#and then a bunch of other stuff happens that we may or may not post about eventually

[strifesolution]

refs for an AU me and @irished-lads have been cooking up... there's a lot of little details, but here's the TL;DR:

After being alone on his singleplayer world for years, RT is fully embraced by the sculk, lives in the deep dark mostly full time, and has befriended the warden and sentient sensors down there. He becomes apart of their hivemind.

...Until, he gets "rescued" and taken off server to safety, as well as operated on to remove the sculk. It leaves him very unstable and he's kept under surveillance to study sculk corruption.

[maeamian]

Saw a post claiming that the Biden memes on here are why Joe Biden is generally not getting as much criticism as he probably should for the bad parts of his agenda, and some offense, but it really seems to me like that doesn't pass the sniff test at all and maybe if you believe this you need to go log off and get some outside air.

[woodland-gremlin]

Summoning Your Secret Boyfriend Pt. 3

This post is dedicated @fanfics-or-dragons who wrote part of the post. I will put their part in bold. I would suggest checking them out, they write some really interesting stuff.

First Previous AU Summary

“Because it is!” Constantine screams, “They literally say ‘hi’ by fighting each other. Not to mention even if they don’t try to purposely hurt you they often do due to how fragile we are compared to them. Even their weakest would be a challenge to our heavy hitters!”

Constatine tried to take a deep breath to calm down. The kids were obviously alive so they obviously haven't pissed anything off too badly over there. If anything they might have gained favor with something from there. "Kids you may have not bungled whatever the hell you got up to but I seriously doubt you understand the ramifications that can happen when you form ANY type of relationship with beings so powerful you can't comprehend it."

Constatine was actually feeling like the sheer dred was fading and that he could handle this, and then Superman had to butt in to defend his kid. "The kids obviously have not been keeping us informed of their actions as much as they should have, and that will be being addressed Supernova. But they obviously have not gotten themselves into too much trouble with how you describe the beings from this realm. And you are one to talk about dangerous relationships with more powerful beings. The team has hardly had the type of relationships you tend to favor."

Which would have been annoying enough if it wasn't followed by the robin kid bursting out laughing and falling to the ground. Looking directly at Supernova, who was suddenly looking at the ground and bursting out into more laughter. He doesn’t get paid enough to deal with this let alone teenagers.

While Constantine was reenacting the scene from the office, Supernova and Red Robin worked on controlling their laughter.

“It was from when Batman was stuck in the time stream,” Red Robin stated through his muffled laughs.

All eyes turned to focus on Red Robin the moment those words came out of his mouth. The mood turned from slightly light hearted to sullen in a moment. Most members looked like they were sucking on a lemon, remembering how they called him crazy for thinking that Batman was alive. The look in their eyes as they agreed that he lost his mind in grief was always in the back of his mind. Reminding him to be careful with who he trusted and how small that number now was. It was why he liked rubbing it in their faces that he was right, no matter how childish the action was.

“The time stream,” Red Robin continued getting up from the floor, “is a part of the realms. Batman being there was causing them a bunch of problems so they were pretty happy to hand him over after we fixed the problems his presence caused.”

“Yeah,” Supernova chimed in, “and one of their citizens that was fixing the disturbances in the time stream talked about the rules and how Batman was breaking them while they helped us hold up our part of the deal.”

Which was partly true. It was mostly Danny complaining about how much trouble the Justice League causes him and with mentions of laws he needs to study up for his coronation. Apparently every new King throws out the previous ruler’s laws and makes new ones. He decided he would instead use old laws as a framework and make them fairer. They spent a lot of time with him working on them so they have the best understanding of the laws now that their boyfriend is King.

Even without mentioning that Constantine turned from his calmer state into looking half-dead again.

“So let me get this straight,” the con man said while he rubbed the bridge of his nose, “For fixing the disturbances in the time stream that Batman caused, they returned him?”

“Yeah.” “Basically.”

“And you never thought to mention that to anyone?!”

To be continued . . .

Next

[sabh0]

"If you want me to talk solely about the manga vs anime skk"

I do, actually.

Please.

Pretty please with a cherry on top.

PART 1.

Aight!! I will be just pointing out some differences/stuff that was deleted from the anime.

Under the cut

THE DUNGEON SCENE:

-When they first meet again in the manga, they throw some silly jokes at each other (like Dazai asking Chuuya if he's hiding a bald spot. And Chuuya just taking his hat off to show him he's, in fact, not balding)

-In the manga when Chuuya calls Dazai the youngest mafia executive, in his mind Dazai is wearing his ADA clothes but keeps the black coat and the bandaged eye. I think it's a very silly detail

-In the anime, in anger Chuuya actually cuts Dazai's cheek with his knife. In the manga, the moment he starts getting angry he jumps away from Dazai and then throws the knife to the floor, not touching him at all

-Manga Chuuya falls to his knees (basically standing on all 4s), having a lil crisis after realizing Dazai only stayed in the dunegon to meet him. He gets up in a while, just to yet again squat on the floor after Dazai yapps more

-Obviously the pigeon-stand scene: in the manga Dazai is laughing to tears at this, while in the anime he stays silent. (Tho i must say i find it funny that Chuuya gets angry over Dazai not laughing,, like he tried so hard and this guy just :| him)

LOVECRAFT FIGHT:

-This is not about skk but lord yall know that panel where Chuuya ie standing on all these Guild ppl being all like im gonna beat ur ass next. He's just standing normally on the floor in the anime. Aughhhhh this panel is so good aughhhh. Ok anyway back to skk

-When Dazai nullifies John's ability, in the anime Chuuya just kicks Steinbeck from behind. In the manga, skk perform that silly move where Chuuya jumps from behind Dazai. It just shows how even after 4 years of not working with each other, they instantly work together as well as before

-Skk arguing about who's walking next to who like some preschoolers ('dont walk next to me' 'its you who's standing next to me' typa thing) then deciding that they're gonna stay at least 2 metres away from each other

-The manga clearly shows Chuuya's expression when he's talking about 'being happy when Dazai left'. He definitely doesn't look very happy. (In the anime we just get some background drawings)

-Manga Chuuya's lil blush when Dazai compliments his taste in shoes 😭😭

-When Dazai asks for Chuuya's knife, in the manga Chuuya just goes 'oh sure lemme find it' and is actually ready to give him the knife. In the anime? Chuuya doesn't search for the knife, instead he just gets annoyed

-Anime deleted the scene where Dazai talks to Chuuya about recording Kunikida while he was cursed with Q's ability. Chuuya going bruh he also annoys ppl in the agency

-those two idiots calling each other stupid nicknames for half of a page

-Chuuya mentioning keeping a track of women Dazai made cry and threatening him with sending them Dazai's address????

-Dazai telling Chuuya that his intelligence will be consumed by his hat (im currently looking at my polish version of the manga so the translation may be a bit off but anyway)

-Before activating Corruption, they yet again call each other a bunch of stupid nicknames (ahah consider this a silly form of goodbye if anything happens)

-Remember my post about Dazai keeping his eyes on Chuuya at all times during Corruption in the manga? In the anime he looks either at John or at Lovecraft, no puppy eyed loser

-Just a mention that in the manga we see Chuuya sleeping while he's sitting, he doesn't flop passed out to the ground (until later)

Well i will stop there for now bc it's past midnight and umm this is gonna be long af if i continue with the rest so,, i will add the differences in the next skk interactions tomorrow or something muah

[mousedetective]

URGENT! Please Help A Homeless, Disabled & Mostly Queer Family Get Ready For Housing By Helping With Paying For Much-Needed Loans!

PAYPAL | AMAZON WISHLIST | KOFI | GOFUNDME

VENMO: @penaltywaltz | CASHAPP: $afteriwake23 | ZELLE: DM me for email address

4/29/24 - New Post

So some stuff has happened, some of the loans I listed before have been paid, and I missed a few things, so I'm making a new post!

So, we still haven't heard about Section 8, and while I'm grateful for the shelter housing and feeding us, there's been some pretty toxic activity on my floor and I'm at my wit's end. I'm not sleeping well, I have constant headaches from grinding my teeth, and my blood pressure (which is already high and I'm already on meds for it) keeps being high when I get it checked. So we need to get housing with or without the Section 8 voucher as soon as possible.

Now, I have a list of low-income apartments all over North County. While not ideal, we have also heard of a complex of studio apartments available for $1400 which give preferential treatment to shelter occupants. But the problem is that I not only have a bunch of payday loans to pay, but I also have a payment on a two-month loan, a five-month loan, a six-month loan, and a year-long loan that eat up my entire income until I at least pay off the first three. My mom only gets $1300 and my daughter isn't on disability yet. So we can't even afford the studio until October and we'll have been kicked out of the shelter long before then.

I can probably cover the remaining payday loans and this month's payment for the two-month loan and still pay for the storage units. But I need to pay off whatever I can on the other loans, and the longer I wait the more interest that compiles. So I need a lot more than I was asking for before and I need it quickly to cover at least all of this month's payments while I work on paying off the totals of the bigger loans.

This is the list of payments I need to make as it stands now:

$300 for my loan from Ace Cash Express (due by May 2nd)

$300 for my mom's loan from Ace Cash Express (due May 2nd)

$408 for my loan payment from Ascend Loans (due May 3rd)

$277 for my loan payment from Greenline Loans (due May 3rd)

$177 for my loan payment from Green Arrow Loans (due May 3rd)

$148 for my loan payment to Possible Loans (due May 3rd)

$148 for my mom's loan payment to Possible Loans (due May 3rd)

$321.80 for my mom's loan from Moneylion (due by May 15th)

$285 for my Moneytree loan (due by May 25th)

$285 for my mom's Moneytree loan (due by May 26th)

I can't make partial payments on any of these loans except the Moneylion loans my mom has. I need the full amount for the payment to pay it off early, and for the four non-payday loans, I can't make an early payment but if I can cover the payments in my bank account with donations I'm good.

The Ascend loan was for $1,000. The Greenline loan was for $500. The Green Arrow loan was for $400. The Possible loans are $300 each, coming out as two payments of $148 (one this May, one in June) per loan. So I'm going to set two goals: covering all of the above payments and then covering the bigger loans as a whole throughout the month of May.

I can't take much more of the toxicity at the shelter at the moment, though I have hopes some of it will subside if the most toxic resident on my floor leaves this week like he's threatening to, but yeah. We just need to get all this paid off and get into housing of our own, even if it's just a studio for now. I'm including the $35 I got from a GFM towards the current totals because I spent all the rest of the money I had and I still haven't gotten that donation in my account yet.

TOTAL GOAL: $47/$4850

IMMEDIATE GOAL: $47/$2650

Goal has been met! However, the car is acting up, so we have to take it to our mechanic tomorrow. I may still need some help.

[yukipri]

Some thoughts on Cara

So some of you may have heard about Cara, the new platform that a lot of artists are trying out. It's been around for a while, but there's been a recent huge surge of new users, myself among them. Thought I'd type up a lil thing on my initial thoughts.

First, what is Cara?

From their About Cara page:

Cara is a social media and portfolio platform for artists. With the widespread use of generative AI, we decided to build a place that filters out generative AI images so that people who want to find authentic creatives and artwork can do so easily. Many platforms currently accept AI art when it’s not ethical, while others have promised “no AI forever” policies without consideration for the scenario where adoption of such technologies may happen at the workplace in the coming years. The future of creative industries requires nuanced understanding and support to help artists and companies connect and work together. We want to bridge the gap and build a platform that we would enjoy using as creatives ourselves. Our stance on AI: ・We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation. ・In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily.

Should note that Cara is independently funded, and is made by a core group of artists and engineers and is even collaborating with the Glaze project. It's very much a platform by artists, for artists!

Should also mention that in being a platform for artists, it's more a gallery first, with social media functionalities on the side. The info below will hopefully explain how that works.

Next, my actual initial thoughts using it, and things that set it apart from other platforms I've used:

1) When you post, you can choose to check the portfolio option, or to NOT check it. This is fantastic because it means I can have just my art organized in my gallery, but I can still post random stuff like photos of my cats and it won't clutter things. You can also just ramble/text post and it won't affect the gallery view!

2) You can adjust your crop preview for your images. Such a simple thing, yet so darn nice.

3) When you check that "Add to portfolio," you get a bunch of additional optional fields: Title, Field/Medium, Project Type, Category Tags, and Software Used. It's nice that you can put all this info into organized fields that don't take up text space.

4) Speaking of text, 5000 character limit is niiiiice. If you want to talk, you can.

5) Two separate feeds, a "For You" algorithmic one, and "Following." The "Following" actually appears to be full chronological timeline of just folks you follow (like Tumblr). Amazing.

6) Now usually, "For You" being set to home/default kinda pisses me off because generally I like curating my own experience, but not here, for this handy reason: if you tap the gear symbol, you can ADJUST your algorithm feed!

So you can choose what you see still!!! AMAZING. And, again, you still have your Following timeline too.

7) To repeat the stuff at the top of this post, its creation and intent as a place by artists, for artists. Hopefully you can also see from the points above that it's been designed with artists in mind.

8) No GenAI images!!!! There's a pop up that says it's not allowed, and apparently there's some sort of detector thing too. Not sure how reliable the latter is, but so far, it's just been a breath of fresh air, being able to scroll and see human art art and art!

To be clear, Cara's not perfect and is currently pretty laggy, and you can get errors while posting (so far, I've had more success on desktop than the mobile app), but that's understandable, given the small team. They'll need time to scale. For me though, it's a fair tradeoff for a platform that actually cares about artists.

Currently it also doesn't allow NSFW, not sure if that'll change given app store rules.

As mentioned above, they're independently funded, which means the team is currently paying for Cara itself. They have a kofi set up for folks who want to chip in, but it's optional. Here's the link to the tweet from one of the founders:

And a reminder that no matter that the platform itself isn't selling our data to GenAI, it can still be scraped by third parties. Protect your work with Glaze and Nightshade!

Anyway, I'm still figuring stuff out and have only been on Cara a few days, but I feel hopeful, and I think they're off to a good start.

I hope this post has been informative!

Lastly, here's my own Cara if you want to come say hi! Not sure at all if I'll be active on there, but if you're an artist like me who is keeping an eye out for hopefully nice communities, check it out!

[alexissara]

Recruiting Minthara Without Doing A War Crime - BG3

Opening Disclaimer: I do not know every variable, I am sharing what I did to recruit Minthara in BG3 since basically every guide in the internet is wrong and says you must do a war crime to recruit MInthara. You will lose out on the Minthara post battle sex scene and she remains mutually exclusive with Halsin you either have her or him but she can be obtained as a party member and even has exclusive voiced dialogue for Karlache and Wyll whom many say you are also locked out of to recruit her. Also this is totally intentional and accounted for but in my personal run I am getting some bugs, idk if it's an everyone issue or a me issue the game is still very new.

To Attack The Grove or to Kill Everyone In The Goblin Camp, that is the question, one that needs not an answer. You can do quests in both places, talk to Minthara, and more and still walk away from this fight.

All you need to do is simply progress the plot ignoring these two binary options. You'll need to ensure Minthara does not know the location of The Druid Grove so for me the way I did it was I rescued Sazza then killed her in the goblin camp before she could rat out the location and turn on me right before she would have walked me over to MInthara. It triggered a small fight but I destroyed the drums they played to trigger an alarm and have everyone fight me meaning I only had to kill four Goblins or so. I went to talk to Minthara and told her I had no clue where the druid grove or her item were but i'd totally look into it. I grabbed everything I wanted from the Goblin camp and before that did all of the Tiefling kid side quests except stealing the artifact in The Druid grove, upgraded Karlache's infernal engines, looked around everywhere I could. I did not at any point meet or talk to Halsin.

Then from there I simply went to the Underdark, you may be be able to take the Gith path instead, idk I didn't do it but I personally went to The Underdark by way of Feather Falling in the Phase Spider Monarch's layer down into it. From there I found some slavers, killed them and stole their boat. I sailed away to a forge where more slavers were living, I helped them save a true soul, helped the true soul kill them and then killed The True Soul. With that I was on my marry way and entered act 2. This I believe triggers time to have progressed in the game and everything will have gone into motion. I wanted to be sure though that I had done everything correctly so I headed to Moon Rise towers as fast as I can. I did some fights, got to the tower and found Minathara getting yelled at by her boss and thrown into a prison. In the prison two women are trying to wipe her mind. I killed all the guards before trying to help her out in the prisons area and freed some other prisoners. Stole a bunch of stuff then went to the girl herself. I then killed the people trying to brainwash her after talking to them for a little, walked out with Minthara, the guards at multiple times were like "why the fuck do you have Minthara" I smooth talk my way out of each situation, we leave moonrise and I tell her she can stay in our camp. From there she is a party member.

The game suggests you don't bring Minthara back into Moonrise Towers with you, I have got some light glitches on my own run when going to areas that are before you can normally recruit minthara and going to camp sometimes she spawns over at The Goblin camp where you first meet her. The Goblins seem to be basically fine so what happened with the tiefling and druids. Well the tieflings were forced to leave the druid grove but they were gonna do that anyway and the same quests are triggered as if you didn't do that as far as I undertand. I have met one of the tieflings already in act two and they were not mad at me for not helping the grove. The grove however did do the ritual and is no longer accessible. I will update this when I enter Baulder's Gate if I find out I like idk caused the death of a bunch of characters for not siding with either but I don't think I cased any deaths at all, I think I spared the most lives, the most peaceful bitch.

I want to end of the note that there is more to Minthara than Girlboss, Gaslight, Gatekeep. She for narrative reasons is a fun character to have. She is cold for sure but I think the game does a pretty good job justifying it and you can see right away glimmers of her warming up. In terms of a party member her kit is interesting, she starts with tadepoles already in her head so if you were totally avoiding them like me you'll be able to see a few of the powers in action given you have no option to remove them from her.

[sageistri]

Jimin had a solo era where he had 10 days of mostly local promo except for Jimmy Fallon for his 6 song EP (1 b-side + 1 title track) in Mar 2023 + 1 collab (with Kodak and Jvke) in the F&F movie franchise in May 2023 + 1 collab with Taeyang of Big Bang in Jan 2023 with accompanying mvs for both collabs + 1 fansong released on christmas week 2023 with 30 hours of notice and recycled footage for its mv + 1 documentary released on weverse in Oct 2023.

JK had a solo era where immediately after hiatus he released left & right in June 2022 with Charlie Puth who's pretty famous in his own right, a world cup song in Nov 2022 and performed solo in the opening ceremony which was watched by 1.5 billion viewers. He then proceeded to release Seven in July 2023 with latto who's also pretty damn famous in the west with Grammy winning producers and an accompanying mv with Han So Hee. Seven is perhaps the most payola'd kpop song of all time - I can't even list it all down without making this ask huge but suffice to say that with all the ads and playlisting on several platforms including tth from day 1 and some help from spotify to keep all his combined versions together instead of splitting them and probably a tiktok heating deal - seven managed to stay on top of global for weeks and netted a bunch of records.

However moving on, JK performs at good morning america, is supposed to perform at the mtv emas (gets cancelled) and announces his next single 3D with Jack Harlow at Global Citizen Fest at NY releasing in Sep 2023. He also has a collab too much with kid laroi and central cee in Oct 2023 with an accompanying mv. After that we're gearing up for his all English album release in Nov 2023 with a 11 track album. He has features from major lazer and dj snake and songs composed and produced by the likes of Diplo, Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes. He goes on to perform snty at Jimmy Fallon, Times Square and iHeartRadio live. While none of his songs post seven are as heavily payola'd, they're still very well promoted. In Dec 2023, he releases a remix of SNTY with usher with an accompanying mv. He also features in hots in single I wonder in March 2024. Finally he's released a fan song never let go for festa in June 2024 which is a fansong but has a bunch of benefits usually seen for digital singles but no MV.

Obviously I haven't mentioned everything like their ambassadorships, their single bad decisions with benny blanco (mostly because I forgot about it), smaller promo like suchwita, JK's radio interviews, his visualisers, Jimin's Korean shows, either of their mnet performances, their myriad of tiktoks, their dance performances on youtube, JK's week-long station head parties or accompanying Yoongi on the D-Day tour. Plus as I said I can't mention the full length and breadth of JK's promo compared to Jimin in smaller aspects like number of remixes / remix albums or cd stock because this'll go on forever. And of course this is only the status as of today. We know pjm2 is coming as is probably a documentary for JK and their travel show together. Though I've probably missed out some things for both, I think I've covered the main points of both the solo eras.

There's a bunch of stuff happening here. For one JK's solo era is spaced out very well regardless of who else among BTS is releasing. While other members are clustered in specific times to avoid overlap, JK manages to have the most well spaced out solo era sometimes to the detriment of a member whose promo he might be encroaching on (debatable but I think it's true). The world cup gig which undoubtedly went to BTS being co-opted as JK's solo has never sit right with me but whatever. People can delude themselves about how in demand JK is but the truth is Latto, Jack Harlow and others probably got very well paid for collabing with JK and were certainly approached by Hybe / SB projects rather than the other way around. Same goes for them putting the full force of their marketing department in netting all those performances in the US plus awards. The new jeans controversy gave some insight into how Hybe can use their leverage to net spons, awards and performances when they want to. The fact that most of the collaborators JK had are good buddies with 🛴 isnt lost on any of us. JK's almost exclusive focus on the western market with all English songs is also noteworthy. I haven't even mentioned Jimin's sabotages because I can see how it's debatable but certainly JK's team at Hybe / SB projects were at the least way more careful handling his releases than whoever the hell is running things for Jimin at Hybe even if you don't want to acknowledge the sabotage he went through or the sheer disrespect of having his album release cut off by another members. Also not going into the bs with the delay in Jimin's RIAA certification just so that JK could get that first kpop soloist title or the insanity of Jimin's billboard sales filtering versus JK's premptive itunes preorder for seven before the official announcement of the BB rules change and helpful midweek sales updates that seven had.

After all this, it's amazing that JK's main point of comparison is Jimin. The fact that jjks and armys still feel this compulsive need to compare JK with Jimin after he releases something inspite of JK's peers supposedly being Taylor Swift now (their words not mine) speaks to both how JK was unable to capitalize on his heavy marketing and records versus how much Jimin was able to achieve with Face and Like Crazy.

JK managing to get the most likes on tiktok, staying on charts after heavy playlisting, becoming the darling of kpop stans - notoriously known for being visual stans and extremely fickle, and getting a bunch of kpop awards at the end of 2023 and probably 2024, having the most name recognition among all the members, still needing most of his streams for SNTY to come from Thailand, having album retail sales equal almost the same as Jimin inspite of the huge difference in gross album sales - are these really worthy accomplishments after this extremely long list of moves he's made? Jungkook was very popular to start out with and has always been the darling of armys - to the extent that he managed to avoid getting boycotted inspite of being associated and working with a bunch of zionists for golden. Apart from his new kpop fans, did he manage to net new fans during his solo era though? Or are his main fans still the armys he started out with in the first place from his time in BTS? Is this what anons in your asks think we're supposed to believe is impact?

Impact is what happened after BTS released Dynamite and Butter. A breakout star or single is what Baby was once upon a time for Justin Bieber or Espresso is to Sabrina Carpenter today. You get gp fans when you release good music like Olivia Rodrigo or Billie Eilish. You get critical acclaim when your albums have overarching themes that were carefully constructed and thought out like Beyonces albums. Your solo fanbase becomes more dedicated when you share parts of yourself in your music like Taylor Swift does.

When you make an album with care and dedication, then even when your label doesn't give a damn about you or actively tries to suppress you, your song can still chart more than a year later with your solo fanbase working dedicatedly towards you. That might not be a PCA, but it's a damn sight more valuable imo.

Sorry for how long this got. I just kept remembering more and more stuff to include...

Wow... This is such a perfectly summarized version of the major points and opinions we've all had since jimin's debut... I love it, this is probably the best ask and best post related to this whole thing i have ever read.

It is good for pjms who still ask certain questions about stuff we already talked about and I can never find the exact post where we already talked about it so I'll pin it.

[agarthanguide]

Very much love your take on the new looks for Orym and Ashton! I saw a bit of your post about how Liam and Tal give feedback... would you be willing to share any information about how the back-and-forth process works between you and the actors as you work on their stuff? (I just love hearing HOW the awesome happens, not just the end results.)

Yeah okay. Lemme think, here. Alright let's so this as a numbered list-

1- Actor sends description of character. This is pretty broadly interpreted, in my experience. It's something between a brief paragraph, an annotated pdf, and multiple pinterest boards.

2- I send back a Pitch. This has taken multiple forms in the past, but it's generally settled into a few pages, that kinda go- a- Poses and Vibe Sketches- This includes little portraits, attitude poses, a couple sketches showing extreme dynamism or movement. I try to suggest outfits and weapons or accessories, here, but I don't spend a lot of time fleshing it out. b- Outfit Poses- usually on a turnaround or one fairly lowkey pose. I try to include 3 or 4 serious attempts at outfits and maybe a couple of backs, if it's important. c- Color- I usually just pick an outfit at random and try to give it a few different palettes. If the actor is absolutely sure what the palette is, or if it's a character I've worked with before, I might just make one palette and briefly color each of the outfit sketches from b in that palette d- Accessories, Weapons, Other Important Stuff- if the character is carrying around like a book or a bird or a really specific weapon, I try to address that in its own space, though sketches for all of those things may exist on other pages. This has been known to be very pretty or a bit boring.

3- There is some form of back and forth between me and the actors (and a producer, who are all lovely and don't step in on creative things but are always working against a schedule and need to know how things are going. I just want to be clear that every producer at CR is a secret angel who eats deadlines and shits magic and every one of them totally Gets It. They are all One Of Us). The back and forth is always individual and based on the actor but it can be- a- Actor picks from menu, usually via complex "circling" system (also all sketches are numbered, so they can just ref numbers). b- Actor sort of picks from menu, while moderating and adding further references. c- Actor just sends a bunch more shit and I narrow stuff down based upon what they seem to be getting at.

4- There's this bit of finding what the pose is gonna be, marking in all the necessary accessories, getting that last email about adding a scar, can we add a necklace? etc. What you are left with is something that the Producers call "pre-final." If it hasn't already been with the modelers and painters this whole time, this is when the modelers and painters get the design and start their magic.

5- I go away into a cave for a time period of quiet reflection with my Gods. I refer to this period as "rendering." I cannot be reached by the reason of man and spend a lot of time bitching to my friends while I try to figure out why shading a cape is suddenly the most difficult thing I've ever dealt with in my life.

6- Done!

[dnalt-d2]

(Long post time, talking about Phil and Tubbo today, no Creation theory here yet but SOON)

Okay so I've been seeing a lot of people pissed that Phil didn't take Tubbo's death seriously and how we was handling Creation and like

Can you really blame him??

For starters, Tubbo is like one of THE most unserious people on the server. The guy will interrupt the most serious lore moments with countless jokes like his life depends on it and everyone knows this about him. And they usually laugh WITH him

So when he says stuff like "Oh yeah I've only got one life btw" in THE most joking tone ever, can you really blame people for thinking it's a joke??

(And yes I know that he does have serious lore reasons for making jokes like this, that HE knows aren't really jokes. But if they're presented as jokes, then yeah, people will read them as jokes)

Hell, even Chayanne said just now that he thought it was a joke too and he was the MAIN ONE playing along with it this whole time

I don't imagine acting depressed to a bunch of kids is gonna do much to cheer them up anyway, so yeah Phil's jokes may not have been well-timed, but I really doubt he was making them with any bad intent. Maybe he was just trying to cheer them up in his own way idk. Either way, he was definitely taking it very seriously when he found out it wasn't a joke, trying REALLY hard to figure out what to do to help bring back Tubbo

(As for the adoption thing, I think he was mostly talking about how Chayanne is acting like he's adopted her?? Even Creation told Chayanne to take care of Sunny so)

But people are taking this way too seriously, especially considering it's about THE most unserious guy on the server

Also the fact that Tubbo was in Phil's chat a lot today, laughing and commenting, which means he probably thought this shit was HILARIOUS. He was even making jokes at the end, saying "Ah shit sorry I fucked up your eggs KEKW" He's still making jokes!! So please start taking his jokes as jokes, at least a little bit. I can understand being annoyed, but people are way too serious about it

(AND ALSO OF COURSE PHIL WAS ACTING DEFENSIVE AGAINST CREATION AT FIRST. EVERY TIME SOMEONE WEIRD SHOWS UP TO HIM, THEY'RE ALMOST ALWAYS A THREAT. DON'T FORGET THAT THE LAST TIME SOMEONE SHOWED UP TO HIM, IT WAS THE EYE GUYS LOOKING FOR LUFFY. AND WE KNOW HOW THAT WENT. OF COURSE HE'S PARANOID ABOUT WEIRD-ASS LOOKING STRANGERS SHOWING UP OUT OF NOWHERE AND BEING CRYPTIC ABOUT THE EGGS)

Just please calm down, everyone. We've got enough negativity going on in the community right now. It's okay to be frustrated, but outright insulting the creators is not the way to express it, and I doubt it's what the other creators would want either. The fact that Tubbo is choosing to have Phil be directly involved in his lore means that he WANTS Phil involved. So please respect that, at least

(Sorry for the negativity again, it's just getting really exhausting seeing everything happening all at once right now. Just take a breath or something, please, I'm BEGGING)

[hogwartslegacypics]

HL2 Discussion Post

Figured it would be fun to make a little post about the sequel and say what I’m looking forward to/hope to see from it, and everyone else can reblog or comment with what they hope to see!

DIRECT SEQUEL!! This is the most important one to me. I want to continue with the same storyline and the same characters.

ROMANCE! I feel like they will implement this just because of how much everyone has been asking for it. Not even just romance, it would be cool to have friendship meters as well so we can see if someone is just an acquaintance all the way to a close friend.

DECISIONS THAT MATTER! I know we technically can make decisions in this game, but they don’t change anything except a few lines of dialogue. I want actual impact. I want our decisions to change what can happen, or change our friendship/relationship with the characters.

MORE CLASSES! I honestly wouldn’t mind if they had us repeat activities in classes for the same class (like if we got another potions class and again had to go through the same motions to brew a potion), because realistically speaking we would be going to the same class multiple times and doing basically the same things.

DEMENTORS! I’d love to learn the patronus charm and be able to use it on them. Maybe it could be like a POA situation where a prisoner escaped and dementors are around the grounds? I know there’s a shit ton of patronuses and it’s a lot of work to animate them, so I wouldn’t even be upset if there were only like 10 to pick from.

QUIDDITCH! This may not end up being a thing because of the other Quidditch game coming out, but I still hope it is. Even if we ourselves can’t play it, it would still be a cool little immersive activity to sit on the stands and be able to watch a Quidditch game play out. Also beater!Sebastian

DIAGON ALLEY! Going back as sixth years, we need to get our supplies so it’s a perfect way include it in the game! Imagine going with Seb, Ominis, Poppy, and Natty in the beginning of the game! Walking around and getting our supplies just like we did in the Hogsmeade quest.

CHRISTMAS AND/OR HALLOWEEN EVENTS! Imagine if we could actually celebrate those holidays in the game! Exchanging gifts with our friends (going to Hogsmeade to shop for them, and maybe we have a choice of like 10ish items and we have to pick one for each friend we think they’d like best, and they have a different reaction programmed for each gift we can give them, and it could impact how much the friendship/relationship meter goes up), and they give us a gift based on our play style or level of closeness to them?

PETS!! We know pets were supposed to be in this game so I feel like they might make the cut the second time around. Just imagine having your own cat or owl! So cute!

COMPANIONS! And I mean without needing a mod to make it happen!

RESOLUTION FOR THE SEBASTIAN STORYLINE! Ok so I feel like this one is a given assuming it’ll be a direct sequel but I still wanted to mention it. I hope we can cure Anne somehow, whether it be actually us doing it or finding something with Sebastian. Also see how Sebastian is dealing with the murder, and coping without Anne, and hopefully seeing them get along again. Anne coming back to Hogwarts too if she’s cured!

LET US SIT AND SLEEP! Especially in the Great Hall! Doesn’t need to be a frequent thing, but maybe like once a season we have a little scene with our MC sitting in there having dinner with friends in their house? NPCs need to sleep at night too!

NO MORE MERLIN TRIALS!! I never wanna do a Merlin Trial ever again. I hate the process of having to do a bunch of repetitive, tedious tasks just to unlock stuff.

MORE LOCATIONS! I don’t mean the Highlands, I mean London, the Ministry of Magic, Diagon Alley, etc. Would be cool to get to visit each of these locations at least once.

HOUSE POINTS! Give us a house points system where we can have points given or taken away from us! I guess this could kind of double as a morality system too?

[vasito-de-leche]

Do you have any specific queer headcannons of r1999 characters if so which ones and why?

I wrote a bunch of stuff for this post but then tumblr fucked me up and reloaded without saving it so here we are..... rewriting it all over again ... OAUGH. usually I default to seeing everyone as Vaguely Bisexual and Not Cis until stated otherwise, but you asked for specifics so here we go!

6 is aromantic or demiromantic.

On one hand, it's because I love projecting on my faves. On the other hand, it's because he genuinely doesn't feel like the type of person to be interested in relationships. But this isn't something that's tied to any potential disgust, repulsion or even trauma related to his Revelation and struggle against fate -- to me, 6 just doesn't feel romantic attraction. At the very least, nothing strong enough to consider pursuing. It's not in his priorities. I really dislike this specific thing that fandoms do in which every single character who is introverted, or who happens to be alone/isolated (either by chance or by choice) is secretly lonely, touch starved, pining and desperate for attention and romantic love. It feels like such a huge disrespect for their equally important platonic or familial relationships. 6 already holds a lot of love for his own community and his childhood friends, a type of affection that is shown in his subtle and unique ways. I like it when his character focuses on those aspects instead!

Mesmer Jr. is aromantic and asexual.

In her case, she's the opposite of 6. Mesmer Jr.'s trauma and OCD is much too intense for her to even consider the idea of an emotional or physical bond with anyone. She's disgusted at the idea of touching others so casually, and she's afraid at the possibility of allowing a person (someone she logically cannot have any control over) into her life because what if they throw her off her schedule? What if they mess every meticulous thing she's planned for herself and her mental stability? What if she loses her grip? Yes, it's plausible that she may find a partner who works perfectly with the way she needs things to be, and yes, you can headcanon that she heals and her OCD becomes "manageable" enough to have a stable relationship, but personally? I just like it when characters don't get to have stereotypical happy endings in which everything gets better through love and friendship and support -- like, yeah everyone loves to see their faves happy and all but eh... It's a bit of projection on my part! Some people don't get to heal and do all the things their disabilities prevented them from doing, even if we're given all this support and love. Some of us just have to find ways around these things, anything that works for us that makes our lives easier.

Sweetheart is queer but has a complex relationship with love. In a somewhat similar vein, Blonney has gone through every single letter of the LGTBQ+ community.

I tried my best to explain my thoughts on Sweetheart but at this point she deserves her own post because it's honestly a LOT, this single part was just too long so I cut it out entirely. Just trust me when I say she's queer and has a very complex relationship with love. In Blonney's case, we discussed the possibility of her being written as comphet and it got me to think a little about her. I see Blonney as the type of girl who presents as a straight bimbo, following the themes of her character and all, but who has constant crisis after crisis in the privacy of her bedroom, the only place she's allowed to be more than just a blondie. This constant journey questioning her orientations and gender happens entirely in her head and in private. I like to think that she just has these long monologues in her head. Sure, she's identified as straight her whole life, but maybe bisexual works better because there was that one girl she kept meeting under the bleachers. Oh, but maybe she's a lesbian, since all her boyfriends are just huge disappointments and none of them ever make her truly happy. Oh, but maybe that's just because she has bad taste in men, there was that one guy in class who keeps making her laugh after all. Ahh, this would be so much easier if she were a guy, her femininity is mostly performative after all. Ah, but she actually really loves pink and fashion... Nonbinary then? No, she's not the type to pick something so vague, it's one or the other. Oh, how about both? Genderfluid! Etc etc. If you ask her about how she identifies, she'll simply brush you off with a "What's it to you? That's none of your business, creep!" and move on, but this is something very personal to her. So far, she knows she likes being femme presenting and that she likes Jessica!

Eagle is a trans girl.

Have you guys seen those posts going around tumblr about how important it is that trans women exist because they fight for their own womanhood and girlhood in a world that constantly looks down upon feminine things and all women as a whole? Yeah. Yeah. Eagle being a scout that fights so hard to prove herself, the feelings of not belonging into the Boy Scouts and seeing how the Girl Scouts are created eventually, a space for her. The fact that she visits her father's grave so that he can see her grow up.

Kaalaa Baunaa, Oliver Fog, Medicine Pocket and Melania are probably bisexual, but they're super busy with work so they don't have time to address that.

Self-explanatory <3 I do like to think that Kaalaa and Medpoc are more chill about it, Kaalaa because she's a grown ass woman who is very mature, and Medpoc because they genuinely give no fucking shits about dating in general, so who cares about confirming whether they're bisexual or not. Oliver Fog is a little more flustered at the idea of exploring his orientation and whatnot, but it's tolerable. BUT MELANIA? I LOVE to think that she's FULLY aware that the MOMENT she acknowledges her bisexuality, she will have a crisis and then what will she do? She has 3 papers due next week and a heist this weekend, she can't possibly sit there wondering about liking girls! She's got things to do!

And here's the extra round of HCs that don't require that much text to explain or that lean towards being more silly!

Eternity has literally outlived the concept of gender. She/They royalty.

37 has QRPs instead. It Just Works. No one but herself and her partners understand the dynamics, though. As god intended <3

APPLe is a raging bisexual and has been spotted in many gay bars. Regulus is also bisexual.

The world would've been a better place if Bette was a butch lesbian.

Balloon Party and An-An Lee play with gender like its playdough.

Baby Blue is Not Cis and she's Not Straight either because none of that shit matters to her anymore, since she's been disconnected from reality and society for so long. She also doesn't care about labelling herself.

Diggers is trans, but no one can figure out which way exactly. It doesn't help that he refuses to clarify either. The same thing happens with John Titor, except she's very vocal about being a transwoman.

Bunny Bunny is bisexual but she hasn't realized this yet. In similar fashion, Horropedia is bisexual but he just forgets about it sometimes.

Druvis III as a trans woman goes hand in hand with Forget Me Not as a gay man. This is why they're both super divorced.

Leilani is pansexual because she prefers the colors of that specific flag over the bisexual one. Spathodea is pansexual because the personal distinction between pansexuality and bisexuality matters to her.

Tennant is bisexual because she can scam and seduce more people that way.

The Fool is nonbinary. Mf should've been born in the 2020's, I just KNOW he would've loved mirrorgender.

Zima is in the closet not out of shame but out of safety. Just in case.

Sotheby assumes that every girl in the world likes girls. So far no one has been able to prove her wrong because all she does is interact with other sapphic girls.

Pavia is nonbinary out of spite. But I also love transguy Pavia HCs so so so much, give that guy boobs, he would never get top surgery <3

Vertin is nonbinary too but she doesn't care about people knowing about it. She does, however, make the effort to be a little androgynous, as a treat for herself.

Madam Z and Katz absolutely had a Situationship going on during university. Katz was bicurious and Madam Z helped her experiment. Now the Situationship is between Madam Z and Constantine, the latter using Madam Z as a rebound after fumbling her relationship with Vertin's mother <- the machinations in my brain will astonish you.

TTT is genderfluid by virtue of being a picture on a TV, so I like to think she can just shift her appearance. In similar fashion, gender means nothing to Alien T and Voyager because they're aliens.

I specifically love the idea of all of the 1.2 gang joking about how Tooth Fairy is their token straight adult figure -- she's actually bi and asexual, but likes to keep that to herself so the kids can make their little jokes and have fun.

Enigma is gay and homophobic because his self-loathing is just that strong.

Turns out that the push Click needed to explore his own sexuality was getting killed on the battlefield, so now he's free to be gay. perhaps bicurious.

[tkingfisher]

Following the monk seals snorting eels post, I’d said that it wouldn’t be the tenth weirdest thing I’d heard about mammals. And then someone in the tags asked what the ten weirdest WOULD be.

Okay, I’ll confess there was some hyperbole there, because I didn’t have ten off the top of my head, but here’s three that strike me as A Thing:

CW: Animal injury and death! Also it’s disgusting! Read at own risk!

We all mostly know about hyena genitals by now, which is pretty wild in and of itself, but it gets weirder. Given that they have to give birth through the pseudo-penis, you’d think they’d be better at it, but the umbilical cord isn’t as long as the lady hyena’s junk, AND there’s a weird elbow turn, so cubs often suffocate on the way out. This may explain why they’re born so goddamn angry that siblings have been observed fighting *while still inside the amniotic sac.*

(I once peed while surrounded by hyenas. The African bush is not an easy place for a woman with a small bladder.)

(That’s not a weird mammal fact, except insomuch as I am a weird mammal.)

Lemurs will take giant millipedes, nip them to make them secrete toxins, then rub the millipede on their fur as insect repellent. But the millipede toxins also make them High As Fuck and cause them to salivate, so you end up with a bunch of stoned, drooling lemurs passing around a millipede that probably had other stuff to do today, dammit.

Ambergris is a weird waxy mass that stinks like the devil eating sardines in hell, and so of course is used in perfume. (It mellows.) For centuries nobody actually knew where it came from, just that it would sometimes wash up on shore. Eventually it was discovered in the guts of sperm whales and some clever soul figured out that it involved the indigestible bits of squid, like beaks. “Aha!” said humanity, “it must be whale vomit!”

Humanity, alas, was unduly optimistic. See, the whales regurgitate most of the squid beaks normally—they’ve got four stomachs, like a ruminant, and since they can’t chew, the first stomach is super tough and muscular to crush their food and to resist the assault of the squid, which is often still alive at this point—and so if they barfed up the beaks, there would be no ambergris. But sometimes they swallow the beaks instead and it lodges in the softer bits of the whale intestines. And then more beaks get hung up on it and more and basically it’s like a whale bezoar, and since this is of course moderately painful, the body secrete a mucusy goo to cover the sharp edges so it doesn’t poke the soft bits, the way an oyster coats sand to make a pearl.

Except, of course, it’s a whale intestine, not an oyster, and instead of a grain of sand, it’s like the world’s most disgusting Katamari. (Okay, technically it’s called a coprolith, aka “shit rock” but it’s just sitting there hooking any indigestible bits that get hung up on it, as well as a bunch of whale poop, and getting bigger and bigger, so I stand by my simile, dammit.)

Now, if you get a whale who keeps swallowing their beaks, over time, the coprolith gets so big that it creates an intestinal blockage. And at that point, one of two things happens. Either the sheer force of liquid whale poo trying to come out dislodges the coprolith and the whale takes the sort of crap that songs are written about…

…or the whale’s gut explodes. (Well, ruptures.) And the whale expires, bloats, pops, goes through the process of whale fall (which is amazing in and of itself) and the ambergris floats to the surface and marinates in seawater for a decade or so, casts up on a beach, and gets sold for a whopping $10k a pound.

Interestingly enough, making ambergris is a very rare condition, found in less than 5% of male sperm whales. (It only happens in males. Don’t ask me why.) Hunting sperm whales for ambergris would be ludicrously inefficient, and it’s classed as a “found” object under international treaties, which means that you can sell it if you find it cast up on a beach, unless you’re in the US, which classes it as a by-product of an endangered species, although enforcement is usually a little more concerned with the people smuggling live parrots in their socks and not with your disgusting lump of found whale poop.

So, yeah. Mammals. We’re a thing.

[comradekatara]

sry if u already answered this, but like thoughts on gaang + the girls trying weed for the first time + how they would do it 🙈

the first time suki tries weed she is ten years old. a bunch of the older girls are getting high together, and when none of them are looking she steals their bong. they find her on the bathroom floor hacking up a lung. but once she finally stops coughing she’s like woah this rules…

you may be wondering why i’m listing suki first when i don’t usually do that for these kinds of posts, but since suki is of course the one who introduces every other member of the gaang to weed, it feels only appropriate.

suki gets high with sokka like a week into the start of their relationship. sokka is pretty disappointed tbh. he thought maybe weed would solve all his problems and unlock the secrets to the universe, but in actuality it just made his head hurt. alas

suki then tries to get high with zuko, who flat out refuses. he doesn't like suki, and he's afraid that she can tell (she can) and is in fact trying to poison him. so sokka has to suffer the intolerable Weed Headache all over again so that he can get high with zuko, because he wouldn't feel safe otherwise. "why doesn't he just not get zuko high in the first place?" you may be asking. well it's because suki begged sokka to get zuko high upon her insistence that it would be really funny. and it is.

katara also wants to try weed but suki is like "not until you're older" (she may sound like a massive hypocrite here, but she knows that sokka would kill her if he ever found out that she gave DRUGS to his BABY SISTER!!!!) and even when katara is like "but you're barely older than i am and you've clearly been doing this forever???" suki refuses to budge. eventually, after one million years, katara finally gets to try a hit from suki's special stash, and she's like "yeah, wow, this is good weed. wayyy better than iroh's tbh." to which sokka and suki are both like "excuse me WHAT???!?!?!?!?!"

aang wants in on suki hotboxing the bathroom and is just like "why does it smell like gyatso in here?" to which suki's like "your mentor, the air nomad legend, monk gyatso, was a pothead?" and aang's like "well i don't know about that, but your room smells exactly like the stuff he'd give us to calm us down whenever we got too hyper." at which point suki just shrugs and passes her joint.

iroh is actually the first person to give toph weed. like with that unpleasant katara revelation, suki feels immensely betrayed. so does sokka, for some reason, even though he doesn't even smoke weed. toph thinks it's just fine tbh, but then she discovers that getting azula high is actually the funniest thing ever, and she starts smoking way more, specifically with azula.

azula and toph get high together pretty frequently. sometimes (whenever he catches wind that this is happening) sokka joins them just to chaperone (he's scared of all the damage they might cause with any sort of common sense filter turned all the way off) and also to witness it (it's truly a sight to behold). they mostly just bitch about their terrible families, but their insults are really funny, and they make each other crack up. they have fun together.

suki is really proud of the fact that she's the first person to ever give mai weed. she's like, "wait..... did iroh never...." and mai's just like, "you really think i'd let that old creep push drugs around me?" weed does for mai exactly what sokka had hoped it would. for once in her life she's not hyper vigilant while also being bored out of her mind, but actually kind of chill and happy. sokka is so fucking jealous.

ty lee refuses to try weed, or any kind of mind-altering substances whatsoever. she won't even drink a single glass of wine at dinner. she's convinced that the moment she lets her guard down someone will finally find one of her weaknesses (a real one, not just the ones she advertises on purpose to deflect from her true vulnerabilities) and exploit it. suki, on the other hand, doesn't understand how someone so hot and cool could also be so straightedge. she's constantly trying to get mai to convince ty lee to try weed, but mai is just like, "sorry but this is just how she is, there's no changing her." eventually, years down the line, ty lee is finally sufficiently worn down and agrees to try weed once with suki and mai, but that they must first shut all the doors and close the blinds and promise to never let her out of their sight. it goes...fine? she's never tempted to try it again, but at least now she knows, and that's that.

bonus: no one knows this, but it wasn't actually gyatso who gave aang his first joint. it was bumi.

[inkyvendingmachine]

Mobs and Stalkers Season 4, Episode 3

💀 Call of Cthulhu: Haunted Hijinx Masterpost 💀 Call of Cthulhu Season Four Masterpost (Coming Soon)

Warning: This campaign is an edited version of  a Call of Cthulhu scenario from the Tales of the Crescent City book. While a lot has been changed, there IS spoilers for it throughout these posts.

Who is this guy and why is he following us? Why are we following him?? Why are we interreacting with mobs again??? How does this keep happening to us?????

Art Credit: @inkdemonapologist : sketching + inking @inkyvendingmachine : concept + colouring

IT IS THE NEXT MORNING. EVERYONE WAKES UP AND NOBODY (who slept over at JDS) IS MISSING, OR DEAD.

THAT’S GREAT.

Bendy even slept on top of Jack during their slumber party, trying to give the same comfort as an Beans might give. It might’ve been weird otherwise, but after all the hectic nonsense going on and not being able to feel safe going home, in this case it was welcome.

Joey slept on his research notes. 

But it is a work day (at least it’s friday,,,) so the cots are shuffled away before people start coming in and questioning the group about the spontaneous night in. And foreseeing this might be a future issue if stuff goes haywire and they have to hide out at JDS more, Joey takes the holiday opportunity to get everyone out of the office for a while.  Enjoy New Years Eve off, go party! Also New Years, to recover from the party. And also… the day AFTER New Years, to do all the things you meant to do on New Years but you were recovering from the party!! Look how nice Joey Drew is, giving so many thoughtful days off. Nobody come back until Thursday or else.

While everyone else is getting some work done, Joey checks in on Norman who didn’t even call in. He seems fine, but he’s still adamant about staying at home. Okay you do you.

(Joey sends Susie to hang out with Norman, as his inside woman and also because the Norman vs. Susie perception of the world will be nice when more things just. C h a n g e.)

The team has two big leads for trying to find Alan Leroy: Chandler Kreel and Amanda Cornish. Both of them are apparently good friends with him, and with addresses in hand, they split up to try and track down the danged clarinetist that they probably need to get to.

Jack and Sammy drive downtown to a bunch of law offices with apartments above, searching for Amanda. They’re able to get to her door pretty easily, but Amanda isn’t the one who answers. Her sister does! Luckily Jack’s there to run introductions because otherwise Sam’s scowling face probably would have just been turned away at that point. Sitting in the waiting room, Amanda soon joins them and admits that the last time she saw Alan was at a christmas party they went to… but seems to be kind of standoffish about any other information.

After some more charming by Jack, it’s revealed that she thinks he might be in trouble with the mob, and uh, Sammy… looking the way he does……. Maybe made her think they were the mob?? But with confirmation that, no, they super aren’t the mob and in fact are trying to find Alan before he possibly gets in trouble with a mob or two, she’s a bit more relaxed. Something weird is happening, because Alan really doesn’t seem like the type to be in trouble with the mob. And the last weird thing she remembers happening with Alan was… well, he got freaked out over some book she gave him for the holidays!

What’s so scary about a book? It was a pretty interesting read, here she’ll go grab it for ya!!!

Sammy is looking away Sammy is looking away Sammy refuses to look in any direction near Amanda as she, indeed, brings out a little black book with the Yellow Sign on it. 

Jack immediately feels it wiggle into his head. But at least he’s able to wrap up the conversation with her in a… semi-normal manner? While Sammy’s eyes, darting anywhere else, find a photo on the mantelpiece that features Alan Leroy and friends, hanging out at a party scrawled with the note: Skinner Place, May, 1934… and Sammy is CERTAIN he recognises the man.

Oddly, his clarinet in the photo is missing one of the extensions he'd expect for a professional player...…….

Joey and Henry take the brown Mercedes to check out Chandler Kreel, who luckily lives in a nice part of the city that feels like a Mercedes might be somewhat… less… easily noticeable. 

He answers the door but seems extremely nervous, like Amanda was. Leroy is great! So good at clarinet you wouldn’t even know he was down a finger!! Also totally a swell guy who shouldn’t be in any trouble so why are you heeerree?? 

Through Joey’s uh, storytelling skills, and Henry's good calming daditude, they get the idea he’s a loyal friend who wants to make sure he’s helping his buddy and not handing over information to the mob or any other parties that might be after Alan… Which means, he probably has information on where Alan is. Since it’d be suspicious to just plain ask, Joey goes the heartfelt “please reach out to us we’re here to help,” direction and hands off contact information. 

While returning to the car, Henry and Joey find someone oogling over it… and this time it’s not some girl trying to declare herself Henry’s lifelong love, but the pale-faced man in a black suit that’s been seen everywhere recently. Their conversation is short, as the man mentions looking for a “wandering player” that needs to be returned to his place, and he walks off after some vague threats about what happens if you are in his way. Or if you lie to him, don’t do that either.

His mask-like face doesn’t move while communicating any of this.

Henry tells Joey once they’re alone that he thinks that guy is Fowler. He has the same nervous fidget Fowler used to…

Jack and Sammy go to stop by Norman’s on the way back, and find that… his place is apparently a block down from where it used to be!! 

GREAT!!!!

When he answers the door and is immediately and frantically questioned about this, he takes a look around and confirms, shrugging and simply stating “it seems like I’ve moved.” 

He invites them in for a housewarming party.

Susie and Norman have been playing cards. There’s no updates on Avadon. Jack and Sammy update them about the few tidbits of information they’ve found, and Norman finds a piece of junk mail to hand off to Jack before they head out. Since… the address on there seems to have changed too, so if Norman ends up moving again, well… they’ll know where he is!

The four of them meet back up at JDS to exchange information about Alan Leroy, and also eject the yellow sign from Jack’s head asap. Sammy's still worked up about this clarinetist's missing E flat extension, but Joey dismisses this as old news -- obviously; he's missing a finger. Keep up, Sammy. Peter has kind of also met back up with them, leaving a message on Joey’s phone talking about sightings of the masked man going through some magic shops in the city. And the fact that despite all his digging, he really can’t find anything about where this Leroy guy came from…

Joey tries to call Peter back by memory and it doesn’t work. We’re not going to talk about the fact that Joey has Peter’s number memorized. Pulling out his phone book, indeed, Peter’s number on paper has changed and that one DOES work. 

Before they get much of a conversation going at all, Joey hangs up on Peter to try something. Instead of dialing a number in, or looking one up… he just wills himself to dial a number in to call Alan Leroy.

It kiiiindaaa works.

Joey manages to call Alan Leroy’s phone, but the same servant picks up and insists that Alan hasn’t returned home. Joey hangs up on him. 

Peter gets a call back. Okay so there’s those Magic Shops he wants to check out, and also he has a lead on the gangster guy who shot the gun during the charity event. To keep Peter from doing nonsense alone and probably being abducted to Carcosa, Jack and Joey decide to go with him to investigate magic shops, while Sammy and Henry uneasily go to the bar to find info on the gangster guy, once Sammy is reassured that this won’t be like last time and all he has to do is eavesdrop. This surely will only go well.

At the bar, Henry casually brings up the charity dinner shooting while trying to fish for information, and maybe he talks a little too much, because suddenly all eyes are on him. What! Sammy wasn’t doing any talking so Henry was just trying to… do….what Joey would do? Henry trying to do what Joey would do has never gone wrong before…

Sammy and Henry are in a mob car, only kind of against their will. They are escorted to a restaurant, where they meet the extremely average looking Italian mob boss, Johnny Nero, who wants to know what they know about this pale masked man. At first it seems like they’ve made another great terrible get-yourselves-kidnapped-by-a-mob mistake, but the boss seems surprisingly rattled, and after some grilling from Sammy, Nero admits that… he’s seen some stuff that shouldn’t be…

… and Sammy hits the nail on the head when he asks, have you seen the y͟el͜l͘ow sig̵n?

Henry steps in and decides to offer to help him… to get him on our side, and understand that we are not a threat to him, we’re simply trying to remove the same thing from the city. After some pressure, Nero is convinced, and goes through the extremely normal process of Henry writing eldritch symbols with his own blood to remove the sign from him. After the nightmare has been yeeted from his brain, Nero turns out to be a wee bit nicer: he gives us all the info he has, but insists that if we find whatever the pallid mask guy is looking for, to give it to him so he can use it to get the guy gone.

And then he kicks them out without even offering them a ride back to their car at the bar.

Wrow.

What an extremely average super not classy even mob boss. 

That’s gonna get you a terrible review on yellowp my dude.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, it’s time for

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*SHOPPING✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*~~!!

The first store is called Cool Jewel Skull. It has cool jewels and skulls. Surely that’s exactly what it says in the book, because it’s extremely not a legit shop, and Jack spends the entire walk to the next shop dunking on it to keep Joey's spirits up. They did find out that not just the Phantom but Leroy had been through it though!

The next stop is an apothecary, and it does seem a lot more actually occult stuff. The guy recognizes a photo of Leroy and confirms he came through looking for protective charms, but when he went to buy one, he dropped it upon touching it and immediately left?? Then the Pallid Mask guy came through later… Not much info on him, except that he was creepy, but we already knew that. The interesting thing is though, the charm that Leroy dropped? It has the same symbol on it that Henry uses to expel the yellow sign from people’s heads. So… weird that he didn’t take it with him…. And seemed allergic to it as well.

The three leave and try to go to the last shop on the list… but the address is missing from the paper now. Like… completely gone. Joey gets the great idea to try his “I'm going to will myself there” trick and closes his eyes, imagining a route to this store he’d never been to before, and giving Jack directions to drive there. Suddenly Jack slams on the brakes and manages to keep from completely smashing into… a man in a suit… and a pale mask…. There’s definitely a dent in the bumper now though, because Jack wasn’t that quick, and apparently a moving car is not more solid than this thing is. 

Joey immediately starts cursing him out, but he insists that Joey called him?? before going around to the side of the car and opening the back seat door… where Peter is sitting. Not having this AT ALL, Joey tries to beat him out of the car with his cane, only to be thrown back against the dashboard. 

With Jack frozen in terror and Peter having an oddly difficult time moving to even the other side of the car away from this pale jerk, Joey immediately decides he cAN AND WILL RIP THIS ASSHOLE OUT OF EXISTENCE. 

And… somehow, it works.

It sure tears something into him alright, and manages to boot him out of the car, giving enough time for Joey to demand Jack step on it. And Jack, panic stricken, somehow manages to follow the command and at least not run into anything else as they drive off into the night – But just as he’s hit the gas pedal, he does feel the cold of both glass shards and … something else, as  he gets touched by a hand smashing through the window in the last second. 

Luckily Jack bought the first car on the market in the US that had safety glass so he’s not going to be fucked up much from this in the physical department, except for his wallet maybe.

Mentally though? Memories flood in… 

memories of a time he visited a dream with his eyes closed, and almost had his head removed.

After they’re at a safe distance, a shaken Peter manages to pull the door closed. 

And thank them.

[meanbossart]

Asks about VaM, art advice, and miscellaneous stuffs

HI! Real quick please refrain from referring to Sad Sack as S/S for the uh... Obviously reasons LOL We call it "sads" for short!

If what you're asking for are recommendations for a website to host that kind of thing, Neocities, Twitter, Itchio and as you mentioned AO3 are all perfectly good options! Patreon too (depending on how gnarly you're planning on getting) but I'd suggest keeping that as a secondary host option because I don't think it lends itself super well for getting your work circulating. I believe Bluesky allows that kind of thing too, but I'm not too sure since I don't use it.

Now, If you're asking about public reaction rather than guidelines, anywhere you go you might find people that don't jive with the work you do 🤷 just be upfront about the type of content you're making right off the bat to avoid having anyone stumble upon it by accident to the best of your abilities, otherwise, I wouldn't worry too much. I know we're constantly exposed to examples of overwhelming harassment and "dogpilling" happening to others but... Truth be told, most of us won't ever get to the size/internet level of fame where we experience that. I think the threat is a little bit... Overstated, nowadays. Not to mention that most of the time people are getting harassment for things that have nothing to do with their work, and rather relating to their behavior and attitudes. Play smart, be responsible, and be honest! Whatever comes next is in god's hands LOL

Thank you for the ask! Not sure I was of much help 😅 but frankly when you're just starting out it's best to focus on getting the work done first and just throwing it out there, wherever it may be. You can worry about technicalities like that later!

I GOT YOU MAN the full sketch is now up on my patreon!

YES AND YES WHETHER IT BE STORIES OR ART OF DU DROW AND YOUR CHARACTERS SLAMMING PINTS TOGETHER BE MY GUEST PLEASE

I love seeing everyone's take on my weirdo so much, anything is honestly welcomed!

AW DUDE thank you so much! Especially for suffering through the mammoth of a story that ANE turned into - writing has never been my strongest point so I'm always shocked to hear from people that enjoy it 🥲

About the booze question, honestly I'm not picky at all, I usually go by price and by that I mean whatever is cheapest LOL but I prefer a dry white as far as types go.

You only have to pay for it once! You get a code that unlocks the software and all of it's features and you're free to cancel your subscription after that. At some point the code might change or there might be an update that requires subscribing again - but that seems like a very rare occurrence so I wouldn't worry about it.

OH NO I HAVE DEFINITELY TRACED MY OWN REFERENCE BEFORE, but not entire poses! When something is challenging I'll make a point of drawing it out the usual way.

I can remember a couple of instances from Nick and mine's comic where I traced pictures I took of myself, just as a time saving measure. Again like I said in the post, there are several ways to employ tracing your own material that is perfectly acceptable. I have also traced bare-bones 3D backgrounds that I made for the same reasons.

I know you specifically asked about tracing when something's complicated, but I still wanted to be upfront to demystify the practice under different circumstances. The rule of thumb is to never use it when you know it would be inhibiting your skill development!

Happy to hear you wanted to pick up the skill! I definitely understand the urge too LOL since playing BG3 and becoming so invested in the stories and characters my art has improved a ton, simply from forcing me out of my usual style and making me want to capture different moods and scenarios - finding something you're passionate to draw is, frankly a great damn start.

I replied to a bunch of asks asking for pointers and advice a while back, one of the questions was very similar to yours and I still stand behind the advice I gave then. Hopefully you can find something helpful here! https://meanbossart.tumblr.com/post/740543514692173824/some-art-advice-asks-ive-been-meaning-to-reply

HMMM I don't usually think of myself as the best teacher/tutorial guy, but funnily enough I can think of a few things about this topic that I could elaborate on lol. If I do that in the near future, I'll put it up on my patreon (for free as with everything else.)

If there are any specific things about it that you (and anyone else who would be interested in it, for that matter) find challenging and would like for me to focus on, let me know!

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That's all for now folks, and as usual thank you so much to everyone who's left a nice compliment, word of encouragement or funny tidbit in my inbox as well! I can't reply to you all individually, but I see and read all the messages I get c:

HAVE A LOVELY REST OF YOUR WEEK