#beginner mistakes

[destructokats]

The first time I learned that Night = Scary in FFXV was that one quest for Takka where you had to get an ingredient only found in Galdin Quay. I think it was a tomato.

I wanted to finish all the quests I could before moving on, so I figured I would just go and then come back. It was late into the day in game but I thought it was a short distance and it wouldn't be a big deal.

The first clue should have been Ignis refusing to drive but I was alright just letting Noctis drive.

I only ended up half way to Galdin before an iron giant spawns in the middle of the road. The guys were all still babies in terms of level and they couldn't take on an iron giant, so I ditched the car in the middle of the road and the guys hauled ass on foot back to Hammerhead while iron giants were spawning behind the guys.

I was more careful after that.

[greenpvnk]

So despite growing tomatoes yearly since about 2018 or so, I’ve clearly done a beginners mistake in the form of overwatering my plants.

Pretty much all of my plants are showing these signs but Especially this Neapolitan variety of Piennolo seems to be very sensitive to too much water.

Don’t do what I did, unless it’s crazy high temperatures or super dry conditions you probably shouldn’t water your tomatoes daily or even bi-daily this early on in the season.

[why-bless-your-heart]

My mom sent me a watercolor she just did and I’m going a little crazy over it, tbh.

[pippinseal]

Here’s my puppy bunny mix dessert boy, Parfait!

yes, you can take a bite out of him. no it wont hurt, yes he tastes good, yes he regenerates, yes he has two tails, yes he melts under the sun , if u have more questions im happy to answer:3

[rainwater71]

i drew, no consistency between the different variations though

[cachito-p]

My drawing app offers stock background so I decided to try to emulate that good ol’ main-guh style with it 😗

[poisonnxkki]

Mistakes I Made In The Beginning Of My Practice🦋

What Makes Something a Mistake?

How do we define a mistake? How do we know when we've messed up? These were questions that haunted me in the beginning of my practice. I was overly worried about doing things wrong and having to pay the price for those mess ups. The uncertainty of it all made me really hesitant to start experimenting in my craft. I would later come to terms with the fact that mistakes are inevitable, but as a beginner I was definitely intimidated.

The truth is, I'm not really sure there's a surefire way to know if something is a mistake until we've messed up. Spell work can be tricky in the sense that we often define our own parameters of success. This means that a spell can be failure to one person and a success to another based on their personal views of what success means. If a spell has consequences that we don't intend it to have or manifests in a way we weren't expecting, does that constitute as a failure? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. In my opinion the best way to determine if something's a mistake is to mess up. You won't know until things go wrong.

How I Rectify Mistakes:

To start, remember mistakes are inevitable. We can't avoid them and we shouldn't try to. Sometimes spell work isn't going to manifest in the way we were expecting. Sometimes our spells are going to force us to confront uncomfortable truths or set boundaries in order to get what we want, and there may be no other way around that. This is a reality that we should strive to accept rather than avoid.

But what happens when we actually do mess up? How do we go about fixing what we've done? I follow a few guidelines which help me determine what my next steps should be and hopefully these are helpful for you too.

Determine what has happened and if the spell is influencing the situation- the effects of some spells are relatively short lived so if the spell isn't currently influencing the situation then you're on damage control (and a good cleansing should be enough). However, some spells (often spells that are contained within a vessel or are tethered to you) need to be undone first.

Cleanse or banish- depending on the type of spell you may feel like cleansing just isn't enough. If that's the case, doing a banishment of the effects/energy of your previous spell should do the trick.

Mundane over magical- the effects of spell work often show up in our daily lives so taking the time to fix/heal from life events is super important.

Reflect- it's important to try and understand exactly what went wrong. Were you specific enough? What ingredients did you use? What order? What did your petition say (if you used one)? Where was your mind when you were casting? Going over how you did the spell can be helpful when determining what went wrong. It's important to reiterate that sometimes our spells are going to force us to confront uncomfortable truths or set boundaries in order to get what we want. Something that feels like a mistake now, could play an important role in you getting what you want later on so keep that in mind.

Mistakes I've Made:

I've talked about this before but I once did self-love spell for myself and a group of friends. This was fine, my mistake was trying to do them at the same time. I ended up accidentally binding myself to all of them. Months later we had a major falling out, which inevitably ended our friendship and was especially difficult on me. I was sick for several days and ended up doing several chord cutting spells to rectify the situation.

I was struggling with severe anxiety a few years ago and decided to do a spell to help with it. The problem was that I didn't define what I wanted from the spell. I kinda just said "no more anxiety" and lit the flame. When doing this spell, social situations had been the driving force behind my anxiety. However, it became health related after this spell. I should have been more clear in my intention when doing that spell but more importantly, I should have known that there is no "easy" fix for anxiety.

My first baneful protection was a blunder because it didn't work. I was nervous about messing up, which caused me to. Something I find influences baneful protections are boundaries (and our ability to set them). If you can't set boundaries in the physical world, then you aren't going to be able to set them energetically (in my personal opinion). I was an absolute pushover in relationships. I let people take advantage of my kindness and had trouble putting my foot down. My energy reflected that and the baneful protection did absolutely nothing, it was both a waste of ingredients and time.

🖤*All images are from Pinterest*

[telekitnetic-art]

Have you seen the formline art in splatoon? It's present in a variety of salmon run decals and on some of the locker graffiti. Idk if the Devs just googled "salmon art" and got indigenous art and decided to copy it or what. Not sure how I feel about it personally.

Long post incoming, gonna put a break here. Also sorry for the late response, I wanted to take a couple days to formalize my thoughts together before responding fully.

I have, I remember noticing in 2018-2019 (when i first started playing splatoon 2) how much one of the decals/graffiti located on the ruins of ark polaris back in 2 sort of resembled a formline bear and salmon. (near the logo in this screenshot, I couldn't find a clear picture online)

Back in 2019, it was pretty easy to think of it as coincidence or a stretch for a comparison. But with splatoon 3's salmon run decals, the resemblance is far easier to see, specifically with the TS-ORBRS graffiti and the TS-SCHL graffiti.

(also this was the best image size I could find for the graffiti images, sorry)

A couple of the banners have the designs on them as well:

The website Sealaska Heritage has info such as textbooks and an online doc about formline art (specifically geared towards Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian nations' style) with lots of info about formline art, and the Seattle Art Museum website has an info sheet (with credits listed as being from the Sealaska Heritage site as well) breaking down some of the basic shapes of formline art.

with this chart, you can definitely begin to notice the similarities between the Salmon Run graffiti and formline art. the ovoids, crescents, and u-shapes appear noticeably in some of the graffiti such as ORBRS and SCHL.

For perspective, here are some formline pieces featuring salmon or fish from various Indigenous artists from various nations.

"sk’ug sdang" (Two Dog Salmon) by Robert Davidson (Haida)

"metal medallion", by Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl (Tlingit Athabascan)

"Salmon People" by Alano Edzerza (Tahltan)

"Jumping Chum" by Stephanie Anderson (Wet'suwet'en)

"Salmon" by Art Thompson (Nuu-chah-nulth)

And that's literally just the surface of dozens of Indigenous artists from the PNW.

With these pieces, you can begin to see the resemblance that the graffiti designs have. A lot of the heads follow the pattern of utilizing ovoids for both the head and eyes, and u-shapes for the bodies and crescents to fill in specific areas are also common. For example, TS-SCHL has a small school of fish where the bodies are entire ovoids.

However, there are a couple flaws in the graffiti designs too. With a few of the designs, you can see they utilize the u-shape (see the formline shape breakdown from Sealaska again) in designs like TS-WHP and TS-SMFR. I can't speak for every Indigenous formline artist ever, but from how I've been taught to design formline art from my family, the u-shape should connect to the rest of the form instead of free-floating. I drew a quick example here:

you can see similar mistakes with a different kind of u-shape with TS-RLPL and TS-C0HK.

Another very specific mistake that takes a bit of squinting to make out is that ovoids are sort of top-heavy, for lack of a term I can't think of right now. The line or the area should be thicker on the top then the bottom. This mistake is frequent in the graffiti designs utilizing ovoid or ovoid adjacent face or body shapes, like TS-ORBRS, TS-C0HK or TS-SCHL.

Full disclaimer, I am not an expert at formline art. I've been practicing it under the tutelage of my aunt and father for about 3 or so years now, and there are definitely cultural variations that come into play as well. My culture's formline art style can look completely different from someone who is Haida or otherwise. This critique of the graffiti designs is based off my knowledge and skill at formline art, as well as critique and feedback that I've gotten from family. Formline art isn't just something you look at and replicate, there is a specific process of utilizing the shapes and negative space that you need to account for too. Some shapes have their own rules for how they're used as well.

Despite the beginner mistakes, the clear resemblances are pretty definitive proof that a good section of the sticker/graffiti designs for the salmonids are meant to be, or at the very least based off of or inspired by, formline art.

Splatoon's lore has a lot of elements of taking inspiration from real life culture (which is sort of one of the main elements of the story, the squids and octos are basing their society off long dead humans). Hell, Shiver and Frye are two prime examples of Splatoon working in real world culture into their setting and characters.

With that in mind, using an art style that's exclusive to an ethnicity of people as inspiration or baseline reference for the game mode that's all about taking natural resources from a species that in-game dialogue tends to treat as dangerous and lesser-minded is... not a good choice. Especially an ethnicity that has historically been ravaged and attacked by settlers for natural resources.

Now, technically if you do digging into lore for salmon run, you can find out that the salmonid are not as simple-minded as the dialogue in-game (I am staring directly at the deep cut big run announcement dialogue we've gotten so far -_-) makes them out to be. The salmonids do trades and commerce with the octarians for equipment and gear. That's why they have such technically high tech gear, like the scrappers with their shields that actually resemble octarian shields and the flyfish with their missiles and flying aircraft. That's also why power eggs show up in the story mode; they're from the salmonids' trades with the octarians.

So the salmonid could technically be as just as smart as the inklings, which is why the dialogue and some of the portrayals of the salmonid are confusing and contradictory (shiver's dialogue from the first big run, that one promo picture of an inkling walking a smallfry on a leash????). I think a good bit of the fanbase sort of thinks of the little buddy we get during the game as a pet, and I'm sure that much more of the fanbase/playerbase doesn't really care about the lore whatsoever. Salmonids sort of have a similar vibe to me as hilichurls from Genshin Impact, where the lore tells you that they're smarter than people assume while NPCs talk of them as less intelligent monsters. And you're also caught in this paradox where killing/fighting them feels morally wrong but the gameplay loop has you continuously doing that while also telling you on the downlow that you should sort of feel bad about it.

Rassicas did a really good video on translating salmonid lore from various interviews, which is where I learned a lot about the salmonid lore that doesn't really get explained/brought up in the game.

The usage of formline art in Splatoon has me sort of mixed on my opinion, because besides using an Indigenous art style for an enemy species that are considered lesser in intelligence by the NPCs, Indigenous art and culture as a whole has suffered a lot under colonialism. I don't know how much awareness whoever is reading this has about Indigenous history and colonialism, but Indigenous culture as a whole was banned in North America by the respective governments from being practiced by the respective cultural groups. Things such as ceremonies, regalia, and even practicing formline art were banned from being used by Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous people however were free to use it, which is why a lot of bastardized versions of Indigenous regalia and culture exists. You can see it in non-indigenous spiritual practices utilizing Indigenous practices and terminology like spirit animals and dreamcatchers, and sports teams utilizing Indigenous culture in its labelling and mascots. That is where cultural appropriation comes into play. And before I get anybody commenting about this, the salmonid formlines don't count as "cultural appreciation" because as far as the info available is concerned, there wasn't any Indigenous people that were consulted for the designs. And even if there were, I again have mixed feelings about Splatoon utilizing an Indigenous art style as a design piece for an enemy character in the franchise.

On another note, this isn't the first time Indigenous cultural appropriation has popped up in the Splatoon franchise. There was actually a headgear that was unreleased in the first Splatoon game called "Warrior Headdress", and you can guess what it looked like.

Yeah. That was all levels of yikes and I'm thankful as hell that it didn't make it into the game (technically it's not in the game as a wearable item, but you can spot it at the very back of the headgear shop ingame)

So Splatoon has utilized Indigenous culture as inspiration beforehand with the games, so it's not much of a stretch anymore to think that the salmon run graffiti designs were based off formline art or was an attempt at formline art.

I'm not really sold on the idea that the salmonid are meant to be representative of Indigenous people though, nor do I believe that utilizing formline art for the salmonid was a malicious decision. But it was a slightly ignorant decision at best, because again using Indigenous specific art for a species of enemies that gets fought for their natural resources and is referred to by some of the NPCs as basically being lesser-minded animals is really not a good decision.

This whole thread is not meant as a guilt trip for anyone who likes the salmonid lore, has bought any of the salmonid graffiti stickers, or enjoys salmon run, nor is it an accusation of the devs for maliciously misusing Indigenous culture. I actually really enjoy salmon run for it's PSP and concept, but this design aspect gives me mixed feelings as an Indigenous person. And to be honest it's hard to label intentions or the thought process because there isn't any info available on the development of salmon run and those graffiti designs specifically. So it's hard to know if the devs employed an Indigenous artist for feedback or if they indeed just looked at some formline art of salmon and tried to replicate it or used it as inspiration. I'm inclined to believe the latter judging by the beginner formline mistakes seen in some of the designs. There is an art book coming out soon for Splatoon 3, so maybe that will give more info.

To wrap this all up, I don't think there is really anything to be done about the designs. The game has been out for a while and I don't know if the game would change the designs at this point. I also don't think this should stop people from buying the sticker designs in game or playing salmon run. However, it is important to learn about the context of these designs so that you know why they exist and why they can be harmful, and so devs and creators can avoid making the same mistake in the future, and so Indigenous issues with cultural appropriation can be made more aware in the public space and not be ridiculed by non-Indigenous people. And again, I am just one Indigenous person so there may be other opinions from other Indigenous people on the graffiti designs and how they should be handled or viewed.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and have a good day!! Be sure to check out some actual Formline art made by Indigenous people, like the ones I listed near the top of the post!

[wafflerissue]

art block over yuri go

not my phighting ocs btw, they belong to my friends!!

[nightyraven-art]

That's how my lu Twilight design from lu

Yeah I'm very proud of this, I spent a lot of time on this and yeah I will try to draw others as well soon

He's one of my favorites, pls be easy on me, thanks

[java-dragon]

Covers Bookbinding for beginners by a beginner- The Home Stretch

*drinks half a gallon of coffee*

COVERS!

You've gotten your typeset done for the fic, you've battled the demon that is your printer, folded pages, stitched pages, glued pages, glued end pages, and end bands. Made the cover, covered the cover in potentially homemade book cloth.

Now it's time to design a cover.

It's time to make this thing into a fully functioning book and slide it on your shelf and have a nice bout of "Laying on the Floor while Questioning the Human Condition (TM)".

There are a few options.

It depends on what you want.

I can only take you so far with Cricut/vinyl applications. But I researched enough to maybe, MAYBE give you the run down on at least how to get your cover from Canva to the software to cut out your vinyl. I'll start there since this is what I know the least.

Open up your version of Canva.

Make a document, I've seen some fanbinders make all this in the cricut software but I can only smile and nod along. But for me- this is the best I've figured:

go to the search bar and type in book cover (or use the drop down menu) click on a random template.

Fiddle and fart your way into a design you like. Text and Font Options are available in drop down menus and find some designs that are "Easy to Weed" which I understand as "Getting rid of all the stuff that's not going on the cover".

For Example:

Do you like it? It took me 40 seconds, I'm very proud of it. But this isn't to impress you really I just need to show you how to save your file so you can make the leap from one software application to the next.

Hit "Share", Hit "Download", File Type- Hit the down arrow, Hit "PNG" I missed this for the first few times--- BUT!

Click the "Transparent Background"

If you're doing more than one colour Vinyl you're going to duplicate the page that is located right next to the lock icon above the document. Hit that. Delete the stuff that you want to be different colours. Otherwise it will just cut everything out as one colour and I've seen some vinyl covers that get damn fancy.

You can also build a title cover just measure the spine and height of your spine and rotate your text to horizontal if you please.

Now for how I do mine. I use Printable Iron On Vinyl. Keynote there is a difference, there is stuff for light fabrics, and stuff for dark. Choose for what your primary book cloth will be but the paper itself will be white.

Make your design.

I have 3 different covers for Celestial Navigation by Sabrecmc just because of how LARGE the fic itself is. I had to split the text block up for ease of handling.

I saved as a PNG, and loaded up my fancy printable vinyl into my printer and went through the software for printing, I had to do some fiddling but for my purposes I had to get the whole cover in the right size on the page- it took some fiddling yours might be simpler it might be more complex. But once I got it printed I trimmed off the white and was left with a peel-able rather velvety feeling thing.

Remove the backing. Get the iron on and go low and slow with the provided barrier material to prevent melting and damage to the print you've just done.

I made spines as well and made an 11 x 8.5 (Or brochure template)

And lined up my spines accordingly as to not waste materials. There will be grids that pop up automatically to let you know if things line up.

Print them out on the "highest quality" out put for your photo software.

It peels like a sticker. It may take a bit to get it going.

Line it up as nicely as you can on the cover (double check on the still exposed board).

There is a protective sheet that comes with it USE IT. Set your iron to a low heat and move it around frequently.

If you're in a relatively humid area (I live in a coastal town so the humidity is pretty high all year). Have a heavy book to squish your covers down with to try and get out any bends that may happen post ironing (also why we want low and slow).

Leave to cool.

Now you have a text block and a cover.

For all intents and purposes for my demonstration I'm leaving the spine off and am redoing everything with this fic from the ground up. There are aspects and mistakes that I have made that have irked my brain. So I will be leaving the spines off for this round. This is the learning curve and since a lot have things have clicked into place since beginning this series that have given me the "AH HA! CLARITY!" moment. I have completely reworked EVERYTHING in my text block of Celestial Navigation. Plus I've a perfectionist issue that is a lot milder than what it was.

But these two text blocks will work as my "Ground Zero" and will be the books I compare all potential future binds too.

As a note that I said in the beginning of this endeavor:

THIS IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK DO NOT SELL WORK THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU!!!! YOU HAVE ASKED PERMISSION (I dearly hope) TO DO THIS DO NOT BREAK TRUST WITH THE AUTHOR.

IF You want to offer a copy to the author- GO FOR IT. Close friend that is showing interest in the fic?? Sure ok.

But if you sell it for monetary gain? I hope you stub your toe, and just before it finally heals you stub your toe again and may all your breakfast cereal turn to slugs.

DO NOT BE A DICK. I am writing this whole 'How To' Series as an experiment of Good Faith that you, the potential binder, will do right by the community and not compound an issue that has been cropping up. Etsy sellers, and this horrible Facebook community that will steal other's typesets, and begin selling them.

Like I said- this is a breech in Fair Use.

Now with that lecture, again, out of the way lets settle the rest of this series.

You will need:

Glue

Book Press

glue brush

Wax Paper.

Your Cover.

Your Text block.

Get your textblock and cover lined up with some wax paper in the middle of the decorative pages (if you're doing them other wise the page you glue down to the cover and the rest of the text block.

Fiddle, fart and dry fit until you are satisfied.

Lay down a layer of glue on the page NOT THE COVER ITSELF.

DON'T BE ME. I FUCKED UP HARDCORE AND DID THE COVER WITH THE GLUE. HOOOOO NELLY LET ME TELL YOU HOW BADLY THAT FUCKED SHIT UP.

HOW BAD WAS IT? BAD. VERY BAD. DON'T BE LIKE ME THAT FIRST ROUND, BE LIKE ME ON THE SECOND ROUND AND PUT GLUE ON THE END PAGE.

Line up the textblock for a final time and then apply the paper to the cover open the textblock and smooth what you just glued down. Flip over and repeat.

Then add weight to the text block put it back in your press, or if you're like me and have a reprint in the press just throw books atop the block.

Allow glue to cure over night.

Shiver, shudder, and lay on the floor. Your fic is now a book that you can put on your shelf.

Welcome to the wild wild world of bookbinding.

I've been your host trying their best to explain all the things.

I will likely continue this series with "OK SO I LEARNED SOME SHIT ALL THAT SHIT I WROTE BEFORE FEEL FREE TO LISTEN BUT I'VE GOT BETTER SOLUTIONS NOW" time stuff.

[pollen]

what if i became a dietician 0-0 what if became an lcsw 0-0 what if i became a personal trainer 0-0 what if i went to culinary school 0-0 what if i became a pilates instructor 0-0 what if i went to nursing school 0-0

[littlemeltymarshmallow]

Mesmerizer!

[declawedwildcat]

It's finally complete 🐟 As soon as @thenightpool said they were considering doing a collection of the works from Unleashed Blue this summer, I knew I wanted to make a hardcover copy to commemorate the event.

I've never tried any bookbinding before but I'm pretty content with the results, and it's so satisfying to see all the participants' hard work in a physical, over-2-inch-thick form!

If you'd like to read this yourself, you can download a copy from this post 🌊 (The art looks much more impressive in digital high res!)

[erazonpo3]

i don't know if i feel like posting my whole rant about how people treat romance as the amateur genre because it's easy to make a snap judgement about whether or not you find something romantc, but when it comes to anything else about a work people would rather just consume it uncritically. And in fact being critical about anything other than ships when it comes to fanfic is bad and you shouldn't dare point it out

[marigoidz]

My final camp creation