were yrui…..

[gilraina]

Well folks I've been sitting on this little script for ages and finally decided to just go ahead and publish it. What does it do?

you can enter any ao3 link - for example, to your bookmarks or an author's works page - and automatically download all the works and series that are linked from that page in the format of your choice. if there are multiple pages, the script will page through results for you until there are no more fics to download

you can check your fanfic-savin' folder for unfinished fics and automatically update them if there are new chapters. you can also check for new fics in series!

if you're a dinosaur who uses Pinboard, you can back up all the Pinboard bookmarks you have that link to ao3

don't worry about crashing ao3 with this! this baby takes forever to run, guaranteed. anyway ao3 won't let me download stuff too fast even if I wanted to so it's quite safe

I've been working on this for about two years and it's finally in a state where it does everything I want and isn't breaking every two seconds, so I thought it was time to share! I hope y'all get some use out of it.

note: this is a standalone desktop app that DOES NOT DO ANYTHING aside from automate clicking on buttons on the ao3 website. Everything this script does, can be done by hand using ao3's regular features. It is just a utility to facilitate personal backups for offline reading - there's no website or server, I have no access to or indeed interest in the fics other people download using this. No plagiarism is happening here, please don't come after me.

---

2024 update

This is now a fairly mature project that I've been maintaining for quite a while (3 years?? omg), so let's do an FAQ

Question 1: Wait, a python script? That's scary! I don't know anything about running python scripts!

Answer: You don't need to! When I published this program I knew that there would be people who would want to use it that did not know anything about running python scripts. To that end I have provided extremely detailed instructions (accessible at the link above), which have been fine-tuned over the last three years to make them as absolutely easy to follow as possible. Not only do you not need to know anything about python scripts to use this program, you don't even need to know anything about computers at all. Try it and see! ;)

Question 2: I already use Calibre and FanFicFare to download fanfics - isn't this the same thing?

Answer: Nope! In fact, one of the reasons I created ao3downloader is that I tried FanFicFare and found it unsuited to my needs.

- FanFicFare requires a lot of configuration to work well. I wanted something that would get out of my way and just do what I needed it to do with as little prompting as possible. ao3downloader has sensible default behavior that will do what most people want it to do without too much pre-work.

- FanFicFare doesn't handle multi-page downloads very well - you need to enter the link to each page of results individually. What if I want to download dozens, or even hundreds of pages of fanfic? (Honesly, even two pages is too tedious for me...) I want to download all of the results I'm interested in, not just one page at a time. ao3downloader can download up to five thousand pages of fanfiction in one go if you're willing to let it run for that long... and that limit is only because 5,000 is the maximum amount of pages that ao3 itself will show you in a search result.

- FanFicFare doesn't handle ao3's rate limit very well - you need to babysit it and fine-tune the amount of time it pauses between downloads. I want the downloading process to handle itself, so I can completely ignore it until it's finished. ao3downloader will automatically pause when it hits the rate limit, and automatically resume when the rate limit expires. You can also quit ao3downloader entirely, and it will do its best to resume at the same point you left off when you turn it on again.

- FanFicFare uses its own download format, which doesn't match the files I download from ao3 directly - I want them to be consistent. ao3downloader downloads fics using the native download buttons from ao3, so it's exactly the same file as if you downloaded them manually.

- FanFicFare has an option to check incomplete fics for updates, but it relies on you telling it which fics in your library are incomplete. I don't want to have to keep track of that. ao3downloader can scan your existing files for incomplete fics and identify them for you, then check ao3 for updates and only re-download the ones that have new chapters. (It can also scan for incomplete series, and do the same thing!)

Question 2a: That's all great, but I need Calibre's organizational features.

Answer: Me too! That's why I import all the fics I download using ao3downloader into my Calibre library after I'm done downloading them.

Question 2b: That's all great, but I prefer FanFicFare's download format and I don't want the native ao3 one.

Answer: ao3downloader has a special option for this which instead of downloading actual files, will simply harvest a list of links to give to FanFicFare. You won't get ao3downloader's rate limit handling or automatic update functionality, but you will get to avoid entering individual page links! If you choose, you can also include detailed fic metadata in the links download (such as title, author, summary, tags, etc) which will be saved in spreadsheet format.

Question 3: Do I need to enter my ao3 login information? What happens when I enter my login information into this program?

Answer: You only need to enter your login information if you want to use ao3downloader to download archive-locked fics, or to download a page that is only accessible when you are logged in (such as your history or subscriptions). Hopefully the reason behind this requirement is obvious. If you don't need those things, you can simply skip the login prompt and the program will work fine! That said, if you do log in, here's what will happen. 1) ao3downloader will save your login information to a file so you don't have to enter it every time. (If you don't want your login information to be saved, you can turn this behavior off using the included .ini file - just open up the file named settings.ini and read the instructions inside to configure it.) 2) then, ao3downloader will use your login information to log itself in to ao3... aaaand that's it. It's not stored or sent anywhere other than your own computer and archiveofourown.org. In fact, there is absolutely no tracking or spyware in ao3downloader of any kind - I don't even know how many people have downloaded it, let alone what you type into it. And that's the way I like it!

Question 4: I thought of a feature that doesn't exist yet that would be really cool! Can you add it?

Answer: Very possibly! Feel free to contact me via one of the options listed in the readme (that's the page linked above) if you have a feature request.

Question 5: Do I have to pay you?

Answer: Never.

Question 6: But I really want to pay you... do you have a ko-fi?

Answer: Yes. It's on the github page in the sidebar.

Question 7: Does it work on mobile?

Answer: No. :( but watch this space... there may be certain things on the horizon. we'll see!

[gilraina]

the weirdly vengeful and petty tones aborted babies take in pro-life propaganda images are so funny like this passive aggressive "was it worth it mommy?" and "it's a shame you can't join me in heaven mommy 😔" like do you ever wonder if you were aborted for a reason you little bitch ass baby

[gilraina]

Explaining to straight adults that much of queer history happened within their lifetime and they were unaware of all the extremely important events and how many laws there were to prevent us from thriving because they werent part of queer circles themselves is like...

-leans in close-

How would you like to know about the war in Ba Sing Se?