#9 mag

[blackmensuited]

[galoogamelady]

How do you draw inorganic things so well your guns and armor and metal stuff is just so gosh darn good like i need tips i fail hard at inorganic matter every i every draw looks so soft and fleshy

The thing about hard surface items is that you have to be at least a little bit anal about perfect straight lines and ellipses in relation with perspective. I was really bad at descriptive geometry (my teacher sucked ass but that's another thing), and okay at best at drawing still life of objects in high school, but I recommend dabbling in the latter at least, if you can, to strengthen your foundations. How and where shapes connect to each other, how corners are formed, how a pattern or sticker translates on a flat surface we see in perspective all matter in selling your drawing.

Unless you're going to simplify shapes a lot, don't rush it and just refine the drawing as you go. This is my process. Again, I'm not a perfectionist, I know this final drawing is not a 1-to-1 to the reference, but it's good enough for this practice. If the gun was the main focus of an image, I would make sure the tip of the barrel looked sharper and nicer.

You can see me using this method in this old speeddraw and in a recent twitch stream (footage of which will be in my next youtube vid).

I recommend using rulers even if you trace over images of items. And be mindful about where and how you weather or detail shapes. For example, I could have drawn horizontal lines on the upper receiver here, but the short vertical lines help convey its roundness better.

If you're drawing different materials, you can forego the ruler on soft materials but still use it for the hard ones. (eg. a couch that has a wooden base/legs vs the cushions):

[i-am-not-a-who-i-am-a-what]

so about the header that proceeded today's statement:

Viability as agent: Low

Viability as subject: None

Viability as catalyst: Medium

i didn't know what to think of this part of the entry at first, but the longer the statement went on... was the institute in this universe trying to manufacture avatars?

the dice can't do anything without someone to use them, they can't be an "agent" by themselves, but might be capable of manipulation, so in that aspect their viability is "low."

the dice could be a "subject" in the sense that they could use further studying, but the statement itself was a very thorough investigation of their workings, so in that aspect their viability is "none."

the dice seem to influence their holder to roll them, or at least find more victims to roll them, and could therefore be described as a "catalyst" for someone's becoming. but, as seen in the statement, their owner can give the dice to someone else (albeit not without consequences), so in that aspect their viability is only "medium."

so what about the line following all this, what does "Recommend referral to Catalytics for Enrichment applicability assessment" mean? if we go by this interpretation, i'd say it could mean the institute wanted to find a way to make the dice even more potent as an artifact, maybe even remove that pesky ability for their owner to reject them.

imho all of this this brings a whole new level of context to the events of episode seven, of unknown violent agents going after an influx of objects that seemed straight out of artifact storage. was that the nature of the titular "magnus protocol" first mentioned in episode four, the one that involved the starkwall group? containing or destroying potential artifacts before the institute could get their hands on them?

it also makes their "gifted kids program," and sam's link to it as one of the kids being studied, all the more horrifying to think about. was it not just avatars in general they were after, but child avatars specifically? no wonder gertrude got so defensive over the possibility of sam and celia dragging gerry back into the institute's business last episode, we all picked up on her clearly knowing more than she's letting on but now we might know the shape of that information a bit better.

and one final bit of food for thought... this statement had a lot of familiar themes, didn't it? free will or the illusion of it, gambling and not-so-random chance, the statement giver being done in by one final hit from what feels like a bit of an addition... all hallmarks of a certain mother of puppets. doesn't it seem fitting that "chester" would use this kind of statement to warn sam about what harm pursuing the magnus institute could bring to him, considering the one his voice might draw from? and doesn't it seem so painfully ironic that his warning seems to have only driven sam further into that web?

[tmascrapbook]

Mag 9: a fathers love

[hezekiahwakely]

The disdainful tone with which Jon delivers this line is really funny considering the kind of person he already is and what hes about to become in the next four years

[oficmag]

ISSUE #9 IS HERE!

So much work and love has been put into Issue #9, our special Doubles Issue which features two beautiful novellas on polar ends of the same fantastical aesthetic spectrum. These stories speak to each other in interesting ways, playing on themes of love and devotion, and how those feelings become distorted by the nature of time. For this issue, we took inspiration from a French bookbinding method called tête-bêche ("head to tail") binding. Whichever way you hold it, you'll be looking at the front of one of the novellas, upside down to the other and eventually meeting in the middle. So fun!

In "Missing Ange" by Erica Cheng, ambitious engineering student Wes is kidnapped and taken to the future by Lyra, a time traveler desperate to solve the mystery of her brother Ange’s disappearance, having supposedly died in a lab accident related to the invention of time travel. A mystery unfolds, with Ange at the center of everything.  

In "Adelina and the Bug Parties" by Allison Stalberg, Lu the luna moth and Adelina the faery seamstress fall in love at a praying mantis wedding. They attend all kinds of bug parties, from termite birthdays to spider funerals. During and between the parties, Adelina learns how to cherish the most fleeting of moments as her low-stakes life meets the high stakes of the insect kingdom in this absurdist but poignant fairytale.

PURCHASE ISSUE #9 HERE.

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THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT. HAPPY READING AND HAPPY SUMMER!

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[isagnesalive]

yeah, sorry, we took your dice after you died. yeah they were weird end avatar dice idk why u rolled them again lol. we're sending them to the enrichment department now. sorry.

[lurkingindoorways]

‼️ Tmagp 9 spoilers ‼️

“The only thing you need to have your life destroyed by this stuff is just bad luck.”

- Tim, tmag 117: Testament

“I’d never seen snake eyes come up before. Never in all the thousands of times I’d seen them rolled, clattering across someone’s future…maybe Gary was just really, really unlucky.”

- statement giver, tmagp 9: Rolling With It

Oooohoohoo boy the parallels are paralleling 🎲🎲

[rinjak3]

So. Um

4:26 pm (cst) on April 10th 2024. Over a year, and i finally finished The Magnus Archives

Um??? I am Not Okay™ what do i do now lmao???

[blackmensuited]

[cult-of-the-eye]

I WANT A LOCH NESS MONSTER INCIDENT MORE THAN ANYTHING. PLEASE.

[rainenightshade]

Ignore this

THE DICE!

My brain won’t let me not be thinking about tmagp right now so I’m re-listening to it and the dice are definitely important

That dude with the sack of weird things from Taking Notes had a set of gamblers dice

Also RedCanary mentioning an empty box and then proceeding to say “no dice”… I feel like that’s the just kind of pun that they would put in there

[samobservessonic]

Normally, at the end of the Poster Mag they advertise the next issue. But since there won’t be one this time, here’s Tails wishing you a happy new year!

[mothmags]

A few Grians for the end of season 9

[asalesbian]

MAG009 – A Father’s Love

“The next closest streetlight failed. Then the next. And the next. A slow, rolling blanket of darkness, making its unhurried way towards me. The few lights still on in the houses along the road also disappeared as the tide approached. I just sat there, unable to look away. Finally, it reached our house, and all at once the lights were gone and the darkness was inside.”

A tiny Julia for @tma-girls-week Day 3 – Statement Givers!

[still images under the cut]

[zoueriemandzijnopmars]

*Significante tijd = minimaal een paar uur en niet langs de snelweg. Dus niet gewoon doorheen gereden opweg naar België of Duitsland. Een dagje uit telt wel natuurlijk

(zou ook leuk zijn als je ff vertelt welke je niet bent geweest)