#Should improve with progress!

[eeveeandme05]

First post, what whaaat!

So, first time here! To get straight to the point, I have a fic crewing which I'll be posting snippets of here. Yes, it is a TTTE story, but with my own twist to it, featuring a pair of human characters. Take this as you will - please enjoy!

The train rushed down the mainline, the rural scenery rushing past in a blur. Amano was sat in one of the coaches, staring vacantly out the window. He was on his way to the Island of Sodor, where a family friend had agreed to host him while he stayed on the island for a month to do some work experience - a mandatory practice instated by his school. While he would have been excited about this new adventure he was going on, something he often longed for, he was feeling unusually sombre.

However consumed he was by whirling, anxious thoughts, they were all promptly swept out of his head the moment the railway drawbridge from Barrow to Sodor came into view. He was almost there. The boy sucked in a breath as he was pulled back to reality.

The stories Amano had heard from this obscure island were, to him, nothing short of legendary, having grown up with them, and now he had been given the opportunity to visit it in person. The excitement he should have been feeling began to well up inside him - he even felt himself crack a smile. He took a deep breath and put on a brave face. He would get there and make a good impression, then show them what a good worker he could be!

***

Donald whistled as he puffed into Vicarstown. It wasn't often that he went to the mainland, but James had been relegated to goods work after being silly a few days prior, so he had been asked to take over the red engine's passenger duties temporarily.

Edward was simmering at one of the adjacent platforms, and opened one sleepy eye at the sound of Donald's arrival.

"Hullo, Donald!" he said cheerfully. "Welcome back. Had a good trip?"

"Aye. A'd forgotten howfur stowed it gets back oan th' mainland. Loads o' tourists this time o' year!"

"Naturally! James must be in a right tiff, knowing how many there are that he can't show off to." The old engine chuckled as he watched the crowds of passengers disembark, gradually dispersing off to their various destinations, until there were only a few left.

"Hello!"

Donald started at the voice right next to him, and glanced over to see a young boy, not much older than fourteen or fifteen, standing on the platform, grinning.

"Awright, laddie," said Donald, bemused. "Haven't seen ye aroond afore. Whit brings ye 'ere?"

Before the boy could answer, a voice hailed him from the station's entrance. Donald looked up to see a man come forward and shake the boy's hand. He was a familiar face, a close friend of Donald's driver; he recalled speaking to him a few times when they met.

"Ah, hullo Donald!" he said, seemingly just noticing the engine. "Sorry old boy, I forgot to tell you. This is Amano, a young friend of mine. He'll be staying here for a little while to learn some life on the railway. I hope you and the others will make him feel welcome!"

Donald looked once more at the boy. He saw his mop of black hair, his sparkling heterochromatic eyes, his cheeky smile, and found himself smiling back. "Weel, weel, weel. Walcome tae Sodor, laddie! Ah shuid hawp ye'll lik' it 'ere."

In the background, Edward raised a bemused eyebrow.

He rather felt like things were about to get interesting on the North Western Railway.

And that's a wrap for now! A work in progress for sure, but I hope you like what we've got so far!

[cinnamon-flame]

Pigeon studies

Okay so long story short, my love for pigeons reignited over the last few days and I drew only pigeons for like a week to the concern of everybody who saw me enter that state of mind.

The first three are drawn based few different pigeon shots I found, the two after that are referenced from my weirdly pixelated vacation pics and the last one is so high quality because my bestie @wilczuuu let me use one of their gorgeous photos for reference.

Also just for fun I filmed the last one as a timelapse to see that that would look like

I struggle a lot with bird anatomy and while these drawing made me get a firmer grip on that, I'm still super confused about that. So if anyone has some experience with drawing birds and would like to share some tips I would be very thankful.

[commodorez]

Hey. You. Yeah, you.

You can do it.

[sualne]

2024 <- 2021

[forourtomorrows]

me ? drawing ? i guess so..

[dallonwrites]

i do think as writers and creatives we would all benefit from letting ourselves embrace and enjoy being a beginner at something. and not just in a "because one day you will improve and see how far you've come" way but actually enjoying being an amateur at something in the moment. embracing the fun and excitement of something new even if you don't really know anything yet. like i'm making a worldbuilding bible for the first time and do i have any idea what i'm doing? no. am i having fun? absolutely

[monster-noises]

Anyone out there got a solution for when you're feeling really stuck with your art and everyone and their mother tells you the solution is to do studies and figure drawings and other such things but even just thinking about doing those things makes you Spiral and want to Kill Yourself?

[rexcanttietheirshoesright]

3 year difference, and the fandom never even grew

[juniperberrypipebomb]

Decided to log into twitter (hell) and outside of everything going to shit as always i found this piece of shit as my banner

I dont even remember when i made this but i do remember that i did and i remember how i made it

I saw a picture on twitter w some kind of caption and decided that i could make it look like a banner

i tried to add the fire flaming text that i saw on some reposted to twitter tumblr posts where someome makes a grammatical error and someone corrects them in a form of flaming (sometimes animated) text (never change guys, gals and all of you magnificent pals lol) but at the time i didnt know the website that you all used so i tried to improvise and google

I remember half way thru the making of this text being so upset that it looked like shit but after taking a break for 20 minutes i said "fuck it, it is way funnier this way" and i kinda glad that back then i decided to "fuck it we ball" it

It looks disgusting and i love it

[khufiya-khaufnak-antariksh]

So earlier today I introduced some of my WIPs to some new people, and I realised that many people might not be familiar with those two WIPs.

Kriya Petri: fantasy (with body horror & dystopian elements). Setting: A country called Fillor on a planet called Thuluke. In Fillor, to bind yourself to the one you love, you require a trinamate potion to seal the bond. 'Trinamate' is marriage (though that is a rather crude translation of the word). But to get a trinamate potion legally, the couple needs to be… acceptable. A man and a woman who plan to have at least one child. Yes, it's been 1000 years since the global apocalypse, but 'sufficient reproduction' is still a concern among the Filore people (plus it's a moral virtue for the Divine Monarchy, who reside on the cloudlands, with an iron grip on the institutes of Fillor). A potioneer wants to elope with their lover, but the pair is, let's just say, not acceptable. So what are they to do? The potioneer brews a trinamate potion on their own, finding the closely guarded methods & ingredients for the potion through who-knows-who, bunch of shady people. The potion explodes. The potioneer knows the punishment for something like this. They'll be condemned to Kaewoe (so will their lover, if anyone finds out), a realm so deep below the ground that it's close to the core of the planet. Kaewoe, where the mind & body are destroyed by the horribly high concentration of magic. Kaewoe, the names & lives & loves of all who enter it, all slowly turned to unknowledge. Good thing stealing identities is absurdly easy in Fillor! The potioneer wipes all memory of their crimes & love (or else the Thought magicians would know), flees to the city of Naebo. Their name is now Kriya Petri,

.

Welcome To The Real World: scifi, fantasy, surrealism, horror, tragedy

This one's in very early stages Inspired by Frankenstein Setting: The Great South Asian Rip in Reality, where physics (time & space both) is just completely twisted. The year is sometime in the 2070s. Sometimes it's the 2040s outside the Rip. Depends when/where you step out. Moh-maya, reality's very fabric & everything that keeps up the illusions that comprise reality, are very malleable in here. Main character: Kabir aka Moksh. A closeted Indian trans man who lives a double life, perhaps even a triple life. One in which he's a cis woman & a regular bright STEM student (STEM studies also include study of moh-maya). Another in which he's just some guy with good friends (the most authentic of his lives), where he goes by the name Kabir & uses moh-maya to present as his true self. If only temporarily. (it's painful, mentally & physically, whenever he has to revert to the female form). The third is some mad scientist bullshit, he's going by the name of Moksh among his fellow mad scientists & his main project is a moh-maya Frankenstein's monster that others can share their consciousness with, such that they can experience shape-shifting more easily & go where they physically aren't, do things they physically can't. Let's simply call it the 'entity'. Due to many reasons, creating this entity is pretty illegal. Hence the new name & collaboration with fellow shady people. the plot, put shortly: he starts doing vigilante justice w/the entity & then goes far & gets more & more consumed w/work & things go verrrrrrryyyyyy wrong despite starting with (dubious but) good intentions.

in this second one i neglected to mention the fact that you, as the reader, get front row tickets to the main character's spiral into madness & justifying murders thru the entity + the entity is a whole person & has opinions + a whole lot of other stuff, I DID mention that this WIP is in very early stages but holy fuck i could go on & on about it (just not in a way that can be packaged in a structured & sensible introduction)

[orcelito]

Wonderful news, after a month of flossing almost every day, my gums are finally no longer bleeding every time I floss!! 😃

[lemonhemlock]

https://twitter.com/Targ_Nation/status/1611158240359759872?t=bfo77HLITj21KBLCUKx6fA&s=19

Seeing all those likes took years off my life

i don't even know where to begin............

"centrist bs" - the concept of left and right doesn't exist in a medieval setting ...................

where was this energy when cersei was committing abuses left and right and placing her bastard children on the throne? why didn't "the modern audience" "almost unanimously stand by the side of the woman being usurped of her throne" back then? 😵

but this isn't even about one side being more wrong than the other or both sides being awful or war being horrible as a rule or the smallfolk always paying with their lives and livelihoods when the high lords play their game of thrones

that entire tweet is predicated on not grasping the basic principles of the polity they are operating within 😫 you cannot define usurpation based on absolute primogeniture when that society relies on male primogeniture for inheritance, in that context it literally means the opposite

words don't somehow gain whatever meaning you want based on what you think is fair, same how laws don't materialize into existence just because you say so. any kind of law is a social construct, doesn't exist outside the confines of society and requires a certain kind of framework in order to be accepted & enforced. if proposed laws are not accepted by the majority and cannot be enforced, they only exist on the astral plane

there aren't even any proper institutions in westeros. literally the only ones i can identify are the crown and the small council, which serves as a kind of proto-government. there's no parliament, there's no proper justice system, no magna charta. the only courts that seem to operate are Faith-based courts and your liege lord's judgment. medieval-style legal systems and law enforcement are headache-inducing as a rule anyway, but feudal monarchies generally involve constant negotiations and power leverages between kings and their vassals

a more apt characterization of the Dance would be what exactly and how much can the targaryens get away with now that they've decided to impose themselves as rulers of a unified westeros. so far, they had to accept the religion of the land (aegon the conqueror was anointed by the high septon) and were forced to renounce polygamy. they got to keep practicing incest as a result of jaehaerys' successful doctrine of exceptionalism. see? negotiation. now the question remains - are they going to respect succession laws like a normal person (i.e. Andal Law) or are they going to resort to this ridiculous circus every time a targaryen monarch dies? because at the point of the dance, there had hardly been a straightforward transition of power since the conquest

for the internal coherence of this fictional world to be maintained, the nobles should be pushing Andal inheritance rights like crazy, because their own succession is decided on the basis of that and they would be directly interested in not fucking it up for themselves or their descendants by having weird precedents set by the royal family. a lot of these lords, if not most, have bastard siblings/children of their own, as well as elder sisters/daughters. it doesn't make sense for them to threaten their own stability for the sake of rhaenyra of all people, who isn't even good at her job and has done absolutely nothing to endear herself to them. what could they possibly gain by supporting her?

the question of the monarch imposing a law is much more believable in a centralized state, which westeros most definitely is not. imposing laws can also be done via force, of course, as long as """the state""" retains the monopoly on violence. the targaryens' v effective military superiority has so far been conferred by dragons. but rhaenyra's side isn't the only one that has dragons anymore. the opposing faction, i.e. the side who'd perpetuate Andal law, also has them now, as it happens. ergo war.

this situation is absolutely not similar in any way to today's democracies where laws are voted by parliament and the rest of the country have no choice but to abide by them or else the police come knocking on your door and hand you over to the our modern justice system, where your punishment is set by objective specialists & not decided by crazy stunts like trial by ordeal or the whims of your liege lord

tldr: there is no incentive for westerosi nobility to break andal succession law for rhaenyra, since it would be legal self-sabotage by setting a precedent that could come to bite those very same people in the a*se. rhaenyra is NOT an only child - by having trueborn brothers, the only way she can ascend is by breaking the laws & customs of the land. ergo disgruntled lords will inevitably flock to alicent's sons to form covert alliances & subversive power centres that, in time, will erupt in open rebellions. real-world historical examples attest to this happening with or without the consent of their respective figureheads (eg. lady jane grey) - i.e. it doesn't matter if aegon/aemond/daeron play happy families or not. in turn, the only way rhaenyra can prevent this is by executing her brothers/their male descendants. the greens don't want to die => the only way of achieving security for them is by claiming the throne.

alternatively, rhaenyra's life is not in danger as long as she bends the knee, as no-one in-universe would take her claim seriously with 3 living brothers. rhaenys also bent the knee to viserys after losing an election and is still alive. i'll say it again: it is not in the lords' best interest to support rhaenyra in the first place. if we are to go by any logic - what would they gain, should they flock to her? they would destabilize the line of succession for themselves for a (pretty terrible) queen, a reviled king consort and a bastard heir. but, as far as advantages and favours are concerned, what would they be, specifically? in order to outweigh the above-mentioned disadvantages?

you should all blame viserys for getting remarried and fathering sons, because had rhaenyra remained an only child or had only sisters, none of this would be happening & she would have become the first ruling queen of westeros

[brw]

Thinking about The Vision.

[thefirstknife]

I don’t understand people who are upset we don’t have all the answers about the Veil right now because quite frankly I thought that was the point? Like if we had all the answers then we get to the issue (that a lot of these same people had) where the seasons feel disconnected and like little actually matter until the last one before the expansion. They didn’t give us everything probably because we’re supposed to discover the answers as the year goes on before we chase the Witness through whatever portal it made. Bungie is doing what they wanted and yet people still complain

Yep, pretty much. They also did explicitly say in the latest TWAB that yes, the story will continue throughout the year. Some people took that as Bungie "having to tell us that there's more story because of how shit their writing is" but what I saw was community managers trying to politely explain to tens of thousands of raging players that the story isn't over. It felt almost passive aggressive to me given that this is exactly what players wanted:

We know there are still plenty of questions left unanswered at the end of Lightfall’s Campaign that you’re all eagerly awaiting answers to. As the events of Season of Defiance get into full swing this week, know that this is just the beginning of the next year of storytelling that will connect the events of Lightfall and The Final Shape. We can’t wait for the community to learn more about The Witness’s origins, its objective, and the ways we can thwart it and its disciples throughout Season of the Deep, as well as Seasons 22 and 23 later this year.

You made a great point about that. People asked that seasons become more meaningful. I remember that initially seasons were kinda all over the place and not really connected into a full story. Like, there were very few connecting points between Undying-Dawn-Worthy-Arrivals. Nothing that couldn't be summarised in 2 sentences. Even less if you look at Black Armory-Drifter-Opulence seasons from Y2.

On one hand, it meant that you could skip any and not lose much. But on the other hand, those that weren't skipping complained that the seasons aren't very well connected between each other and the main campaign of the year. This was a serious enough complaint that it became the reason for more connected seasons and also a reason to let seasons last the whole year, as detailed in a TWAB from April 2020:

We have been making progress carrying the overarching narrative Season over Season in Destiny 2. Saint-14 and Osiris led to the Warmind which leads to… [REDACTED]

It’s not perfect yet. The bridges between Seasons can definitely be improved, and we could do a better job of recognizing prior Seasons’ narrative threads in the active Season. 

In Year 4, we are going to build a better interconnected narrative and, more importantly, let players be a part of that narrative no matter when they enter the current year.

I'm putting this here because people have notoriously bad memory, but we have tangible proof of people asking Bungie for seasons that have more meaningful and interconnected narrative. Bungie listened, but that also meant that skipping a season became harder if you wanted to stay in the loop. Obviously you can watch a playthrough online, but you know. But clearly the majority wanted seasons to be meaningful and were happy when Bungie listened.

And now suddenly we don't want the story to continue during the year? I understand the FOMO complaints and monetary complaints. If you buy an expansion, you want to NOT feel forced into buying all seasons for it in order to experience the full story. It's just strange to me that we are dropping that issue at Lightfall when BL and WQ were the same. A lot will say that they liked it before, but now just got tired of the same thing over and over, but what exactly is that thing? A good and connected narrative that links expansions and seasons? Do we now want a break year where seasonal stories are irrelevant and nothing meaningful happens?

Obviously, connected seasons benefit Bungie. I am aware that connecting the narrative like this means more people will feel compelled to buy the seasons. But if they're already making contect they want us to buy, then people want their purchase to mean something instead of getting content they easily could've skipped. It's kind of an impossible conundrum? We want the seasons to be good and narrative rich and meaningful, but we also want the seasons to be easy to skip and not necessary to play. That's kinda contradictory.

I genuinely don't know what is the solution and I welcome discussion about it. I just find most of the discussions about this kind of stuff to be very strange. Like, in most cases it just boils down to a contradiction of wanting the story to feel worth investing yourself into, but also easy to sit out. Those two things just can't both be true at once.

[southern--downpour]

pros of new hyperfixation: dopamine :) 

cons of new hyperfixation: i cannot focus on school work all i want to do is read trigun nothing else is interesting rn

[theriverdalereviewer]

everyone jumping to team kamala we will never experience true freedom in this country