#because only recently i actually started..using it

[kimberlychapman]

And mask the fuck up.

My fics are taking longer to put out because I have long covid. And after two years with it when I was starting to learn enough coping strategies about it, I got infected again (I'm still shielding but both times my kids - who mask at school but are kids - brought it home). I got reset back to zero. It's been another year and only recently was I able to get back into writing again.

A major reason so much is being enshittified lately is because humans have spent five years glibly passing around a pathogen known to cause massive vascular damage and ME/CFS. And whole legions of people don't even realise they have this damage. They think they're just exhausted more than they used to be.

I get actual post-exertional malaise now from writing too much. That is a real thing. With LC/ME/CFS, you can make yourself sick by thinking too much.

You want more fics? Stop spreading the pathogen. Stop being ableist fucks just because you like brunching around other people's lung expulsions.

Mask the fuck up. Be intersectional. Protect yourself and the people around you.

That's how you support the free art you crave.

“We’re in a fanfic drought” Tell the writers you like their work.

“All Tumblr ever does is write oneshots now” Tell the writers that you’d love to see them write longer things.

“Nobody updates their fics anymore” Tell the writers you love the fic and want to see more of it.

Tell the writers.

[mylovesstuffs]

OT13 reaction to your siblings call them “oppa” instead of brother-in-law

Request: OT13’s reaction to their wife’s siblings calling them “(older) brother” [or oppa in korean] instead of “brother-in-law” THANK YOU Have a nice night/day/afternoon

A/N: Lol, this reminded me of how I call my cousin’s spouses [my sibling isn’t married] ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ instead of brother-in-law or sister-in-law. I just feel more comfortable calling them that [they're too!]. I think I’m the only one in the family who does this, so it feels like an ‘us’ thing, yk? I recently started switching to calling my sister-in-law actually sister-in-law because, heh, I felt a bit immature still calling her ‘sister’ Though I slip up sometimes, but it’s okay!!

A/N #2: First of all, I'm not Korean... Second, I added Joshua in two categories because I'm not sure which one he might be 💀 He's unpredictable

Oh loves it a little too much — Dokyeom, Mingyu, Seungkwan

Becomes a literal golden retriever the moment he hears your sibling say, “Oppa, can you pass me the kimchi?” His whole face lights up like a Christmas tree. “Of course! Do you want rice too?” It doesn’t matter if they’re older or younger [I mean obviously is younger in this scenario but can be nam-dongsaeng if older, instead of oppa/hyung], the word ’oppa’ hits a soft spot for him. Makes him feel officially part of the family and he lives for that. He’ll even brag to you after: “They called me oppa. That means they really like me, right? 🥺” And if it never happens again, he’ll still talk about the one time it did because it was a core memory to him.

Finds it adorable but will tease you and them about it — Jeonghan, Jun, Hoshi

Smirks the first time it happens. Stares at your sibling, then at you. “Oppa?? Since when?” Loves it, actually, but he's going to act way too smug about it. “Tell your sister [his wife; you, y/n] I want coffee too. Oppa’s tired” with a smirk. He uses it as leverage to win family points, but deep down he’s really touched. He thinks it’s sweet that they feel that close to him.

Mildly... panics (?) but tries not to make it obvious — Joshua (1), Wonwoo, Woozi, Vernon

First reaction is: 🧍‍♂️

Did they just call me... oppa?? He wasn’t prepared. He thought he was signing up to be a brother-in-law with formal respect and maybe distant nods, but definitely not a new big brother. Might whisper ask to you later, “am I... supposed to answer to that?” Still, he won’t complain. He’ll go with it, kind of flustered but too polite to correct anyone. Inside though, he’s still buffering like: “I married you...??? no??” But if they keep calling him that for months? He gets used to it and one day accidentally answers to them even though they're calling someone else.

Kind of offended and wants to remind them he MARRIED you — Seungcheol, Joshua (2), Minghao, Dino

Cue the 👁️👄👁️ stare. “I’m sorry. What did you just call me?” He does not hate your siblings. He just thought he’d get ‘brother-in-law,’ status or at the very least be called 형부 [hyungbu/brother-in-law]. Not this casual nonsense ‘oppa’ or ‘brooo’ energy like he’s just another guy in the house. He’ll let it slide once, but he definitely leans in during dinner like, “you do remember I married your sister, right?“ [might as well add, “... Legally. With papers.” if he's feeling it]. But later, when you ask if he’s really mad: “No. I just wanted the tag. Is that so wrong?” [He’s not mad. He just wanted to feel ✨ distinguished ✨ for a second. It's not even respect, but the fact he married you 😂]

[seraphinitegames]

Hi! I hope you're doing well.

I wanted to thank you for sharing the Wayhaven series with us-- I started reading it in high school, after getting my mom to buy the first book as a birthday gift, and even though I've only been able to buy the other two books recently (pros of having regular income now!), I've been obsessed with the series ever since that birthday night. I actually recently recommended the series to a coworker, and I have a feeling she'll love the M route lol

Anyway, I did have a silly question to ask about UB and the MC but I still wanted to thank you-- especially as someone whose native tongue is not English; I could speak English at the time my mom bought Book 1, but the game (and other CoG I played after that) really helped me build a better vocabulary, and learn how to write better.

Anyway. :>

I had a silly question about UB and the MC: basically, I tend to have MCs who are very curious and eager to learn about the supernatural world, especially the Echo world-- they're also usually well-versed in languages.

When I read the Book 4 demo (still positively insane about it, btw), I saw a few Echolian words were mentioned, and imagined a funny moment with my MCs trying real hard to pronounce the words correctly, and even use them in sentences. Kinda like this (book 4 demo spoilers!):

MC: Ostin released the-- Ee-yooh-lees-aid-- You-leesed-- Y'oolees'aid-- Y'ulis'ed... :)

(Cue MC looking to N and F with a "Did I pronounce it correctly" smile lol Clearly the whole case isn't as important as linguistics to MC 😭)

Anyway!! I was just wondering how UB (and Rebecca lol) would react to an MC like that, lol? And I'm so sorry for the length of this ask, as you can see I can't not ramble. 😭😭

Thanks again for the books!!

Aah, what an amazing message! I'm so happy to know that you're enjoying the series! I can't wait until Book 4 is out so I can chat about all the major dramatic and exciting stuff to come (I do love my melodrama, hehe!)

As for your ask, I think N would definitely be helping the MC with pronunciation. Though, interestingly, even N might not be quite so…accurate with it either all the time.

For example, I actually wrote a moment like this in Chapter Five when F and N are discussing something Li-Sar said in Echolian (a moment that will be coming up in the demo the end of this month!)

-

"The direct translation for it would be something such as…." Nate/Nat waves a hand as though attempting to summon the translation from thin air. "'My want', or possibly, 'my need'."

IF ROMANCE NATE/NAT Farah/Felix places a hand on her/his hip with an unusually serious expression tightening her/his features. "Or you could tell them what it actually means without being too worried to admit because you're swept up by[Name]."

Nate/Nat's brows pinch together before he/she spins away.

-

IF NOT ROMANCE NATE/NAT Farah/Felix places a hand on her/his hip with an unusually serious expression tightening her/his features. "Don't sugarcoat what it really means, Natey/Natkins."

Nate/Nat rolls his/her shoulders back before turning away.

---

"Nate/Nat not necessarily wrong. It does directly translate into that, but when in actual use in the actual language, the meaning is closer to 'my possession' or 'my obsession'," Farah/Felix explains with a shake of her/his head. "The creep is basically saying he/she wants to own you."

--

I kind of went off on a tangent for that ask, but I hope this is an ok answer anyway, hehe! :D

Thank you so, so much again for the amazing message! <3

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

there's a lot wrong with the pregnancy plot points - but one of the things it showed to me is that sjm does seem fatigued by the morality standards she established in maf. and i always said that. that, in the end, sjm would only continue to become sloppier with the morals in the series purely because she wasn't trying to be that serious. ultimately - sjm prioritizes drama and shock value. making tamlin an abuser was purely for that intention, she wasn't like...trying to make a statement. but like - it's a heavy topic so of course it ultimately...made a statement. and i truly believe she just rode the coattails of that. it's like literary rage-bait. like - i think that's a much simpler explanation for why we get what we get. like a lot of our analysis are very deep and complex, and i stand by those analysis, but i also believe the immediate reason the pregnancy plot happened is for...plot. that's why it happened. it's shock value, it's 'entertainment' -- and given the success of maf, sjm knows that shock value sells.

what i mean is: though the narrative does hate tamlin -- it also doesn't hate him...that much. sjm wants everyone to like rhysand - or to perceive him in the way she wants him to be. tamlin is just a means to that end. like does sjm actually hate tamlin...no. i would even take it a step far and say she wrote him in a way that -- if she wanted to -- he could be redeemed by the standards of the story. like -- there's a lot of contingency writing with tamlin. he's abusive, but the story also writes a lot of caveats to that abusive behavior. it was something i noticed in war, where, the story started to walk-back the seriousness of tamlin's actions in a weird way. like - the pendulum has shifted so far with tamlin in the ten years since these books came out.

sjm isn't interested in maintaining the rhys's virtuousness - she doesn't care. she wants rhys to be that 'roar-stay-away-from-her-alphahole.' like - ultimately the fantasy is that rhys is a 'alphahole' (think about the definition sjm presents - and think about who that statement actually applies to). the alphahole conversation isn't trying to demean men like tamlin, beron, etc., it's to absolve her mmc's. it's to break the fourth wall, to acknoledge to criticisms of her character without ever having to do so.

we're also in a post-booktok literary environment with ya/na book, in which, the mmc in the books have gotten so progressively abusive, that tamlin (and even rhysand)'s actions seem small in comparision. and this is partly (in my opinion) a consequence of sjm's own writing. what im saying is - maf standards are...outdated. it's why rhys will progressively become worse - sjm has to write to the times. like twilight was considered 'bad' by our standards in 2008 -- and compared to more recent fantasy mmc, even edward and jacob seems like angels. the reality is that people have become desensitized to a lot of the weird behaviors in this genre - and its interesting that sjm now has to contend with a different literary landscape that she is the progenitor of: the idea that intention negates action. and now - every dark-haired NA male protag has the same MO, with progressively worsening behavior. and again - since i believe that sjm writes for shock value - she will swing the where the literary space is.

and that's where i've been getting with sjm; she knows that this ragebait sells, hence why sf ends with the introduction of a whole other 'ship' with no tangible lead-up. i think sjm cares more about how popular these books are than she cares for the integrity of her character, themes, and story. that one chapter generated enough talking points for three years. and now - she's radio silent. that tactic alone tells me that some of these points might have some merit. idk - you can just tell sjm just wants to say f this. i also think nesta character is a very good example of what i am trying to say. sjm wants us to think of nesta as abusive, in a vacuum. for the plot, but the story...doesn't take it seriously. it doesn't care. we're supposed to hate the sisters when feyre does, and love them when feyre does. like - sjm doesn't want us to actually take the abuse between nesta and feyre seriously...she just wants us to like feyre. nesta (and elain) were just means to that end. and once the story feels confident that we all love feyre, or rhysand, it begins to walk back the seriousness. sjm wasn't trying to craft what familial abuse might do to some one, it just wanted us to sympathize with feyre at that moment.

[reakain]

This is an interesting article on a... sort of within-subjects study investigating how using LLMs impacts someone's brain while writing an essay. While it's easy for me to cheer and want to just share it, I, uh, can't in good conscience just go "wooo, look!"

So, I'm going to talk about their methods, and the nature of arxiv.

To start: Arxiv is not a peer-reviewed journal. This means researchers can post research papers to arxiv without them being vetted by other researchers. This is general is not a bad thing, and normally articles are posted to arxiv while also being submitted to an actual peer-reviewed venue. In those instances, there is normally something mentioning that it's a pre-print or currently under review. This mentions neither of these things. (But! Looking it up on google scholar shows it is labeled as a pre-print, so it is theoretically under review)

Now, that said, in this paper's favor are the key faculty on the paper. Normally the main advisor on the work (especially in engineering fields) is the last author on the paper. In this case Dr Pattie Maes, who is a very well-known researcher at MIT. Looking up her recent research work, though, this paper does seem a smidge outside of expertise. This is not unusual, but when it comes to more medical-focused fields, checking the other authors to see if they're collaborating with reasonable domain experts is a good idea. Normally those experts are also going to be near the back of the author list. (Basically, the first author does the bulk of the work, and is normally a graduate student, and the more senior support expertise are at the back of the paper. Everyone in the middle helped to varying degrees, normally) That said, that doesn't appear to be the case here. (I cannot find information on Iris Braunstein)

Moving on from the investigation of the publishing venue and the authors, let's look at the work itself. Primarily: let's look at its methods.

They had 54 participants complete the study, broken up into three groups of 18. Each group had different resources available for writing their essays. The first group could only use LLMs. The second group could use any website or search engine but no LLMs (and LLM search support turned off). The third group could use only their brain (mimicking an in-person essay exam). Everyone completed three essay writing sessions, with an optional bonus fourth session.

Now, there are two interesting things to note about session 4. One, it only had 18 participants total. Two, the participants in session 4 were reassigned to a different group to complete session 4. (Aka, if you were in the LLM group, you would instead be assigned to use only your brain, or have search term access.) In Session 4 you also were offered to write on one of the topics you had already written about in a different session. Now, the group swap looks to be: if you were in brain only, then you were placed in LLM. If you were in either LLM or web search, you were placed in brain only. The paper does not explain it's reasoning for these swap pieces, and the specific group swap is not discussed in the paper, and only shown in a single figure outlining the groups (using not colorblind friendly color outlines for the groups)

Now, the overall survey results for the groups are interesting, because they asked some neat questions (percieved ownership of the work, ask them to quote their own essay, etc) but, obviously, for some of the questions, the responses changed for the follow-on sessions because participants knew what the questions would be.

Now, some things that are missing:

While the paper discusses all three groups being present for session 4, the results only show participants having come from the LLM group or the brain-only group. This inconsistency is not addressed

There is never any discussion about how much time passed between participant sessions. (Aka, was it consistent? Was there a longer delay between session 3 and session 4?)

For session 4, the paper mentions running statistical tests, but there was never once any discussion about how many participants would be necessary for statistical significance, and these statistical tests were not run in other sections of the results.

Between sections they flip-flop on if they are calling the brain group as still the brain group, or now the LLM group for session 4. They do this all over the place, which is... Honestly a big concern related to how well they kept their data groups straight.

That said, they did a lot of neat analysis! And explored interesting results. (I would absolutely not have let them submit the paper without first correcting the lack of cohesion/consistency in the writing and the various figure/typographical issues, though)

The biggest "hmmmm" point for me related to these results is the fact that 90+% of their key findings hinge on the 18 participants from session 4, with very little engagement or linking of the sessions. (I'm also a little sad they didn't investigate or track how much of the allotted 20 minutes for essay writing each participant actually took. That seems like a really easy slam dunk thing to track and include.)

Lastly, as an academic researcher trying to read this academic paper: I fucking hated trying to read this paper. It was jumbled as hell, inconsistent in how it described the different groups, unclear in a number of its methods, and the figures were kind of atrocious and difficult to interpret. It can't even keep the ordering consistent when presenting the different data analyses and results, or even when talking about the different groups. If I want to know the "why they did it this way" for their methods, (including relevant related work citations) I have to... Go look for it in the discussion of results. =/

All that to say: I don't actually doubt the core point of their results that LLMs negatively impact cognitive engagement. But I personally don't have anything but anecdotal data to back that up, and their paper does not give me something structured to really give me anything concrete. I do think this paper as currently structured and written is actually doing a huge disservice in how it presents its work and results, that makes it incredibly easy for people to try and point to this to say a whole host of things that the paper itself does not and cannot definitively say. (Their introduction goals and their abstract also don't seem particularly aligned???)

ChatGTP rotting away your brain

[mooblesandsoups]

Tw implications/mentions of self harm/suicide and dissociation

So I rewatched Scott's double life recently just for fun and man so many little things your able to notice that I think are so important.

Like genuinely Scott's characters are typically very self-sacrfical in nature always giving things like lives or supplies away to those he trusts but double life is different...

For later we gotta take a look at C!Scotts pov on the first episode for us to understand him.

C!Scott spent all day desperately looked for his soulmate, asked everyone and even helped many others find their soulmate until it was just him and Cleo. At that point Scott's been wandering the contained world for hours at that point just hoping to find his soulmate to not luck not even once so he comes to the conclusion. "Hey they must not care about me."

So what else do you expect him to do besides trust the one person who's been his side pretty much the entire time and who he considers his best friend at that point. Especially when Cleo suggests becoming a team with just the two of them of course its intriguing to him because his soulmate doesn't care. Even when he finally meets his soulmate for the first time this entire game they just end up laughing at him like he didn't spend long grueling hours looking for her.

Like he didn't matter to them.

Scott takes this as a sign he was actually never wanted in the first place and leaves with Cleo who was already determined to leave. He didn't think Martyn would leave Pearl either bit hey Martyns devotion to Cleo has nothing to do with him other then he's being a bit of a problem.

After that the first thing he gets hit with is being damaged by powdered snow, all for a little fun he eventually find out and for the rest of the series it can be very obvious that Scott does not care about his own well being, he's the one who comes up with the axe crits every morning, he willingly sits in powdered snow whenever Pearl starts hurting him again ignoring his own pain to get revenge, he's now more reckless than we typically know of Scott walking of ledges that might be a bit high, or even letting out a few arsonist tendencies not caring if he gets burned in the flame.

Heck later on in the series Scott says something similar to thus, "when I get to red I'm offing myself"

In comparison to most other life series where Scott's more suicidal tendencies are more related to sacrifices for his allies, DL! Scott is straight up just suicidal no questions asked no thoughts about it.

It really doesn't help when he's constantly being told that his soulmate is "the one" and "maybe it'll get better" over and over again constantly putting the thought in his head that it's his fault for not at least trying with Pearl, oh people fight from time to time I'm sure you'll get better, oh I'm sure she's not THAT bad. They say while laughing as Scott is forced to watch people who don't know anything about his situation but in because they have their perfect soulmate so you must have one too.

He finally snaps when Jimmy is yelling at him saying over and over again how Cleo isn't his REAL soulmate just a phoney one yelling about how he doesn't get a say while threatening to burn something Jimmy loves in front of him. Only like the idea of being soulmates with Cleo instead of Pearl was the only thing keeping Scott from snapping.

Scott snaps because he knows Pearl doesn't care about him so he shouldn't be caring either even if its still obvious there's some lingering care still present it's overshadowed by the thought of "but I don't matter to her so what's the point."

Scott knows Pearl doesn't care to be his friend, he knows Pearl at the end rather be with Tilly rather than him, Scott knows Pearl killed Cleo with no shame or guilt, he knows Pearl doesn't care about him when the first thing she does is hold up a bow to him as he tries to take his life exactly like he promised.

[kozachenko]

Ok so I have gotten very into cookie run recently and have already done some doodles of some of the characters as humans hooraaaaaay I actually have played the game before (and even drew human designs of the characters I liked the most) but left for a while and only got back into it recently.

Artist's Notes;

So not only did I use these quick portrait drawings to get a sense of how I wanted to draw these guys as humans in the future, but I also wanted to mess around with stylization since I wanted to explore some new avenues with my rendering style and even the way I draw shapes. I...also have to catch up on a lot of the story leading up to Beast Yeast since I don't know how much of the Crisipia story I need to know before going into the Beast Yeast storyline. A lot of what I know of the characters after the BTS event (oh yeah I left the game during that time because I was bored of the BTS event) comes from people talking about the game.

So I did the Shadow Milk portrait first and it is probably my favourite one in terms of how I depicted him. For context, I listen to the Japanese dub of the game and had only heard Shadow Milk's English dub VA in clips before (His English VA does a fantastic job by the way, he's so unhinged and portrays the "clown" part of his character perfectly). So, I come back to the game after seeing some animatics on it and wanting to know what I missed and immediately Shadow Milk stood out to me. I am a sucker for jester themed designs, and the abundance of eyes in his hair and just his vibes in general immediately let me know that he would be on track to becoming my new favourite character for a while (I know, it's basic and very new-gen, but trust me he isn't the only one I like a lot, Affogato cookie, Cotton Cookie, Black Rasin cookie, and Black Pearl Cookie were my OG favourites). So since I've only heard his english voice before I decided during my "skip the story to watch later and get rewards to Gacha" to listen in on a bit of the story to hear Shadow Milk's voice just so I know if I've gotten him in the gacha. And so I listen to his JP voice and immediately became inspired. It felt really different to the delivery his English voice had, and it immediately gave me "main villain in a Final Fantasy game" vibes (I haven't played Final Fantasy 6 yet but he reminded me of Kefka since they're both...y'know...clowns...). This also strongly influenced the direction I wanted to go in if I ever wanted to draw Shadow Milk in my style. I approached drawing his face here a bit different to what I usually do, in that I drew the eyes first and then painted the base of the face behind them on a separate layer (by "paint" I mean I just screwed around with some blob shapes before I settle on something that felt anatomically right). Drawing in the rest of the features and the hair was pretty easy enough, I even added in some little clown cheeks because I thought it would fit him, though it was kinda hard getting the white Eye to look right with the way I drew the rest of his face. I added some subtle eye makeup to make him look more dramatic and used a very bright blue for the shading since I thought it fit. The real hell started when I had to render the clown collar....Oh my fucking god I don't know how people do it so easily. I had to look up other people's fanart to try and get even the slightest idea on how I was supposed to even start with it since it's a weird as fuck shape. I eventually made a layer for the "cap" of the neck piece and just drew in the cloth underneath it to give the illusion that it's a full piece of clothing (I need to study clown clothing jesus christ), so uh... try not to look at his collar to closely the rendering on it is so scuffed....I do think I kinda cooked with his soul jam though, rendering gemstones is fun :D ! I also really like how the smaller bits of clothing turned out, I tried out rendering with the dry gouache brush in Clip Studio and it gave the material this nice velvety look with the highlights that I love omg. I really like Shadow Milk as a character too even outside his design. I know I said that I know basically nothing from the BTS event onwards, but from what I've gathered from fanart and discussions, he fascinates me. I love trickster villain type characters and his relationship with Pure Vanilla cookie is also incredibly interesting. I don't enjoy the ship because I think it's "super cute and romantic omg" but I mainly just wanna put them in a room together and see what happens in a controlled lab experiment (again, I really gotta read the story to actually know more of what happens between them but I don't know if I should finish Crisipia first or not).

Next up is Eternal Sugar Cookie, who I drew second and also because her design caught my eye when getting back into the game. I think the newest update is actually really neat, and I love the references to the "Garden of Earthly Delights" as someone who enjoys art history (I still don't know much about art history though lol). I also think the little devil wings and tail hiding in her design also intrigued me as well, as if you know me from my time in the Touhou fandom you'd know that I am a big fan of characters who have good intentions to protect and keep people happy but...maybe go just a tad bit too far in their methods (what I'm saying is she kinda gives me Keiki vibes in terms of her motivations, I still gotta read the story to get more insight but still). I also had a pretty clear direction that I wanted to go with her, that being someone so beautiful that they just seem... really really off. That's kinda the vibe I'm getting from episodes 9 and 10 of Beast Yeast without reading the story as well. For her portrait I gave her them big Ol' shoujo manga eyes with a bunch of sparkles, looking at ball jointed dolls for reference since I thought it would kinda lean her towards the uncanny valley a bit. Her naturally kinda long and weird eye lashes also helped out a ton with this, and I also gave her those funky heart eyebrows that were inspired by those weird heart eyebrows in Gacha Life because I thought those fit (yes I have played it for character design ideas. I also really liked rendering her soul jam, gemstones are so fun to render. I also gave her little elf ears which, admittedly I do wish I could have given Shadow Milk but that's just gonna be something I choose whether or not I wanna add when I draw him later down the line. I just thought they kinda fit Eternal Sugar cookie a lot. WAIT FUCK I AM REALIZING JUST NOW I FORGOT HER LITTLE HALO AHOGE FUCKING HELL- ok sorry I was reminded of it and got distracted, that's also something I need to add when and if I draw her more later on (much like Keiki, Eternal Sugar Cookie also has a small design element that I am most likely gonna keep fucking forgetting woohoo...). I also ran into a struggle with Eternal Sugar Cookie, that being her hair... I don't have too too much experience rendering drill curls like that, so I just kinda winged it (hehehehheheheh) while l looked at a few references online. In the end, I kinda ended up splitting them so it's kinda like slightly looser curls, and they ended up kinda having a similar shape language to wings oddly enough (I think I'm seeing things) so I'm happy with how that turned out. I didn't do too much in terms of clothes, again these are mainly bust up portraits and I wanted to focus on getting some of their vibes across with their faces so I'll focus on clothing when I draw full body versions of them.

And now for Pure Vanilla cookie, who was actually my favourite long before his Beast Yeast episodes. While I do like his English voice actor (he's voiced by the same guy that plays Sasuke, Ben 10, and Mumble from the licensed tie in video game Happy Feet 2 which I played on the DS) I ultimately prefer his Japanese voice...IDK there's just something slightly more natural about his JP voice actor's delivery to me, it's hard to explain. I kinda took both voices into account when doing his drawing because I do think they both have good qualities to them. I took a lot of inspiration from Greek Statues for his more realistic face since it just...felt right. I kinda struggled with making his white eyelashes read correctly and even be visible at all, but I am super happy with the way his lips turned out. I tried out a more painterly style of rendering for this piece as well, keeping a lot of my rendering on the same layer as my base and only merging pieces like the irises and eyebrows when I feel like i have developed them individually enough. For the rendering, I tried out using the pencil brush to make it feel more sketchy in some parts, though I do think I could have gone a bit harder with the values on it. I do like what it adds though, the lip and nose highlights turned out really well. With the hair, I deviated from his design a bit and made it a bit wavier/messy. It fit more with the image I had in my mind and I wanted to try it. I liked it enough to where I literally copy and pasted it to the more simplified version I had of him and just added some more rendering to that as well lol (I did NOT feel like doing realistic hair rendering for light blonde hair that day). Speaking of I'll talk about that next. It's a bit more in my wheelhouse to do more stylized faces in my art and that's because it just appeals to me more visually. I was really tired when doing that version as well, but I kinda mourn the loss of some of the softness of the more realistic version of his face. I do like the rendering I did with the dry brush though. It has a neat spray-painted kind of look to it and I like it a lot. I do wanna keep exploring more semi-realistic styles though, I love the look it has as well and it'll help me simplify faces better since I literally used the realistic face as a base for the stylized face (you can tell I was sleep drawing the PV drawings lol). Also, I know that you technically have more freedom to make the cookie's skin tones whatever colour you want, but I personally prefer sticking to their OG design's colours. I don't have much experience rendering darker skin tones and I commend the game for being so diverse with the skin colours when so many other gacha games stick to the same shades of blinding paper white all the time (looking at you Genshin). I do wish to try drawing non-Eurocentric features a bit more as well, this game is a great catalyst for helping me get out of my comfort zone since it actually has men in it (and I almost never drew men before, these are the consequences of exclusively drawing Touhou Project fanart digitally lol) and characters with a variety of different skin tones. I was really eepy when drawing PV so I just... didn't wanna draw his outfit... I've had struggles with it before and I have an entire Pinterest board of ideas which I have never really done before for fan designs of a character. I also just wanted to focus on skin rendering as well and experimenting with that so don't mind it lol.

Overall, I'm happy with how these little doodles turned out. I do intend on drawing more Cookie Run fanart in the future because I have gotten waaay to into this game now and looking at the lore page on the wiki has been fun. The saddest thing is....out of the three I drew here.... I only have Pure Vanilla and his ancient awakened form.... Shadow Milk and Eternal Sugar Cookie still haven't come home.... I have Burning Spice and Mystic Flour cookie though as well as the rest of the ancients to that's good (I am a VERY stubborn F2P gacha game player, I refuse to spend money on a phone game I can easily delete and lose all progress on). UPDATE: I have both Eternal Sugar Cookie and Shadow Milk now, I finally got Shadow Milk at the 300 pull gift on the fate banner and Eternal Sugar cookie with her soulstones from the Warden of The Heart event yipeeee~

Also, to the people who know me from the Touhou fandom, please don't mind the Cookie Run obsession, if I feel like continuing my Inscryption AU series and feel like drawing fanart again I will.... though I do have a little crossover ship cooking up between the two series' right now....

[saras-almanac]

"It just feels like this entire John storyline is being told in three distinctive parts but they all feel so separated from each other and not necessarily a 3-act structure" can I ask what you mean by this? I hate this character and this story and just don't know what they're doing with it or him

It's more like the three parts of the story we have so far don't fully match up or flow together:

John arrives in the village--absolutely not interested in any relationship with Victoria or Aaron, but constantly badgering Aaron and winding him up to prove that he can, he's arrogant and downright rude and almost hostile at times

John settles into the village with Aaron and Victoria, seemingly flipping a switch from one day to the next about being Victoria's "big brother" and wanting a relationship with Aaron

John is potentially a psychopath or sociopath who has a hero complex and needs to always be the savior and the hero to everyone around him

I'm not saying they can't work together, but they don't seem to, and rather at least one part of things always feels out of place. You could argue that 1 is who John is until he's more comfortable and that's how we get 2, but that doesn't really help explain how we got to 3. And 2 and 3 definitely work together, but 1 is not the way a character who has a savior complex and absolutely needs to be adored and praised would seemingly act. (This is in confines of media, where characters fall into certain patterns and tropes for a reason.) So to me, it feels kind of like they started swerving toward 3 before making a hard turn into 3, without giving us the piece that actually links them all together. At least not that I've seen--and this is for me and my writer brain.

That's what I mean when I say that it feels segmented and separated. There's pieces missing yet, the biggest one being--has John always been this man with a savior complex or has that become a recent development? If it's always been who he was, then I'm not sure why he was acting like 1 at the beginning. Wouldn't a man who is desperate to be a hero absolutely love the idea of moving into a village with a younger sister who already idolizes him, and now he's got an entire village of people to win over. They just need the right little push. And even if he was only sort of a dick to Aaron in some weird playground children thing cause he's got a crush, I could have bought that, but he was so mean to everyone.

Theoretically it could be argued that maybe this hero thing is a more recent thing, after he met and started becoming obsessed with Aaron and/or Vic and/or the village in general--he got stuck dealing with Nate instead of the fire, figured he'd knock Nate out and throw him in the back of his van, run to help the barn fire, come back and be a hero for everyone finding Nate passed out on the side of the road somewhere--only it didn't happen that way and things started spiraling. And now he got a taste for being the hero and he chased it every chance he got--Aaron, Chas, Liam, Anthony. And it's becoming all-consuming especially now that John has to compete for Aaron. But I just don't think that's what they are trying to do and I'm not sure it works either.

It sucks that they didn't do much with this storyline until now because--even being somewhat of a repeated storyline of Belle's domestic abuse in 2024--having us seeing John slowly becoming more and more unhinged (over a longer period of time) might have been more entertaining than watching everyone fawning over him nearly the entire time he's in the village until there's a "shock reveal" that he's behind everything--even if that episode was actually really good. This storyline to me is just both too much and not enough and I honestly am just waiting for the fics to come out as people come back to the show and make John a proper soap villain and give him more depth cause it just is taking too long to get there that it feels a bit boring and stale already...

[sonobeunitsarecool]

This likely has no significant meaning to it.

This is the personalised Pasmo card (used around the Tokyo area; where Yuno lives) that Yuno uses, and we get a full shot of it. It's mostly typical, it doesn't have Pasmo on it because it's Milgram and you can't do that, or something, it's got her name and age and presumably other info on the back but we don't see that. It's a "continuation" because you can re-use the same card by just changing the details on it, and ¥8120 being the pre-paid cost of 6 months' worth of train rides on a card used just for school is fairly accurate. The card no. being six 0's is probably because you can't have a real number shown because it might be someone's actual card number. The あたし<-->あたし part is in place of the pre-selected destinations the user travels between (this card would be used by Yuno exclusively for school commute) and occurs when Yuno is saying あたしはあたし, or "I am me". Fairly standard, and the dates are almost 6 months apart (if the calculators used with the cards use 183 days = 6 months, then it matches perfectly), so assuming that Yuno got the card at the start of the school year (school in Japan starts in early April, to coincide with the cherry blossoms), it does seem less random than at first glance. There is likely no other meaning behind it, since my initial theory (it having something to do with start of pregnancy/how long she was pregnant) is wrong simply because she would have been visibly pregnant at 6 months, and she wouldn't have been starting to contemplate the matter (only recently having it been confirmed by the time she lost the child).

[storkmuffin]

Only My Rose Is a Real Rose To Me

I've said before that Ateez seem to me, the K-tiny who is so isolated that she is only fandom friends with International-Atiny, to be fighting for their lives on the daily within the Korean entertainment context. And recently I've seen something that indicates this must actually at least partially be the experience of the members themselves.

Stanning a Kpop group, especially a minor (no, hear me out) Kpop group from a small company is an exercise in self-hypnosis. I choose to indoctrinate myself into this fandom. There is no reaching out that can be heard through the static and noise of popular culture in general that's done by the band or KQ. Not because they're not trying (though KQ could do better) but they're just too small.

Ateez recently went to Busan, to perform at a Kpop festival. Ateez went last or almost last. And the team right before was NCT someone. NCT has multiple variations and subunits, is an SM team and each of its subunits (Dream, Wish, 127) has more youtube subscribers than Ateez's entire official channel. And apparently what Ateez was faced with was a mass exodus of NCT fans throughout Ateez's set that was so disruptive that HongJoong actually addressed it from the stage.

아이고. 잠깐만. 우리 마지막 곡이 우리 에이티니 참여율이 진짜 높은 곡인데, 우리 에이티니 분들하고 - 사실 이제 다른, 이제 아티스트 분들 팬분들 많이 와 주셨잖아요. 끝까지 보셨으니까, 마지막까지 저희가 어떻게 놀고 어떻게 - 이케 - 보여드릴 수 있는지, 우리 에이티니랑 같이 한번 끝까지 신나게 놀아봤으면 좋겠습니다. 네, 오늘 끝까지 자리해 주셔서 너무너무 감사드리고~

Oh dear, just a moment. Our last song is one that has a huge amount of participation from our Atiny, so with our Atiny - I mean, now, there are so many fans here for other artists here, who've come all this way, right? Since you've watched almost to the end, I'd really like it if you could stay and have a fun, exciting time with us to the finale. We can show you how we have fun, how much fun we have, us and our Atiny. Thank you so very much for staying to the end today

I respect HongJoong so much for knowing what to say at this moment. Wooyoung's posing is also adorable and brave - he's doing a whole You're all leaving even though I'm so cute type deal. I'm not a showbiz person, but I've been a lecturer among a whole day of lecturers for corporate training and such, and if like, everyone sitting in the auditorium started to leave en masse while I was talking I'm not sure how I would have coped, AND those were situations where the audience and I were both forced to do a thing we didn't really want to do!

And to be very clear - the green square light sticks are other fandom (is it NCT? sorry I don't know) so it's not like everyone did this.

Screen captures of the upset K-tiny on X. Some of them are very angry at the NCT fans (and use a derogatory term for that fandom which ... I didn't know that existed??) and others are upset on behalf of HongJoong and the guys.

The thing is, I understand, without condoning, the behavior of the probably very tired NCT or other fandoms, who participated in this day. It looks exhausting to go to any sort of taping or festival for Kpop. Once you've seen your guys, would you stay just out of politeness, for a group you don't know? I know I would, because the thought of walking out of performances is too horrifying for me, but then I've also never gone to a standing-only thing since the only time I went to one and decided never again.

Below is the fulls et of instructions that KQ sends fanclub members for a chance to attend the tapings for their music show performances. It's a hassle and a half. You have a list of physical items you must already own and be willing to bring. They will check. You have to own a Lightiny and you have to have the right physical CD or other item, at minimum. You have to be a member of the fanclub, fill out the survey in time, and show up well ahead of the actual taping to wait outdoors with no seating or break for bathroom or whatever (I mean you can, but I think you lose your place in line). You have to hand over all kinds of private information - your name and your birthday and your mobile phone number, to KQ, whose data security protocols are unknown.

I assume SM, YG and JYP require similar protocols and inflict similar indignities on their hardcore fans. This part really annoys me. Having your fans at the special tapings is actually really necessary. It gives the band something to be inspired by and react to. It adds ambiance to the footage. What these fans are doing is providing a really essential service but they're treated like potential criminals by the entertainment company that needs them.

In any case, if this is how NCT fans are treated, which they probably are, then I do sort of understand the rudeness of having had enough, when you saw your guys and your bias, to just go, Well good luck to you Ateez, whoever you are, but I'm done for the day, bye.

Yelling about others trampling on my rose when I know I might do the same to others might be too hypocritical, but I'm upset, anyway.

[dark-lord-of-awesomeness]

So is Stan and Stanley pretty much the same person in your doodle au? Also I really want to see Ford’s reaction after he erased Stan’s mind (I’m not even sorry for the wip demons cause you gave them to me first 😭)

Pretty much! Stanley is Stan's self insert, they're mostly the same, except for their names and the perspective they view their memories. For Stanley all his adventures were very real, for Stan they were ideas for his stories. There's slight personality differences, as Stan was an only child and Stanley wasn't, but its minor enough that when the dimensional merge happens Stan doesn't even notice he starts acting a bit different, or that his memories seem more... vibrant? Detailed? Eh. He's just good at visualizing is all!

Oh man. Doodle Ford just killed god here, which would normally give Ford an ego boost but now he's just seeing his twin brother, the person who breathed life and love into him, look at him like a stranger. Stanland's inhabitants, now real and living, who know in a deep part of their very being who and what Stan is, are heartbroken.

Doodle Ford is not most Fords, because until very recently he wasn't a real person. He hasn't been hardened by life or reality, he's come straight from a kids comic (albeit, one with swears, but still). Life is still wondrous and whimsical to him, he never had parents to bog him down with expectations or bully's to really drive in the feeling that he's a freak.

So he is full sobbing. Stan's staring at him blankly while Ford's clutching him to his chest, heaving sobs and pulling him tight. They've known each other their whole lives and just met, but Stan(ley) was Fords best friend always, and now there isn't a Stan or a Stanley, just the blank slate looking around at everything curiously, not knowing that he used to be the god of a small pocket dimension.

They have to pry Stan from Ford's iron grip when he starts asking about where he is and who they are and why this strange guy is crying? Stan's sorry, he didn't mean to upset everyone? He thinks? Man everyone's so nice here :) whats his name actually?

[angelsafa]

Hi guys so story abt me and my SP so you get entretained while I answer all your questions heh, and because you're like my friends now and I like to yap to you so:

Basically my bestfriend and I loove to go to this other class, let's say we are x grade class A and this class is C (this is how classes work here in my country).

So basically the people in that class is soo fun so we literally are spending more time there than in our own class, and we've like befriended a lot of them.

Okay, then, there's this guy which I never cared about, let's call him S. He has a friend which my bestie and I always jokingly argue with, and he was always there standing and staring like not saying anything.

So, sometimes we stay at that class's class instead of our own, for example they have P.E and we sneak there bcs who the hell wants to study maths or history. And this S we never actually talked to him. I think he was the only one of that class which we never really talked to.

Anyways, I like watching football sometimes, and in instagram there's this thing called notas which I do not know how to say it in english. I think ig notes?? Whatever basically I always like comment when my fav team wins or when there's some good score or whatever. Now S suddenly liked my note and my bestie's once.

We thought it was just normal like we shared the same opinion and stuff. Some weeks later my bestie and I are walking out of the school and we see this guy giving his gf snacks. We were just chilling and talking about it and stuff. I simply said "I wish I had a bf or a guy who likes me who gives me snacks after school too" like without thinking twice, a random tought you know. And guys. I tell you my bestie when she gets some random idea she does it and she doesn't give a fuck. She says, let's text S. Like out of nowhere. And I was laughing my ass off because I tought she was joking. So she goes, takes her phone and texts him saying: "Hey S my friend Safa wants sweets. If you could bring it to us soon we would appreciate that, thanks."

I was simply dying from laughter like what could I do? Besides, this guy has like a ton of followers and we tought he never answered or anything, so I didn't pay much attention to it.

Guys literally half an hour later he answers back. And that's when everything starts.

Basically from then my bestie and I started the jokes and the teasing and stuff. Like we talked to him three days consecutively just saying random stuff and teasing and demanding our sweets jokingly.

I really tought he is a fun guy. And when once when I got home after staying with my bestie he textes me. Like alone. Like knowing my bestie and I are not together. And well guys we start talking and he was really funny (in the sense that all we do is to swear at each other and making dark humor jokes), and everytime there was some football match we would start talking about it.

Now the thing is, recently I started liking this guy a bit but I didn't really payed much attention to it because he seems like a playboy. Turns out he only kissed one girl in his life and I know her and they're not together since april and stuff. And how did he tell me all of that? Because we were texting and I said: "Wait I have to go to do something I will be right back." And he said: "go and kiss other men?" with like this slight jelaous tone and I was laughing my ass off and I replied: "No, S, I dont do that. but i bet you do." and he was swearing with his life that he didn't and that he only kissed one girl in his life and stuff. Whatever that's not important but I love to overshare unimportant details guys.

Anyways we recently have been talking a lot more and stuff and he is funny so yep. He is not ugly either (my bestie doesn't think the same HAHAHA) and he is overall nice so yep, guess who is manifesting their SP being obsessed hehehehe? Yeah, me.

Now he cannot function through the day without texting me at least once and neither sleep without texting me a good night.

I LOVE LOA SO MUCH GUYSS MANIFESTING YOUR SP IS SO SO EASY AND FUN AND HEHE (i will make a post soon)

So that's all guys. Pls be patient with me if I am not answering your questions quickly, I like to answer the questions calmly and giving a lot of time to each one.

Anyways that's it guys. Im so happy you can't see my face AND BTW TODAY WE GOT OUR CLASSES JOINED TOGETHER AND WE TALKED A LOT AND HIS FRIENDS WERE SO NICE (even if they all looked like gengsters) AND I LAUGHED SO MUCH I LOVE MY LIFE

Lots lots lots of love,

Safa

[mephiles-the-jester]

just realised ive been on blender 2.9 this whole time,,forgot how long ago i downloaded it and now there a 3.6 version, that would explain why the tutorials i follow tend to be not match up with what i have most times

[remxedmoon]

You should tell us about color psychology that sounds cool as hell

YES… HA HA HA… YES!

GGGOD I WISH I WASN’T OUT OF THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW. but i’ve been thinking about colors literally all day so you all get to be subject to my madness! sorry this is long and rambly wauaua. nightmarishly long post under the cut.

okay. first things first, a few basics. color theory and color psychology tend to get confused a lot in discussions, but they usually refer to different things. color theory is more about we physically perceive colors (color wheels and color schemes the like), while color psychology focuses on our emotional response to colors. if you’re familiar with the children’s hospital color theory post, that poster wasn’t actually talking about color theory, but color psychology (and also it’s incredibly surface level and heavily misunderstands the subject because in what fucking universe does the quantity of positive associations with a color matter more than the context it’s used in and sorry i have personal beef with this tumblr post).

color theory is also a special interest of mine but i’m not gonna touch on it too much here because it’s not entirely important. mmmaybe another time…

essentially, certain colors (and color combinations) have associations in our brains and that affect our behavior and emotions. these associations are also very much affected by the context a color is used in. colors don’t exist in a vacuum! so while red can symbolize passion and love when used in something like a dress or a bouquet of flowers, it has a very different connotation when it’s, say, splattered on the walls or smeared on the ground in a snail trail.

or for a less Children’s Hospital Themed example, i’ll put my euphrasie and king designs here!

(of course the saturation and brightness of these blues play a massive part in how they’re perceived but this is not a post about color theory this is n)

and, of course, combining colors in a piece can also change their meanings!! i’m about to get real fucking normal.

i’m gonna be focusing on the color combo of red and yellow here because it’s the one that’s most relevant to my art (and also it’s really interesting.) basically, seeing these two colors together activates the part of our brain that controls our appetite, making us actually feel hungry. this is why so many food companies use red and yellow in their branding! it’s neat stuff!!

also, if you’re familiar with it, this is why the mv for butcher vanity uses this color palette!! along with red’s general associations with danger and blood, the color combo also physically induces hunger. pretty fitting for a song about cannibalism!

(there is also red’s association with lust and passion and how that intersects with the double meaning in the lyrics but i cannot derail this post into being an analysis of butcher vanity i’m sorry. we’d be here all week. maybe another day... wipes a tear from my eye)

and i think this might be the reason why some people feel hungry when they see my art, even when i’m not drawing food. while i don’t tend to use red outright, most of my art has very warm undertones (red-oranges and yellows especially), which could be activating that hunger response??

(ah fuck color theory managed to weasel its way into this post again)

admittedly this part is just speculation on my end. i think my rendering style and Shapes also play a role in it, but it’s interesting for me to think about!!

this is only scratching the surface of how complicated colors can get. i was going to go on an entire tangent about color grading and how green lighting can make a scene feel unnerving but this post is already Too Fucking Long. aaaa super sorry if this is Rambly or hard to understand!! i’m not Entirely sure how much the average person knows about color theory and psychology so if there’s any confusing terms here i’m fine with adding stuff for clarity!

wauauuaa thank you so much for asking!!!! i love talking about colors.

tl;dr colors have a bunch of different emotions and meanings tied to them, but you’ve gotta pay attention to the context in which it’s being used. so maybe take a step back before you put that thick red trail on the floor of your children’s hospital.

[pinokivvo]

lop dlc confirmed waow. all i have is this Liquid carlo doodle as my first attempt at art in months sorry i will draw a proper celebration maybe

[galactaknightyaoi]

When I first got into Kirby, I didn't expect to like, actually get into it. I thought it'd be like any other hyperfixation I'd had up to that point, that it would go away within a few months and I'd never think about it again.

Given I was so deeply in denial, I didn't care about being fully accurate and had some stuff that was really goofy and/or underdeveloped and unexplained. Stuff I'd made up to just work for the limited time I would be there.

Still, I came up with a few headcanons that I got attached to, and when I started realizing this was here to stay, I still chose to be stubborn and had to work backwards to keep these stupid headcanons, but adapt them into something a bit more fitting and polished.

It led to some cool stuff, like for example, my orbs aren't very magical, this was something I had settled on early on. But after I got invested, I had to think about what that actually meant and the implications of it like, how can they do this without magic? And what about that? What about this canon thing, how do I explain it?

I found decent enough explanations for all of these. But as a result of my unserious beginnings and continued stubborness, now I get really embarrassed at the time to actually talk about my headcanons and the stuff I've come up with.

Because what do you mean your Galacta Knight is half-dragon?