#i’m so sorry for my poor photoshopping skills

[itubainaretro]

i love the fact that i was being a clown this morning and everyone followed through with my clownery. i absolutely love this. you’re all legends and thank you for not letting me be on my own on this.

here’s to being clowns together until the end, mecs

[askaceattorney]

Dear 91teivos,

Mod Vera: Thanks! Everyone in the world is going through some kind of existential crisis, so it made sense for the AA characters to join the party! (And since it was another follower who gave us the idea, we might just keep that idea in the think that after all...)

Dear dawsongfg,

Mod Vera: No need to apologize! We like to space out letters from specific people a little, but we’ll answer as many as we can!

(Referenced Letter)

Dear Bluedragoncody,

Co-Mod: Don’t worry.  I doubt they’ll have much luck against the Ace Attorney crew, even without the Proto Badger.  They have the ultimate weapon against despair in their arsenal, after all.

...They’re doomed, aren’t they?

I can’t make any promises, but if I ever gain enough skill in the art of animation (which has been a dream of mine for a long time, it turns out), I’ll keep that idea in mind.

Dear skibot99,

Mod Vera: Probably Tumblr bein’ weird. (What else is new?)

Dear sheeeesh,

Mod Vera: Mods get brought on as needed, as you can see with the arrival of Mod Edgeworth! Also, DGS2 is one of the few AA titles I’ve never played, but rest assured. Where there’s a letter, there’s a Mod who can answer it!

Mod Edgeworth: To add to Mod Vera, even if you weren’t accepted during any mod applications, that doesn’t mean you have lost all chances. I applied early January and lost to Mod Vera. Regardless, Co-Mod informed me that, even though I was rejected, he saw my potential and kept me in mind for if I was ever needed. Now, here I am.

Just because you get rejected, that doesn’t mean it’s game over. Show that you have potential and make yourself known by sending letters to us. That is what I did, after being rejected. I made myself known to the mods by sending letters. We do read them and they tell us how much you know the characters and games of AA more than any application. Of course, you must also follow the guidelines. That just goes without saying.

Co-Mod: I think my actual words were something like “Don’t tell anyone, but you were my second choice.”  But yeah, what they said is true -- becoming a Mod here, like many things, may or may not happen to you, but you can definitely increase your chances by waiting patiently and demonstrating your potential.

As for DGS2 letters, I’m afraid those are still off-limits unless you know of a way to play or watch the game in its entirety, translated into English.  I guess I could check to see if the Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 channel finished translating...

(Translation: Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!  ...D-Don’t tell me?!)

...Okay, looks like I have some watching to do.  Don’t know how I missed that.

So, uh...  That part in bold was what I was going to say.  Now that both games are finally getting an official English version, all I can say is, hang tight!

(Previous Post)

Dear Inferno again,

Co-Mod: Yeah, I agree.  I was just joking around.  For anyone who didn’t catch it, that was a reference to Sbemail #108.

The event’s technically over, but we’ll answer the rest of the April Fools’ Day letters when they reach the bottom of the queue.  I’m as eager to see Trucy’s reaction to the news (after the stunned silence) as anyone else, after all.

(Video in Letter -- Strong Language Warning)

Dear Ella,

Mod Edgeworth: 

I can’t see the first link and....

How did you find this masterpiece and where can I play this game?

Co-Mod: We don’t check for direct messages on Tumblr, if that’s what you’re referring to, so it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.  You can always send links in your letters, of course.

(Previous Post)

Dear Inferno,

Mod Edgeworth: That mad lad would be me and thank you. 

I like to put my heart and effort when answering these letters. With this one, I figured you wanted to see Trucy in costume, so I just searched up an image on Google for the Ancient One’s costume, a sprite of Trucy and a bald head to put on her. The rest I photoshopped on GIMP. 

We’re still going through letters from January. Hopefully we will get the rest of yours soon enough.

Mod Edgeworth: Thank you very much. Your support and the others’ support that have liked, commented and reblogged it mean a lot. As you have stated, a majority of the fandom seem to consider him the worst. I’d like to think it’s because how AA had created this villain of a character to be universally hated was pure genius. Not even the Phantom gets this much hate… and that’s saying something.

Unfortunately, I’d like to keep my real identity outside this blog a secret. I write a lot of letters here and I don’t want to break the spell for anyone. Think of it like a Disney theme park. The cast that play the characters will never admit their true identities, outside of family and close friends, to prevent the experience from being ruined. I want to do the same as a Mod. I don’t want to break the spell of writing to your favorite AA characters. This blog had helped me through my tough times and I want to help everyone else as a mod.

However, I will answer your letters and, if you post anything on your account, a mysterious friend I know may linger and give you a like ;)

(Previous Letter)

Dear Ali S. Fakenamington,

Co-Mod: Beautifully so.

(Previous Letter)

Dear Sinyove,

Mod Edgeworth: That letter was made in 2012 before AA5 and AA6, which was WAY before I became a part of the AA fandom. I’m certain a lot of us were not here when this letter was made, except maybe Co-Mod, but you’ll have to speak with him about this. I will say that the mod that answered this is no longer working here... I think. At the very least, I haven’t heard from him.

That being said, AA4 or Apollo Justice was the first AA game I’ve ever played. Despite all of the hate I saw towards that game, I still loved it regardless. Though, having not played the trilogy, playing the tutorial of AJ was a pain in the ass. I remember going to YouTube to find out how to beat it, because it was so hard. I also played it on PC.

I do see where The Mod was coming from. Had the two sequel games never existed, Apollo Justice would have more holes than my brothers’ socks. My only critique is that Phoenix wasn’t any better either with having Mia babysitting him during almost every trial AND investigations. Hell, Phoenix needed Mia to know how to talk to a kid, talk to a perverted old man, almost gave up in most of his trials in the first game and never conducted a trial without Mia until Turnabout Goodbyes when Maya literally couldn’t summon her. For the most part, Apollo was doing fine on his own without Phoenix, with only Trucy assisting him for the two middle trials, only almost giving up once and Phoenix having assisted him during times when Apollo was not in a normal situation (like when the criminal turned out to be his own co-council/mentor or when he had to lead a trial that included the Jury System). That’s more than Phoenix ever did on his own in the first two games and I think Apollo deserves more credit than he got in that letter in my opinion.

For me, Apollo Justice is one of those games you either like or you hate. I love it for what it is. My least favorite AA game would have to be Ace Attorney Investigations, the first game. The second one is my absolute favorite.

Co-Mod: Sadly, I haven’t seen or heard from the Mod in a while, so it may be time for us to declare him MIA again.

Erm...  Sorry, poor choice of words.

I’m fairly certain I wasn’t around 5 years long ago, but I have to say, Capcom did a great job of making Apollo and his story more interesting over time.  He may not be Phoenix, but he certainly carried his legacy forward pretty well, both as an attorney and as an Ace Attorney protagonist.

Now, WHAT ABOUT ATHENA ALREADY!?

Dear BDC,

Co-Mod: It fits like a glove, if you ask me...although it also kind of reminds me of 101 Dalmatians.  And thanks for that bit of info!  I never get tired of watching people enjoying the fun dialogue and plot twists of Ace Attorney, so I might have to look him up.

I’m not sure I feel the same about watching Dahlia’s voice actress, though.  I’m sure she’s a nice person and all, but the thought of hearing that voice for so long...  *shudder*

(Previous Letter)

Dear dawsongfg again,

Co-Mod: I wasn’t trying to say that natural deaths can’t happen in the Ace Attorney universe, just that most deaths aren’t what they seem.  I knew right away that Archie Buff’s death was no accident, for one thing.  Waaaaay too much of a coincidence, know what I mean?

-The Mods

[nikatyler]

Felt like doing some replies the ~ old fashioned ~ way. I should be packing, but I don’t wanna. One good thing about this semester is that I don’t have classes on Monday morning, which means I don’t have to go to Prague on Sunday. But I’ll be once again going home late on Friday -_- Oh well. Maybe I could skip the lecture every once in a while to go home on Thursday afternoon.

I’m scared. Not really of what I’ll have to learn because I know that even if it’s difficult, I’ll probably get it in my brain in the end. Somehow. I’m more scared that once again, I’ll be left alone. I haven’t really found a stable friend group. I mean, I talk to some people sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it a friendship. One friend that I thought I could rely on doesn’t even bother saying hello to me anymore. I don’t know what I did to him, he just stopped talking to me. But maybe it’s for the best. Even when we still talked, I couldn’t believe how judgemental he was, and I often wondered if he talks about me like that too when I can’t hear it. He probably did. Oh well, I’ll see what I can do. I hope I’ll run into someone who is kinda like my best friend from high school.

As for sims stuff, I know I still owe some things to some people and I feel bad about it. You’ll get it eventually. I’m actually looking forward to doing it too. Makeovers are fun. I’d also like to release some more sims, I have one more sim dump and then some old legacy characters I want to share, plus some BC contestants that didn’t make it. They like to get eliminated in the first rounds.

Also, thanks for the comments on my mental health update post. I’ll see how this turns out and if it doesn’t get any better (I’m kinda hoping that better weather brings better mood, it worked before), I’ll start looking for a therapist or something. No offense to my parents but talking to them about this didn’t help in a slightest. They just don’t get it. And I swear I’m not reverting back to the “I’m an edgy misunderstood teenager” phase. Even though “edgy misunderstood teenager” is an aesthetic I still live for. Whatever that means.

And thanks for the tips on the laptop post. I’ll keep them in mind and I’ll probably ask again when the time comes and I actually buy a new one.

Ahh...I guess that’s it? Replies under the cut. As per usual, they’ll probably be the shorter part of this post, but oh well.

abysims  replied to your photoset  “Let’s find Lilith Vatore some love! In my game, I’ve had Lilith in a...”

Honestly Cassandra and Lilith would be amazing (... In my Glimmerbrook Academy story Cass is actually gonna have a huge crush on Lilith so I'm voting for that, yas!)

Ooooh that sounds great! Also, I’ll have a post announcing the results of the post coming up later, either today or tomorrow, but...spoiler alert: Cassandra might have won ;)

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your post “Simmer - Get to Know”

Lol this thing with Mermaids made me remember that when my friend and I were like 12 years old, a 6-year-old made her a "proposal" and we answered him that she'll marry him when he buys her a house by the sea in Prague

Omg sea in Prague sounds kinda cool, my faculty would be so close to the beach *-* Haha but at the same time it’s kinda terrifying, where would the sea come from? From the north? From the south? Would that mean my home doesn’t exist? Or, actually, considering my town was built on a big hill, would that mean I live on an island? And which part of Prague would be under the sea and which one would stay?

Sorry, I got distracted thinking of this AU where my country actually has access to the sea :D But we used to have it, back in like I think 12th or 13th century. We’re wayyyy smaller now.

amuhav replied to your post “Me, looking up some specs of my current laptop: you're...you're...”

If it's anything like me with my first 'gaming' laptop, the store clerk basically straight up lied to me about how good it was, and I was too young and naive to know better �� sims 3 almost burnt that thing to a crisp ������

Lmao I have a similar story with my first laptop, we were told that it has this super amazing graphic card...and it wasn’t amazing at all, as I later learned when my laptop broke.

amuhav replied to your photoset “Sims Moodboard Challenge I was tagged by @blurrypxls,...”

Oh no... don't make me want to go back to pinterest and do more of these �� They're ADDICTIVE

THEY ARE! I haven’t done much today, but I’ve spent a lot of time there all through this last week.

amuhav replied to your photo “I need to stop. This is more addictive than scrolling through memes....”

Pssst, not to enable or anything, but Picasa 3 has this nice feature where you can take a bunch of pics and it makes them into a nice collage. That's how I made mine, and then used them as my desktop backgrounds ��

I think I’ll use Photoshop, like I do for everything else, but thanks for giving me an idea for my new background! I used to have my sims or some other characters set as a background, but now that I take my laptop to school I feel a bit uncomfortable with that, so since October I’ve had this kinda boring background and I’ve been meaning to change it into something nicer, I just didn’t know what to put there. Now I do.

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “How dare you pretend you’re Father Winter?” Father Winter:...”

Holy crap, Sunset is a lot more buff than I ever realized. Those arms! ��

Yup. That’s because she has to get her Athletic skill higher for work. I think her muscle slider might be at max, actually!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Father Winter: “That’s it! You’re going on my Naughty List. Your...”

How could she not with with muscles like that?? Damn his Christmas magic!

Next time we should just call Caleb. I mean, he defeated Grim Reaper with no problem, surely Father Winter won’t be any more difficult for him!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “Okay, cool. You won’t give us gifts but I have a special one...”

Lmaoooooo, get him, Sunset! ������

He deserves it

asplashofsims replied to your photo “~ daylight”

Cute picture! ♡ I hope you feel better soon and omgg winx club, it's my guilty pleasure for sure hahah all the childhood memories��

I love Winx Club so much. It’s a little ridiculous and the plot holes are terrible (and don’t let me talk about anything after season 4, those are not my Winx D:), but I can’t let it go.

blubrich replied to your post “I forgot how traumatizing Toy Story 3 was ��”

Especially the ending! ��

YES. I remember the whole cinema was crying.

Also, Toy Story always unpacks this weird guilt in me haha. Because as a child, naturally I was like “I would NEVER abandon my toys, I’ll keep them forever!”. And now...they’re in boxes...under my bed and in the basement...some of them I gave away or to my younger sister, who then also gave some away because she’s fifteen now. I still have my plushies and teddy bears in my bed though, it would be too empty without them :D

silverspringsimmer replied to your audio post “(via...”

I love Within Temptation and they got me into heavier music later, too!

I don’t even remember how I found them. I was just bored of the music I was listening to all the time back then, so I clicked through playlists and stuff on Spotify and somehow I landed on their page, I guess. And I immediately fell in love.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your audio post “(via...”

Oh this song was the first song of this bad which I heard! It was also 5-6 years ago.though I do not listen to them often these days.

I think the first song I heard was What Have You Done, which I liked and still like very much, but then I heard this one and went kinda crazy because it just sounded so epic and exactly what my poor slightly depressed fifteen years old soul needed. In one day, I completely switched from pop to metal and it took me a few years to appreciate my old favourite music again. (I know that I say all the time that I’m a Taylor Swift stan, but actually I only really started LOVING her music again last year.)

I’ve always thought that it’s kinda funny that in my Music class, for the first semester I prepared a project about Taylor Swift. In the second semester, that changed, the old pop loving Ronnie was dead, and my new project was about Within Temptation :D But I remember that I was actually upset that day, I chose to show my classmates the video of What About Us and they didn’t appreciate it. And then after me, my other classmate had a project about some singer who had this weird song about getting high. They wanted to replay it. I was so bitter, in my head I was like “this song that I showed you has an interesting meaningful message and you’d rather listen to a song about drugs, how dare you?! You’re absolutely terrible!”

Yeah. I mean, I get it today, but I was so, so bitter.

amuhav replied to your audio post “(via...”

I recently found out they had a new album out (and Nightwish had a new single out too ��) and early 2000s emo teenage me immediately surfaced and threw money at my screen!

Ahhhh I’ve basically had Noise on repeat since it came out, I love it so much! And the video is cool too. I can’t wait to hear the whole album. Nightwish never disappoints, I hope I’ll one day get to see them live. I’ve had a few chances but then it never worked out.

[tksfandomhellhole]

Alright now this. This is the one I’ve been waiting for. This is the start to the (ongoing) series that makes me go “I NEED someone else to talk to about this.” Because boy do I have Plans™ that I really hope I follow through on

If I play my cards right the series may very well be the Apex of my apex fic career.

I also may have busted out my photoshop skills for it towards the end and it feels silly now but at least you can tell I had major fun with this

Fandom: Apex Legends (Video Games) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Revenant (Apex Legends), Pathfinder (Apex Legends), Mirage | Elliott Witt Additional Tags: Minor headcanon for The Syndicate, Canon-Typical Violence Series: Part 1 of Infiltrating the Syndicate Summary:

Revenant is bored to death. Pathfinder would spend 10 minutes searching if you told him gullible was on the ceiling. And Mirage somehow gets roped into this.

What ensues ends up being more dangerous than any of them bargained for.

Revenant is bored out of his fucking mind.

Between being in this communal living space where he has to refrain from killing all these people he hates and rarely getting the chance to curbstomp some of them in the ring himself, being an apex legend is not all he imagined it to be.

Where's the death and action he was promised? He hasn't seen a match all day.

Even assholes need to pass the time somehow.

"Hello there, friend!"

Ugh, great. The smiling scrap heap is here.

"Go bother one of those skinbags you love talking to." He says, attempting to strike down the potential conversation before it starts.

The attempt goes unnoticed, as Pathfinder responds anyways. "I would! But they are all in the ring." The screen switches to a frowning face for effect.

If Revenant didn't have proof standing right in front of him, he'd think it was impossible for a robot to wear it's heart on their sleeve. It's not like they're supposed to have them in the first place.

It does give him an idea though. Maybe he can get some entertainment out of this after all.

"Really?" Revenant starts, feigning interest "Which of those skinbags do you consider your friends?"

"All of my teammates are my friends! They are very nice. I hope my creator gets to meet them one day."

"All of them? That's pretty strange considering half of them can't even stand you, including me."

"My friends don't like me...?" Pathfinder is visibly confused but still pauses to consider the thought, and Revenant knows it's working.

"Yea, in fact, I'm pretty sure that skinbag with the stupid hair and holograms has even told me he hates you." Even Revenant knows the scrap heap is partial to that skinbag in particular, as stupid as the idea of a robot harboring any sentiment at all is.

"Mirage? But he is the one who told me about the games! Mirage is my best friend."

"Hey, if you still wanna believe that it's your choice." Revenant says, before taking his leave. The bot may not believe him but the seeds of doubt have been placed, and knowing both parties far better than he'd ever like to, it's only a matter of time before things come to a head.

At this point anything is better than sitting here brainstorming the fastest way to kill himself so he doesn't have to put up with this a minute longer.

And as if on cue, the man of the hour returns to the lounge.

"Ah, Mirage!" Pathfinder calls out, intending to settle this the most logical way: by simply asking.

Before he gets the chance to respond though, another match begins, and Mirage finds himself on a drop platform getting ready to enter the next game.

Pathfinder doesn't have an issue with that of course, until he actually hears what Mirage is saying.

The platform is about to descend, taking their team out of earshot entirely, but not before Pathfinder hears Mirage say "At least I don't have to fight with that smiling robot" with a laugh.

Pathfinder continues to look at the spot where the platform descended crestfallen long after they've disappeared.

"See? What'd I tell ya." Revenant says with the biggest shiteating grin because holy shit this was way easier than he'd thought it would be.

"Oh... I see. I thought I was beginning to understand humans better since joining the Apex Games, but it seems I am still ignorant..."

Pathfinder remembers feeling this way once before; shortly after meeting Elliott for the first time and learning of how he was being tricked. Had he been tricked yet again? Were all humans just cruel? Is this what he was supposed to learn when his creator abandoned him?

He was beginning to suspect learning about the human race was not such a good idea afterall. He did not like being deceived but he also did not mind these things when he did not know any better.

"Well there isn't really a lot to learn about skinbags I wouldn't trouble myself too greatly over it." Revenant begins panic backtracking because, yea, he was trying to stir tensions up a bit, but the scrap heap seems to be taking this far more personally than he thought possible, and he doesn't actually want to be the reason the bot figures out that most skinbags are terrible retched creatures- really, he should learn that on his own the hard way. Later. When he is far far away, and not right now, in front of him, where he can see how devastating this discovery is to the thing.

For a long moment, Revenant isn't even really sure if the machine has heard a word he just said, before Pathfinder suddenly snaps back to normal, in an almost jarring movement. "Well, I should get going now! See you later, friend." he says, and heads out of the lounge area, leaving Revenant more than a little confused.

---

Mirage had almost forgotten Pathfinder had been trying to ask him something earlier before he noticed he hadn't seen Path around since before that match.

That's strange, he thought to himself. Path was not the best at intentionally masking his presence,  so he should definitely have run into him by now, especially if there was a question still burning away at his mind. Pathfinder seemed to be an infinitely curious being.

There wasn't any harm in looking around at least. After asking "Path? You here?" to at least four different rooms, Lifeline finally took pity on him and pointed him in the right direction.

"Last I seen him, he was talking with Revenant. Ya better off asking him."

Stranger yet Mirage thinks, but decides not to jump the panic button just yet, heading over to where the robot in question idly twiddled with a knife.

"Revenant, was Pathfinder talking to you earlier?"

Revenant almost seems caught off guard by the question "Yea, what of it, skinsuit?" He bites out.

"Well, did you at least catch where he went after that? Cause he doesn't seem to be here."

If he didn't know any better, Mirage would say Revenant almost looks sheepish now, and given the context that's none too reassuring. Revenant says nothing and Mirage narrows his eyes in suspicion. "Wait, do you know something we don't?" Maybe it was just something robot related that non-robots wouldn't understand? Mirage didn't have any idea what the two could've possibly discussed that would make Revenant of all people clam up.

Revenant finally relents "Alright so I may have said somethings that set the walking quote machine off, but I didn't know the pathetic scrap heap was gonna run off like that."

"I'm sorry, did you say HE RAN OFF?" Mirage asks, internal alarm bells suddenly going off.

Revenant regains his edge with a smirk "Yeah, you might wanna go find him before he gets lost. He's about as smart as a toaster oven."

"Dammit!" Mirage yells, grabbing his gear on the way out.

---

“Stupid Revenant and stupid fast Pathfinder leaving without telling anyone. Seriously how did he get this far away already?" Mirage mutters to himself as he speed searches in the general direction he believes Pathfinder would have went. Maybe he should've enlisted Bloodhound's help before he left. At least they would be able to tell if someone had traveled this way recently.

It's dark out, and he's far from where the ship base docked. He hopes he finds something soon because he really doesn't want to be out here all night.

He's also starting to get paranoid, because he swears he heard some shuffling a few times that definitely wasn't his own, despite the fact no one is around.

Finally, he manages to spot the unmistakable  silhouette of Pathfinder up ahead.

"Path! What the hell are you doing out here?!" He yells, to stop the robot in it's tracks.

"Oh, hello Mirage! I have decided to quit the apex games."

Mirage takes only a moment to process this, before  asking, incredulous, "Are you dualsinal- delis- dil- are you out of your mind?!"

"I have been informed our friends do not like me, so it does not make sense to continue participating. I decided to continue looking for my creator elsewhere. It appears I am lost though!"

"Ok you're a robot, so you probably dont understand how ironic that is- but more importantly! Who told you that- wait, nevermind don't answer that, I already figured it out." Mirage says, putting two and two together. He sighs before continuing. "Okay, listen. Path. Nobody hates you buddy. Everyone thinks you're a valuable player to the games, and a valuable member to the teams. And, AND the games are still your best bet at finding your creator, not roaming the worlds blindly. So this is a very poor decision!"

"Then does this mean you don't hate me?"

"Hate you? Why would you think- Ok maybe I joke A LOT, but Path, you were the first person I even met in the games. If I hated you, you would definitely know by now."

"Really? This is great! I love you too, friend." Pathfinder exclaims, wrapping Mirage in a hug before he can object.

"Uh-huh, you're coming back and rejoining the games, that's great, now can we please go back? This place is starting to freak me out." Mirage says, pushing out of the hug.

Mirage begins to backtrack the way he came. "Alright, uhhh, I'm pretty sure it's this way, come on let's- ack!" The sound of a bullet whizzes by and Pathfinder and Mirage manage to get a glimpse of three armored figures coming from the direction it came from before dodging into cover behind a nearby rock.

"That's not good!" Mirage states, yelping when a spray of bullets flies past his head while attempting to assess the situation. "Path, how many crimes did you commit, since leaving the ship?!"

"I have not engaged in any illegal activities!" Pathfinder replies, similarly panicked.

"Well, It's a good thing I never leave the ship without my weapon holster!" Mirage says, pulling out a p2020 from his belt.

The three men converging on their position have spread out, attempting to cut them off on all sides.

"Alright, think fast Mirage, there's 3 guys flanking us, we have a robot with a grappling hook, me, and a single p2020. Totally doable."

Mirage straightens up suddenly and takes one last quick look over the cover before turning back to Pathfinder. "Follow my lead!"

Mirage dodges bullets as he runs out from behind the cover and sends out one of his decoys at the person flanking the left. They shoot the decoy and he loads a clip into their skull. In the same motion he swings back towards the center and heads for the remaining two enemies, activating  his decoy cloak.

Pathfinder takes the hint and uses the confusion to hook his grappling hook on an iron bar above the person flanking right, swinging into them at full force and knocking them out flat.

"You got bamboozled!" Mirage says, now dramatically posed behind the last guy. He takes aim and-

*click*

"Fuck." Mirage says, upon realizing his clip is empty. The man whips around to train his gun on him and Mirage instinctively stumbles a step back before-

The shadows twitch for a second and suddenly the man cries out in pain, robotic fingers protuding through him for only a moment before Revenant retracts his hand entirely and the man crumples to the floor.

"Revenant? What the hell are you doing here?" Mirage asks, relieved, not for the first time, that Revenant is on their side.

If you accused Revenant of being concerned about the trouble he may have inadvertantly gotten these two idiots into he'd brush you off, so instead he says "I was bored. Thought you guys might be up to something more entertaining. Looks like I was right."

"Well that was an uncomfortably close call. Do we have any idea who these wack jobs were?" Mirage asks approaching one on the ground to get a better look.

" ...Hey wait a minute, this is the Syndicate's symbol." He says, running his hands over a logo printed on the shoulder of their armor.

He picks up a boxy device from the person's holster and clicks the button. It boots up and displays a hologram with a dossier.

Mirage doesn't like being stressed, so he chooses to be offended instead. "Hey! Revenant's here too, why isn't he on the target list?"

"You think I got to be a hitman by being as loud and dumb as you two?" He responds, insulted.

Either way, this didn't bode well for any of them. "...Path, Rev, we-"

"I didn't consent to you giving me a nickname, skinbag." Revenant interrupts.

"You guys! We can't tell anyone about what happened here today."

"But Mirage, should we not notify our friends of-"

"No!" Mirage quickly grabs Pathfinder by the shoulders and shakes him for emphasis. "No. This stays between the three of us. We're already in enough trouble as it is, let's just go back to the ship and pretend nothing happened- And for the love of god, Path, don't try to quit the Apex Games again."

Pathfinder frowns at this turn of events but nods his head. "Understood."

Revenant simply gives a noncommittal grunt of acknowledgement.

"We might not live to tell the tale next time..." Mirage adds under his breath, taking one last look at the mercenaries lying at their feet.

Was there even a guarantee they could return to the games without further issues? Only time could really tell.

One thing was for sure; Revenant got exactly what he asked for.

Things just got a hell of a lot more interesting around here.

Perhaps it was time he revisited the Syndicate, add some targets to his hitlist. No one's gonna tell him where he can and can't go.

And maybe, for once, he had two targets to protect instead.

[higelaw]

WARNING: ANGSTY CONTENT AND SHITTY EDITION SKILLS AHEAD

Hey someone told me EraserMic was the king of angst ships in the fandom and I’m here with my contribution. I’m so sorry, i broke my own heart Audio from Bungou Stray Dogs 2, chapter 4. I found out Odasaku and Aizawa shared VA so i did this thing that i regret painfully (I’m sorry for the poor edition, i dont have edition softwares in this computer and i used Photoshop instead)

[dramallamadingdang]

I really like your new hood. What kind of visual editing are you doing? Also, what exactly are the rules of this hood? I tried looking it up with the tags, but alas, it wasn't explained fully. Is this a Zombie Apoc challenge? I'm doing a variation of the one on MTS2, but it takes place in post-War California, circa 1939, if Germans invaded the US. Please let us know your rules for this hood! Thanks! child_of_air

Oh dear, this is going to be really long, sorry. :)

1) The pic-editing. I made a Photoshop action to do that. At first, I was going to edit pics of that neighborhood in a warm, low-contrast sepia-tone. Because I like sepia-tone. So, I fiddled with an existing sepia-tone action I had (one meant for regular photographs) to make it work with Sim-pics. It does everything non-destructively, with adjustment layers, so the original image remains intact "underneath." But then I decided that I wanted SOME color but still low-contrast and matte and kind of grainy. So, on top of the sepia-toning layer group, I plopped down another copy of the original image and set a "Soft Light" layer blend with the layers below to merge it with the sepia-toning. THEN I edited a "film" Photoshop action that I had on hand to make it work better with Sim-pics, then ran THAT on the copy of the original image. Again, it works via adjustment layers, non-destructively. Then I reduced the opacity of the "film" layer group and the second copy of the original image so that the sepia-toning below merged better with the added-back color, resulting in the kind of images I've been posting.

THEN I recorded ALL of the above into a one-click Photoshop action that'll work on most Sims-pics. It'll sometimes need to be further adjusted, especially if the original image is really dark, like an outdoor nighttime pic with little or no light source, but for many pics, it's just one click.

I could share the action, if anyone would be interested in having it or fiddling with it for their own use, but it is still dependent on the other two actions that I edited. I'm not sure how to share all three together since one of the dependent actions is bundled with about a dozen others. I don't know how to extract just the one. I suppose I could just share the whole bundle, though. It's a very nice bundle that offers lots of nice effects, actually! :) I'm pretty sure it's one of the hundreds of free ones my hubby has, since he has the ones he paid for in a different folder on the networked external archive drive... Well, if anyone wants it, let me know, and I'll look into it. :)

Now as for the rules....

There really isn't a hard-and-fast set, I'm afraid. I'm kind of making things up as I go along. Initially, this was SUPPOSED to be just a neighborhood to test out some of Sun & Moon's stuff and some playing ideas prior to using those things in another neighborhood I'm developing but where I don't want to experiment. Then it kind of took on a life of its own. *laugh* It has BACC elements merged with the "backstory" of an Apocalypse that can also easily be a "pioneer" or “homesteading” kind of thing with no apocalyptic undertones. :) There are also some elements of an "integrated" playing style. In its pure form that would mean that everything has to be "built" in-hood, with nothing just appearing out of the air. I don't want to go full-on with that -- too tedious and therefore un-fun, IMO -- but I do have some supply chains. More on that further down.

Basically, it goes like this: The end of civilization was coming (Plague, nuclear war, zombies, who knows? And who cares? :) ), and only one person seemed to realize it. That one person was in college at the time. So, rather than focus on his studies so much -- After all, civilization was ending so there goes that MBA and lucrative corporate career, right? -- he focused on making as many friends as possible and convincing them that, "Hey, world's gonna end, we need to get outta Dodge and make a new world." Slowly, he gathered a group of friends -- people who lived in the dorm, a few professors, hell, even a cheerleader -- who believed him and started to make preparations. Everyone else made fun of them, of course, but who cared about that? They were all gonna die or whatever. After graduation, they left, trekking out into the wilderness with (in my imagination) enough stuff like preserved food and potable water and seeds to plant and candles to burn and shovels and saws and stuff like that, to get them by for a while.

And sure enough, they were right! Civilization collapsed. Infrastructure was destroyed or became nonfunctional. Telecommunications systems were gone even if there'd been electricity to run such devices. This group of 16 is out in the wilderness, and other survivors/escapees/whatever are wandering around, too. But the core group has a collectively-agreed-up mission to work cooperatively to make a new and better and simple-living world: Peaceful, completely egalitarian, communal, a world where money and power neither exist nor are desirable, where everyone works together, willingly, for the good of the collective, a world living in harmony with nature. (Basically, my ideal world. *laugh* I really am a communist at heart, only without the oligarchical totalitarianism that modern attempts at communism have been corrupted by.)

At first, they all lived together in one place, sleeping in quickly-built, rough cabins, doing potty business in bushes, collecting rain water for makeshift showers, and eating food that they brought, that they grew/gathered, or that they caught. All the while, they were busy putting together the "raw materials" they needed to build individual houses to live in, each dedicated to a specific function that benefits the community as a whole, the fruits of which would be shared equally with the entire community. Each time a production goal was reached, one person/couple could move off the communal "raw materials" lot and into the lot that could be "built" from the gathered raw materials. And the community grows from there.

Meanwhile, there are those other folks, wandering around alone and frightened and helpless in the wilderness, having escaped whatever the disaster was that occurred. Sometimes, members of the community meet up with them while they're out scoping out the territory. Those poor souls can be brought into the fold as well, added to the communal lot and becoming contributing members of the community.

And that's as far as the "story" goes for now. :) Bear in mind that my neighborhood is age-modded with this mod, so my Sims have PLENTY of time to live out their lives. Not sure playing this way will really work with the standard-length lifestages. You'd have to figure out ways to speed things up rather a lot, I would think or else your founders will be dead before they can even earn a house, much less reproduce and stuff. :) But anyway, the "rules," such as they are, so far:

1) No careers. No vacations. No Uni after the initial "gather your founders" part, if you do that. No subhoods at all. And no money, so if you want to you can give your households a million simoleons because it simply doesn't matter.

2) No electricity. No indoor plumbing. (I intend to add those things as they are "earned," down the line, but only at the earliest when the first born-in-game generation are adults. Haven't figure out exactly HOW it'll be earned, though.) No phones. No nannies, repair people, maids, gardeners, etc., unless you want to set up some sort of in-neighborhood system for that. (Which is certainly doable; I plan to do it later, once my supply chains are in place and I'm looking for "employment" for new people.) No vehicles except "vehicle horses." (Only once you have a horse farm!) Use candles for light sources. Use only charcoal grills for cooking. (Unless you want to download an historical-type oven, but I'm trying to run this with less CC, not more, and I want there to be some big rewards for earning electricity.) Don't use an electric fridge. (I'm using this one.) Use an outhouse, not indoor flush toilets. Use mods so that water has to be gathered to use to fill bathtubs and sinks. Stuff like that. 

3) I recommend using the Visitor Controller to ban all but playable Sims from every lot. Also ban mail and newspaper delivery. You COULD make the neighborhood from empty templates and no stealth hoods, yes, but then you're going to lose the "meet people by hiking" thing, which is how "new blood" gets added to this neighborhood. That function draws from the NPC household that includes things like the BV tourists/locals and the hobby leaders and stuff like that. If you use empty templates and whatnot, you won't have that.

4) Get yer founders. I did this via sending Komei Tellerman to Uni and having him focus on making friends amongst the dormies, professors, and Uni NPCs so that all the founders would at least have a strong relationship with him, if no one else, but you could just make a bunch in CAS if you’d rather skip that part. Or if you don’t have Uni installed, of course. :)

5) Build an initial lot to dump everyone on. (I teleported them with the Sim Blender, aged them to regular adults, gave them the extra want slots they should have as college graduates, etc., since they weren’t yet playables in Uni.) Include everything they need for basic motive-filling but not much else. (You could put a working stack of books somewhere if you want them to skill, but really? With no careers, skilling isn't really all that necessary.) There will also need to be ways to make/gather raw materials. Here's the layout of the one I made, with some useful links to stuff I used on it. This lot houses the founders, any new members added to the community, and ALL born-in-game Sims once they reach teenhood, until they earn individual lots.

Note: For me, I did not want kids on this lot. They have to wait until they earn an individual lot for that. So the only place to autonomously woohoo is the park benches I used as seating for eating. But, I have ACR set so that woohoo on sofas/park benches requires privacy...which is hard to get on a lot with no real walls and a bunch of other people living on it. :) If you DO want them to have kids, then they could woohoo in the cabin-tents, but ACR doesn't enable autonomous tent-woohoo, so...yeah.

Note 2: I let the communal lot run pretty much entirely on free will, only commanding certain Sims to do certain things at certain times. That way, the residents form their own relationships and either succeed or fail at taking care of themselves. They also develop different sleep schedules, which is nice for the player, less of them to keep an eye on at any given time. :) It's also easier to NOT micromanage 16 or more Sims at once, naturally. But this, of course, would be up to the player and how you like to play.

4) Earning a lot: The communal lot has choppable trees, the mining rocks from Sun & Moon's mining set, and Nixnivis's blacksmith station on it. I have fiddled with the trees and the mining rocks to make them autonomous, and the rule is that Sims can never be commanded to chop trees or mine ore. They must decide to do that themselves, so production is limited by how industrious your Sims are. Further, the mined ore has to be "refined" (into things like nails and other things that go into a house). For this, I use the blacksmith station, just having a person make that object's basic single horseshoe object as as "stand-in." (This isn't autonomous; it's one of the things that Sims can be commanded to do.)

NOTE: I could share the edited autonomized choppable trees if someone wants to use this idea; I don't think Beck would care. But sharing the edited autonomized mining rocks would break Sun & Moon's policy, so if you want that, you'd have to do the editing yourself. It's not hard, if you can run SimPE.

In order to earn each new individual lot, the communal lot must produce 75 bundles of chopped logs and 40 horseshoes. And each horseshoe “requires” 2 buckets of ore, so you need to keep track of how many buckets of ore you have in inventories and subtract out the appropriate number of ore buckets when a batch of horseshoes is made. (Just sell them "to the air;" money doesn't matter. Much of the crafting in this hood will work the same way, too, with "prerequisite" objects that need to be produced somewhere first, so get used to the technique. *laugh*) So to get those 40 horseshoes, 80 buckets of ore have to be (autonomously!) mined first. Once you have the required materials, remove them from inventories and sell them to the air. Then, you can build an individual lot and move whoever you want to own the lot out of the communal one.

(You might want to adjust the requirements needed for how you play. For instance, if you don’t want to go pure free-will, you should probably have much higher requirements. If you don’t age-mod, then you’ll want to adjust simply because you just won’t have time to earn lots with enough time left over for your Sims to have kids to keep the neighborhood going. So, yeah. That’s certainly not set in stone; it’s just what works for my set-up.)

5) Supply chains and stuff: Before you build your first individual lot(s), you're going to want to choose what that lot will be dedicated to, because that will dictate how you build it. My list of possibilities -- so far, that is; it's ever-growing as I get new ideas and figure out how to implement them -- is as follows:

RobotsFlower ArrangingToy-MakingPotterySewingSpinning/KnittingWeavingCattleChickensHorsesPigsSheepGoatsWineryPaintingDog/Cat BreederBeesBakingMarijuanaCandle-makingFishingHayCornMaxis OrchardBasketryHerbs/WildflowersHunting/TanningTrappingApothecary (Plus reagents, if witches)Blacksmithing

Some of those are Maxis things. Some of them are CC. Some of them don't actually exist and I'm using stand-ins instead. (Like, for instance, candle-making. Sun & Moon's beekeeping set produces beeswax as one of its end products, along with honey. They didn't yet make a candle-making station, though, so in the meantime, I'm just gonna use the robot station or something and pretend. They can make toy robots that can be one-for-one "exchanged" for functional candles, which can then be distributed. It's easy to do because money doesn't matter.) Most of them have "prerequisites." I'm not going to go into how all of these will work because I'd be here for days, but I'll give you one example of a supply chain and its prerequisites and stuff.

Let's talk about the sewing supply chain, clothing and blankets and stuff being the ultimate end-products of that supply chain. In order to have new clothing and towels and quilts/blankets and other nice decorative things like that, first, at the very bottom of the "pyramid," you gotta have someone who'll grow hay. Because you can't have sheep (and other livestock) without something to feed them. And you can't have wool without sheep. (Or growing cotton or flax for linen or making silk or something, and if I can figure out how to make THAT happen, I will. I have an idea brewing for marijuana -- think hemp -- but for now...sheep.) And you can't knit a sweater or produce fabric without cleaning and spinning that wool into yarn/usable fiber/thread. And you can't have fabric without someone with a loom to weave it. And you can't have leather (for shoes and stuff) without someone killing some kind of animal (domesticated or hunting wild ones) and tanning the hides. ONLY THEN can you have someone making new clothing. And at each step, there's a kind of conversion. Like "1 spun basket of wool = enough yarn to make 1 sweater." So, you sell the basket of wool (obtained from the sheep farmer) to the air, then "spin" (via a CC spinning wheel plus an invisible sewing machine to make a few potholders or something as a "stand-in" for the process), then you sell those potholders to the air and use Beck's knitting ball to make one piece of clothing which can then be distributed and used to "buy" one sweater or whatever.

That's how everything basically works in a supply chain, some of which have more steps than others. Producing new clothing would be the longest one I've come up with so far. So, when building your lots, if you want to use supply chains at all, you must start out with the "anchors" of the supply chains you want to have. If you don't want to be that complicated, you could just pick randomly or pick whatever appeals to you.

6) Individual lots: Plop down a lot. On that lot, build a house but leave room outside for the lot's function plus the outhouse, the outdoor fridge, a well/water pump and a garden. (Eventually gardens can go away, once you have enough food-producers that can consistently produce enough to distribute amongst the population. But until then, folks will need to grow stuff.) The size of your lots is gonna depend on you and how you play. Me, I like smaller lots and I don't mind cramming large families into small houses...which suits a "pioneer" sort of lifestyle, anyway. So, my individual lots are no bigger than 3x3, and the house itself (they're all the same, just different colors, different furnishings, and oriented differently on the lot), for a child-producing household, is a 9x9 square with a 3-tile deep front porch across the front. Floor plan here.

7) Unlike a BACC where CAS Sims are “earned” by certain events, any new, non-born-in-game Sims have to be met via hiking. (It’s one of the possible outcomes of hiking.) It’s a substitute for being out “exploring” or “looking for wandering domesticate livestock to capture” or whatever. If a non-pet “someone” is met, that person gets added to the communal lot, joining the “queue” for an individual lot. (I just use the Sim Blender to teleport them into the communal lot and add them to the household.) I prefer to age up any children to teen and age down any elders to adults, but that’s up to you, of course.

Annnnnnd that's about it, really. I have yet to figure out exactly how the "economy" is going to run. At the moment, the individual lots are still producing stuff with not enough to distribute yet and I don't have any full supply chains yet...but I need to figure it all out soon. I'm leaning toward just equally distributing end-products in truly communist style, but I'm not sure yet. I could list some more miscellaneous rules...but I think that's enough for now. *laugh*

[ecaile-blog]

Job Hunting: A Depressing Experience

Job Hunting is hard. From my experience, it's 50% emotionally draining and is normally 50% physically taxing. The pandemic also didn't do the process any favour, despite reducing the arduous commute from one place to another and trying to make it to the time set for an exam or interview, it's still tiring.

2019 was a merry year for me. I was employed, (enough reason to be satisfied) and I was happy with the people I'm working with. However, 2020 came down hard on the world and all plans hit the fan. I was anxious, not only from the pandemic but also from the possibility of being laid off. The first wave of what me and my workmates (not) so affectionately refer to as the 'snap' came, and we bid goodbye to our very much talented friends. I thankfully survived, but from then on there was a looming sense that it was only some time until we follow them to the unemployment line. Things were relatively peaceful for one more year until September 2021 came. I received the death sentence and got fired.

The redundancy took some time to sink in. I was really at the edge at work and was already planning to leave come my fourth anniversary with the company. Sadly, that didn't come and my phone is now equipped with Jobstreet, LinkedIn and Kalibrr. I was most worried about helping in the house when it comes to paying the bills. Although I'm in a privileged position, wherein I'm not the only one working in our family, not being able to help doesn't sit well with me. I still get to chat with my workmates, so being separated from them didn't make me sad until the last day when everyone was saying goodbye. Not physically meeting them for the last time was sad and the pictures we've taken through the years only made things more depressing.

I thought searching for a job once I have experience will be much easier this time, but no, it's just as depressing as the first time I had to look for a job. My first job was in production, it was fun but it's didn't pay the bills. So, I entered the corporate jungle and toiled for about four years. It was a niche job which was not an issue until I looked into the requirements of the jobs I'm currently applying for. This is when all regrets and depressing thoughts that have lurked behind me caught up, and I'm now at the stage where I hate myself the most. The English language which I so proudly brandished as an armour and weapon suddenly became my weakness.

I have a total of five years of experience but that does nothing for the resume. I have skills but they are not at a level that I can make a profit from them. Photoshop? Sure (the lowest of the low). Illustrator? Yes(oh, sorry this was the lowest of the low). Video editing? Yes (basic level and I don't have equipment T_T). Drawing? Barely good enough. MS Word, PPT, and Excel? I'm at a basic level but they're not hurdles I can't jump. These are things that one might think easily honed, but it's hard when you don't know when and how to start.

Job exams are not especially hard for the field I'm applying for but they are depressing. It's like being told you're not qualified for this job because you don't know our company's procedures (ugh srsly). Aptitude tests and personality tests, on the other hand, make me feel like a lab rat. I understand that it's so the company can assess whether you're logical enough or your personality jives with the company, but I can't help but feel like being a guinea pig with all my vitals being noted. It's only fun to take Myer's-Briggs when it's for personal reasons but answering one for work is just a land mine. Am I supposed to admit that I have self-deprecating thoughts when I know that will negatively affect my employment prospects?

Then there are interviews that I just bomb. I'm confident with my verbal English skills, I was a public speaker who joined competitions in college, but I'm a stuttering fool in front of recruiters. It's as if I haven't been living myself all this time then I was asked to describe what my life has been so far. The callous "tell me something about yourself' question is okay, I already have my formula for it but I just suck at selling myself. The confidence that I fabricate for these moments easily crumble in the face of open-ended questions. Also, the "we'll just call you to let you know if you got in", is just the company saying you didn't get in.

Continuous rejection is inevitable. That is the core of the emotional stress you feel in this job-hunting process. All you can do is nod your head in disappointment and cry at night. Feeling down and depressed after being rejected is natural and human, so I just let the tears run dry. I feel much better after I let all that negativity flow with my snot and tears (a poor parody of Blood, Sweat and Tears).

Obviously, I'm yet to get that "okay", so, this is just a rant. I've yet to offer this story a happy, or even just a proper conclusion. I was supposed to write three articles that were due yesterday since I'm portfolio-less, but here I am at midnight, ranting on Tumblr. Anyway, job hunting is hard, painful, exhausting, just overall depressing, but I realised that all that stress will make that last "okay" the sweetest (no, this is not that happy ending I just mentioned, this is just me adding something at least one positive note in all these negativity).

[greengargouille]

Little Sugaya things

Hello AC fans, do you know whose birthday it is today? “No, but I have a strong feeling it might be the character whose name is in the title.” What a cheeky reader you are. But, indeed, in this October 25th Sugaya Sousuke turns... Well, he doesn’t really age, fiction and all that. This is an ideal time to talk about him!

I have a strong liking to this character, so I figured I would make a small post about him (especially if that can count toward ankyou week), my observations, mostly things I want to remember while I write fics.

...This isn’t a small post at all.

Note: I tend to link towards other posts whenever I make mention of extra-material, but there are 3 things that I will tend to use a lot, and for this reason I’m linking at the beginning, namely his Roll Book profile, his Graduation Book profile, and the Individual Ability chart. 

This first point is easy, but Sugaya is a really good artist, and really fast at that. And by that I mean really, really fast. Notable achievements includes, in non-chronological order:

Doing really neat drawings on the back of his tests. Like, already, it’s quite the art he’s showing us -and given he’s in the middle of a test that probably only last one class, he had less than an hour to do that. Uh. Impressive for someone in junior high, but still plausible.

A few moments after the class discovered they have to do a theater piece, he do a ‘realistic’ portrait of his comrade (I mean, it’s in the same style as the manga itself, so... that counts as realistic, right?) on the demand of Karma. Again, quick yet with some level being it. [Note that the anime version had Karma hold the image in colors. But no Sugaya in the background. Either we’re supposed to believe Karma have impressive photoshop skills he uses to have countless disturbing images of Nagisa in different clothes, either Sugaya hide himself because wow, it’s embarassing to be associated with art of Nagisa crossdressing. Don’t worry, Sugaya, at least this one wasn’t sexualised.]

Hey, do you remember how class E infiltrated into a building they knew nothing about, then had to disguise themselves to hide against the wall? Am I the only one wondering how did they happen to have just the right hue of spray paint on them, and for 27 students too? This isn’t so much about skill and speed that it is about Sugaya probably having who-know how many spray cans in advance on him during the whole arc. Like, okay, he’s the artist kid, but that’s probably way too many. Unless he have been able to convince his classmates to carry them for him. Or he could actually summon them out of nowhere.

He did seems to pull brushes out of nowhere during chapter 155 just for emphasis. I mean, he could be just happening to have random art supplies in his pocket, even if those can be costly and he is shown to have a little plastic case for his brushes during chapter 111. Buuut I’m still betting on summoning his supplies by demonish magic.

Okay, now it gets really really weird. Remember the island arc? The fight with Gastro the gun specialist? In a few minutes, in silence, under pressure of someone who have shown killing intent, he somehow manage to produce a scarecrow. Like, how. When did he even obtain some of those items. Is he some RPG protag that will put every random item in his inventory. Matsui please explain.

...Yet, somehow, this isn’t the most impressive thing he have done. For that we will have to come back to his own moment of spotlight, chapter 37.

So. He painted the arms of the whole class. (He argues some pages later that there’s no ‘blank canvas’ left for Korosensei, so it truly means the whole class had, at this point, their arms tattooed.) 

Yet some pages later the arms of the students are bare, and given Sugino’s comment, they cleaned themselves before it set off. Henna will dry after roughly 15-30 minutes.

The twist in all this? Try to look at how long it takes to make such a tattoo. Maybe you will be more lucky than me. All I could find is that a full hand or foot tattoo takes around half an hour. Yet it seems in less than that Sugaya have drawn around 50 full arm tattoos. Korosensei who? I’m sorry, but the only Mach 20 monster that I see here is a student. 

But really, think about this. He have impressive skills in drawing. Notably with chalk if we see chapter 37. Painting (he even made a Korosensei’s potrait in what I think is expressionism style? in the manga only though). Sculpting. Doing masks and disguises. Henna tattoos. Calligraphy too according to background details.

This boy is 14, 15 by the end of October. How the heck did he get so talented in so many forms of art? He had to dedicate his whole life to art- heck, his hobby is touring museums and art exhibits, and his treasured item is a watercolor paint set! Okay, I admit Hollands are expensive as heck, so it’s understandable he values them. But... He isn’t just your average artistic student. He’s a monster. 

So far, Sugaya seems less of a background students and more of a final boss in a art shonen, but how well does he fare as a student?

...Pretty badly, actually. Here what his Roll Book profile says about this: “At first he had wanted to excel in both academics and art, so he opted to enrol in an escalator school, but at Kunugigaoka he understood the limits of his academic prowess. His studies floundered, while his artistic sense flourished in contrast.  After coming to Class E, he overcame his limits in academics and gained a surge in confidence.”

And indeed, it is a big fall when it comes to academics. His manga-only chapter show his former headteacher to be the one dealing with class B, so he originally have some skills. Yet, during 3-E... his individual ability chart places his academic prowess at 1 on 5, something only Terasaka shares with him. He consistently is at the bottom of the exam rankings when comparing the scores of class-E only, and get scores even worse than Terasaka when it comes to Science and Maths, his biggest weaknesses if we’re to believe the Graduation Book profile. Though, if we observe his results...

...Japanese’s not his speciality either (not helped that it seems to be the favorite subject of more students). He do considerably better in English, yet in chapter 3 of Korotan D, taking place just after graduating high school, he mentions he’s not very good at English, so he either got worse with time or never was that good either. Most likely the second, though : plenty of characters are good at English, and the season 2 opening give us a shot at his first semester grades.

Since it’s a bit blurry and I suppose not a lot of you readers are proficient in Japanese, here are the results in a more accessible form (keeping in mind the grades are on 5).

First row

Japanese: 3, Social Studies: 3, Maths: 2, Sciences: 2, Music: 4

Second row

Art: 5, Home Economics: 5, P.E.: 3, English: 4.

Yes, definitely better at English. The good music skills is a nice surprise, and the good score in Home Ec. not so surprising with his dexterity, plus him being in Hara’s group when it comes to group activities. He’s really the kid that’s excellent at all secondary subjects...

And then there is Physical Education. He seems to be neither good or bad at it, but how does he compare with the rest of the class?

...That’s a good question, because the opening doesn’t give us good shot to half the class’ grades. What we do, however, is (yet again) the Individual Ability chart, which give us “Physical Ability” and “Mobility” (that I also include as I feel this cover both speed and agility).

The first one is... not brillant, to say the least ; with a score of 2.5 on 5, there are only seven students worse than him (and that include Ritsu, so really it’s more like six), and two of the same level. When only students like Okuda or Nagisa are the ones you can beat in arm wrestling, you’re not exactly at the peak of strength. 

As for Mobility, still 2.5 on 5. Seven students worse (still including Ritsu). Yet again, it’s low but barely enough for it to not classify him among the bottom.  And he have an avantage here: as Karasuma says in the Roll Book profile, ‘he has a tall back and has reach’, not something you can exactly argue with his 179cm, merely one cm less than Terasaka and Karasuma. Longer legs means longer steps, after all. 

...Still a weakass, though.

We talked art, we talked skills, now let’s continue with personality.

Let’s come back to the previous sentence from Karasuma, this time the full version: ‘Although he has a tall back and has reach, he is poor at close combat due to his personal nature.’ Sugaya is one who avoid fights, or is too nice to hurt someone. And he does seems of the nice kind ; after all, isn’t his hidden side in the Graduation Book that he’s helpful?

It’s not so much of an hidden side, to be honest. Besides teaching Kurahashi how to apply camouflage, we also have him help the others prank an ex of Maehara (in a manga exclusive story) by making disguises, and he helps paint Itona’s tank when he, according to the graduation book, is immune to girls (and wouldn’t have much of a thrill peeking under their skirts like some others)... Drawing Nagisa as Abe Sada on Karma’s request... Uh.

Note that at that point, Karma got along well with the class (so much that they send him messages during winter vacation), but there’s an interesting bit about Sugaya on his profile: ‘Even now, there are some in Class E who are still afraid of Karma. That’s why students-who-want-to-tease-and-Tsukkomi-him-a-little-but-decided-to-back-away such as Sugaya are common.’ It might hint at a teasing nature for Sugaya, but mostly that he can be intimidated. 

Another project on which he works because someone asked is Okajima’s, but he’s said to be ‘tricked’ into taking part in it. We don’t see much of him enough as an individual to know is he’s easy to fool (he does fall for Korosensei’s trick about a punchline in chapter 156, but then so does most of the class), but he doesn’t seems to inclined towards thinking much about things (he does have a 2 on 6 in Strategy/Planning aptitude, after all). 

Nice enough to participate in group projects if asked to, but still more of a lone worker: he’s classified among the individualistic students doing assassinations on ‘their own schedule’, and is shown to work more by himself (except maybe with Mimura what, did you thought I would not shamelessly use my previous posts). According to his Assassination Aptitude chart, he would make a pretty poor leader, too, with the lowest score possible of 1 on 6. Which might also tie in with him potentially being easily intimidated, too...

Not only he would rather work alone, he doesn’t seem to care so much about what others might think of him, either: tattoos are a big deal in Japan, yet he acts pretty nonchalantly when he comes in class with one on his arm. While the live-action movie doesn’t have such a moment, we also have an interesting bit of character design:

While Japanese schools are very strict about students not dying their hair, Sugaya have two purple lines of dye in his. Even Nakamura (who did have dyed hair in the manga/anime) doesn’t have her hair dyed. In fact, I think only Karma use hair dye (it’s dubious whether Itona’s hair is naturally white). Ignoring the rules for the sake of aesthetics is a pretty important trait of him, it seems. Maybe is it why he can so easily wear weird patterns?

So far, seems like Sugaya’s a nice, helpful guy who rather prefer calm and alone time, maybe a bit too carefree but nothing truly bad!

...Okay, maybe I spoke a bit too fast on the ‘nice’. That’s... a pretty blunt comment. And then going on how he couldn’t concentrate during the exam because of her and that’s why he got the lowest score of the class... Sure, totally her fault here.

...But outside of that, he’s much more mindful of oth-

Sugaya no. Don’t follow Korosensei’s example. It’s bad to take advantage of someone passing out to draw on them when they violently refused a few minutes before.

...Okay, maybe he would gain to take a bit more care of what other might think. Especially if this cause him trouble at work, like seen in the epilogue with him ignoring the allowed budget for the sake of artistic pride (though, according to his personal history page, he does learn to compromise on that point).

Artistic pride, now that’s an interesting point. Sugaya is mostly a calm student, even if he get as angry as the others on things like Bitch-sensei’s early treatment of class E, or Korosensei’s taboo game. There is, however, a comment from his part in his dedicated chapter:

‘Pissed me off’, talk about a strong reaction! Art really is an important thing for him. (Of course we end up talking about Art yet again. Of course). As a writer, I personally find this fact important to keep in mind, as it is easy to give in to flanderization. 

...I mean, you can make his character totally about art and you wouldn’t be too far from the original, so maybe flanderization isn’t that bad of a tactic...

Anyways, happy birthday, Sugaya! I hope with this post, others will take interest in this character!

[tustinjomimori]

Chap. 2- I still don’t know what to title this

Boku no Hero Academia

Aizawa Shouta/Reader

T+ rating 

Please tell me how bad this sucks and also what a good title would be. Or don’t. 

Except the idiot is back at school just two days later.

The evening of the attack at USJ, you pass out almost as soon as your head hits the pillows of your bed. You're only awoken a few hours later by a gentle pressure on your face; one of your three cats is stepping on your cheek, meowing softly to be fed. You get up slowly, scooting the fluffy grey thing off the bed and dazedly get to preparing food for him and his two cohorts (a calico and a sphinx).

As the cats happily munch on their meal, you return to your bedroom to check the phone you had haphazardly thrown onto the nightstand before your few hours of sleep. There's an email from the principal, informing all teachers, those who were physically capable at least, of a mandatory meeting to discuss safety protocols the next morning. Part of your groggy mind wonders if you can get away with sleeping through it, but you set an alarm for the next day anyways and decide to brush your teeth and take a quick body shower before returning to bed.

                                                                                                                                 --

You're still feeling slightly woozy the next morning, and it takes quite a long internal pep talk to get yourself out of bed. You usually don't need coffee, since you can just absorb energy from around you to wake yourself up, but you make a large batch this morning, ensuring that it's as strong as you can handle.

After feeding the cats again, you take another quick shower, mostly because you neglected to do anything with your hair the night before and you are certainly not presentable(presentable to who? Your fellow teachers?? Aizawa???) like this, and throw on some decent clothes before filling a thermos with more coffee and setting off for the school.

The coffee helps keep you focused throughout the meeting, though you’re still drowsy and try to cover up any yawns that escape you. You aren't sure if you would he able to live with yourself if you fell asleep in front of all your coworkers at such an important time.

At some point during the meeting, you glance across the room at Yamada. Even with his signature sunglasses on (why he wears those inside, you've no idea), you can see that he's running on little to no sleep. He probably stayed at the hospital all night, you figure, and the thought reminds your stupid anxiety to present itself again. You'll visit Aizawa (and Thirteen) after the meeting, you decide, before heading home to sleep for the rest of the day. Sure, the man likely won't appreciate your visit, but it'll at least put your own heart at ease. In all honesty, you’ve been too tired to worry too much about the guy until now, and while you know from Yamada’s text that he'll be fine, you still feel the need to see that for yourself.

After the meeting, you approach Yamada to mention you'll be visiting his friend in the hospital.

“Oh I'll go with you!” He declares, but up close you can faintly see the bags under his eyes past his glasses.

“You need to get some sleep.” You tell him. Before he can protest you continue, “Go home and get some rest or I'll sic my cats on you.” You state flatly, knowing of the man's severe allergy to the animals.

The look on your face seems to take him aback; you usually make an effort to be as polite as possible to your senior teachers and heroes and though Aizawa often jokes about assassinating his best friend through means of cat dander, he probably would never expect you to do the same.

You soften your expression a bit and put a hand on Yamada’s arm. Just as he did for you the day before, you give his bicep what you hope is a reassuring squeeze.

“Please get some rest, I’ll text and let you know how he's doing later.”

“Fine,” the blonde complies. “Make sure you rest up too, I saw you yawning all through the meeting.”

You're a bit embarrassed by that. Maybe you shouldn't be berating the man for not sleeping while you're still recovering from exhausting yourself , but you brush the thought off.

“I will.” You respond and you wave goodbye and head off the supermarket to buy Aizawa (an Thirteen, you have to remind yourself again) a get well present.

At the market, you look at the melons and wonder whether you really want to pay out the ass for a piece of fruit for a guy who will likely only give you a grunt, if anything, as thanks. Sure you're into him and all but there's no way you'd be able to win him over by purchasing a simple piece of fruit, pricey as it may be.

Suddenly you realize that you've never actually seen Aizawa eat solid food. He’s always drinking from juice bags though (you think he might have some sort of never ending stash of them stored in that yellow sleeping bag) and with that thought you head off to the juice aisle. You also look at the get well cards and decide to buy him one that opens to reveal a 3D paper cat, complete with a cone of shame.

You wonder if you should try to be cute and sign the card with your cats names as well as your own. While Aizawa has never met your cats in person (that would mean him being in your apartment and the thought is more than you can handle), he has always seemed more interested in their activities and well-being than well, yourself. You decide against the thought because just the card itself is probably too cute for the guy’s taste, and you don’t want him thinking you only got it to make fun of him or something.

--

Aizawa looks like a goddamned mummy when you finally see him and you have to hold back a snicker at the thought of snapping a photo of him and photoshopping him into a sarcophagus surrounded by cats (because he WOULD be buried with seemingly the only thing that brought him any sort of pleasure in life [besides expelling students probably]). He looks peaceful though as he alternates between soft breaths in and out and the faintest of snores.

You set your things down, placing the melon juice you had bought for him on the bedside table along with the card. You seat yourself next to the bed and pull out your phone. Yamada at the very least would appreciate your poor Photoshop skills.

You snap a couple of photos but don't hear Aizawa stir as you check out how they turned out.

“Did you just take a picture of me.” It isn't a question because he undoubtedly knows that's exactly what you just did.

Aizawa is looking sideways at you, seemingly annoyed, but his expression is softer than usual and you're happy to see that, from what little of his face isn’t covered by bandages, the bags beneath his eyes seem just a bit less dark than when you last saw him (or the last time you saw his face properly without a mass of congealing blood covering his features).

“I was going to Photoshop you into a dead Egyptian Pharaoh,” You defend yourself. “And surround you with relics of the feline deities you so love.”

Aizawa scoffs and struggles a bit to sit up in the bed.

“Hey, don't push yourself,” you chide, placing a gentle hand on his chest (and you couldn't tell under the bandages but you were so sure his chest was fucking ripped and the thought made something in your own chest squeeze) and softly pushing him backwards until he's lying down again.

“I won't stay long,” You assure him. “Sorry for waking you up.”

He grunts in response and crosses his arms, both in casts, across his chest.

You're feeling a bit sheepish now, berating yourself for the not so pure thoughts you just had about the bedbound man and not quite knowing what to say to him.

“I, um, brought you some juice.” You start. “I figured you'd like that more than a whole fruit, knowing you.”

Aizawa once again looks sideways at you, then his eyes flicker to the large carton of juice sitting beside you. His eyes widen almost imperceptibly and something twitches where his mouth is covered in bandages. Dear god, was that a smile?

“You knew my favorite brand?” He might be quirking an eyebrow at you, but again, it's hard to tell under the stark white bandages.

“Oh? No, I just kind of chose one at random?” You admit, and your insides are lighting up at the thought that maybe this small thing you've done for him has actually made the man smile.

“To be honest I didn't wanna buy anything too expensive but I also figured you're deserving of more than just store brand so. I picked the middle of the road.” You explain awkwardly.

“Not that you don't deserve something expensive !” You backtrack. You're panicking just a tiny bit.

“You deserve the most expensive melon juice in the whole store! I just can't afford that for you unfortunately.” You assure him.

Aizawa hums in response, looking over once again at the bedside table and eyeing the red envelope containing the get well card. “And that?”

“Ah, here,” You go to hand him the envelope before realizing his fingers are hidden somewhere in his casts.

“My bad,” You apologize and tear open the envelope yourself. You show him the front of the card and then set it up, propped open, on the small table next to the juice.

Again, you think he might be smiling under all those bandages and your heart flutters a bit (OK maybe a lot) at the thought.

“I’m…..” You're embarrassed to hear your voice crack a bit with emotion and you try again, “I'm really glad you're OK.” Your eyes prickle a bit at the memory of seeing his body lying on the floor the afternoon previous, and for a few heart pounding moments, being unsure whether he was alive or dead.

Aizawa is quiet for a long minute, seemingly examining the ceiling, and you think maybe you just made your feelings for him too obvious. But no, anyone would be worried to see their coworker like that, right? (A terrible excuse because while you certainly were concerned about Thirteen, your concern over Aizawa was completely different)

“You know, the doctors said I probably wouldn't have made it if it weren't for your healing me when you did.” He finally says.

“So thanks. For saving me.” Seemingly as an afterthought he continues, “And for the juice. And the card. It's cute.”

You hadn't expected much in the way of thanks for the simple store bought gifts, much less what was arguably an emotion filled thank you (as emotion filled as you believe Aizawa could be) for saving his life.

You don't know how to reply to him, but after a moment you blurt out, “I wish I could have done more. You're still pretty bad off and I really could have healed you for longer but…”

Aizawa cuts you off by giving you a stern look, one saved for students who were being too rowdy in the halls.

“Hizashi said you exhausted yourself working on me and Thirteen.” You think you notice his expression soften minutely. “You did all you could.”

You shy away from his gaze. It really wasn't enough for you but you're not about to argue with him.

“And besides,” he continues. “it could be worse. I could be stuck wearing a cone of shame.”

You're pretty damn sure he's smiling under the bandages this time, and your face breaks into the first smile you've worn in what feels like days (though you know it’s been less than 48 hours). You're not sure what else to say at this point, and you do feel bad for waking Aizawa up when he clearly needs his shut eye, so you stand up and excuse yourself before exiting the room.

“Please get a lot of rest. Call or text if you need anything, OK?” You say from the doorway. He just grunts in reply once again and you can't stop the smile on your face from growing bigger.

Aizawa smiled at you, you were pretty sure. TWICE, possibly, and you weren't even talking about your cats !! AND he thanked you AND now you knew his favorite brand of juice and just knowing that one small thing about him made you feel as if you finally broke through some sort of invisible barrier between the two of you. Aizawa NEVER talked about himself, at least not around you.

You're giddy and there's a spring in your step as you look for Thirteen’s hospital room. You’re certain at this point that the crush you had on your colleague was not going away anytime soon, but you’re maybe finally OK with that.

--

The next morning, you're greeted by a dark haired mummy in the staff room. Aizawa is drinking his usual morning coffee and going over some papers when you approach him. A feeling you can't quite place is pooling in your belly, your hands clench into fists and you have to focus on not shaking as you approach his desk.

What was he doing here at school?! He was still hurt, he was pushing himself too much, he'd only worsen his injuries!

Worry mixes with anger in your stomach and you try to calm yourself, taking a few deep breaths and wondering how much it would worsen his injuries if you just slapped him across the face.

“You should be at the hospital.” You state firmly, trying desperately to keep your cool. “Or at home resting. Were you even discharged yet or did you actually sneak out of the hospital?”

“No comment.” Was the man's gruff reply. You assume this means that he had indeed snuck out of the hospital.

“Honestly, that's so irresponsible! You NEED to take care of yourself.” You lecture, looking down on Aizawa seated in his chair and feeling like you were scolding a student.

Aizawa sighs. “I'm fine.” He states. “Besides, I have you here.”

That last bit takes you aback. What the heck did he mean ‘he has you here’ ?!

“If anything happens, you’ll just heal me again.”

You don't know what you were expecting but that last sentence has got you feeling rather heated and you're so glad you can't see his stupid pretty face because you  aren’t quite sure you could stay mad at him if you could.

With a frustrated huff, you turn on your heel and take a step towards your own desk.

“After doing something as dumb as sneaking out of the hospital before you’re healed, you’re on your own if you get into any more fights.”

You're not sure if he can hear you because your back is facing him and you're muttering and your voice is cracking because you're so upset with him.

You quickly plop down at your desk and get to aggressively checking your email before the school day starts.

[neoyi]

Anonymous asks:

(hope you don’t mind me asking this) what’s your art process like? can you share what materials you use?

Sure.

My process varies depending on how much I give a crap about the things I draw. Usually it starts off with an idea. Then it starts off with me trying to commit that idea to paper. Then I usually scream at this point as I try and find the motivation I need to grab a pencil and actually do this idea. This, incidentally, is probably the hardest stage in the process. Once I start drawing, it’s usually smooth sailings from here on; any mistakes I make tends to come up after I finish the work, and then I scream some more and wonder what I did wrong with my life.

I’m a traditional artist because my computer doodling skills is about as amazing as a lethargic boomerang that gets tossed and never comes back. I mostly use mechanical pencils, various ink pens (I’ve recently gotten into copic multiliners, though I have luck with Faber-Castells and micron ink pens) to ink my work. Copic markers (usually sketch sized) are my primary coloring choices; they often a wide variety of colors and is refillable to boot. I have some prismamarkers as well, but I don’t use them much nowadays. Still, I have a bushel of them as back-up just incase. 

Here’s my current set of supplies, give or take. The Transformers Animated lunch box houses most of my prismamarkers. It’s hard to see, but the refillables are to the far right of the photo. These things cost a bazillion dollars despite me being poor. Maybe I should get one of them Patreon thingamabobs. 

These are my current sets of pencils, ink pens, and other doo-dads I use to draw before I color the dang thing. I don’t use sharpies whenever I draw artwork I give two shits about because they bleed through easily. Those tools are often reserved for my black and white scribble comics where I don’t care as much to make it look good.

How I draw depends on whether I’m giving a damn or not. 

When I draw half-assed comics and art, I tend to make up shit on the spot. Here’s an example from this Shovel Knight prospecter comic I’m currently drawing (I took this pictures with a phone because I’m too tired and lazy to use a scanner. Sorry.) 

I start off with a rough sketch as seen here on these sets of pages. Usually I work one page at a time, but sometimes I draw them all in advance like I did here, mostly to try and motivate myself to finish the damn thing.

Then I would ink over it (mostly I use a sharpie just to preserve my better art supplies for bigger projects) as seen here.

Here’s a finished version ready to be posted in the near future once I touch up minor edits on photoshop and fill up the world balloons with typed text. Incidentally, I don’t usually draw the word balloons in comics so I have a greater control of editing in speech bubbles via photoshop on the final product, but that only ever applies to my webcomic; simple ones like these I do just draw ‘em in because it makes the process faster. Basically I take more shortcuts depending on the ratio of how much effort I’m willing to put in a work.

Artwork I DO give a damn is slightly different. Most of the time, this is going to be my webcomic, Prince Marine: The Dandy Robot (*cough* link HERE if you’re interested in giving it a whirl. *cough*) That one is like planning out a friggin' symphony. I conceptualize a general story idea, figure out how it fits in the continuity, then jot down a script. As of this post, I have up to Chaper 8 ready to be drawn in the future (to put it into perspective, Chapter 4 is the current story that’s publically up on my site.) I then usually draw a thumbnail/rough sketch on how I want it to look. 

These are the dummy pages, the ones I use as guidelines for the final product. The first 200 or so pages were actually drawn when I had only a rough guideline for the first five or so chapters; everything from dialogue to how word balloons were placed were improvised on the spot before I wrote my first full script. I’ve changed a lot of elements from the original editions since, but they served as building blocks for the first five chapters. The image above for example isn’t much different from the finished pages below: 

The same rule applies to colored products. Ones that are simple and largely stress-free work are drawn on the spot once I think of an idea. Bigger ones are planned much like my comic, such as my recent Hyper Light Drifter 1-year anniversary pic. 

Rough draft on my sketchbook to get an idea:

A work-in-progress on a new sheet of paper:

Finished result with any minor little things I need to fix and add done in photoshop. 

I use a variety of paper depending on how much I give a shit. Printer paper is my default for garbage doodles as well as concept arts and practices. Printer paper, FYI, are often not quality paper for the tools that I use, but they do in a pinch if I want to draw something super quick and cheap on the fly. That goes double for sketchbooks. It’s hard to find a good one that can support markers very well, but I usually go for ones where the pages don’t feel too rough nor too smooth. Rough and the markers look kind of spotty. Sometimes I think it leaves a neat effect like this art, but I don’t often recommended it if you’re aiming for quality. Too smooth and the colors don’t feel as vibrant. 

I think so far, the “just-right” papers I’ve found are the Deleter Comic Book Pages and Hammermill printer paper; the latter of which has a stock card-like feel that makes it perfect for markers. That would be the two papers on the left side of the above picture. 

That’s basically about it. I hope that gives you a somewhat decent idea of how I do things. Thanks for asking! 

[darknesscall-rp]

Under the cut you can check out all the players that have been accepted for their roles. Congratulations!  Please take a look at the instructions at the bottom of the page. For those who haven’t been accepted this time around, don’t be discouraged! Send me a message if you want more feedback on your application and I would love for you to re-apply in the future! Congratulations again to all of you and Welcome to Darkness’ call!

⦃Suzie, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Anastasia Burke.⦄ The idea of a pureblood working with the Death Eaters and sharing their ideals but not being directly involved with them always fascinated me. And you managed to depict that perfectly! Your Anastasia is intriguing, subtle, perfectly avoiding every pureblood society woman clichés that often appear when it comes to this kind of character. I can’t wait to see what you have in store for her!  

⦃Thomas, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Severus Snape.⦄ I can’t believe we’re starting off with a Severus already. This, first of all, makes me really happy. Honestly I loved the depth you managed to give him. The whole story behind his ways and his personality was very moving, and the in character questionnaire was fantastic. I could hear his voice in my head while I read it! Amazing job! (Also, vox machina right back at you!) A message has been sent to you regarding Face Claim changes.

⦃Faaya, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Lorcan D’eath.⦄ I always find Lorcan to be a character full of opportunities and you my friend, seized them all. You didn’t stay focused only on his career or the fact that he’s a half vampire; but instead you went beyond that and gave him a personal life, a complex set of relationships and some strong convictions to go with that. Honestly I can’t wait to see him in action. 

⦃Harleigh, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Rabastan Lestrange.⦄ That biography, those headcanons, those cheeky in character questions! Be still my admin heart. Your application was a pleasure to read. It’s obvious you’ve been playing this character for a while because the connection you have with him is absolutely fantastic. I must say Rodolphus can’t wait to have his little brother around. I’m sorry in advance for what poor Rabastan will have to endure. 

⦃Mare, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Sirius Black.⦄ The details on this application Merlin’s beard! Everything was flawlessly explained, everything fit into place. My favourite part to be quite honest was the questionnaire. You nailed Sirius’ voice and the apartment question put the widest smile on my face. Apparently we’re starting with an almost full marauders set, so I can’t wait to see what shenanigans are in order!

⦃Lily, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Remus Lupin.⦄ First of all, let me healthily envy your name for a bit. Now that that’s over, I was blown away by your interpretation of Remus. He’s always been a character very dear to my heart and I’m always thrilled to find someone who sees him similarly. The headcanons were hilarious, the other extra information was detailed and flawlessly put, and the question about insomnia had definitely one of the best answers I’ve read. I can’t wait to start roleplaying with you!

⦃Becky, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Narcissa Black.⦄ Unique, original and spectacular interpretation of Narcissa. Funny, witty, provoking; but without losing that air of coldness and finesse that only Narcissa Black could project so well. You gave me something I wasn’t expecting on your application and I absolutely loved it. Fantastic job! I can’t wait to see what you’ve got in store for dear miss Black! 

⦃Annie, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Alecto Carrow.⦄ A lawful evil Alecto? Sign me in! As soon as I started reading your application I knew I was in for a treat. Her relationship with her brother was beautifully developed and I love her occupation. I’ve never thought of Alecto doing something like that but after I read about it I can see why it absolutely fits and complements your interpretation of Alecto. I can’t wait to see her in action. Your Face Claim change has been approved.  

⦃Amanda, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Fabian Prewett.⦄ This application was simply adorable. You said you had a strong connection with Fabian and that’s absolutely obvious from the very beginning. The biography and the mock blog were beautiful, but by far the questions were my favourite part. It’s amazing to see a Fabian so well balanced between his shy personality and his mischievous Prewett ways. Congratulations!

⦃Mia, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Mary MacDonald.⦄ I really enjoyed reading your application. It’s got a very refreshing take on Mary and that’s my favourite thing. The headcanons you provided were amazing! I’ve got a soft spot for the cat one, it a really creative way to turn the given rumour into a headcanon of your own. You made Mary feel very real and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for her! Your Face Claim change has been approved. 

⦃Rachel, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Amelia Bones.⦄ As someone who has played Amelia before and loves her as a character, I must say I was so glad when I started reading your application. Your interpretation of her amazed me since the very beginning and it only got better. The questionnaire was fantastic, you totally nailed her voice. And as a sidenote, I love the quotes you chose for her! Excellent job! I can’t wait to see her in action! 

⦃Gwen, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Emmeline Vance.⦄ Your application was one of the sweetest I’ve ever read. I especially enjoyed the biography, and how detailed you were about Emmeline’s past and her relationship with her family. The headcanons were also amazing, and they showed you obviously have a strong connection with her character. You made her come alive and she felt very real to me. I can’t wait to start roleplaying with you!   

⦃Lacey, you’ve been accepted to play the role of James Potter.⦄ I don’t really evaluate the applications for their graphic/edits content because I know not everyone is skilled at Photoshop but I still have to say your mock blog and edits were positively lovely! Now that’s out of the way, I swear I could hear James’ voice (however that sounds) in my head while I read your questionnaire. This one was a hard choice because all the applications were extremely good, but your characterisation blew me away. Amazing job. I can’t wait to plot some jily with you! 

⦃Aman, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Alastor Moody.⦄ Moody is without a doubt one of my favourite character of the Marauders era. He’s so full o possibilities. I adored your interpretation of him! I especially enjoyed how you put all the in character questions in context and how his character changed accordingly. It was a very creative way of showing his personality. Congratulations! I can’t wait to see him being the fierce fighter he is!   

⦃Ash, you’ve been accepted to play the role of Antonin Dolohov.⦄ Wow. You mentioned at the beginning of the app that you were stepping out of your comfort zone this time and boy, that you did. You took risks, and they paid off completely. I was absolutely mesmerised with your application. On a side note, I adored the three options you gave for Antonin’s occupation so whichever you choose will be splendid. I can’t wait to see him in action! 

Again; congratulations to all of you and thank you for showing an interest in this group! Now that you’re here, this is what you need to do next:

Follow everyone on the MASTERLIST

Track all of the tags (found HERE)

Make your character account send it in within 24 hours

Open up your askbox

If for any reason you need more time to get your account in, don’t hesitate to message me so I can keep your role open! If I don’t get a message from you then we will assume you’re no longer interested in keeping your spot. Once you send your account, you’ll be provided with the necessary links and we can get started! And of course; HAVE FUN!

[neojaehyun]

OMG YOU GUYS I JUST HIT 1K FOLLOWERS (1K & 15 technically) THANK YOU SO MUCH 

╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

I CAN’T BELIEVE THERE’S 1K OF YOU GUYS NOW 

you can see i follow back every other follower so i have like 500 mutuals & thank you guys so much YOU GUYS ARE FAMILY AND I LOVE YOU ALL 

and if you guys want me to follow you back just ask

thank you for supporting my content 

thank you for talking to me when i’m bored and can’t sleep

thank you for tagging me in different posts 

thank you for all the positive feedback

thank you for not reporting me when i’m being too extra in the tags 

pls don’t unfollow me & pls love Jaehyun 

NCT FAM YOU’RE THE REAL MVP

also i’m not sorry about these photos but i really should find a better use of my poor photoshop skills 

[adambstingus]

What Stupid Thing Is Trending Now? (9/24/2017)

What stupid thing is trending now? Well…

It’s unclear whether the jarring audio played during the emergency broadcast was a prank, or a bumbling intern who got “normal broadcast tone” with “alien apocalypse” mixed up. Either way, these broadcasts are no War of the Worlds in terms of quality. There are a few problems with the narrative that really need to be addressed.

First, there’s the alien plot arc, which honestly left me a bit underwhelmed. The script reads, “The space program made contact with… They are not what they claim to be. They have infiltrated a lot of, uh, a lot of aspects of military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are coming-the military-I’m sorry the government knows about them…” Aliens infiltrating the military is a solid premise, but one we’ve seen before. So there needs to be a bit of extra spice to really bring this hoax dish to life. Maybe the aliens look like human babies? Or it could turn out that we were the aliens all along? Just something a little extra. And I rolled my eyes at the “Area 51” comment. I mean really, do you think aliens would make a beeline for Area 51? No, their first steps would be to assume control of Tinder and the popular restaurant franchise Applebees. With the mating habits of the young, and the dining habits of the old squarely under their control, the aliens would be able to both stymy our ability to reproduce, and our ability to keep our elderly non-cranky and somewhat tolerable. We’d be doomed within hours.

The biblical apocalypse plot must also be addressed. First of all, you can’t just layer aliens and bible End Times on top of each other like some kind of misery parfait. You have to mix them together with skillful writing, such as “God was an alien all along.” Also you can’t just handwave the events of the apocalypse by saying, “in the last days extremely violent times will come.” That’s lazy writing. You’ve got to show, not tell, your audience. What kind of hell violence is this exactly? Everyone’s skin is now fire? Our skeletons come out of our bodies and attack us? You’ve got to use details to paint a scene. So the next time you startle Californians with hoax emergency broadcasts, put some effort into your art. And if you really want to scare Californians, tell us the end times means drought, and drought means no avocados.

I’m not some sort of fancy “historian.” But I’m almost 80% sure that Yoda did not meet with King Faisal at the UN. Maybe he’s be willing to chat foreign policy in some kind of foggy swamp area, but not the UN. That’s not Yoda’s scene at all. The man (alien?) can’t even stand to wear anything but the lone bathrobe in his possession, the one with all the cream of wheat stains. He’s an old, cranky, green retiree. He gave up being on the Jedi council just so he didn’t have to deal with the long speeches and underwhelming cafeteria food. Why would he come out of retirement just to sit and list to more long, boring speeches, when he could be giving whiny Jedi vague, indirect lessons? Also, I think Yoda died at some point or something, so that would make it hard to get in to the UN.

Maybe the editors of this textbook mistook Yoda for Alan Greenspan. But even then, why would Alan Greenspan be at the UN? He’s also a retiree who only hangs out in foggy swamps and gives indirect advice to young economists. “Adjust interest rates to all-time lows, you shall.”

I’m as big a fan of learning new vocab as any other pretentious dweeb. For instance, did you know “borborygmus” means that rumbling noise in your stomach (and it’s also probably a Pokemon)? But there’s a time and a place for everything. As president Trump and Kim Jong Un trade insults, it feels as if we creep ever closer to military escalation. Which really makes me want to borborygmus in my pants. But despite our perilous situation, the one fact we took away from all this was that Kim Jong Un used a funny word, “dotard,” which means “old an senile,” and is also probably a Pokemon.

It’s great we’re learning new vocabulary, but even the fanciest GRE words aren’t going to do much for us once we’re all a smoldering piles of ash. Here’s a neat word: internecine, which means “destruction on both sides of a conflict,” and used in a sentence is, “The potential internecine war between the U.S and North Korea means everyone is super duper boned.”

Money is objectively disgusting. And not just in the sense that greed is the root of all evil: the paper money itself is covered in inconceivable amounts of filth. It’s honestly better not to think about where your money has been, whose nose it’s been up to vacuum cocaine, whose g-string it’s been tucked into, what rich person has used it to wipe their ass while laughing about the poors. The only way our monetary system can go on is to maintain a flimsy veneer of willful ignorance about the dark places and unspeakable stygian horrors our paper bills have gone through.

That’s what makes the story of this liquor store’s problems all the more harrowing. Instead of using pockets, purses, or a folksy bindle, some customers insisted upon storing their cash in the sweaty crevices of their body. It’s an unspeakable crime against the social contract to reach into the dank recesses of your own body to fish out a slightly moist bill, and to hand that into the trembling hand of a hapless cashier. And as soon as one of these customers goes, “Oh hang on, I think I have exact change in my butt crack,” the cashier will let out a primal scream, the carefully maintained illusion of civil money will crumble, and all of society will soon follow.

Oh come on, what barely visible smudge in the background of a cartoon are parents complaining about now– oh. Oh dear. That is actually very clearly a drawing of a penis. And Snopes has confirmed it.

This was clearly done by the hands of a very disgruntled animator/texture artist. Day after day of slaving away in the animation mines has probably turned the culprit into a hardened, bitter individual, with no other tools to fight back against his corporate overlords but a pen and a vague understanding of what a penis looks like. Or perhaps this required the cooperation of multiple animators and graphic designers, who staged a coup in the only way they knew how. “Help, we’re being held for days on end while we must carefully render all these goddamn stupid cartoon bees,” would probably not get past QC, but a subtle penis would. This isn’t just any dick. This is a cry for help.

Have you ever seen an exposed, hairy man belly in public and thought to yourself, “If only I could surgically remove his gut and sew it into a pouch that can be used to hold my iPhone and keys?” First let me say, getting therapy is nothing to be ashamed of these days. Secondly, you need wish no more! You can now buy mass produced hairy man belly fanny packs. They come in a variety of flavors: first off, there’s “The Allen,” a tasteful, vanilla version that has a modest amount of hair and protrusion. “The Derek” is similar to “The Allen,” except it acknowledges that “pasty white” isn’t the only existing skin tone. “The Bobby” is completely hairless, somehow placing it squarely in the uncanny valley of beer bellies. In contrast, “The Sherman” is thickly forested with coarse, bear-like hair that surrounds a yawning abyssal belly button. “The Magnus” is a photoshopped cascade of belly folds that seem anatomically improbable.

So if you’d like to attain the mystical aura that is the “dad bod,” slap on one of these beauties. As an added bonus, you’ll have a handy pouch to store all the phone numbers you’re totally going to collect while wearing these.

Finally, a victory for the common man. If FedEx says they’ll do overnight delivery, and you trust in them that they’ll honor what they advertise and deliver your horse sperm to your doorstep within a timely manner, it’s critical that the courts hold them to their word. FedEx tried to weasel their way out of their sticky legal situation by arguing the fine print clarified they made no guarantee of overnight delivery, even though it’s called “priority overnight,” with a slogan of, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” And that promise is important when you order horse sperm.

It’s not like horse sperm grows on trees. High quality horse sperm does not run cheap, and you don’t want to impregnate your mare with low-grade budget horse sperm. You can’t hop down to Costco and get plus-sized gallons of horse sperm for $25, and black market horse sperm is often cut with glass and encourages cartels. So for many buyers of horse sperm, delivery is the only option. And by god, if you pay for your horse sperm to be delivered overnight, you should get that horse sperm delivered overnight.

Sure, you might be thinking, “Well I never have needed nor can see any possible reason I will ever need horse sperm delivered to me overnight,” but this court decision affects us all (as long as you happen to live in Nova Scotia, Canada). This is a win for the consumer, whether you’re trying to get priority shipping on a gift for your grandma, or a pint of fresh horse sperm.

There are many, ordinary reasons you might poop in someone’s yard. You could be drunk, there may be no public restrooms, you could have eaten 2 pounds of prunes, or you might be cosplaying as a dog. What makes this story so compelling is that none of these reasons seem to apply to the jogger serial-pooping in residents’ yards. The woman doesn’t appear to be mentally ill or unable to access public restrooms, and her actions seem calculated. She brings toilet paper and poops at the same houses, and shifts her schedule based on when she’s been caught in the act. It seems too coldly premeditated to be a result of a gastrointestinal medical issue. And when she is confronted she apologizes, but never stops, nor cleans up after herself.

It’s a crime spree that seems completely unsolvable. You could tie heroin to the end of a stick and set Sherlock to work, and he’d come away defeated. Is there a personal vendetta involved? Has this jogger finally snapped after dog owners have left countless poops in her yard? Perhaps she’s living by the timeless adage, “When life hands you lemons, you eat those lemons, turn them into poop, and leave those poops on the yards of the innocent.”

This is one of those cases where we just have to accept we’ll never know the definitive answer. Like the Chupacabra or Bigfoot, she will forever capture our imaginations, but we will never capture her.

Photoshop is like a hammer. When used delicately, it can be used to construct beautiful cabinets. But when abused it can pulverize a human body. In this instance, the Tomb Raider poster has been Photoshopped with such wanton abandon, Lara Croft’s neck has gained altitude and flexibility not found in the normal range of human anatomy. Due to this graphic designer’s overabundance of enthusiasm, the writers of the movie will have to change the plot to Lara Croft mixing her DNA with that of a giraffe and an owl, thus becoming the greatest artifact hunter in the history of archaeology.

Can’t see above a pile of rubble? No problem for Lara Giraowlff, she can use her seven extra vertebra to peer over obstacles like a periscope. Are there bad guys trying to ambush the protagonists? Lara Giraowlff’s uncannily perceptive hearing can pick up the sound of a mouse scurrying a mile away, she can definitely hear human footsteps. She can then swivel her head like a lazy Susan, much to the horror of anyone trying to sneak up behind her. “Hoo’s there?” she quips, before unloading her pistols into the body of some hapless henchman, her unblinking owl-giraffe hybrid eyes cold and uncaring as she watches the corpse fall to the ground. This remake is going to be awesome.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/what-stupid-thing-is-trending-now-9-24-2017-2/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182592126672

[allofbeercom]

What Stupid Thing Is Trending Now? (9/24/2017)

What stupid thing is trending now? Well…

It’s unclear whether the jarring audio played during the emergency broadcast was a prank, or a bumbling intern who got “normal broadcast tone” with “alien apocalypse” mixed up. Either way, these broadcasts are no War of the Worlds in terms of quality. There are a few problems with the narrative that really need to be addressed.

First, there’s the alien plot arc, which honestly left me a bit underwhelmed. The script reads, “The space program made contact with… They are not what they claim to be. They have infiltrated a lot of, uh, a lot of aspects of military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are coming-the military-I’m sorry the government knows about them…” Aliens infiltrating the military is a solid premise, but one we’ve seen before. So there needs to be a bit of extra spice to really bring this hoax dish to life. Maybe the aliens look like human babies? Or it could turn out that we were the aliens all along? Just something a little extra. And I rolled my eyes at the “Area 51” comment. I mean really, do you think aliens would make a beeline for Area 51? No, their first steps would be to assume control of Tinder and the popular restaurant franchise Applebees. With the mating habits of the young, and the dining habits of the old squarely under their control, the aliens would be able to both stymy our ability to reproduce, and our ability to keep our elderly non-cranky and somewhat tolerable. We’d be doomed within hours.

The biblical apocalypse plot must also be addressed. First of all, you can’t just layer aliens and bible End Times on top of each other like some kind of misery parfait. You have to mix them together with skillful writing, such as “God was an alien all along.” Also you can’t just handwave the events of the apocalypse by saying, “in the last days extremely violent times will come.” That’s lazy writing. You’ve got to show, not tell, your audience. What kind of hell violence is this exactly? Everyone’s skin is now fire? Our skeletons come out of our bodies and attack us? You’ve got to use details to paint a scene. So the next time you startle Californians with hoax emergency broadcasts, put some effort into your art. And if you really want to scare Californians, tell us the end times means drought, and drought means no avocados.

I’m not some sort of fancy “historian.” But I’m almost 80% sure that Yoda did not meet with King Faisal at the UN. Maybe he’s be willing to chat foreign policy in some kind of foggy swamp area, but not the UN. That’s not Yoda’s scene at all. The man (alien?) can’t even stand to wear anything but the lone bathrobe in his possession, the one with all the cream of wheat stains. He’s an old, cranky, green retiree. He gave up being on the Jedi council just so he didn’t have to deal with the long speeches and underwhelming cafeteria food. Why would he come out of retirement just to sit and list to more long, boring speeches, when he could be giving whiny Jedi vague, indirect lessons? Also, I think Yoda died at some point or something, so that would make it hard to get in to the UN.

Maybe the editors of this textbook mistook Yoda for Alan Greenspan. But even then, why would Alan Greenspan be at the UN? He’s also a retiree who only hangs out in foggy swamps and gives indirect advice to young economists. “Adjust interest rates to all-time lows, you shall.”

I’m as big a fan of learning new vocab as any other pretentious dweeb. For instance, did you know “borborygmus” means that rumbling noise in your stomach (and it’s also probably a Pokemon)? But there’s a time and a place for everything. As president Trump and Kim Jong Un trade insults, it feels as if we creep ever closer to military escalation. Which really makes me want to borborygmus in my pants. But despite our perilous situation, the one fact we took away from all this was that Kim Jong Un used a funny word, “dotard,” which means “old an senile,” and is also probably a Pokemon.

It’s great we’re learning new vocabulary, but even the fanciest GRE words aren’t going to do much for us once we’re all a smoldering piles of ash. Here’s a neat word: internecine, which means “destruction on both sides of a conflict,” and used in a sentence is, “The potential internecine war between the U.S and North Korea means everyone is super duper boned.”

Money is objectively disgusting. And not just in the sense that greed is the root of all evil: the paper money itself is covered in inconceivable amounts of filth. It’s honestly better not to think about where your money has been, whose nose it’s been up to vacuum cocaine, whose g-string it’s been tucked into, what rich person has used it to wipe their ass while laughing about the poors. The only way our monetary system can go on is to maintain a flimsy veneer of willful ignorance about the dark places and unspeakable stygian horrors our paper bills have gone through.

That’s what makes the story of this liquor store’s problems all the more harrowing. Instead of using pockets, purses, or a folksy bindle, some customers insisted upon storing their cash in the sweaty crevices of their body. It’s an unspeakable crime against the social contract to reach into the dank recesses of your own body to fish out a slightly moist bill, and to hand that into the trembling hand of a hapless cashier. And as soon as one of these customers goes, “Oh hang on, I think I have exact change in my butt crack,” the cashier will let out a primal scream, the carefully maintained illusion of civil money will crumble, and all of society will soon follow.

Oh come on, what barely visible smudge in the background of a cartoon are parents complaining about now– oh. Oh dear. That is actually very clearly a drawing of a penis. And Snopes has confirmed it.

This was clearly done by the hands of a very disgruntled animator/texture artist. Day after day of slaving away in the animation mines has probably turned the culprit into a hardened, bitter individual, with no other tools to fight back against his corporate overlords but a pen and a vague understanding of what a penis looks like. Or perhaps this required the cooperation of multiple animators and graphic designers, who staged a coup in the only way they knew how. “Help, we’re being held for days on end while we must carefully render all these goddamn stupid cartoon bees,” would probably not get past QC, but a subtle penis would. This isn’t just any dick. This is a cry for help.

Have you ever seen an exposed, hairy man belly in public and thought to yourself, “If only I could surgically remove his gut and sew it into a pouch that can be used to hold my iPhone and keys?” First let me say, getting therapy is nothing to be ashamed of these days. Secondly, you need wish no more! You can now buy mass produced hairy man belly fanny packs. They come in a variety of flavors: first off, there’s “The Allen,” a tasteful, vanilla version that has a modest amount of hair and protrusion. “The Derek” is similar to “The Allen,” except it acknowledges that “pasty white” isn’t the only existing skin tone. “The Bobby” is completely hairless, somehow placing it squarely in the uncanny valley of beer bellies. In contrast, “The Sherman” is thickly forested with coarse, bear-like hair that surrounds a yawning abyssal belly button. “The Magnus” is a photoshopped cascade of belly folds that seem anatomically improbable.

So if you’d like to attain the mystical aura that is the “dad bod,” slap on one of these beauties. As an added bonus, you’ll have a handy pouch to store all the phone numbers you’re totally going to collect while wearing these.

Finally, a victory for the common man. If FedEx says they’ll do overnight delivery, and you trust in them that they’ll honor what they advertise and deliver your horse sperm to your doorstep within a timely manner, it’s critical that the courts hold them to their word. FedEx tried to weasel their way out of their sticky legal situation by arguing the fine print clarified they made no guarantee of overnight delivery, even though it’s called “priority overnight,” with a slogan of, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” And that promise is important when you order horse sperm.

It’s not like horse sperm grows on trees. High quality horse sperm does not run cheap, and you don’t want to impregnate your mare with low-grade budget horse sperm. You can’t hop down to Costco and get plus-sized gallons of horse sperm for $25, and black market horse sperm is often cut with glass and encourages cartels. So for many buyers of horse sperm, delivery is the only option. And by god, if you pay for your horse sperm to be delivered overnight, you should get that horse sperm delivered overnight.

Sure, you might be thinking, “Well I never have needed nor can see any possible reason I will ever need horse sperm delivered to me overnight,” but this court decision affects us all (as long as you happen to live in Nova Scotia, Canada). This is a win for the consumer, whether you’re trying to get priority shipping on a gift for your grandma, or a pint of fresh horse sperm.

There are many, ordinary reasons you might poop in someone’s yard. You could be drunk, there may be no public restrooms, you could have eaten 2 pounds of prunes, or you might be cosplaying as a dog. What makes this story so compelling is that none of these reasons seem to apply to the jogger serial-pooping in residents’ yards. The woman doesn’t appear to be mentally ill or unable to access public restrooms, and her actions seem calculated. She brings toilet paper and poops at the same houses, and shifts her schedule based on when she’s been caught in the act. It seems too coldly premeditated to be a result of a gastrointestinal medical issue. And when she is confronted she apologizes, but never stops, nor cleans up after herself.

It’s a crime spree that seems completely unsolvable. You could tie heroin to the end of a stick and set Sherlock to work, and he’d come away defeated. Is there a personal vendetta involved? Has this jogger finally snapped after dog owners have left countless poops in her yard? Perhaps she’s living by the timeless adage, “When life hands you lemons, you eat those lemons, turn them into poop, and leave those poops on the yards of the innocent.”

This is one of those cases where we just have to accept we’ll never know the definitive answer. Like the Chupacabra or Bigfoot, she will forever capture our imaginations, but we will never capture her.

Photoshop is like a hammer. When used delicately, it can be used to construct beautiful cabinets. But when abused it can pulverize a human body. In this instance, the Tomb Raider poster has been Photoshopped with such wanton abandon, Lara Croft’s neck has gained altitude and flexibility not found in the normal range of human anatomy. Due to this graphic designer’s overabundance of enthusiasm, the writers of the movie will have to change the plot to Lara Croft mixing her DNA with that of a giraffe and an owl, thus becoming the greatest artifact hunter in the history of archaeology.

Can’t see above a pile of rubble? No problem for Lara Giraowlff, she can use her seven extra vertebra to peer over obstacles like a periscope. Are there bad guys trying to ambush the protagonists? Lara Giraowlff’s uncannily perceptive hearing can pick up the sound of a mouse scurrying a mile away, she can definitely hear human footsteps. She can then swivel her head like a lazy Susan, much to the horror of anyone trying to sneak up behind her. “Hoo’s there?” she quips, before unloading her pistols into the body of some hapless henchman, her unblinking owl-giraffe hybrid eyes cold and uncaring as she watches the corpse fall to the ground. This remake is going to be awesome.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/what-stupid-thing-is-trending-now-9-24-2017-2/

[samanthasroberts]

What Stupid Thing Is Trending Now? (9/24/2017)

What stupid thing is trending now? Well…

It’s unclear whether the jarring audio played during the emergency broadcast was a prank, or a bumbling intern who got “normal broadcast tone” with “alien apocalypse” mixed up. Either way, these broadcasts are no War of the Worlds in terms of quality. There are a few problems with the narrative that really need to be addressed.

First, there’s the alien plot arc, which honestly left me a bit underwhelmed. The script reads, “The space program made contact with… They are not what they claim to be. They have infiltrated a lot of, uh, a lot of aspects of military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are coming-the military-I’m sorry the government knows about them…” Aliens infiltrating the military is a solid premise, but one we’ve seen before. So there needs to be a bit of extra spice to really bring this hoax dish to life. Maybe the aliens look like human babies? Or it could turn out that we were the aliens all along? Just something a little extra. And I rolled my eyes at the “Area 51” comment. I mean really, do you think aliens would make a beeline for Area 51? No, their first steps would be to assume control of Tinder and the popular restaurant franchise Applebees. With the mating habits of the young, and the dining habits of the old squarely under their control, the aliens would be able to both stymy our ability to reproduce, and our ability to keep our elderly non-cranky and somewhat tolerable. We’d be doomed within hours.

The biblical apocalypse plot must also be addressed. First of all, you can’t just layer aliens and bible End Times on top of each other like some kind of misery parfait. You have to mix them together with skillful writing, such as “God was an alien all along.” Also you can’t just handwave the events of the apocalypse by saying, “in the last days extremely violent times will come.” That’s lazy writing. You’ve got to show, not tell, your audience. What kind of hell violence is this exactly? Everyone’s skin is now fire? Our skeletons come out of our bodies and attack us? You’ve got to use details to paint a scene. So the next time you startle Californians with hoax emergency broadcasts, put some effort into your art. And if you really want to scare Californians, tell us the end times means drought, and drought means no avocados.

I’m not some sort of fancy “historian.” But I’m almost 80% sure that Yoda did not meet with King Faisal at the UN. Maybe he’s be willing to chat foreign policy in some kind of foggy swamp area, but not the UN. That’s not Yoda’s scene at all. The man (alien?) can’t even stand to wear anything but the lone bathrobe in his possession, the one with all the cream of wheat stains. He’s an old, cranky, green retiree. He gave up being on the Jedi council just so he didn’t have to deal with the long speeches and underwhelming cafeteria food. Why would he come out of retirement just to sit and list to more long, boring speeches, when he could be giving whiny Jedi vague, indirect lessons? Also, I think Yoda died at some point or something, so that would make it hard to get in to the UN.

Maybe the editors of this textbook mistook Yoda for Alan Greenspan. But even then, why would Alan Greenspan be at the UN? He’s also a retiree who only hangs out in foggy swamps and gives indirect advice to young economists. “Adjust interest rates to all-time lows, you shall.”

I’m as big a fan of learning new vocab as any other pretentious dweeb. For instance, did you know “borborygmus” means that rumbling noise in your stomach (and it’s also probably a Pokemon)? But there’s a time and a place for everything. As president Trump and Kim Jong Un trade insults, it feels as if we creep ever closer to military escalation. Which really makes me want to borborygmus in my pants. But despite our perilous situation, the one fact we took away from all this was that Kim Jong Un used a funny word, “dotard,” which means “old an senile,” and is also probably a Pokemon.

It’s great we’re learning new vocabulary, but even the fanciest GRE words aren’t going to do much for us once we’re all a smoldering piles of ash. Here’s a neat word: internecine, which means “destruction on both sides of a conflict,” and used in a sentence is, “The potential internecine war between the U.S and North Korea means everyone is super duper boned.”

Money is objectively disgusting. And not just in the sense that greed is the root of all evil: the paper money itself is covered in inconceivable amounts of filth. It’s honestly better not to think about where your money has been, whose nose it’s been up to vacuum cocaine, whose g-string it’s been tucked into, what rich person has used it to wipe their ass while laughing about the poors. The only way our monetary system can go on is to maintain a flimsy veneer of willful ignorance about the dark places and unspeakable stygian horrors our paper bills have gone through.

That’s what makes the story of this liquor store’s problems all the more harrowing. Instead of using pockets, purses, or a folksy bindle, some customers insisted upon storing their cash in the sweaty crevices of their body. It’s an unspeakable crime against the social contract to reach into the dank recesses of your own body to fish out a slightly moist bill, and to hand that into the trembling hand of a hapless cashier. And as soon as one of these customers goes, “Oh hang on, I think I have exact change in my butt crack,” the cashier will let out a primal scream, the carefully maintained illusion of civil money will crumble, and all of society will soon follow.

Oh come on, what barely visible smudge in the background of a cartoon are parents complaining about now– oh. Oh dear. That is actually very clearly a drawing of a penis. And Snopes has confirmed it.

This was clearly done by the hands of a very disgruntled animator/texture artist. Day after day of slaving away in the animation mines has probably turned the culprit into a hardened, bitter individual, with no other tools to fight back against his corporate overlords but a pen and a vague understanding of what a penis looks like. Or perhaps this required the cooperation of multiple animators and graphic designers, who staged a coup in the only way they knew how. “Help, we’re being held for days on end while we must carefully render all these goddamn stupid cartoon bees,” would probably not get past QC, but a subtle penis would. This isn’t just any dick. This is a cry for help.

Have you ever seen an exposed, hairy man belly in public and thought to yourself, “If only I could surgically remove his gut and sew it into a pouch that can be used to hold my iPhone and keys?” First let me say, getting therapy is nothing to be ashamed of these days. Secondly, you need wish no more! You can now buy mass produced hairy man belly fanny packs. They come in a variety of flavors: first off, there’s “The Allen,” a tasteful, vanilla version that has a modest amount of hair and protrusion. “The Derek” is similar to “The Allen,” except it acknowledges that “pasty white” isn’t the only existing skin tone. “The Bobby” is completely hairless, somehow placing it squarely in the uncanny valley of beer bellies. In contrast, “The Sherman” is thickly forested with coarse, bear-like hair that surrounds a yawning abyssal belly button. “The Magnus” is a photoshopped cascade of belly folds that seem anatomically improbable.

So if you’d like to attain the mystical aura that is the “dad bod,” slap on one of these beauties. As an added bonus, you’ll have a handy pouch to store all the phone numbers you’re totally going to collect while wearing these.

Finally, a victory for the common man. If FedEx says they’ll do overnight delivery, and you trust in them that they’ll honor what they advertise and deliver your horse sperm to your doorstep within a timely manner, it’s critical that the courts hold them to their word. FedEx tried to weasel their way out of their sticky legal situation by arguing the fine print clarified they made no guarantee of overnight delivery, even though it’s called “priority overnight,” with a slogan of, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” And that promise is important when you order horse sperm.

It’s not like horse sperm grows on trees. High quality horse sperm does not run cheap, and you don’t want to impregnate your mare with low-grade budget horse sperm. You can’t hop down to Costco and get plus-sized gallons of horse sperm for $25, and black market horse sperm is often cut with glass and encourages cartels. So for many buyers of horse sperm, delivery is the only option. And by god, if you pay for your horse sperm to be delivered overnight, you should get that horse sperm delivered overnight.

Sure, you might be thinking, “Well I never have needed nor can see any possible reason I will ever need horse sperm delivered to me overnight,” but this court decision affects us all (as long as you happen to live in Nova Scotia, Canada). This is a win for the consumer, whether you’re trying to get priority shipping on a gift for your grandma, or a pint of fresh horse sperm.

There are many, ordinary reasons you might poop in someone’s yard. You could be drunk, there may be no public restrooms, you could have eaten 2 pounds of prunes, or you might be cosplaying as a dog. What makes this story so compelling is that none of these reasons seem to apply to the jogger serial-pooping in residents’ yards. The woman doesn’t appear to be mentally ill or unable to access public restrooms, and her actions seem calculated. She brings toilet paper and poops at the same houses, and shifts her schedule based on when she’s been caught in the act. It seems too coldly premeditated to be a result of a gastrointestinal medical issue. And when she is confronted she apologizes, but never stops, nor cleans up after herself.

It’s a crime spree that seems completely unsolvable. You could tie heroin to the end of a stick and set Sherlock to work, and he’d come away defeated. Is there a personal vendetta involved? Has this jogger finally snapped after dog owners have left countless poops in her yard? Perhaps she’s living by the timeless adage, “When life hands you lemons, you eat those lemons, turn them into poop, and leave those poops on the yards of the innocent.”

This is one of those cases where we just have to accept we’ll never know the definitive answer. Like the Chupacabra or Bigfoot, she will forever capture our imaginations, but we will never capture her.

Photoshop is like a hammer. When used delicately, it can be used to construct beautiful cabinets. But when abused it can pulverize a human body. In this instance, the Tomb Raider poster has been Photoshopped with such wanton abandon, Lara Croft’s neck has gained altitude and flexibility not found in the normal range of human anatomy. Due to this graphic designer’s overabundance of enthusiasm, the writers of the movie will have to change the plot to Lara Croft mixing her DNA with that of a giraffe and an owl, thus becoming the greatest artifact hunter in the history of archaeology.

Can’t see above a pile of rubble? No problem for Lara Giraowlff, she can use her seven extra vertebra to peer over obstacles like a periscope. Are there bad guys trying to ambush the protagonists? Lara Giraowlff’s uncannily perceptive hearing can pick up the sound of a mouse scurrying a mile away, she can definitely hear human footsteps. She can then swivel her head like a lazy Susan, much to the horror of anyone trying to sneak up behind her. “Hoo’s there?” she quips, before unloading her pistols into the body of some hapless henchman, her unblinking owl-giraffe hybrid eyes cold and uncaring as she watches the corpse fall to the ground. This remake is going to be awesome.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/what-stupid-thing-is-trending-now-9-24-2017-2/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/what-stupid-thing-is-trending-now-9-24-2017-3/

[joannaedenmusic]

Confessions of a TV Judge

Last autumn I was asked to appear on BBC One’s new singing show, ‘All Together Now’ as one of ‘The Hundred’ panel of judges. The rules are simple: if I like what I’m hearing, I stand up, press a button to vote and join in; the contestant then receives a score out of a hundred. It was a job on a prime time BBC show and I took it.

But it was a mistake.

In agreeing to be part of this programme, I had to ignore a belief that I’ve held deeply for years: that singing competitions are unhealthy, flawed...just wrong. So why did I do it?

Well, simply because I couldn’t resist the chance to be on TV and to get my face into the mass media market place. Also for the public to know that I had been chosen. I persuaded myself that as a professional singer, I would be doing my career a disservice if I didn’t do it. Unfortunately, I hurt myself in the process; I ignored my inner voice; I stepped blindly into the light and wilfully ignored my misgivings.

Now, four months on, as I watch the series being aired, I find myself wondering why we are drawn to these singing shows. Fundamental questions bubble up: what is singing for? What does it actually do?

Singing turns our breath into sounds. These sounds convey our thoughts and our stories via language. They also convey something else. That other thing. Ah yes, the sound of the soul; the ebb and flow of extended vowels and percussive consonants dancing in the air from the deepest hollows of our lungs via the intricate tunnels of our mouths and noses to the tiny bones of our inner ears. Our singing voice gives life to the invisible; those mysterious, integral parts of our psyche which can only otherwise come out as laughter, squeals, sighs, or sobs.

And what about the listener. What does it do to us?

Singing moves us; mentally, emotionally, physically. Music is transformative. Things happen to us when we partake in music. We are not the same afterwards. Its effects are both quantifiable and mystical. We are not ‘ourselves’, we are warmer, our heartbeat changes pace, we are heightened or we are soothed. And sometimes we fly - our earthly cares drift away, we are living in the moment, we are risen, closer to heaven maybe?

Parts of our brains fire up when we hear a song. Neural pathways damaged by dementia are reawakened. A song can take us back to specific times in our memory or can lift us out of our daily cares and anxieties into a state of bliss.

Song can bind us with others. When society works well we call it ‘living in harmony’. Harmony is a kind of joined separation; a sum greater than its parts. It teaches us how to live.

Song is ephemeral. It is the ultimate expression of living ‘in the moment’. It’s hard to worry about anything when you’re singing, surely?

But singing in public comes high on the list of common fears.

Why? How can something so pure, natural and joyous create fear?

I believe humans have tainted this beautiful gift of song with judgement. We have taken what is given to us all for free and we have made it transactional. A singer in a TV talent show represents a pitched battle between the open, loving heart and the closed mind. Between a heavenly gift and earthly cares. The singer wants and needs to stay ‘in the moment’ and release their voice without the anxiety which can constrain it with muscular tension. But their brain is all too aware of society and its proclivity to judge, to ridicule.

So the winner is the person who can rise above those fears; to sing with an open heart and an unfettered voice in the face of judgement and possible humiliation. The winner has the strongest soul. The winner looks the harshest judge in the eye and sees nothing because they are in a heavenly world of song. A safe place; untouchable.

The Simon Cowells of this world have turned this David and Goliath battle into currency. They have created media machines which exploit our contradictions. We queue up to hear singers; we can’t resist the chance to catch a fleeting moment when the human soul can fly from a stranger and connect directly to us. We’re addicted to it. But we’re also addicted to its failure. We can’t look away from those gladiators who fail to transcend. Who remain earthbound. They are living out our daily struggle to be good, to be better than our weaker selves, to conquer our fears. When they fail we are encouraged - ‘Maybe I’m not that bad after all?’ And Cowell knows that when we listen to songs we are at our most suggestible. We are entranced and susceptible to fairy tales, parables, goodies, baddies, hard luck stories. We lap them up as we sleep through these lazy programmes. They capture the beauty of the voice like an entomologist captures a delicate butterfly and pins it down to a board. And the wings are trimmed. There is no place for eccentricity. How would Tom Waits score? Or Leonard Cohen, Billie Holliday, Bob Dylan, Kate Bush?

Last week I watched the movie ‘The Greatest Showman’ and found it almost physically unbearable because the voices of the singers (who I can almost guarantee were all highly skilled) had clearly been hugely digitally altered and manipulated. It was like drinking over-sweetened, saccharine tea. It was not a human sound. It was cold, brittle, thin and mechanical. Worst of all, these digital ‘improvements’ were completely unnecessary. It was as if someone, somewhere had decided that the frailties, the uniqueness, the humanity in the human voice were no longer desirable; that they were something to hide, to obliterate with digital noise. Our weaknesses and our efforts to compensate, to overcome them make us courageous and fascinating. Ironically, that was the main message of the movie but its creators had no faith that we the audience could bear to listen to fear, strife, pain, triumph, grace in the unfiltered human voice. The sound team on that movie denied us all of that. And time and time again, in the highly digitalised music we consume, we are denied this humanity. Songs and stories of human endeavour sung by humans, filtered and made bland by machines. We are misrepresenting ourselves. More fake news, less palpable truth to hold on to, more fear.

Are we really that insecure? That we can’t even hear ourselves any more? We Photoshop-fix our beautiful models and Melodyne-fix our beautiful voices. Our young girls and boys are being exposed to the aural equivalent of body dysmorphia.

I recorded my new album ‘Truth Tree’ live. I am a singer-pianist and perform at my best when I do both together; piano and voice are recorded at the same time and cannot be separated. This has the welcome effect of making it impossible for me to digitally ‘tamper’ with the tuning or the timing of my vocal performance. And I love my album. I even love my ‘pitchy’ moments because I feel my pain in those moments; my humanity; my struggle. Is our desire to cover up that struggle a denial that we are imperfect? Like someone who is so insecure that they brag all the time. We’ve all met people like that. We sense they are covering up deep-set insecurity. And actually we know that these people are invariably the bullies. Maybe our society’s relationship with singing is similarly dysfunctional?

I have met too many poor souls who, in a moment of cruel comparison from a crass teacher, have had the joy of singing sucked out of them. They have nursed their wounds in songless, solitary silence. But the desire to sing doesn’t go away and they turn up at a singing group, choir or open mic night decades later - sometimes in old age - fearful but fighting to do what they were born to do before it’s too late.

Next time you hear someone sing, remember they are offering up their inner self. Before you judge, remember they are probably at their most vulnerable. If you hear something coarse or not to your taste, remember that judgement or ridicule will only serve to hurt. I deeply wish that all singing teachers were aware of the weight of responsibility they carry. Wouldn’t it be lovely if everyone was encouraged to love and nurture their natural sound? If the human voice was prized for how it reflects our bodies, our souls, our stories? Humans are distinguished from machines by our flaws and idiosyncrasies. We can be flawed and yet beautiful. And so can the human voice!

Please let’s stop judging. Let’s acknowledge that singing is a healing gift, for the singer and listener alike.

So I’m sorry for being a TV judge, (albeit a pretty ineffectual one as I found myself on my feet for nearly every singer!) And I’m sorry that I let my hunger to fast-track my career get the better of my conscience. I did myself a disservice and I feel I have given my own students mixed messages because I haven’t practised what I am preaching here.

But worst of all, I have done my voice a disservice. It has given me so much: I sing every day; I write songs that heal me; I meet wonderful people, receive so much love, witness such beauty in musicians, students and in audiences alike. Last week I sang with a dying friend; it was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I knew then what the voice can do. We both transcended this world.

So, apart from being grateful to have made ninety-nine inspirational new friends, I now want to move on from my brief foray into the world of TV talent shows and to savour every moment of being the world’s slowest overnight sensation!

Joanna Eden is a UK singer/songwriter and teacher who famously mentored Sam Smith.  Joanna's new album 'Truth Tree' will be released autumn 2018.  

www.joannaeden.net