#decide what’s good enough to post

[rosicheeks]

Ok ok ok ok fiiiiiiiiineeeee

[luck-of-the-drawings]

so REVENGE, HUH? or justice, if that makes you feel better. it tastes the same when cooked just right. 'I REALLY WANTED A BROTHER.' such a shame to burn a bridge you so desperately wanted to keep, especially when it wasnt even you who started the fire. especially when you hope that not a single fragment of that bridge ever washes ashore.[MAY IT ROT FAR FROM MY SIGHTS] an unfortunate loss! atleast he has his friends.

[jewelthenerd]

Guess who started playing Cult of The Lamb 10 days ago and got obsessed with it

meeeeee

anyways here take a Leshy ( favorite character honestly )

Version without shading under the cut

[dracothedeatheatingcupcake-ao3]

And that’s a wrap for Comic Con 2024! Ha, it was a lot of fun, but I really enjoyed dressing up as Mondo today! I even had a couple people recognize him! And a few others just liked the hair, one of whom asked how long it took me to get my hair like that, which tells me that at least it looks natural enough for people to mistake it as my actual hair, ha.

Overall, Comic Con was cool! On Thursday, I attended a live podcast recording for Braving the Elements, which is an Avatar the Last Airbender podcast hosted by Janet Varney and Dante Bosco (the voices of Korra and Zuko, respectively), and I actually got a trivia question right and I should (hopefully…) get an email from them soon to get a prize for answering the question right. If not… oh well. At least I’ll be featured briefly on the podcast answering trivia correctly, even though I usually suck at trivia, ha.

The rest of the days were a bit more meh, but I still had fun. I won a Pokeball ornament from a Hallmark panel, since I knew how many Squirtles were in the Squirtle Squad, aha. Which leaves my trivia score 2 for 2 at the moment.😅 I also got a free shirt and scarf for the upcoming Yakuza live action show, which was neat. I’ve never played Yakuza, but my brother has, so I was able to give him the shirt at least.

Still, while Comic Con was fun, I’m definitely glad it’s over so I can go home and clean up from my frantic cosplay creating the last several weeks, oof.

Also! On the first day I dressed at Taka, but since I was by myself I only have the one photo my dad was able to quickly take of me before he had to drive off and a quick selfie I took in the car.

[thunderboltfire]

I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.

It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.

The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.

What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.

But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.

There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.

But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.

My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.

The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.

I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.

It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.

And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?

There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.

[insomnya777]

hermitcraft au where literally everything is the same except redstoners are called stoners

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

DARK CREAM WEEK: day 5- punish/reward

idk man i think your threats would work a lot more often if you stopped being so handsome about it fdrgbegh<333

dark cream week and comic are by @zu-is-here

[antiqua-lugar]

I never played early access so I have no idea what the vibes were there, but it's wild to me that some people really thought Gale was gonna have some secret evil plan? Like never mind his whole personality, he is the only companion who approves of every single good choice anyone makes.

[cerealmonster15]

ummm goober time sketchy doodle time w/heartslabyul.......... adeuce + lil babby crushies...

i think adeuce would enter that "no homo but tbh a lil homo" era of bestieship and be in mega denial before they realize their own feelings

also not necessarily ship exactly, but like i could see adeuce havin lil tiny crushes on treycay when they first enter the school fjdkshg like caters vibe matches ace + trey is that responsible upperclassman lookin after the freshies and i think juice would admire him [he admires like most of the older students tho it's soooo cute]

and then same reasoning for deuce w/riddle... riddle being sweet to deuce w/ his math struggles in deuces dorm story my beloved... + ace has that one thing he says about riddle in his ghost bride event card story where he was like "yeah he looked so cool bursting into the room i wanna work hard and be cool like him" and tbh sounded like a boycrush in denial.

[sunless-not-sinless]

shitGPT

for uni im going to be coding with a chatGPT user, so i decided to see how good it is at coding (sure ive heard it can code, but theres a massive difference between being able to code and being able to code well).

i will complain about a specific project i asked it to make and improve on under the cut, but i will copy my conclusion from the bottom of the post and paste it up here.

-

conclusion: it (mostly) writes code that works, but isnt great. but this is actually a pretty big problem imo. as more and more people are using this to learn how to code, or getting examples of functions, theyre going to be learning from pretty bad code. and then theres what im going to be experiencing, coding with someone who uses this tool. theres going to be easily improvable code that the quote unquote writer wont fully understand going into a codebase with my name of it - a codebase which we will need present for our degree. even though the code is not the main part of this project (well, the quality of the code at least. you need it to be able to run and thats about it) its still a shitty feeling having my name attached to code of this quality.

and also it is possible to get it to write good (readable, idiomatic, efficient enough) code, but only if you can write this code yourself (and are willing to spend more time arguing with the AI than you would writing the code.) most of the things i pointed out to the AI was stuff that someone using this as a learning resource wont know about. if it never gives you static methods, class methods, ABCs, coroutines, type hints, multi-file programs, etc without you explicitly asking for them then its use is limited at best. and people who think that its a tool that can take all the info they need, and give it back to them in a concise, readable way (which is a surprising lot of people) will be missing out without even knowing about it.

i got it to write tic-tac-toe (the standard babee) in python (the lang i have to use for uni ;-; (held at gunpoint here)). my specific prompt was "write me a python program for tictactoe that is written in an object oriented way and allows for future expansion via multiple files"

it separated it into three files below (which i think would run, but i never actually ran any of this code. just reading and judging)

why does board use display instead of __str__ and __repr__?

why is the board stored as 1d instead of 2d? thats just confusing

why does it never early return aside from check_winner? (not a big issue here but kept on choosing to never early return when i asked it to add more methods)

why is there no handling of non-number user inputs?

why are non-int inputs truncated instead of telling the user that they should input ints only?

why is display implemented like that?

why are so many lines so bloody long (wide)?

why is there a redundant self.check_winner() after the while loop in TicTaacToe.play()? and if it wasnt redundant then you could finish the game without there being anything printed telling you that the game is finished?

why is the only comment useless? (this comment wouldnt be useless if it was a doc comment tho, but it aint a doc comment. speaking of, why is there no doc comments?)

these are the more immediate things i saw, but there are other things that are bad here.

whenever i write * this is where it updated the api without changing any usage of the api.

so i ask it to change board.display into __str__ and __repr__, it changes it to __str__*, it does not add a __repr__. asking it to add a __repr__ 1) removes the __str__ and 2) gives me this (the other methods are unchanged)

what. the. fuck. this would imply that board takes in an argument for the boardstate, but it clearly doesnt. after 4 more asks it finally has both __str__ and __repr__, without fixing the fact its implying board takes an optional arg, so i get it to add this arg. anything that needs to print the board still calls display btw.

the reasoning it gave for using display over the repr and str magics was this

While using __str__ and __repr__ is a more idiomatic approach in Python, choosing to have a separate display method can still be a valid choice, especially if the display logic is more complex or if you want to keep the __str__ method for a more concise or formal representation of the object.

which, erm what? why would __str__ be for a concise or formal repr when thats what __repr__ is for? who cares about how complex the logic is. youre calling this every time you print, so move the logic into __str__. it makes no difference for the performance of the program (if you had a very expensive func that prints smth, and you dont want it to run every time you try to print the obj then its understandable to implement that alongside str and repr)

it also said the difference between __str__ and __repr__ every damn time, which if youre asking it to implement these magics then surely you already know the difference?

but okay, one issue down and that took what? 5-10 minutes? and it wouldve taken 1 minute tops to do it yourself?

okay next implementing a tic-tac-toe board as a 1d array is fine, but kinda weird when 2d arrays exist. this one is just personal preference though so i got it to change it to a 2d list*. it changed the init method to this

tumblr wont let me add alt text to this image so:

[begin ID: Python code that generates a 2D array using nested list comprehensions. end ID]

which works, but just use [[" "] * 3 for _ in range(3)]. the only advantage listcomps have here over multiplying is that they create new lists, instead of copying the pointers. but if you update a cell it will change that pointer. you only need listcomps for the outermost level.

again, this is mainly personal preference, nothing major. but it does show that chatgpt gives u sloppy code

(also if you notice it got rid of the board argument lol)

now i had to explicitly get it to change is_full and make_move. methods in the same damn class that would be changed by changing to a 2d array. this sorta shit should be done automatically lol

it changed make_move by taking row and col args, which is a shitty decision coz it asks for a pos 1-9, so anything that calls make_move would have to change this to a row and col. so i got it to make a func thatll do this for the board class

what i was hoping for: a static method that is called inside make_move

what i got: a standalone function that is not inside any class that isnt early exited

the fuck is this supposed to do if its never called?

so i had to tell it to put it in the class as a static method, and get it to call it. i had to tell it to call this function holy hell

like what is this?

i cant believe it wrote this method without ever calling it!

and - AND - theres this code here that WILL run when this file is imported

which, errrr, this files entire point is being imported innit. if youre going to have example usage check if __name__ = "__main__" and dont store vars as globals

now i finally asked it to update the other classes not that the api has changed (hoping it would change the implementation of make_move to use the static method.) (it didnt.)

Player.make_move is now defined recursively in a way that doesnt work. yippe! why not propagate the error ill never know.

also why is there so much shit in the try block? its not clear which part needs to be error checked and it also makes the prints go offscreen.

after getting it to fix the static method not being called, and the try block being overcrowded (not getting it to propagate the error yet) i got it to add type hints (if u coding python, add type hints. please. itll make me happy)

now for the next 5 asks it changed 0 code. nothing at all. regardless of what i asked it to do. fucks sake.

also look at this type hint

what

the

hell

is

this

?

why is it Optional[str]???????? the hell??? at no point is it anything but a char. either write it as Optional[list[list[char]]] or Optional[list[list]], either works fine. just - dont bloody do this

also does anything look wrong with this type hint?

a bloody optional when its not optional

so i got it to remove this optional. it sure as hell got rid of optional

it sure as hell got rid of optional

now i was just trying to make board.py more readable. its been maybe half an hour at this point? i just want to move on.

it did not want to write PEP 8 code, but oh well. fuck it we ball, its not like it again decided to stop changing any code

(i lied)

but anyway one file down two to go, they were more of the same so i eventually gave up (i wont say each and every issue i had with the code. you get the gist. yes a lot of it didnt work)

conclusion: as you probably saw, it (mostly) writes code that works, but isnt great. but this is actually a pretty big problem imo. as more and more people are using this to learn how to code, or getting examples of functions, theyre going to be learning from pretty bad code. and then theres what im going to be experiencing, coding with someone who uses this tool. theres going to be easily improvable code that the quote unquote writer wont fully understand going into a codebase with my name of it - a codebase which we will need present for our degree. even though the code is not the main part of this project (well, the quality of the code at least. you need it to be able to run and thats about it) its still a shitty feeling having my name attached to code of this quality.

and also it is possible to get it to write good (readable, idiomatic, efficient enough) code, but only if you can write this code yourself (and are willing to spend more time arguing with the AI than you would writing the code.) most of the things i pointed out to the AI was stuff that someone using this as a learning resource wont know about. if it never gives you static methods, class methods, ABCs, coroutines, type hints, multi-file programs, etc without you explicitly asking for them then its use is limited at best. and people who think that its a tool that can take all the info they need, and give it back to them in a concise, readable way (which is a surprising lot of people) will be missing out without even knowing about it.

[kakashisthickthighs]

i am thinking about if getou and gojo really did continue talking afterwards and like the tiny intricate details and logistics of their lives.

they part in 2007. they had flip phones.

getou dies in 2016. they had iphones, instagram, snapchat, and dog filters.

when getou first goes rogue, shoko and gojo probably still have his number and are blowing his shit up. he probably has his phone off for the first days of it and turns it back on after. there’s no need to trash it out of a want to stay hidden—he won’t die unless they send an army or gojo himself.

when he turns his cell back on, he’s half-tempted to delete all his photos of jujutsu tech, with shoko, with gojo, and he gets as far as deleting maybe 15 of them in a heavy-breathed rage before convincing himself that maybe he doesn’t need to delete these. these are mementos of the said pinnacle of jujutsu, and they’ll come in handy when there are no non-sorcerers left.

he’s about to put the cellphone away before it rings. it’s satoru. he sighs. he calls once every day. it’s relentless, six or seven calls at minute intervals. getou almost laughs at it—the world’s strongest, desperate.

a month after his disappearance, he calls every night at ten. sometimes the pixels on his cell read 10:04, 10:21, the latest was 10:42. it becomes a ritual, agonizing every night wanting to finally beat gojo at something, to make him lose. but suguru finds himself holding his breath as 10pm wanders by every day, breathing easy only when his phone stops buzzing.

maybe one night he’s yet again alone in his shoebox apartment, assorted belongings littered about, convincing himself this was the best path for him. not jujutsu tech, the horrible missions, the loneliness, the taste. it feels better here, where no one else is happy.

he’s lost in a daze when his phone rings. it’s been three months and satoru won’t let up. every night. he scoffs and flips his cell open just to sneer and make a point, to feel powerful in his own mind, but once the line connects, he’s silent, mouth agape and eyes wide that he actually picked up.

he hears static from the other side, a shift of fabric, a shaky inhale. “suguru, you fucking idiot,” gojo sneers, loud on the other end, “what’d ya pick up by accident?”

getou can’t help but laugh from the bottom of his heart. his abs are burning and tears are falling by the time he contains himself, and memories flood back. selfies, dumb finds, food pics, phone bills crazy all from hours on the phone together. there’s satoru’s voice, and then there’s lofi samsung static-lined satoru’s voice. both sound like home.

“suguru—“

“satoru,” he breathes, and this is what it feels like to talk again. he’s lived in this apartment in silence for the past three months, voices only coming from his saved videos.

“come home, suguru.” they both know it’s impossible.

getou chuckles again into the speaker. he can almost see it, satoru’s spindly form, one leg propped up on a chair, elbow resting on it as he holds the phone in distaste. or maybe he’s completely prone, jolted awake by a voice he hadn’t expected to hear.

“satoru, you’ll be fine,” he chimes, hanging up. he squeezes his eyes shut and swallows a sigh, and just like that, he’s left home again.

three years later the calls have stopped. the iphone 4 comes out, and the world is awash in touch screens, app stores, and missing charging cables. it’s time for an upgrade, and getou powers off his flip phone—his youth—one last time and tucks it gingerly into a shoebox. he starts completely anew with no data to transfer.

gojo meticulously transfers every contact and double checks only one number. it’s the first call he makes on his new phone.

the number you have dialed is not in service—

he hangs up and slows his breathing. he doesn’t delete the number. suguru, the contact reads.

you’ll be fine.

[mekanikaltrifle]

Unlife: once more, with feeling

Clan Brujah headcanon: their rage is alien. 

This is not to say that their anger is explicitly the work of outer beings or extraterrestrials (that has gone down badly in VtM lore before. Just check out the removed lore for Vicissitude and find that one out).

No, their rage is alien in that it is truly the works of inhumanity; this fury is as like that of a god, and something they could never have known in mortal life. It’s nothing like human anger, or even that of other vampires. Borderline uncontrollable, but seemingly bottomless, there is no way a mortal could know rage like this-- it would rip their muscles from the bone to ever attempt to live through it. Alien in that it has no source, at least not one an individual Brujah can really pinpoint with any degree of accuracy; it’s likely the Beast, and definitely the Curse of their blood, but beyond that? Even staring into it is enough to blind you. And it need not always be in the throes of Frenzy, though Frenzy they do. The rage is impossible to define because it does not feel like mortal anger, but the only framework they have is that of their former life. To an outsider, that is the only reference they can append to this unknowable deathly force. And it is always there even outside of Frenzy.

Consider delving deeper into the rage, the feeling. All Brujah feel, far deeper, far sharper than any other Kindred. Each of them may think they know feeling: melancholy, for instance, runs so deep in Kindred existence one could be forgiven for thinking it is what they are meant for, and the Brujah are no different. The image of the rough-and-ready street warrior is a perfect cover to obfuscate the misery, and the elation, the sheer staggering valley of raw emotion every Brujah has howling in the depths of their cracked-open soul. How could the other Kindred ever know how it feels to live an unlife with no protection from your own self? And this feeling, these raw emotions, they lie to you. 

Every memory of feeling from before the Embrace falls flat below the Curse-- gaslit by your own Beast-- and you steadily lose the ability to understand ‘moderation’ or how you could ever have felt so calm. Sure, you can act a certain way, you can mask what you’re feeling, but sooner or later it will rear its head again, it will demand you feel, at all costs and what a cost that will be.

The Malkavian Embrace is supposedly a mind-shattering experience that renders every single Malk irrevocably mad… and could the same not be true of the Brujah?

An Embrace so overpowering, so damning and paradoxically alive with emotion, fear, as well as bewilderment, the vertigo of having your life turned upside down and inside out… nobody could feel that and live. So, you die. And you come back an entity of feeling more embattled on all sides than anyone could ever know, because to feel so deep it kills… that’s a lonely way to exist. A heart that lies still under your cold ribs cannot break from the stress. And what is dead may never die. So they survive it, even when they shouldn’t. 

So the Brujah, they come up with causes and stories and political battles to direct this rage; what else can they do, under the weight of it all? Better to fight out the energy than to let it fester, or you’ll rot away from the inside-- forever, and ever, without end. 

The other Kindred, they hate you because they do not understand… even if they act like they do. You’re a street punk, one of the rabble. Reckless and meat-headed and vulgar so unlike the graceful, emotion-stunted beings of ages long passed. And so many of them have seen from the outside what a Frenzied Brujah looks like, and completely missed the true horror of it. To be so overwhelmed, never able to surface for more than a few days, in an endless sea of what the living enjoy so easily, so broadly, proudly even.

Poor lost souls.

[compacflt]

does thomas kazansky believe hes an honarable man? what does honor mean to him?

i love this question because this is my version of tom kazansky’s whole thing, and i think my version of tom kazansky is a man very conflicted about what honor means—the purpose of everything he does, the way he acts, what he acknowledges and refuses to acknowledge, is to achieve some higher level of honor… one more medal, one more rank, one more star. but of course in his personal life (womanizing, his relationship with mav, all the secret-keeping), he is not an honorable man, no.

and the funny thing is, i don’t think he could answer this question—the fatal flaw of my fanfic, as I’ve written about (and made diagrams etc) here, is that… for plot reasons, no one can really ask him that question! It’s actually very visible in the slider one-shot: every time slider or someone else gets close to asking, “Look, can you just be honest with me about this for a sec,” they literally get interrupted in the middle of their sentence, because for plot reasons Ice can’t actually be pressured to answer a question like that until maverick dies! So I think, if you asked him what honor is, he would say “I’d like to think I’m an honorable man. I have four stars that prove it.” But if you pressured him about some of his actions… what about pulling Bradley’s papers, or your secret illegal relationship… he wouldn’t know what to say. Honor, for him, is whatever the NAVY tells him it is. The navy says honor = four stars, he has four stars to prove how much honor he has earned. Anything in his personal life comes secondary to the honor he’s starving for in the navy. And, he feels like he has no control over his personal life, because he just lets that happen to him.

So—in summary, I’ve been writing him as someone who values professional honor over personal honor, and then ends up paying for that in the end.

But here’s also the thing… I’ve been trying to write him as someone who still TRIES. He’s been given this life…all these secrets… some of it is his fault, yes, but some of it also isn’t. It’s just life. He’s trying to do the best he can within its (admittedly artificial) constraints.

He’s just trying his best. hopefully ive left it up to you to decide if he succeeds.

[thedrotter]

not-yet-dead-person

silly comic of a conversation in-game i thought was too funny not to make something proper for instead of a doodle ww

(timelapse + wip images (thus silly process commentary in read more if you like artist commentary :3)

i think the sketch looks silly and goofy and funny so i find it important to share with you the mere presence of the faces i drew on it. i drew it on top of the boxes without staying inside its borders because i find my proportions can get wonky if i draw them cropped in a restricted space. and I feel trapped otherwise and i will draw BAD!!! give me spaceeeee to go wild!!!!

the head circles are there for emotional support

very low res speedpaint because truth is the canvas was much bigger than the space where my comic was placed. i didnt account when exporting my timelapse in 720px that that tiny space would look so pixelated ... but it's able to be percieved, so its okay.

(i will now comment on my process and it is not brief sorry)

usually i would try to clean up my sketches and figure out what goes on top before jumping into linework, but since there are multiple panels and drawings i chose to jump into inking right away for the sake of brevity. i just went in with a brush that uses pen pressure and drew what was needed. i added extra line thickness and contrast in areas around the face because it helps direct your eyes there more easily that way.

according to her equipment rei has a chain belt but i only remembered it existed once I was going to color, and i did not like that discovery... I chose to ignore it to maintain my peace. i already have the color palettes for these characters figured out, and i didnt really want to think about a new element at the moment www I tend to overthink those things a lot so i skipped it

the rest is rather straightforward! not that anything else wasn't, but in here i could turn my brain off and sing. linework and sketching require mumbling so i cannot turn my brain off. just block in the characters with a solid color so i can have a mask (something along those lines,) where the color can stay inside. then just color in !!!

Base colors just had slight cell shading on the skin, and for the hair i airbrush a bit of the skincolor in low opacity near the forehead... I'm not sure what it means, but i can look at the faces easier with it somehow. i like the gentle subtlety it adds even if you cant really tell. it makes things look nice.

background was just me blocking in the color of the wall and floor, shade the wall a bit, then slap a noise and free use wood texture on top. work smarter not harder ! yet it took a bit to make it look stylistically fitting with the characters, and even now i think bottom middle panel looks odd. whatever!!!

for the middle panel i thought itd be funny if the background was a solid silly and colorful one to contrast the next panel's sketchy black one. a contrast to how the word widow is seen. on that note my handwritting is not pointy. i gaslighted my hand into thinking that it was indeed pointy in that moment so i could write "not-yet dead person" in letters that didn't seem cute. my hand did not fall for it but it complied anyway

that's basically it! I'm not sure what else i could say that doesn't feel barebones because it really is that straightforward. if you're curious I used clip studio paint for this. only special brush used was for linework (a brush named Lemon Brush), the rest used were just the default. my computer gets the least credit. it was trying to convince me a 20mb file was going to nuke it all the time and hardly let me save multiple times so i do not appreciate it

[toytulini]

if you draw enough monster ocs, when you go back to drawing a human character, it feels like "sameface syndrome" everytime, by virtue of their face being. human.

[minecraft-sideblog-tm]

“...Begin?”

____________

I started this drawing with the intention of a quick doodle of that face Grian accidentally built last episode as being like some cute, no-thoughts-head-empty salamander dude that I’d post like “This is the big salamander in Grian’s base! His name is Derrick” or whatever. At some point it just started looking very creepy and when I couldn’t fix it I decided to just kinda....roll with it. So....

This is the eldritch horror in Grian’s base! His name is Derrick

Happy Halloween I guess lol