#i've been wanting to make a template page for each of them but it's taking so much time

[bg3screenshotdump]

Don't know if you have done it on your blog but can you introduce us to your Tavs? Like a Character Profil Template. :)

This has been in my inbox for ages, and if i wait until I have everything perfectly set up like i wanted before answering i believe i'll never answer :'D

so perfection and fear of being cringe and seen be damned i'm doing it it now !

so far the only things i have for my tavs on this blog is their respectives tags you can find in the sidebar of my blog :')

so i'll just list them here and i'll make them more detailed pages later, when i have time and feel confident enough to share more of the backstories i imagined :')

( warning, piss poor writing in coming i suck at writing in my native language and it's even worse in english )

Delsys - My 1rst Full release Tav, half wood elf orphan, beastmaster ranger who ended up serving as a guardian of the druidic order that found and raised her. she's a big introvert and has piss poor social skills, litteraly her only friends are her owl companion, Verbena and Trilli ( even if she feels disconected from her two very extroverted and playful friends ) she's been following the orders and lead of the druids for most of her life so she's really not confident in her new role as the leader of the bg3 party, ( she's not confident about a lot of things actually, tbh the only thing she's not insecure about is her archery skills ) and unfortunately for everyone she tends to hide those insecurities behind a tough and apathetic mask

Trilli Bumbleroot - archfey warlock/bard forest gnome - lover of music, dancing, nature and village festivals, she's just a little gal who loves traveling, i'm still not entierly sure of who i want her archfey patron to be, but she took a contract when she left her village in order to have enough power to protect herself on the road. During her travels she eventually came across Delsys ( who wasn't born yet ) and Verbena's druidic order and she's been bestie with Verbena ever since and unfortunately for the other druids when the both of them put their mind together tomfoolery ensues

Verbena Ferngrass - Wood elf druid - high bimbo of the same druidic order that raised Delsys ( and she kind of sees her as a little sister ) she's a big extrovert, a big flirt, she values her personal freedom and fun above all else, she thinks with her vag and is always pulling Delsys into all kind of situations™ She considers Trilli to be her best friend ( and they kiss sometimes )

Vetra - Githyanki war cleric of Vlaakith - soft and curious soul who's been battered and hardened by her training as both a warrior and a priestess, now that she's in faerun she starting to feel a bit more free to be explore and connect back to the parts of her personality she had to hide behind her now no-nonsense tough persona

Kastyn Firebeard - warrior/maybe paladin ( haven't decided yet) - mercenary coming from a blacksmith family, don't have much of a backstory for her yet :') just that she was disatisfied about her life in the mercenary group she was a part of, mostly because she had no control over the missions they took, and those missions sometimes went agaisnt her moral code

Healstra Ssiwin - lolth drow Sorceress - Bit on the fence about her story and personality :'x i'm not sure why exactly she chose to go to the surface,i initially made the Astromancer robes mod for her, so i had in mind that she wanted to see and study the stars but idk, i'll think i'll need to document myself on drow a bit more to get better ideas :'D

Cyn Clarilieu - my EA tav, basic noble human turned paladin ( is now tall and buff thanks to the full release Bodytype 3 ❤️) good aligned, annoyingly too self-righteous at times

Shani Cotton - Halfling rogue - Street urchin turned criminal in Baldur's gate lower city, magpie brainded if-it-shiny-i-want-it ,quite loose morals so she doesn't care if she has to kill or maim to obtain what she wants

Oriann Aleviir - my co-op tav, half drow - cringefail 8 dex blew-her-own-face-off-with-fire-spell wild magic sorcerer, terrified for her life 24/7 and will make every bad choices out of fear and gullibleness ( highly manipulable, will probably end up a squid as a result )

[stagkingswife]

Take Notes Like Stag Part 1: Spirit Encounters

Part 2: Unrecorded Entity Note Taking Exercise Part 3: Spell "Lab Notes" I think I've mentioned before that I studied witchcraft and folklore academically in college, but I don't know if I've ever made much of a deal out of the fact that I did so as part of a major in Cultural Anthropology. I learned a lot about different magical practices in those specific classes and I still use much of what I learned, but what I learned back then that I use the most didn't come from one of the magic classes, it came from the prep class for the original anthropological research I had to do for my thesis. In that class I was taught how to conduct anthropological interviews and how to take notes on those conversations. Over the years I have developed those anthropological interview notes into a template that I use for every encounter I have with an incorporeal entity. This template is very simple: 4 broad categories that I sort my thoughts into and some examples of what kind of notes I put into each category. I use this format to take notes on all of my spirit work encounters, regardless of the type of spirit - one page of my binder per encounter, and then I can keep all of the pages for a particular entity together in chronological order.

Impressions: Initial notes on an encounter.

How did the entity present themselves?

How did they look/ sound/ make me feel in the moment

What did they say/ how did they communicate

Reflections: How do I feel about the encounter after the fact

How does the encounter sit with me now that I’ve had some distance?

How do I feel about how the entity treated me/interacted with me?

Emerging Questions: Questions I have based on this encounter

Was there anything from the encounter that I feel might have been symbolic/metaphorical?

Do I have any follow up questions about the actual conversation/message? Ie: was anything unclear to me, do I need to clarify anything?

Are there questions/trains of thought that I need to go research or divine on further?

Future Actions: What do I think I need to do next?

Did the entity give an “action item”/ something they want or expect me to do? If so, list them here.

Is there something I want to do before I communicate with this entity? If so I also list them in here.

[corgitation]

How I make my Japanese flashcards

I've been able to switch all of my flashcards to mochi SRS from anki and I think this has made a huge difference for me. I'll make another post explaining why mochi is so much better but for now just take my word :)

How I find vocab terms:

I have a few main sources that I use for finding new vocabulary. I have an immersion deck, with subdecks for each piece of native media that I pull the words from (とびもり、ハピネス、しゅんとにほんご、etc). I also have a deck for vocabulary I pull from bunpro. This is great because it means I'm getting words that interest me (from immersion content) and words that are more useful/common (from bunpro)

2. How I make flashcards:

I make a template for each type of card, and when I create a deck, I set all cards to the template type, and then just fill out the information. I have two card types for Japanese: vocab and kanji

Card types:

Japanese vocab

for these cards, I add the word (using kanji if applicable), then add the definition, an example sentence, and link my kanji cards so I can reference them when reviewing the vocab card. Furigana is added automatically!

Kanji

For these, I add the kanji, the heisig kanji ID, all of the keywords in jisho, the kunyomi and onyomi readings, the JLPT level, and then the link for the kanji in jisho. This helps me for quick reference, but if I want more info I can easily pull up the jisho page. I have all kanji cards in an archived deck (they won't come up in reviews) and I have them linked to my vocab cards. This way, if a kanji is used in any vocab cards, I can see all of the linked vocab

If you're starting your Japanese learning journey or trying to find a new flashcard solution, I hope this helps!　頑張りましょう！ :)

[dorkfruit]

i put this together using my computer's trackpad so the new year is already starting out . bad .

posts: J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D

template

reflections on the year, my plans for the future, some studies i did, and wips for the next year all down below for those who are interested

tldr; we will be ianthing next year so watch out!!

oh dear lord it's been another year. 2024! can you believe it! i don't talk much on this blog because i have a tendency to talk too much, but it's my little new year's treat, so here we go.

RECAP

i started taking drawing "seriously" in December of 2020, starting to do studies and stuff, and each year since i've ramped it up more and more. this year, i did. a lot of studies. there's probably like at least 200 more in my folder now (not including the 300 days worth of gesture drawings i did), with things like painting, faces, feet, poses, etc. anything i was struggling with, i went right into studying it. my art has been mediocre for a pretty long time now, and it's only the past few months where i feel i'm starting to get the hang of it, which is exciting!

more importantly, i started posting a lot more on this blog. i really like documenting my progress, looking on where i was before and seeing how i've improved. everytime i draw some fanart, im like, oooghh i can't wait to show my (: followers (: !! lots of locked tomb art of course. i've been trying to nail the energy of the different characters, which is why i enjoy books so much, because you get a lot of creative control. drawing ianthe is my fav of course, cause she's my lil nasty, but also i enjoyed doing designs for characters i hadnt thought about before, like judith.

in addition to the locked tomb, we had some new fandoms that got brief moments in between iantheposting: Fear and Hunger, Postal, Faith The Unholy Trinity, and a couple of old ones too, like We Have Always Lived In The Castle and The Merciless.

i posted about 115 times this year, although most of those are shitposts LOL i love posting stuff on my blog and showing people my stuff <3

THE FUTURE

my plans? do more ianthe art, of course. ill be working on more studies, probably going to work on developing a style, and figuring out how to paint. i'd like to do more actually finished pieces, but let's be honest, it'll still be mostly shitpost doodles. i'd like to do more weird stuff. i've been messing around with some gore and NSFW near the end of the year, and it's fun to draw for me. i like idk art that evokes some type of emotion, especially discomfort, and so i find that type of art fun to do, so if you don't enjoy what i've done thus far in that direction, perhaps this isn't the blog for you. i really like horror media, and so i want to do some stuff like that too.

for specifics, i like western type art, a comic book-esque style i'd like to aim for. but i'd like it to be a little more. weird with it. i find comic books often draw all the characters the same, and make all the characters traditionally attractive, and that's boring to me so i'll have to work on finding a way to keep things weird, while also appealing in a graphic sense. the worst thing my art could be is bland and forgettable.

locked tomb wise... more tridentarii art. need to be really weird with it. i have lots of wips planned, like i have a whole page worth of just thumbnails, so i wanna get some of those done. also i had a few animatics i wanted to do. mostly stupid shit, once i learn how to do animatics, then we'll do actual serious ones. id also like to do more comics. i have some comics storyboarded out with my girlies, i like telling a story so, need practice on that. id also like to develop a way to consistently draw them, for convenience sakes, so i'm not fighting for my life every single time i draw these characters. oh and i wanna do some outfit stuff. i draw them in like. generic clothes everytime but i'd like to come up with a few actual outfit designs, that i can just reference back to. and, of course, more shitposts. lots of stupid shit in 2024 for sure. there was something else i wanted to say here but i can't remember.

ART

oki enough rambling, here's some IMAGES for yall to look at i know everyone loves to look at images.

began this year by warming up with gesture sketches (almost) every day. i started with 20 poses (30 seconds each), and then in november i was like. ugh my hands suck i need to get better at hands, so i switched to doing 10 hand sketches (60 seconds each). i want my art to be very energetic so it's important that i do these !!

anatomy studies of extremities because i'm flopping at those -_- ive gotten better with hands but they're still a struggle. i hate feet tho still

need to get my painting game up. i joined an art forum to get advice, and the biggest suggestion i got was working on my values, so i did various value studies. also lots of faces because my faces flop !!

random doodles to work on drawing from imagination. on my "sketchbook" pages, as i like to call them, i'm usually pretty loose and messy, since the point is just to be drawing so often these will suck, but that's fine. i don't think very much when i draw faces on here either so they end up being in my Instinctive Style i suppose you could say

ianthe wip. i was planning to do a few drawings based on the idea of her having Missing Arm nightmares, but the lineart was intimidating to me so i haven't worked on this one more yet /: also there was going to be a toontown gay homosexual toxic yuri comic that i was gonna put here with it but the page is way too long so umm guess that'll have to wait.

...

anyways. thank you for reading if you got to the bottom of this! i appreciate all the support that i've been getting lately (extra big kissies for the same like 5 people who always reblog my posts youre the best). and we will be ianthing soo hard in 2024 so watch out!!

[box-architecture]

which are the aus You have more on your ming latetly?

A mixture of them!

I'm staring at the Dreambur AU I have (Strangers Vassal) and wondering if I should post what I had planned for it to look like. I'm struggling a lot with writing it, partially because I don't have a lot of people to bounce ideas off of, partially because it's an AU that would have a lot of fight scenes, something I don't have a lot of experience in and am unsure how to proceed with.

I really enjoy the concept of it, and I want to write for it, but it might once again turn into a bunch of shortfics in a series rather than the longfic I originally wanted. It's disappointing that I can't seem to consistently write longfics, but if I don't accept the limitation I might risk not getting anything done at all, and that's potentially more disappointing.

The Communication Knife AU is almost always on my mind. It's evolved from just pure demons and rotations to being a huge comfort that I can just idly think about throughout the day.

It's really neat, because I started out as a Dream-centric multishipper who wasn't sure if I could vibe with Punz and Sam closing the triangle, but after marinating in the idea, it's now really important to me that they become something too. They grow from two people fighting around their relationship with Dream to something based on trust and blunt honesty and Forgiveness Withoit Forgetting. They can be deeply affectionate with each other in a way thats different from their relationship with Dream. Not bad, not in a way that excludes him, just different.

The AU has also tentatively opened me up to exploring 2nd Gen characters, something I've literally never been capable of before. I have a lot of vague ideas for who gets together post-main story, and how those relationships works and why. Ponk/Foolish/XD is a ship for example, and I've designed a possible child for them? As well as designed Fooshs Totem children? It's always a maybe for if I actually want to give people kids, and it's not really the point of CKAU, it's just really fun to explore the rest of the smp in this sort of fix-it au and how it impacts their lives in the After of it all.

It's also helped me expand my Minecraft Lore and Worldbuilding Bible (how in my headcanon the mineacraft world works and its history/lore, including tying other media's like Hermitcraft and Maricraft to the dsmp to make everything part of the overall world.)

Writing CKAU post-story had also, ironically, made me enjoy benchtrio more, as I get to talk to my friends about their interpersonal dynamics and how they work and how they end up finally at peace. Especially considering Tubbo and Ranboo are bitterly divorced for a long time.

I had a lot of small ideas for a DNB Mass Effect AU in a similar vein to To Tear Asunder being my Dragon Age AU, but I feel really guilty getting into that when I haven't even finished the Philza fic or the Techno fic I have for the latter. I have significantly less people to bounce ideas off of for To Tear Asunder, which is why I struggle with it sometimes.

A lot of my writing in the beginning was done through utilizing my manic moods, but now that I'm better medicated/no longer constantly manic, it's led to me going a lot slower with writing. Demons (PWP stuff) are a lot easier to write, because they require significantly less scene set-up when I can use the sexual act as a template, and being horny-brained isn't particularly difficult.

(Also. No Plot Nessecary. Hence the Porn Without Plot. Plot is really exhausting to write sometimes.)

Obviously it's a lot better for my health that I'm no longer manic, but it's still disappointing that I can no longer work myself into a tizzy and write 30 pages of something (before collapsing and being unable to do anything at all for the next several days.) Give and take and all.

I briefly was very insane about Benchtrio fucking Dream in various ways. I made a whole Teacher/Student AU about it that's in my drafts, god willing I get my new laptop and can finish that up. I really enjoy CNC and bodice ripper type stuff, so it's pretty fun to explore crack AUs where Dream is just trying to be normal and the 3 most abnormal people in the world come into his life.

I'm not really a fan of the Tommy/Dream dynamic where Dream is preying on the Poor Helpless Child, especially because it has a habit of taking itself Very Seriously. I'm not looking for serious and dark and the villainization of Dream. It's a lot more fun for me to explore a strong, confident, and very tired 20-something desperately trying to figure out how to deal with the 17-18 year old being horny on main. Also it's just really interesting to me when the younger character takes advantage of normal social and power dynamics and subvert them so they can have the older character sub.

^I'm not sure if the explanation there is perfect or makes sense but I'm always happy to try to talk more about it if you'd like.

I have a little more of the Warden Hybrid!Dream type stuff in my head that I wanted to write out, mostly just a lot of Porn With Minimal Plot for purely kink reasons. I also have a Dream/Ravager fic I'm supposed to be posting, but God only knows when I can finish it. I need zoomies.

[allthe-everything]

to all my babes out there trying to get a job, got some tips for y'all. i'm updating my resume and realised that what i do might help some people, and not everyone knows about ATS parsing. gonna be long, will add a tldr at the end

so, first things, instead of MS office, i use libreOffice as my document creator/word processor. stop giving microsoft your money - libreOffice is free and open source, and it's amazing. go get it. saves you money too and god knows we need that. but, i'm sure you can do this in publisher too, i just don't know all the buttons

onto techniques: instead of creating my resume in libreOffice's equivalent of word, i use the equivalent of microsoft's publisher - the thing meant for you to make cards and flyers and whatnot. essentially you just pick a size document, and get to throw things (pictures, text boxes, charts, whatever) onto the page where you want them. since it's geared more towards artsy things, it's a lot more flexible with formatting than word (moving images in word? just don't).

essentially, every snippet of information i put on my resume is one text box. each job with its description, each project i've worked on, etc gets its own text box. this is great in a couple ways: it means that if you want to change the formatting of your resume, you can just move around text boxes instead of fucking around with copy/paste all day. the second thing is that when a machine tries to read your resume, internally it'll read that pdf and see blocks of related information that's more precise than giant paragraphs you'd get in word. make your section titles their own text boxes (like experience, education, skills, etc) so they don't get lumped in with the real info.

i'm not gonna talk about "resume words" or "clean formatting" bc tbh i'm bad at that and i think recruiters are dumb sometimes for wanting "no templates, but only format it this one particular way". but get all your info there, arrange it how you see fit, and THEN. then we get sneaky.

in libreOffice, you can name and add descriptions to text boxes. "what!" i hear you say. "that's so weird why would anyone do that!". and i say "well, if a human is reading your resume, it doesn't matter what the text box thinks it is. but it's a machine reading your resume! you want to speak the machine's language." the name is less important than the description, in my opinion, but you can name the boxes too. what you're gonna do is select a text box, click on "format" at the top bar, then "description". and you're gonna add in the alt text box what this text box is. if it's a list of skills, write "skills". if it's education, write "education". this info won't show up visually to a human reading the doc, but it helps machines categorise the data, just a little bit better. in the description part of this, you can also try adding the key words from the job description so the machine sees them but a human really can't find it unless they really look. this isn't something i've been able to test thoroughly, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

i'm still working out all the kinks myself, and picking apart what the ATS does in terms of parsing your resume, but when i started doing this my resume was better parsed whenever i applied to jobs. which, bonus, less retyping your resume into the bullshit job app.

tldr; fuck microsoft, use libre office instead. use libre office's drawings app or ms office's publisher app for ease of use. in libre office, click text box, go to format -> description and add a description of what the text box contains. test and retest your resume in an ATS parser online to make sure the machine reads your resume correctly.

i wish this wasn't how things are, but since we're here might as well figure out hacks. if anyone else has info to add, please please do. it's rough out here.

[bigskydreaming]

I actually can not believe I've never posted this X-Men headcanon (that turned into a whole treatment/thesis) here on this blog, but for those few followers who know who Dallas Gibson aka Specter is, or Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, or just anything about Academy X in general.....enjoy!

(Mostly because I don't trust the random PDF hosting site I've got it stored on and I like to keep stuff backed up online and not just in my files so posting it for posterity here anyway.)

Anyway, I give you:

THE GREAT MANIFESTO OF WHAT IF DALLAS GIBSON WAS THE SECRET LOVE CHILD ONE NIGHT STAND CHILD OF BOBBY DRAKE AND LAYNIA PETROVNA: A CRACK FIC THEORY OUTLINE SOMETHING IN THREE PARTS

(Relax. Its actually only about 10,000 words long. That's like, barely ANYTHING when its me. Its a itty bitty teeny tiny nothing of a thing. Hardly even counts).

So, okay. I have approximately 80 different pitches for what to do with Iceman at any given time, but here's one that I know would never in a million years happen purely because the X-Office will never let the 05 be the ages I perceive them as which is mid to late thirties at this point. Like I picture Bobby as around thirty-six or so, though for him it actually makes sense for him to be eternally portrayed as LOOKING like he's in his early 20s, since that was the age he first transmuted to his ice form and so makes sense to be his default template/molecular blueprint his power resets him to every time he has to make a new body from scratch. BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, wildly self-indulgent pitch ahead, which ties into a cracky headcanon I've had since Academy X, includes a couple OCs, and explores his past history with Laynia, long before he was out, as well as his connections to other heroes beyond the X-Men like Laynia and her brother, Black Widow, etc. And then it combines my ideas for giving Bobby an antagonist of his own, more characters to interact with other than major X-Men so his story beats aren't reliant on whatever's going on with other X-Men and who's available, and gives him concrete reasons to want to level up quickly in terms of how much social influence he wields among mutantkind, take more prominent/proactive stances on things, etc. While still leaving room for him to be goofy and always trying to use humor to seem more relatable, less threatening, etc.

So. I'm picturing this as a triptych like Sabretooth, three interlocked minis of five issues each that form a trilogy by the end.

First mini:

ICEMAN AND DARKSTAR: SHADOW GAMES

ISSUE ONE:

First issue opens with Bobby in his apartment in LA, sometime after he's left the most recent X-Men lineup and is back to living off of Krakoa. He's just gotten in and is going through his mail where he comes across a card with no return address. Opening it, he finds its a condolence card that says "Thinking of you on this anniversary of such a tragic day." His internal monologue, conveyed in caption boxes and a key element of this whole mini, shows he's totally confused by this. He has no idea why this date would hold any special significance, or who would have sent the card or why. (The specific date would just be somewhere around the date of publication, in a world where this actually got published, lol. Let's go with April 27th, for instance).

Deciding to just shrug it off as some weird thing, Bobby's basically just being moody for a page or two of reflection before Scott calls. They're trying to do better about keeping in touch even when they're not on the same team. Some generic catching up, and Bobby eventually mentions he's just been in a weird mood all day, to which Scott says he's not surprised. Turns out Scott's noticed that for as long as he can remember now, Bobby's ALWAYS in a shitty mood every time April 27th rolls around. Yes, Scott is anal enough that after years of Bobby being weird around the same time every year, he eventually narrowed it down to its epicenter. This very day. Bobby is both weirded out and touched by Scott's attention to something so specific about Bobby...more attentive than even Bobby himself. When they hang up, he's still clueless about why today would be such a big deal to him, but apparently there's a pattern. That card might not have been so random after all.

Confused & uncomfortable now, Bobby decides to get out of the house & just do hero stuff. That always makes him feel better. He helps put out some fires, divert a tidal wave, gating back and forth across the planet, restless. The whole issue, even as he uses his usual banter to make the people he helps feel at ease in the wake of whatever catastrophe they were just saved from, his internal monologue shows he's second-guessing himself constantly, being his own worst enemy, criticizing every choice he makes about his saves, how he could've done things better, etc. Things come to a head when he intervenes at a protest - I don't have a specific cause in mind but ideally something non mutant related - as a group attacks the protesters until Bobby drops in to protect them.

The protesters thank him but are pretty cynical about the whole thing. They note that this happens constantly and most of those same people will be back stirring up trouble and violence at another event like this down the line. They hope for change for the better but point out that some people never will, because they're not interested in better. They're happy with their hate. Bobby reflects on what they said, and here's where his thoughts start to take a particularly dark turn. He thinks of some of the ways his powers could be used to ensure those ppl never hurt anyone again, how the full potential of his powers include a lot of lethal options, and why shouldn't he use them when its true most of these ppl will just commit heinous acts in the future, and he might not be around to protect their victims next time. He even reflects on how he's used some of those darker options in the past, so its not like it'd be crossing a line he hasn't already....

Disturbed by the fact that the only reason he can think of not to go there is he's a hero and heroes don't do that, he just wants to be anywhere else in a hurry so he skips heading for a gate and does something he does only rarely....turns himself into mist and starts to disperse, to teleport somewhere far away, but as he does he gets the weirdest feeling, like his spread out consciousness is brushing up against someone else's. He's not alone he realizes. And he stops and recoalesces right there and talking to the empty air he demands that someone show themselves. A man appears out of nowhere, laughing.

Stranger: Your observational skills are a lot sharper than they used to be, Drake. Back in the day, you had no idea when I was around.

Bobby: Who are you and why are you talking like I'm supposed to know who you are? I've never seen you before in my life.

Stranger: Wow, it sucks to realize you left way less of an impression on someone than they left on you. I guess it makes sense though. I mean, when you KILLED me almost twenty years ago, this very day - that was obviously a big deal for me, but hey, I've been out of the loop awhile so what do I know? Maybe it was just another Tuesday for you.

Bobby: Are you the one who sent me that card earlier? Who the hell are you and what kind of game are you playing?

Stranger: Same one we were playing all those years ago, Bob. Before you got all pissy and flipped the board before I got a chance to make my next move. But thanks to the wonders of Krakoan resurrection, now we can pick up right where we left off. It really is a miracle, isn't it?

Bobby: Well maybe you should check with the Five and make sure they didn't bring you back with a few screws loose, because I'm pretty sure I'd remember this if it was actually me you were playing this game with.

Stranger: Maybe you just forgot. Or who knows? Maybe someone made you forget.

Bobby: Okay, yeah, I'm bored now. Time to put you on ice.

He starts icing the area around the stranger, intending to trap him in a block of ice, but the stranger just laughs and turns incorporeal, becoming a transparent outline hovering above the street....so to anyone who hadn't been watching their conversation - like the very protesters Bobby had saved earlier - it looked like Bobby was just furiously creating some kind of ice attack that didn't seem to be aimed at anyone...other than them. The now ghost-like stranger zips over to the crowd and starts weaving among them, seeming to whisper in a bunch of peoples' ears....and before long, the crowd that had just been saved from one attack and were primed not to just sit down and take another, were ready to choose fight over flight, becoming a mob headed for Bobby.

He constructs some ice barriers to just keep them at bay, not really worried they'll hurt him and more concerned about not hurting them, when the stranger's ghost form swirls around Bobby, hovering above his shoulder and now whispering in his ear. But there's no dialogue in the stranger's speech bubble....just caption boxes displaying Bobby's internal monologue....and now calling into question every single box earlier in the issue.

Caption box: Isn't it surreal how the right words whispered in the right ears can dramatically change a person's perception of something....or someone? How easy it is to change peoples' courses....even the course of their entire life?

Caption box: And fear, well, fear's one of the best motivators there is. So much easier to get someone to listen to you when they're afraid of something else.

Caption box: But maybe you can't really relate to that. A guy as powerful as you, you're probably not afraid of much these days.

Caption box: That wasn't always true though, was it? This take you back at all? Remind you of when you were just a kid, and there was a mob gunning for you just for the crime of being mutant and vulnerable? I bet you were scared then.

Caption box: Considering what a guy like you could do if he were scared enough, if the right person used the right words as the spark to ignite all that fear....the world's probably pretty lucky that Saint Xavier was there to be the voice you listened to back then, huh. Y'know, instead of someone like Magneto or Apocalypse being the ones to tell traumatized, impressionable little you what to do with all that fear and anger you felt....

Caption box: Do you ever think about that, Drake? Wonder if all that separates you from the worst of the worst is you had the right voice in your ear at the right time? That maybe there's nothing special about you at all, nothing innately noble, heroic.

Caption box: That you were just....lucky?

Caption box: Food for thought. Anyway, I gotta run for now, but I'll be seeing you, Bob.

Caption box: We have so much to catch up on.

Then its just Bobby left keeping the mob at bay with his ice structures, him visibly shutting down, trying not to think too much and just running on instinct, until a hand reaches down from above and snatches him up into the air, until the streets are just a speck below them. Bobby looks up and to his shock its Laynia Petrovna aka Darkstar, his old friend and teammate from back when he was on the Champions as a teenager. The issue closes with her saying: "Hello, Bobby. I'd say its nice to see you and all the usual pleasantries, but we don't have much time. And we need to talk about our son."

ISSUE TWO

This issue switches to Laynia's POV with her internal monologue in caption boxes, and picks up with them having teleported somewhere secluded via Laynia's powers (she's much more practiced using hers to teleport than Bobby is using his that way). This issue goes back and forth between past and present, as during Laynia's narration of past events they're shown as if they're happening in real time.

Bobby's pointing out that they were never together, and considering she was the one who turned him down, you'd think she'd be aware of that. Laynia responds that no, they were never a couple, but they did sleep together once and once only....she'd been feeling particularly down about her ex-boyfriend Yuri after running into him, it was a rebound thing for her and she never hid that but Bobby took it to mean more than it did anyway and acted a fool about it, aligning with their canon interactions at the very end of their Champions run, before getting on the same page and they went back to just being friends.

Except, Laynia says, then she found out she was pregnant, and he flew to Russia to join her and decide what to do together, while everyone else thought he was still at UCLA. He doesn't remember any of this, because blocks were put in their memories, hiding everything related to this. But it did happen, and they do have a son. She'll explain everything, but they need to keep moving around, as she doesn't want the man who just confronted Bobby to overhear any of this and its very hard to detect when he's around. Their best option is to keep on the move, teleporting frequently and not staying anywhere long enough for him to track where they are.

Bobby: Oh crap. HE'S not our son, is he?

Laynia: Hell no.

Bobby: Phew, I was worried we had a Stryfe situation for a second there. I am barely holding it together as is and I am NOT equipped to handle an evil Bobby Jr. from the future.

Laynia reaffirms that he is definitely not their son, but he is the reason for much of what happened back when they were eighteen. They only ever knew him by his moniker, 'Doubting Thomas' and honestly were never sure when exactly he started watching them and messing with their heads. That's his MO. His power lets him turn from flesh and blood into a form made solely of psychic energy...an astral ghost that's invisible, immaterial and can travel via the astral plane. But his only power to affect the material world in that form lies in telepathy. He can project thoughts into someone's mind and its almost impossible to keep him out or tell his intrusions from ordinary thoughts.

She's not sure how he'd fare against other telepaths, but at least with non-psychics, even the best psychic shielding or anti-telepath technology isn't a guarantee against him. Because doesn't try to break into minds, or even sneak past mental defenses. He just surveils his targets, watching them invisibly, learning all he can about them, and then he looks for cracks in whatever mental shields they have. Tiny gaps here and there that he can just whisper into, slipping a thought in amongst the chaos and chatter generated by someone's own mind.

All of which means they never were sure where their own natural fears and paranoia ended, and his whispering began. They were eighteen, she reminds Bobby, already freaking out about this giant life change neither were sure they were ready for, even if they did keep the baby...and neither of them was an ordinary civilian. They were powerful mutants with lots of enemies....from day one, they were concerned that their child would be born with a target on their back just from that. And then there was the fact that one of the things they'd always bonded over was resentment for how early they felt their childhoods ended.

Laynia and her twin brother Nikolai were taken from their parents at birth, and raised separately with government agents for foster parents. They were always intended to be mutant operatives for their government, their lives scripted out for them, and their training began in their early teens. Laynia didn't even know she had a twin brother until she was in her twenties.

And Bobby had always quietly nursed resentment for being put out into the field at the same time as the rest of the 05, all years older than him and with a lot more focus from the Professor. Scott was his protege, a tactical genius, Jean was his preferred pupil in terms of power development, Hank was a bonafide genius, and Warren was a millionaire playboy, a natural spokesman and inevitable future celebrity. Bobby was just Bobby though, with no awareness of his full potential, and the only one the Professor didn't seem to have any real purpose for or interest in. Like he was tacked on as a spare, his presence more of an afterthought than intentional.

So especially in his late teens, after the 05 went their separate ways, Bobby had always been bothered by the fact that he'd gone through all the same traumas and hardships as the rest on their various missions, but always wondering what he was even doing there when it didn't even seem like there was any reason he was supposed to be. Privately he'd always wanted someone - his parents, the Professor, even the older 05 - to question whether there was really nobody else Xavier could have been sending out to fight Magneto, than a fifteen year old too afraid of being abandoned to say no on his own behalf. After all, the issue was complicated by the fact that when his parents weren't fully on board with Bobby going to the Institute, Xavier mindwiped them into thinking he was just at boarding school, and it was only when Bobby was eighteen that the Professor restored their full awareness of what Bobby had been doing for years.

All of which played into why Bobby and Laynia didn't tell anyone about the pregnancy, even their closest friends. It started out as them just putting it off, wanting to be more sure of their own thoughts on this before someone else tried to make the decision what to do for them, but by the time Laynia gave birth, they'd fully isolated themselves, paranoid that Xavier or the Red Room would take the baby and just make them forget all about it. And problem is, as Laynia put it, they couldn't tell how much of that was Doubting Thomas whispering all the right things to ramp up their anxieties and specific fears.

And obviously someone did mess with their memories anyway, Bobby points out crankily. This all is partly meant to seed two ongoing character arcs for Bobby in the future....the first, his awareness of how often his mind and memories have been messed with over the years, by enemies and allies alike, to the point he's honestly not sure how much of 'him' is really even him, and how much he's just the end result of people just editing his mind whenever he started heading in a direction they didn't want him to. With how long the memories of their time travel trip were hidden, now these missing memories, what other holes could exist in his memories without him ever having a clue?

And the second character arc is his misgivings about Xavier and the role he played in Bobby's childhood. Knowing what he knows now of his omega potential, aware that all the biggest developments and learning curves with his powers happened when Bobby WASN'T Xavier's student, Bobby's increasingly convinced that Xavier never trusted Bobby with his own power, and while he might not have actively stunted his growth, he certainly didn't help or encourage it the way he did his other students. The foundation is there for Bobby to wonder if the only reason Xavier ever even recruited him was to keep him from falling into anyone else's hands and becoming a threat.

As Laynia reminds him of what they were like back then and how they viewed things, things fall into place for Bobby and its very easy for him to see how they could have ended up hiding this from anyone in Xavier's orbit, etc...and this starts to become less abstract for him. It wasn't that he thought she was lying at any point, but its hitting him now....he has a son, and someone made him forget. He's someone who has always yearned for family that won't judge or condemn him, leave him, always been determined to be everything his own father wasn't and nothing like him, and yet he has a son who's grown up without him. Whose name he doesn't even know.

He does know his son though, it turns out. At least somewhat. Its one of Bobby's former students before M-Day. Dallas Gibson aka Specter. He has no idea who he really is, Laynia says, but the parents who died when Dallas was ten were his adoptive parents. But he was born Dallas Drake, as Petrovna wasn't even Laynia's real last name and she had no idea what it originally was. Heir to the merged powersets of both his biological parents, with his father's elemental form but made from his mother's signature Darkforce energies.

As for why Laynia remembers when Bobby doesn't....she didn't originally. But then years ago (during the Morrison run), she was possessed by one of Weapon X's most dangerous creations, the Huntsman. However, thanks to how her powers were designed to let her mind travel through the Darkforce Dimension to do things like teleport, when she was possessed, her mind tried to flee into that dimension. When Fantomex killed her, he only killed her body, and her mental tether to it. The shock and trauma of her physical death broke down the barriers around her memories, and they all came flooding back. Problem was, she only existed as a consciousness drifting aimlessly in the Darkforce Dimension.

But then Dallas started learning more about his powers and growing them during his time at the Academy. And his powerset also includes the ability to make shadow golems similar to the ice golems his father makes. But he didn't realize this as the first time he made one, with Darkforce energy being the clay his golem was sculpted from...Laynia was able to use that as a doorway into the physical world. She inhabited his shadow golem as her vessel, the way a future Iceman's golem once split off from him and became a separate entity. So Dallas never realized his newfound shadow friend started out as something he made unconsciously...he just knew that it seemed to have its own sentience from the jump, was a friend and protector who'd show up whenever he needed them. That friend and protector just happened to be his biological mother, watching over him the only way she could.

Until M-Day. When Dallas was depowered, Laynia lost her connection to the physical world and was stuck again in the Darkforce Dimension....until her brother Nikolai made a bargain with Immortus that led to her full resurrection. Finally she was back, and she remembered everything. But also knew Bobby remembered none of this. And so for the next couple years she just checked in on Dallas periodically but kept her distance, because she not only remembered her son...she also remembered why they were so desperate to hide his connection to them that they covered up their own memories of him ever existing.

At the end of the issue, they arrive at the hideout of the Russian mutant underground, a community of mutants who mistrust Krakoa and its leaders, but aren't on board with Mikhail Rasputin and his faction either. Laynia brought Bobby to the person who originally hid their memories and locked them away - at their own request....Bobby's idea, in fact - Alexi Garnoff aka Blind Faith, a telepath Bobby first met in his X-Factor days. But who was so quick to trust Bobby, because turns out that wasn't actually the first time Alexi remembered meeting him.

As Bobby reels from the reveal that this particular manipulation of his mind had been something he himself asked for, Alexi says he can erase all his work and return his own memories of all this, and Laynia warns him that remembering it all will hurt. Because they have a son, yes, Dallas Gibson aka Dallas Drake aka Specter. But twins run in her family.

And for a brief - too brief - window of time, they had not one son, but two.

ISSUE THREE

This issue returns to Bobby's POV and internal monologue, and takes place almost entirely in the past, or in Bobby's mindscape. He tells Alexi to do his thing, he wants to know, NEEDS to know everything. The walls come down and in his mind, Bobby finds himself standing at the start of a giant labyrinth made of ice. He sees a little boy running through it and gives chase, needing to catch up to him, desperate even as he's aware he's running on autopilot, more instinct than knowledge. He's never seen this boy before - he's not even a real memory himself. But he knows what an older Dallas looks like, at least. And he's sure this is what his mind imagines a Dmitri older than what he actually remembers might look like, and he desperately wants a closer look. But this Dima stays forever just out of range because his mind doesn't actually have a clear image of an older Dmitri to conjure, and up close, the illusion would be too obvious, and the loss all the more real for that.

Following the boy through the labyrinth, he sees memories unveil themselves on the ice walls around them. He remembers Laynia telling him she was pregnant, their agitated debates over the months that followed as they agonized over what to do, how to keep the baby safe - babies, once they found out it was twins. He sees the day the twins were born, relives them deciding to name the elder twin Dallas, after the city where they first met, before Laynia even joined the Champions, and the younger they named Dmitri, or Dima for short....after the only teacher Laynia ever felt actually valued her for herself instead of seeing her as a weapon being honed.

He remembers them leaving the hospital and hiding for a few weeks at a secluded cabin their old teammate the Black Widow found for them....she was the only one they told, figuring nobody could keep a secret better than her, and how they wavered and grew closer to caving and letting their closest friends and teammates help them figure out how to keep the twins safe. Sees flashbacks of him playing with the boys while Laynia watches fondly, and vice versa. Relives as he - still little older than a child himself - puts them in their crib and tells them not to be scared, talks about how his grandfather used to have a saying: "all Drakes are dragons," and making a dragon sculpture that catches the light to act as their nightlight.

And then he relives the day they woke up to find the crib empty and the twins missing. The first time they met Doubting Thomas, who left them an easy trail to follow because he wanted them to find him, wanted a confrontation. Bobby and Laynia had descended on the facility they tracked him to with the full fury of midnight and winter at their most destructive, and once inside they separated as they found the twins had been split up and taken in different directions. Laynia went after Dallas, who she could feel faintly, an early sign of his link to the Darkforce Dimension that she shares - second generation mutants always tend to manifest early - and Bobby went after Dmitri.

Doubting Thomas was waiting though, and the villain backstory reveal unfolded. The Professor, the Hellfire Club, etc....they weren't the only people who went around looking for young mutants to mold, seeing their potential. He grew up under the thumb of a woman even he only knows as Mother Nurture, a sadist with unguessable motivations even to her lackeys that she raised from childhood....to be their worst selves. Apparently she claims to be a precog, who knew what mutant children would grow up to be great heroes or positive influences on the world....which appears to be contrary to her agenda, whatever that is....as she targets kids who COULD grow up to be great forces for change, change for the better, and picks the ones with the brightest potential to stamp out and corrupt, turn to darkness. Her obsession with proving that there are no real heroes, that anyone can be twisted into the villain was apparently a recurring theme of Doubting Thomas' childhood, so when she assigned him the task of abducting the Drake twins when they were still months away from even being born, Thomas fixated on Bobby and Laynia during his surveillance of them, and developed an obsession of his own.

It was the first time he'd ever targeted superhero parents, let alone ones close enough in age to him that he could project onto them, see them as an inverted reflection of his own life. And even as he prepared to take the Drake twins at the earliest opportunity, that was just his assignment. His obsession with Bobby and Laynia was wholly personal, as he clearly became consumed with a need to prove to himself that they weren't better than him, that he could have BEEN them in another life, with better influences....that they would have been no different than he if they'd been in his shoes.

In fact, he was convinced there was such a slim margin of difference between them that he could topple Iceman from his heroic perch with just the slightest push. Bobby refutes this, saying he's nothing like him, but that's when Thomas says he lied. Mother Nurture actually only sent him after one Drake boy. She wasn't expecting two. Apparently, one of them was never destined to live all that long to begin with.

The issue never actually shows Dmitri, just Bobby breaking down, cradling the swaddled figure to his chest. He's dead-eyed when he looks up, frozen tear tracks on his cheeks as one icy drop falls to the ground and shatters.

Bobby: Guess you were right about me. Congrats. You win.

And then over the next two panels, Thomas flash-freezes before he can react, his entire body frozen on a cellular level...and then he shatters.

We only see glimpses of Laynia's horrified reaction when she arrives with Dallas in her arms, as Bobby hurries past those memories, he has them back but he doesn't want to relive those moments at all...and there are more snapshots of barely glimpsed memories of Bobby and Laynia reducing the entire facility to nothing but an empty crater. Bobby arrives at the memory of Laynia and Bobby, fueled by trauma and desperation, panicking about this Mother Nurture sending someone else after Dallas, their original fears reignite, the list of people who might want a baby like Dallas for their own agendas seems endless....culminating in them giving Dallas to Black Widow to place with a family she trusts to raise him safely. But Bobby notes despondently that even with all that, it'd take someone like Xavier or with similar resources all of five minutes to find a powerful mutant that young, if they ever got so much as a hint about him from Bobby or Laynia's minds.

Which is when Bobby decides: "In a world of telepaths, Cerebros and Wolverines, the only foolproof way to keep a secret...is to not even know it yourself.

They both agree, and seek out a telepath unaffiliated with any team or organization: Alexi Garnoff. Which brings us back to the present.

April 27th. The anniversary of the day one son died, and they made the decision to give up the other for his own safety.

ISSUE FOUR

With both of their memories fully restored, they're on the same page about what happens now: They have to find a way to keep the resurrected Doubting Thomas from figuring out who and where Dallas is. If he truly wants revenge, or if he still just feels compelled to fulfill his original assignment, Dallas is his real target. But they're fairly certain the extreme lengths they went to all those years ago at least did their job. Even with Bobby unaware of Thomas' existence, let alone vendetta against him, the latter was able to stalk him ever since his resurrection without finding even a hint of Dallas' location or identity...he would have had better luck stalking Laynia probably, but they assumed his fixation on Bobby for killing him, along with Laynia steering clear of Krakoa (ironically because she was worried about the many telepaths there picking up on her secret), Thomas concentrated his efforts on following Bobby and might not have even realized that unlike him, Laynia DID already know who and where Dallas was.

Thomas must have come out into the open in the way he did specifically to push Bobby to regain his memories, figuring then it would only be a matter of time before Bobby slipped up enough for Thomas to zero in on his target....so now they had to figure out how to keep that from happening, while now having a whole new host of reasons not to want to advertise they had a son. The last thing they want is to keep him out of Thomas' clutches just to put him on Sinister's radar, especially now that they know Bobby's an omega and how 'highly prized' they are as resources....which would no doubt make his offspring of interest to various villains.

Not to mention, Laynia's got her own misgivings about Krakoa. She's FURIOUS about the Crucible - Dallas was among the earliest to sign up and go through it, desperate to get his powers back and return to his place among his former classmates. Not only does she consider it needless trauma of the very sort they sacrificed so much to protect their son from, Laynia is territorial. Dallas' name and powers were pretty much the only thing he got from his biological parents, that they were able to give him as his birthright, the upside to all the downs that came with being their kid, and Laynia's pissed as hell that Bobby's new government had the gall to demand their son EARN BACK what was always his and that losing had ALREADY been a trauma all its own.

This in turn sows the seeds for Bobby's development into a more proactive role in mutant society, as well as future conflict with a lot of the personalities that put the Crucible in place initially, as he's forced to confront why he didn't have more problems with it in the first place, or at least not enough that he wasn't able to justify its existence. Has he gotten so used to assuming others know better than him, that he no longer bothers trying to weigh the morality of things himself? Is he comfortable with what it says about him that it took having a personal stake - his son having gone through it - to make him sit up and think hey, that was fucked up?

Meanwhile, Thomas has not been idle, and is using reports of Bobby seemingly attacking innocent protesters the other day to stir up doubts in him among any influential mutants or X-Men he can whisper suspicions to, without them being aware of his presence/influence. Bobby is 'strongly encouraged' by Xavier to return to Krakoa to clear up the confusion, and when he refuses, that just adds more fuel for Thomas to work with. Plus he uses all the paranoia Beast has drummed up over the past couple years to cast suspicion on Bobby suddenly being inseparable from Laynia, a known Russian operative who has no allegiances to Krakoa, while also stirring mutants in Mikhail's camp to view Laynia's choice of companions as suspicious, which threatens her work with the Russian mutant underground and her efforts to keep them safe and hidden as well.

Finally they decide the best way to deal with Thomas is to lure him in and get Alexi to do to him what he did to Bobby and Laynia years ago. Hide away all Thomas' memories of things related to them and give him a tailored memory of how he died and why.

ISSUE FIVE

Most of this issue is just Thomas, Laynia and Bobby all playing cat and mouse with each other...Thomas having his own schemes even as the other two try to implement theirs, until its hard to tell who is the hunter and who is the hunted. Bobby and Laynia are still teleporting as often as they can, both to keep him from sneaking up on them and poisoning their thoughts or manipulating their plans, as well as to evade various friends and teammates who are now seeking them out, concerned by their behavior and increasingly susceptible to distrusting them as they refuse to give any hints as to what the hell they're doing.

It should be very clear that Bobby and Laynia are NOT acting wholly rationally here, and they're both aware of it. Doubting Thomas is GOOD at what he does, and he's familiar enough with them and their sore spots, from intel he gained long ago still being relevant here and now, particularly with how recently their memories were refocused on those days....that they're sure even the tiniest or briefest amounts of access to them is enough for him to skew their own paranoia in extreme ways. Not to mention.....they're much older now than they were when they made the choice to hide Dallas in the way they did, and they made that decision at the absolute height of their grief, fear and anxiety. They're second-guessing every choice they made back then, as well as the ones they're making now, and they're NOT sure that staying away, doing this on their own, not confiding in anyone or pulling them in....they're not doing all that because they're convinced its the right move.

They're staying the course because they don't have any idea what the right move is, and until they do, doubling down on their previous choices is because there's no take-backs, no undoing things once the secret is out. They can't afford to decide that was the wrong move after they've done it, when that will do them no good.

So they stick to their plan and try to get Thomas in Alexi's range, but with his guard down enough for the other telepath to act. The POV shifts back and forth between Bobby and Laynia's, with a lot of their internal doubts about everything they've done, the thoughts Thomas raised in Bobby back in Issue #1, the ideological battle Thomas imagines exists between him and the heroes he resents so much - this back-and-forth spans most of the issue and keeps these themes front and center, until ultimately Bobby and Thomas face off again.

Bobby surprises Thomas by using his powers in an unexpected way....he makes dozens of golems spread out all over the place and then shuffles his actual consciousness through them one at a time, 'possessing' one golem as his vessel, his ice form before leaping into another one. Thomas can't get a bead on him, keeps chasing his own tail trying to keep up with Bobby's constant shell game in an attempt to find the 'real one,' where Bobby's actually vulnerable.

Finally, Bobby makes it clear he's not going to be playing this game with Thomas anymore, because thing is, the point Thomas is so obsessed with proving, wanting Bobby to know he's no better than him, is capable of terrible things....Bobby flat out just doesn't care.

Bobby: I remember everything now, Thomas. That's what you wanted, right? For me to relive all that, make sure I can't hide from it? That I have to feel every bit of pain I shut away back then because I couldn't deal? Because the truth is, as much as that was to protect my son it was also to protect me from everything I WANTED to forget? I remember. I remember my kids, losing them....I remember killing you. But I also remembered something else, that you probably didn't factor in.

Thomas: And what's that?

Bobby: I remembered that I'm not sorry.

He goes on the attack, just destruction every which way you look so that Thomas is forced to stay on the defensive, keeping himself immaterial and jaunting around because there's no safe space for him to land, so to speak.

Bobby: The Five can bring you back a thousand times and I'll kill you a thousand and one, if that's what it takes to keep my son safe from you. Here's what you never got. The whole hero vs villain, right or wrong, good or evil thing you're so obsessed with? I just don't care, man. That's never been why I do any of this. I know I'm flawed, too flawed to ever be 'truly good' but by the same token, I know there's enough good in me I'm not truly bad either. I've done terrible things before and I'll do them again, because at the end of the day, I'm not trying to be a hero. I'm just trying to save people where I can.

Bobby: Its about priorities, see. Its people that matter to me, if I'm helping or hurting. And I'll hurt someone to help someone I think deserves it more and maybe that's wrong but thing is I'm not making that choice based on if its right or wrong. I'm making it based on who I think needs help and what do I have to do to help them. Let someone else figure out the scorecard, I'm just trying to make sure the person I'm protecting makes it home safe.

Bobby: And you? You don't matter. My son matters to me. That's all that matters here. I choose him, no matter what, every time, and whatever that means, whatever I have to do to choose him, or because I choose him? I'll deal with it. If I make the wrong choices, if they backfire and get him hurt or they're not what he would want - that's the stuff that can keep me up at night. But if choosing him means killing an asshole like you to keep him safe?

Bobby: Don't worry about my virtue. I'll cope.

With that, Thomas makes his retreat, tail between his legs. They weren't able to implement their plan to have Alexi erase his memories, but they don't consider this to be over. He'll be back, they'll have more opportunities to make that happen. At least this time he was the one doing the running.

But as the finale of the issue, Thomas adapts and changes the game. He waits until Bobby's back on Krakoa, meeting with Xavier and other X-Men about recent events and trying to say as little as possible...and then Thomas picks that place and time to make his first public appearance on Krakoa since he was resurrected as just another name on the resurrection queue. Nobody knew who he was then or cared that he didn't seem interested in staying on the island, claiming amnesty and official Krakoan citizenship....but he does that now in the most dramatic way possible....as he turns to Bobby and blatantly advertises they have history.

Thomas: And in the spirit of new beginnings, I just want to say I forgive you for killing me eighteen years ago. Fresh starts for everyone, right?

And with that bombshell - and the fact that one look at Bobby tells everyone present that he's not denying it - he saunters off, leaving Bobby with more questions to answer but no closer to being able to fully disclose what he's keeping hidden....which Thomas can still reveal to anyone at any time. What he did reveal was enough to ensure there was no chance now of changing his memories of their shared past....not after he dragged them both into the spotlight and made sure they were linked so if anything did happen to Thomas or seem awry with him....there'd be no doubt who was Suspect Number One. And that was always going to come with the question of why.

The mini ends with a final page where Bobby's finally done talking w/the QC for now, and he's just standing on the beach far enough away from where a bunch of the Academy X kids are having a bonfire - with Dallas right in the thick of them - that it wouldn't be obvious that his sole reason for being out there was to catch a glimpse of him, even if only from a distance. Elsewhere, Laynia is browsing through a shop and notices a stuffed dragon similar to one flashbacks showed Dmitri cuddling with as a baby. She picks it up, hesitating as if debating whether to purchase it, with the final panel being of her back as she walks out of the shop, the stuffed animal still sitting where she'd found it.

ICEMAN: A HOUSE OF DRAGONS

The second mini of three, this one introduces Dallas as a POV character, still oblivious of everything readers learned in the first mini. It explores his feelings about being depowered on M-Day and his survivor's guilt from having left the Institute and been relatively safe compared to those who stayed, when other depowered mutants like David still stayed and fought for mutants. His best friends, Julian and Brian Cruz, insist that nobody thinks less of him for it and he was a minor, it wasn't like anybody was really consulting him on whether he wanted to stay or go at the time, but he can't shake the feeling he should have done more. Its what drove him to go through the Crucible so early on, and its what drives his determination to make it onto the X-Men team.

Seeds are also planted for later, via some brief scenes that reveal that while depowered and living away from the Institute, Dallas started exploring magic as an alternative to his powers, since there are various arts that access the same Darkforce Dimension his powers connected him to. He's no longer pursuing it as feverishly as he did while depowered, but it remains an interest as he's determined to never be powerless again, whether he has his mutant abilities or not.

He also has several chance encounters with Iceman, who he really only knows as his old math teacher, and no idea they're not so chance encounters at all.

Meanwhile, Bobby and Laynia are meeting more regularly off the island as they argue about whether or not they should tell Dallas the truth - he has a right to know and he's old enough to make his own choices about what he wants or doesn't want done in the name of keeping him safe. Their various rationales are undercut by the underlying awareness that both of them are afraid of his reaction and worried he won't understand why they did it and might even hate them for the choices they made.

At the same time, they're trying to figure out how to even go about resurrecting Dmitri. They know from Joanna Beaubier-Jinadu's example that despite his young age, Dima could still theoretically be resurrected....they just have no idea how to ask the Five or X-Factor to look for him in the Waiting Room without disclosing everything about Dallas at the same time...which brings them back to how do we tell Dallas.

Ultimately, they wait too long and Thomas takes the choice out of their hands. While Dallas is in the Mojoverse along with various other Academy X kids who have been regular presences there while taking advantage of the treaty between Krakoa and Mojo to try and get some Krakoan media entertainment off the ground,

It turns out that while Bobby was worried about Doubting Thomas approaching Sinister, Shaw or one of the other notorious mutants on Krakoa as part of his schemes, he went a different direction entirely. He approached Mojo with his proposal for a must-see show that would have all of Krakoa glued to the nearest TV screen.

And so what was supposed to be just a random trip to the Mojoverse leads to Dallas being trapped as the very confused and unwilling star of what Mojo describes as the ultimate reality show: DALLAS GIBSON, THIS IS YOUR LIFE.

The show proceeds to take viewers - and Dallas - through a recreation of his entire life, including all the parts he didn’t know about. Starting before his birth even, with Krakoans flocking to their TVs just as Thomas promised, as soon the bombshell claim of who his biological parents are drops and word spreads throughout the island. Even X-Men close to Bobby have no idea what to make of this at first and they start trying to figure out how to shut it down and figure things out from there, but it’s a futile effort, honestly.

Even if they could get Mojo to shut it down right away, the damage was already done - and its clear that nobody is more interested in seeing what comes next than Dallas himself. Seemingly having forgotten that everyone is watching this, he’s half in denial, half captivated by what he’s watching. It seems impossible but that doesn’t stop him from having a lot of confused and conflicting feelings as he watches literal surveillance footage Thomas had installed to spy on the much younger Bobby and Laynia as they interacted with their newborn sons.

Much of this is used to flesh out flashback scenes from the first mini, where Bobby and Laynia’s POVs of these early days were shown, stringing together a timeline without reproducing the same scenes exactly. In contrast, some of these scenes do directly recreate scenes seen previously in Bobby and Laynia’s memories….but now reproduced for Dallas’ viewing by objective technology devoid of the emotions layered around his parents’ actual memories of that time.

The video retelling includes footage from security cameras at the facility Thomas had retreated to for their final fateful confrontation years ago, similarly providing a stark and explicit view of Bobby and Laynia’s rampage through the facility and Bobby’s unapologetic killing of Thomas. It’s a side of Bobby few had ever seen before and raises more than a few eyebrows while answering the questions many of them had had ever since Thomas made his dramatic entrance to Krakoan society at the end of the first mini.

Bobby meanwhile started racing for Mojoworld the second Rogue called him and told him to get there fast and laid out what was going on. But it still took long enough for him to navigate Mojoworld’s confusing layout that he only smashed his way onto the ‘set’ Dallas was trapped on in time to see his eighteen year old self hand an infant Dallas over to the Black Widow onscreen.

One look at Bobby, not hiding behind his ice form and with pain and remorse writ large all over his face, told Dallas (and everyone else) everything they needed to know about how true or not all this was.

But before Bobby can even attempt to figure out what to say, Mojo calls everyone’s attention back to the screens, as he announces there’s a plot twist featuring never-before-seen-footage from that first tragic April 27th.

The screen jumps to more security camera footage from Thomas’ facility….but the time stamp puts this at just before Bobby & Laynia’s arrival. Bobby (and Laynia who has arrived on Krakoa for the first time, as soon as she learned what was happening) watch in shock as Thomas hands Dmitri off to a lackey and instructs him to get offsite before the two arrive. Onscreen, Thomas says if he’s there’s one thing he’s figured out about Bobby & Laynia, its that they’ll never stop searching for one of their babies so long as they’re still alive….so if they’re convinced this one is dead and the other one is taken to Mother Nurture as she instructed him, they’ll focus all their efforts on trying to reclaim that one. Let her deal with that Thomas sniffs derisively. I have different plans for this one.

Of course, those plans never came to fruition, Mojo narrates. He underestimated just how….fatally Bobby would react to the simulacrum he believed to be his now dead son. He was never able to follow up with the lackey who took the real Dmitri, and his hired hand - who had not signed up for any of this and was freaking out once he saw what was left of the facility he’d last seen his boss in - well, he basically said fuck this and anonymously dropped Dmitri off at the nearest hospital.

Given the lengths Bobby & Laynia had gone to make sure their kids’ information WASN’T readily available anywhere when they were born, there was no indication of Dmitri’s real identity or where he came from, so he went into the system where he grew up in a series of homes that left him not especially traumatized, but at least distrustful of authority. Then Thomas revealed that when he’d first been resurrected, he’d tracked down Dmitri by finding his lackey and figuring out where he’d left the baby, retracing Dmitri’s path from there. Unlike Dallas, Thomas had always known exactly where to find Dmitri….but felt that particular reveal really needed the RIGHT moment.

And that moment apparently was now. Taking over narrator duties from Mojo, Thomas now speaks into the cameras, directly addressing Bobby and Laynia as he tells them Dmitri too manifested powers early and has had years to learn to make the most of his powerset. He apparently can access a mirror dimension that lets him teleport via reflective surfaces, use them as scrying portals by which he can see anything within visual range of that surface….and there’s one particularly interesting twist to his power. When Dmitri’s in the mirror dimension and watching events play out in the real world via a mirror or other surface….those events don’t just have to be in the present.

Time is wonky in the mirror dimension, as is often true of extradimensional spaces. Dmitri has limited precognitive abilities as he can use the mirror dimension to peer out of mirrors and watch what’ll happen in view of them at some point in various possible future timelines.

Apparently its tricky and unreliable, but its at least effective enough that Dmitri counts as a precog by anyone’s standard. And in the early days of Krakoa, when deciding whether to go there himself, he apparently glimpsed enough clandestine conversations to know that at that point, at least…..Krakoa was not a safe place to be a precog.

Onscreen, Thomas claps his hands energetically and addresses the entire audience now:

Thomas: So, to recap, somewhere out there is the teleporting precog son of an omega level mutant who’s already proven he’s willing to cross just about any line for this son’s sake. Said son is also primed to be extremely distrustful of Krakoa….and anyone who might be seen as an emissary of it. Like, oh say, X-Men. And to top it all off….he has absolutely no idea where he comes from nor does he have any reason to believe anyone who comes out of nowhere claiming to be his longlost parents or friends of theirs.

Thomas: Now I don’t know about all of you, but I think whomever were to find him first, and gain his trust, well - they could probably figure out any number of ways those combined factors could be useful.

The screen flashes to a generic street camera view of a Dmitri Drake that looks a lot like his brother, just with brown hair instead of blond. There’s little to distinguish either his surroundings or Dmitri himself, but its clearly being presented as a starting point for potential searchers.

The final pages show an array of panels showing notorious mutant villains all leaning forward and studying the screen with interest. Sinister, Shaw, Selene (if she’s back yet), Abigail Brand, MLF members, Stryfe, Mystique and Destiny, the Fenris twins, etc.

The second mini concludes with Doubting Thomas winking into the camera, essentially staring straight at the reader.

Thomas: May the best influence win!

DARKSTAR: SONS OF SNOW AND SHADOW

Subtitled: “Run, Dima, Run!”

The third and final mini of the triptych is a chaotic free for all as basically everyone is hunting for Dmitri Drake, who has absolutely no idea why people are suddenly coming out of the woodwork looking for him but quickly decides he doesn’t want to be found.

Dallas is aggressively putting off dealing with how he feels about any of this and flat out shuts down any attempts Bobby or Laynia make to approach him. He’s totally fixated on being the one to find basically the only person in the universe who could understand how he’s feeling right now, and they can figure it out together then. He’s blatantly underestimating how much his longlost twin actually might NOT be able to relate to his specific perspective here, and vice versa. Something his friends and Academy X classmates try to caution him about while helping him on his search.

Surge: Oh shut up, dumbass. I don’t have to like you for you to be one of us, and any twin of yours is basically a two-for-one deal, so of course we’re going to do whatever it takes to keep your longlost brother from being exploited and used by adults who suck. I would include your parents in that but I actually think them hiding you from that musty bald bitch Xavier was probably the smartest thing any X-parent has done for their kid so I’m fighting down the impulse to be impressed.

Dallas: …thank you? I think?

Thus the Academy X kids actually take one of the most prominent roles in the mini as Dallas and his classmates’ search is heavily prioritized. There’s a strong focus on various kids who have history being exploited by older mutants and are now projecting heavily. Brian and Julian are of course Dallas’ closest confidantes through this, maybe Brian a little more than Julian as the latter flip-flops back and forth between calling Dallas a legacy and a nepo baby at different intervals. He can’t seem to decide if he thinks it’s something to be envied or not. Anole is unrepentant about ranking Dallas’ dad’s most infamous costumes and how hot or not he looked in each of them. He and Dallas never got along in school. Icarus absently notes that he’s pretty sure his brother and Dallas’ dad had a thing going on at one point.

They’re not quite all as helpful as they could be, is the takeaway. But they do feel the stakes and if any generation of mutants is prone to embracing gallows humor to cope, it’s the Academy X kids.

Elsewhere Bobby is conducting his own search with the help of numerous X-Men and friends, who are all trying to process everything they just learned and saw. Most of them are supportive and understanding, though a few are more abrasive about the sheer amount of stuff they didn’t know about him or even suspect.

Xavier tries to lecture Bobby about how they wouldn’t be in this situation if he had trusted them with this at any point in the past. Bobby shuts that down with gusto, emphasizing that Xavier was one of the people they were most concerned about hiding the twins from - and a good thing too, he points out, given what could have happened to Dallas if Onslaught had known about him when Dallas was still just a kid.

But then he gets downright chilly and makes it clear how and why his dynamic with many of them will be at least somewhat different from this point on…..Xavier especially.

He brings attention back to the not so minor detail of Xavier, Moira and Magneto apparently originally declaring Krakoa to be for all mutants….except for precogs.

Bobby: You keep saying this place is the culmination of everything we’ve fought for from the first day we put on an X-Men uniform, so I just wanna know, Professor. Why the HELL did I spend my whole life fighting for you to create your own personal vision of paradise….which apparently was meant to exclude one of my children, just because of what freaking power he was born with?

Xavier: Compromises had to be made in order to -

Bobby: Y’know, you’ve been using that line since I was fifteen and its tired, X. Every time we asked why you couldn’t just use your powers in ways you insisted would ethically compromise you - except for whenever you decided it was okay because it made things more convenient for you specifically.

Bobby: From day one you’ve kept your secrets from us, for a lot shadier reasons than I’ve ever had for keeping one, so you don’t need to be telling me I’m not entitled to my secrets. You have all these contingencies for if any of us go bad, while telling us nobody’s beyond redemption except for those times you decide Magneto is, or the Shadow King is.

Bobby: You know what the real problem with your dream has always been, Professor? It asks for a leap of faith that you’ve never been prepared to make yourself. You’re always asking us to line up and put it all on the line for the chance at a better world, no matter how realistic it is….but you’ve never actually put down your own cynicism or pragmatism or whatever you want to call it….and just….dreamed. How does that even work, huh?

Bobby: Just….what the hell would you have even done, Professor, if I had raised my kids at the mansion all this time? What spin would you have given me when you finally embarked on this grand Krakoan experiment you’ve been planning for years….and needed to tell me one of my sons wasn’t allowed to come with? That if he died, you had no intention of resurrecting him and his politically inconvenient power?

Xavier: *keeps silent*

Bobby: Yeah, y’know what, on second thought I don’t think I actually want to know the answer to that. Stay away from me and my kids, X. You and I are done.

Finally, last but not least, Laynia will be running her own search for Dima with the help of her brother, the Black Widow, and Warren, who wanted to make sure she knew that he’s her friend too, not just Bobby’s. Despite the lack of detail here, she’d actually have the most prominent role in this mini - being associated publicly with Krakoa is actually an obstacle for Bobby gaining Dmitri’s trust. Laynia’s lack of affiliation with it or Russia’s government or any other organization, is what lets her convince Dmitri to give her a chance and hear her out when she does find him.

(Something she’s ultimately able to do by going to Arakko and asking Storm if she can get her an audience with Lactuca, who should know exactly where to find him. In exchange, Lactuca will ask a favor of Laynia at some point in the future, which plants some seeds to bring Laynia more into X-books without just being an extension of Bobby).

There will be a final reckoning between Laynia and Thomas this time, and the mini will end with things still messy as hell, as the newfound family of four (plus Uncle Nikolai, standing awkwardly off to the side) basically stand there staring at each other and wondering what next. But even with them all as relative strangers now, there’s a wealth of possibilities now that everything’s out in the open.

This mysterious Mother Nurture still lingers offscreen as a potential future threat, especially as they still don’t know what they intended with Dallas - if he was even the twin she was after in the first place. Iceman’s poised to be launched in any number of directions as he’s now essentially reinventing himself while everyone is paying more attention to him than ever before, all while he’s trying to fall back on comfortable, familiar habits of joking and pranks to try and bond with the sons who are grown up and don’t really know what - if any - dynamic they even need or want with him. Laynia’s reluctantly taken Krakoan citizenship to be closer to her sons, but finds she prefers staying on Arakko and grows closer to mutants she meets there, with Dima joining her more often than not, as he’ll never be fully comfortable with Krakoa even if precogs are ‘allowed’ now. Dallas is more determined than ever to be an X-Man but he’s worried that now he’ll never make it on his own merits and it’ll always be more about him being a legacy, a founding X-Man’s kid.

Etc, etc.

[the-corset-witch]

It's time to scrounge together all the random notes that I took on scraps of paper while listening to audiobooks at work and put them in the Obsidian. Most of my templates have come together, with different headings that can be taken out or added to underneath when needed. This all builds together into a new list of to dos!

Book Notes - New ones going forward will have the new template. Old ones will not need to be reconned, I'm lazy. However, I do want their Properties to all be the same, if I can find the information on my Goodreads Acct.

Templates - There's a few that still need polishing and getting these nailed down will enable me to safely add new Notes without worrying about having to retrofit them.

Tarot Card Database & Deck Studies - Speaking of retrofitting.......... The Properties on each card need to be redone since we've deleted the Reading Logs from the Properties. Since this is referenced the most, I want it looking tight. There's also the debate of how do I keep the Database across Multiple Decks, as the way I did it in Notion might not translate very well? Will I instead put that on the actual Deck Page, under Headings-- this is the idea I'm leaning toward. It allows a dive into each card's symbolism, and thus allowing the reading of the individual Deck's Card which could be linked influence the main Card Page? Is this making sense? That's a lot of Links, since I can just Ctrl+O any card, it might not be actually linked, and that's a lot of links for some card studies.

Condense The Closed Practices - When things like books have referenced Closed Practices in the past (ie, Chakras comes to the mind off the top of my head), I had an actual Note that detailed that Practice, Why it was Closed (to me), & How to Respect From A Distance. I want to put these notes all in one, there's only a handful, I think, so it should be pretty easy. I did a lot of 30DayGrimoire Challenges in 2020 where I took on a topic to learn about for 30 Days in order to expand my Grimoire. Unbeknownst to me when taking on some topics, they were indeed Closed to me, which was then noted and is how we got to where I am now, but these pages are relatively short, it'd be easy to reformat and condense them into one Note. Obsidian allows linking to Headings via [[Page#Heading]] so I think I'll end up using that if I ever need to reference any of these.

We're getting to the part where I want to flood the atmosphere of this Vault with new Notes, so I have decided to read pretty much everything I can this year, take all the notes I can, and Grow All I Can. EzPz.

This means the Grimoire side of things is coming together really nicely. The flip side, the Life Side, however, is very much lacking for 2024. I've been in a bit of a slump, we all know I struggle, we all struggle, no explanations needed. I have decided I am okay with doing things Retroactive, like Monthly Reviews for January-March. This opens a different chapter for the Vault, so I'll keep y'all posted on that as well.

[glassfullofsass]

Job application tips

job applications SUCK but i have made my personal process easier and I'm going to show you how

i hate updating and tailoring and editing my resume so it fits perfectly on the page and then still having to input each bit of information individually to the online application, but back in college when my brain worked better, I did this:

[id: a screenshot of my documents folder with seven word document names visible, two have been edited to hide my last name. The documents are titled:

Master Coursework, Master Experience, Master Publications, Master Skills, Name Resume 2023, Name Resume, Template. end id]

When I need to build a resume for a specific job, I make a copy of the 'template' and put it in a folder named "Specific Job"

I name that template copy 'Name_Resume' then I open it up.

The top has my name and contact details, formatted how I like.

Then there are sections that are empty except for the headers "Skills", "Experience", and "Publications"

I've got my template set up, now I just need to fill it in, to do that, I go to the 'master' documents and cherry pick the pieces that are relevant to the job I'm applying to.

I've had pretty consistent employment since graduating, so under "experience" I'm going to include all of those jobs, but I might bulk up or pare down the descriptions that go with them.

I might not include any publications, and skills are where I'm going to spend the most time.

Each "master" document includes all the things I've done that fall into that particular category.

I can probably do away with 'Master Coursework' but if you're a recent grad, or you've taken a few classes here and there, or you take online seminars or whatever, this might be a good one for you. I have grouped mine by topic instead of when I took them. I have an unofficial copy of my transcript for the timeline of my college career if I need it.

My experience document includes every job and volunteer position I had in college, all the way to now.

I list the job title and company and dates of employment on one line, and right underneath the title, I list the location. Underneath that is a bullet point list of responsibilities I had at that job.

The document also includes a complete list of just the job titles, companies, and dates. If you ever have an inch or two at the bottom of your resume, pad it with that kind of list.

Publications includes the papers I wrote in college and their academia(dot)edu location. I was also in the school magazine a couple times, and in a regional publication. All of those are listed, as are my college presentations. Everything is in a specific citation format. I don't remember which one that is, but it's consistent.

My skills document is a mess, but I've grouped it into categories like "science", "office", "interpersonal" and "art". I include things I've learned at work (instruments I'm familiar with, tools, and processes I've learned to use), and life skills like communication and cooking. You might come across some weird job postings. If you have the skills they're looking for, it doesn't matter where or how you gained them.

Those two resume documents in the list are fairly generic but already filled out resumes. If I were going to a job fair, that's what I would take with me to hand out. I have also started from here instead of the template on occasion.

When building your resume, keep in mind you want either one full page or two full pages (print front and back!)

After you've got your resume ready for the specific job, start a document for your cover letter in the same folder. When you upload all your 'relevant documents' later they will all be exactly where you need them.

[monstroustea]

a friend was talking about style influences earlier and it reminded me of this old meme and i wanted to do one!!!!! i'll talk more about each one under the read more, but if you want to do one, here's the link: https://www.deviantart.com/foxorian/art/Influence-Map-Template-174550753

Sailor Moon (particularly the 90s anime) - this is a big one! i remember drawing sailor moon in elementary school and playing pretend/LARPing sailor moon on the playground... the good old 90s anime style with the exaggerated expressions! cute girls! friendship! this general kind of soft, roundness to the style of the 90s anime? it has everything

Honey and Clover - this manga/anime means the world to me. i love the style, the way the mangaka draws emotions, but also the protagonist's story of finding himself? resonant. the manga especially is precious to me bc of the art tho, it has a sketchy quality that i love

Hey Arnold! - another childhood favorite... this one doesn't reflect on my actual style so much, but it's a big influence on the stories and characters i like and create. if i could make everyone watch only one cartoon, it would be hey arnold

this is a triple threat... Persona 5, sketchbooks, @meruz - if you look at more than one page of this blog, you can probably guess i like p5(r)!! a lot!! i love all the characters, even if you mostly see me drawing the protag and akechi bc i'm a shipper at heart lol... i'm always inspired by sketchbooks of other artists! especially proper sketchbooks, where they're messy and worked in and aren't curated to be "good looking" for people to look at. that said, this is a page meruz posted from one of their sketchbooks (go buy them) and i adore meruz's work! i got into their work a while back and their lineart really drew me in, the lineweight and use of spot blacks is delicious. i need to work more on those in my own art and meruz's work always makes me want to do just that

Dolls - and here we take a little detour from the obvious? i sadly don't own this doll :( she's a rune naito fashion doll and i want one so badly. i collect dolls, especially fashion dolls!! i love their designs!! i usually just leave them in their stock outfits bc those are part of the charm to me. i wanna draw my dolls more, but for now they're just a big influence on design and outfits for characters

Amanda Lafrenais - i've been following amanda for so many years i can't keep count anymore!! her style blends "western" and "anime" so well to me and also she just draws lots of pretty women?? also we love queens who draw different body types

Roleplaying (pixelated image from wiki-how) - i've been roleplaying, mostly just with my bestie erin, since i was like 14? i draw stuff inspired by our roleplays soooo much, whether it's from a scene or just "what if"s we threw around. erin is a brilliant writer, has great ideas, and she's basically the GM even tho it's collaborative writing-based rping lmao... im just like "erin come up with a plot and we can shoot ideas back and forth" lol

Drawfee - no idea anymore how i came across drawfee but it's a really fun and funny channel and i'll do some of their challenges on my own sometimes!! (my favorite is the 30s character from memory challenge, i'll have erin give me characters and time me) also they have a ttrpg-style series called Drawtectives that has great characters!!! also every time julia draws a scene im like "ah i want that to be me..."

The Golden Age of Illustration - i'm such a junkie for cartoons and anime and comics and such, i don't really know the classics OOPS... but in the past year or two i've gotten really into what's apparently known as the "golden age of illustration"!! roughly the 1880's to 1920s, there's a lot of fairy/folk tale art from this era and i'm obsessed with all of it. standout mentions that i love to look at the work of are kay nielsen and edmund dulac

honorable mentions are just... every manga i've ever loved. every artist i've ever obsessed over the art of. and HONORABLE honorable mention to drawingwiffwaffles who sadly hasn't updated in a few months... she got me back into traditional media tho and is a general delight to watch work

[tvmigraine]

How I'd Write a "Doctor Who" series

So I made my Tumblr page in the first place so that I could do two things - the first is to ramble here instead of to friends so that I annoyed them less, the second being to write out story ideas that I've had as a sorta web-diary-blog-thingie.

This is part of that web-diary-blog-thingie.

I really love Doctor Who and I always wanted to write something about them, lockdown and university giving me that opportunity. In this post is my mad ramblings about a story where the Doctor's companion is Dorian Gray.

WHO'S DORIAN GRAY?! "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" was written by Oscar Wilde back in 1890 before a novel-length rerelease in 1891. The story is about a young man who sells his soul for a wish - where he will age, the portrait will in his place. As he continues to live a hedonistic and amoral life, the portrait continues to corrupt further and further.

Pop-culture has changed Dorian, in a way, to accommodate further adaptations. First of all is the repeated image (ha) of Dorian's invulnerability so long as the Portrait remains undamaged, any fatal injury goes to the portrait. The second of this is his immortality, he can continue to live for years on end while his Portrait would continue to age.

WHY DORIAN GRAY?! There are two main inspirations for this. The first inspiration was "The Confessions of Dorian Gray", a Big Finish series produced by Scott Handcock (he's the script editor for RTD2, I'm beyond excited.) It's a great take on the character, And it's really cheap! Seriously, just by the downloads and listen to it, it's half an hour of supernatural goodness.

The second inspiration was recent books published by BBC Children's Books. There's been a big theme in them of Doctor Who crossing over with famous literature - first they did Doctor Who meeting Wizard of Oz, reuniting with Robin Hood and arriving in Camelot. This year they'll be telling Who-versions of Treasure Island and Jason & the Argonauts. Essentially, I'm throwing my own hat into the ring to have these two meet.

It would also make for a unique pairing - often times Dorian, in a modern setting, is portrayed as encountering other supernatural entities through his life while the Doctor encounters aliens every day. It would be a fun dynamic to place a creature in front of them and have the pair bickering over whether the foe is monster or alien.

WHICH DOCTOR THEN?! I don't know yet honestly. There's a few that I think could work but, as I've been writing, I've been using a strange template that first appeared in the Target novelization of "Rose"...

"A tall, bald black woman wielding a flaming sword". That was it. That was essentially all that I was working with, which is good if you want a description for a character in a hurry but a bit more difficult for making a personality. I worked with this the best I could with the idea that this is a new incarnation, "The Rose Doctor", would meet Dorian as their first companion.

What about the Doctors we actually know? Well, I've narrowed it down to the three I'd be most interested in trying.

The Seventh Doctor. Considering that this man, the heart of the Cartmel Masterplan that led to "Lungbarrow", was often suggested to be more than just a Time-Lord, it seemed right to have him placed alongside a man who sold his soul. A man who's often many steps ahead with a plan behind each move, it'd be fun to see how he ultimately uses Dorian in order to get what he wants.

The Eleventh Doctor. In contrast to the Seventh Doctor, I considered this incarnation because I can only imagine them as complete polar opposites to Dorian Gray. Dorian is desperate to cling onto his youth while the Eleventh Doctor is, overwhelmingly, an old man at heart. There's also an easy introduction for the pair, as the Eleventh Doctor exiled himself during "The Snowmen" and could've encountered him.

The Thirteenth Doctor. At the time of writing, she's only just regenerated and we are moving onto the 14th and 15th incarnations next November/December. The Thirteenth doctor doesn't have many gaps in her timeline, so I think it'd be fun to explore what she'd be like with a different Tardis Team. Also, most importantly, I think she'd hate Dorian Gray and that presents an interesting dynamic if the two continue to meet.

What's most important about these two is the dynamic between them - what are they looking for in the other person? Simply, answers.

Dorian Gray is a literary character so how does he exist as a real person? Is he from the Land of Fiction or is he from the real world? The Doctor is a mysterious time traveler that clearly knows more than they let on, so who are they really? What secrets do they keep?

OKAY EPISODES NOW!! Most important thing to note is that the episodes have two numbers. The first number is order of reading for Dorian's life chronologically, while the number on the right is order of reading for the Doctor's. 00:02 - Introduction [1886, London] We start with the early days of Dorian Gray's hedonistic lifestyle, essentially verbatim the events that occurred in the original story. While Dorian is hosting a party, he eventually finds himself in discussion with someone that previously hadn't been invited. This woman is greatly interested in the portrait he recently had made of himself and tries to figure out the secrets behind it...

01:04 - The Death of the Author [1900, Paris] After saying goodbye to his old friend and author, Dorian is surprised to run into the woman from his party many years ago - the Doctor. When these two impossible people meet, a deal is made to continue to check on each other before they leave each other's side. Rumour has it, there's a werewolf loose on the streets of Paris and what are the chances they're both tracking down the Loup-Garoux?

02:06 - Sod of the Somme [1916, The Battle of the Somme] Dorian Gray is participating in the Great War, having gone with friends and lost many along the way. Now, he's trapped in the trenches after fighting off a monster that's killed his fellow men. They don't believe his story about a monster in the dirt, but one person does - a medical officer called Johanna Schmidt. If she can convince everyone to work together, maybe they can all get out alive.

03:03 - A Ballroom at the End of the Universe [1927, Edge of Space] On the edge of the universe, a party is being held. Dorian Gray finds himself invited and can't resist taking a trip into space. The Doctor likewise can't resist the invitation, but she has her own plans. Travel into alternate universes is forbidden after the Time War, but the Doctor needs to find out the origins of Dorian Gray so journeys to the Land of Fiction.

04:01 - The Kennedy Heist [1963, Maryland] On the 22nd of November, the President of the USA was assassinated. For the Doctor, they've gone through this day a few times, but there's always something that's bothered them about it. What happened to JFK's brain? Bigger questions arise when not only does she find Dorian Gray with the brain in a jar, but a man in a battered leather jacket claiming to be the Doctor...

05:05 - To Heal a Broken Heart [1972, London] Attending the first Pride rally to occur in the UK, Dorian Gray's heart is broken and actions becoming reckless. After dragging a drunk Dorian out of the Ballroom, despite their rocky relationship, the Doctor stays on Earth to help him recover and begins to see a new side for the first time.

06:07 - Same As It Ever Was [2000, Fiji] A popular internet hoax is that a hidden planet called "Nibiru" would crash into Earth, coinciding with the end of the Mayan Calendar. Dorian has lived through many of his own "End of the World" scenarios so chooses this time to enjoy a holiday. What he hardly expects is for the world to really end, let alone to wake up at the start of a time loop.

07:08 - Nobody, Everywhere [2012, London] As Dorian builds a life in modern day again, the Doctor returns with a warning. Dorian's eternal life is in danger and he cannot trust anybody. The people that want him go back to his very beginning, they cannot be stopped or reasoned with and they'll stop at nothing to get their hands on him. After being in each other's life for so long, do they have what it takes to stop an enemy without a face?

08:00 - Cancer [2099, Seoul] The Doctor's regeneration gets revealed along with her placement in the timeline. Her regeneration leads her to crash into the streets of Seoul in 2099, where she meets Dorian for the first time and he meets her for the last. As the Doctor battles Regeneration Sickness, Dorian has to work on his own to stop a hacker called "Jocasta" from destroying the biggest business district in South Korea. Is she the biggest danger? Or is there something lurking beneath the surface?

09:09 - Epilogue Now that the Doctor has recovered, it's time for her to travel through time and space. Who's to say she has to do it alone?

Confusing? Here's each story in order.

IS THAT IT?! Pretty much, that's all my current thoughts on the idea plus a short description for each episode. There are definitely more ideas I could vent, but that would involve a serious amount of foresight about where I'm going to take this IF I take this anywhere.

But in case I never elaborate... > Harmony Shoal, "The Flood" Cybermen & Macra. > A Gallifreyan ghost story turned into a cat. > Silurian Time-Lords and "The Nightmare Child". > A "Paradox" Doctor with a red TARDIS.

If you're interested, let me know! I want to know if people would like to read this or if it's just me

[betterdcyz]

hi there :> im new to tumblr roleplay blogs and i was wondering, if you have the time, would you be willing to explain how it all works? i really want to start roleplaying on tumblr but it all seems so confusing. i understand that you're busy and have other commitments so if this is too much, please let me know. other than that, i hope you have a great day thanks so much for taking the time to read this <3

I just logged on 'cos I've been too busy on @korinthiakos but yeah! I can explain it. Though it gets simpler eventually once you get used to it. I'll just give you the terms: Mun = You Muse = Your characters Multi-muse = multiple characters on one blog Single-muse = Just a blog dedicated to one character IC = In character OOC = Out of character

There's probably more but that's just off the top of my head.

People would prefer you to have rules and an about page for your character/characters. You can check mine for an example. You can use things like carrd or google sites/docs to make these. I can always help you find templates. Though carrd has a 50 element limit. So if you don't feel like using money on your carrd account, then I highly recommend google sites or docs. Because it's free and there's some good templates out there for them. I think mainly for docs?

People will also prefer to interact with mutuals only. Meaning both you and the other person must follow each other. X-Kit & X-Kit Rewritten are good due to their mutual checker. There's also some neat theres on there as well. Like trimming posts. ( Which you can get on X-Kit Rewritten! ) 'cos you'll probably be met with the beta editor on tumblr.

Ask memes ( like sentence starters, which you can find on any kind of ask meme blog ) is a great ice break starter. But you can also throw out starter calls or inbox calls. Starter calls are just basically starting a thread. You can do one-liner starter calls, etc. And inbox calls are just simply going through someone's meme tag and sending them ask memes. Oh!  And promos!  If you want to get yourself out there,  best to do it with a promo!  Text promos are easier.  Though if you need help with that,  also do ask me <3 

But I think that's about it? If you have any more questions, do ask <3 and I hope you have a fun time on here!

[call-me-copycat]

Your oc Sora Tsuneyoshi stood out the most to me because omg, I am SUCH a hypochondriac and it actually ruins my life. It's the worst thing in the world, but people don't take it seriously. So to see your oc have this problem just makes me so overjoyed!

With their quirk, can they actually cure a disease assuming they know everything about it? I know you said they can control them, but is it permanent? So let's say for example, someone has a chronic illness. Let's take Asthma maybe, or heart disease. Could Sora cure these things? Or just lessen their effects? I'm so genuinely curious on this oc haha.

Do you ship them with anyone? I have 3 ocs who I ship with different mha characters, I know shipping isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I was just interested in knowing! Honestly I'd wanna know any of your oc x canon or even oc x oc ships, you're very good at world building and character creation from what I can see.

I'm the one who sent the snowflake ask so I'll go ahead and give myself a little anon name bc I'm too shy to come off anon for now :,) I'll be 🧼 soap anon if that isn't already taken on your page !

Thank you for asking, I'm always happy to answer! A funny thing I might want to mention is Sora's name always stuck in my head, so even if I forget some other characters names, for some reason their name will stick. (ㅎ.ㅎ )

And you're the first anon to choose a theme on my blog! Thank you! I'm going to create a tag for any anons that choose a character or emoji, so you'll be the first ໒꒰ྀི∩˃ ᵕ ˂∩꒱ྀི১

And I'm glad you were able to relate to my character, I myself (while not a hypochondriac) am a sort of germphobe, but I do have my moments where I freak out and think I'm going to die over something small.

Also, I'm AceAro, so I never really thought about shipping before since romance isn't always my ideal situation, but I'm not against it at all! If anyone were to ship my characters with each other or with an MHA character, I'd totally allow it since they're most likely just having fun (minus the kids, that might get a little weird).

That being said, I haven't thought about how far their quirk can go into detail, as I've been focusing on the other characters backgrounds, so it was left as a sort of template. I actually came up with the drawbacks and limitations of their quirk very recently, so if you have an idea or just want to add something small then feel to to tell me!

Also, I'm going to get rather excited about their quirk, so I'm sorry if I ramble! I'm just a huge biology/biotech nerd ＼_(-ロдロ-)

- Quirk:

Disease manipulation: The ability to control disease inside or outside of a person/animal. Can control movement, spread, division, and others.

✧*̣̩⋆̩☽ Drawbacks / Limits ✧*̣̩⋆̩☽

Physical strain: The ability to control diseases takes a physical toll on their body, causing them to become exhausted or even collapse after using their power too much.

Limited control: Sora can only control diseases to a certain extent. They cannot create new diseases or completely eradicate existing ones.

Moral and ethical considerations: The ability to manipulate diseases can be seen as unethical or even evil, especially if used to harm others.

Unintended consequences: Sora's actions may have unintended consequences, such as accidentally creating a superbug or virus that is resistant to all known treatments.

Difficulty with non-living surfaces: Sora may have difficulty manipulating diseases on non-living surfaces, such as objects or clothing.

Inability to control all diseases: Some diseases may be resistant to Sora's quirk, making it difficult or impossible to control them.

Sora's quirk is highly dependent on their own immune system; if they get sick or injured, their quirk weakens or disappears altogether temporarily.

They experience intense pain and discomfort whenever they manipulate diseases past their limit, making it difficult to use their quirk for extended periods of time.

Sora can only control one disease at a time, and must fully focus their attention on it to maintain control. If their attention is split their quirk's effect can lose strength.

Sora's quirk can be disrupted or negated by various medical treatments or procedures, such as vaccines, antibiotics, or chemotherapy. It all depends on the context.

Their quirk is heavily influenced by their emotional state; if they become stressed or anxious, their ability may become erratic or uncontrollable. This is why they're working on controlling their hypochondriac tendencies, because they can't use their quirk very much because of it.

Sora is unable to control certain types of diseases, such as those caused by genetic disorders or environmental factors.

Their quirk can be dangerous or even lethal if used improperly, and they must exercise extreme caution and restraint when manipulating disease

Sora's ability to control a disease is limited by the pathogen's replication rate. If the pathogen replicates too quickly, they may be unable to keep up with its spread and control it.

Sora's quirk can only manipulate diseases that are currently in their active phase; they cannot control latent or dormant infections.

Their quirk has a limited effect on diseases that have already caused irreversible damage to the body, such as chronic conditions or organ failure. They can only control the diseases, they can't reverse anything the diseases might've done.

Sora's quirk can only be effective against diseases that are currently recognized by modern medicine, and may not work against newly emerging pathogens or rare diseases. However, if they have a steady knowledge of any be disease, they can control it better. Then again, if there's an already established disease that they happen to know little too nothing about, they can't control it at all, or at least will struggle in an attempt.

Their quirk may have unintended consequences, such as creating drug-resistant strains of a disease or inadvertently spreading the disease to others.

｡o♡o｡Uses and Benefits ｡o♡o｡

Quick Explanation: Since Sora's quirk has so many limitations and risks, they normally only use it when absolutely needed, or if there's minimal risk involved. Since they're a well educated medic, they have other alternative methods of treatment.

In emergency situations where traditional medical treatment is unavailable, Sora could use their quirk to control the spread of infectious diseases within a patient's body, potentially preventing the disease from becoming fatal.

They could use their quirk to manipulate diseases in laboratory settings, allowing for more targeted research and development of vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases

In situations where quarantine is necessary, Sora could use their quirk to control the spread of a disease within a confined space, potentially limiting the number of people who become infected.

They could use their quirk to manipulate diseases as a form of biocontrol, targeting pests or invasive species that are causing harm to ecosystems or agricultural crops.

In situations where traditional treatments have failed, they could use their quirk to manipulate the disease within a patient's body as a last resort, potentially saving their life.

Sora could use their quirk to manipulate diseases as a means of tracking the spread and transmission of infectious diseases, potentially providing valuable data for epidemiological studies.

They could use their quirk to manipulate diseases to provide symptomatic relief for patients, such as reducing inflammation or fever in cases where traditional treatments are unavailable or ineffective.

•°•Exceptions•°•

If there is a new disease, they naturally wouldn't know much about it. But if they do, it wouldn't matter if it was new or not, they'd still be able to use their quirk on it

They cannot completely eradicate a disease, they can only control it. There is a loophole, though. Say Sora is trying to help a cancer patient. For those that don't know, cancer cells are normal human cells that mutated and went uncontrolled. Since they can control disease how they wish with enough information on it, they could force the cancerous cells to undergo apoptosis (programmed cell death). Or they could mess with the diseased cells homeostasis or osmotic pressure, and make them burst or crumple inwards. Or they could do the opposite and make sick cells healthy again.

If there overall isn't much data on a disease and they happen to know the small amount that was discovered, they'd still not be able to do anything, since they need a vast understanding of the disease.

They're quirk greatly ties with their mental knowledge and state

To answer your questions, say there's a kid with asthma (like you asked). They can only control the disease, but not the damage already done. If they know a lot about asthma, they could prevent it while the person is near them so the patient can undergo treatment, or thi could prevent it from getting worse if the patient wasn't going to get treatment at the time (with the wide world of quirks, I'd imagine there's going to be numerous medical advancements and techniques)

•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨*•.¸¸♡•*¨

Overall, I'm glad that my character was able to make you so happy! I never thought anything I could do would have that effect (⁠^⁠～⁠^⁠;⁠)⁠ゞ

I'm sorry to hear about your hypochondriac issues, but since I don't have any experience with it I'd be glad if you offered some insight as to what's it's like since I'd like to write Sora's character realistically. ( ˙˘˙* )

If you have anymore questions, feedback, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to send in another ask! I always look forward to seeing anything in my inbox, really (⁠๑⁠¯⁠◡⁠¯⁠๑⁠)

I'm thinking about drawing them more often when I have the energy. If I do, I could let you know! If you want to know anything else about Sora or if I post something about them, I could always tag it with your emoji, your choice!

Sorry if that was long, I got a little excited (⁠─⁠.⁠─⁠|⁠|⁠）

Please have a lovely day, and don't hesitate to submit any thoughts! Thank you so much!  

　　∧＿∧

　( ・ω・)

┏━Ｕ━━━Ｕ━━┓

┃♡ありがとう♡ ┃

┗━━━━━━━━━┛

[theangelshavethephonebox]

Heyyyy- went through and fixed a couple Deca member's galleries and character templates, plus uploading a few more pieces of art from the wonderful people who have allowed their work to be uploaded to the wiki (:

I thought it would be a good idea if I list the tasks that I want to get to next on the wiki:

Still got a lot of art to upload- the reason it's taking a while is because writing the alt IDs is quite tiring, so I can only do a couple of them at a time, but I promise I will get through all of them! Plus upload a few from the show that will be needed for the Doctor Who character pages on the Deca members

I'd like to figure out the best way to show that certain images are linked- maybe using prevnext? Because sometimes I have broken up a piece of art with multiple figures into each separate figure, because one of those characters had no solo art and needed something, but I think it would be good to show that they're all one piece of art.

Obviously if The Big Poll on Coverage concludes options 1 or 2 should be done, it'll be a lot more work, so priorities may change

I have been messing around with infoboxes- we'll see. If i can figure it out, it may be worth creating a couple template infoboxes, but also with the way we're doing everything right now I don't really see the need. If people are finding the layout of a specific type of page busy or confusing, maybe pop a note on one of those page's discussion pages?

Got a lot of category work to do. Luckily I can mass-add pages to categories, so I just need to sit down and do it, but there's also the issue of having overarching categories that other things are sub-categories of. Shouldn't be too hard, just something I have to sit down and figure out, you know?

If 1/2 is voted in, I will give each wiki artist their own page, rather than just a category. Didn't do that originally because I was a bit shaky on what pages should and shouldn't be mainspace, but I think if 1/2 is voted in they definitely should be, and would be under the 'fandom' section. Doesn't mean if 1/2 isn't voted in this won't be done, just that I'll probably put up a separate poll to see if people think it should work like that. If the artists come forward and say they would prefer that, that should override the poll though, because it's about them.

In terms of content, I've been working my way through insignificant memories, and then I'll go through decaeological findings- I'm going slow as I'm doing the plot summaries at the same time. Once all that's done, obviously the main series should be the main priority- I'll at the very least create stubs for the non-revised pages. I would've made Only Dead Fish when it came out, but honestly I didn't think I'd enjoy it if I had to type out a plot summary while reading for the first time. We've also got a lot of other major characters who need pages- Borusa, Ensilden (btw I think we should have a conversation about what name to use lol), Ummins... And, something I really think I need to make is the page on Doctor Who. Kinda embarassing that it doesn't exist, actually- it has 40 links to it!

But, I have exams next month, so though I'll be able to do some of the more low effort/quick ones of these, the bulk of this will be after May.

[c-mccormick-svad-2022-2025]

(ARTS246) Ch. 10: Typographic Design Education & Project #3 Progress

I spent this week working on the process book for project #3, which is due on Wednesday, April 3rd. The upcoming deadline has been causing me stress because my previous process book had a more flexible and longer timeframe for the deadline. Nonetheless, I am determined to tackle this challenge.

I spent most of Monday getting acquainted with the website and software that we'll be using for our process books. The website is called Blurb, which offers an extension in the InDesign software to design books using their templates. These templates need to be customized before creating the design file. It's important to note that the front and back cover are separate from the actual pages of the book and the files need to be combined before finalizing and submitting them for printing and shipping. The printing process takes about two weeks, which is why the turnaround time for this project is shorter compared to the previous two projects. Although I'm not an expert in using Blurb, I'm excited to experiment with the service more and potentially use it to print my other portfolios in the future.

The process book's layout has been a challenge for me, mainly due to the grid and margins. Although the margins are pre-set from the Blurb template, I found them to be too small for my liking on the spreads. To fix this, I took inspiration from my old process book from ARTS102 (Introduction to Design Technology and Concepts) and incorporated a similar margin and grid into my new process book. Initially, I felt strange using my old process book's layout and ideas, but I also thought, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" This was particularly true for this project, as I loved the balance and harmony of my original layout. I aim to achieve that same look and feel with my new process book while showcasing my detailed process and the improvements I have made from each project.

The cover design of the process book draws inspiration from the traditional analog movable type process, where typography uses a movable component, such as metal or wood letters and ink, to reproduce the elements of a document on different types of paper. The design is also influenced by the artwork of Brad Vetter, a designer and letterpress artist who visited and spoke at the University of South Carolina. His work inspired me, and I wanted to emulate his style in digital art form. I took inspiration from my mood board, my traditional style of geometric surface design, and the multiple typefaces used throughout this process book, such as Cabin Bold, Josefin sans, and Josefin slab. My main concern was that the cover might feel too crowded and confusing, making the text difficult to read. However, after receiving feedback from my professor and peers, I realized that the color palette is balanced, the title is easy to read, and the visual hierarchy is well-balanced. The only suggestion I received was to change the colors of the large circle in the top left corner of the cover, as that element slightly threw off my visual hierarchy.

My process book follows the theme of my cover art, but I've decided to make the geometric shapes less prominent. Instead, I want to highlight each project and its process on the pages. I aim to let the typeface be the main focus and make each project stand out to catch the audience's eye. To make some pages look better, I may add subtle geometric shapes to fill in empty spaces or where some pages look too wordy. I also need to work on the visual hierarchy of some spreads, as some elements feel like they are competing. Overall, I have made a good start with my process book for Typography I and II. I plan to improve it before submitting it for the final class critique and printing.

The reading for this week discusses the importance of conducting in-depth studies of common typographic design issues and how professional designers can develop creative solutions by applying all the skills learned throughout the textbook. This includes integrating type and image on posters, establishing a visual system to unify various materials, experimenting with content in publication design, thinking about typography in terms of time and motion, creating dimensional and environmental typography, analyzing and visualizing data, and developing a unique visual language for everyday events. This chapter combines all the concepts learned in this book, summarizing why educating oneself on typographic principles is crucial. Having taken Typography I and II courses, my views of typography have entirely changed. Previously, I paid little attention to the use of type, the visual hierarchy of typography, or even the fonts used in various works. Now, I pay attention to these elements even more, and I have a greater appreciation for typography than ever before. I understand that many decisions go into creating something related to typography, whether it's a book cover, magazine spread, poster, social media post, etc. I am grateful for these courses, even if they were challenging because they helped me become a better graphic designer. I have come to see type as an art form, not just words on a page.

[andymakesgames]

Magic: The Gathering 3-Card Blind

(As you can probably guess, this post assumes some familiarity with the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering)

I just wrapped up a multi-week online Magic: The Gathering tournament that I've been wanting to do fo a while. The 3-Card Blind format is an interesting thought-exercise/meta-game challenge that has been played on forums since at least the early 2000s.

Instead of a normal game of Magic where players bring a deck of cards to face each other, in 3CB players submit a list of exactly 3 cards. All three of these cards start in hand and players do not lose for having no deck to draw from. All of the uncertainty, and even gameplay decisions, from a normal game are removed. The game is reduced to a sort of puzzle (or auto battler) where players try to come up with 3-card combinations that can win the game and even throw off opposing strategies.

In this post I'm going to talk about the rules of the format, what I did to make my tournament unique, and how you can run your own (including a template spreadsheet I created to make it easy for players to report their scores).

The main focus will be on the game design decisions I made to shape this particular tournament as well as the nuts-and-bolts of how it was run. Check out some of the links below for theory and strategy (which is fascinating in this format).

How It Works

Each week, players secretly submit their deck lists to an email account I made specifically for this purpose. I put their decks into a spreadsheet (preserved here), and at the end of each week, players would mark how they did against each other deck.

Scoring works like this: for each match, players play two games (one where they go first, one where the other player goes first). For each game they win, the player gets 3 points; for each where they tie they get 1 point; and they get 0 points for a loss. So the max number of points a player can get in a match is 6.

There are a few restrictions to keep things on track: * Decks cannot win on turn 1 * Decks cannot force an opponent to discard more than 2 cards * Random effects will always go in opponent's favor

The exact rules for my tournament can be found here on the page I used to introduce and maintain the event.

But how can participants play their games solo? This is the magic of this format: there is no randomness, players have perfect information & only 3 cards. Each game is more of a logic puzzle than a proper game. There is a “correct” sequence of plays, and it is possible to determine which deck comes out ahead (or if both decks stall out and tie). The MTG Fandom page linked below has more detail about edge cases or things that would introduce randomness, but the the take-away is that the skill is in submitting a well-positioned trio of cards, not in actually playing the games.

Example Game

Let's take an example from the last week of my tournament. We have the following 3 decks:

Player A: Thassa's Oracle, Cavern of Souls, Island

If unopposed, the Oracle deck will win on turn 2 (this was the “house deck” for the week. More on that in a minute). Not surprisingly, combo is weak to counterspells, so Cavern of Souls provides a little extra security.

Player B: Lupine Prototype, Mishra's Workshop, Trinisphere

Player B is looking to lock up the opponent with Trinisphere before playing a 5/5 that can end the game in 4 turns.

Player C: Blackmail, Cruel Sadist, Swamp

Player C is also playing a control angle, using Blackmail to pluck a critical card from the opponent and then taking their time with Cruel Sadist (which can hopefully get large enough to overcome an opposing blocker that manages to get around Blackmail).

How does it play out?

Player A vs Player B – On the play or on the draw, B can get Trinisphere out before A can play Thassa, completely locking them out since their 2 lands cannot produce 3 mana. (6 points for B, 0 points for A)

Player A vs Player C – Similarly, C can play Blackmail on turn 1, guaranteeing that they can pluck Thassa from the opponent. (6 points for C, 0 points for A)

Player B vs Player C – This one is interesting! When B goes first, they can get their Trinisphere down and prevent Blackmail or Cruel Sadist from being played. When C goes first, they can play blackmail and trash the Lupine Prototype. (3 points for each)

Although it tied in this example, the Blackmail/Cruel Sadist deck was the strongest against the field the week it was submitted. It was able to beat multiple decks that beat the Lupine Prototype deck.

All of these decks take advantage of the unique properties of the format to use cards that would otherwise be underpowered or at least require a lot more hoops to jump through. Thassa's Oracle is certainly powerful in its own right, but usually requires a lot more setup. Blackmail is not usually premium discard, but in this format it can hit every card in the opponent's hand (including lands). Lupine Prototype I had forgotten about entirely, but here it is a reliable 5/5 beater.

Pretty much every link below has other sample matchups that you can check out. These are filled with examples of cards that need to be re-evaluated in the context of 3CB. This is a format that really rewards players who dig for gold in older, mostly forgotten cards.

Resources

Before I dive further into my own event, I want to provide a few links that are helpful for anybody thinking about running a 3CB tournament or who just wants to read about this interesting offshoot of Magic. I certainly would not have been aware of 3CB or able to run my own tournament without them.

MTG Fandom Page – A solid primer and a good reference for the rules.

3-Card Magic by Brian Demars – This article on Channel Fireball was the first time I heard about the format.

Three Card Blind: A Whole Different Format by Goblinboy – A very detailed forum post from 2005 about the format. It's very fun to see the cards from that era evaluated for this format. Does a great job of pointing out cards that are unremarkable in normal Magic, but extremely strong in 3CB and vice versa.

3-Card Blind Metashape Tournament – This was a recent tournament run on Reddit by u/Lognu. My own tournament is heavily based on their setup. That link also has spreadsheets from the game and is a great resource to see decks that people have submitted.

My Tournament's Page – Here's where I laid out the rules for my tournament and maintained the ban-list.

My Tournament Spreadsheet – You can check out my decks submitted each week here! This was where the game took place. Player names have mostly been obscured and all comments have been removed (but they were lively!).

My Tournament

In terms of structure, I was heavily influenced by Lognu's Metashape Tournament. Rather than starting with an extensive ban list (as many 3CB games do), cards from the best performing decks are banned and the list evolves over time. This forces players to come up with new solutions each week.

A lot of the fun of this format is trying to beat the field. Although there are some combinations of cards that are quite strong, there is simply nothing that wins every match. So a huge part of the tournament is trying to figure out the meta and guess which decks other people will play. To this end I introduced one other major gameplay element: the house deck.

Each week, the highest performing deck has two cards banned. Then this deck becomes the house deck. In the following week it will be one of the decks that everybody faces. This is the only deck that players know they will face, so submitting a deck that beats it guarantees 6 points. However, all players know about this can can choose to design their own deck to prey on decks that will beat the house deck. The goal is to provide just enough known info about the next round for savvy players to predict the field. There is also the challenge of forcing players to beat the winning deck without having access to the same cards (since cards in the house deck have been banned).

During the course of the tournament, one player asked if Conspiracy cards could be used. This is a bit of an edge case since they aren't proper cards and are not typically available in constructed play, but I think it's fun when things get weird so I OKed them (with the exception of Power Play, because it undermined the structure of the tournament). I think it would be more than fair to ban them in your own tournament, but I liked the inclusion and they never felt like they broke things.

Ban List

My tournament ran for 5 weeks. In that time the following cards were banned:

Strip Mine

Chancellor of the Annex

Mesmeric Fiend

Leyline of Anticipation

Memnite

Snapback

Thassa's Oracle

Cavern of Souls

Island

Power Play

Running The Game

Each round was given one week. Here is the cadence I listed in the game description:

Results will be announced on Monday, including the updates to the ban list.

Players have until Thursday 3PM EST to submit their decks.

Players should review their games by Saturday at 8PM.

Decks were submitted by people emailing their lists to a special email account I made for the purpose of this game. This meant that I had to submit my own deck before I officially opened submissions so that I did not see anybody else's deck before locking in my own.

Because players did not see each other's decks, I allowed players to update their decks until the Thursday deadline if they wanted to. I also tried to alert players if I noticed that their deck probably would not play out the way they expected it to, or if it broke some rule and would be disqualified.

On Thursday, a new page was made in the spreadsheet and players could start scoring their decks!

The spreadsheet

Much like Eve Online, this is a game played in spreadsheets.

I based my spreadsheet on the ones that Lognu made. The big difference is that in Lognu's game, players find their row and score themselves going right along each column. The decks are listed on the right, and I figured players know their own deck. So I switched this and had my players find their column and move down, allowing them to easily see the cards they faced in each match.

Here is a a gif I made of Jenny submitting her scores to explain the process to new players. (She has one win against Timmy for 3 points, and no wins against Spike)

You may notice that this system has duplicate information. For example, the result of cell E2 (Spike vs Timmy) can be derived from cell C4 (Timmy vs Spike). Since Timmy got a 0 against Spike, we know that Spike must have gotten a 6 against Timmy. But there is a reason for this: it means that every game has both players computing the results separately. Magic is a complex game and the optimal play is not always obvious. By having both players evaluate the games independently, there is some built in confirmation of the results. (This was further assisted by other players being generally interested. During the game, there was constant commentary on many of the cells as players discussed how games would play out).

Because I hated the thought of scanning the grid to determine if values did not line up, I wrote some formulas in my sheet to check if the values for a given pair of cells did not match. Then I used conditional formatting to highlight those cells in yellow to alert myself and other players that there was some issue here.

Let's take the same example from above. Let's say Spike shows up but thinks they win one game and tie one game against Timmy.

The spreadsheet highlights the cells for that match in yellow. If one cell of a match is 0 (two losses), the other should be 6 (two wins). Alternatively, if one cell of a match is 4 (a win and a tie), the other should be 1 (a loss and a tie). The logic for this is frustratingly complex and I wrote a python script to export the formulas for the 225 cells needed for a 15 player game. If you are curious, you can check out rows 50 to 65 of my template sheet (they're hidden by default but you can expand them if you duplicate the sheet).

If you go through the weeks of my tournament, you'll find a few instances where I had to make a judge call (highlighted in purple), but in at least 90% of cases where the results did not match, players sorted it themselves (often with help from other players weighing in on the result via cell comments). Having the sheet automatically flag disputes did a lot encourage players to reevaluate and fix results. It also provided fun conversation fodder!

It is a credit to the group I was playing with that one of the most frequent disagreement was a player explaining why the other deck would actually beat them.

Week to Week

Dive into the spreadsheet if you want to see all the decks submitted each week. There are some very interesting trends as certain deck types had rises and falls in popularity. What I'm going to present here is the winning deck for each week (which became the house deck for the following week). It's a great microcosm of the strategies at play in 3CB.

Most players asked that I not include their names, but rest assured that none of these winning decks were submitted by me.

Week 1 – Inkmoth Nexus, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Week 2 – Strip Mine, Chancellor of the Annex, Icatian Store (submitted by NaCl)

Week 3 – Mesmeric Fiend, Leyline of Anticipation, Black Lotus

Week 4 – Memnite, Snapback, Force of Will

Week 5 – Thassa's Oracle, Cavern of Souls, Island (submitted with only slight variations by 4 players)

Week 6 – Blackmail, Cruel Sadist, Swamp (submitted by NaCl)

You can see how each deck beats the one before it, but not necessarily the one two weeks prior!

Random Thoughts and Notes

Cell comments were an unexpected delight. I originally planned on including all participants on a group email each week to discuss the round, but players started adding comments directly onto the spreadsheet. It was very lively and became a space to discuss cool decks people had made in addition to sorting out tricky matches.

I do wish I had encouraged people to use burner email accounts and usernames. The comments in the spreadsheet are mostly tied to personal email accounts. It didn't occur to me that I might want to share the results of the game in a post like this, and at that point the comments were too linked to personal information. The spreadsheet I posted here has all of the decks, but the commentary and most of the names have been removed.

After one week of manually linking everybody's cards, I started asking players to submit their decks on a single line with each card name being a link to scryfall. It made the process of prepping the sheet much less time consuming.

If I did it again, I would green light conspiracy cards from the jump, as I thought they were a lot of fun.

In this game, I banned two cards from each winning deck (determined by the order in which they were submitted). This resulted in an interesting but slightly slow-moving ban list. In the future I'd ban all 3 cards in the winning deck and possibly take out one or two from other high scoring decks as well.

The house deck did exactly what I wanted it to do. It guided the field just enough that players could strategize around it.

Running Your Own / Using My Spreadsheet

If you are interested in running your own 3CB tournament, you absolutely should! It's a good time and you only need about 5 regular players to make it compelling.

You can use my or Lgnu's rules directly, but it's a lot of fun to make up your own spin on it as well.

If it is helpful, you can duplicate my spreadsheet template and get my nice conditional formatting.

If you do start a new game with this sheet, I'd love to hear about! Hit me up on twitter, mastodon or email me at andy[at]andymakes[dot]com.

While I have you here...

I'm a real sucker for games where people secretly submit their moves for the turn. I've been working on a wargame called Skirmish Society that was inspired by Diplomacy. It's played via Discord bot and you secretly DM your orders to the bot each turn (while plotting and making deals with other players in the public channel and over DM). I'm close to wrapping it up and would love to have a few more test groups. If that sounds fun to you, you can install it on your Discord for free over here!