#because I feel like their models are relatively similar

[reginrokkr]

Putting here an itty bitty PSA before going to sleep. With the spike of interest for many people in the new Honkai game, I fear that comparisons between both Genshin and Honkai will spike too which is... something I don't like to see. It's tremendously clear that when HYV wants to make glaring cameos and make use of their ownership of other games and bring them to one of them, they will as it happens with SR. My pet peeve for the most part is that concepts of Honkai keep being used for Genshin and keep being assumed as "this is that" when I feel that at this point Genshin is its own thing as Honkai and Honkai SR are their own. Yes, I know there are some similarities of characters and names. But I, too, have two eyes and from what little I skimmed over the dialogue of SR and my own experience playing it, I can tell that these references in Genshin stray far from the way it's being done in SR. What I want to ask of you peeps is that if you ever do what I mentioned earlier about building theories including both Honkai and Genshin into the mix at once, that you kindly tag it so I can blacklist the tag.

[kuroananosanji]

One aspect of ZoSan that Westerners may not get the full nuance of is the concept of “うちの”, literally “of our/my household”. There’s a reason why the EA fandom (mainly Chinese from my POV) disproportionally ship ZS over other ships, to the point where even dudebros hop the joke.

So there’s this Chinese saying that means “be strict to yourself but lenient towards others” which is seen as model behaviour for respected individuals. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent idiom in Japanese but both Koreans and Japanese hold similar attitudes towards treatment of self vs treatment of others in society. Here’s the fun part: thanks to collectivist culture, one’s “self” extends to your immediate family too. Since you’re seen in conjunction with your family, if you’re head of the house and your “inferiors” misbehave in public, it reflects badly on you as a person. That’s why strict parenting is more normalised in EA culture, because controlling how your kids behave is more or less the same as controlling how you yourself behave. This is also related to how tough love is a more common form of affection in EA families, there’s a sentiment of “being able to be mean to you means we’re close, being too nice means I see you as a stranger.”

You might now see how this relates to the Strawhats in general (see: Nami beating up members for acting out of line). Sanji is a funny one coz he was sort of a maternal figure secondary to Nami early on in the series. Women aside, there’s a difference in how he treats men on his crew and “outsiders” (e.g. Ace). He’s actually not rude towards men, it’s just that we predominantly see his interactions with the crew! Since his crew is his family, he can be strict with them like how he’s strict with himself.

How does this relate to ZS in particular? Well, it’s because Zoro is closest to him on the self—others sphere. Luffy is his captain so despite the usual bickering he has to obey him to some degree. Usopp and Chopper are younger and weaker, so Sanji has a responsibility to take care of them and show generosity as an “elder”. Franky, Brook and Jinbe are way older than him so there has to be some degree of respect when interacting with them. Nami and Robin are Women. This only leaves Zoro, who is his equal in both age, power and hierarchical position on the crew. Essentially, Sanji has every right to hold Zoro to the exact same standard as he would himself. And given that Sanji is extremely harsh to himself, he’s harsh to Zoro too.

This is why there was virtually no discourse over the “Sanji calls Zoro a liability” moment in the EA fandom. The unspoken context was that Sanji was apologising to Jinbe for Zoro, who wasn’t performing his best. And since Jinbe is relatively new to the crew and also much older than Sanji, it feels like a mother/wife apologising for her son/husband?? It’s giving “I’m sorry my Zoro embarrassed us”?? It’s giving “Zoro is my responsibility”?? On the flip side Zoro absolutely does this to Sanji too. I can’t name a specific anime moment but in one of the mobile game collabs he said something like “sorry our cook caused trouble for you”. The specific wording was うちのコック. (They both think they’re managing the other lmao I hate them)

Tldr: Zoro and Sanji see themselves as one household unit 😭 hence the bickering and bluntness and lack of pretences in general.

[velvet-games]

he’s so normal :)

I actually drew this before a lot of the recent stuff I've been posting; it was just me trying to figure out a good redesign for vox. I might make a proper redesign explanation later, but here are some quick notes while I'm still playing with it:

vox trapzod and alastor trongle :)

^^ ok but unironically this was kind of a hard decision since I have mixed feelings about vox's body type

stuff I was considering:

1) vox is alastor's foil and has a similar body type to alastor at least in part because you're supposed to be comparing them (It's actually so cool cause I was watching TB Skyen's reaction to ep 2 and he immediately predicted that they would have beef lol)

2) tumblr sexyman bod <3

3) I LOVE @/bestosunglass' way of drawing him, and it made me realize that I kind of love the idea of vox being a little bigger than alastor? it's very big himbo puppy + lithe cat energy

4) not sure what my headcanons about vox's body are in terms of biological vs tech yet, but I think I want to lean toward tech (which is customizable)

I love the angst concept of vox having the freedom to change his body with relative ease, which makes him feel like he has to constantly update and update and update and update and update and it's never good enough because he could always change something and he'll never quite be good enough--

basically being a victim to his own progress-oriented mindset

and also treating himself like a product; if it's not working, if it's not the best, newest model, then it's broken and useless and disposable

tbh alastor's ability to find beauty and art in the old (not necessarily based on function, but on character and care) would be good for him

ooc or not, as someone with dysmorphia issues myself, I really want an "I like your body because it's yours" moment from alastor

I think all of that + toxic masculinity would probably mean vox would make himself comically buff (at least at first) lol

5) but I like drawing him kinda scrawny ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's just weird because I kind of want to audience to pick up on the fact that he's not actually hypermasc but vox would totally (mostly successfully) broadcast that to the characters in the show

6) I think a trapezoid is a good shape for him! it contrasts well with alastor being a kind of sly and striking triangle shape. trapezoids are more interesting and dynamic than rectangles, but are still more stiff and business-like than triangles (p sure I am completely misunderstanding shape theory here but it makes sense to me lmao)

vox is such a mess of vibes? like he's a cult leader he's a televangelist he's a hypnotist he's a business shark he's a tech CEO he's a newscaster he's a TV he's a computer he's a literal shark he's a mastermind he's a pathetic fanboy

still not sure which of those is the most important/what should be obvious in his design

obsessed with the concept of TV knobs as buttons but it's kind of old fashioned

I headcanon him as having been a nerdy kid that got kicked in the shins for being obsessed with TV/tech lol

also hc him as being vaguely and very obliviously transfemme; the buffness can also be overcompensating for a lack of masculinity both physically and mentally

[nostalgebraist]

thoughts on xDOTcom/CorralSummer/status/1823504569097175056 tumblrDOTcom/antinegationism/758845963819450368 ?

I mostly try to ignore AI art debates, and as a result I feel like I don't have enough context to make sense of that twitter exchange. That said...

It's about generative image models, and whether they "are compression." Which seems to mean something like "whether they contain compressed representations of their training images."

I can see two reasons why partisans in the AI art wars might care about this question:

If a training image is actually "written down" inside the model, in some compressed form that can be "read off" of the weights, it would then be easier to argue that a copyright on the image applies to the model weights themselves. Or to make similar claims about art theft, etc. that aren't about copyright per se.

If the model "merely" consists of a bunch of compressed images, together with some comparatively simple procedure for mixing/combining their elements together (so that most of the complexity is in the images, not the "combining procedure"), this would support the contention that the model is not "creative," is not "intelligent," is "merely copying art by humans," etc.

I think the stronger claim in #2 is clearly false, and this in turn has implications for #1.

(For simplicity I'll just use "#2", below, as a shorthand for "the stronger claim in #2," i.e. the thing about compressed images + simple combination procedure)

I can't present, or even summarize, the full range of the evidence against #2 in this brief post. There's simply too much of it. Virtually everything we know about neural networks militates against #2, in one way or another.

The whole of NN interpretability conflicts with #2. When we actually look at the internals of neural nets and what is being "represented" there, we rarely find anything that is specialized to a single training example, like a single image. We find things that are more generally applicable, across many different images: representations that mean "there's a curved line here" or "there's a floppy ear here" or "there's a dog's head here."

The linked post is about an image classifier (and a relatively primitive one), not an image generator, but we've also found similar things inside of generative models (e.g.).

I also find it difficult to understand how anyone could seriously believe #2 after actually using these models for any significant span of time, in any nontrivial way. The experience is just... not anything like what you would expect, if you thought they were "pasting together" elements from specific artworks in some simplistic, collage-like way. You can ask them for wild conjunctions of many different elements and styles, which have definitely never been represented before in any image, and the resulting synthesis will happen at a very high, humanlike level of abstraction.

And it is noteworthy that, even in the most damning cases where a model reliably generates images that are highly similar to some obviously copyrighted ones, it doesn't actually produce exact duplicates of those images. The linked article includes many pairs of the form (copyrighted image, MidJourney generation), but the generations are vastly different from the copyrighted images on the pixel level -- they just feel "basically the same" to us, because they have the same content in terms of humanlike abstract concepts, differing only in "inessential minor details."

If the model worked by memorizing a bunch of images and then recombining elements of them, it should be easy for it to very precisely reproduce just one of the memorized images, as a special case. Whereas it would presumably be difficult for such a system to produce something "essentially the same as" a single memorized image, but differing slightly in the inessential details -- what kind of "mixture," with some other image(s), would produce this effect?

Yet it's the latter that we see in practice -- as we'd expect from a generator that works in humanlike abstractions.

And this, in turn, helps us understand what's going in in the twitter dispute about "it's either compression or magic" vs. "how could you compress so much down to so few GB?"

Say you want to make a computer display some particular picture. Of, I dunno, a bird. (The important thing is that it's a specific picture, the kind that could be copyrighted.)

The simplest way to do this is just to have the computer store the image as a bitmap of pixels, without any compression.

In this case, it's unambiguous that the image itself is being represented in the computer, with all the attendant copyright (etc.) implications. It's right there. You can read it off, pixel by pixel.

But maybe this takes up too much computer memory. So you try using a simple form of compression, like JPEG compression.

JPEG compression is pretty simple. It doesn't "know" much about what images tend to look like in practice; effectively, it just "knows" that they tend to be sort of "smooth" at the small scale, so that one tiny region often has similar colors/intensities to neighboring tiny regions.

Just knowing this one simple fact gets you a significant reduction in file size, though. (The size of this reduction is a typical reference point for people's intuitions about what "compression" can, and can't, do.)

And here, again, it's relatively clear that the image is represented in the computer. You have to do some work to "unpack" it, but it's simple work, using an algorithm simple enough that a human can hold the whole thing in their mind at once. (There is probably at least one person in existence, I imagine, who can visualize what the encoded image looks like when they look at the raw bytes of a JPEG file, like those guys in The Matrix watching the green text fall across their terminal screens.)

But now, what if you had a system that had a whole elaborate library of general visual concepts, and could ably draw these concepts if asked, and could draw them in any combination?

You no longer need to lay out anything like a bitmap, a "copy" of the image arranged in space, tile by tile, color/intensity unit by color/intensity unit.

It's a bird? Great, the system knows what birds look like. This particular bird is an oriole? The system knows orioles. It's in profile? The system knows the general concept of "human or animal seen in profile," and how to apply it to an oriole.

Your encoding of the image, thus far, is a noting-down of these concepts. It takes very little space, just a few bits of information: "Oriole? YES. In profile? YES."

The picture is a close-up photograph? One more bit. Under bright, more-white-than-yellow light? One more bit. There's shallow depth of field, and the background is mostly a bright green blur, some indistinct mass of vegetation? Zero bits: the system's already guessed all that, from what images of this sort tend to be like. (You'd have to spend bits to get anything except the green blur.)

Eventually, we come to the less essential details -- all the things that make your image really this one specific image, and not any of the other close-up shots of orioles that exist in the world. The exact way the head is tilted. The way the branch, that it sits on, is slightly bent at its tip.

This is where most of the bits are spent. You have to spend bits to get all of these details right, and the more "arbitrary" the details are -- the less easy they are to guess, on the basis of everything else -- the more bits you have to spend on them.

But, because your first and most abstract bits bought you so much, you can express your image quite precisely, and still use far less room than JPEG compression would use, or any other algorithm that comes to mind when people say the word "compression."

It is easy to "compress" many specific images inside a system that understands general visual concepts, because most of the content of an image is generic, not unique to that image alone.

The ability to convey all of the non-unique content very briefly is precisely what provides us enough room to write down all the unique content, alongside it.

This is basically the way in which specific images are "represented" inside Stable Diffusion and MidJourney and the like, insofar as they are. Which they are, not as a general rule, but occasionally, in the case of certain specific images -- due to their ubiquity in the real world and hence in the training data, or due to some deliberate over-sampling of them in that data.

(In the case of MidJourney and the copyrighted images, I suspect the model was [over-?]heavily trained on those specific images -- perhaps because they were thought to exemplify the "epic," cinematic MidJourney house style -- and it has thus stored more of their less-essential details than it has with most training images. Typical regurgitations from image generators are less precise than those examples, more "abstract" in their resemblance to the originals -- just the easy, early bits, with fewer of the expensive less-essential details.)

But now -- is your image of the oriole "represented" in computer memory, in this last case? Is the system "compressing" it, "storing" it in a way that can be "read off"?

In some sense, yes. In some sense, no.

This is a philosophical question, really, about what makes your image itself, and not any of the other images of orioles in profile against blurred green backgrounds.

Remember that even MidJourney can't reproduce those copyrighted images exactly. It just makes images that are "basically the same."

Whatever is "stored" there is not, actually, a copy of each copyrighted image. It's something else, something that isn't the original, but which we deem too close to the original for our comfort. Something of which we say: "it's different, yes, but only in the inessential details."

But what, exactly, counts as an "inessential detail"? How specific is too specific? How precise is too precise?

If the oriole is positioned just a bit differently on the branch... if there is a splash of pink amid the green blur, a flower, in the original but not the copy, or vice versa...

When does it stop being a copy of your image, and start being merely an image that shares a lot in common with yours? It is not obvious where to draw the line. "Details" seem to span a whole continuous range of general-to-specific, with no obvious cutoff point.

And if we could, somehow, strip out all memory of all the "sufficiently specific details" from one of these models -- which might be an interesting research direction! -- so that what remains is only the model's capacity to depict "abstract concepts" in conjunction?

If we could? It's not clear how far that would get us, actually.

If you can draw a man with all of Super Mario's abstract attributes, then you can draw Super Mario. (And if you cannot, then you are missing some important concept or concepts about people and pictures, and this will hinder you in your attempts to draw other, non-copyrighted entities.)

If you can draw an oriole, in profile, and a branch, and a green blur, then you can draw an oriole in profile on a branch against a green blur. And all the finer details? If one wants them, the right prompt should produce them.

There is no way to stop a sufficiently capable artist from imitating what you have done, if it can imitate all of the elements of which your creation is made, in any imaginable combination.

[opiopal]

My physical head canons for the brothers that no one asked for but I’m sharing anyways because I can’t contain myself cause im a beast of headcanons that need to be released RARARARAR(don’t mind the cringe I’m sleep deprived,)

Lucifer

I like to imagine Lucifer with a slim face and bold cheekbones, he has side burns that look more like small black feathers and ofc he has eyebags, and he’s not as pale, having more of an olive skin tone. I’ve always imagined him with a hooked nose as well, along with more gray hairs. His ears are pointed upwards and are decently long. He still has a slim waist in my brain but also a bolder chest and shoulders. He’s not very muscular but still looks strong for his age(got those baby holdin arms). He has Insanely good posture and I imagine him in his regular outfit as is(though I like to imagine his stupid fuckin shoes are at least a darker brown). He is the third tallest in the household.

Mammon

His face shape is relatively the same in my brain, minus the addition of his ears being pointed, though I always tend to imagine his skin a few shades darker then what it is. his hair has little gold tips like in his demon form. And some of his body hair, like on the back of his hands, arms, and his legs, look like little white feathers. He’s fit like a runner and has very vague abs, like, you wouldn’t process they were there unless he pointed them out. I like to imagine him with a few piercings as well(body piercings not face piercings iykyk;3). His clothes are relatively the same in my brain but he doesnt have feathers in his boots(just keep the feathers as a keychain babe we all know you have a bird thing going on it’s ok). He’s the fourth tallest in the house.

Levi

Levi has as round face in my mind, along with blue freckles that appear like blue scales and visible gills on his neck. His ears are long and thin and constantly drooped(cause bbg is always pathetic no matter what and that’s why I love him💕) His hands and feet have webbing. since he is canonically tall(compared to mammon at least) I like to imagine him being the second tallest and because he is decently tall his body fat does even out, though he has a gut and multiple parts of his body is a lot squishier. I can imagine his clothes give him the appearance of being thinner, but obviously he’s not. And i imagine his clothes to be pretty much the same, maybe looking a little more like he just rolled out of bed though if that makes sense. And like I said he’s the second tallest in the HOL, but sometimes it’s hard to tell cause he slouches.(I can imagine one day he’s getting scolded by Lucifer and he’s told to sit up straight, and after he does so it baffles Lucifer a bit that he has look up at him)

Satan

First things first he does NOT have that jacket, immediately he looks a lot better with only that sweater and his regular pants. Though I can imagine his clothing looking a lot darker, black pants, darker shirt underneath his sweater. His face is pretty similar to Lucifer’s, though his nose is a little smaller and his ears are a little shorter. He’s fit, mostly because I’m sure he burns calories out of pure spite/j. But in all seriousness I feel like he would be a little scrawny from not eating a whole lot by mistake, probably because he was sucked into a book, so he doesn’t mean to forget to grab a snack here and there, he’s just to much of a nerd </3. He’s relatively tall, and him and mammon are the same height.

Asmo

Skin so smooth it would make a modeling agency weep. I like to imagine any makeup he wears is a lot more obvious? Like, you can actually tell he’s wearing makeup, and it’s always flawless, the type of flawless were you can’t help but wonder if he gets up at 4 am to do his makeup. And I could totally see him either using those eyelash oil things to make his lashes grow longer as a part of his 3457 step skincare routine. And I imagine his ears are more elegantly elf like. His hair is still that very soft pink in my mind but the tips fade into a slightly brighter pink, and is also longer. I will never imagine him in his Og outfit because his human realm outfit just fits him so so SO much better both personality wise and just fashion wise period. He definitely works out but just enough to stay healthy and to not develop any muscles. I imagine he is also the same height as mammon, but maybe shorter by half an inch? I also like to imagine he flip flops from looking super fem to being more in between.

Beel

First things first he has a rounder face, period. I also like to imagine him with freckles and his hair is a little scruffier and longer. Not to long but touching his shoulders. He also has shorter chunkier ears that droop downwards. He is the tallest in the household no doubt about it, being taller than Levi by nearly a foot. I imagine his clothes as relatively the same, the fluff on his coat just doesn’t look as matted(I can’t be the only one who thinks that it looks like it needs to be brushed😭). As for his body, he has a gut. And just overall is so much more hunky. I can imagine his body is constantly changing from being more fit to being chunkier, so he has a good handful of stretch marks from his body constantly changing. I like to imagine that demons can burn fat a lot easier than humans, so he finds little to no issue with working away some of the fat that accumulates. But overall he’s mostly rocking a gut and strong arms. Also he’s not as pale in my mind, like he definitely has some melanin.

Belphie

Belphie also has a rounder face, with cow print looking freckles. His ears are droopy like beels and has the same cow print freckles. His hair is longer and he is in a constant state of bedhead. I also don’t think he’s SUPER scrawny, his stomach is pudgy and you can kind of see his ribs. I can also imagine the tips of his fingers have a black gradient and his nails are long and pointy like talons, I like to imagine that it takes some effort to be in their neutral forms, so he doesn’t care a whole lot to fully commit to it. First things first with his clothes: mf does NOT have those pants, nor those knee high laced brown boots. In my head he probably has a pair of sweatpants that have a star pattern, along with some slippers(maybe little cow head slippers cause that’s adorable in my head, and even though I don’t like him a whole lot he still deserves SOME bbg vibes </3). The rest of his clothes are fine to me I guess. But overall he does not care about his looks whatsoever and is always ready for his next nap.

[tobi-smp]

it’s occurred to me that some things that were relatively common-knowledge in queer spaces have become less well known as the years have gone on (incidentally or otherwise).

there’s quite a few identities/labels that I’d say this has happened to, but tackling all of them in one go would be a very long post I suspect. so! for anyone who is unfamiliar with or doesn’t (in good faith) understand “demisexuality” / ”demiromanticism” here’s a brief but comprehensive rundown!

most people are familiar with asexuality/aromanticism (which is a lack of sexual/romantic attraction) and most of those people are familiar with the concept that asexuality/aromanticism is a spectrum (which is to say that people under the asexual/aromantic labels can experience their attraction differently, the same way that bi/pan/mspec people have varying experiences with their attraction. often shortened to “ace-spec” “aro-spec” individually or “a-spec” to cover both).

but what people Aren’t as familiar with are the specific labels that describe certain experiences within the a-spectrum. one of the more popular of which is demisexuality/demiromanicism.

people who fall under the demi label only feel attraction to people that they feel a deep emotional connection to. if that attraction is sexual then the label is demisexual, if that attraction is romantic then the label is demiromantic, if the attraction is both then someone may choose to use both or simply “demi.” 

this is often misunderstood on the surface level because of the conflation of “attraction” with actively pursuing a partner, which is an understandable mistake but shouldn’t be used to kneejerk reject the label or the people who use it.

attraction is any feeling that you get in response to a person, not just the feelings that you act on. feeling attraction to a character in media, to an actor, to a model, to adult media, that’s all filed under sexual and romantic attraction without necessarily needing a deep emotional connection to preempt those feelings.

a demi person may, of course, appreciate a person or character aesthetically (know that they’re pretty or handsome), but they Won’t experience that attraction unless they otherwise have that deep personal connection.

and in the same way, a demi person would have a much more difficult time trying to date through, say, dating apps or hookups. going into a relationship with the idea of attraction first could be unnatural in a way that it may not be for someone who isn’t demi.

and so a demi person will share similar experiences with ace and aro people, not being able to relate to media or school crushes like the people around them are (a fact that those people often pick up on). they do often (though not always) seek out relationships with people that they Do feel that intimate connection with, though often at a slower pace than their peers.

not everyone who shares this experience will use these labels (all labels are a personal choice after all), but for some people it is a significant aspect of their sexuality and one that they want to put a name to. whether someone wants to use this term specifically, a-spec, or both is, again, up to personal preference!

[adobe-outdesign]

I am so late to this but I had only just realised Neopets added new gray nostalgic styles with brand-new artwork for combos that don't exist pre-conversion! Do you have a favourite out of them?

(I already did the main grey review here before the new pet styles were released.)

Even as someone who enjoys customization, I think the execution of it was pretty poor. It definitely should've been that you could freely switch between the UC design and the converted design at any point, and the option would exist for pets that were painted after conversion instead of it being a thing you had to grandfather into. Likewise, I'd argue that TNT should've done new UC designs for colours that used to get special poses even after customization, so you wouldn't be losing the beautiful art.

It took the NC Mall and 17 years, but new TNT finally wised up and switched all UCs over to purchasable NC pet styles. Originally it seemed like they were only going to include pre-existing UCs; then, it seemed like they'd do pre-existing UCs plus some other pets with old art but no UCs; and then, finally, we learned that TNT would be giving pets that didn't even have old art styles. This is a great idea, as it gives the pets that didn't get a chance at unique art (Lutaris and Vandagyres being good examples) to have some. Plus the converted versions still exist, so it's just more designs for everyone.

(Pictured: Two UC/styled grey pets with pre-existing old art.)

The most interesting part about these new styles is watching new TNT trying to mimic the classic Neopets' art styles. There's no hard rule as to how old Neopet art worked (because different artists worked on different pets), but the following are what I'd consider the most consistent and important points:

Shading: Hard-lined cel-shading with only one or two layers. Generally high-contrast, especially for grey pets. Sometimes there'll be a small amount of highlights, but not always.

Lineart: Not too thick or too thin with natural weight variation.

Design: Not always present, but often times will include fun little plays on the original design like the Yurble's uncurled ears.

Pose: Easy to read with a good sense of motion. Matches the proportions of the original basic colour pet.

Of course, just because a new pet style isn't quite on point doesn't make it inherently bad (though I personally like the on point ones more, and have highlighted the best in that regard below). The new grey Xweetok style is pretty off compared to an actual UC; like, here's the old sad blue Xweetok pose, which is somewhat similar to it:

You can easily see that there's way too much detail in the shading and highlights (highlights too thin/plentiful, shading too hairline and layered too closely together), and the proportions and design details are also way off model (eyes missing the black "liner" at the back; head way too big; paws too big; ears slightly too big). But dang, it's absolutely adorable, and much much better than the converted version, which looks vaguely ill. It's a good example of how much personality a style can add.

Favorite (New) Species:

Blumaroo: BROKEN HEART FEET. BROKEN. HEART. FEET!! That's such a wonderful detail, and 100% feels like something a UC version would've had. The pose is also really good, and the shading and lineart are pretty accurate (the lines are just a smidge too thick, but obviously not actually a problem).

Bruce: Another pretty good pose with excellent lineart and shading (might be the same artist for this and the Blumaroo)? It's adorably mopey and little things like the extra chubby cheeks and bigger bow add a lot.

Hissi: The shading's not quite as accurate as the above two (one too many layers on the wings, which are also a little too fluffy relative to the non-converted Hissi's wings), but the pose on this one is perfect and really feels like something that existed back in the day. I really like the eye shape in particular and how it affects the entire upper brow, so to speak.

Least Favorite (New) Species:

Bori: Sorry, Bori, but you're not quite right. There's just a lot of things slightly off with this one, like the shading (WAY too much fur detailing that doesn't flow with the actual lineart fur; too low contrast; highlights too minimal in areas like the tail fur). Like I said above, accuracy doesn't matter if the design and pose are good, but that also feels off here. The pose is just kind of strange, like it's about to be smacked or something, and the head is like... off, like it's too far down and too far in in a way that makes it look like it has no neck. It's still got a lot more personality than the converted though, so that's good.

[armythings-love]

I’m gonna cry… I had an entire analysis for this typed out but my wifi is shit so it refused to post😭😭 anyways, this is based off of the @ladybugout-au permanent superhero team. I decided against doing Luka’s Cadmeancio suit because I 1. Didn’t want to draw him in orange and 2. I was already pushing it with making a purple/red Neurofoxin. Only reason I made her purple is because natural coloring obviously doesn’t mean shit to the character designers if Juleka gets to be a purple red tiger. Anyways, here’s my take on their suits!

Hecattack: I wanted to diverge from the furry/bdsm influences Chat’s suit got, so I gave him looser fit pants, a hood and combat boots. His suit was lowkey inspired by Red Hood’s design because, dammit, DC may be super dark, but they know how to design characters well (something MLB could stand to learn from ಠ_ಠ) anyways, along with the hood and paneled top+cargo pants+combat boots, I gave him cat-shaped knee pads, similar to Ivan’s turtle shell knee pads. You will also notice a trend with a lot of my hero suit designs, which is fingerless gloves. Yes, this’ll take away from the cat claw thing Chat had going on, but I’m ok with that. To go with his punk/rock band aesthetic, he got combat boots with the signature cat paw steel toes. His tail is pretty much the same along with the ears. His mask is also different, covering the bottom half of his face. This also takes away from the cat sclera thing the original Chat had, but Luka isn’t a furry so… also, the mask covering his mouth alludes to his calm nature and quiet personality, not feeling the need to play around, especially during a battle,which was where the original Chat erred most often. Luka also has very expressive eyes, so I wanted to push that, like, even if he doesn’t talk much, he’s still a good communicator. Plus, when cats are hunting, they’re quiet! Which the original Chat cannot relate to!

Ladybug: ok, so her suit is still pretty basic, since I wanted to stick with he AU’s canon description of her suit. The main bodice/legs are similar to the season 4 suit after she calls on the lucky charm, but the sleeves are slightly different. I also got rid of the “reverse” polka dots cuz they just look ugly imo. Her gloves are also fingerless, since I feel like that would 1. Lend better to doing yo-yo tricks and 2. They just look better (u_u) anyways, her hair is still the same, as well as her mask. It’s pretty basic but eh…

Neurofoxin: her design is also super simple, but I also wanted to veer away from the gaudy orange normally associated with the fox miraculous. If she can make her tiger suit purple and red, I can make her fox costume reddish purple!! She’s goth, she’s not gonna walk around in *o r a n g e*. And I stand by that. Anyways, like I said her suit is relatively simple, the panels of the suit modeled after Volpina’s actually, because despite how I hate Lila and her stupid sausage link hair, her volpina suit was pretty cute. Instead of giving her a jacket w/coattails or a belt/sash to be her tail, I decided to make it her hair, cuz even in civilian form it’s pretty long. I also decided that instead of a dark grey/black to purple, I’d make the tips the same cream as her “underbelly” panel, as I wanted to incorporate the cream in more than just that singular spot. I also pulled her bang back because even if she’s goth, she still needs to be able to see properly as a superhero. Plus, I like Juleka’s eyes, and I feel like Trixx would like her to show off more. Anyways, besides the morph suit and her hair being a bit longer than normal+a different color, she has a cropped leather jacket,same color as her suit. There’s also paneling on the side/back of her thighs/back that’s a darker red/purple color. Again, to go with her rockstar/alt aesthetic, I gave her combat boots as well, though hers are knee high, plus I forgot to draw the laces, but eh. Fun fact: I headcanon the Couffaine twins as being super tall for their age, but Juleka is taller than her twin for now+her boots are heeled.

Fukiya: for Kagami’s suit, I pulled inspo from someone else’s LBO AU fanart, although I can’t remember who’s it was. Originally, I was gonna go for a suit similar to Kagami’s fencing gear, but decided to go w the suit she has now so it’d be more reminiscent of a bee. I gave her a sleeveless, cropped kimono, the bottom of which has a honeycomb pattern and an ombré going from dark yellow to black. Her obi has two layers, the bottom layer being a bright yellow and the outside layer being black. Her sleeves are similar to Queen Bee’s, but with an added black line. Her legs are completely black with the exception of her knee pads, which are a bright yellow and octogon shaped. I wanted her to look more bee-esque than Queen Bee or Vesperia (her character design is 🤢) so I gave her the yellow torso with black limbs, than made the kimono collar thick to look like a neck ruff or smth. I honestly struggled with her design a bit but it looks ok in the end so I’m happy with it :) also, Kagami is the shortest because I said so!

Heavy Matal: oh, Ivan, you absolute teddy bear of a guy. I adore the Iván of this AU, he’s so sweet, a gentle giant, so I wanted to focus on making him look slightly softer than the rest of the heroes, despite being the turtle holder. I gave him his signature cargoes, although they’re pants instead of shorts when he’s transformed, a sleeveless hoodie, and “turtle”-neck compression-esque undershirt, the sleeves long enough to be, you guessed it, fingerless gloves! The only reason Kagami is the only one with full gloves is because I wanted to giver a more serious/conservative look. Mari’s been ladybug so long she deserves to have cute, fingerless gloves! Anyways, back to Ivan! His hoodie is two toned, like a turtle’s shell, with the front being a light green. It’s patterned to look like a turtle shell underbelly, with a nice big pocket to hold whatever. He wears elbow- and knee-pads, which are shaped like little turtle shells. He wears regular Vans-style tennies, and his mask is similar to Carapace’s, except it cover the majority of the front of his face (think Kid Flash), and is colored/patterned similarly to a box turtle, with red accents along his cheekbones and his little tuft of hair is his usual blond with an ombré to that same red. (Ignore the ear I forgot to color in plz, I don’t feel like editing anymore T-T)

Ok, so that’s it for today’s character designs! I’m working on redesigning pretty much everyone’s civilian and hero costumes. I haven’t mentioned on this blog, but on pretty much every Gabe!Salt fic I’ve read, I will tell you, whoever the hell designed most of the characters in MLB, you deserve to be fired and then arrested. I’m so sorry, but there’s no way ur gonna convince me Fashion Designer™️ Marinette Dupain-Cheng walks out of her house every day, wearing ugly ass ballet flats+”denim” jeggings in that shade of pink. No way. And don’t even get me started on Gabriel’s candy-cane, red pants and duck hair headass, because omg… that man is supposed to be a world renowned Fashion Designer™️, one of the best in Paris. IN. PARIS!! No fucking way. No way. I get, you want ur characters to be simple and easily recognizable, but that doesn’t mean they have to be ugly!! And I get it, Adrien’s supposed to have a model-off-duty look, but wth are those shoes? Plus, why does he never change for his photo shoots? He’s a MODEL! I get it, you can’t even spend money to change the transformation animation to whatever the characters are actually wearing but wtf??? If you were gonna have any kid’s show where we get to see a lot of different clothes/outfits, this would be the show!! Two of the main characters are fashion designers, one of the minor antagonists is the daughter of a fashion magazine owner and your other main character is a model. IN PARIS!! A city known for its fashion and “romance”. And ur telling me you can’t add a few more outfits to the show??? That’s called lazy writing/animation.

Ugh, sorry abt that rant, but the character designs genuinely piss me off. It’s bullshit.

I digress.

I’ll be releasing the main 4 kids’ redesigns probably on the 15th!!

[bbygirl-aemond]

Which Targaryen do you think you would be able to make Freud rise from his grave faster?

....Daemon? Daemon. He checks every single box.

He has massive mommy issues because his mom died when he was a baby. Because she specifically died in childbirth, it rings a lot of Freudian bells related to things like womb envy. The lack of maternal presence is what causes his relationships with all subsequent family members to be so clingy. He also has daddy issues, because Baelon was heavily affected by the losses of his favorite sister and brother and likely never paid much attention to him as a second son.

The mommy and daddy issues combine into him projecting his maternal and paternal needs for affection/approval/etc. onto his only remaining relative, his older brother Viserys. This is also because his parents were both siblings, so they blended the fraternal with the romantic and sexual, AND his grandparents did the same because they were also siblings. All of the romantic relationships modeled before him were between siblings.

So Daemon loves Viserys in every possible way (fraternal, paternal, maternal, and romantic) and desires the same from Viserys in return. Because it's the only way he knows to love. This is also why Daemon has def got some gender envy, because if he'd been born a girl, then Viserys would have married and loved him (in his mind) and they could have had babies together (he's super into Valyrian bloodline stuff).

Here's where Daemon's obsession with Rhaenyra comes into play. He views her as a kindred spirit, sort of who he thinks he could have been if he'd been born a girl, especially because she gets Viserys's favor the way he thinks he would have if he'd been a girl. He also sees her as an extension of Viserys; if he can't have Viserys, then at least he can have Rhaenyra. He loves her because she gives him the affection he wanted from Viserys, because he can't be in a relationship with Viserys and she's the next best thing (Ryan Condal has confirmed this verbatim btw in case you think I'm reaching).

This is part of why he's SO happy to have babies with Rhaenyra. Baby Aegon and Viserys represent the children he wishes he could have had with Viserys. They carry Viserys's blood, through Rhaenyra, and Daemon's blood, through himself. They represent the union (yes, romantic and sexual) that Daemon subconsciously wishes he could have had with Viserys.

(Also, if you're asking within the Stormbreak universe, Aemond looks fairly similar to how Daemon's mom, Alyssa, is described. Plus he's also like an extension of Viserys, maybe even more so because he's male.)

Like, this mans' psychosexual fuckery has LAYERS. The incest aspect of him and Rhaenyra is only the tip of the iceberg because of how much it ties into his fucked up feelings towards Viserys. And it would honestly have most of these layers even if his parents had survived, because they were still siblings, as were his grandparents.

I think a lot of this Viserys stuff would be WAY more clear if they hadn't aged Viserys up in the show, btw. In the book, Viserys is only four years older than Daemon, but in the show he seems like a grandpa by the time he dies. If Viserys was played by someone who was younger and hot the way Matt Smith is, I guarantee they would be one of THE most popular ships in the fandom, and this type of analysis would be super commonplace.

Anyways yes if Daemon existed in real life he would single-handedly resurrect Freud and also probably render him immortal by virtue of being the single most fucked up incesty individual on the planet.

[aestheticaltcow]

Fatherhood: Carmy Berzatto

I did a similar post for Billy Hargrove a while back. Why not do one with our favorite chef? This also may be an intro to a new series.

The Bear Masterlist

In early 2018, Carmy lived with his cousin Michelle and her long-term boyfriend, Steven. He enjoyed spending time with her before finding a SOU position at some hot shot’s new restaurant. He enjoyed his time there- at least as much as Carmy could.

After moving out of her guest bedroom, he found a decent apartment near The French Laundry. This led him to meet Amanda at a local coffee shop.

Amanda was Carmy’s polar opposite. She was a model/influencer/actress who found Carmy interesting enough during their initial meeting. Finding out he was a ‘celebrity’ chef made her pursue him. 

The two didn’t have a lot in common, but Carmy being the stupid horny 25-year-old he was, didn’t particularly mind. She was something to keep his mind busy when he wasn’t cooking.

The two hadn’t been together long when Amanda sent him a picture of a positive pregnancy test and a Venmo request for half the cost of an abortion. He couldn’t do it. His sweet Nonna’s voice echoed in his head, going on about how life began at conception and how abortion was the ultimate insult to God- he didn’t intentionally try to guilt Amanda or force her into doing anything she didn’t want to do, but listening to his sweet promises of raising a baby together was… convincing. At least at first. 

COVID shutdowns proved difficult for the two. Amanda felt like a shut-in. Carmy was getting on her nerves more and more every day. Although the pregnancy content she was getting out of this arrangement was a bankroll, Carmy turned from her hot celebrity chef boy toy to her ‘controlling’ baby daddy. Every like she got on Instagram, every brand deal, every positive comment, and well-wish almost made it worth it.

Carmy ensured she was eating well and living a relatively low-stress life. He did everything he could to make this pregnancy as smooth as possible.

Michelle was the only person he’d told about Amanda and their baby. She, of course, told Natalie and the other cousins. At first, Natalie didn’t believe her. Carmy hadn’t dated in high school, and truthfully, she wasn’t sure about the escapades he’d gotten himself into when he lived in Europe, but she couldn’t see her baby brother as some international playboy. Of course she Instagram stalked Amanda for weeks, trying to figure out their ‘relationship’ timeline. Natalie decided she hated Amanda- she’d been using her baby brother to up her own status. 

Carmy was nervous when the two found out the baby was a boy. Growing up without his Dad and Mikey as a father figure- he didn’t think he could be a Dad. He devoted hours of his life reading everything he could to prepare for this new role.

Amanda went into labor early. Thirty hours later, Wyatt Arlo Berzatto was born. Carmy was in love with him the moment he saw him.

Parenthood was more challenging than Carmy originally thought. With New York reopening, The French Laundry was determined to get back in the green. Carmy worked 14-18 hours a day, and for the remaining hours of his days, he dedicated himself to being the best Dad he could be. He had a routine for the most part. He’d take care of Wyatt’s first feeding and change him before getting some morning snuggles in. At work, he turned his brain off. He was a machine; every plate was perfect, and every chop was precise. After work, Carmy would go home to a crying baby and a crying pseudo-girlfriend. He took care of Wyatt while Amanda locked herself away in the bedroom. Carmy got used to it; he didn’t realize what was happening until it happened.

The day Amanda abandoned them was a memory burned into Carmy’s head, not because of his feelings toward Amanda but because she’d left his eight-month-old son alone for who knows how long. He walked into the apartment to hear Wyatt’s crying- it didn’t register at first; this was a different cry. It was a high-pitched, intense wailing that Carmy had never heard. He scrambled into the nursery. He wasn’t sure how long Wyatt had been crying. Carmy had scooped him up in his arms and tried his best to soothe him. Wyatt hadn’t eaten or been changed since that morning. Carmy wasn’t sure how long Amanda had left Wyatt alone; all he knew was she was gone. 

With Amanda's limited support, fatherhood had been hard enough, but it was a whole other can of worms without it. He was worried that Wyatt would be traumatized for the rest of his life because of his mother’s actions.

As soon as Carmy had finally gotten into a normal routine again, he got the call. Natalie had been bugging him to come home to visit with Wyatt. Carmy was going to ignore her call that night while he lay in bed with one of Wyatt’s feet in his face, but his gut said to answer. Mikey was gone. Carmy sobbed; he felt like he was going to throw up until he was met with a stubby finger poking his eye. 

Wyatt didn’t know what was happening, in his short life, he’d never seen his dad like this. He poked Carmy’s eye again before pushing his stuffed duck in Carmy’s direction, babbling something before screaming ‘Dada’ at the top of his lungs. Carmy watched his son throw himself against his chest as tears poured from his eyes; he had to be strong for him.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

My (F, 28) friend (F, 24) has a tendency to ignore her phone when she gets overwhelmed. She's in university, so this usually happens every semester around finals. We've talked about it and I fully understand and I don't resent it in any way whatsoever.

Now, the last time it happened was back in November. After I returned from a trip I texted her to catch up and give her some souvenirs, but she did not answer. Assuming she would eventually look at her phone and get back to me, I just minded my own business.

Except she never did. Weeks passed, then months, and my invitation to go out for a drink stayed unanswered. Every now and then, when I was out shopping relatively close to where she lives, I'd text her asking her how she was doing, if she wanted to meet up. The answer was the same: nothing.

I couldn't help but feel resentful towards her, especially because she frequently posted on Instagram about stuff she was doing. But I have really bad anxiety over being 'too clingy', so I told myself it was a 'me' issue and kept hoping she'd reply.

It wasn't until last month that a mutual friend (let's call that friend Anna) asked about her that I started suspecting it might not be just my brain being mean. Anna (who isn't as close with this person as I am) straight-out called it ghosting but advised me to try to contact her on Instagram in case she had changed her phone and lost my number or something like that.

So two weeks ago I DMd her and asked if she was okay and if she was having trouble with her phone and, just in case, if I'd done something to her to be cut off. A week later she replied and explained that she'd archived the chat because of the exams but then had forgotten to un-archive it, and that she wasn't upset with me. She apologised and asked me to meet up if I wanted.

She... gave a model apology, really.

But I don't feel relieved or happy or anything positive about it. As I said, I understand that she deals with stress by ignoring people, but it's been over six months and she's clearly been hanging out with plenty of friends. I don't want to be jealous or bitter and she is truly a good person, but this makes me feel like my friendship is an afterthought to her, to the point that she probably would've never remembered about me if I hadn't thought of reaching her via Instagram. I get it, we're adults, we don't need to chat daily, but it's not the first time a similar incident happens and it's always me reaching out first; and I feel like there should be a little reciprocity for this to work.

Am I the asshole for not wanting to mend my friendship with someone who ghosted me for over six months?

What are these acronyms?

[gender-trash]

okay i AM going to turn reblogs off for this one --

i think we need to talk more about the collective trauma of being part of an online community that a different online community is directing coordinated, nonstop harassment towards. this is the part of the post i am so close to deleting or leaving in the drafts, because i'm (still!) anticipating anon asks like, how dare YOU, an asexual, compare YOUR experience to that of REAL queer people -- and i have no experience of being a transfeminine person on tumblr but i get the impression it is way way worse than aphobia was at its height. but like -- the experience of having your queer subcommunity harassed sucks! hardcore sucks! and has a variety of shitty knock-on effects on the health of the community! and i wanna commiserate with other people who've had that experience!

(also, i can't stand the sj "how dare you compare bad thing A to bad thing B when B is clearly much worse" rhetorical move. sometimes bad things are bad in similar ways and it's useful to talk about that similarity without necessarily making any claims about relative severity.)

i also think we need better tools and mental models for thinking of harassment as not just a one-to-one relationship, but a many-to-many relationship -- "moderation" as a concept seems to exclusively deal with individual posts or at best individual accounts, when, like. the social graph exists; clustering algorithms exist; i don't trust their reliability enough to want to bring down the website banhammer on anyone in a particular cluster, but i would absolutely fucking love a "block this blog and everyone within three degrees of separation of them" button. or something along those lines -- hey, i'm just spitballing here. a mental model of bad actors on a website as not just individual bad actors, but badly-acting communities with internal dynamics.

in every community of recreational bullies i've ever closely observed on tumblr (terfs, truscum, aphobes, various flavors of shipping drama), the following dynamics are present:

members of the community socially reward other members for engaging in harassment, and encourage new members to engage in harassment

members of the community screenshot and pass around often-equally-rude responses from the people they're harassing, as "proof" that these people are Incredibly Harmful and therefore the harassment is Morally Good, even Important, and that the harassing community are actually embattled victims valiantly fighting the oppressor

usually an Opposition Community forms, with the mission of harassing the bully community and exactly the same group dynamics, and the "original" bullies + opposition bullies become a self-sustaining feedback loop of harassment, because each group is constantly giving the other one more material to pass around and rile themselves up with

each community forms an incredibly specific and characteristic dialect of shorthand language that updates frequently as the community they're harassing gets wise and starts blacklisting keywords (when i was most recently on a terf blocking spree, "febfem", "TiM", and "moid" were big ones). engaged community members rapidly become unable to interact with anyone who is not Very Online, isolating them so that the community is now their main social circle

eventually the community comes up with some chain of reasoning, no matter how strained, for calling the objects of their hatred pedophiles

occasionally someone in the community will actually Go Too Far and bring down the banhammer on themselves. they remake their blog within days or weeks (due to the profit incentives of running a social media website, users are sucked into becoming hopelessly addicted -- especially users who are in so deep that they can no longer figure out how talk to people who aren't up on the Incredibly Specific Group Vocabulary). they are promptly passed around as a martyr

you'll notice that the main forces that keep the feedback loop going are a feeling of victimization -- if you feel like you're a righteous, oppressed victim, then you can justify little a death threat as a treat against the evil outgroup who is oppressing you, right? -- a community that rewards its members socially both for harassing others and for being harassed, and isolationist tendencies that make it difficult for community members to get social reward anywhere other than within the community.

it seems that, if you want to be able to deal with a group like this, you need to have some strategy for countering those forces -- whereas conventional moderation efforts mostly feed into the victimization mindset. maybe you need to somehow wall off the harassing community and the responding opposition harassers from each other, so that as far as each group is concerned the other one doesn't exist. maybe you need better tools so users with the characteristics that the harassing community targets can block the entire harassing community all at once. i don't actually know! but i doubt we're going to get anywhere without at least a basic understanding of system dynamics!!

[elerrinacrownedwithstars]

It's thinking about Galadriel hours again and the thing stuck in my head lately is that whether she identified more with her Teleri kin than with her Noldor relatives and I think there are strong arguments to be made for this, and specifically after the Kinslaying at Alqualondë.

The process maybe starts before that, I think. Finarfin maybe always felt more at ease at Alqualondë, and probably took his children often to the city of their maternal grandfather. Meanwhile there's the whole political drama in the royal court of Tirion and her uncles being absolute nightmares, and she might have observed how much more peaceful it was at Alqualondë. She is sure to be taking notes at this point, however, because where would Galadriel learn her subtlety, her skill at diplomacy and savvy for politics than in the hot mess that is royal court of Tirion? It's like watching a trainwreck. She is still ambitious, though, and the unrest of Noldor inflames her as well as the most of her kin.

But the march into freedom doesn't turn out like she imagined. Suddenly, her Noldorin uncles and cousins are slaughtering her Teleri kin. According to some drafts, Galadriel participates in the Kinslaying, and fights to protect her mother's people.

She doesn't heed the warnings of the Valar and turn back with her father, though. She keeps going. Her ambition is still too strong, and maybe she feels guilty and ashamed about Alqualondë? Perhaps there is a sense of culpability: after all, she is one of the leaders of the rebellion. She actively lent credence to the whole thing and that may have contributed to why some of the Noldor decided to join the march. Whether or not she participated the fighting, maybe she feels she should have done more to protect her mother's kin, and can't bear to face her or her surviving relatives in Alqualondë after that. It's better to keep going.

Interestingly, Galadriel remains with Fingolfin's host only long enough to get to Middle-earth. Despite of her ambition, she doesn't go on to claim land for herself to rule over, she isn't fighting alongside with her brothers, and she doesn't spend time in their camps or realms (except perhaps for a time in Nargothrond). Instead, Galadriel goes to Doriath and stays there in the court of Thingol, and the kin of her mother who never completed the journey into the West. She studies under Melian's tutelage and this has such a powerful impact on Galadriel that Lothlórien under her rule is extremely similar to the model she adopted from Melian. She becomes engaged to and eventually marries a Sinda, Celeborn. It's as if Galadriel at this point has been disillusioned by whatever Noldor have going on, and wishes to have no part in it. I think it would make a lot of sense that this change is specifically informed by the First Kinslaying and not wanting to deal with her cousins who fought and killed her Teleri kin. Perhaps the warnings of Valar and the Doom of Noldor also make her second-guess the very reasons that brought her people to exile. Either way, Galadriel is going to do her own thing.

The most beautiful of her names, the one name she uses forevermore, is given to her by a Sinda.

It's telling that she never does fulfill that youthful ambition of setting up a realm of her own, although she does act in leadership roles. It seems almost like she takes this position in spite of herself, and because the Elves of Middle-earth offer it to her and want to follow her. Even then, she adopts their customs and lifestyle, and shows respect to other cultures too, although her background could have made her incredibly haughty against peoples of Middle-earth. And why would the Sindar and Silvan elves respect her, a Noldorin princess related to Kinslayers who took the lives of their families and friends, if they too didn't see her rather as the daughter of Eärwen than of Finarfin?

[atherflame-theconcubus]

What body does Lune have? Because with the shattered twins turned into babies, a lot of their reactions to things is based on feelings associated with memories. And I know that Lune is a moon model just in the role of sun in the swap au. So does he look like a normal moon model?

Lune looks relatively similar to swap lunar (aka lunar’s nanomachine body) with one exception, which I haven’t really gone over yet

And it’s the fact that his parent decided to give him hair. (still working on the exact style, but it’s short and messy.)

[pretty-prince-lulu]

I have GOT to talk about this colonist partly because he's interesting in his own right and partly because the idea of him as a story inspiration is fascinating to me and I'm sure someone out there will enjoy the concept

it's a bit long but we can focus on text around here!

started a tribal colony randomized the xenotypes with the intention of going with all non-baseliners (I presume they'd been liberated from a base with growth vats as infants and raised by tribesman, and never knew anything other than tribal life) we got: an animusen (fox person from Alpha Genes), who started pregnant from her missing VRE hussar husband), a dirtmole, a highmate (expanded upon by Vanilla Races Expanded- Highmates), a genie (ditto from the Genies module), and an android (likewise). who I assume, at the time of Liberation, was a simple service android, probably running a growth facility alone (not the same one by relative ages, but a similar one) who would have had zero skills across the board but also zero needs basically just a machine for renewing the supplies in the vats and whatever menial task the unmanned facility would have needed

these androids, however, do something interesting they start out as blank, subservient service droids (without needs or demands, occasionally rebooting to empty their RAM, which I presume looks to his fellows as a brief seizure and then he's fine) but when exposed to a great deal of stress or excitement (which I assume will have happened patching up after a raid or in some other dire circumstance, judging by the result) they Awaken whereupon they have a bunch of randomized traits unlock, and they become, in a very real sense an Actual Person. capable of feelings, romance, growth, learning, and almost everything a biological person can!

It is at this point I presume that all that he WAS is wiped from his memory banks, and from there on, he is a tribal. An ordinary man of flesh and blood, or so he insists.

he is Raven, a skinny, elderly man, who is really anything but.

he is not elderly at all- in fact, he's a relatively recent model, and is simply styled as an old wise man, a trait I imagine he took on when deciding to lead this tribe.

by programming, he has several double passion excellent skills: Medical, Intellectual, and... Social.

He leads our cult of magic and administering healthcare to all (including our enemies, who we release from prison after raids when we've treated their wounds)

This is not as interesting as his traits, which are as follows.

Wimp: This trait means he will go down very easily with pain.

He does not feel pain according to his health tab, so I'm taking this as psychological.

Desensitized: Won't get upset after horrible shit happens, which I'm chalking up to the same.

Schizoid: Can't express himself until he's stressed to the point of absolute meltdown, which I am, again, chalking up to past experiences.

Cat person: SAME, BABE

but the last one... the LAST one is what really compelled me to share.

Blood Mage.

Blood Mages work by using their magic in ways that interact with blood.

This includes: cutting themselves and using the hemorrhage to fuel their power

causing blood that is spilled to ignite like fuel

forcing someone else to bleed and vaporizing THAT blood specifically into a healing mist for himself

surrounding others in a shield made of the magic charged by bleeding himself

causing others to violently haemmorhage

the ultimate power (which he does not know): calling down a Blood Moon, which summons demons and other nasties upon our enemies.

Raven is an android.

Androids do not have blood.

When cut, Raven, instead, lurks neutroamine. This is also what comes out when he cuts himself to fuel his magic.

This is an ultra-technologically advanced substance, usually used to make advanced medications or drugs. We can learn how to grow the flower petals we can extract it from- but the casket and equipment needed to actually infuse it into our android is ultratech, and is behind about six layers of advancement.

For tribals, which has a massive penalty on research past the stone age.

Neutroamine in an android DOES NOT replenish when lost. It must be manually replaced.

It also interacts strangely with his powers.

Bleeding himself DOES charge his blood magic

The spilled neutroamine CANNOT be used like blood for spells (it will not heal others and it will not ignite)

He CAN use the charged power to shield his loved ones

He CAN make others haemmorhage and utilize that blood per normal.

This essentially renders him an opportunistic back-line defender and medic, who can bleed himself to shield others, but is a disastrous power to use because it's essentially a permanent down when he runs out.

This does not stop him defending the tribe.

Or his wife.

Or his daughter.

Androids cannot have children.

Did you know that, when they're paired up with highmates, they can reproduce telepathically- and that this is the only circumstance in which offspring is possible?

Did you know that, when these babies are born, they are- after briefly initiating- adults?

I presume this contributes to his insistence that he is an Ordinary Man.

Look at him.

He has a tribe. A wife. A daughter. So precocious for her age.

And so it shall be, until he calls up his shield for us, and the raiders are gone, and he sputters and fails, run out of his strange blue blood

and lies motionless for years upon years

until we learn the ways of the men from the skies.

[schoenht]

GREETINGS, MY DEAR FRIEND. if your requests are really open, may i ask for your faves (can be one of them, can be all of them, it depends on you!) + azul and riddle with an s/o who's the oldest sibling? thank you for your time and enjoy your week <33 (don't feel pressured to do this ofc JLSDJLAD you can do your ideas first !!)

↳ oldest sibling s/o.

characters: trey clover, jamil viper, azul ashengrotto, riddle rosehearts.

genre: fluff.

a/n: THE POWER YOU’VE GIVEN ME yes i’m putting four bc. my favs.

TREY knows how tired you must be. He loves his little siblings to bits, but he gets that sometimes you’re just tired. If you are the type of person to say that you hate your siblings but really don’t, he gets amused every time you speak about them. He knows that you talk bad about them, yet it’s clear how protective you are. You can complain all you want to him, he will listen. He is aware that as the oldest, you are the anchor, therefore no one realizes that you’re being crushed under all your expectations. All of it is thrown away when it comes to him. He ensures that you are relaxed around him and don’t have to worry about carrying another burden with a smile. Trey definitely likes to hug you a lot, if you make it clear that you don’t really get hugged that often. They’re long hugs too, they’re long enough to give you, even just temporarily, peace inside.

JAMIL sees past what you put up. He is too used to seeing this; he has literally had to do this for most of his life. He is an intelligent person who has to work hard to keep that hidden; meanwhile, you are the person who has to follow the expectations set to you from a young age. He can tell you are burned out. You are not even in a situation like Kalim’s, where you are rich, you actually have to work until you get to a position where you are safe. Jamil hates seeing how much you force yourself to do in order to make your parents proud. He is the one that tells you how proud he is. If no one else tells you, he will. If no one else shows you how much they appreciate you, Jamil will. He wants to help you the one no one helped him because you are the only person that has seen past what he tries to hide. You are the only person who reached out to him and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t do the same for you.

AZUL likes to think that you’re just as hard-working as him, when he actually starts realizing that maybe it’s not the hard work. Maybe you are so used to stress that whenever you are not in a constant state of it, you get even more panicked. This idea came to him after he told you that you did not have to take care of the twins, yet you insisted it was fine, that you didn’t have anything else to do. However, he was stubborn. But he saw the effects of that when you were pacing, nervous as though relaxing was going to bring something bad. Azul finds out after a while what is going on and he does his absolute best to slowly get you to ease up on your workload. If you truly want to help him, he will not say no. He likes spending time with you; he will just tell you to vent if you need to. He’s the kind of guy who will stay up late talking to you because he knows that you need someone to be there. He is more than willing to be that person. If no one else will, he will because he wants to. He is not good at saying he loves you out loud, but he says it in his tone when he goes on and on about stuff he likes about you, from your work ethic to your personality. Your smile is everything and he wishes to be the one that causes it.

RIDDLE understands that you carry a lot on your shoulders. Since you are the oldest, you are the model in your family. It is similar to his role as housewarden, only you have your siblings stuck with you for a while, maybe even forever. The protective instinct never goes away and it is even more haywire when you are not there with them. He tries to help you whenever he can since you carry a lot. He tends to hold tea parties just for the two of you to help you relax and so you can spend time together. Here, you can vent to him, he will listen and give advice if you want it. Mostly, he is concerned that you might burn yourself out. He sees your potential and the last thing he wants is for you to collapse. If there is anything you need help with, he is there for you. He makes it clear that you do not need to keep up the strong act with him, you can finally breathe.