#also the piece from july looks wonky to me now but it still is the most polished thing from that month bc i did a bunch of quick art fight p

[mg549]

5 years in review (2018-2022)

[scoups4lyfe]

Yyyyyyo. First, I just wanna say I've enjoyed your liveblog stuff a lot, especially with the analysis thing you got going on. Second, I hope you're staying safea and healthy, I believe you said something about getting food poisoning a few days ago? And lastly... Do you think it's possible that Vice and Ikki might revise their contract somehow? I admit, the only reason I'm considering this is because they're 'Revice' lol

……….Revice…………..revise….

mthER FVCKER

I FKING HATE THESE WRITERS AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

This is gonna drive me INSANE.

Also <333 thanks 🙏 for enjoying my liveblog and crack theories 🤪. And yeah <33 I’m doin my best to stay healthy (hahaha 👻💀)

I say “food poisoning” but it was actually an allergic reaction to something my friend made me :DD…..I’m allergic to a lot of sh*t. Egg whites and gluten are the big ones though. The food was supposed to be vegan/GF but I guess something went wonky. Mostly these accidents are fine cause I’m a lot more careful then I used to be

(Landed myself in the ER July 2021 cause I was living fast and loose with how careful I was when it came to food LOL )

Now.

Some analysis and why I wanna strangle these writers 👺

So after episode 31's insanity I couldn't sleep

So instead I spent 7 hours doing research and writing analysis.

While I was doing research I was looking into definitions (because I've noticed Intentionality here before, with Vail's name -- insert link) and decided to finally bite the bullet and google some sh*t.

And boy oh boy did I end up going into a fking RAGE at how deep this sh*t is. These writers planned everything down to the last detail and the more I analyzed the more insane I went.

(To the to point of homicidal rage cause FK these writers maaaan.)

Kinnoshita fking CATCH ME OUTISDE how bout THAT

Riiiiiight. So one thing I discovered is that the writers were really aware of the multiple different meanings of the words they chose. Language barriers be damned

So the reason I put the meaning of Preposition here is because the fact that "Vice" (in the preposition meaning) 'comes BEFORE' and that it is supposed to tell us the relationship with the noun phrase. A noun phrase being about a person, place or thing.

Obviously the other word would be Ikki. Because Vice formed in Ikki's past.

And why did he form?

Because he had to take the place of Ikki, because Ikki couldn't handle taking on Vail.

Vice "rather than" Ikki.

And then it coming from Vicis meaning "change, alternation, stead" is REALLY fcking me up -- because every time Ikki uses Vice's power his memories are altered. Using Vice changes Ikki, his power for Ikki's past.

Don't even get me STARTED at the meaning of Vice as a noun (person, place or thing) having one of the definitions be:

"Buffoon, Jester"

lol I think the sexual immorality definition really got a laugh out of me. "Especially prostitution" LOL!!! Honestly though the definition could still be applied if we think of Ikki's 'prostitution ' him losing pieces of himself (memories, etc) for the sake of others.

(Servicing others instead of himself)

So then I started lookin up Daiji's definitions and this drove me even MORE insane.

Like "live ammunition" ??? And what weapon does Daiji use when he transforms from Evil to Live?

A fking GUN bro.

Or the "armed but not exploded" and "Live bomb" like ?? Obviously when Daiji explodes he goes from Live to Evil.

My favorite though (of course) is the "of or involving a presentation" because Holy Live? When he finishes transforming his title is sung. Like at a concert.

This tells the audience that "Holy Live" is all just a presentation Daiji's putting up. A play where he's both the actors and the audience. Like? This isn't how Daiji *really* is hence

"To live out their fantasies"

or "Living a dream"

Because he needs to live up to the expectations he's placed on himself and his identity. He wants to be looked up to and admired. He wants to be the hero. He wants to be like Ikki. (Live copy)

Except by living out this fantasy -- by deleting Kagerou -- he will now have to "Live with their decision". I have no idea what happens to Akemi but I guess nothing good if y'alls sus-a$$ comments are an indicator LOL!!! So I guess with whatever happens,

Daiji's gonna have to live with the consequences.

Now this is where I was yelling screaming crying throwing up--

The fact that Evil meant more specific qualities of something "bad" shot me in the face. "Defective"

(Daiji is the only sibling not able to do things on his own. He keeps losing. Failing to be useful and/or needed)

"Weak" (do I even have to explain this?)

Even fking "FILTHY" y'all.

Like notice?? When we see Daiji first look into the mirror and see Kagerou (with the audience seeing Kagerou too) where is Daiji? He's lying in a pile of trash. With the trash bags.

"Wavering, timid" + "simple, ordinary" ?????

Dude

The "evil twin" thing took me outside and shot me in the face.

Especially how the "bad" adjective at one point had the definition of "fairly good" is SO funny to me because Kagerou's way more successful than Daiji LOL!!!!

[dewitty1]

Fic Recs Wrap Up  -  July 2020 (੭ˊ͈ ꒵ˋ͈)･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*☆

Redeem Me by Samayel

Two years after the events of Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts, Draco stumbles back into his life. Harry is a bitter and vengeful young man, Draco is a walking wreck...and who is helping who? Rec post 1, 2

Under Pressure by VivacissimoVoce

Harry Potter has quit magic and left the wizarding world. Draco, a top-notch Tracker, has been hired to find him and save his life. Rec post

Solder by Oakstone730

Seven years ago, Harry disappeared out of Draco and Scorpius's life without a trace after Harry's addictions destroyed his and Draco's marriage. Now, Harry’s back, and Draco wants to believe he’s changed. But Harry isn’t the only one haunted by the past. Rec post

The Promise of Summer by Omi_Ohmy

How was Harry supposed to know that coming back for eighth year would be so confusing? Everything is the same, and yet not the same. And nowhere is this more obvious than with Draco Malfoy. Harry finds himself once more watching and following Malfoy, trying to work him out. When they are drawn together to heal the castle, Harry doesn’t just find Malfoy - he also finds himself. Rec Post

Dwelling by aideomai

Curses, James and Lily Potter ride again, several Ministry balls, a teenage Summer of Love, a grim young adult dystopian winter, a few different Draco Malfoys, secrets and the problems re: not having any, alternate lives, impossible lives, real lives, allusions to Dirty Dancing, and just because it's not called the Mirror of Erised doesn't mean you shouldn't know better. Rec Post

Now My Neck Is Open Wide (begging for a fist around it) by LadySlytherin

Six months post-war, Harry meets Grayson Wenke, a famous Quidditch player. Harry believes he's found the love of his life, and a Happily Ever After ending suitable for the storybooks. When Grayson slowly goes from Prince Charming to a monster behind closed doors, Harry finds himself trapped, and alone, and fearing for his life. When Harry realizes he's pregnant, the opportunity for escape - and a real Happily Ever After - presents itself as none other than Draco Malfoy. The only question is if Harry is brave enough to take a chance, and strong enough to heal. Rec post

Of Fates Entwined: A Story of Love Lost and Found by taradiane

Harry Potter vanished without a trace from his home on a warm summer morning in June 2004. This is the story of how a random visit in a cafe on the other side of the world, six years later, proved that the ties which entwine our fates together can never be broken. Rec post

Conception of Dreams by FreakingCrups

Waking up naked in Malfoy's bed without the memory of what happened the night before is the least of Harry's problems. Malfoy is an Incubus and Harry is his mate and that one night comes with consequences: a conception. Now Harry has to get to know Malfoy on a deadline, while dealing with Death Eater threats. Sounds like another exciting year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter. Rec post

A Big Black Sky by AlexMeg @alxmeg

Draco shifts his head as he turns to look at Scorpius, his cheek touching the pillow. "Did you know that…" He pauses, his throat convulsing, and it sounds audible in the silence, besides Michael's steady, even breathing from the other bedroom.

Scorpius is staring back at him, in wait of something new to learn, a beautiful and intelligent child. He has Draco's mind. He has Draco's eyes and nose and mouth and hair. He is his. All his. All he has of Michael are his wild curls and the green of his eyes, and sometimes he looks into them and imagines that they aren't Michael's, but someone else's.

Draco leans his head closer, biting the quiver out of his lips before he breathes a laden and shuddering exhale, and he whispers, "You are my star in a big black sky." Rec post

Some other fics you might enjoy - (੭ु˙꒳˙)੭ु⁾⁾*✭

Slithering by astolat @astolat

Draco found the nest down in the Manor’s cellars, while he was clearing them out. Fic RecArt post

Modern Love  by Anonymous (written for  H/D Wireless Fest 2020) @hd-wireless

Harry Potter, of all people, knows that life isn’t always fair. And no one gets to be happy all of the time. But surely there’s something more—something better—than a rubbish Ministry job, and a lonely old house, and that feeling that everyone out there is doing a better job of living than Harry is.

And it really doesn’t seem fair that Draco Malfoy is back in Harry’s life, all of a sudden, and even though he’s wandless, and living with Muggles, and making his mother cry with his lifestyle choices, he’s happy. So what's he doing right, that Harry isn’t?

Because things don’t really change, do they? And if Harry can’t be happy, he’ll settle for a good night’s sleep, some posh antiques, and the opportunity to find out what Malfoy has been up to for all these years.

And that’s what starts it all. Our Love Song -  Harry and Draco enjoying a Sunday morning bus ride in London.  Don’t miss this amazing art that pairs perfectly with this fic!

Returning Tides by Anonymous (written for  H/D Wireless Fest 2020) @hd-wireless​

Is my timing that flawed? Our respect run so dry? Yet there's still this appeal That we've kept through our lives

Love Will Tear Us Apart - Art piece to accompany the fic ‘Returning Tides’, based on the song claim, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Joy Division*****Harry's brooding while straddling a motorbike. Need I say more?

Blond Brew by Anonymous (written for  H/D Wireless Fest 2020) @hd-wireless​

A blond roast with soy milk makes Draco's morning, but a pair of green eyes makes his week.

A Different Kind of Meaning by Anonymous (written for  H/D Wireless Fest 2020) @hd-wireless​

The ceiling doesn't hold any answers, but there are cobwebs scattered across the corners with shadows tangled in their threads. The rug against his back is rough and scratchy, threadbare and devoid of colours other than various shades of brown. Harry takes it all in, absorbs the dingy and depressed state of his home. There's a pointed moment of decision, a note about to be played, a silence about to end, and then he rolls to his feet and sets to cleaning.

It's the first constructive thing he's done in years.

Isolated Thunderstorms and Scattered Showers by Anonymous (written for  H/D Wireless Fest 2020) @hd-wireless​

Post-war, Harry needs space. Everything is too much all at once, and time and time again, he finds himself pulling the invisibility cloak over his head, just for a bit of peace.

Returning for eighth year is hard, especially when you're considered a war hero, and your name is Harry James Potter. It's just that things go a little wonky when Harry starts following Malfoy, and finds that he can't (or doesn't want to) stop. ( Gift fic for meeeee!  ♡✧( ु•⌄• ) ♡ ) 

Thanks so much for reading and following! I hope you enjoy all these! I look forward to sharing more recs with y’all! 

xoxo Carey 💜💙💚💛🧡❤💕💖

｡ﾟ✶ฺ.ヽ(*´∀`*)ﾉ.✶ฺﾟ｡

[nicknellie]

Honestly when Tumblr crashed I just thought it was my Internet being wonky but that stinks that it got rid of everything you said, I completely agree it’s really fun to bounce ideas off of each other.

Agreed, although the show kind of says that Luke wrote the songs that Julie mentioned I feel like the band probably did help out with those songs but those exact ones may have been a bit personal to Luke hence the extreme reaction ‘My Name is LUKe’. However an idea that I have is that Alex write songs as well (also just because I want his version of unsaid Emily in my life) (and the show mentions that Reggie wrings county music) also it would make more sense for the band to bounce ideas off of each other (as we see Luke do with Julie) then just Luke writing every single part of those songs by himself.  also the show never really confirms when he wrote the songs so easily could be that he wrote them while he was still grieving because he was thinking that was the best way to honour them and then later down the road he realized that wasn’t the best. And the show doesn’t mention if he gave money to charities in their name or what he did just that he didn’t give them credit.

I agree I feel like part of it may have been that he didn’t want their deaths following him because reporters would definitely be like oh how are you recovering and etc. also as you said he was going through a lot of trauma from losing his family and although that may not have been a lot of people’s gut reaction it is understandable. I just think that’s how the boys saw it just because unexpectedly they hear that someone stole their songs and then all the sudden it’s not someone who’s not close to them but someone who it feels like they stabbed them in the back kind of.

Honestly the fact that he meditates is kind of what made me think of the idea just because he would be able to calm himself and think rationally which I don’t feel like Luke and Reggie could do if they thought someone who they cared about was hurt. Maybe back then it was Bobby and Alex who shared the single brain cell that was Sunset Curve (but only Bobby when Alex was upset any other time he was just as chaotic as Luke and Reggie)

Crossword: that is totally what Reggie would do and he would totally just blurred out the words before Alex even had a chance to think about them just because he loves Alex so much and he was so excited. (Also I feel like Reggie would be the sentimental one who would make a scrapbook and just give Alex a photo album to show that no matter what they will always be here for them)

Reggie owns so many flannels, yes!! (also double yes, because I definitely feel like those piece meant something to them especially if that’s what they had before they died, also it would just be so adorable if the band members just gave each other items to show support and unconditional love)

Awe, now I’m thinking about Bobby sobbing after they passed just because he loved them so much and that for the longest time he couldn’t get back into knitting or  jewelry making because it reminded him of the boys (similar to how Julie couldn’t play music after her mom passed)

Necklace: But he definitely would, he probably put so much research into it as well and chose colours that held meaning and stuff, also the necklace helped Reggie so much when his parents were arguing because just like with Alex’s bracelet they were made with love and it remindes him that he always has a place to go.

Yes, when Luke ran away they were all sobbing however that’s exactly what they did. You described it perfectly, also because I feel like it’s canon that Alex gives the best hugs so he was giving Luke huge hugs while Reggie was trying to distract Luke and Bobby was trying to figure out arrangements. (also I feel like Alex would help Bobby would as soon as he can, I feel like Reggie would try to get movie night as a way to distract Luke).

With the jigsaw I could definitely see Luke trying to pretend like he isn’t interested well just focusing on Bobby putting the jigsaw away. (The point with Reggie is perfect and reminds me of that meme with the guy who is looking at a butterfly and it’s just Reggie being like is this a reason to get distracted and then dropping the jigsaw)

Yeah I totally agree that the mentioned ones were more personal. I reckon all of their songs came from some sort of struggle and to have that kind of erased when they weren’t mentioned must have been another thing that really hurt them when they found out what had happened. So yeah, I think they would all bounce ideas off each other (when they would all talk again after one of their quiet jigsaw/knitting/crossword/Rubik’s Cube sessions) and Luke would sort of put the pieces together to make the song. When Julie says ‘none of his latest stuff is as good’ I think that maybe Bobby had been trying to emulate their old song-writing sessions, trying to recreate the way they had given each other ideas and stuck them all together, but it just wasn’t quite working with just him because he couldn’t make it alone. Which maybe is when he realised even further that it had been the wrong thing to do, not credit them for their music. He would definitely write out of grief and pain and then later realise that he hadn’t really done them justice or kept their memories alive in the way he had tried to because he had unwittingly done everything he could to erase them. I’ve thought in the past that Mitch Patterson would have set up some sort of charity or foundation in Luke’s name that set to bring help and music to kids in need and now that you’ve mentioned charities I have decided that Trevor/Bobby makes hefty donations to that whenever he can.

An Unsaid Emily-style Alex song would kill me. His would be more focused on how his parents view of him changed. I headcanon that Alex’s parents were very kind and loving and they doted on Alex. They loved him with all their hearts and none of them ever thought that would change, so he was confident when he came out to them. But obviously they weren’t cool with it and we get very little detail about what happened next. I think Alex would have written about his memories and how lonely it felt and how shattered he was that he hadn’t been accepted. There’d be undertones about him missing them and missing the old days and part of him wishing he’d never told them (although he is really glad that he did).

Yeah, you’re totally right about the fact that he didn’t want their deaths following him. For a teenager to be thrown into stardom is one thing, to be constantly bombarded about his trauma would have been another. It wasn’t that he wanted to escape the boys or forget them, he wanted his memories of them to remain untainted by flashing cameras and cruel interviews. And YES, that brings us back to the fact that they’ve grown at different rates and the last two and a half decades were nothing for the boys but likely hell on Earth for Bobby. The guy they used to know is suddenly someone seeming cold and distant and because they didn’t experience losing each other they can’t understand how it must have been for him to lose them. They never really give themselves a chance to see it from Bobby’s perspective - even when they begin to move on in episode 6 Luke says Bobby ‘has to live with that guilt’, he immediately discards it as a bad thing and none of them begin to rationalise his actions. They don’t make any effort to see the situation from Bobby’s point of view (although admittedly I can’t imagine that would be an easy thing to do).

Totally - Bobby and Alex shared the brain cell but Bobby was the only be who could really use it to it’s full potential. He was so ready to be there for all of them when they needed it. Luke and Reggie would want to fight the problem head on while Bobby knew it was best to take their time and figure it out like one of Alex’s beloved jigsaw puzzles.

Kind of off-topic but I think he’s very spiritual too (I kind of get it from the meditating in a way I can’t quite explain) and if he wasn’t so certain that he was finally losing it after all those years of guilt then he would have believed and been happy that the boys were back as ghosts when they haunted him. Like he thinks rationally until it comes to supernatural stuff and then he’s all over the idea of ghosts and monsters.

Omg ok the scrapbooking!!!!! I am so here for this!!!!! Reggie had tons of scrapbooks and photo albums - he writes silly little captions underneath the photos, gets Bobby to make things that can be stuck in as decorations, and will take a camera with him wherever he goes. I think cameras were very different in the nineties and I wasn’t born then so idk how it all works but didn’t you have to go somewhere to get them developed?? Well, Reggie loved doing that and he’d always get one of the boys to come with him so when he saw the photos for the first time he would have someone to look through them with. He made special scrapbooks for special occasions: Alex’s coming out, Christmases, birthdays, holidays they all went on together. He would collect things and add in little envelopes to the scrapbook if it wasn’t flat enough to be stuck in. He kept everything from tickets to candy wrappers because he wanted to remember everything they all did together.

I definitely think the boys’ signature clothing is important to them. Reggie loved his flannels and his favourite was from the boys; Alex loved his hoodie which the boys got him (and his fanny pack may have been a gift from them too so he wouldn’t have to carry whatever’s in there all the time); our theory that Bobby was the one who knitted Luke’s beanies. It makes me wonder if Bobby had anything from them he still wears. He probably would have grown out of clothes, but maybe his sunglasses were a gift? Or they made his necklaces? Or he has a jacket that used to be one of theirs and still fits him?

Oh my god no that hurts 😭 Bobby trying to make himself a necklace or bracelet out of colours that reminded him of them (pink for Alex, blue for Luke, red for Reggie) but his hands shaking so much that he can’t thread the beads and had to stop. Him trying over and over again but not being able to do it because he gets bombarded with memories about Luke knocking over all his beads that one time, or Reggie accidentally breaking the clasp on his necklace so Bobby had to replace it, or the tears in Alex’s eyes when he was given that rainbow bracelet. Oh my GOD.

Alex definitely gives the best hugs. I would kill for an Alex hug. For a while, Luke just needed to be held so Alex did that, Reggie started talking about something completely unrelated, and Bobby started making phone calls and looking things up to find out what the best way forward was. Alex of course helped, like you said, as soon as Luke was fine to be left with just Reggie. I feel like it was kind of similar within the band - Bobby was the one who booked gigs and made deals, he did all the managerial stuff while the others focused more on the performances and the music. He missed rehearsals because of meetings with record execs or whatever sometimes but he could pick things up very quickly so it didn’t really matter.

And because I couldn’t not do this:

(Also is it cool with you if I make a mini masterlist of all these things we’ve said? I’m definitely going to want to find these again but at some point they’ll be buried deep within my blog so I want easy access lol)

[yeonchi]

Sea Princesses Book Review X2: Sticker Albums

Raws downloaded 1 July 2021 OCR commenced 10 July 2021, completed 12 July 2021 Translation commenced 12 July 2021, completed 16 July 2021

Scans, transcripts and translations available on Google Drive

Such depths of content grubbing have never been achieved.

Continuing on from the review of the educational books, we take a look at the sticker albums for Sea Princesses, which are described as “illustrated books”. The two albums were published by Editora On Line and Alto Astral in 2009 and 2012 respectively. The format for this is that you get the album and a pack with a few stickers, then you buy more sticker packs until you complete the album (which you have like a year or less to do). It’s like what De Agostini does with their model and magazine subscriptions except it’s not a subscription and it doesn’t cost an ungodly amount of money to complete (at least that’s what I’m presuming). Here’s an ad for the 2012 sticker album:

I would like to thank the A Magia dos Cromos blog for posting scans of the completed sticker albums because if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have found the raws while lurking for Princesas do Mar mentions on Twitter and bothered to translate and review the educational books as a companion piece.

Like the educational books, Fabio Yabu has likely had little to no input in the sticker albums outside of providing illustrations. Again, while I consider spinoff media like this to be non-canonical as they are not official stories, I will still judge them as if they were to see if the publishers got things right or wrong. Given that both albums have 36 fully illustrated pages full of stickers, there is quite a bit for me to nitpick.

Please note that some of the images in the sticker albums may be wonky as, well, they are stickers and some images are composed of multiple stickers.

Both sticker albums reuse art from the books, wallpapers and official sources, but they also mix in screencaps from the animated series as well, so it’s very easy to compare the art style of the two and see that they are quite different. At the same time, they mix in original art not seen in the aforementioned sources; amongst some of the original art, there are stickers of Polvina and Ester taking a selfie with a digital camera (with the size of that screen it’s definitely not a smartphone) and Polvina using a laptop. I don’t know why, but for some reason I find Polvina using a laptop underwater absolutely hilarious. Oh well, this is Salacia and Salacia is to Salacians what Dryland is to us Drylanders. In addition, there are some pictures that have clearly been taken from the book art (or other sources) and edited, with one glaring example of this being Polvina, who has had her outfit edited in several images to fit her appearance in the animated series, though there are a couple of unedited ones here or there. I’ve been debating whether I should ask Yabu for some high-quality character designs and images in order to replace the average-quality JPGs on the Sea Princesses Wiki. As I stated in the epilogue of the book reviews, admin Liggliluff only vectorised the character images for Polvina, Ester, Marli and Lia before giving up and I’m not arty enough to take on the rest. I won’t make any promises right now though.

It is also in the sticker albums that we get full character design portraits of the princesses’ parents, who were background characters in the animated series. We see the kings and queens of the Penguin, Turtle, Hammerhead Shark, Whale, Stingray, Crab and Sea Urchin Kingdoms. Of note - the Penguin King and Queen don’t get individual stickers in the 2009 album and the Crab Queen seems to have wonky eyes in the animated series (eg. at 8:35 in The Royal Ball), making her the Derpy Hooves of the series before MLP:FiM came out. A little nitpick I have with the Shark Queen is that her illustration from the third main series book is reused in the 2009 album while the Shark King gets a full character design-esque portrait. The 2012 album gives the Shark Queen a portrait, but even then she doesn’t seem to match her design in the animated series. It’s like they just took her illustration from the book and edited it. I would much rather they used her animated series character design for the sake of consistency.

On the Spanish Wikipedia page, Leia’s family is mentioned to have Japanese-influenced aesthetics. While it isn’t been mentioned explicitly by Yabu in interviews, I read a bit into this line and noticed some more international influences incorporated into some of the characters; for example, the Whale Queen’s dress is styled like a kimono, signifying a Japanese theme for the Whale Kingdom and the Stingray King looks like a conquistador or a stereotypical Mexican, signifying a Latino theme for the Stingray Kingdom. Agostinha and Socita appear to be of Asian descent while Lia, Maurico and Vivi appear to be of Afro-Brazilian descent; of note, the Sea Urchin Queen is Caucasian, signifying that Maurico is therefore part-Caucasian. If Yabu never said anything like this, then I stand corrected and what I just said can be considered to be my personal observations. The representation is ok given the demographics of Brazil, though most children probably wouldn’t notice their races unless they made an effort to do so, which I unfortunately did.

The character descriptions are mostly paraphrased from the official sources, so obviously they don’t cover the characters that don’t have character descriptions, including Caramelo, Matilda, Jaune, Goldina and Flourison - out of them, Matilda is the only character who gets original illustrations in the sticker albums (with one of them being an addition to an image released as a wallpaper). Unsurprisingly, Marcela is not featured, but Veto, Caton, Naimo and other animated series exclusive characters aren’t featured as well, let alone the Drylanders. These are big missed opportunities here and it begs the question - what was Yabu planning to do with those characters? In his mind, what were their names or representative species? Like with the character designs, I might ask him about it someday, but again, I make no promises.

In the 2009 album, there’s a page that talks about Gummy, Spikey and Tentie. While they are listed under their original Portuguese names (Dentinho, Telo and Tavinho), Bib and Panjo are also featured on the same page under the same names, that is the names they had in the English dub. From this, I can deduce that the inclusion of Panjo and Bib were on the part of Southern Star, but on the other hand, the same can be said for Gummy, Spikey and Tentie because they never appeared in the main series books (well, except for Gummy in the fourth book).

Later in the same album, Marcello states that each species of shark has a king and queen and I really need to question the logic behind this. If that is the case, then how come we don’t have separate kingdoms for whale sharks and other sub-species of sharks? What would be the point of Tubarina, the Shark King and the Shark Queen then? I guess they could still be a unifying figure for all the separate shark kingdoms, but if we reverse the logic, then what would be the point of Marcello if Tubarina represents all shark species? What makes you so special that you have to be a separate character?

There’s also a mini board game in the 2009 album with 15 spaces and I swear, some of the instructions on those spaces are absolutely stupid. “If a sticker is pasted here, move two spaces. If not, skip a turn.” What’s the point of it if the point of the whole album is to collect stickers in order to complete it? This would have been better if it was purely a trivia game.

In the 2012 album, they got Agostinha’s zodiac wrong again - the original text states it as Cancer when the official sources state it as Sagittarius. This isn’t the first time this has happened - the same thing also happened in the first main series book, with the addition of Tata being listed as a Taurus instead of a Cancer. But hey, while the zodiac descriptions could match the characters personalities as described in the official descriptions, what’s the point of doing so if the animated series (less so the books) isn’t willing to show it?

On the other hand, the same album actually acknowledges Hugo and Tata as twins of the Turtle Kingdom, a fact that was never acknowledged in the animated series. Even though Hugo never had any interactions with turtles in the series, at least it’s good that he is being acknowledged as the Turtle Prince. Interestingly, the 2012 album also mentions Dinho, a character that received an official description yet never had any appearances in the series.

Speaking of Dinho and Agostinha, I think that their names would have been slightly changed if they had any prominence in the animated series; like how Eletropaula was changed to Elektra, I would probably change Dinho and Agostinha to Dino and Augustina. On another note, I don’t know why Mauriço didn’t get changed to Mauricio, but hey, what’s happened has happened (and at least it’s kind of better than spelling it Morriso).

In conclusion, while the sticker albums don’t add much to the plot or the characters (which is essentially the point of non-story spinoff media), they have a lot of substance in terms of images as there is original art mixed with reused art. As I stated already, there were some missed opportunities to add character descriptions or more original art for the characters that were never featured in the series or had descriptions in the official sources.

[thisyearingaming]

1997 - This Year in Gaming

Muggins here was born in ‘97, and can’t really remember much of it, natch. But there were some good things released this year - I’ve played every one of these, and have missed so many more.

Diablo - Windows, January 3rd

We start with dungeon-crawl-em-up and well-loved out of season April Fool’s Joke, Diablo. I’ll be totally honest - I don’t like Diablo that much. It’s absolutely fine, I just can’t get into it. The writing, setting and characters are all very good especially since this year only marks the beginning of games being seen as a bit more adult and intelligent. Check out this gameplay from Hour of Oblivion on YouTube, and marvel at the faux-Scottish accent on Griswold the blacksmith.

Mario Kart 64 - Nintendo 64, February 10th

Compared to its more recent versions, Mario Kart 64 is a veritable bloody relic of the past - solid controls and a quirky style mean it’s still a crowd pleaser to this day, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone right now that would die on the hill of it being their favourite single-player racing experience. It’s also got some of the deepest, impenetrable lore in any medium known to the human race - why exactly is Marty the Thwomp locked up here?

Blast Corps - Nintendo 64, February 28th

February’s position as most boring month of the year is shaken up a bit by having a uniquely designed Rare game slammed into its 28-day long face. Blast Corps is the puzzle-action game where you take control of several vehicles to destroy homes and buildings in order to prevent a nuclear warhead exploding in the coolest incarnation of Cold War politicking ever seen in a video game. Calling Blast Corps a “hidden gem” these days is like calling Celeste a hidden gem - it impresses nobody and makes you look like a dick. 

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - Nintendo 64, March 4th 

The N64 was home to a surprisingly large number of above-average shooters despite its muddy graphics and small cartridge space - Turok is one of these, a great FPS game where you shoot the SHIT out of dinosaurs. Brett Atwood of Billboard said it was like Doom and Tomb Raider mixed - Doom Raider, if you will. I say it isn’t - there’s no demons, and there’s no polygonal breasts to poke dinosaurs’ eyes out with! 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

What is a retrospective? A miserable little pile of opinions. I’ve only recently played through SotN for the very first time on a TOTALLY LEGITIMATE copy with a CRT filter. Bloody good (geddit?) game, that takes the repetition of its predecessors, improves on it in basically every conceivable way, and combines it with special effects and graphics that even 23 years later had me going “ooh, that looks quite good!” Symphony’s music and audio design are wonderfully paired with a deeply enjoyable experience that’ll have you saying “mm, maybe just one more room?”

Tekken 3 - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

Also releasing from the Land of the Rising Sun that day was Tekken 3, which many believe is still one of the best fighters ever made. Tekken 3′s combat is so fast and responsive that it’s better than some games made today. T3 is also the best and easiest way to knock seven shades of absolute shite out of your friends without risking a massive head injury or a trip to the headmaster’s office... where you could also challenge him, but only if he plays as my favourite Not-Guile-or-Ken character in gaming, Paul. 

Sonic Jam - Sega Saturn, June 20th

The moment Sega realised that re-packaging old Mega Drive games would net them serious cash - although unlike later collections, this is a strictly Sonic affair, and has a neat little 3D world to run around in as a sort of hub world. Sonic X-Treme proved that Sonic Team would have to work hard at getting the fastest thing alive into 3D space properly: Jam is the sort of test ground for it too. It features some genuinely good emulation work for 1997, although it’s basically the gaming equivalent of going round to your grandparents at Christmas only for them to give you the exact same gifts you got in 1991, 1992 and 1994 but wrapped in a bow to make you think it’s different. What are you lookin’ at, you little blue devil?

Star Fox 64 - Nintendo 64, June 30th

So there’s this German company, right, called StarVox. Nintendo look at Europe and say “shit, we don’t want another lawsuit... after all, we’ve done three this year!”. So they give us in the PAL region the exciting title of Lylat Wars which as far as I know means absolutely fucking nothing in the context of the game. They’re still called Star Fox in-game too so what was the point? Anyway, fun 3D shooter with graphics that’ll make you do a barrel roll off the sofa and onto the power button to make the brown and green blurs a little easier on the eyes. Hello 2007, I’ve come back to make old references with you!

Carmageddon - Windows, July 30th

The game so scary it was BANNED in the UK! More like the game so fucking shit it was banned. Carmageddon is so deeply boring to play on PC that I can only imagine that Stainless Games made it tasteless by 90s standards simply to ramp up demand - much like another game we’ll be covering soon. 

Herc’s Adventures - Sony PlayStation, July 31st

“And they said Kratos was the best hero? Shish... they got it wrong, sister! Hercules is clearly better... he even has a coconut weapon.” A surprisingly fun overhead action game that most people only know for... well, I’ll just embed it.

Mega Man X4 - Sony Playstation, August 1st

A few years ago I tried playing every Mega Man game there is - I gave up at X3 because I was getting bored. Even still, Mega Man bores me - but at least the level design is good. Stay away from the Windows port. Pictured: me in the background yawning.

GoldenEye 007 - Nintendo 64, August 25th 

The name’s Intro. Overused intro which I also managed to fuck up twice through the deeply editable medium of text. GoldenEye is like the Seinfeld of console shooters - playing it nowadays you’re unlikely to be amazed but holy shit there’s some absolute greatness in this game. Every sound and every piece of music in GoldenEye is permanently seared into my brain - sometimes I’ll just hear Facility or Frigate in my head alongside the door opening sound and the gentle PEW of the PP7. I mean come on, fucking listen to this and tell me Grant Kirkhope isn’t cool as all hell.

LEGO Island - Windows, September 26th

The first open world experience I ever had was LEGO Island. It’s still quite good today, utterly deranged animation from the likes of the Infomaniac and Brickster - a cautionary tale for children that giving pizza to high-profile criminals is disastrous for the human LEGO race. 

Fallout - Windows, October 10th

War never changes, but franchises do. Fallout’s legendary status in the industry is exemplified in how different it feels. Yes, we had the game Wasteland nine years prior, but until September 97 there was nothing quite like Fallout. From the chilling introduction sequence showing the ruins of the United States to the tragic ending, Fallout is an exercise in pure human misery with the brightest spots of hope it can possibly muster thrown in for good measure. What begins as a tedious isometric point-and-click RPG ends as a minigun-wielding power fantasy, before your entire worth is stripped from you at the finish line. You have 500 days to find a water chip before it’s too late, but you’re constantly being fought by terrifying Super Mutants, irradiated animals, and the biggest monster of all - humanity. See what I did there? If anything, humanity in Fallout’s setting would be the greatest unifying force possible against the horror of the outside world. But how is it? It’s dull, it’s sluggish, and it’s really hard to get into even if you’re already a fan - but push through that and it’s worthwhile to see exactly how far the series got before Todd Howard said “eh fuck it” and had the whole thing dipped into an FEV vat.

Grand Theft Auto - Sony PlayStation, October 21st

To put it simply, the first in the GTA series is now nothing but a novelty. It has an irritating camera, wonky controls, poor graphics and deeply repetitive gameplay. But thank fuck it exists, because without it the Rockstar story may have been very different indeed. It’s quintessential cops and robbers gameplay, spanning across Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas in one game, but with maps so far removed from their modern incarnations they may as well be named “Not New York, Possibly Bristol and Orange Town”. People really fucking hated Hare Krishnas in the 20th Century, didn’t they?

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - Sony PlayStation, October 31

A hard one to talk about, honestly - it’s more Crash and better than the first one. It looks great, and Crash controls so well compared to his first outing. It’ll also keep you playing for 100%, fiendishly addictive and unashamedly difficult. Had a weird cover that moved with your head. 

PaRappa the Rapper - Sony PlayStation, November 17th

Type type type the words into the box! (Type, type, type - uh oh - the box?)

PaRappa is a gorgeously stylised rhythm game about rapping to steal the heart of the girl of your dreams - which involves learning karate, getting your driver’s license, selling bottle caps and frogs, making a cake, desperately trying not to shit yourself, and finally performing live on stage. Every one of its segments is so well-produced that they’d genuinely sell like ghost cookies in this era of shite rap. Notable for producing the greatest Jay-Z backing track ever made.

Sonic R - Sega Saturn, November 18th

Sonic R is absolutely FINE with vibrant textures, interesting levels, neat gimmicks and decent controls. But I’m gonna talk about its fucking AWESOME soundtrack by Richard Jacques and T.J. Davis, an eclectic mix of Europop and New Jack Swing - even thinking about it is bringing tears of absolute joy to my eyes hearing Super Sonic Racing in my head. You’ve got the main theme, Living in the City, Can You Feel the Sunshine, Back in Time, Diamond in the Sky, Work It Out and Number One - all of these are absolute club bangers and genuinely wouldn’t be out of place in a 90s disco. 

Tomb Raider II - Sony PlayStation, November 18th

Lara Croft returns to single-handedly endanger every species on Earth. TR2 is really good, the exploration and puzzle-solving aspects of the first game expanded upon here and the gunplay remaining just as punchy. Lara’s got a fully-functioning ponytail which absolutely boggles the fucking mind - a lot of work went into Lara’s hair for the 2013 reboot, so I can’t imagine the amount of man hours it took to get fluid(ish, come on, it’s the PS1 we’re talking about) hair movements in 1997. 

And really, that’s all I played from 1997. I’ve left out big hitters like Quake II, Gran Turismo and Diddy Kong Racing, but I simply haven’t formed an opinion on them yet. Maybe in a future post. 

Thanks for reading.

[cherrisummer-art]

Art Summary & Yes i’m doing it like this

The WORST format lets GOOOOOOOOOOOO, i’ll link the original so it won’t be THAT awful

1) JANUARY 2019

PROS: I like how i did the shading on the gold tassels

CONS: I don’t think i knew how to colour dark colours so that it is indistinguishable from the BG

2) FEBRUARY 2019

PROS: I like how i shaded the gold &  the nose was good?

CONS: Still didn’t know how to do dark colours correctly, too muddled & i forgot to colour in the triangle! (i edited it today & coloured it)

3) MARCH 2019

PROS: I learned how to draw faces & shade skin nicely! + nose was good

CONS: i didn’t shade the chest completelt??? well? & 1 eye only still.... can’t draw other eye....

4) APRIL 2019

PROS: I’ve always sort of had a loose messy line styel but I’ve sort of? changed it even to be even more loose? & blocking in dark colours really to make it pop & also fingers! 

CONS: none????? the mouth is still alittle wonky i guess would draw it differently now probably, and the line thickenss is a little TOO thick for my likeing now but that’s a retrospective from dec 2019

5) MAY 2019

PROS: look at that fucking hand, look at thoes fucking HANDS they are the FUCKING SHIT STILL also look at that GOLD??????? + earrings

CONS: his torso is wacky a little & the face + eyes could be better b/c i drew the lineart a long time ago LOL not in May

6) JUNE 2019

PROS: very experimental, the face came out nice! the sparkles! are good

CONS: coudln’t draw ruffles for dress so copped out

7) JULY 2019 (NONE)

PROS: I was relaxing in china

CONS: didn’t draw

8) AUGUST 2019

PROS: the hair was fucking impeccable i like how this turned out

CONS: new sai 2.0 was hard to use but thank you acri for making me do it

9) SEPTEMBER 2019

PROS: the hair shading was really smooth?? for new sai practice pretty good & i learned how to shade gold from my pervious karna piece & put it to good use in this one lol

CONS: i don’t love it as much as i should i think. The nose & mouth are good it just.... hmm i don’t like as much as i thought i would i guess

10) OCTOBER 2019

PROS: I tried painting

CONS: it took too long and there’s version 2.0 

11) NOVEMBER 2019 

PROS: This looks nice. my mom is into chinese watercolour painting and I was like. this would be so much easier on the computer and i was half right. 

CONS: none??? other than i think i’ll never do this again and that’s sort of a shame

12) DECEMBER 2019

PROS: this is coming out pretty nice! the black & white is already super good & dec still ongoing & the fur texture was so fun... & i’m loving the loose thin line weight!

CONS: I can never play the other routes

also COMING UP is a WIP gallery a gallery of things that are wips............ for one reason or another.......

[imaginenola]

Young and Beautiful

Dwayne Pride x reader

Words: 2,154

Warnings: angst, pure sadness

Notes: loosely based on the song Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey. this is the first imagine I’ve ever written so it might not be the best. also big thank you to @dwaynepride for helping me make this account & story a reality! thanks for believing in me (: also the spaces might be a little wonky, sorry! I worked really hard on this so please don’t steal it, all work is my own. enjoy!!

I’ve seen the world, done it all

Had my cake now

Diamonds, brilliant, in Bel-Air now

When you interviewed for a job at NCIS in New Orleans, you were a young and eager cop. Only a few years out of the academy, you had made more cases than most could make in their entire career. Your boss and partner both pushed you to apply after you expressed interest in NCIS. A few days after your interview, you received a call from none other than Dwayne Pride. You had been chosen for his team.

Hot summer nights, mid July

When you and I were forever wild

The crazy days, city lights

The way you’d play with me like a child

It began with slight flirting, just for fun. You never meant to get involved with your boss, but things soon escalated. You were both experts at keeping your work and personal lives separate. You two weren’t partners anyway, so for the most part, it was easy to not let feelings get in the way of doing your jobs.

A few months in, Pride asked you out for drinks after work. The two of you made your way to a jazz club, where you drank and danced and drank some more. Pride twirled you around and around until you had no memories of what happened that night. The next morning, you woke up naked in your boss’s bed.

Will you still love me

When I’m no longer young and beautiful?

Will you still love me

When I’ve got nothing but my aching soul?

I know you will, I know you will

I know that you will

Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?

Six months after that night, and you were still going steady with Pride. He was the perfect gentleman, and working together had only brought the two of you closer. You were only a few years older than his daughter, but he always made sure you knew that age wasn’t a problem between the two of you.

Your partner, Tammy Gregorio, kept telling you she ‘sensed’ that Pride was going to propose soon, but you weren’t so sure. Of course you had a strong bond and everyone believed you were a match made in heaven, but it made you nervous to think that you might have to leave the team. Sure, two co-workers dating could be overlooked, but married co-workers? Especially between an agent and their superior? You didn’t think so.

I’ve seen the world, lit it up

As my stage now

Channeling angels in a new age now

Hot summer days, rock and roll

The way you play for me at your show

And all the ways, I got to know

Your pretty face and electric soul

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, and you were out on a walk around New Orleans. You barely ever got a day off, but you made sure to enjoy it while you could. All of a sudden, you were being pushed into a black SUV, door locking behind you. You pulled your gun out of your holster until you recognized your captor: FBI Agent Isler.

“What do you want, Isler?” You asked, remaining calm and collected. You knew this man well, and you knew whatever it was he needed help with had to be important. Isler never dropped by just to say hello.

“Hello, Agent (y/l/n). The FBI needs your help on an undercover mission in Los Angeles. Once we get to the motel, I’ll give you the case file. It’s a highly classified operation involving corrupt Naval officers and a drug trafficking ring.” Isler said, shifting the car into drive. “Wait! Isler, I didn’t agree to this. Stop the car, now,” you demanded.

“I’m sorry, Agent (y/l/n), but you don’t really have a choice. This is a joint investigation between the FBI and NCIS, and you were picked by the big boys. I’m the only person in Louisiana who knows about this, and we’re keeping it that way.” You rode the rest of the drive in silence, until Isler parked in front of a decrepit motel on the outskirts of the city. The motel room was stale and unwashed, the air thick with swamp water.

“We’ll be staying here for a couple of days to prepare you for your mission. Once you step off that plane in Los Angeles, your undercover identity will be all you know. You will eat, sleep, and breathe this mission from start to finish, Agent (y/l/n).”

“How long do you think I’ll be gone?” You asked, afraid of the answer. Isler looked at the ground for a moment, then passed you a box of hair dye. Black. The girl on the picture seemed happy with her hair color, but you weren’t so sure.

Will you still love me

When I’m no longer young and beautiful?

Will you still love me

When I’ve got nothing but my aching soul?

I know you will, I know you will

I know that you will

Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?

“Hard to tell. Could just be a few months. Eight, maybe. Possibly a few years. Hopefully nothing more than five, six.” Five years? Six? You would be in your thirties by then. How different would things be? Pride might find someone else. Forget about you. The whole team would probably forget about you, by then.

“There’s one other thing,” Isler trails, “by now, your family and friends will be receiving the news of your gruesome death.”

-

Today was your last day in New Orleans, and you didn’t know for how long. After three days stuck in a hotel room with Raymond Isler, memorizing your new persona (Heather Watson from Montana, by the way), you were going stir-crazy. That was how you convinced him to let you attend your funeral. He thought you were crazy, you knew you were crazy, but Isler did feel bad. He knew about you and Pride’s relationship, and since he couldn’t give you Pride, the least he could do was give you closure.

The balcony of St. Patrick’s had been closed off due to unstable ground, but you arrived early in order to slip up to the balcony, lay on your stomach, and peer through the small slit under the bench. To your surprise, everyone you had ever worked with at NOPD and more had arrived. Friends from the academy flew in, and family members you hadn’t seen in years were there. You felt so, so horrible for tricking them like this. For this hole you had gotten into and you probably wouldn’t ever get out of. Six years undercover, living and breathing the life of someone you weren’t? You’d rather die, maybe. Rather die as yourself than live as Heather Watson. You only wished you could’ve said goodbye.

Dear lord, when I get to heaven

Please let me bring my man

When he comes tell me that you’ll let him in

Father tell me if you can

All that grace, all that body

All that face, makes me wanna party

He’s my sun, he makes me shine like diamonds

You knew it was all over for you when Pride arose from his seat, wearing his black suit. You could see the tissue peeking out from his pocket, full of tears he cried for you. “(y/n) (y/l/n) was the strongest, most determined, an’ most loving human I have ever known. I knew she was the one from the day I laid eyes on her. I hope she knew how much I loved ‘er, and how much all of us at NCIS appreciated her. She’s always been a light-” Dwayne’s voice broke. The occasional tear spilled down his cheek. You could hear the desperation caught in his throat, the need to wrap his arms around you and tell you everything was going to be okay. But as far as he knew, you would be six feet under in a few hours. A closed casket for the horrific boating accident you died in. Your limp body caught in the blades. They could barely piece your limbs back together.

“-I was plannin’ on proposing to her at dinner Sunday night. I had this diamond ring picked out, and now it’s just sittin’ in the box. I wished I could’ve said somethin’, wished I coulda saved her. She- she was tha love of my life, and I know she’d want us to remember her as a dedicated cop and a-a beautiful young woman who was gone- gone too-” Pride choked out, sobs overtaking his body. You could feel your heart breaking into microscopic pieces as Chris got up from his seat and assisted Dwayne. They sat down and Chris gave Pride’s shoulder a quick squeeze in solidarity. The rest of your team respectfully placed a hand on Dwayne’s back for his courage in facing your memory, your mourners. Your family, his future family. If only it hadn’t been for this goddamn mission.

Tears rolled down your face. Oh, how you missed the comfort of Dwayne’s arms wrapped around you when things got tough, when you became sad and he was the only one who could help. Now, even less than a hundred feet apart, it felt like there were planets between you. He was going to propose? Tammy had been right all along.

-

Your silent sobs combined with your uncomfortably warm outfit and position in the hot balcony suddenly prompted your exit. It was easy to slip out of the church unnoticed as your sibling gave a heartwarming speech about your childhood. Isler was sitting in his car in the parking lot, working on his computer, when you knocked on the window. He unlocked the door and let you in. “How was it?” He asked without looking up. “I shouldn’t have gone. Big mistake. Pride was supposed to propose to me that night. This is sick, Isler. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I might as well be, for what it’s worth,” you fumed, tears clouding your vision. You weren’t thinking straight.

“We’re going to have to drive to a more concealed position. I just have to get a few more papers emailed from HQ and we’ll be all set to head back to the motel. From there, I’ll drive you to MSY and you’ll get on your flight. Then, it’ll be out of my hands and into the hands of your new FBI case agent.”

-

You sat in the parking lot of an abandoned building. You knew it was near NCIS, which made it near Pride’s bar, which was where your reception was going to be held. The place you once dreamed of marrying Pride in, dancing to the jazz music as newlyweds. Now, it would never happen. You weren’t dumb; you knew with an undercover operation this long, it was likely someone would find out your secret and brutally murder you. As long as you got intel, that was all that mattered. No one cared if you were collateral damage.

Before either of you knew it, you were reaching across Isler at the speed of light and unlocking the passenger door. “(Y/n), wait!” Isler yelled, chasing you as you ran away from his car. Something told him where you would be heading.

Will you still love me

When I’m no longer young and beautiful?

Will you still love me

When I’ve got nothing but my aching soul?

I know you will, I know you will

You knew the song, one of your favorites. It reminded you of your and Pride’s whirlwind relationship, of the appeal and the secrecy, the pure love and affection. Percy was singing, the only flaw in her beautiful voice being the rawness in her throat from crying. Pride was next to her on the piano, playing along what he knew from when you would sing with him. When you didn’t have a care in the world, when it was you and Dwayne and no one else. Nothing standing between your love for each other.

Suddenly, the music stops and people crowd around Pride’s piano. Laurel, your co-workers new and old, and your family stood behind Dwayne as he picked up his glass from the top of the piano, raising it as far as his arm could extend. You couldn’t see him, but you heard his voice ring out, “a toast to (y/n), tha best cop I’ve ever known. wherever you are, babe, I hope you’re raisin’ some hell.” to which everyone joined in, “cheers!” Tears fell down your face as you watched as Pride began your favorite song once again, reminding you how you fell in love with the man with an electric soul.

Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?

Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?

Will you still love me when I’m not young and beautiful?

[fisherfurbearer]

Updates

Well.

It’s my 21st birthday today.

I’ve been very quiet here since winter, but in actuality so much has happened. I’m still sorry for being-here but not-being-here, and vanishing on everyone waiting on art, but it’s really been a whirlwind. Just a real wild ride.

I had this big, rambling post written up, explaining what’s happened so far this year and what’s been going on, but I don’t think it’s necessary really. What matters is that I’ve made it this far. This time six months ago I really wasn’t sure if I’d make it to see today. But. Here I am.

I feel like life has been pretty unrelenting in the past few years, and it never seems to end. Between this post and my last text posts, I’ve had another Break Down due to problems with work and doctors, and it’s been pretty terrifying, but I think it’s going to be okay. We’re not out of the woods and I really need to focus on this right now so I still won’t have time to get back into art (which I do plan on doing!! But it’s really not fair to anyone for me to start up again when I’m still not completely stable) and everything else.

But hey. Even after that recent disaster, I’m still here. I’ve been on much better meds for almost 5 months now, I’ve been figuring out what I want to do with my life, and I have my second wind. Things have been getting a lot better (even though a LOT has also been going wrong, but such is life, and we get through it!) and I’ve been on the right track for several months now. I think I’m truly happy.

I’m still here and so is most everyone else. I figure it’s about time I do an update on everyone, as this is a pet blog after all, and I think it’s best to let everyone know how we’re all doing. It’s been a long time since I really talked about everyone properly, and a lot has happened. So here’s the all-encompassing update on everyone:

INVERTS

I posted about this a bit before, but yes. At the start of July I found that I lost about half of the tarantulas. While I think in general we were doing okay picking up the pieces from everything that happened, not everyone was alright. It’s my fault, and I take responsibility. I don’t care how tough things were, it wasn’t fair to them that I let them go unnoticed for too long. Most of the slings passed away, they got too dry, and the more moisture dependent ones passed away as well, including Boopus, Conte, Lucy, and Cassini.

There is a huge hole in my heart from losing them. I will never let this happen again. I don’t CARE how hard things get for me, I will NEVER let my illness take the lives of the ones I care about ever again. I don’t know if it’s the right decision to continue keeping Ts at all after what happened, but since it did, Jessie and I had a very serious conversation about was has to change if I want to keep the remaining Ts. I’ve spent a lot of time re-working how I care for everyone, and so far, everyone has been recovering VERY well. The remaining Ts are: Agnes, Deckard, Isidore, Montag, Winnipeg, Wilder, Flaveri, Kessler, Kitty, and Turnip. They are all fat and hydrated and doing better. Deckard and Isidore molted successfully, and Winnipeg is deep in pre-molt. Montag had some sort of weird kinda-mites-but-not-mites thing going on, but I got most of them off and they’ve been doing really well for about a month now.

Suffice to say I think everyone is going to be okay. The ones that are here. I do love them deeply and I need to not let my illness get in the way of them. My depression was slowly eating away at everything I loved, including them and my desire and ability to care for them, but I will never let it happen again. No matter what, I’ll do what’s best for them, even if it’s a tough decision.

As for the other inverts...the roaches are all doing very well. Red goblins have had their ups and downs but the colony is big and thriving. I finally have adults again and babies are cropping up once more. My dubia colony is finally stable and they’ve been delightful waste disposals for all the ugly peppers and bolted greens from our poor little garden. The rothi, the Original Dig Sons, are STILL kicking. I thought the female was gone but she cropped up again and is as gigantic and cute as ever. They’re chubby and happy and digging like champs. The little kenyans are also doing well!! I’m moving them in with the dubia and they seem to thrive with them. Everyone is peaceful and passive to one another, and by being in the bigger colony they have much more space and food options than before.

All in all, the inverts are recovering and doing okay. I also have thriving isopod cultures in the geckos’ vivs, and they’re doing very well! Lots of orange P. pruinosis in there.

REPTILES

Vladimir and Estragon are doing WONDERFULLY. After the fire I was very worried about the smoke, but both geckos have been perfectly fine and very active and healthy, especially as the weathers warmed up. Estragon is exploring all the time now, and has recovered well after all the stress of moving around so much earlier this year. As I type this he’s climbing the glass of his viv and mleming the air. He’s such a little man and I love him. I’ve been watering the vivariums properly again and they’ve been exploding with growth! Not all the plants made it but the ones left actually need trimming, they’re growing too fast!! The local pet place has lots of vivarium plants available actually and I got a couple that I’m going to plant in the empty spots for the boys. So right now the vivs definitely look a little wonky, but it’s nothing we can’t fix, and the boys themselves are doing GREAT. They lost a little weight after all the chaos, but Gogo is a good chunky boy and Didi is doing awesome too!! Eating lots and he even catches the loose roaches that have been living in the leaf litter, which is pretty cool to watch and great enrichment for him. My little men have been doing so good and I’m so happy that we’re all okay. <3

MAMMALS

Before the fire, I had recently gotten my very first rats, which was a huge deal on here, if any of you remember that!! Java, Lisp, and Python have been thankfully 100% okay after the fire, and have suffered 0 smoke injury! They were farther from where it happened, but there was definitely some smell in my room but now, eight months later, I think it’s safe to say that they’re unaffected. The rats are doing GREAT. They get pampered every single day by everyone here, and my roommate LOVES them. Even when I couldn’t take care of them, he’d feed them and squish them daily, which was a huge help while I dealt with all the craziness. I’m getting back into the routine and taking over their care again, but I can’t thank him enough for his help.

The rats are now THE BIGGEST BOYS and Java is the BEST bean!!! He went from peeping and running away when we first got him to bruxing like CRAZY whenever we hold him and he loves being squished. I don’t know why. They all just love being held and squished and Lisp has some really unsettling Extreme Happy Boggles when we do it, he loves being crushed. (Not that we actually “crush” them, just gently pretend to squish them with our hands while joking about squashing them into pancakes)

They get so much love every single day, and they’ve been one of the best things to ever happen to us. Unfortunately since moving here (and I wasn’t aware of this until the day of move-in, haha, lucky me...) they’ve had to live in the basement which is colder than I’d like and makes it hard for me to care for them, but soon we’re switching to 100% fleece and they’ll be able to live up here with us properly!! I’m so excited about it and it’ll make caring for them so much easier. I’m so excited.

OH and how could I forget. I put off saying this but we DO have a few more pet friends since I last mentioned everyone in December. We bought five little mice into our home many months ago, and their names are Awesome Opossom, Moggles the Mole, Inspector Beans, Bhombus, and Trungalo. They were one of the best things ever, for me. They’re the perfect fit for our lives and they’ve been thriving since we got them. They’re so relaxing and wonderful, and they are incredibly calm and squishy little girls. Sadly, Possie passed away a month or so after she came here (she was almost like a FTT...she was doing so well, then she just...she wasn’t growing like everyone else, no matter what I did, and one day she just. Didn’t make it. We found her snuggled up in her favorite hide in a pile of fleece. No one bothered her. She passed away peacefully.) and she just...she was here for such a short time but she changed everyone’s lives forever. She was the most incredible little thing. She was so outgoing and sweet and when we bought them home she instantly became Nick’s favorite little friend. I’d come home from work and he’d be in the middle of the living room playing with her. He loved her so, so much and even though the mice “are mine” I really think Possie was his. She was a very special little thing and I’m glad she could spend the last of her time with us. She was an incredible little animal.

All in all though...the rodents are doing good. It still hurts my heart that Possie passed away but we did everything we could and we had a special little service for her under the big tree in the backyard, and we will never forget her. I kinda wish everyone here could’ve gotten to know her too. She was really something special.

Otherwise...ahh gosh it feels really sad to say anything else after talking about Possie. She was so, so wonderful, but so are the remaining meecers. Mice are weird. They’re just so small and gentle and wonderful, and I’m really happy to have them with us.

Oh yes!! And there are two more little friends who joined us. I researched getting birds for a few years, and back in mid-April in my area there was a couple having to rehome some of their button quail. They hatched and raised them by hand, and I talked it through with Jessie and we jumped on the opportunity to adopt a pair. It worked out wonderfully for everyone and now it’s been about four months with us and they’re doing fantastic. Their names are Wasabi (male) and Mushroom (female) and they’re an extremely devoted mated pair and we love them. They’re in our front living room and while we don’t/can’t handle them they have become so outgoing in their own way and I’ve learned so much about caring for them over the past few months. They’re very relaxing to care for and any time I slack a bit with anything, they let me know by tapping the front of the enclosure until I investigate and fix whatever’s wrong. It’s actually really helpful and over time I’ve gotten much better and now they hardly ever pace or tap the front, which makes me feel like I’m doing something right. They seem peaceful and spend a lot of their time with each other and bathing in their dirt bath or foraging for treats. c:

All in all, we’re really getting there and have been getting so much better since The Disaster that was winter. The animals are doing great/much better, I’m getting better (although the recent scare is still a drain and I do have to work 12-9 pm today but so it goes...) and it’s going to be alright, I think. And I have a very supportive partner and awesome roommate and friends and I can’t thank them enough for helping me get this far. I wouldn’t be here without them.

Well anyway. Happy birthday to me, I spent way too long writing this and now I need to rush to get ready to work for the rest of the day/night. But so it goes, I’ve been through worse. c;

[katzirrart]

Art Growth Compilation

I really enjoy doing posts about improvement in art.

It makes me feel better about my work, especially with how busy I am these days.

I wanted to compile all the comparisons I’ve made over the years and kinda discuss the posts, for myself or others.

I thought it’d be funny to start with comparing how I first drew on a tablet, using dodge and burn tools, to how I do now which is using layers and actually painting. It’s funny to look back on that, you know?

I linked the post I made, compiling all the month to month memes from 2003-2017 that I try and do yearly. And everything else is under a cut ;w;’‘/

Most artists have done a drawing of themselves and a few Pokemon, or their team. I did that in 2010, and was dissatisfied with my work...

I took a crack again in 2013 after I’d learned to draw more animals and not be so Edgy(tm) I really liked the results. I still didn’t use references though, because I was lazy. I just didn’t want to. I still was on that boat feeling like I was CHEATING. I wasn’t being CREATIVE if I looked at references.

Artists get stuck on using reference and it’s AWFUL. USE THEM. USE TWENTY. LEARN!! It’s so HELPFUL, I wish I had started sooner.

In 2014 though -

I tried again.

I had gotten better at anatomy, but most of all, I started to work off references more. I started to really focus on not stylizing so much, but to work on actually making things look like things. I started to work on caring about COMPARISON sizes. Composition!!

While Pokemon reference sizes are -wiggle hands- and while my team changed up, I was satisfied that I could draw Arbok ACTUALLY like a cobra now, Meowth is easy given it’s just a noseless cat so to speak, Haunter is literally a triangle cloud - I was satisfied having drawn that team.

My secondary team in the new games? I was excited to draw them. It was fresh and new and FUN and it turned out PRECIOUS.

I learned better how to proportion things in an image for layout, and just... making characters feel COHESIVE in the same space.

It was a nice thing to keep visiting. I have a sketch in the works for an update even hopefully.

These pieces are kind of interesting to me too, because they’re towards the end of my era of THIN lineart?

My lineart has gone from this, and THIS,  to this.

Literally I use to not believe in line weight, I can still do thin work of course, but I’m not a fan of trying to FORCE it like I use to? Even the second link, I went from the SMALLEST brush in Sai, to using a marker brush that had barely ANY give, to a custom brush on Sai that acts like a Paint Chat brush I use to use with friends online!

That’s what I mean about style too, like you may reserve yourself about things - like not coloring black in and outlining with white, or certain ways you do things. But the growth and changing and figuring FUN ways to color that black etc is where the fun of art comes in, to me??

Learn. EXPERIMENT. PUSH!

A few months ago, I did my first redraw. Of this piece from 2012.

Six years difference.

This was interesting for a number of reasons. There’s aspects I like more in the old one, but not many. I really like the pose a bit better, but I like the casual closeness that I did in the new one because that’s more my Shepard.

But technically speaking, it’s worlds better because I took time. I paid attention to details. I did fun things instead of rushing. I took time with my coloring and didn’t SMEAR it around. I had a friend who use to complain I drew so fast and they felt so SLOW, but I love what that taught me. I started taking more time on my art, and enjoying it more since I caught more mistakes and vastly improved. By leaps and bounds.

It’s amazing what a difference six years makes in not only style, which is often a FOCUS of these things? My style has come awkwardly and naturally to me over the years of critically picking certain things apart? but I really love where it’s gotten.

I have things I want to get back to, but I love... where it is, and CAN be?

But it’s wild to me how much change happens in technical handling? It’s a hand in hand thing, you can’t focus on one or the other only, or the other suffers.

Honestly this has been my favorite improvement to notice though?

Kisame was a character I felt I should be able to draw EASILY? Not so much. Itachi? ALSO EASY. Not so much??

Kisame has weird eyes to grasp how to draw? Thus focusing on them kept making them wonky to me!! On top of that, he’s everything I’ve been use to drawing for AGES because he has a muscular body, with a smaller waist? ... that was something I was use to drawing? I still was awkward getting back into the swing of that... Drawing HIS HAIR though? NOT SO EASY....

But like, Itachi should have been easy, but I have a thing about him appearing too feminine as he gets drawn because his eyelashes, and I’ve really found a nice... medium at this point?

But even still like my face styles and eye styles are finally to a comfortable point for me? I have stopped focusing on some weird things with Itachi’s hair and just... DO IT? But even still like...

The improvement here is literally just if I don’t know how to do something, or I’m not satisfied with how I do it? I just keep at it.

It’s a theme of this post honestly... repetition, persistence.

Keep drawing it. Keep trying to figure out what it is that’s catching you off about how you do it. Don’t like how you do eyes or how they fit on the face? Look at facial structures and references and figure it out. Draw them separate and figure out how to apply them to what you are.

Remember there’s a skull in there. I draw the holes in the skull like the eye sockets, and the nose area to help my proportions for SURE.

I’ve also gotten to a nice marriage in my lineart? The piece before the recent one, those lines feel HARDER or HEAVIER? The newest piece seems...softer? Like I’m lighter handed again?

I really like critiquing my own growth on what is good or working better for me? Older pieces it looks like I’m putting lineweight for SAKE of it versus where it goes now?

INTERESTING.

Like this lineup -

My style shifts so RAPIDLY, it still is noticeably MY style to people, but parts shift so VIOLENTLY because I’m constantly picking at what I don’t LIKE.

It’s funny too in the case of Kisame and Itachi because consistently I’m drawing the SAME character over and over - can make you REALIZE how you’re doing something wrong?

Like, here’s a difference of eight years, and it’s all the brush I use now, and it REALLY shows how my style has changed - in the aspect of one point of reference?

I have a childhood favorite character too, of Daisuke, and I use to be bad at drawing boys, and I use to be SUPER bad at drawing fluffy hair?

It was something I specifically started to learn to do? And I started to draw Daisuke every few months or years for a while. Especially when I started to first REALIZE I didn’t like my style that much?

But the middle one was July 2009, top left is less than 6 months later, and the last one is about a year later. DRASTIC DIFFERENCE. But next -

This one was in 2012, when I started to do more with teeth, or first dipping my toes into anatomy. I started to focus more on HANDS too, I was super bad at them. Overall I started to focus more on making my art have...ages? Like a boy versus a man. Facial features being DIFFERENT.

I can look at this boring little bust and see that he comes off more of a teenage boy to me now. I need to work more on figuring how to draw asian features especially the eyes. Sometimes I hit the mark, other times I don’t.

but between this and 2012? Not too much has changed. I do hair fluffier now, and I angle the eyes better. The teeth not being outlined doesn’t give that weird effect where I might give him TOO MANY TEETH....

People do that and it’s easy but whoof.

So there’s still learning and adapting to do in QUICK drawings, you know? but I can still see there’s good things. That took me like 5 minutes to draw? Not bad honestly.

In it’s own bracket is original characters though too?? But also divergent of STYLE shifts because like...

OKAY. Nightmare Syndicate’s story.. started for me in 7th or 8th grade, that was when I was...14? 15? I’ve been fleshing it out for like 13 years, that’s wild haha!! I love my kids and all.

But okay so SIALI. She’s still fairly similar but I restructured her face for SURE. She’s gotten less edgy, she’s.... a teenage girl.

FELIX?? CHRIST. He’s been such a long journey!! More on that later?

Rot and even Cor?? Rot and Cor are a shorter span of development, but Rot started in Highschool so almost 10 years ago, and Cor has been fairly solid - but even just DRAWING him over three years? Go look at how much he changes.. I’m not married to concepts easily. haha!

People act like making a character you’re STUCK with it. Like Oh boy, I better make this character good, from the get go!!

I only worry about that with small potatoes like my Pillar(Gods) designs I just made for the comic?? Even still, small things will change with them I’m sure.

But not only has Felix and Siali changed, but they’ve GROWN with my style and DEFINED it even. I’ve had to adjust my style to support Felix’s look honestly a LOT. Bend my rules. Break my anatomy stickler attitude - and honestly, that’s the thing.

You have to learn the rules and anatomy BEFORE you can break them. A style built upon broken anatomy will fail you down the road if you just excuse everything with style.

Learn to draw the hands. Learn to draw the feet. Figure out the face. Bones exist. You can break the FUCK out of it once you learn how to do it, you know? Like I’ve seen so many styles I LOVE who are cartoony and BROKEN AS FUCK, but there’s still some STRUCTURE to it. Most of those people can still structure a face just fine, and the reason exaggeration works so well is because there’s like unwritten rules for what works and doesn’t based on that?

Idk.

Felix has a very elongated torso, he’s like 7′ or 8′ tall so I mean?? He’s... broken anatomy, but he’s... lanky - but his muscle is LITHE and stretched. It makes contextual sense. That’s the important part.

But even designs, it’s important to understand designs YOU make, or like... to understand they’ll CHANGE and that’s growth within your art too?

Like okay, example. Felix has a millipede inspired monster form. But with designing that? I still have to know how millipedes and SNAKES work because there's bones and vertebrae in there??

But there’s also the difference of like... CONCEPT, versus execution. You can design a fucking badass character, but understanding your own concept is SOMETHING.

I had no idea how this would play out, until I was mapping out his ‘midsection’ spikes? and man. MY STYLE WAS MADE FOR THIS CHALLENGE NOW. Which is so interesting how smooth my style has always been? Felix has defined ANGLES in it, and it’s hilarious tbh?

But even too, I’ve had to work with Felix’s monster form FACE, to break the rules to make it WORK the way I need it too?

On the anatomy subject too, like when I first got into Marvel comics 6 years ago or so? I had no idea how to do muscle structures?? I was so BAD at it.

I can look at this left image and CRINGE so badly at how NONE of those are muscles?? THOSE ARE THINGS I PERCEIVE AS MUSCLES. Like...

A course I took taught me to draw what I see, not what I know. That’s the whole point of that post that goes around about drawing a shrimp. Look it up. It’s hilarious and cute.

But it’s like, asking an artist to draw a bike, you can tell who uses reference and who WINGS it. It’s funny, but like it’s what you know versus what you see.

I started to study anatomy like crazy and was seeing improvements days at a time. The right image was done like... a month later? already I can see the muscles under the pectorals? those look normal now. the abs aren’t dough lumps under the skin in a perfect 6 pack, they’re the actual plane shapes.

I was trying to find a good reference for myself of learning to make men ‘thicker’ too in terms of the waist etc since the left is really...thin.... but...

A bit better, but even still, comparing these two - they’re 2 months apart? and I can see understanding more about arms and how they connect to the body, where the planes ACTUALLY lay for the chest and obliques and such?

I can see improvements from July 2012 up there, to - WHOOPS. I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE YEAR LMAO... TO FEBRUARY 2013...omg

I mean, I could go on and on about improvements I see, when I go through my art though? Gosh.

Like I’m seeing so SO many bad hands and feet in my old stuff, and just CRINGING because tricks I learned for myself by now?

I give so many pointers and streams and screenshares on discord still to help people with art and it cracks me up?? Like...

I dunno. I’m pretty mediocre tbh, but god damn.

[tom-a-fox]

First anniversary of this account!

It's the 18th of November, in my timezone at least, and that means it's the first anniversary of my Tumblr! (and the Tom A. Fox account in general) Now here's something I don't usually do: write a long blog post. I'll talk about some statistics of my art from the last year and about future plans.

Sorry if the formatting is a bit wonky, I'm not used to writing long texts and I'm copy-pasting this to both Tumblr and Inkbunny from a plaintext editor.

Last year's schedule

In January of 2018, I decided to make at least one piece of art per month and see how long I could keep that up. It's been pretty challenging, but surprisingly enough I did it - with two extra pieces as well! Now here's why it was so challenging to me: I dedicate little time to this blog. On top of my current education and my job, I'm applying to multiple art colleges. Both of them require me to have an art portfolio of their respective art form. (Animation/Live-action filmmaking) So, I have to make these videos too. I really don't want to combine the nudity from this account with my portfolio. I want them to be completely separate, so I have to make three portfolios, if you count this account as one.

My favourite piece so far is Campfire (July 2018) because of its combination of the 2D drawings and 3D environment. It looks like the two layers are actually interacting with each other for once, even though ironically this is the first piece in which the characters are not in the same place as the environment. I made a behind-the-scenes post for that image, if you're curious.

The boring statistics

I really don't mind if you're skipping this bit, I don't expect it to be of much interest for people other than myself.

I've wondered which pieces would be the most popular, so I'd know what to make more of in the future. I found it surprising that the popularity of a piece didn't depend on when it was released, as I thought that because I'd be better known now than on my very first day, my posts would get more views now than in the first few months. What I did expect however, is that my animation from August would get the most views. Because animations are rarer than still images on Inkbunny, it would appear for much longer on the New Animations tab. Because of it's popularity, it might have snowballed to the Popular tab to get even more views, but I don't know this for sure. This animation performed the same on Tumblr as the still images, though. This makes sense, considering Tumblr's system. Another success was Campfire. (Posted in July) It's the second-most popular most on IB view-wise. It's my favourite one, so I had it featured. People who clicked on my account from the animation saw that piece first. It also helps that it has multiple images in the same submission - people would be curious to what the other images could be, instead of scrolling past the image, which wouldn't count as a view despite having seen the image. Another surprise for me is that it also performed well on Tumblr!

Plans for the future

I ran out of ideas for still images, so expect less of them in the future. I'm open to suggestions! I'm planning to make comics instead, featuring some stories about Tom and Sam. Tom's featured in all fourteen pieces of my current art, Sam is in only three of them. Keep in mind that even though I'm using Tom A. Fox as my persona (fursona if you will), they're all completely fictional characters and my real life is completely different from what I will be portraying. I will start with short comics consisting of only one or two pages, then move to longer comics if possible. If it turns out that I'm able to produce comics at a reasonable pace - which I don't expect to be honest - I might be able to move on to a long-form webcomic with new characters in a fantasy setting. I already have a vague story idea with some world building, but I don't want to start a long project only to give up on making it and leave it unfinished. There are enough unfinished projects on the internet already, I don't want my comic ending up like that! In any case, I hope to continue my once-per-month schedule.

Thanks for reading this long post, or at least part of it, I appreciate your interest! :)

[amisbro]

Impressions/Review:  Shining Live

Alright...here we go friends and neighbors.  Since we have hit our main roadblock on the game right now what better time but to do an “Impressions/Review” on the game “Shining Live” from the “Uta no Prince-Sama” franchise? This impressions however isn’t just going to be about the game but we are going to give a history on the series from its inception to where we are now because all of that is going to be factored in for a specific reason Oh and since we are in this for the long haul...this is going to be under a read more as well.  Also all information comes from the wikipedia page for UtaPri as well as the .com site and Broccol.co.jp  I did my research for this piece when I knew I was going to review it With THAT out of the way...shall we get started?

Uta no Prince-Sama was announced by Broccoli in the Summer of 2009.  To be exact the post that was placed on the website is from August 8th of 2009 and you could go to the website from there.  To this day if you wanted to go to the original version of the site you could...just hit up internet wayback machine for it. The first game’s release came in June of 2010.  June 24th is the day that is referred to as the proper Anniversary of the series and this year will be 8 years for the franchise.  Can you believe it will be 10 years in 2020?  HOLY CRAP! ANYWAYS! As you will see for the rest of this review there will be release dates from the game series and there will also be dates for the Anime seasons.  This is for a reason as you will see when we actually get talking about the game but I wanted to make sure this review was a 100% thorough breakdown for everyone both old hats and new peeps coming into the fandom.  With that in mind let us continue Uta no Prince-Sama as a “Visual Novle/Otome” has currently 9 games in their “Main” series between the PSP and VITA.  The Original game (Uta no Prince-Sama has been remade 2 times since its original version and they came out on August 11th ,2011 and January 26th of 2016 respectively.  The rest of the ORIGINAL games came out around the following times Amazing Aria - 12/23/2010 Sweet Seranade - February 10 ,2011 Debut - May 24, 2012 All-Star - March 7th, 2013 All-Star After Secret - February 26, 2015 Now all of these are important because around some of these dates a season for an Anime came out and all of the Seasons fell under the “Maji Love” banner starting with 1000% in July of 2011 (July 2nd for those keeping score at home) and running to September 24th of that year.  Of the four seasons so far this is the only season to have a a “Summer” Release as the other seasons (2K ,Revolutions and Legend Star) all fell either in the Spring or Autumn season.  2K and Revolutions both released in April of 2013/15 and Legend Star was in 2016 Okay okay I know what you are all thinking “Josh we know all of this...hurry up and get on with the friggin’ review” To which I say “I’m getting there but we need to do just a LITTLE MORE setup because the next part is important to Shining Live” When the first season of the Anime (ML1K) aired it was around “Amazing Aria” and “Sweet Sernade” and so the writers were writing to introduce you to basically STARISH as a 6 Member group with Cecil being a guest start basically (because when the first game happened 6 members were dateable from the start and one in Cecil was unlockable).  When Season 2 aired in 2013 Debut and All-Star were a thing but they had to introduce QN (whom briefly appeared at STARISH’s debut concert at the end of Season 1) so they would do just that When Season 2 premiered in 2013 the first episode was titled “Poison Kiss” and in it introduced the boys of QUARTET NIGHT whom would take the roles of “Seniors” for STARISH for the season.  Later when “Revolutions” happened 2 years later they would become the “In Agency Rivals” of STARISH to try and win the sport of the performer at the Triple S. HOWEVER Season 2 also sought to bring in a new monkey wrench into the fray by introducing the group “HEAVENS” led by Eiichi Ootori as he was flanked by Kira Sumeragi and Nagi Mikado and would face off in a “Must Win” scenario at the UtaPri awards where the loser would be forced to disband.  STARISH won but HEAVENS would be spared from disbanding as the President of Shining Agency stepped in and made sure that that stipulation wasn’t fulfilled.  They WOULD come back later as a 7 person group where each member was an opposite for a particular STARISH member and this season in particular (Revolutions) would be the last season also to aired around the release of a game.  “Revolutions” aired around April of 2015 the same year that the final game for the PSP (VN wise) released which was in February. Now there is a reason we just went through this History lesson (and if I fucked anything up I apologize) but its because we NOW are going to talk about Shing Live! LET’S GO Okay when we talk about Shining Live we are going to break this down like this Story Gameplay Translation (This is a translation of a Japanese Rhythm game so this one is important) Overall fun factor Just so you know...I am tempted to talk about the translation LAST because of the fact that it is a bit of a hot button but with that in mind...LET’S GO! Story I know that UtaPri isn’t typically known to some for its story but if you pay attention enough the story and plot are some of the most interesting things in the series.  I can’t tell you how ,when I watched every episode (52 and if we count the OVA then 53), I was always looking forward to what was going to happen in the next episode because the characters were compelling as all hell (and still are) and their personalities ,while some kind of grated on me over the years, were still varied enough that you could have your favorites So what IS the story of this game?  Well QUARTET NIGHT and STARISH are performing a joint concert called “Shining Live” where they showcase the groups that President Shining Saotome has on display.  In this case those groups are STARISH and QN. When the game starts the player (that’s you) are greeting by intros with each of the characters and that is our first introduction to ,not only the new translation for the game, but also the personalities of each character that will be on display at this time.  I say “At this time” because we will be talking about the future soon enough. After an introduction from all the cast they play “Welcome to UtaPri World” which is your introduction to the gameplay.  I’ll talk more about that in bit but basically tap the buttons in accordance to the song and as you do you will eventually progress to the title screen and go about your business After this the real story begins but...which story IS IT? See the game has 3 types Main Story Side Story Event Story The one that you will play a lot (or until you run out of certain items which I will talk about in a minute) is the Main Story.  This starts with after the performance of “Welcome to UtaPri World” (which doesn’t count towards clearing songs on the setlist) and your first chapter consists of a story with STARISH AND ONE WITH QN where the STARISH boys want to try and get better than their Senpais to eventually overtake them.  To do this they know they need to get better and to do that they need to keep on having performances and getting stronger.  QN however knows this and knows they need to get better as a group themselves but of course we know they have their own issues too right? To clear a chapter of the game the player must play each song and clear them.  Now there are 4 difficulties in the game so you have to play the one you are comfortable with but remember this Higher difficulties consume more LP (That stands for Live Points in this game) and can cause problems later on higher player levels...it can also help you progress faster in the game though with the XP system. As the player progresses in the story more and more songs become available.  Remember that you need tickets to play the stories so not having them puts you in a position that is no fun so playing the songs repeatedly helps out greatly Speaking of...LET’S TALK ABOUT GAMEPLAY Gameplay The game play of this game is not unlike say...Klab’s Love Live.  Rings come from a beam of light and your job is to tap them as close to perfect as possible and get the best score possible. Now this is where we are going to have differences in the way the game scores your taps.  In the JP version the scoring went JUST PERFECT PEFECT GREAT GOOD BAD MISS Getting all “Just Perfect” and “Perfect” scores meant you got a “PERFECT COMBO” and a special purple board came around the screen.  a Full Combo was just orange text When the Global Version was released they changed up two things and one was the grade for the note taps PERFECT GREAT GOOD BAD MISS Notice something:  Yeah they removed the “JUST PERFECT” rank from the score.  The belief is that having those would confuse the International audience so they scrapped “JUST PERFECT” and just left those in.  Also now you can get “ULTIMATE COMBO” just for getting “Perfect” and “Great” grades all the way through...its the equivalent to the Crown in Music 1 or the Gold in Music 2 You also get a score rank in the game The game ranks you scorewise from D to S (although C is the first one on the rewards chart...more on that in a second) and as you score in the song the bar goes up.  The better you grade on a note the more points and the better your shot of getting the elusive S rank on a song. How high you can go on the score meter is determined by a few things How well you tap on a note (although that can be wonky sometimes) The level/Grade of your phots Your traits for you and your partner in the song The first one we already explained how that kind of works...the others might be “Huh?” for some people so let me explain Every card has 4 rarities Normal Rare Super Rare Ultra Rare The higher the rarity of the card the better you have a chance to get an S rank...thing is your level matters too because every card gets EXP that participates in a song (BTW I know they are photos but I for some reason always call them “cards”...its a Yu-Gi-Oh! problem with me) so you want them to be in as much as possible.  There is also the BOND of the card though too Alright how to explain this We all have favorite characters and we want them to get to know us better right?  Well this game has a thing where has your number in the star of each character goes up you get new voice clips and the like from them...you also get rewards from the game as the game has missions based on songs ,player level and bond level between you and a character.  The goals are always every 10 levels and you usually get 10 prisms for doing it each time so that is def something to keep in mind Oh right...that is another important aspect of the game and its getting the new cards So this game has a gacha system which involves a photoshoot (for the record B-Project also has something kind of similar too) and there are many different kinds.  Some are based off of events like an MV for a particular video or even a Gacha that has cards from previous sets in it!  Some might even be themed after a Holiday (There is an event going on right now where Natsuki is the UR for Valentine’s Day and if you are lucky enough to pull him HE WILL BE SO HAPPY!) and there is even a Photoshoot which I think was the very first one they ever did that is a standard (Its one with the Military Outfits..you’ll know it when you see it. There are also two other special ones for special tickets that you can win either in a slot machine or I think you can get those in a shop.  I know for the V-Day you could get the SR+ one for sure in exchange for Presents! Some Photoshoots have an expiration on them and some are split into “halves” meaning that they will have one half have one UR card on them and then there is another half with another.  An example of this would be Nats being the UR for this particular half of the V-Day and Ren is beginning on the 13th of this month. NOW SPEAKING OF THINGS WITH DURATIONS LETS TALK ABOUT THE EVENTS! @baku5ds asked me to talk about these so I will...ONLY COS SHE ASKED ME TOO! So the game has events that last for about a week and the way they work is not unlike the events of “Stand my Hero” (a Match 3 game with Otome Elements that has some of the UtaPri VAs in it) EXCEPT all of these are ranked! Here is how they work From about 1:59 PM JST (That’s 11:59 PM EST for us) and for the next 6 days the player engages in a battle with other players to try and win not ONE new Photo but TWO! The Photos are related to the Event Story we spoke about earlier as the characters on them are portraying characters for the story.  The stories HERE (unlike for the main story) are 10 parts long BUT you get 5 Prisms each like you do for playing a side or main story chapter...that’s 50 prisms! You’re goal is to do one of two things in these 6 days 1.  Make it all the way to the cards on your points ladder (good luck because every so often the points increase by 500 so to get to the UR card its every 3500 to get the next reward) OR 2.  Finish in the top 10% of the rankings and you get TWO nice new shiny photos.  IF you got both copies already on the points ladder this just means you get a 3rd of at least one of the photos so enjoy This is legitimately one of the most exhausting things the game can ask a player to do because you aren’t just playing other players but you are playing yourself as your will and endurance get tested because you are playing THE SAME SET OVER AND OVER AND OVER again...it can be exhausting BUT if its for cards you really want you will suffer for them and it will be worth it!  I got a nice shiny UR for my collection so I’m happy :-) Are the events LONG...yes but if you have the patience and the endurance you can get through them easily...otherwise WHY ARE THEY SO BLASTED LONG?! (again that was for @baku5ds) Now let’s address the elephant in the room Translation (I know I said I would do “fun factor but...eh put that with the events thingy) The translation in some respects seems to be a bode of contention and I can respect that.  I think for ME it hasn’t been an issue because it feels like when they did the translation they wanted to make it more “lighthearted” as an experience for new players (and potential new fans) as possible.  If the story was “Angsty” as all get out how many people outside of the general base would play it? Does it have its issues?  Well there was a part in the last event when Syo said to Natsuki “Hey want to come with?” and I mentioned this to a friend of mine and they thought it might have been some old slang that got in. One that became a meme was when Ren at the beginning of the game goes “Hello Ladies.  Ren Jinguji is in the house” and I actually chuckled which I think is something this game wanted us to do from the start.  Have a lighthearted romp through UtaPri and get to see the characters in situations that might not happen in the Anime because of the fact that the series is 13 episodes each season and 22-25 minutes a pop.  A little lighthearted fun never hurt anyone (and let’s be real...we all needed that after Season 4). So now that I wrote what is no doubt a College Thesis on this game would I rec it for a new fan? SURE! The thing that you have to get over is sometimes the hit detection is wonky af when it comes to hitting notes and if you can endure the events when they feel like a Boston Marathon then you got that going for you too! All in all Uta no Prince-Sama Shining Live is a game that ,even if you aren’t a UtaPri fan but you love Rhythm games...check it out you won’t be disappointed!

[ecoslo]

My traveling quilt!

Last year, I joined a “traveling quilt” bee - sometimes known as a “round robin.” The idea is that you make your first block, then send it to the next person who adds to it. Then the person after adds to that, and so on (we had 11 people). At the end and comes back to you, all finished ... I got mine back last week!

I can’t even believe it’s mine... it is so fantastic!

It started with the centre English paper pieced medallion that I made back when I was still living in Edmonton. 

Deanna added a border of “X” blocks and her own paper pieced blocks for the corners.

Stephanie added the colourful “piano keys” around the sides, and Erica added the “hummingbird” blocks. 

Shena did a little restructuring and added in the “glitter” blocks (from Jen Kingwell’s book “Quilt Lovely”). She made the borders off-centred, which I love -- and think gives the whole quilt a more modern look!

Julie paper-pieced these modern, wonky flying geese, which to me remind me of my “paper cut” blocks! I also love that there is a maple leaf block in the fabric that Julie chose... it seems too appropriate for my 2016 year (with all of those maple leaf blocks!)

Gemini made these cute wonky flying geese, that seem to fade - so lovely ... and do you see all of the different low volume fabrics in the “piano keys” on the right? It’s hard to do justice in photos!

Francine and Adrienne added hourglass blocks (which are so my thing right now!) And finally, Laura added this fabulous colourful improv border around the whole entire quilt... wow!

It was quilted by Katrina, who took a vacation day off work to specifically go and long-arm this at a local quilt shop! The quilting is perfect! And she bound it just so that there are little cat faces poking out of the sides.  Love it!

The quilt measures at about 82″ x 89″ - big enough for a bed! 

Thank you SO MUCH to all of the ladies of this bee for your contributions to this amazing quilt! It is going to be used and loved forever!

I can’t wait to see the rest of the quilts finished. It has been a inspiring challenge and experience to contribute to all of them, and it is so fun to see what they all turn out like.

(and now, I just have to finish Deanna’s and ship it out to Alberta!)

Although this is not strictly my finish, it is so awesome that I want to share the work of all of these ladies -- so linking up with Finish it up Friday!

[thisdaynews]

Behind Nate Silver’s war with The New York Times

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/behind-nate-silvers-war-with-the-new-york-times/

Behind Nate Silver’s war with The New York Times

POLITICO illustration/Getty Images photo

Media

The paper’s one-time data guru can’t stop kicking his ex-employer for its 2020 polling analysis and supposed capitulation to Trump.

Nate Silver made his name as The New York Times’ data guru, creating the methodology that predicted Barack Obama’s re-election.

Now, Silver’s method seems to be to stir up trouble for the Times.

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The 41-year-old editor of the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight recently called his former employer arrogant, engaged in an extended Twitter debate with his successor, who is also named Nate, and helped ignite outrage online over the paper’s front-page headline on the president’s response to two mass shootings, a wound that caused such pain it obliged Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and executive editor Dean Baquet to hold an all-staff meeting this week to clear the air.

Silver’s persistent criticism of the Times, stretching back to the last presidential election, has long struck some inside the newsroom as less about methodology and more about personal grievances with the paper that was unable to meet his demands to expandFiveThirtyEight and now publishes The Upshot, which features Nate Cohn’s coverage of elections, polling and demographics.

In discussions with POLITICO, Times staffers questioned Silver’s motivation for repeatedly criticizing the paper, though declined to comment publicly, declining to pick a fight with Silver and his three-plus million Twitter followers. However, frustrations have spilled out publicly, at times, with reporters suggesting on Twitter that Silver’s assessments of the paper’s journalism veered beyond respectful disagreement.

White House reporter Maggie Haberman once derided his “gratuitous jabs at a former employer,” while political and investigative reporter Nick Confessore characterized a tweet criticizing the paper’s 2016 coverage as “a cheap shot masquerading as something else.”

Silver, however, has not been deterred. In recent weeks, he took issue with reporter Peter Baker’s analysis of Robert Mueller’s testimony as “not the blockbuster Democrats had sought,” by grousing, “Why not just report the news and not reach for a weird like 5th order conditional/counterfactual narrative.” He also poured some gasoline on the embers of the dispute over Times deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weisman’s allegedly racist tweet. And he “sparked a social media furor,” as the Columbia Journalism Review noted, by being the first to call attention to the Times’ now-infamous headline on President Donald Trump’s response to shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

“Not sure “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM” is how I would have framed the story,” Silver wrote in a tweet that was seized on by 2020 Democratic candidates and others critical of the headline. Editors changed the headline, which Baquet told staffers Monday was “a fucking mess.”

“I do think a lot of NYTs problems (and to be clear, there are *many* things they do very well along with some *serious* problems) are born out of arrogance; thinking they’re the most important voice in the room,” Silver wrote after the headline blow-up. “Nothing engenders that sort of arrogance like a lack of competition.”

When it comes to data analysis, at least, Silver offers competition of his own via FiveThirtyEight, the former Times site that is now under the auspices of ABC. This summer, a Silver-generated dispute over how the Times analyzes polling data has morphed into the “Battle of the Nates,” as the wonky Twitter beef has been dubbed. In one recent skirmish, Silver told the younger Cohn that he hoped he’d “grow out of” a phase of calling things “simultaneously a prediction and not a prediction.”

Cohn and Silver declined requests for interviews. But in emails to POLITICO, Silver praised Cohn’s work, while dismissing suggestions his criticism of the Times is motivated by a rivalry or personal grudge.

“Media criticism is a core part of what I do,” Silver said. “I founded FiveThirtyEight 11 years ago because I had a lot of critiques of how the American press covers elections.”

“Given the extremely prominent and influential place that the Times holds in coverage of American politics, any media critiques are naturally going to invoke the Times frequently,” he continued. “I think they’d do well to take those criticisms to heart instead of constantly accusing their critics of having ulterior motives or acting in bad faith.”

Nonetheless, New York Times spokesperson told POLITICO: “We don’t always agree with Nate but he sometimes offers smart criticism of our work and we value that, it makes us better.”

The Times’ history with Silver dates from 2010, when it took over FiveThirtyEight under a three-year agreement. His posts were a traffic-driver for the Times’s site and — like Cohn — he used polling data to raise provocative questions about elections, such as his Nov. 2011 Times magazine cover story asking, “Is Obama Toast?” Obama wasn’t, and Silver went on to correctly call all 50 states ahead of the 2012 re-election.

As his star rose in the media world, Silver, who was based in New York, developed a strained relationship with the Times’s political reporters in Washington. Former Times public editor Margaret Sullivan noted in 2013 how Silver didn’t “really fit into the Times culture”and Silver has accused the paper’s political reporters of being “incredibly hostile and incredibly unhelpful.”

Silver had fans in Times management, but the paper couldn’t meet his demands to stay.

“When Nate Silver was negotiating a new, richer contract, his lawyer told me that his client was ‘the prettiest girl at the prom,’” former Times executive editor Jill Abramson wrote in her 2018 book, “Merchants of Truth.” “I told him, perhaps echoing the past, ‘The Times is always the prettiest girl.’”

Abramson told POLITICO that Silver sought funding for about 20 “stat mavens in different areas, including sports and weather,” which “would have required a huge investment,” from the paper. In July 2013, Silver decamped to ESPN, which bought the FiveThirtyEight site and provided Silver with resources to build a data-driven newsroom. ABC News — which, like ESPN, is owned by Disney — acquired FiveThirtyEight last year.

The Times rebounded after Silver’s departure by hiring Cohn, another young data wiz, in Nov. 2013 and launching The Upshot five months later.

Both Silver and Cohn came under scrutiny during the 2016 election for underestimating Donald Trump in the Republican primary. On Election Day, The Upshot put Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the electoral college at 85%, while FiveThirtyEight was less bullish than most election models at 71%.

Following the 2016 shocker, Silver published an 11-part opus: “The Real Story Of 2016: What reporters — and lots of data geeks, too — missed about the election, and what they’re still getting wrong.” And the Times, Silver wrote, “is a good place to look for where coverage went wrong.”

While the Times was Silver’s primary target, he suggested the paper’s political coverage was emblematic of broader problems in 2016, such as journalist groupthink, access-driven reporting, and a misplaced notion of Clinton’s inevitability. In the Trump era, Silver has accused the Times of normalizing neo-Nazism and being beholden to White House access.

On Tuesday, Silver suggested the Times is “too self-conscious about trying to prove” that it’s not part of the resistance to Trump that it will “likely worsen their journalism” and critics such as the president “will accuse them all of it all the same.”

And then there’s the running dispute with Cohn, who wrote on July 19 how Trump’s “Electoral College edge could grow in 2020.” Despite Trump’s low national polls, Cohn pointed to the importance of a potential “tipping-point state,” like Wisconsin, where the president’s favorability is higher than average.

Silver argued that Cohn’s analysis of Trump’s Electoral College path is premature based on the polling currently available. “I’m pretty skeptical that we can say much right now about whether it will be larger, smaller or nonexistent in 2020,” he tweeted.

Cohn acknowledged the map can change before the 2020 election, but responded: “The piece is plainly describing the president’s current standing, and goes to unusual lengths to explain that it can change.”

“I think it’s kind of BS to lean really heavily into a particular takeaway in top 80 percent of the article, not to mention the headline/lead/social promotion/etc., and then to introduce the caveats in (literally!!) the 42nd paragraph,” Silver responded. The spat resumed nearly a week later, with Silver accusing Cohn of cherry-picking data to support his hypothesis about an election 16 months away.

Dr. Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, and who has analyzed the 2020 race using her own election model, told POLITICO that both Silver and Cohn had legitimate critiques.

But, she added, there seemed “to be a personal hostility that was coming through that was more than about methodology.” She said it looked like Silver was criticizing Cohn “for doing the same type of piece that Nate Silver has written many times.”

In an email to POLITICO, Silver praised Cohn for being “exceptionally good at what he does” and said that he doesn’t think “there are actually many philosophical differences” between them. He said “a lot of things that boil down to what you might call matters of taste,” such as “how certain things are described or when to apply a certain method to a certain problem.”

“Practitioners often feel passionately about matters like these,” he added, “but I don’t know that they’re terribly newsworthy or important in the grand scheme of things.”

Yet Silver didn’t let the dispute go. Days later, he offered a mocking subtweet in response to new polls: “bUt I WaS ToLd ThAt TrUmP LoOkEd StRoNg In ThE TiPPiNg PoInT StAtEs aNd HaS a BiGgEr eLeCtoRaL CoLLeGe AdVaNtAgE tHaN iN 2o16.”

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, one of the many journalists following the recurring Twitter spat, responded: “At this point, the best advice I can give you, as a fan of both, is to settle this with a straight-out fistfight.”

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[musicxmakerx3]

New Year, New Blog! (Sorta)

I am going to start treating this an actual blog so here we go. I am going to post weekly updates about what I learned/did at work.

In November I started working at the local string shop. It is a very small business with an in-house staff consisting only of the owner, a bow specialist (who has another day job and another side job), a repair apprentice (also has another job), and myself. My initial task was to do inventory and generally clean up and organize everything. Since I have been working there for nearly two months I am going to have to do a bit of a recap here before starting weekly updates.

Both the owner and the bow tech had/have day jobs with the City so normal business hours for us start at 5pm and go until we get tired enough to leave (usually midnight but sometimes earlier).

November:

- I spent my first day 5 hours going through the online order invoice cache and “completing” orders that had been sitting there since July.

- I took inventory and organized all 7 of the bow cases. Four of the bow cases hold up to 24 bows, the other two hold 12. This is how I learned to tell the difference between violin, viola, and cello bows. I also have tons of manufacturer model codes burned into my brain.

- My job description in our time clock app is “inventory” and my brain processed that like a robot with a single command. I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that so many things in the shop were never recorded in any sort of inventory sheet so I took it upon myself to fix that and count everything I possibly could. I started by counting all of the cheap bows that sit in a mess of cardboard boxes in the back room. Next, I inventoried every cello bow hanging on the rack of pegs in the show room.

- Our back room remains a horrifying, unusable disaster area. I spent a while considering how to make it more organized and functional and made a game plan. I also demanded my boss buy more pegboard so I could fix the show room.

I think that covers it for November. I started on 11/13 and had a concert cycle in LA that started two days later. There were plenty of other rehearsals and concerts that month that prevented me from working in the evenings. It took me a while to learn that I could come in whenever I want during the day as long as I could find something to do.

December:

- More bow inventory. I also inventoried all of the rosins. Sadly, our webstore host service is kinda derpy so I can only set up inventory tracking management for products that have NO variations. Anything like strings (different strings or sizes) or something that comes in different patterns or colors cannot be tracked because things get janky when we set up product options that way. This forces me to do inventory the old fashioned way by literally touching and counting everything once a month and entering it into a spreadsheet.

- Received and installed pegboard in the show room so it became a shopable area as opposed to a jumbled mess of stuff no customer feels like they are allowed to touch. The skills I learned about merchandising a wall at the Halloween store really helped with this task. Since the “chachki wall” was completed I believe every single customer that has entered the shop has approached and spent time looking at the wall. Some have even bought things! (most of our business is online so walk-ins aren’t frequent)

- Organized the back room by putting all of the packing materials in plastic storage bins so they no longer spill out all over the floor.

- Watched and took notes on how to rehair a bow. I also learned how to prepare one for repairing by “taking it to the spa.” Every rehair we do consists of checking that the mortis angles are correct or correcting them, filling any crazy-deep mortis with ebony, removing rosin residue from the stick, polishing all the silver bits, and lubricating the eyelet and screw of the frog. We might also do a bit of straightening at no extra charge if we notice things are a little wonky.

- Learned how to do shipping. I still have some stuff to learn about where things are in the shop or if we even have the item in-store. We offer TONS of stuff on our website, some of which we are out of (because nobody every inventoried it) or some of it we get dropshipped directly from the company to the customer because we don’t have the model they want in-store. We have lots of shipping options so learning how to do them all and remembering how to do each one correctly is tricky.

- Took inventory of all cellos needing repairs and sat down with Boss Lady to categorize them as “quick fix”, “slightly involved”, or “nightmare”. Customer cellos are just a whole ‘nother category of “DO THIS NOW REGARDLESS OF HOW INVOLVED IT WILL BE.”

**Now we are getting to the good stuff**

- Learned how to tie hanks (small sections of hair) to rehair bows. I also learned, or taught myself rather, how to DYE hanks. Boss Lady (who also has neato colorful hair) asked me what I thought about dyeing bow hair and I told her I was 100% on board. I will do a more in-depth post about this later but if you want to see the finished product check out http://www.lindawest.com/Color_Bow_Rehair_p/colorrehair.htm

I think that is it for December. I spent a week down in LA rehearsing for the Yeethoven II concert (freaking AWESOME btw. Check it out on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter) because the Thomas Fire had me concerned for the safety of my cat if I were to get an evacuation notice while 90 miles away. A very kind friend let me spend the week in his house. He even gave me his room despite the fact that he is allergic to cats (thankfully Baron didn’t seem to be messing with his allergies.) Between Yeethoven II and a NYE concert out of town I missed another week of work, essentially.

JANUARY! Week 1:

- How do I start every month? Counting things! I have reorganized the bow cases, updated the sheets that are taped to the cases, and made an index card for the top and bottom of every case so that bows can be easily put back in the spot they belong when someone is trying out many bows at once. I didn’t come in FOR ONE DAY and I came back to find bows everywhere and cases laying open on the floor. When my boss came in this evening I said “So the index cards didn’t work, huh?” And she was like “well, they would have! If... well...” and started putting the bows back where they were supposed to go. Sort of. It is still a mess. Maybe she will try harder next time. Or maybe I will be there next time. I am so fed up with how quickly these bow cases go to shit.

- I touched almost every string in the shop. I counted all of the full size and fractional strings that were in packaged and then untangled and learned to identify all of the strings that had formed a rat’s nest on the bench. Each string was rolled and put into a small plastic baggie and labeled as “tried but new” (strings that we literally took out of the package and put on an instrument for someone to try and that person didn’t like it so we took it right back off) or “for rentals.” The really busted strings got tossed into a horrific box of “donation” strings for school cellos.

- *crazy singsong voice* I counted all the bows again. All the bows in boxes. And all the bows on the rack in the show room. I still have to inventory the violin/viola bows on the other showroom rack though... TOMORROW!

- Figured out how to wrangle the mountain of fking gig bags: roll them up. I have spent the past two days rolling and strapping most of the gig bags in the shop. We mostly use them for rentals or donate them to schools (or toss them in the garbage when we get way too many because Goodwill doesn’t want them and selling them on EBay doesn’t really work.) I ran out of bag-wrangling straps today but Boss Lady ordered more.

- I learned how to fit pegs. You might think that you just put pegs into the holes and *boom* you’re done. In reality you have to reshape pegs that are out of round with a giant pencil sharpener, ream the holes of the peg box, and make sure the length of each peg is correct. It should barely peek through the hole on the opposite side of the peg box so if it is too long you grind the end down with an electric sander. Once you have it at the length you want you shape the end by hand by rubbing it on sand paper from 120 - 600 grit until it is that smooth dome-shape you are familiar with. You can even do this with plastic pegs. I helped to fit a set of new geared pegs onto a rental cello. Geared pegs seem like a luxury item but it actually just helps to keep people from snapping strings when they tune so in the end the cost of one set of geared pegs on a rental makes up for all the strings we would have to replace because kids or parents break them.

Side note — we had a bow returned to us from a renter that was literally the most busted thing. The Thomas Fire really dried things out so the hair got very tight even when the bow was technically loose. I guess the girl kept cranking on it trying to get it to tighten and either she or a parent took some pliers to the bow screw. Technically, the bit that you turn to tighten or loosen the bow is called the button and the screw is the long piece with threads that is inside the button/frog. These people busted the button by using pliers, stripped the screw out of the button AND the eyelet it screws into, and cracked the stick from the force of it all.

PSA: If you ever think of using a household tool to solve a problem with your instrument you should probably stop and take it to a professional instead.

- I learned how to take the top off of an instrument. The top meaning the whole piece of wood with the f-holes on it. After taking the top off I learned how to glue the center seam crack, make cleats, reglue the top, mix watercolor and wood stain to match the varnish, and set/cut a bridge.

I also sat down with my boss and had her tell me what she wanted me to do each week and each month. Counting will basically be a monthly thing: strings, bows, cello cases, rosin, anything else I can find to count... Weekly things will be mostly be computer tasks. It is also apparently my job to keep Boss Lady on task so now that this junior high violin has been repaired I am going to have her teach me how to do a sound post patch so I can start fixing that which is a problem with many of our cellos needing repair. I also want to learn how to sharpen blades properly because most of our stuff in the shop is dull and that makes it hard to do things accurately. Tomorrow I am going to force Boss Lady to start on the very broken customer cello that has been sitting downstairs for a bit.

Well, it is 3am and my brain has definitely stopped working so I’m going to stop this post here. I’ll post more info about the colorful rehairs at some point and aim to write a post every Sunday evening about what I’ve done and learned that week so I can keep track of my progress as a “chihuahua doctor.” I work in a cello shop so violins and violas are referred to as “chihuahuas” and sometimes turned down for repairs because Boss Lady hates working on the tiny little things. Being the only violinist/violist in the shop means I not only am in charge of familiarizing myself with our stock so I can help our customers find what they want, but I will eventually become the high strings technician because Boss Lady doesn’t want to do it but we are the only shop for at least 90 miles that is capable of doing this kind of work.

Be back next week with more tales of counting things and learning repair skills.