#lookup plans

[meownotgood]

PLS WHERE DID YOU GET THAT APPLE KEYCHAIN ITS SO CUTE

it's cute isn't it?! I got it to go on my aki itabag... everything I posted I bought from mercari jp 🫡

[everydaylouie]

Hello!! Your 3D renders are SUPER inspirational! If possible, could you tell me how you composited or overall edited your pokemon renders to look the way they do? (i.e the Nosepass in bed). I've been trying to capture a similar effect hehe... Thank you!!

Thanks so much! I usually do a few things in Photoshop after I render. Details below!

This is the Nosepass straight out of Blender - I try to get the colors and effects as close as I can off the bat.

Then, I usually do a color correction pass using the Color Lookup function. (I learned this from the master, Kat Tsai.) Usually, I use a combo of the 3-Strip and the Kodak presets. It's a function that basically maps colors across the spectrum of your original image to a new set of colors - often used in photography and film (which I'm using Blender to emulate!)

I often then draw in 2D details. Finally, to emulate that sort of old-video-game-magazine look, I duplicate the image and use Color Halftone on it. Find a decent blending mode, and voilá!

The post-Blender editing is super fun. I often try weird blending modes and overlay textures at this stage to get the effects I want. Hope this helps! (I also plan on making a beginning-to-end Blender video at some point.)

[darkstrawberrytimetravel]

Why don't you just give in?Pt.4

Fem reader

Pt.3

You

I grab my drink and follow the girls to a nearby table, we’re seated midway between the bar and the back of the pub. I know the girls are watching the lads at the pool table, I can’t help myself either as I look up and watch as Simon loses his current round against Gaz. His movements around the table are sleek, like a panther, and practised as he lines up his next shot. His muscles flexing under his jacket, the hem of his jacket and shirt riding up just enough for my eyes to trail over his lower back. He’s trying, but he’s never been great at scoring, he’s just in it for the game. 

Images of us in bed together lazily flash through the forefront of my mind, him laid on his front as I straddle his bare thighs and massage his back. My thumbs working deep into the knotted muscles of his broad and muscular physique, the feel of my breasts brushing against him as I lean forward and trace my tongue up his spine. The taste of his skin, sweat and his own scent that I can never find elsewhere. 

I clear my throat and shake my head away, willing those thoughts to dissipate as quickly as they had appeared. I shouldn’t be thinking of him. We’re history. 

I stir my drink and make an idiotic point of counting the beads of condensation on the glass. Anything to distract myself. By the time I lookup again I realise he’s gone, I check the table with Soap and the others and he's not there either. 

Breathing a sigh of relief I settle in, despite my little speech in the taxi it looks like we’ll be staying here. Then again I can’t really go elsewhere in shorts, a hoodie, and trainers. The evening flies by, finally we actually start to socialise as a group, no more eye fucking the boys. Just as I start to feel that familiar easy going feeling of the alcohol working its magic on my body, my eyes trail up to the pool table and then the adjacent table and bench. Still no Simon.

I wonder why he's gone, he doesn't chain his cigarettes, and normally after a particularly long operation he parks himself out in the pub until last orders. The more I think about him in the present I can't help the past rear its ugly head. Though it hasn't always been ugly. I find my thoughts shift to us, our passion once upon a time. How fierce it had burnt, the feeling of our bodies, limbs tangled, comfortable and even serene moments in each other's company as we went about mundane ordinary hobbies and tasks. Hopes for the future. His hopes for our future. My inability to fully commit myself. His disappointment and hurt.

“Hey!” 

I feel myself being shaken lightly, blinking and looking around, I'm met with a pair of green eyes. Laura's eyes. Suddenly I'm back in the present, we're in the pub. I realised I'm chewing my thumb, removing it and wiping my thumb dry on my hoodie. I avoid her eyes.

“Yeah sorry, got a little lost there. You know…. I think I'm going to head off. Make my own way back.” 

Standing up, I make my excuses to the rest of the girls, citing plans for the weekend and needing an early night. As I step out onto the street and the pub door closes behind me I take a lung full of air. There's an autumnal chill, I realise how cold I am despite the alcohol coursing through my body. Standing there for a moment longer I make my mind up and walk further along to the taxi rank. My self control crashes, vanishes, and I know I can't fight the inevitable.

Settling into the taxi I nervously play with the cuff on my hoodie, I'm drunk. That's all it is. I just need physical connection. No other reason. I try to distract myself by looking out the passenger window, watching the dark houses fly past as we get ever closer to my destination. My limbs are tingling, I start to panic as I think about the last time we were in close quarters, alone. How he'd looked at him with dark eyes, disappointment and hurt morphing into something else. Anger. How he'd fucked me, lulling me into a sense of security only to pull the rug out from under me after we'd finished. Calling me a slag and practically kicking me out his house. 

His defence mechanism. What did you expect? You broke his heart, did you expect him to carry on with the arrangement as normal, as if he hadn't poured his heart and soul out to you? Only you couldn't reciprocate back could you. Those three words on the tip of your tongue but you're not brave enough to say them. Coward. 

The taxi stops and I'm pulled from my thoughts again. I barely register myself paying the fare and stepping out. I'm outside his home. Simon's home. I'm always awestruck with the mundanity of it. Just a simple two bedroom detached brick property on an unassuming street in Hereford. Close enough for a 15 minute standby, far enough for privacy and comfort away from the Garrison. I feel my heart race and my breath shudder out as I walk those few remaining steps to the front door, I don't even have to knock. The door opens and I'm met with his eyes, I can't tell how he's feeling. It's too dark to see any emotion written on his face.

“Hey” I don't realise how soft my voice is. How nervous I am.

Pt.5

[paradoxlemonade]

Mirror Mirror

Fandom: Double Life SMP

Dynamic: Etho & Joel

words: 1313

Warnings: body image issues, insecurity

Ao3: Here!

Summary: Etho doesn't like how he looks. Joel does not know this. Hurt/comfort ensues. (This is my @mcytblrholidayexchange present for @kyleknight! I hope you enjoy ^^)

— — — — —

Joel likes to think he’s a pretty funny guy in his own humble opinion, thank you very much. People laugh when he starts cracking jokes, and those that don’t are probably just peeved that they’re the subject of his mockery—after all, when there’s a punchline, someone has to be the one to get decked. It’s all in good fun!

It’s… disconcerting when someone who’s supposed to be in on the joke isn’t smiling along with it. 

And it’s not like Etho’s even the one on the receiving end! The whole point of the thing is how they—as soulmates—can ruin everyone else’s thumbnails together!

It’s a bit of Etho’s that Joel has always found fun as long as he’s known about it: hiding another layer of visual data in his player code only visible upon lookup is a fantastic prank for messing with one’s friends, since it’ll only show up when they pull his image to build the thumbnail. Etho himself, who doesn’t bother with that sort of menial technicality and just whips out a camera from his back pocket when he spies a good thumbnail, is immune. And sure, sure, Joel doesn’t actually know how to replicate the effect and just went for a plain t-shirt with the face painted on in crooked lines, but it was still funny and would show up on the lookups (And Etho’s pictures, but that’s what hiding the shirt with armor is for).

Joel was grinning like mad as he showed off the creation, hands waving and detailing the concept. Etho gave an affirmation, but he hadn’t seemed particularly enthused with the concept; the mask hiding his face stretched with a smile even as his eyes skittered to the side and hid under knit brows.

So. Joel tries not to let it bother him and simply enjoy the thought of his friends being annoyed with him.

He picks at the hem of the t-shirt as he paces about the Boat Boys (not Small Etho!) base area. The day passes as usual: chaos reigns, problems are caused (all on purpose if asked, mostly on purpose in actuality), and Joel enjoys Etho’s company. Really, the man is a delight—Joel knew of him more than he knew him personally before the latest season, but every new interaction reveals something new about Etho that he didn’t know, and Joel’s actions and mannerisms in turn to him.

Everything seems fine, until. Until, until, until.

Etho removes the secret layer. Joel finds out about it in between sessions and tries (fails) not to take it personally.

It… stings.

The start of the next session and Joel’s ire do not roll in like thunder, but instead stumble in on unsure legs like a fawn. Sure, he’s irritated (and a little offended, and a little hurt), but it’s Etho. So Joel leans on the edge of The Relation Ship and drinks in the sight of the server.

A creaking floorboard from behind him and a gentle wheeze of breath belies Etho’s awaited arrival. 

Without turning around, Joel begins, “I see that you’ve changed your skin?” It’s light as he can manage with a slight chuckle of incredulity, but from the tightness in his jaw, it does little to masquerade much of anything.

“I did, yes—”

“You took the face off? Was it because I—”

“Yeah.”

Joel huffs. “Wow, brilliant.” He pushes off and turns in a single motion, and—

Freezes.

…Any plans Joel has for a polite (but frigid, but pointed, but sardonic) questioning evaporate once he gets a look at Etho’s face.

He looks tired, bags like smudges of coal languishing, shifting with every blink. Every step is upheld with an air of casual nonchalance, but the slight tremble in his fingers betrays him. His pale hair is dull and falls over his scarred eye.

“...You look like a wreck.”

Etho scowls for a bare moment but beats it down to a practiced neutrality. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Joel snorts. “Considering that I hadn’t asked but you tried to deflect anyways, say that I don’t particularly believe you.” He grabs Etho by the wrist and slides past, leading him down to their chests. “Did you sleep at all between now and the last session? Because your eyebags have eyebags. Bet we could fit a whole stack of items in there.” Before Etho can respond, Joel pops the lock on a chest and picks out a loaf of bread. He drops it into Etho’s hands with a nod of finality.

“I slept just fine. And I ate too, if that’s what you’re getting at by this.” He gestures helplessly with the bread. “I told you, I’m fine.”

Joel shrugs. “And I said I didn’t believe you. I can play this game all day, especially since your face isn’t helping your argument.”

Etho scowls again. “Stop saying that.” 

“Saying what? That you look like you’ve been fighting phantoms? And losing?”

 “Joel, please…” His shoulders are drawn in close and his grip on the bread grows tighter, more desperate.

Joel falters.

“Are you… okay?”

Etho makes a face and stalks back onto the ship. “You don’t need to rub it in, you know.”

Joel trails behind him, his sense of assurance drying up. “You’re gonna need to be a little more specific than that, mate. Rub what in?”

He laughs. Laughs. Something dry, something quiet, something brittle. Etho keeps his gaze trained on the bread crust he picks at aimlessly. “I know I’m nothing nice to look at. I’ve known that basically forever. So you don’t need to rub it in; I already know.”

Joel blinks. He stops following Etho’s pacing and stands in place. What does he say to that? “You’re kidding, right?”

Mm. Probably not that.

Etho gives him an unimpressed look. “Why would I be kidding about this? You’ve been saying it yourself all morning.”

Wait, he thought that… and then Joel…

Oh, goddammit.

Joel rubs a hand across his face letting it trail up to drag through his hair. “You look tired, man, not ugly. You’re not a supermodel—so what? Neither am I. And neither is anyone else that we hang out with. You’re in pretty good company.” His feet finally unstick from the floor and he manages to scoot next to Etho, their shoulders brushing. “You’ve been thinking about this the entire break, haven’t you?”

Etho shrugs, as if it hides the way his shoulders droop with the weight of his thoughts. “I don’t… I try not to think about my face too much. Not ever since”—he waves his free hand at the long, ropy line bisecting his face—“that. No mirrors in any of my builds or anything. I guess your silly t-shirt just reminded me that everyone else is looking at me when I talk to them.”

Joel kinda feels bad for taking that personally, now.

He shakes his head. “If you told me what was up, I would’ve ditched the shirt. Here, like this.” He reaches up with one hand and yanks it off by the neckline, tossing it across the ship in the same motion. It hits the wall and slides to the floor in a crumpled heap. “There, now it’s gone.”

Etho takes a minute to gather his thoughts. After a pause, his eyes trail over to meet Joel’s. “Thanks.”

Joel leans over and bumps him, never breaking eye contact. “Bothering people is fun. Hurting them isn’t.”

The moment passes, and Etho turns his attention back to the bread. He slides his mask down and takes a hesitant bite.

— — — — —

Joel leans back and kicks a foot over his leg. “Besides, I can still think of, like, at least three different people who would throw themselves at you in a heartbeat if they thought they had a chance of getting you into bed with them.”

Etho chokes on a mouthful of bread.

[ryuichirou]

Can we see some of your figurines? 👉👈

Omg Anon, yes of course!!

Luckily, you have the most perfect timing because I started reorganising them not that long ago (+ because I have Katsu around right now to take all the pictures while I’m working lol). It’s still not perfect, but for now this is how they look.

Also, sorry for the quality… My phone isn’t the best for taking pictures.

Aniplex Azul! He is very gorgeous and I am trying to make him a little shrine; I already put a little cauldron with coins under his shelf, and I’m planning to decorate his surroundings with some fish tank accessories. His shelf is actually a little plastic showcase thingie they use for candy at stores. Azul is the biggest candy of them all lol

Here are the rest of my twst figurines + a bunch of nendos and lookups. Also Souko! Don’t mind her broken whip, I’ll fix it one day. She is very dear to me because she is a gift from Katsu (Azul too!).

Idia’s sitting down figure is absolutely perfect by the way. I am very happy it’s finally mine. And Vil too!! <3 Vil’s face is much prettier than I thought it would be (what a wild thing to say). And then there is Azul… who sits like a teacher and bullies his husband to the wall…

Some other guys. We haven’t watched Legend of the Galactic Heroes yet, but I got these figures the moment their pre-orders popped-up because I figured we’ll end up enjoying these dudes eventually. And if not, I’ll just sell them…

Also yes, I have three Atobes. I miss Prince of Tennis.

More nendos, Yowapeda boys, South Park boys, very random (likely bootleg) Asuka. Poor Eren is stuck with that pole forever, and Levi and Erwin don’t seem to be very eager to help him out.

Peanuts…. Some of them are from McDonald’s, some of them are proper figurines. I love collecting these a lot. Lucy in her psychiatric booth is my favourite, I am very happy that I have her lol She is a morale booster.

Some tiny ones. Marchen and Elise are actually keychains, and boy were they overpriced, but SanHora merch is so rare that I really wanted to get them. Also I know you are not surprised to learn that Ichimatsu is my matsu-boy.

Last but definitely not least, my Trixie Mattel doll. Nothing to say about her, she is special and absolutely perfect. Worth every penny and all the nervous breakdowns I had when I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get her because of all the shit that happened in the world after the preorder.

This is it for now, I think. I’ve been collecting figurines for more than 15 years now, and I at some point I sold some of my older ones, but I’ve been getting very excited about making my collection look good lately. I’ll keep working hard…

[daydreamingmia]

Walker Scobell X Reader I series I you belong with me🔱part 26

The hike from hades...

You woke up to well...silence. It was weird. You were so used to Walker smacking you with a pillow or just yelling at you. But today it was just silent. You sit up and look at Walker's side of the bed. HE WAS STILL SLEEPING! He looked so peaceful tho ☺️...well not for long!😝

"Well today you're gonna get a taste of your own medicine" you thought to yourself

You put your feet to his back and kicked him out of the bed!

"Ow!" Walker screamed as he fell to the ground

"What you don't like the taste of your own medicine?" You mocked

"Oh just wait I'll get you back" he said mischievously

"Oh I'm so scared" you rolled your eyes

"You will be" he replied

"Sure" you say sarcastically

"Go get ready for my surprise and wake me up when you're ready to go" he said laying back down

Walker told you yesterday that he had a surprise for you. He didn't tell you what though. Wait that's a little suspicious...

"Wait it's a good surprise right?" You ask

"It was...I just changed our plans" he smirked

"Boy who thinks he's gonna get me back say what?" You raise your eyebrow (horrible attempt at a Hannah Montana reference lol)

"Just go get ready" Walker laughs

"No! Not until you tell me your plan!" You argue

"You'll have to wait and see" he smiles as he drifts off

You go over to the desk and pull a piece of paper from your notebook

You were writing a note to the others because they aren't gonna be awake before you leave

My dear friends,

By the time you read this I could very well be dead. Walker won't tell me where we are going (very suspicious) so he might kill me idk. But if I don't return please know that it's Walker's fault hehe. Seek revenge! Get him! Destroy him!! Anyway love you all kisses! ♡

You place the note on the kitchen counter then go to your bathroom and put on light makeup. You get changed and step out of the bathroom seeing Walker is still sleeping.

You grab your phone and turn the volume to full blast. You then play one of the songs from your latest album and put it right next to his ear.

"AH! WHAT IS THE NOISE?! TURN IT OFF!! TURN IT OFF!!" He screams and falls out of the bed

"That "noise" is one of the songs I wrote for you! Wanna rephrase that?!" You say picking up a pillow in preparation to hit him

"I mean what is that angelic music? It's so beautiful" he say

"I still hate you" you say putting the pillow down

"No seriously I didn't mean it. It was just loud in my ear" he says sweetly

"Sure" you joke and hit him with the pillow as he falls back on the bed

"Tell where we are going and I will stop!" You yell at him

"Never!" He replies putting him arms up to protect himself

"Fine but people gonna think it's really weird when your fans lookup Walker Scobell cause of death and it says Annabeth beat you to death with a pillow" you shrug

"Fine! Fine! Fine!" Just put the pillow down and I will tell you

"Good" you smile as you set the pillow on the bed

"I can't believe you fell for that!" He laughs and hits you with the pillow so hard you fall down

"Ow!" You whine hitting the hard ground

Walker drops the pillow and kneels down next to you

"I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" He asks worried

"Ha! I can't believe YOU fell for that!" You mock him as he curls up in a ball as you hit him with his own pillow

"Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! TELL ME!!!!!!!!" You scream at him

"Ugh fine!" He concedes

"I'm not putting the pillow down this time so you better not be lying" you glare at him

"We are going...on...a...hike-" he gets cut off by you scrambling to stand trying to run away

"No! I don't wanna go on a hike! You want me to walk miles and miles for no reason?! It's not even like Disneyland or something where you at least have fun!! I was hoping you wanted to go see a movie or something! No! No! No! Absolutely not!! Let go of me!" You yell at him as he grabs you by the waist and picks you up

"Come on! It'll be fun!" He says dragging you towards the door

"No! How would it be fun?! There are bugs and snakes and spiders and who knows what else!" You complain trying to hold onto things so he can't make you leave

"Just like Annabeth...afraid of a little spider" he says crawling his fingers on your neck spider-like (probably not a word but whatever 🤷‍♀️)

"I HATE YOU!! STOP IT!! YOU ARE NOT TAKING ME ON A HIKE!! I WILL BE MISERABLE!! AND IF IM MISERABLE I'LL MAKE YOU MISERABLE!!"

"Nope it'll be fun!" He says leaving the hotel room and grabbing a backpack and walking out of the hotel suite

As he was carrying you through the hallway basically kicking and screaming you got several weirded out looks from the other guests

"I promise I'm not kidnapping her. Trust me if I were to take someone it wouldn't be this little brat" he jokes as you just look at him offended

"He lies! He's kidnapping me! Taking me on a hike! Someone save me!" You whine and reach your arms out trying to grab anything to hold so he can't drag you

"Stop it. You'll have fun. Trust me." He says pulling your hands off of the corner of the wall

"I don't trust you" you glare at him

"Oh well...I'll live" he shrugs

He shoves you into the Uber and you just glare at him as he rolls his eyes

"I hate you" you glare

"You love me" he smirks

"Whatever" you roll your eyes and punch him

—

You get to the trail. It was a giant mountain and when I say giant I mean GIANT!

Walker opens the door and gets out of the car

"Sir please drive as fast as you can back to the hotel!" You yell at the driver

"I'm sorry Miss, Mr. scobell has told me to not listen to you" the driver chuckled as you shoot Walker a glare

You get out of the car, slam the door and scowl into the distance.

"Are you excited?" Walker squints from the sun

"No" you reply

"Come on smile!" He asks

"No" you reply again

"Please?" He says making funny faces

You couldn't help but giggle

"Ha! You smiled!" He gloats

"Only because you look like an idiot!" You reply

He smiles and hold your hand as you start to walk up the path

"You know I really hate you for making me do this" you tell him

"What if we died and those were your last words to me" he says faking offense

"Then I would really hate you for bringing me on this hike to die" you roll your eyes

—

You were walking for about an hour at this point. Several fans recognized you and you took picture with them and even walked with a few for a little while! You hated to admit it but you were actually having fun!

"See I told you! You're having fun!" Walker smirks

"What makes you think that?" You roll your eyes

"Well if you weren't having fun you would be yelling at me right now" walker laughs

"You're an idiot" you scoff

"Admit it! You're having fun" you smiles

"No" the glare

"Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it. Admit it." He says over and over again

"FINE! I admit I'm not that miserable! But then again it's only been like an hour" you say

"YES! FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE I WAS RIGHHT AND YOU WERE WRONG!! HOW DOES IT FEEL?" He gloats throwing his fists in the air in victory

"Like I'm a seaweed brain" you roll your eyes

—

You have been walking for about 4 hours now. The sun is blistering! It has to be at least 80 degrees if not more! And it was like 7pm at this point!

*the following is said in a mocking voice*

"Let's go on a hike it'll be fun. You'll just die of a sunburn and probably die from the heat! So much fun!" You complain

"Oh shut up! You're fine!" He rolls his eyes

You look to your left and see the same carving in a rock you saw an hour ago.

"Uh Walker...are we going in circles?" You ask a little worried

"Uh why do you say that?" He says fiddling with his phone

"Because that rock has the same "Star Wars rules" carving on it" you reply

He doesn't say anything he just keeps looking at his phone

Your jaw drops when you realize what's happening

"WALKER ARE WE LOST?!" You yell at him

No reply

"WALKER!" You yell again

You stanch his phone away so he looks at you

"WALKER WILLIAM SCOBELL ARE WE LOST ON THIS MOUNTAIN?!" You lecture him

"Uhhhh maybe?" He replies

"And you didn't bother to tell me?!" You scream

"I didn't want you to be mad" he shrugs

"You didn't want me to be- ugh how long have we been lost?!" You ask

He mumbles something

"What?" You ask

"3 hours" he says quietly

You just stand there too stunned to speak and he takes the phone back

"WE. HAVE. BEEN. LOST. FOR. THREE. HOURS. AND. YOU. DIDN'T. THINK. TO. TELL. ME?!?!?!" You scream at him

"Well in my defense I didn't want you to destroy my hearing with your yelling" he rolls his eyes

You just give him a death glare and open your phone for directions

"Ha great no service!" You whine turning off your phone

"Don't worry! I'll get us out of here. Just calm down." he reassures you

"Mr. Scobell we have been lost three quarters of the time we have been here. We have not even seen the so called "breathtaking view" and the sun is already starting to go down! It's roasting out here and besides that how much food and water do we have left?" You ask

He looks in his backpack and looks back up at you

"Uhm we've got 3 cheerios and a quarter bottle of water" he says sheepishly

"Huh so this is how I'm gonna die" you sit down thinking

"I thought I would have children. I thought I would at least live to 80 years old BUT THEN YOU HAPPENED!" You put your head in your hands

Walker starting to feel bad sits next to you

"It'll be okay y/n. I'm so sorry. But I promise I won't let anything bad happen to you okay?" He hugs you

"But what about you?" You kiss him

"I'll be fine don't worry" he reassures you

You hear coyotes howling and you hear the animals starting to come out for dusk

You hear something rustling in the bushes...

A/n: I AM SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SORRY!! I HAVE HAD MAJOR WRITERS BLOCK AND LIKE NO MOTIVATION!! IM SOOOOOO SORRY!!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU ALL SOOOOOOO MUCH!! IM SO SORRY!! ALSO I'M SO SORRY IF THERE ARE MISTAKES OR THE WRITING IS TERRIBLE!! I'M RUSTY😭💔YOURE ALL AMAZING!! AGAIN IM SO SORRY💔

Tags 🏷️ @mireyaaaaaaaaaa @lukey-pookie-hughes43 @yeeteddemigod @walker-scobell-obsessed @callsignwidow @froggyflower264 @owlscanread25

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

I finally read again today, chapters 34-39 this time

Usually I read these books in german while on the bus but today I forgot my book, but fortunately, I had some time to go to the library and they had it, but only in english. And since I was sitting at a table with my phone, I was able to take notes live as I read, and I'd like to share those with you rather than doing what I usually do and trying to sum up all of my thoughts a few hours later

Chapter 35:

the fact that NO ONE in the summer court recognized Feyre is absolutely ridiculous, it really is like her accomplishments from the first just vanished, no wonder so many people recommend just skipping ahead to MAF i bet that would make the reading experience wayyyyy less frustrating

shes cursing herself from being so out of shape despite Cassian's 'lessons' and that reminds me, at the start of ACOMAF her internal monologue and other characters kept remarking on how thin and frail she had become and I dont think its come up since she started staying at the NC permanently, great mental health rep girlie

"I let instinct, no doubt granted from Rhys, guide me forward." Come onnnnnnnn, can Feyre not be cool on her own for one (1) moment

"Amarathan did not break that kindness [from before UTM]." no, but Rhys sure did

Once again, Feyre is horrified at her violating Tarquin's mind, rightfully so, and yet she continues to hang out with His Majesty, The King of Violating Minds

Rhys tells Feyre that she "thinks like an Illyrian", which is very strange to me given that Illyrian women are literally not allowed to do anything other than housework and Illyrian men are seemingly all violent misogynists whom Rhys hates

Chapter 36:

"I'd bet they wouldn't have handed over that book" but you didnt ask them though??? Like, they couldve just told Tarquin about their plans, he seems reasonable enough, even if Cresseida and Varian dont agree, he as high lord should be able to override their opinions easily and if that doesnt work out THEN you can go ahead and steal it. Sure, maybe they wouldve trippled security and/or thrown them out of the SC but that should hardly be an obstacle for The Most Powerful Highlord In The History Of Prythian and his eldritch girl best friend

Okay, so Rhysand did pack illyrian leathers for her which is nice, but still, I see no reason why Feyre had to wear dresses for this (and be okay with wearkng dresses when she absolutely wasnt at the start of ACOMAF) when the NC clearly has more feminine fashion involving pants

Theres lead in this vaguely medieval fantasy world?? And theyve had for like centuries?? That seems weird to me I'll have to look into that i think

Okay, so Feyre shapeshifted into Tarquin and she says that she didnt let any part of herself that wasnt Tarquin shine through while she opened the books locks, but those shapeshifting powers are Tamlin's though. That has some very interesting implications but tbh idk if I trust sjm to have thought about it that much

"I am summer; I am sea and sun and green things" that just sounds kinda silly, also I feel like it shouldve been "I am sea and sun and golden sand" given the beach vibes that the Summer Court has

Chapter 37:

note to self: lookup what Leshon Hakodesh is exactly bc theres no way its not some random mythological term that sjm is just dropping into her world [edit: its just the jewish term for 'the Holy Tongue', im not gonna question the implications of that any more than im gonna question the existence of Nyx as a minor goddess or something in this world]

Rhysand doesnt tells anyone jackshit and Cassian is ready to stab Amren if she dares go against him, why are these jokers friends again?

Chapter 38:

granted, its been a while since I read this book and my memory isnt the best, but why exactly does Rhysand need to keep the 'why' of their mission secret? wasnt their mission just to find the cauldron before Hybern does and prevent a war with prythian and the human world?? I guess maybe Rhys doesnt wanna reveal his secret goodness or whatever, but he couldve just had Feyre act as some kind of emissary to the rest of Prythian, like, just have her pretend this is information she found out by herself at the Night Court and have her relay it to the other courts, Feyre has saved them before they have no reason not to listen to her

"'I think Tarquin wanted to be my friend.'" question, is Tarquin/Rhys a thing? Obviously Rhys doesnt deserve Tarquin but idk, there could be something there I think. they have some nice aesthetic contrasts

why would Feyre say stuff like "mother above" when thats not a deity she believed in for most of her life? Like, I already talked about how Feyre clearly had the impulse to pray in ACOTAR she just didnt do it because the names of the mortal gods have been long forgotten, but idk, I feel like her starting to embrace fae religion warrants more exploration. and fae religion in general warrants more exploration tbh

"'Its not the end of the world if you [make a mistake] every now and then'" hello??? Feyre, he made you steal from a man that has been nothing but kind to you for no reason and now theres a bounty on your heads!! And lets not forget that Rhys, Amren and Feyre are all highranking politicians in the night court, youre lucky the SC is too occupied with rebuilding itself to declare war on your asses

I keep saying this, its so infuriating how well Feyre and Rhysand already get along when theyve spent like, 2 or maybe 3 months if Im being very generous, worth of time together aside from their time UTM

god Feysand flirting is the most straight bullshit to ever straight bullshit I feel like im gonna die

Shes thinking about buying RED "lacy things" when that was meant to be a trigger for her, did no one edit this

"a sensual male voice chuckled with midnight laughter" istg the prose is so much worse in english

Feyre having to make herself focus to not look at Rhysand dick after he just had a horrible nightmare has the same energy as Bryce Crescent City thinking about how hot and muscular Hunt is while he just completely shut down because he had to kill someone

"The hole in my chest that was slowly starting to heal over" can you BE more unsubtle

Chapter 39:

Rhysand tattooing the symbol of the nightcourt onto both his knees because he "will bow for no one and nothing but his crown" is actually so funny, i wish he did more cringefail bullshit like that

I think out of all the inner circle relationships, I like Amren and Feyre the best so far and I absolutely do not believe that Cassian cares about Amren at all, much less sees her as family, that guy would kill her in a heartbeat if he could

forgive my aromanticness, but I really dont like the thing that Amren and Varian have going on, cant there be ONE character that doesnt have some stupid romance subplot in this world

Oh, so Mor telling Feyre very little of any specific plans they have is fine, but if someone from the spring court does it theyre the worst person ever

"[Cassian told me] that my family was full of bossy, know-it-all females" oh but hes sooooo much better than all those other illyrians who are all sexist brutes

Why are Beron and Helion the only ones with a last name

"[Strolling through Velaris with Mor] was perhaps my favorite, and the female certainly excelled at finding ways to spend money" are you fucking kidding me, are there actually people who consider a book with this kind of blatant 'women b shopping' bullshit to be feminist?

"'I wanted to protect my people, change the perceptions of the Illyrians, and eliminate the corruption that plagued the land'" wow Rhys and youve done such a good job at all of those things in the 500 years youve been on the throne

"[Tamlin] resented being High Lord — and maybe... maybe that was part of why the court had become what it was" ???? girlie what are you talking about, the spring court is fine right now it doesnt get destroyed until ACOWAR. which is also you fault

so Feyre is once again wearing a chiffon gown for political reasons when she could very well be wearing pants and shes completely fine with that. great

And Mor is wearing red and Feyre is completely unbothered by it, why give her a trigger like that if it just stops mattering the second shes out of the spring court

[rigelmejo]

some basic language learning thoughts (based on some common questions i see on reddit forums). as usual, if you don't like the suggestion, feel free to ignore and throw it out! what works best for you will be what works best for you - everyone is different. at the end of the day, if you continue studying (hours add up), study some new stuff (expand your knowledge), and practice/review some stuff you've studied (improve comprehension of what you know), then you'll improve. You can achieve that in a ton of different ways, and any way which motivates you to keep doing it is great.

What's the easiest language to learn? My thought on this question is... it doesn't matter as much as it might feel like it does. If any language is going to take hundreds or thousands of hours of study, you will probably want to have goals that motivate you to study for THAT long, for years. If Danish 'takes less hours to learn' than Thai, but you watch Thai shows everyday and follow thai webnovel writers and twitter, and don't have much interest in anything Danish (and no friends that speak the language), then Thai is going to be 'easier' because you have more reasons to USE it. If Spanish and French seem to take a similar amount of hours to learn, but you're planning to go to school in a French speaking country and get a job there? Well you have a more pressing Need to learn French, that will hopefully help motivate you. The 'easiest' language to learn is the language you have REASONS to learn. The language you will use, and keep using. If you have no pressing reason to learn any language, but want to learn a language? Find reasons. Make goals that require the language.

(Here's one from me - I wanted to learn Japanese, in theory I can mostly do anything I want by just reading/watching/playing translations, however I am the kind of person that really enjoys reading originals in their original form... so that's motivating. My recent kick to study more? A show I want to watch is untranslated, so I better get to studying so I can still watch it.) Your goal can be anything from: I want to visit X, I want to talk to X friend/family better, I want to blog in multiple languages, I want to watch untranslated media, I want to sing my favorite musicians songs easier, I want to work in a country that speaks it, I want access to more recipes in X language, I am into history and want to read a history book from X time period in X language, I want to play a video game before localization, really the sky is the limit on goals you can set. Your goals, and how much you want them, and how often you do the sub-goals (so if reading untranslated cnovels by an author you love is your goal, maybe along the way you read easier webnovels to motivate you and find more writers you like), is going to push you to keep studying. Even if your goal is 'pass language B2 test' if it has a deadline, and it's a goal connected to other goals (like going to work in a country with the language, translating work, writing better), that will keep you motivated. Motivation is what will make a language 'easier.' If you can't find the motivation, even the languages which should take the 'least amount of time' will feel hard.

All that said, I am now about to contradict myself. While I really think motivation is the biggest factor in if you'll keep studying and keep learning... there are languages which due to their similarity to languages you already know, will take less Total Study Hours to make progress. As an English speaker, it only took me 6 months of very lazy unorganized studying (half hour most days) to be able to start reading non-fiction French with only a handful of word lookups per page. A lot of that was because French (especially science words and proper nouns like places) has so many cognates with English. I basically 'had' thousands of words of French I already knew, just because I knew English. It took about a year to read fiction books in French only looking up a handful of words per page, for 'general main idea' comprehension. When studying Chinese, it took me also about 12 months to read fiction, look up a handful of words, and understand the 'general main idea.' But I was studying 2 hours a day. So I studied around 182.5 hours to read French fiction with word lookups, and 730 hours to read Chinese fiction with word lookups. And the Chinese also took longer to learn to read with NO word lookups, since there was no english-cognate carryover to sound-out and over rely on like with French. (Although at a wonderful certain point, you know enough Chinese hanzi that new words are built of mostly hanzi you know, and you can use that to guess the gist of a LOT of new words when extensively reading with no word lookups - that happened for me at about 2 years). My point is: Chinese DOES take more hours of study to reach language skill milestones as an english speaker, compared to French! It took me the same amount of months, because I studied Chinese more hours per day (to make up the difference - and I had a better study plan with Chinese). But if you are a total beginner, and unmotivated and KNOW you will study maybe 1 hour per day and probably not more, then learning a language that is more similar to one you already know WILL take less study hours total to reach skill milestones. And that will hopefully be motivating.

(Another example: I spent 3 months of 1-2 hours a day studying Spanish, and can read Spanish nonfiction - thanks to the similarities to French and English. I can read fiction too but it requires word lookups. Japanese, due to kanji, also got 'easier' to read once I had learned more Chinese hanzi. So if your goals include learning languages with some similarities, then once you learn some of those similarities it will make future learning 'faster.')

I spent a month once studying Esperanto (a constructed language). Do I ever use Esperanto? No. Did I find the experience helpful? Yes. Because Esperanto is designed to be fairly easy for european language native speakers, has no exceptions, it had 1. a lot of similar-words to english so I could practice 'guessing similar words' (a skill I'd use a lot with French and Spanish later), 2. practice guessing what word endings mean grammatically (since Esperanto has no exceptions the grammar patterns are much more obvious than say grammar patterns in French). 3. Practice recognizing spelling to sound connections. Those 3 skills are useful in learning any language, but natural languages will have more exceptions to the patterns.

After spending a month on Esperanto, I saw HUGE progress after studying a few hundred words, noticed a huge amount of grammar patterns and how to notice them, and just generally got the experience of 'this is what skill milestones feel like.' Later, when studying French, I used that experience to recognize French word endings and what they tend to indicate, word functions, patterns in pronunciation, guessing with cognates/similar words, and I knew what the first 'milestones' I was aiming for would be. In a similar pattern: French milestones took me a few months each to hit, so when I studied Chinese later and it was taking 2-3 times as much study time... I knew which milestone to expect myself to 'work toward' and achieve next, and knew what making progress should feel like (even if it felt like it was moving slower) so I didn't give up. I was aware that Chinese language skill milestones might 'take more hours' so I didn't panic when it was taking me almost a year of reading graded readers in Chinese to move on to simple webnovels, whereas in French I'd only been reading graded readers for half a year before I felt ready to move on. I knew the general process, because I'd done it before in a shorter timespan with French, with Esperanto.

Is Esperanto useful to you? Only you know that. I personally did not find it useful in general for me, and didn't continue to study it. But it did teach me 'how' to study a language, what progress to monitor, and gave me the confidence that I was capable of learning.

If you really feel you're incapable of learning any skill in a new language, then spending some time on a language more similar to what you already know (if possible - a language you have motivating goals with), may help you see you are capable and can learn. An addition to this: spend a LOT of hours studying as a beginner, if lack of progress demotivates you. Once you push past the beginner stage, you'll be able to do goal-related things in the language you study and that will keep you motivated. But in the beginning, progress feels slow and you feel very confused. So the more upfront studying you do, the quicker you will push through that hard-to-motivate stage.

Is learning a language that is more similar to ones you know going to take less hours of study? Probably. But either way, motivation over hundreds or thousands of hours, for years, is going to be needed. So the goals you wish to achieve will be more important in your success, rather than how many 'hours' it will take.

What do you do if you get demotivated that it's taking SO LONG to hit the next language skill milestone? Fair concern. I got demotivated OFTEN by how much longer it took to reach milestones in Japanese compared to in French. First: try to keep perspective. It's normal for it to take more hours to understand certain things, if the language is not very similar to ones you know. You have to build a bigger foundation of understanding for lots of totally new stuff. Second: you're going to hate me but I'd suggest upping the study hours per day (or week). Studying Chinese RARELY demotivated me, despite it taking more actual hours of study to hit milestones compared to French, and why? Because I increased my study time for Chinese so I was still REACHING milestones in a reasonable amount of months (very similar to the months it took to hit French milestones). 2 hours a day of Chinese study was more than 1/2 an hour of French study, but 2 hours was doable. And it meant I still got to watch shows and read within a few months, and watch/read without looking many words up (depending on difficulty) by the end of year 1. Once you are doing the goals or sub-goals you have, it becomes so much easier to stay motivated. Once I could watch cdramas before they got translated, or read any novel I wanted using Pleco or Readibu to help? It was very easy to stay motivated and do things I WANTED to do in chinese. From there it was just practice/learn using activities I had the goal of doing.

Finally, similar to the suggestions above, if you find yourself in a motivation rut what can you do? I personally try to do 'study sprints' when I'm getting demotivated and need to see significant progress. What I do is pick a small goal, then spend 1-2 months studying as much as I can to improve in that goal. Suggestions: A beginner may make the goal to study the alphabet, a pronunciation guide, and 300 common words and see how far they get by the end of the month. (If at the end of the month the pronunciation is easier to hear and alphabet is easier to read then they succeeded - and they likely will). Another beginner may make the goal to read graded readers 1 hour per day or more all month and see how much they can read. (If the first graded reader they read is easier to read at the conclusion of the month, such as less unknown words or faster reading speed, then they succeeded - and they likely will see progress). A beginner/intermediate learner into flashcards might try to study as many flashcards in Anki as they can for a month. An intermediate learner may pick an audiobook and try to listen to AS MANY chapters as they can in a month, or may pick a novel and look up every unknown word while reading for 1 hour per day or more, until the end of the month. The idea is to pick a goal where you KNOW you're current skill level, work HARD on studying to improve that skill for a month, and then try to do the skill again and see how much progress you've made. I find it very motivating. It can take months to broadly notice progress milestones like managing to improve in your overall reading skill to tackle more difficult novels. But it can take just A MONTH to learn a few hundred new words and make the current novel you're reading become much EASIER to read, or the current show you're watching to become much EASIER to follow, or for the listening skills you're struggling with to become much more instant and reliable.

Example: one of my most recent sprints was to improve my Chinese listening skills. So for a month, I listened to audio flashcards of chinese-english sentences audio, and audiobook chapters (re-listening to each chapter a few times). I saw progress in 1. The audiobook got easier to understand over time, and 2. I tried watching a cdrama I've watched before, only this time I watched it without any subtitles, and it is now much easier to quickly comprehend and follow the lines (even without chinese subs). A sprint I did after a 2 year funk with minimal japanese progress was to cram study 2000 words in memrise Nukemarine's LLJ decks (took 3 months) then try to play a japanese video game I'd tried playing before the sprint. Another japanese sprint I did was listen to japaneseaudiolessons.com free lessons for a month, to work on improving my listening comprehension and recognition of word-order faster, and it did really help with seeing an improvement in those things.

As a beginner, I think the sprints can help with staying focused on small achieveable goals and seeing your progress (like reading daily, watching a show daily, studying X new words daily, going through a chapter of a grammar book weekly, etc). And then as you get farther and can actually do some of your sub-goals, can help with pushing yourself to some significant improvement in a particular area. (Like if you reached a sub goal of reading easy webnovels, it might be a month where you read a webnovel with more unique words that's 'harder' and look all unknown words up, and by the end of the month you see that medium-difficulty webnovels now feel as easy as the 'easy' ones did at the start of the month).

And then... if you study like me, which tends to be periods of a LOT of study followed by lulls where I might watch/read/listen to the language but not do much active study, then the sprint goal months tend to help cram in 100 hours of study every so often. So that you'll still (on average through the year) have studied 1-2+ hours a day. I do not focus well, and sprint goal months along with more relaxed months where I just watch/read/listen to stuff when I feel like it, is the only way I can get myself to study regularly. If you can consistently study daily, then sprint goal months can help you make Significant progress in a very specific area if some slow-progress area has been demotivating you. (And you can turn the sprint goals into challenges with friends, or tests to see what study methods work great for you versus bore you).

[luimagines]

Hello! So i have this idea of a Linksona of mine if you don't mind listening to it.

This Linksona title is The Hero of Freedom, he is actually a complete nobody wannabe bard before the whole adventure happen, so the Chain could also call him 'Bard/Musician'. He belongs in the downfall timeline and his Hyrule is kinda of a mess because Ganondorf is the current Ruler of his lifetime, having killed the royal family of Hyrule way before the spirit of the Hero could have reborn.

This Link of mine actually had a mother who was a priestess of Hylia, his mother still has hope in the Goddess even after years of suffering under Ganondorf rule and his severe punishments to those caught still worshiping the Goddess or having any type of rebellious behavior, Link mother managed to savage a Golden Harp thought to be the original Harp that Hylia used from the ashes of the old church where she prayed, she gave her son the name 'Link' because she wanted him to be as brave as the hero of Legend, Link mother would often play her harp to her son and sing to him and tell him stories about the heroes of the past, she always told him the importance of being kind and brave even in the most severe of circumstances, she wanted him to be able to feel hope even when none existed. Link mother ended up dying, killed by Ganondorf followers when Link was 13, she left him her harp and made him promise not to hate the people of Hyrule for their fear of the Demon King and to not let hate weight in his heart.

Link was pretty much alone after his mother death, he ended picking up his mom musical talent and played his harp and sang regularly, although he was sometimes getting thrown at him, he met Zelda at the age of 14 and his adventure started there.

Zelda is 19 in this timeline and is actually the leader of a rebellion against Ganondorf, she was saved still as a baby and was raised by Impa so she doesn't know about much about royalty life, but she knows to kill a man, so there's that, she is actually pretty no nonsense and is focused on battle tactics and fighting rather than magic, although she has the triforce of wisdom, she actually met Link when she was trying to shrug off one of Ganondorf guards, and he appeared out of nowhere and chucked a glass bottle at the guys face, the guard then attempted to kill Link and Zelda put a dagger to the guy's throat.

Zelda was pretty prepared to give Link the scolding of his life, but the racket they caused ended up catching the attention of more guards, and she ended up picking the kid like a sack of potatoes and fleeing the scene. She was not exactly happy that the 'Chucking a bottle at a guy two times my size is a good idea' kid is the fricking Hero reborn, actually the thought of having to train a 14 old to kill a freaking adult demon man makes her nauseous and start to curse the Goddesses to high heaven, she eventually relents and keeps a Hawkeye on Link in his journey to make sure 'everything goes according to plan' (She is actually worried, but doesn't want anyone to know).

I see Link and Zelda having a very much Big sister and Little brother relationship in this timeline, Link does lookup to Zelda and think she is the coolest person ever and Zelda thinks Link will be the reason she goes white early because the kid never stopped picking fights with things that are a hundred times his size.

That my Linksona, hope you found it interesting!

I really like this au! XD

Link is still Link no matter what and Zelda is ready to kick butt as always!

Would that make Impa the grandma or very tired aunt?

Poor Link though, destined to not have family. :(

[lacependragon]

Went ahead and restarted Stardew because of weird character/gender feelings. Decided to make a new dude.

This is Beck of Maverick Farms. 27, He/Him. Queer as folk (heh).

Beck is a very curious, knowledge driven guy who is fascinated by life cycles and nature and Science. He also loves mechanics and building. If you're looking for Beck, try around the forests and the animals, down in the mines, or out by the water. He's always looking to learn new things and adores the beauty in the world.

Beck never wanted to work for Joja and got trapped there trying to pay off student loans for a college degree he never finished, for a program he dropped out of, for a school he ultimately left. He still has those debts and is even more in debt now, because of how loans are bullshit.

With the opportunity to start fresh, Beck is going to take his earth sciences knowledge and desire to learn to be laid back and see what he can do in Stardew Valley.

His only plans are to care for animals, pay off his loans, adopt as many dogs as humanly possible, make some friends, and learn to relax.

Who knows, maybe he'll even fall in love and start a family!

His favourite gifts are Earth Crystal, Cheese Cauliflower, Strawberry Jelly, Ginger Ale, & Squid. He hates Joja Cola, Pepper Poppers, Coal, and Tuna. His favourite part of farming is the chickens.

He hates Joja and wants to burn it to the ground and rescue all of its employees. Maybe even Morris. If Morris will let him.

Yeah this is my new Stardew farmer. Enjoy. I hope you like him. You'll be hearing a LOT about him and his adventures.

Selected Modlist: (not comprehensive)

Bean's Pet Overhaul

Bigger Silo Size

Blue Eggs and Golden Mayo

Cornucopia More Crops/More Flowers

Darkroom Portrait Shop

Elle's Cuter Barn Animals, Cats, Coop Animals, Dogs, Horses, and Grass Replacement

Frog Friends

H&W Furniture Sets

Tractor Mod/Questable Tractor/Lily's Rustic Tractor Garage

Stardew Valley Expanded

Ridgeside Village

SD's Mushroom Dig Spot

The Geology Mod

Wyrd's Seasonal Mailbox

Bigger Backpack

Lookup Anything

CJB Cheats Menu

Distant Lands - Witch Swamp Overhaul

Dust Overhaul

Dynamic Night Time

Dynamic Reflections

Ferngill Fashion Festival

Grandpa's Tools

Grandpa's Farm

Happy Birthday

Horse Overhaul

Legacy Community Centre Bundles

Luuna Astray

Marry Morris

NPC Map Locations

Passable Crops

Ranching Tool Upgrades

Secret Woods Extra Area

Sit for Stamina Mod

The Last Smoluanu

Visible Fish

Wild Animals

Visit Mt. Vapius

Little Red Schoolhouse

[mjalti]

Hi mama... my husband and I have been together for almost 7 years and married for 4 years. We've been drinking pretty heavily all of our time together, but now that I'm pursuing my master's I want to limit/stop it. He says he wants to, too, but whenever I try to stop, he continues. He can't seek help bc he's military and can lose his clearance. I love him with all that I have. He's also my sole provider (I have medical issues which his insurance takes care of) but I'm having a really hard time between his drinking, constant stress of his work (as that's all he talks about when he drinks) and my classes. I don't know how to bring it up when he's sober because of late, he isn't... I'm worried I need to make a move that I'm not financially, emotionally or mentally ready for. I just started my 2-3 year program which he's paying for.

im gonna be real with you. you need a game plan. you dont have to make

the move right now, but you do need to eventually make it. i need you to open a very very secret account and honestly, start asking for an allowance for fun money [getting your nails done etc] or faking a school charge. Something where you can move money into that account. you need a game plan. Ask on reddit if any other military wives have been in this situation/lookup what they did. If you feel uncomfortable about lying for money [i get it!] you need to find a job you can do; like babysitting for some extra cash, or tutoring for your program that he does NOT know about.

i would buy more non-alcoholic drinks and bring them in while there are still alcoholic drinks present. I dont know your partners temperament but it definitely seems like they’re heading down a path that you may not be able to follow.

for right now, you need a game plan for the next 3 years. Find out what resources are available for your program for financing, in case you do need to leave. if you have someone you 100% trust, it’s time to start opening up a little bit about what is going on at home “he and i want to stop drinking!” at first. You need to have someone that, in the event of an emergency, you can go to to sleep.

this may seem drastic, but it’s better to have a plan in place and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

[frtools]

Januari update

Happy new years!

So this month I got a few more things working, though I did not really get everything done that I had planned for myself. Nonetheless a few things are worth mentioning, they are all related to the Discord bot so if you (used to) use that then you will like these updates!

My personal future got a lot more secure too, the job I have been working at offered me a permanent contract with a nice salary bump too. Stress levels have been low as a result! 💖

This post is a bit big, due to images and a lot of explaining text. To save reblogs from blasting people's dashboards there is a keep reading snip.

First of all, costs. This month the total cost was comparable to December, sitting at €8.51. As predicted, now that more stuff is being slowly re-added things like storage and database costs are going up. But really it is such an insignificant amount compared to the previous hosting solution this is essentially free.

Discord

So what has changed to the discord bot? Well, a lot of things really. I got announcements to work! But it isn't as straightforward as before, but I did my best to keep it as simple as possible. The biggest thing is that I moved server location. It was in Australia before (don't ask, I was tired) and now it is in EU West. It being hosted in Australia significantly increased the response time of the bot, but it is all nice and fast now!

Discord Announcements

I can go into a lot of detail but the gist of it is that the bot in its current iteration is not actually a bot that can read and send messages in channels. While it has the [✓ BOT] icon next to the name it isn't actually 'there'. Everything is handled through HTTP requests, almost no different from you browsing the internet. As such I had to get a bit creative in how the bot sends messages without someone interacting with the bot, as such let me introduce you to: Webhooks!

You might have heard of, or used, webhooks with another bot before. Or some website offers webhook service that you can hook into Discord. This is really no different. You supply the bot with a webhook through an interaction and from then onward I use that webhook to post messages to.

Through the use of the /config command you can set up the webhooks on your server, assuming you have the Administrator permission on your server. Due to Discord's own limitations, the config navigation is not as clean as I would like it to be, but it works.

You might notice that New Items is back as well, yay! Still needs some work though, but in the simplest sense it works. Filters will come soon™️.

Now we just had the Crystalline Gala event and oh man, the New Items announcer got put through its paces. You see webhooks have a big advantage over normal messages being send by bots; they can hold up to 10 embeds each. So I took full advantage of that.

The video below shows just 5 messages, of varying amounts of embeds!

Lookup

I've added a new feature to the /lookup command too, allowing you to influence the result of the preview of the item (when applicable). For example, if you use the id lookup feature and the item is for a specific breed or gender (like a skin) then the supplied parameters don't do anything. Or when the gene is for an ancient breed it will only take into account your gender parameter.

That's all for this month, I got nothing too broad planned for Februari besides polishing the things above. I am missing stuff like custom emojis in the webhooks, the color of the embed is always black, etc. Small stuff really. I might work a little bit on getting the website part up again, but as it will be entirely different from before and thus a complete rewrite I will not throw out any promises. I have some ideas on how I want to do it but that way is essentially entirely new to me.

Speaking of, this entire project was originally started to advance my own knowledge and experience in things that I did not have much experience in as a professional programmer and thus far I am still learning new things almost every time I open up my editor. I am having a blast with this hobby project! (especially now that I no longer pay an arm and a leg for hosting)

Do you have any ideas on what you would like to see next? Something you feel should be changed? Just throw out random ideas? Reblog or post a reply, or send me an anonymous ask if you prefer!

[yourimagines]

Heyyyyyy

i love you work and i had an idea. Imagine Drake bell taking you to disneyland for the day and y/n is so happy to see him so happy. And like its just about their day at disneyland, going on rides and eating everything they can. Like with everything going on drake wanted a day to be with his gf and show her his favourite place.

Anyways its just an idea but if you could write smth along the lines of it id love you :)

Of course, I love this idea!

Happiest place on earth

* English is not my first language I apologise

* Triggers: Fluff

Drake POV

This weekend was a special weekend, we both had finally some time off from work and wanted to spend some time together. So I planned a trip to Disneyland for us, surprising her a few days before we leave to Disneyland.

“Oh my god Drake…” she clasped her hands in front of her face as I told her what I was planning for us. “You like it?” She nodded and threw her arms around my shoulders, hugging me tightly. “Yes….i never been to Disneyland.” I snaked my arms around her waist and held her close to me as she started to kiss my neck. “You’re going to love it.” I said softly as I placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “Thank you.” “No thank you darling.”

The days after were a bit chaotic and nerve wrecking for her, she needed to pack her bags and plan everything. “You want to go out shopping?” I asked her as she was packing her suitcase. “I can’t, I still need to pack my suitcase.” She lookup from her suitcase, looking at me with wide eyes. “You can finish that up tonight, come let’s go shopping.” I stretch my hand out for her but she declined it. “No…I can’t Drake, I still need to pack and I need to plan some things for….” She was rambling, her mind was running wild. “Baby, I know but we really need some groceries and I thought you mind wanted some new clothes for this weekend.” Her eyes darted between me and her suitcase. “Okay but for not too long.”

Y/N POV

We finally arrived at our hotel and I was so excited to be here. “Let’s go to our room first.” He suggested as we got our room key. I nodded and hooked my arm around his. We both walked through the hotel till we found our room. “Ladies first.” He gently pushed the door open for me and let me go in first. The room was beautiful with all the Disney details. “Oh my….look at this.” I looked around the room in an awe. “You like this, baby?” He wrapped his arms around me from behind, leaning his head against my shoulder. “Yes, I love it.” I turned around and placed a small kiss on his lips. “Good to hear darling, you want to go to the park?” I nodded and he smiled at me. “Let’s go then.”

We both walked hand in hand through the park, enjoying our time off. “Let’s go in there.” I pointed at space mountain. “Okay. Lead the way.” He smiled softly as I guided us to the entrance of the ride. “I’m so excited, I really love it.” I admitted to him as we joined the waiting line. “I know, it’s cool right?” I nodded as he was smiling brightly. Looking all happy and relaxed, making me feel happy and relaxed too.

After that we went to his favourite spot to get some snacks. “This is one of my favourites.” He handed me over a snack and a drink. “Thank you.” We both sat in silence as we were watching some people that were passing by. “You like it?” I nodded as I had my mouth full. “Good, shall we go to the next ride, perhaps the haunted mansion?” I nodded and stood up, he immediately wrapped his arms around me. “You ready?” “I’m ready.”

The whole day went smooth, we did all the rides we wanted, got some food and Drake showed me his favourite spots. “We should go back, relax a bit and then go back for the fireworks.” He moved his arm around to my shoulder and smiled at me as we both walked back to our hotel room. “We have one hour then we need to head back.” He checked his phone and quickly snapped a picture of me. “Beautiful.”

Drake POV

We relax a bit in our hotel room before heading back to watch the fireworks. “Let’s go over there.” I pointed at an empty spot. She grabbed my hand and held it tightly as I walked us through the crowd. “Perfect, do you want something to eat?” I stopped walking as I found the perfect spot to watch the fireworks. “Yes that would be nice.” I quickly looked at the time and saw I had some time left to get us some snacks. “Okay, I’ll be right back then, stay here.” She nodded and I walked back through the crowd to get us something to eat.

She was making some pictures of the castle as I walked back with some snacks and drinks. “Here you go my love.” She turned around and smiled at me. I handed her some snacks over and took a bite from one of the treats that I had left in my hand. “How long?” “10 minutes.”

After 15 minutes the show was about to start. She was standing in front of me, standing close to me as the night became a little bit chilly. I quickly pulled my jacket off and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Thank you.” She looked back at me with a smile on her face. “No problem.” I gave her a kiss and rubbed softly her shoulders. She looked back at the castle as the music started to play. I rested my head on her shoulder, holding her close to me as the show began.

We both walked hand in hand to our hotel room, she was rambling about the fireworks. “That was so beautiful and the way they used the lights…just wow.” She had a huge smile on her face. “You had a good time today?” She immediately nodded. “Yes! I loved it.” She looked so happy and relaxed, making me feel lucky to have her as my girlfriend.

Y/N POV

We were laying together in bed, my head was resting on his chest as he had his arm wrapped around my shoulder. We were both looking at his phone, looking through the pictures. “Aww that one is cute.” I pointed at a picture of us together with Pooh. He gently gave me a kiss on my head and swiped further through the pictures. “What do you want to do tomorrow?” I asked him while looking at his phone. “I have a reservation for us for dinner tomorrow, but for the rest I haven’t planned anything yet.”

I carefully turned around and looked up at him, feeling the urge to say to him that I love him, that I’m feeling a lot of emotions right now and that he’s the one for me. “I love you.” My voice trembled as tears started to form in my eyes. He moved his hand to my face, caressing me softly. “I love you so much baby.” His eyes became glossy as well. “You make me so happy.” His fingers traveled over my face. “You make me happy too Drake.” He smiled and a few tears rolled down his face. “Ugh I hate crying.” I wiped away his tears as mine started to fall down. “Me too.” I said with a laugh as I pecked his lips. “I love you baby.” “I love you too Drake.”

[new-components]

su review

so I read the first entry in su, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Toki Pona Edition by Sonja Lang. i have many positive thoughts about it

my perspective of the book is coming from someone who would consider itself roughly a beginner-intermediate toki pona-knower, and someone who had very little knowledge of the original story going in.

the book is very clearly an abridged version of the story (and paraphrasing jan Sonja, super-fans of the original Oz might be a bit disappointed at cut ideas), but it didn't feel like a dry synopsis. i found it easy and enjoyable to get into the story, and this was helped a lot by the wonderful illustrations by Evan Dahm! the book is also fully bilingual in toki pona written in sitelen pona, and a literal translation of that back into English (partially to help beginners, partially because of publication restrictions). i found myself occasionally using the english back-translations to make sure i was on the right track understanding things, especially as it was the longest toki pona text i had read up to this point. perfect for me- but absolute beginners will likely struggle.

it's worth noting that jan Sonja has stated that "su" refers to a series of books that jan Sonja plans on writing- with the wizard of oz being the first entry in that series. i look forward to finding out what the next entries she writes are!

kon toki:

I found the writing style fun to read. very deliberately matter of fact/terse as a lot of toki pona writing is in my experience- but it didn't shy away from clever wordplay, evocative descriptions, and emotional writing. "waso laso kin li pana e sike mama laso" made me smile and tense moments had a degree of grave weight and the writing reflected that. a simple "pakala" can be devastating. jan Sonja is a clever writer, and is very proficient with the language, and it shines through in the book.

as for how well it represents the original story- i can't say as i'm not very familiar with it! everything I knew about Oz was in there but that was mostly "there is a metal guy and Dorothy and Kansas and a green city". the illustrations by Evan Dahm really brought the book to life and helped me have confidence that I was understanding the words, giving context to them.

nasin sitelen:

the formatting of the sitelen pona text was a delight to read and i think is a model that should be considered by all tokiponists writing in sitelen pona. there are no special punctuation symbols and sentences are broken by line breaks. when a subject has multiple li predicates, the li phrases are often indented to be in line with each other to break up the text and make it clear they're applying to the same subject. there is no use of compound glyphs making it easy to understand. name cartouches are written with one glyph per letter (which is to say, sitelen kalama is not used), which makes names long but also means there was ample opportunity to make the symbols fit each character, group, and place. Dorothy's (jan Towasi) cartouche for example is "tomo olin wile alasa suwi ijo", which i feel fits her character and narrative very well! names are abbreviated to the first letter after their first use in a chapter.

as for uncommon words/glyphs, there are a few! majuna, lanpan, namako, and one other i can think of but don't want to spoil make appearances. the glyph for majuna was one i was unfamiliar with but i do like it! also, a quad-luka variant of mute for use in the information page for writing "2024" using nasin nanpa pona. one neat nasin was using two glyphs for sewi: a secular variant that is similar to the other positional words for where it is meaning "up" or "above", and the pu variant for a mention of a divine/holy thing.

beginners may find these rarer words and alternate glyphs slightly challenging- but i think the back-translation will help a lot in identifying any unfamiliar words. jan Sonja is also making/made a sitelen pona lookup page which, while i've seen similar materials already, is notable in the context of su because it uses all the same glyphs as su (or at least in Oz.) i half-expected something like this to exist as an appendix in the book proper, but i didn't miss it too much, most books don't have a dictionary in the back after all!

pini:

all in all i highly recommend the book to toki pona learners who are past the absolute beginner level and are looking for an actual Thing to read. absolute beginners will likely struggle to understand it as it is not a reference of the language itself, unlike pu or ku, especially if they took the approach of learning the language as written in sitelen Lasina first and learning sitelen pona later.

still, out of the three jan Sonja books i think it is probably the most valuable to learning. there are many guides to toki pona vocabulary and grammar out there, some of which i would argue are probably more up-to-date and comprehensive than pu (that's not to say that pu isn't useful, but it isn't essential to learning the language in a way that maybe it once was) and ku, while a good reference for the semantic space of words and figuring out translation, does not have any full examples of written toki pona and so its use learning practical toki pona as it is written and spoken is somewhat limited.

su, so far, is a great jumping point after learning the basics of toki pona and getting to read actual story written in it and learning through that. full stories written in toki pona, while not unheard of, are pretty scarce, doubly so stories by proficient storytellers, translators, and toki pona speakers, and so su is a very welcome addition to the bibliography. i am excited to see what jan Sonja makes next!

i give the wizard of oz: toki pona edition a "pona a!"

[fruityyamenrunner]

The mathematics of astrology are very simple! You shouldn't become an astrologer because it's nonsense, not because the maths is difficult.

There is approximately one hard part, which is calculating ephemerides and this is is a genuinely occult practice.

The best ephemerides available are produced by the JPL:

These have to be so precise because NASA et al are in the business of actually sending vehicles to these planets, where a difference in a fraction of one arcminute of location is the difference between inserting into the planned orbit and going off on a hyperbolic orbit into nowhere.

Astrology requires nothing so close as this -- in practice if you get the location of a planet in the sky to within the nearest few degrees you have everything you need. There is an inherent fudge factor in all astrological planetary locations called an "orb" which varies from about 10° to 1° for usual purposes.

The most precise measurement I am aware of in common astrological use (i.e. not absolute theorywanking where they use tight orbs if only to prevent hundreds of cases of these ultra special cases coming up in every chart) is the concept of "cazimi": if a planet is within 15° of the sun it usually loses a lot of its power UNLESS it is "in cazimi", which is either within 1° or according to some authories, within 20' or so - i.e. a third of a degree.

And an ephemeris is just a proxy for looking at the sky and seeing where things are. In practice there are about two or three sources of printed ephemerides everyone used before computers depending on what century or country they were in, and now I think everyone uses either some JPL derived stuff, or

The ephemeris is library. If you had to be able to calculate an ephemeris de novo to be an astrologer there would be essentially no astrologers.

The other moderately difficult bit of mathematics is calculating house boundaries. These are much simpler to calculate, but still annoying enough that astrologers use lookup tables or computers.

The rest is linear interpolation and transforms.

[ajcgames]

A little output

I spent my lunch programming rather than eating, which is very typical of me when I get deeply involved in a project. I must make sure I don't fall into that obsession trap again, which has caused many burnouts in the past! 😅

My current task was to get the new generation machine to spit items out onto a connected belt. This was mostly straightforward, though it was a little tricky getting my head around supporting rotation.

Ultimately it came down to making things simple. Machines can either have an input or an output, or both. Since the side with which the machine accepts either inputs and outputs is defined at the prefab level (i.e. it's fixed based on what I set the model to), I just had to write some code to shift those input/output 'sides' depending on which of the 4 possible directions the model was placed in.

As far as handling exactly where the machine should look for an input / output belt, I kinda cheated a bit on this one.

The reason this was a little more complex is because machines can have a footprint of more than just 1x1, they can be 2x2 as well. A 2x2 machine will have a inputs / outputs on specific grid positions around its outside perimeter. How do I allow for this whilst enabling rotation of the placed object?

This. This is my cheat.

The little blob in the above image is an object that represents which grid position I want the machine to look for a belt (specifically an output belt). Because this blob is a child object of the machine, when the machine rotates - so the blob does too. At runtime, when I configure the machine, I can simply read the real-world position of the blob to get its grid coordinates. Neat!

It's easier to see top-down here:

The machine lives at grid position [6,4] and the blob lives inside the machine object at position [1,0]. Translated to absolute world position the blob lives at [7,4] - exactly where I need to be checking for belts!

I'm sure there are much better ways of doing this, but this was a pretty straightforward solution that only requires a tiny amount of preprocessing when the object is first placed, after which no additional calculation is needed.

With the positioning and belt-lookup code added, it was just a case of writing up a short Machine class, from which I derived a special 'InputMachine' class that only spits out items of a specific type.

The result you can see below!

Where is this all leading?

I suppose it's a good a time as any to review my future plans for these developments. What good are little prototypes without some larger goal in mind?

In one of my earliest posts I details the kind of game I'm hoping to make. Mechanically it's not super complicated, but it required figuring out some of the technical stuff I've been showing in recent posts - namely conveyor belts and moving items around.

I'm hoping to create a game that fits in the automation / factory genre. You'll be playing the role of someone setting up an automated factory that has been deposited and unpacked on a remote asteroid. You place down drills (inputs) that dig and spit out raw materials into your factory, and you move these around and process them in various machines in the name of science!

As I said this isn't the most complex of concepts. From a programming complexity point of view some of the legwork has already done (problem solving belts, specifically). There are areas that still need consideration, but looking over what's left to come I'm quietly confident it falls within my skill set to execute.

A cut down the middle

I expect anybody familiar with game development is aware of the term 'vertical slice'. It refers to the practice of developing a small segment of a product, but to a very polished state that could be considered represetative of its final form.

You see this a lot in game development. Particularly at conferences and exhibitions where publishers want to whip up excitement about games that could be years away from release. But there should be some delineation between a vertical slice for a trailer, and a playable vertical slice. I'm aiming for the latter.

In order to decide how to put something like that together, I need a broader understanding of the scope of the game. A vertical slice should demonstrate all the key concepts in the game, but leaving room to expand those ideas later without changing the core experience too much. It doesn't have to look like the final game either, though I would like to put some effort in there where possible.

I'll probably end this post here for now, but I'll probably detail out the main efforts I'm likely to be aiming for in order to reach this vertical slice. I will, of course, continue posting updates when I can with more details about the game's development.

And if you read this far and found some small measure of interest in here, thanks for your time and have yourself a great day! 😊