#Guiding principle

[bonefall]

Since you mentioned only cats and a few other distant animals are sentient, does this mean foxes are getting their sentience removed? Midnight can talk to foxes in the books and even convinces some foxes to leave a patrol of cats alone (the foxes are WEIRDLY violent and talk about eating the cats too lmaoo).

I assume Hollyleaf's changes mean the Fox Cub Incident is either being moved or just removed entirely, I always found that small plot point interesting in face of all those "Non-cat in clan" AUs. Seems like something that could be interesting if an "us vs them" argument was formed from it, especially if it was targeted against Midnight and calling her unholy yknow?

Yeah, that sapience is gone completely. In this universe, language is limited only to humans, cats, and some distant animals that are far outside the range of Albion (elephants, bottlenoses, some parrots, etc)

And Hollyleaf's story especially. Ngl to you, I don't like that fox idea. Or anything about Hollyleaf's Story. I think it was the worst possible route to take.

"Hollyleaf will be a mother to this evil creature to learn what it's like to love something that hates you. It is so sad to be your mom Leafpool (Squirrel-who?). Don't you feel like a shitty daughter now, Holly? Let's not ask any questions about the code btw, or how you were already filled with crushing shame from it. Or how it made you so disgusted about the idea of pregnant nuns that you flipped your shit and ruined the lives of your entire family. No, what really mattered about this situation was maternal empathy. Also here take the nearest male character we can find to ship you with, we accidentally made Cinderheart too gay when she was upset about your death lmao"

But, digressing, putting my distaste of that novella aside,

WC is profoundly xenophobic already with just the cats, and I think it was a CATASTROPHIC mistake to make it so every animal is secretly intelligent but speaks animal language. Now every conflict between cats and their predators is an ethnic dispute! You're chasing out groups of people perfectly capable of reasoning if you bridged the language barrier, but they're also ACTUAL PREDATORS.

AT BEST; It's the same uncomfortable situations that Zootopia and Lion King ends up tripping over. In Zootopia, predators are used as an allegory for oppressed groups... but predators are MADE to eat prey. A rabbit is RIGHT to be terrified of a fox, twice its size with a jaw made for catching bunnies. In Lion King, lions have divine authority to rule over their dinner/subjects, and chase out any animal based on their personal ideology... which just so happens to only be leveraged against rival predator species.

(Nerd preemption: yes i know about lion guard. I do not think diverse Lion Cops were the solution you think it is.)

Carelessly adding sapience to "natural systems" often ends up accidentally justifying bigotry. Bigotry doesn't MAKE SENSE, it's bullshit we made up and perpetuate through culture, but food webs are completely logical. The rabbit fears the fox because the fox eats rabbits. The lion hates the hyena because they compete for the same food. Gazelles don't happily submit to an overlord who is divinely capable of deciding who should live and who should die, it's just nature.

But it gets even worse-- because it's actually WORST CASE; the Erins saw that complicated moral problem and went, "don't worry! They're actually born evil! Foxes just talk about food and killing things :)"

like... my brother in cats, YOU gave them language in the first place! What was the fucking point if they were just going to be evil barbarians anyway?!? For ONE scene where Midnight could show off her Duolingo streak???

So to summarize,

It was an awful idea to start with

It was executed in the worst possible way

In a series that is already plagued with xenophobic sentiment, this somehow made it even worse and more direct

If it was completely nuked it from the story, the series would be immediately better with minimal change. Holly caring for what is essentially the clan cat-equivalent of an exotic animal like a chimp or a tiger cub would have done the same thing

There is not even a glimmer of an idea here that justifies the poison that full sapience does to the wider implications of the series.

Don't even get me started on the Badger Debaucle in TNP, which is actually in my top 5 for most vile things in WC

So if I don't explicitly say that a species in BB is capable of true language, assume it is non-sapient. Talking animals like Midnight and Rat Leader are magical individuals-- gods, curses, etc.

[sohannabarberaesque]

"Life is either an adventure or nothing."

--the motto of Sherry Manufacturing Co., manufacturer of tourist-trap souvenir T-shirts

Which could also be something of a mantra among much of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera ... especially when you have Snagglepuss and Huckleberry Hound on the road in their motorhome for the former's weekly postcards ... Peter Potamus and his intrepid(?!) Magic Divers, not to mention the Three Wolves and the Divin' Wolf Pups ... or even the Hair Bear Bunch out on the road during bear mating season, letting their inner juvenile sexual curiosity loose.

That's just for starters--can you imagine other likely possibilities Hanna-Barberian in this vein?

[tumatawa]

My old Tezuka phase is crawling back to me...

[tutorialdrawix]

RESOURCES FOR ANIMATION

Book Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnston

Book The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams

Book Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters by Robert Beverly Hale

Book Character Animation Crash Course! by Eric Goldberg

TUTORIAL VIDEOS:

[specialagentartemis]

my misinformation post has now reached enough people that there are people starting to go “I agree with this post! But the Catholic Church has done bad things so these particular lies FEEL true and isn’t that just as important really”

[mothmanavenue]

can i confess something else that will absolutely get me stoned in the town square since im dropping my unpopular opinions. I don’t like altean broadsword Lance. i already disliked red paladin Lance. the broadsword was like rubbing salt in the wound. why couldn’t he have his own niche. why was his character development just making him keith. i understand that it was like “he accepts that he doesn’t have to be a leader and excels as a co-leader and you can find happiness that way yada yada yada”. but you could’ve done that without making him keith. also now give him something unique, cool, that falls in line with his sniper bit. i’m not saying just give him another gun, im saying give him something quiet and lethal. like a garotte. yeah i want garotte lance.

i yap a lot more in my notes by the way if you were interested in other unpopular opinions. don’t send me hate messages or comments i won’t read it and will block viciously i also will not be debating this this is my hill to die on <3

[hauxicrook]

The Zen of Python

Beautiful is better than ugly.

Explicit is better than implicit.

Simple is better than complex.

Complex is better than complicated.

Flat is better than nested.

Sparse is better than dense.

Readability counts.

Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.

Although practicality beats purity.

Errors should never pass silently.

Unless explicitly silenced.

In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.

There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.

Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.

Now is better than never.

Although never is often better than *right* now.

If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.

If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.

Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

[vaguely-concerned]

you know it is hard to not feel for caterina a little in my worldstate. she loses sight of lucanis for a couple of months while her other grandson has her in jail for grandmother time-out, and by the time she sees him again he is in full undying devotion mode for the guy she sent to get him back. her grandson finally brought someone home, and it's a fairly low-level elven mortalitasi whose family background is 'idk we found this baby in a crypt and liked their vibes' who will not be giving her any biological grandchildren. not even one of the politically well-connected scheming mortalitasi, which could at least have been useful (nevarra is a bustling market for the crows! twenty contracts on the king alone and still going strong! still a payday baby let the good times roll!), but one of the dutybound earnest little freaks they keep down in the necropolis to wrangle skeletons and write esoteric papers and who frankly don't care that much about murder b/c death comes to us all in its own time anyway trust us on this one. lucanis looks at him like he hung the moon, the sun, every celestial object and glittering star in the sky, like he's the only real thing in the world. and in caterina vision she sees this weird little slip of a goth mage guy wearing too much kohl who cracks jokes at strange times and is so hard to read but also gives her the unmistakable flinty 'I'll try to keep this civil if you do the same. If.' eye contact over lucanis' shoulder sometimes, with the utter grave calm that only someone who's a speaker to the dead (and the dead are savage) and who has killed several gods and wouldn't back down from second deicide if necessary could bring to bear. she sucks and deserves this and more but she also does have a whole Situation on her hands here

(I love that rye's relationship to lucanis' family is basically 'I met some of the most insufferable people. but, they also met me'. he tangoed with the god of lies and betrayal so he could waltz his way through a dellamorte family dinner relatively unscathed)

[bonefall]

so are wild boar still considered “extinct” locally by the humans? given that wild boar in england are currently considered extinct, even though there are pockets of population

(context: i was looking up animals that england has driven to extinction with my partner last night because we were both feeling Some Kind Of Way about species conservation, and how england is basically the worst monster historically in terms of driving entire species to extinction, and continues to be hugely negligible. then i remembered boars in better bones i was like “aren’t there boars?” and then saw that they were also considered extinct, which surprised me)

Yeah England is a fucking monster in terms of bad conservation, and its colonial influence in how OTHER places view conservation can't be understated. But anyway I'll save that for another time

(But like it fucks me up that you guys only have one protected river in the whole UK and it's mostly in Wales. What the fuck. It's been 30 years and they're just now thinking about adding another. Brits in the audience who can i kill for you? If we throw someone in the thames maybe they'll dissolve)

Here's the thing I have in mind; England is so fucked that people don't even know how fucked it is. Do you know how important hogs are to a mixed-oak woodland? What types of moors need burning, grazing, or being left alone? That the entire island of Great Britan is supposed to have a thriving freshwater pearl mussel population? That England isn't supposed to have pine forests?

There is so so so much here to cover and talk about, AND I'm telling this story from the perspective of cats! They have to have encountered the things to know about them, even if it was culturally!

And what that means is that I am willing to bend a couple of things SO that I can include them as part of the story! Things that SHOULD be here, that should be or ARE being reintroduced, especially when they're lesser known.

(In fact I think your boar thing is a perfect example. You're telling me the story I want to hear-- that you heard something offhand, went "woah arent those in this work I'm a fan of?" And then you learned more. Goal accomplished!)

In my head I file boars and mussels under the "Eagle Exception." Something that, with a bit of alt history, could be seen in this environment.

It's based off the canon eagles (which ironically I'm massively downplaying in my rework of the BB!Tribe). The golden eagle has been extinct in England for a very long time, but it's right there in canon, so logically there could be similar animals or reintroduction projects.

List so far;

(Also BB!Great Britan is called Albion to mark that it's a little different.)

Freshwater Pearl Mussels (extinct in White Hart, populated in Sanctuary Lake)

Boars (rare in White Hart, populated in Sanctuary Lake. Replacing the majority of deadly badger and fox encounters because badgers arent bears and foxes arent coyotes, Erin :/)

Golden Eagle (exclusive to Tribe mountain)

Beavers (Being actively reintroduced to parts of Albion in the 2010s)

Wolves (extinct)

Lynxes (suspected extinct; there may be some around specifically because I want to make an example of how non-domestic cats in this universe are non-sapient.)

Salmon (uncommon in White Hart, populated in Sanctuary Lake)

Atlantic Sturgeon (exclusive to Sanctuary Lake, rare even there)

Medicinal Leech (dying population in White Hart since Chelford expansion, extinct in Sanctuary Lake)

Additionally I'm keeping my eye on the European Buffalo (wiseant) reintroduction, but that's not in my modeled region and I don't want to jump the gun on it. Last I checked the project JUST managed to get its bull this year after a long 2020-induced delay

[tiffanyachings]

one of my many tlt costume thoughts is that the sixth house robes should look like scifi-ed academic dress. i am talking stupidly long, pointy hoods. i’m talking 578 different lining / trimming / tassel colour combos in barely distinguishable shades of grey denoting department, title, citation impact etc. do you see my vision

[akkivee]

THE ENERGY AND CHAOS IN KUUKOUS MOVEMENT

THE CALMNESS AND MEASURE IN GHOST KUUKOUS MOVEMENT

[godofthestupid]

I'm going to have the nightshift for the rest of the week

which meeeaaaans I'll make a proper art style guide to Reverse1999(considering how much time I'll have) including the Elements of Art and Design(Line,Shape,Form,Color,Value,Space and Texture) and the Principles of Art and Design(Balance,Emphasis,Movement,Pattern/Repetition,Rhythm,Proportion,Variety and Unity)

I already picked out some in game CGs but if you have a fav you want me to look at feel free to share!

[spaceradars]

jack rackham was so real when he said “to be underestimated it’s an incredible gift”

[its-robyn]

Yeah gotta be the tits you want to see in this world

[boyjoan]

i had this massive epiphany last night and I'm only just now remembering that it happened .

[tomwambsgans]

tomgreg is not "i could fix him" nor "i could make him worse" but "i could make him feel like a real person." from both ends.