#IT Project Contract

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dungeon Meshi: The RPG

[amphibianaday]

day 1609

[anewp0tat0]

I'm a freak for making him make weird faces. but he's a bigger freak for making them.

refs:

[shanklin]

It’s the most honest job Stan’s ever had.

Sure, the company he’s working for is downright diabolical, scamming their customers in all aspects of life, but that’s not Stan’s problem.

As Le Ville Corp’s most successful customer service agent in the Oregon area his only job is to follow the company guidelines, sell as many bad deals as possible and never ever let anyone back out of a contract. 

Morality aside, nothing the company does is actually illegal, so at the end of the day Stan gets to collect his almost-minimum-wage-sized paycheck and go home in the knowledge, that no pigs will come knocking on his door anytime soon.

Life is good. Or at least as good as it gets where Stan is concerned. Last month he even got a raise for selling every bad product the company had to offer to one poor kind sucker. 

From household appliances to car insurance, magazine subscriptions and even their extremely shitty telephone and electricity contracts - the McGucket guy brought it all.

Thanks to him, Stan could upgrade from his car to an almost black mold free one room appartment with a community bathroom one block over.

Stan was finally moving up in the world and then his phone rings. He recognises the number. It’s his good friend Fiddle-not-gonna-say-the-rest McGucket.

Stan grins and cracks his knuckles. It’s about time McGucket figured out he’s gotten scammed. Time to make the poor guy’s life a living hell. No one is getting out of a contract on his watch.

“Thank you for calling Le Ville Corp. For us you are more than just a customer. You are family! This is Piers. How can I help you today?”

The moment Stan starts his greeting, he is bombarded with noise disturbances from the other side.

Ah, the good old Le Ville Corp telephone network working as intended. Maybe Stan can convince the guy to upgrade to a slightly less egregious version. 

Wait, what did he say?

His name is Dr. Stammered Lynes? Weird, but okay. Still better than Fiddle-nope-not-saying-it Hardon McGucket.

As it turns out, Stan finally met the mysterious roommate whose money McGucket has been using to pay for all of their products. Stan didn’t think the guy had it in him to ditch his roommate after the scam got discovered. Good for him!

Now, how to best screw Dr. Lynes here over.

***

An hour and a half of data security safety questions and a new phone contract later the doc hangs up to Stan’s cheery and corporate mandated farewell:

“And don’t forget we here at Le Ville Corp consider you our forever family, because you will stay with us forever!”

***

Stanford Pines just had the worst month of his life [not counting the weeks after the science fair that he refuses to think about].

The portal test was a disaster, his partner left, his muse refuses to explain himself and on top of all of that his new fridge won’t open, because this week’s subscription fee hasn’t been paid yet.

What the f-FIDDLEFORD!

[ef-1]

Twitter is mad at Daniel again because they caught on to that CH interview about Daniel being offered the same contract as Max, icl I'm also bitter about it. I wish he wasn't so rash in 2018

It's easy to be bitter in hindsight but the reality is more nuanced, had it not been recorded and internationally broadcast, what happened to Daniel in 2018 would be flat out unbelievable by ANY standard lol. Daniel had mechanical issues in every. single. weekend in 2018 <- this is not a hyperbole or a joke (more on this later). He ran multiple races with a b spec engine -> 20 bhp down on Max. At no point in 2018 did Max run a lower engine power than Daniel. Daniel incurred 8 dnfs, 4 back of the grid starts for mechanical issues and 6 grid drops in total where as Max had *1*[one]. This isn't even accounting for failures in quali or free practice that would have compromised his set up or race prep. Daniel's car accounted for 92% of Red Bull failures in comparison to Max's 8%.

Christian's cunty "he ran from a fight" comment stung particularly hard because it was Christian who made MULTIPLE public apologies to Daniel in 2018 on the ground that he wasn't given a chance to compete. Christian would apologise to Daniel again when Max won in Mexico, even though Daniel had an uncharacteristic outburst in the media pen during that famous "The car is cursed. I can't wait to give it to Pierre" This isn't even diving into the dubious & predatory RB contract practices. At 28 years old, to quote Christian "It's the first time he's effectively a free agent."

You look back at it now and lament it as a bad call but even by Christian's admission Red Bull were on the verge of selling the team for 4 years. Honda was coming in, I know it's easy to praise Honda now but Honda single handedly sent Alonso into early retirement. He found working with them untenable + said it cost him his love for the sport. Those were the lingering images of Honda as they re-entered the sport, the team who electrocuted Alonso then bled his love for racing dry.

If you weren't around in 2018 let me give you a run down so horrific it looks like a joke:

Australia - Race: 3 Place grid penalty

Bahrain - Race: DNF - Battery Failure

China - Free Practice 3: Gear box issue with complete engine turbo failure. Misses FP3 entirely, no quali set up prepared. He would go on to win that race from p6

Baku - Race: DNF - Collision with Max. Racing incident.

Monaco - Race: partial MGU-K failure. He would go on to win that race with drastic loss of power.

Canada - Free Practice 2 - Power unit issue, misses majority of the session.

France - Race: front wing failure. (it disintegrated)

Austria - Race: DNF - Retires from p3 with MGU-k Failure

Britain - Quali: DRS failure. No DRS activation, still qualifies p6 behind Max in p5

Germany - Race: Back of grid start + DNF - Takes new engine for the weekend, starts p19 + has lower power spec A ICE approximately 20 BHP down on B spec that Max was running. Daniel climbed upto p5 from p19 but incurs a MGU-k failure and retires.

Hungary - Race: Daniel is forced to run lower power spec A ICE again, 20 BHP down on B spec that Max was running

Spa - Free Practice 1 + DNF: Daniel misses entire session with engine injector issue + Daniel would go on to retire after being driven into on lap 1.

Monza - Race: Back of grid start + DNF. Daniel takes another new engine for weekend (spec C) and incurs another full grid penalty, starts p19. Daniel would go on to climb to p6 before having clutch failure and retiring.

Singapore - Race + Quali + Free practice: During every session in Singapore Daniel has an unresolved spec C engine clipping issue that Red Bull can't fix.

Russia - Race + Free Practice 1 - Daniel misses FP1 due to mechanical issues. Daniel takes another engine penalty, starts p18

Japan - Race + Quali: Daniel incurs throttle actuator failure, misses quali, another back of grid start.

USA - Race: DNF - Battery Failure

Mexico - Race: DNF - clutch Bearing failure + start software clutch issue. Daniel retires the race from P2

Brazil - Race: Daniel takes a 5 Place grid penalty due to new turbo charger replacement. Starts in p11.

Abu Dhabi - Free Practice 3: Misses majority of FP3 with water leak.

Daniel's insanely vulnerable "if racing was the only thing making me happy this year, I would have been miserable" during the last on the sofa with Max was a v apt summary of 2018. To suggest that Daniel fucked up based on the information he had in 2018, namely Daniel undergoing all those problems + knowing RB was flirting with selling the team + Helmut's fuckery + having an out from the RB umbrella for the first time in his career? Your problem isn't with his decision making process, you just wish he was clairvoyant which is an unfair thing to be bitter about

[blenselche]

slapped some color onto these fft/firnntress doodles

[parisoonic]

Just wanted to say thanks for all the tf2 art.

Your art is great and is really reminiscent of the comics. I hope Valve hires you in some official capacity to work on something tf2 related cause your work is just fantastic.

Cheers for the lovely comment! HAH that would be a dream come true but it's also cool that the 'TF2 project' as it currently stands is a tight consistant team of artists, writers and creatives - that doesn't happen much in the industry nowadays.

[elucubrare]

I spent a while last week spinning straw into gold

[the0ther-side0f-dawn]

excuse my long preamble before i get to the point but idk if this was:

an accidental private info leak from Dan and a 'cover-up' by Phil. it is unclear if he is denying altogether, or moreso just saying "not in this case"

or if it was just Dan getting carried away with yapping and saying random things like that time when he described the preshow as being "a gender".

or maybe it's like an unconfirmed thing like Dan is speculating and he's definitely brought it up with Phil before but this is maybe something Phil doesn't want added to his Lore™ at this point in time. idk.

but in the Glasgow n1 preshow 03/02/2025 (timestamp around 13 minutes)

they're telling the story about how Phil got his license and how if he did drive again he would need lessons but probably shouldn't do it, and anyway:

Phil: But I think if I ever did get behind the wheel again I would need some lessons because it's not safe for me to-

Dan: You would need Jesus if you got behind the wheel again

Phil: Would you trust me on a motorway?

Dan: ♫ NooOoo

Phil: Imagine that.

Dan: ♫ I'd rather not.

Phil: Left! The other left! The other right!

Dan: (turns to look at Phil) Yeh, I guess the dyspraxia doesn't help when it comes to like...

Phil: It's not dyspraxia. I just don't know left and right. It's [like/not]* an actual thing.

Dan: alright.

*I can't make out what Phil actually said since they were talking over each other.

anyway, is this new information??

[knight--of-the-stars]

Guess what I did. ^u^ I contracted! I'm a real puella magi now.

I use a necklace, but it isn't really my soul gem because my soul gem is in the astral. It's just a visualization for it/way of managing it in the physical realm. I wrote in my journal about the specifics. I'll transcribe it.

Contract day! Day 0. 7/17/2024. I made a contract with Kyubey. He had a black hat that looked like an upside down bowl. This is what happened: I got the necklace for my soul gem and put it in the middle of the circle. I sat on one side and told Kyubey to sit on the other. I put a white ring on my left to represent the hope of magical girls. I put a black ring on my right to represent the despair of magical girls. Lastly, I put a purple ring in front of me to represent myself. When all that was done, I cast a circle and called upon Kyubey. He answered and asked "What is your wish?" I didn't expect him to get there so quickly. I forgot my wish and almost left the circle to grab this journal to remember. Instead, I made myself focus until I remembered. I repeated my wish until the phrasing felt right. I think he could tell I wasn't very comfortable the first few times. When he transferred my soul, it felt like something was touching my insides, but it didn't hurt, it was just uncomfortable. When it was complete, I felt extremely dizzy, and my body felt hollow and lightweight. The Kyubey looked like this:

@meguca-meduka was the one that helped me figure out how to contract without astral projecting, so I am very thankful to you, Rem! ^U^

[arlecchinoprojectharbringerask]

The jester trio!

The idea is that Pirin!Berial - the one with knight-jester getup - Is the middle. Teen? The Fool. And sort of Young aduthood. Known as the Laughing jester.

Arlecchino - The eldest, Solemn jester. The 'Crone' and full maturity, adulthood.

Sens!Berial - The Sinister jester. The youngest. Immaturity, childhood. The child

[rivetgoth]

Ugh how I love the strange toned down atmosphere of Bedside Toxicology compared to anything else Ogre’s ever put out. Ik he said it’s because he was sick of working with heavy electronic distortion after leaving Skinny Puppy (can’t remember the exact quote rn but something like “I never want to hear a distorted vocal again” lmao) but it produces such a cool unique effect that he never really replicated. So many of the songs being almost entirely reliant on some guitar, Martin Atkins’ drumming, a couple of electronic noises, and Ogre’s almost fully untreated vocals while he sings objectively the most direct and personal lyrics he ever publicly released (“And people enjoyed watching me cut myself / Cut myself and throw myself into things / Throw myself in and out of reality … My friends didn’t care / My friends left me” like jeez) makes the whole thing feel so intimate. Obviously it’s not remotely as dark or intense or cinematic as something like Last Rights lyrically or sonically but I do think it captures exactly what it would be like if the “protagonist” of Last Rights, instead of overdose and die at the “Circustance” / “Download” climax as I’ve always felt was implied (with Last Rights among other things being an imagined “bad ending” of Ogre’s lowest point with addiction), woke up in his room and found himself thrown back into completely sober waking reality and had to pick up the pieces in a world so mundane and quiet it loops back around to being jarring and surreal in its own way. Which is kind of exactly what it actually is, since that kind of is what really happened lol.

[flufflecat]

bill cipher deconstructed, a cosplay

[blazingauraheartworld]

Does anyone know why the Kazumi Magica artist went AWOL like you said to dreamerwitches?

That’s the fascinating thing, right? I can’t seem to find anything about them deciding to. I feel like someone would have likely noticed if the artist had put out a ‘I’m deleting everything.’ or any sort of similar vibe before it happened. 

The Cuddly Despairs event ran in October, 2021. The artist did the CG art as well as art for the newly unlocked *5 stars + new Kazumi. Sometime between that event and potentially July/August ish of 2024 ( since there was no ‘goodbye’ art piece made featuring Kazumi characters when Magia Record EOS when everyone Else did one) is when the artist seemingly deleted their online presence. 

Now, the rest is under a read more just because I find this situation fascinating, but is really just pure speculation on my end.

Kazumi Magica is such an interesting existence in the catalog of madoka spin-offs, precisely because it seems as if both the creators ( writer and artist) of the manga aren’t very interested in involving themselves further in the Madoka Magica series as a whole than the story they made. I can’t tell if it’s because there’s two people who worked on it vs the other spin-offs, where the artist And writer were the same person, that’s created this sort of vibe where Kazumi keeps getting excluded from the cool magical girl club. Tart also was a two party team with Masugitsune & Kawazuku (under Golden Pe Done), but Masu alone was plenty active in helping with designing new characters and doing multiple Tart events.

I had a whole thing here getting into it the thick of it, but very much every spin-off artist that had their story shown off in the Exedra trailer (GAN, Masugitsune, Kuroe Mura) have all given some form of contribution to Magia Record during the game’s run, if not still doing artwork for the main series, like the MagiReco anime end cards and other miscellaneous works. 

I’m not expecting Masaki Hiramatsu( Kazumi Writer, still around) to have picked up a tablet pen and done something in place of no longer having an artist for his series. He seems to be plenty busy writing for the Bleach anime right now by the looks of things. I want to make it clear : I do not think he does not care for Kazumi. He clearly does with how he didn’t like how the first Magia Record Kazumi event was written, and then seemingly assisted with it on the second go. I feel as if the same would likely happen for Exedra too to ensure the story is properly retold. 

anywhos!

Simply put, I believe the artist of Kazumi Magica, for one reason or another, retired from being an artist or does not want their art to be available online. 

This is slightly unrelated, but to give you an idea where I’m going with this, I occasionally buy adopts and customs from other artists, and if I had a nickel for every artist I’ve worked with that has scrapped their existence from the Internet entirely due to AI concerns, I would have eight nickels. Again, I cannot confirm nor deny that is why the Kazumi artist decided to scrub everything, as we do not have an official confirmation. However, it would not surprise me if that was the case.

Even if unlikely at this point, the artist could always make a comeback to work on Exedra! I feel like they might leave Kazumi as the last spin-off they'll add, just to sorta see if they could maybe Find said artist. I’m just…not holding my breath for it as of now.

Which comes to another question: When Kazumi inevitably gets added to Exedra, who is going to do the art? I know there’s someone on the f4 team that can do a good impression of Ume Aoki’s art style, but I’m not sure if they can do the same with Kazumi…? I feel like there are many artists around and involved in the series now that there’d be someone who wouldn’t mind picking up the task…

[herearedragons]

okay no I am doing this. brain go brrr. applying the reproductive horror angle to my Watchers

Selene. the usual godlike fare but for her specifically, I like the interpretation that moon godlike are like. a subconscious manifestation of Ondra's guilt for killing Abydon. I like the idea that there were no moon godlike before that. you are born as walking evidence of someone else's crime. is it any wonder she wants you to disappear. also half of her Deadfire character arc is spiraling over the realization that Edér is excited about the idea of having a child, which is something he's never going to get with her. because she's not meant to be a part of the cycle of life, she's made for the cycle of grief. she's not a wife, she's a memorial, she's a tombstone. he knows, and he marries her anyway

Mae. her family tradition of swearing the oldest daughter into the Goldpact Knights, giving her the heirloom breastplate, to honor the contract that got their ancestor out of slavery. which, from an outside perspective, means that every few decades a new orlan woman will show up, same armor, same fighting skill, same determination to prove herself. they look alike. their faces blend together. your grandmother is your mother is your daughter is you. in the first year after Mae swears her oath she promises herself that she'll never have children because this way of life is lonely and dangerous and she has made a home in it but she's never want it for anyone else

Lorenzo. standard godlike fare. sold to a slave owner as a baby because his parents were going to kill him for being An Omen and then saw an easier alternative. growing up being told over and over again, every birthday, that you weren't ever supposed to make it to this age so you better be grateful and work hard to pay it back. his biological mother survived the birth but he killed every single person who had a hand in raising him, by the will of Berath, who is more parent to him than any mortal being. and Berath loves him, as much as a god can love a soul. but the thing is that Berath loves the soul, so when Lorenzo is overwhelmed and replaced by his Awakened self, Berath sees it, and Berath does not care. you are god's child and you are your parents' child and you're Bianca's boy and you're nobody's. no one will lay claim to you. no one will step in to save you

[gay-jewish-bucky]

atp it seems like seb is completely phoning it in, he so clearly does not want to be there and won't even pretend otherwise, and yk what? good for him, get that check and get out