maledictionwolf

[maledictionwolf]

SNAILQUEST 003

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I like drawing mountains. Can you tell?

[maledictionwolf]

SNAILQUEST 002

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I will get much better at drawing snails in short order, don't worry (this page was drawn years ago).

[maledictionwolf]

Comics from Scandinavia and the World, a comic about, well, Scandinavia and the world....

It's funny how american guys who got "73% Scandinavian" in a mail order DNA test once will be like "I have Viking blood coursing through my veins, I'm a natural-born warrior and I've got +5 poison resistance and I'm immune to frost damage", while the average Norwegian guy is just some guy named Lars who works in IT, rides a bicycle to work, and looks like this.

[maledictionwolf]

Settings are a tricky thing to present in TTRPGs, and although I like to get immersed in the extensive worldbuilding of some games, recently I have felt more attracted to games that present their setting through gameable elements: tables, rules, character choices, items, locations, etc.

One of these gameable elements I love is “The Calendar of Nechrudel” from Mörk Borg, which shows through random events (which could or not occur every dawn) how the world is falling apart.

This is something I wanted to translate to “No Peace for the Heathen” (NPFTH), as a tool to show:

A world that is perpetually changing its landscape through earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions (in Chile, all these are “common”, and in the folklore of Chiloé, the island was forged through these events, under the wills of the great serpents Caicai Vilu and Tretren Vilu).

The decay of the island and its people under the invasion of the conquistadors.

This is my take on “The Calendar of Nechrudel” for NPFTH, perhaps, it will inspire you to make your own “calendar” to show the changes your world experience. Also, if you want to use these two in your game, you are welcome to do so. :)

[maledictionwolf]

First thing you see after you zoom in is how you die

How you dying 👀

[maledictionwolf]

SNAILQUEST 001

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The first page of a dumb comic that got put on the backburner a while back but is short enough I could probably finish it by the end of the month. The first five pages are already done and I'll be posting a page every Tuesday evening.

[maledictionwolf]

Coffee Buns is now on Steam!

The page for Coffee Buns is now up on Steam, along with a new, longer demo! Now is the best time yet to give our story a try and add it to your wish list!

[maledictionwolf]

The closest experience I've ever had to discovering "the vitamin" was buying a 100% wool outfit and wearing it in the winter.

Not only was I not freezing anymore, I was not sweating and overheating either. The horrible sensory nightmare of winter clothes disappeared.

In particular, I bought a pair of wool pants. They were a thrifted pair of fancy dress pants like you would wear at an important office job, and they were easily the most comfortable pair of winter-appropriate pants i'd ever worn. I wore them Every Single Day.

From that point on I realized a lot of my clothes were making me feel bad, and the common thread was polyester. Especially polyester blends.

It's a trap because the polyester clothes are the ones that always feel sooooo silky soft when they are in the store, whereas cotton, linen and wool can feel comparatively rough and scratchy. But when actually wearing them for hours throughout the day, it's the natural fibers that feel more comfortable.

Maybe the secret to sensory comfort is not about the presence of softness, but the absence of overloading sensations. Or maybe the sensory stress and agony is not triggered by texture of the fabric, but by how it breathes and regulates temperature.

Then there's the problem of clothing life span: polyester blends, no matter how soft they seem at first, become rough and scratchy and covered in hard, itchy pills after wearing them 10 or 20 times, whether or not they have been tumble-dried or even washed at all. (I tested it!) Linen and cotton become softer and more comfy the more you wear them, polyester but ESPECIALLY polyester blends become a constant stressor. Polyester blend t-shirts I used to love for their softness now feel bristly and irritating.

So now I'm trying to change my wardrobe to as many natural fibers as possible, and the more natural fiber clothes i have the more I realize that the plastic fibers stress me out. It's so easy to overheat or freeze in them and they're always degrading and becoming less comfortable and it sucks.

[maledictionwolf]

University libraries often have digitized photo collections and other stuff that are available for free online! The web pages can be kinda janky, but for weird specific stuff, finding a university either located in the region you're looking for clothing from or with a large department that specializes in study of the region can be quite good. Sometimes you need to find out the name of the University library to get to them, though.

You can also look up the library website for your local college/ university and see what they have available in their digital collections, as schools often have stuff that isn't related to their fields, due to donations by alums!

There's also various online organizations that collect these media, generally called the center for [x] studies.

Some examples:

Want Mardi Gras clothing from the 1920s? Tulane University's Carnival collection includes the original designs for costumes by the various krewes, and is the reason I know these things exist because I was part of the team that made them available online!

Here's 1910 photographs of the peoples of Tunisia and Algeria from the University of Michigan

How to search for this stuff:

Let's pick Laos, we want traditional clothing in rural villages, 1800s. I'm going to intentionally ignore basic Google image search in this example, as this is an explanation of how to find reliable references when basic searches fail. I'm just going to assume we tried the standard "Laos rural 1800s" image searches and got nothing useable.

Okay, step one: Google "Laotian studies"

Step 2: what's an official educational institution or related academic organization?

Google result #1 is a .org link, this is an official NGO, working with Laotian culture. May or may not have photos, depending on the specific goals of this org--it's unclear from the result whether this is an organization focused on historic preservation, community outreach, academic studies, etc. This site is definitely worth checking out, but isn't going to be our top choice, as it is highly likely to focus on more modern periods in its photography and illustrations.

Google result #2 is a site for digital resources for Laos at a university library at a school offering Southeast Asian studies. This means the school offers courses studying the history of the region,and has at least one digital library collection related to the specific country. It is highly likely historical photographs or illustrations are available, and is going to be our first choice.

Google result #3 is an oral history project of first generation Laos Americans. We can safely ignore this result, since we're looking for references from rural Laos in the 1800s.

Google results #4 and #5 are both related to the organization in result #1, further emphasizing that this is a prominent resource in the field. Based on the text in result #5 we know that this is an organization was created to be a resource center for academic scholarship which makes it something we should definitely look at.

Step 3: find where the photos are!

Let's start with the university library link, since university libraries generally all use the same basic online layout and I know my way around them.

Like most internal university sites, it's got a giant annoying menu that takes up much of the screen when accessed by phone and the layout is kinda crap. Took 3 full phone-screen-length scrolls to get to the bottom, with no indication that there were even sections after the first one. Keep this in mind, always scroll down on these sites if you don't see what you're looking for! Sometimes it's there, the site just isn't laid out that well.

That said, that first link under websites for Lao studies looks like it might be a better source than the historical photos section, as the website doesn't have a specified date while the historical photos sections two options are East German archives (so post WWII but pre 1990s) and one specifically dated to 1968-1973.

However, that first link is for Buddhist photos of the former capital of Laos; we wanted to see rural people rather than urban religious photos, but it doesn't have a time frame outside out period so let's take a look at that one.

Well, look at that first result! We've got ourselves since photos from the 1800s in our target country (but not quite the right population area).

1880s, plus reproductions of earlier offerings and paintings. Group portraits of laypeople including those on pilgrimage.

We might have found ourselves some winners!

The link to see the actual photos in the collection is hard to find, and the navigation inside the collection is awful. There are literally 8,000 images in this thing and they are not organized or searchable by date.

But you can kinda guess the time frame by the photo itself, these are obviously older photos:

And these are newer photos:

And look again at the older photos up top. We see a variety of clothing, both obviously Buddhist monastic and colonial-influenced aristocrats and businessmen. But not rural, poor populations.

I'm not going through the entire 8000 images for this example and also it's late and I need to go to bed because, ya know, work.

But you can see the process, to get to the photographs? And we've got actual historic photographs, eight THOUSAND of them, from the target region (I'll be honest, this is an unusually large collection,usually we're looking at 50-200 images) and no risk of ai bullcrap polluting the results!

So I'll call it for the moment. Additions may be made later in the week when I have time.

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Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.

[maledictionwolf]

... realizing I don't remember how I actually used to do these backgrounds...

Page of project I'm reviving that I did years ago:

Me trying to recreate a similar look in the panel 2 pages later:

Eeeeh. Maybe I just need to keep going more and push further?

[maledictionwolf]

Been wanting to try my hand at stop motion animation, feels like it's so much more accessible than digital animation. Just need a camera, paper, scissors, and a basic, basic video editor. Like, windows movie maker level basic. It's literally just a really fast slideshow.

This is my little cutout wolf friend I'm gonna be trying stop motion with. He's one of four watercolor wolves, with two others already cut out and need to cut out the fourth.

(The bg is just a sketchbook with a really cool pattern on it lol).

[maledictionwolf]

Excerpts from Fukugyou Mahou Shoujo (aka Side Business Magical Girl), a 25-page one-shot manga by Hattori Shouta. It’s the story of “the world’s first magical girl who fights for both justice and worker’s rights.” 

@stick-arms @basilouija @titleknown @lunaticobscurity @theamazingsallyhogan

[maledictionwolf]

[maledictionwolf]

Tiny Echo (2017, a video game by Might and Delight)

A delightful atmospheric adventure game in a strange little world that doesn't get bogged down by esoteric puzzle logic. Only had to look up a guide for the last two letters. Heard about this game through the grapevine years ago, but forgot about it until I spotted it deep in my Steam library with an hour and a half to spare.

[maledictionwolf]

Unpopular opinion (it seems) but I would love to have Nico as a permanent commentator - besides waxing poetic about Lewis' existence, he provides really good insight on what's happening on track

[maledictionwolf]

so can we start hunting down white liberals now or what

[maledictionwolf]

Rio (the orc) (she/her) checking her new eyeliner in the mirror while Bubo (possessed doll head) (any) is more concerned about the snake.

Some OC facts:

Rio chose her name because she'd heard that feminine names in [the local language*] ended in vowels, not realizing that in a nearby language some ending vowels are masculine and as a result are often judged as male names in [local area*], especially with people who seem more muscular, or otherwise normatively masculine. It doesn't help she's visibily not local.

Bubo is a demonic entity stuck in a doll's head and can only speak when attached to a decapitated corpse, as they need to use the lungs to speak. They can communicate with some people telepathically though.

*worldbuilding still pending here, haven't given geographic regions names yet.