#specifically put a link because i want people to buy this!!

[odd-drive]

2004 CASIO DBC-32 PINK CALCULATOR MULTILINGUAL DATA BANK VINTAGE DIGITAL WATCH

[the-witchhunter]

You know, if Spider Punk gets people interested in punk, good. We all have to start somewhere and Hobie is a damn good representation. If he is what makes a person go “hey, this seems cool, I should check it out.” good. That’s one more person interested in punk and wanting to get into it. 

That being said, if you are new to punk(hi baby punks!) some things to keep in mind

1. Punk philosophy is largely anti-authoritarian. Individual and even punk communities differ on specifics, and some are more political than others, but the core themes tend to be resisting those who would control and oppress us, and supporting and including people in your community

2. Punk fashion SHOULD NOT BE EXPENSIVE. A lot of fashion companies will try and sell you jackets for a couple hundred bucks, but that’s just corporations trying to cash in on a subculture. A big part of Punk and its history is DIY because Punk should be open to everyone and putting that behind a fashion paywall is just not punk. You don’t even need to be dressing punk to BE punk, but thrift your clothes. Make stencils and use spray paint or bleach to give it a pattern. Use old jeans to make patches. Buy your spikes and studs in bulk and go wild. Turn your old t shirt that doesn't fit anymore into a back patch. Go crazy with some safety pins. You can make more with $30 than you can buy from a designer for $300. And skill is not needed, frankly if it looks a little wonky it makes it look more punk

3. Dental floss makes for good thread for sewing on patches. It’s good for thick, stylistic stitches and is both cheap and durable. Don’t know why I made this its own point but it’s one of the most common tricks for punk DIY besides taking paint to scraps of fabric to make a patch. Honestly, if you want to know how to do more, just ask other punks how they made their vests and jackets, they’ll probably be happy enough to tell you

4. Punk philosophy and music is closely related. The communities evolved around the music scene so it is closely linked. Give some punk bands a try if you haven't already. There’s a bunch of subgenres so you’ll probably find something you like. From OG “proto punk” where the sound was still developing into what we call punk, to pop punk, anarco punk, and folk punk. There are people who say you can’t be punk if you don’t listen to the music, and there’s a whole conversation to be had about all that, but it’s just a good idea to try listening to some punk music

5, Nazis fuck off

6. Seriously, nazis fuck off. There’s a whole history behind it and why we associate skinhead punks with neo nazis. Largely we’ve made it clear we don’t want nazis in our community and the street punk music scene that nazi punks became associated with has made strides to separate themselves from that.

7. Be cool and respectful of people regardless of religion, ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, background, etc. Solidarity with our community is important and all sorts are welcome. Gatekeeping isn’t cool and frankly women and minorities have done a lot for punk as a whole. Respect for everyone

[tocomplainfriend]

SEE!? THEY DON'T CARE!

TW: Rape, SA, Homophobia, Misogyny, Misandry

The specific censored word with "-", it's for my own reasons and comfort. It's not censored up and in tags due to filtering! Sorry if I made mistakes like forgetting of filtering or similar, I haven't used tumblr much before!

THIS IS A R-PE JOKE! THAT'S WHAT I HAVE BEEN FUCKING SAYING! ONE OF MY BIGGEST PROBLEMS WITH EPISODE 4 IS THE FACT OF "we want to write an empowering story about men getting sexually assaulted. Men victim don't get that attentio-" BITCH, YOU MADE MANY R-PE AND SA JOKES ALL THE FUCKING WAY THROUGH HELLUVA AND KNOW HAZBIN! You are the one making fun of scenarios where your male characters get assaulted or r-ped.

HOW TF DO YOU PRETEND TO BE SOOO ABOVE PEOPLE (INCLUDING VICTIMS OF SA AND R-PE) THAT'S EXPRESSED HOW THEY FELT ON THE EXECUTIONS AND WHO WORKED IN EPISODE 4. WHEN YOU YOURSELF MAKE JOKES ABOUT IT????? For some context, Sir Pent is trying to get with Cherri, but always deflects first in case she rejects him. He offers her a drink, but immediately says it's because he'll buy a drink for everyone on the club. Then he asks Cherri if they can have sex- and deflects back (a repetition joke) "Because I'll have sex with everyone here". Then he gets dragged into a room by other people, yelling wait and no! And the door closes as you heard him scream.

Out of context in the screenshot, you might even think it might be a serious scene where something happens to Pentious. BUT NO! IT'S BRUSHED OVER REAL FAST AND PLAYED AS "HAHA SOMETHING BAD HAPPEN TO SIR PENTIOUS AGAIN LMAOO"- it's the punchline.

Then at the end of the episode he gets out asking "Where is Cherri" (who btw is having sex with a random guy).

And please don't say "Well, he asked for it"- you know how you sound. The whole point of the joke is that he is trying to get with Cherri and failing astronomically. The point here is that he really doesn't want to have sex with a bunch of random people, but he has to do it because he is getting dragged into a room. (Again, Pentious is like Moxxie Their joke it's getting trashed and bullied by the world or people around them).

You made a whole episode about dealing with a male character's sexual assault, abuse or r-pe. Saying how much you respect victims, and your episode, it's just perfect about the topic. BlaBlaBla- no, you don't. You made all this jokes since HB season 1. This new joke was episode 6 of HH. You never acknowledge power dynamics, or coercion. You never acknowledge anything bad in your show.

Remember, as much as this shows go for LGBTQ+ representation and Queer media. As a ""Female lead show"". This jokes link back (not only to making fun of SA and R-pe itself, but to) homophobia and Misogyny. A scenario of where a man gets SA'ed or r-ped by another man or woman- leads to a scenario where the character is made fun of for not being "masculine enough" for being a victim or for not being able to defend themselves. In a scenario where this happens by a man to man, "It's funny because the victim is viewed as gay. As less masculine = gay and that's bad cause gay = weak and feminine and the idea of feminine = weak".

(There are a few jokes here and there, like Blitzo touching Moxxie's dick after making fun of him for having a baby penis.)

If you didn't notice, Moxxie gets attacked by multiple succubus, and that's apparently funny. KEEP IN MIND is not basic physical violence-no he comes out with lipstick kisses marks, the sounds effects are (ugh)... and Blitz tells him "Don't let them access any of your holes". In other concepts, I want to point out that the times when Moxxie is viewed as a bottom or feminine- he is made fun of. When Millie pegs him, he is made fun of because he is the man of the relationship, being implied as the bottom. When he wears the outfit of unhappy campers, he is extra objectified or made fun of even more than in any other episodes. He is also forcefully put on a dress in his wedding.

He is made fun of for being SA'ed for being uncomfortable scenarios:

These aren't jokes made by characters that "are bad because they are from hell". These are scripted jokes written by a person searching for the audience to laugh.

AND the reason why many audiences accept this jokes or even find them funny is because of some of these views (internalized or not) above. You'll also notice how all these jokes are directed at men (if you find an R-pe or SA joke directed at a woman in this two show, say something about it! POINT IT OUT!). People accept and write these jokes more because they care less about the idea of a man being a victim of such situation. More often than not- in the present, a woman getting assaulted or anything similar in any media gets noticed and called out. THESE JOKES OR THE NORMALIZATION OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT, ASSAULT, COERCION, OR SIMILAR TOWARDS WOMAN STILL HAPPENS!!!! There is an idea that men just tend to just want sex all times at any time. -And that a man getting SA'ed or r-ped by a woman it's just sex, cause "Why wouldn't you like free pussy". When it's a gay perpetrator is viewed as funny cause "that makes you gay or a woman" and that's apparently hilarious. Men can be r-ped no matter what. Men can be targets of all of these acts.

Remember that all the scenes of sexual abuse, harassment and r-pe in Poison are directed by the R2. Who, once again, is into r-pe porn- and they themselves said they are not an SA victim either. So remember, not even a victim trying to cope with their own R-pe or SA. This person draws and ships "R-pe ships", and tags it as "naughty men uwu" bullshit. Also, a person so obsessed with the character of Angel that they changed their name to Tony (Angel's real human name), make themselves look like him, and become a sex worker like Angel. They themselves looked at a comic of Val threatening r-pe and abuse on Angel as "thank good you have balls to draw something mean with these too, I was so bored" ???? (this stuff is in:) and cosplay and take photos of your Val x Angel ship

Congrats if you as a victim yourself thought that the scene with Angel was good. If it helped you be and feel seen. But remember the rest of the show, the hypocritical writers, don't care enough to view it as a serious topic to not joke about. Both HB and HH written by the same people (as in Vivziepop), take their sweet time to turn these topics into jokes.

What pisses off more, it's the trying to make yourself be viewed as a sensitive person about such topic. Make it seem like you are a savior for writing about it in such "serious, powerful and not sugar coded" way. But then you drop that on the fucking ground to make a joke about it when you are tired of pretending you are so good. If you were so informed of SA and r-pe, you wouldn't be making these jokes. If you knew how much SA male victims struggle to get viewed as serious or their stories taken into account-you wouldn't be this shitty.

God, you are so proud of the joke too.

My poor snake guy... one of the few characters that I like-

[solarpunkani]

hi would like to make this clear that this is gonna be an unhinged rant about my college classes.

For context, one of my classes is a semester-long group project (hell) and I pitched the idea of solar powered community fridges to my group and we rolled with it. Here's a post i made on it previously. We don't have to make the fridges themselves, basically just talk about the problem our concept addresses (food insecurity in this case) and how we think this concept would work and how, in a hypothetical reality where we made it real, we would test to see if it worked.

Anyways we had to post the rough draft of our presentations so people in other groups could see what we were doing and comment on them with their thoughts and all. Yknow. Classic 'college class discussion board have to reply to at least one project with quality feedback' stuff. And

Man.

I am so frustrated.

Highlights:

My group keeps insisting that we should have an app for the solar fridges. I don't know why they think app design needs to fit into community fridges but they put it into the draft posted to the forum.

In this case they proposed the app would be kinda like Instacart? Where people who want to donate to the fridges but don't have groceries on them and don't feel like going to get groceries can put in money and then people will then go buy the groceries to put in the fridge. Or use the funds to help with fridge maintenance. And the fridges would have 'QR codes, links, etc. to connect community members for the common cause of helping tackle food insecurity in the community.'

Lots of the comments were pretty good! People liked the idea. There were some concerns about insulation and keeping things cool with low energy cost (the program is online but the college itself is in Georgia USA so many people are in Georgia) but yknow.

But the frustrating part to me I guess is that a lot of people seem convinced that people would use the fridges 'unfairly' and that we'd need to find a way to restrict how much food people can take out or how many times they can use it or something. Which frankly in my opinion defeats the purpose of it being a community fridge. Here are some examples of things people have said so far (comments are due tomorrow evening but I'm mad now so I'm venting now):

One student said "How will you know if the pantry is being utilized fairly?" and "How will the app work? In a dream world, this might be a way to help with tracking and accountability. (Just a thought…) Maybe folks would need to sign up on the app, they get a code… and the fridge acts as a sort of vending machine to deliver what they need. This would give you data to measure success. :)"

Which. I just. This feels completely antithetical to the purpose of a community fridge??? Or a community anything???? Little free pantries and little free libraries don't operate on a 'you get a code to access it once' vending machine basis?? We even mentioned community farm stalls/community pantries in the draft write up! And showed examples!

Another student said "Great thoughts. I am concerned about one person taking all the food for themselves. It might be a great idea to have them in an enclosed area with access control through the app that would log and lock out people who are overusing the resource. Perhaps a barcode could be added to Apple Wallet to track each individual's arrival? Possibly having a mechanized lock and opening mechanism that would only allow each fridge to be open for a specific time before automatically closing and locking? Each scan would only allow access once each 24-48 hour period, preventing "password sharing.""

I cannot emphasize enough that this is the comment that has brought me here today because with all due respect what the flying fuck do you think is the point of a community fridge! I'm already prickly about the idea of limiting access to the fridge itself to only people with cellphones, but to this degree?! Like maybe its because I'm the one who came up with the concept and I care about terms like 'mutual aid' and 'community building' and 'judgement free accessibility to food' but have these people not heard of the concept of helping people?!?! With no strings attached?!? If someone takes all the contents of a community fridge or pantry--which, seriously, how likely is that--they're probably hungry and need it! The concept of putting community resources behind a lock and limiting accessibility is just repulsive to me???

Like someone else commented with this excellent point--"As several have addressed above, I am also wondering how would you monitor use? If you use the simplicity of the honor system, it could easily be taken advantage of. However, I feel like if you were to create some sort of access code, how is it to say that they people needing the use of the fridge will have access to the necessary technology to get the code? It's a tricky situation to think about." For the purposes of this hypothetical assignment where we'd need to track how many people are using the fridges? Yeah I guess we'd need to be able to track how many people use it and when. But in reality??? In real life reality where people are living and struggling and hungry??? I just don't really give a shit!! Helping five people is better than helping none, and locking access behind technology everyone pretends is universal but really isn't is not the way to help!

And of course one of my groupmates is already commenting on all these posts like 'oh! I really like the idea of restricting access to a code! :)' even when someone said 'hey my family struggled with food insecurity when I was a kid and I think this would be helpful but not if you could only access it with an app some of the most vulnerable citizens wouldn't be able to access it I wouldn't have been able to access it' my groupmate was still like 'oh but that wouldn't be a problem today now would it? :) Maybe we should make a way to get a code without downloading the app :)' like maybe there shouldn't be an access code in the first place?!?!

Like am I crazy or like. What the fuck. Again I am here so I don't blow up on a bunch of masters students in a discussion post but like UGH

"you gotta be able to gague if the people who're using it are the people who actually need it" food insecurity can look so many different ways for so many different reasons and you can't always judge by appearances and income levels who is struggling to feed themselves or their families!! There are people who have nice jobs who are struggling because they're caring for sick family members or kids or dealing with student loans or ANYTHING! There are people with nice clothes who are trying to decide between buying groceries and paying rent! There are people living in their cars or couch surfing looking for jobs who also happen to own an XBox or a Laptop!!! "Sorry you can't access the community fridge because you don't look poor and needy enough to me. but if you do, good news--you can only use it once every 48 hours so make it last!" Bullshit utter bullshit.

I talk to people in my life about things like community fridges and little free pantries and mutual aid and the like and people are always like 'ok but theres gotta be strings attatched' BUT ACTUALLY NO THERE DON'T GOTTA!!! Maybe we could change how we view our fellow human beings and stop assuming that everyone around you are greedy little demons looking to ruin everything good and that you are the only holy and righteous saint on the streets who understands the concept of 'community resources' and 'sharing' maybe??? It's like that post about community fruit trees where people are like 'oh but what if people steal all the fruit' like HELLO? how do you STEAL a PUBLICALLY ACCESSIBLE RESOURCE

I'm tired of this goddamn class I'm tired of this goddamn group project if anyone actually has the ability to make a solar powered community fridge you have to promise to keep it accessible and not put it behind locks and QR codes and limited access and facial tracking BS promise me promise me promise me

[montrealmadison]

in your palace warm, mighty king

okay i’ve recently found myself on angel tree tiktok. if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, basically, some stores will put out a tree around the holidays with gift tags for anonymous local kids, and people coming in to do their own shopping can take a tag off the tree and buy kids gifts off their wishlists for the store to pass off to them. (the linked video shows it in action!)

anyway this got me thinking about jack zimmermann at the beginning of his career. he has been fabulously wealthy and privileged for his whole life, but he’s only recently started earning a massive salary of his own and has no real idea of what to spend it on. he’s comfortable. he has a car and a nice apartment and an engagement ring hidden somewhere in said apartment. he knows he should probably donate to a worthwhile cause, but he hasn’t figured out what.

one day, though, bitty’s visiting for the weekend and comes to the store with him, and right there in the entryway, he just… stops. jack doesn’t notice and consequently almost runs him over with the cart.

“you alright? careful, eh?”

bitty does not respond, because he’s looking at the tree.

“bud?”

jack follows his gaze. it really doesn’t look like much. it’s fake, unlit, and has seen better days if the way it’s a little flattened on one side is anything to go by. there is an equally squashed-looking stuffed snowman sat on the floor next to it. it’s the kind of thing your eyes slide over easily, hurrying from one place to another. blink and you’ll miss it.

bitty isn’t blinking.

“lord, i haven’t seen one of these in years,” he says. his voice is soft. he still isn’t looking at jack. “do you know what it is?”

jack doesn’t, so bitty explains. and when they inch closer, jack sees that all the ornaments he thought were plain paper before are actually printed with ages, shoe sizes, requests for warm coats and toys and cute jeans and deodorant. here and there is a specific wish—a bluetooth speaker. a particular board game. one kid, age eight, is fervently hoping for a bike.

and—okay. here’s the thing. they’ve been together for more than a year, and bitty is pretty willing to go along with jack’s desire to spoil him. but although he’s so open and accepting when jack wants to kiss him, or cook dinner for a change, or lay him out on their bed and make him feel good—he will always, always get uncomfortable where significant amounts of money are involved. it was the subject of the one and only fight that sent them to bed still heated. the fundamental difference between their upbringings is the hardest for them to grasp: jack has never known a life without plenty. and bitty—

“i think my parents put me on one,” bitty says. “the year we moved back to madison, after—”

the closet looms between them, black and yawning.

“well. you know. coach had to leave a good job in lawrenceville. took us a while to get back on our feet, i think. and that year, they couldn’t—i mean, i heard them talking at night about how we might not be able to make christmas work, when they thought i couldn’t hear them. but i still wrote my letter to santa, and there were a couple presents when i woke up christmas morning, so.” he scuffs one shoe on the industrial carpet. “maybe an angel sent ‘em.”

the words make something sizzle down jack’s spine and settle low in his gut. he steps forward, reaches out, turns over the nearest tag.

boy, age 11. shoe size: 8. wishlist: sneakers, earbuds, basketball, patriots merch, chapter books. loves fantasy and mythology.

once upon a time, jack spent three months in a rehab center designed specifically for the privacy needs of celebrity clients. his parents footed the bill, had the windows on all their cars tinted for him to hide behind when he got out. at the same time, thousands of miles away, bitty sat at the top of the stairs in his parents’ house and listened to them wonder if they could afford to keep the magic of christmas alive another year.

people are stepping around them to get out of the cold, now, their eyes skipping right over the tree and the boys in front of it. once upon a time, strangers on the street picked apart jack’s overdose like a piece of tabloid gossip. strangers on the street made sure a thirteen-year-old kid had something to unwrap with his family on christmas morning.

“bits?”

bitty sniffles, swipes at one eye with the sleeve of his sweater. “yeah?”

jack lifts the tag gently off its branch, catches bitty’s gaze. bitty’s intake of breath is so sharp it’s audible over the music playing overhead. do you see what i see?

“what do you think? wanna go get us another cart?”

[askmerriauthor]

I said the game demands microtransactions, not that it requires them. That's not just me being pedantic about wording, but rather a big indication of how the developers designed the game to work. Pokemon Sleep doesn't want you to play for free and is designed to make playing-without-paying a worse experience.

Like many free-to-play games out there, they operate on the idea of monetizing convenience and "fear of missing out" (FOMO). Such games will either create a problem in order to sell you a solution, or rely on a rotating/limited availability of enviable items to encourage impulse buying to avoid losing the chance to have the item. Pokemon Sleep does both of these.

Despite Pokemon Sleep being presented as a passive "something in the background while you sleep" kind of novelty, that's not the actual gameplay at all. The game actually wants you to be extremely active and paying a lot of attention to it non-stop, along with encouraging you to get others involved as well. Up to 500 potential invitations with a 50 individual approval list of contacts, specifically, and the system "helpfully" lets you link to your Google, Apple, or Facebook accounts in order to facilitate that and further scoop up lots of personal data for advertising.

The basic gameplay cycle of Pokemon Sleep is that you have a 7-day period in which you can power up your Snorlax as much as possible, with a higher power score equaling a greater variety of visiting Pokemon for you to catch. Visiting Pokemon will appear in a variety of sleeping types, of which there are at least 415 to collect (with individual Pokemon having multiple sleeping types). These Pokemon can also be "befriended" by giving them a sufficient number of items, which means they'll then join your team and help you boost Snorlax's power score over time. You can further boost Snorlax's score by feeding it, which the game encourages you to do three times per day within a given time window. Your Helper Pokemon will supply you with ingredients to make meals for Snorlax at different intervals, and the meals you make have different potencies based on the ingredients used.

So, to summarize, you have a limited period in which to get a number as big as it can be, with various randomized factors able to improve the rate of progression, before it all resets and you're back to square one.

Yes, you absolutely can play this game without spending any money. But the game itself is designed in a way that urges you to spend money at every turn. Every element of gameplay is improved if you spend money, and will actively degrade in effectiveness and quality if you don't. Remember how you can befriend Pokemon to help you out with getting Snorlax's score up? That's faster and easier if you spend money. Those same Helpers who gather ingredients for you? They lose Energy (an arbitrary limit put in place by the game system) the longer they're around, and become worse at gathering ingredients the less Energy they have. But, good for you! You can just buy more Energy for them! Rather, you have to make two purchases - the Energy-restoring item only gives back 50% of their Energy, so you need to buy two in order to max them out again. And you can just buy a box of random ingredients too! How convenient! And if you really want to get the most out of sleeping, you can buy the monthly auto-renewing (until you manually cancel it through Google or Apple, not the game app itself) Premium Membership! Which literally makes your sleep more valuable than the same - or even higher quality - sleep of people who aren't Premium members! But you better buy fast, because all of these items for sale are on a rotating schedule and will swap out of the shop at different 15 or 30-day intervals. You wouldn't want to miss your chance, would you?

A core facet of microtransaction pricing is that it's intentionally and carefully designed to never be enough. You'll always be in a position where you need to buy just a little more than the minimum, and it always comes out at odd numbers that never fit exactly where they need to in order to maximize your purchase, and are priced in unorthodox values specifically to trick the buyer's brain into thinking it's a better deal than it is. With that in mind, it pays to look at the minimum and maximum amounts the game wants to try and charge you since that gives a good idea of their intended range of interaction with your wallet, and how far a given amount of paid microtransactions will take you. Because, remember, such games are built around the idea of NEVER giving you enough. They ALWAYS want you to be in a state of wanting a little more and being tempted to dish over some more cash for it.

In Pokemon Sleep's case? The minimum buy-in for "Diamonds" - their premium microtransaction currency - is 60 Diamonds for $1.19. Their maximum? 7000 Diamonds for $97.99. So what this says outright is that the game is designed in such a way that it expects 7000 Diamonds to NOT BE ENOUGH to maintain a player's best experience. Because, again, such games will NEVER give you a value sufficient enough to deter the need for further purchases. This is a game that wants players to spend $100 multiple times over throughout the lifespan of their interest in the game. Will the majority of players do this? No. There's absolutely going to be a number of whales who will, especially among influencers and content creators on social media who make their own career off these sort of things. But what Pokemon Sleep is relying on is that there will be a far greater abundance of players who think "Oh, it's just a dollar..." or 'Oh, this item is going away... it's not even $5, so why not?" on a very regular basis.

And I haven't even touched on the overt security/privacy issues and the personal info scraping the app has potential for as well. So, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and sleep on Pokemon Sleep.

[canonkiller]

Hi, I'm trying to do art commissions, but no one has commissioned me yet. Do you have any advice for attracting customers?

I wrote a lot of words for you in hopes that at least some of it will be helpful, so I'm putting the bulk of this answer below a read more to save people the scrolling. The quick and easy two tips that I find people forget to do the most are:

Is your art easy to find? Having a pinned post with a tag for your art, a link in your bio, or an art-focused / reblog-light blog (like this one!) make it so that people know you draw, and knowing you've been posting art for a while makes you less likely to be a scammer.

Is your commission info easy to find? People can't buy things that they don't know you're selling; clear and accessible links to your prices and terms are important.

Now for the real bulky meat of advice giving, where I say a lot of words that may or may not be relevant:

I have a lot of advice, but I do want to say before getting into it:

A lot of selling art (especially in a non-industry setting, like with social media commissions) is luck.

There is no one size fits all method for selling art, and it's best to go with what feels right to you (I'll go more into this later)

Tips for selling are not necessarily tips for creating, and there will be advice in here that I don't apply to myself. Determining what you do and do not implement is something you should decide for yourself and your work flow.

Your art not selling doesn't mean nobody cares about it.

Personally I think the idea of intentionally curating a single subject demographic of Customer and Consumer for your work is limiting and doomed to burnout in a non-industry space. I will also touch more on this later.

Now for the rest of it in varying orders:

✨ Attracting Customers

This one is going first because you mentioned it specifically. It is kind of vague though, by nature of the term, so what I advise doing is specifying.

When you are thinking of a customer, are you trying to appeal to:

People who will buy pre-made art products? (Pins, stickers, prints, etc)

People who will buy custom work? (Commissions for specific subject matter)

People who will buy art resources you've created? (Fonts, bases, texture packs, 3d models etc)

There's also frequency: a repeat customer of custom art will usually be appealed to more by a wide range of options (like illustrations), while you might get more single-purchase customers if you only offer a limited range of options (like only icons).

Demographics also, of course, play a substantial role in just custom art commissions; furries get lauded as high spenders, but they're also a huge community that is focused around OCs, so by statistics alone they will have more people with spending money and will be frequent customers of people drawing OCs. A narrower audience means fewer people, but often the spread of the people within that audience is the same - and at the end of the day, selling an art piece only requires one other person, it's just a matter of happening to find them.

The follow up question is of course the finding: the average artist in fandom spaces selling commissions does not have the platform or budget for an ad campaign. This, however, is also its own category:

✨ Posting Online

Right out the gate: anyone who has told you that just drawing x thing is the way to get easy money is wrong.

"If you draw more fan art, you'll -" wrong.

"Nobody cares about that, you should be drawing this instead -" wrong.

"if you need to sell fast, just sell porn -" wrong. And also re-evaluate your perceived lack of quality or value about the subject.

The things you will be able to create easily and consistently will be the things YOU, SPECIFICALLY, like to create. It is also entirely impossible that you are the only person on earth to have ever liked those things, which means that if you create them, there are people out there who will enjoy them.

It feels itchy to be like "and those people are Potential Customers", but it is true; your work will resonate with people. They will want you to create it. It is vitally important to your own well being that the things you create, that you want others to enjoy, are things you enjoy as well.

(This is also why the "just draw porn" joking advice that gets tossed around is particularly fucked up. You as the artist should not feel forced into drawing things you aren't comfortable with, and the vast majority of customers for explicit content also don't want the people making it to feel forced into doing so. It's basic consent. I have strong feelings about this.)

If you are creating things and putting them out into the world, they will find an audience. That audience may be one singular person! The number does not matter, because that's still a person who - again, sucks to frame ig this way - has the potential to buy things from you.

If you're constantly chasing a bigger follower count, more interactions, etc etc for the future, it can genuinely be pretty taxing on the people who want to support you in the present. When you enjoy someone's work, and want to support them, being told constantly that that support is not good enough is frustrating. Trying to follow your work should not lead to seeing more "likes are WORTHLESS and NOBODY reblogs my things" posts than it does art. You are a person making things to share with other people, and you have to remember it or you will burn yourself out into a desiccated husk.

TL:DR consistency is key and the easiest way to be consistent is to just draw whatever the fuck you live drawing in whatever ways you want to draw it, and then slap it on the internet somewhere and Keep Doing That

✨ The Actual Commission Information

this one is just factual really. A lot of artists have really shitty commission sheet layouts, because advertising graphic design and illustrative art are different skill sets. That's fine. You don't have to remake the wheel. A good commission sheet should include:

More images than text (if you can't see what the examples are when zoomed out, you have to rearrange or cut down on words)

Examples organized by price / type, and clearly labeled

Your personal favourites for examples - one really strong example piece is better than twenty tiny images of work you think is just "okay"

Contact information - having a method that works WITHOUT a social media account (email.) Is important and way easier to keep organized, imo

A SIMPLE list of strengths (the things you draw the best) and things you won't draw (common example: mechs). You do not need to list every fandom or subject matter. Limit yourself to a top five.

A clear and easy to type link for your terms of service. Carrd, and sites like it, is good for this. This will go into details about your process, what you will and won't do, permissions granted to the commissioner (like "no, you can't make an NFT with this"), your privacy policy (saying you won't sell commissioner details to third parties), and other stuff. You do not want to have all of this on your original post, because it should be thorough and you want your main post to be showcasing your work and not your legalese. Here's mine as a reference; if you have trouble writing your own, feel free to copy from it and make the necessary alterations for your work.

✨ There Was More I Was Going To Write But I Forgot

I have a different document of commission related talk here, which is also incomplete but in a different way. It's in my nature. Hopefully some combination of this and that can be useful to you. Sorry if they're not. I love you have a nice day

[no-phrogs-in-hats]

Baby Steps Part 4

Larissa x pregnant!reader

Summary: The third trimester leaves many twists and turns

Warning: Small breakdown

Read Part 3 here

“Wow, throwing a baby shower really makes you realize how few friends you have,” you quipped as you sat on the couch creating a guest list. “Most of these people are our coworkers.”

Larissa, who sits beside you putting together the gift registry, chuckled. “I feel like we said the same thing for our wedding.”

“Probably,” you giggle. “We’re both very antisocial people.”

“So, is it a gender reveal?”

That was the third time you had gotten that question since you sent out the invites.

“No,” you explained politely, pausing the grading on the final exams. “It’s just a baby shower. Gender reveals are so tacky to me, so Larissa and I agreed to find out the sex when it’s born. I mean, it’s already the beginning of June, so there’s only a couple months left.”

“You know, I saw this really cool gadget on TikTok! You should add it to your registry! Or maybe I’ll just buy it for you anyway.”

“Oh, I appreciate it, but, really, it’s okay. We’ve only put necessities on our registry.” 

“No, seriously, this is a need. I’ll send you the link.”

And, once again, someone was insisting on getting you something you didn’t need. On the gift registry you sent out, you had put in asterisks a message, specifically saying to not get anything that isn’t on the registry unless otherwise stated. Necessities were for now, fancy gadgets could be saved for later.

When your coworker left your classroom, you reclined in your chair, letting out a deep breath and placing your hand on your bump. “Boy or girl, this is going to be a long eighteen years.”

“Talking to them again?”

The sudden voice made you jump in your seat before you saw Larissa in the doorway. 

“I saw Grace coming out of your classroom,” she said, leaning down to give you a kiss. “Was she insisting on getting us that crazy baby gadget?”

“How’d you know?”

“She cornered me in the teachers’ lounge earlier. All I wanted was a cup of coffee, but instead I received parenting advice from someone who has no children and gets all their information from parenting accounts on social media.” Larissa pulled a seat up to your desk and sat beside you. “How’re you feeling?”

You bent over to rest your head on her lap, groaning when you felt her fingers dig into your back and begin to massage the knots out. “My back is killing me, I’m exhausted, I have to pee all the time, my tits hurt when I touch them the slightest bit, and I’ve had to refrain from snapping at multiple students because of how easily I’ve been getting irritated.” 

Larissa’s hand came to your face, fingers smoothing out a strand of hair and pushing it behind your ear. She smiled softly, “You’ve always been one to minimize things, darling, so that doesn’t really answer my question.”

“I’m fine, Larissa,” you huffed.

Larissa pursed her lips. “Mhm…sure…”

Her response was like a tsunami came crashing down on you and you stood up. Your lip began quivering, yet you had all the rage of a thousand angry men. “Well, how would you feel if you were creating a human being out of nothing, Larissa!?” Tears started pouring down your cheeks as Larissa sat there awkwardly, watching your outburst, saying nothing as you slammed the door to your classroom. 

“I’m in a terrible mood all the time! The slightest thing irritates me, but I don’t wanna make a big deal out of it because then I’ll be known as the overdramatic pregnant woman! Teachers have been pestering me about my birth plan! Like, why does it fucking matter how I’m giving birth!? That is between me, you, and the midwife! Not some random fucking math teacher on a Tuesday morning! Wednesday Addams keeps telling me all these weird and creepy facts about pregnancy and newborns! I’m sorry, but I don’t want to know that some babies lactate! And all I wanna do at the end of a long day is have sex with my wife, but my stomach is the size of a fucking cantelope and every position is uncomfortable!” 

You took a steadying breath, wiping away your tears–and smudging your eyeliner and mascara. Reaching over your desk, you grabbed a tissue. “I’m sorry,” you sniffled. “I’m just…I needed to get that out…I’m sorry…”

When you sat down, Larissa pulled you into her arms, her hands rubbing up and down your back. “Shhh…You don’t need to apologize, love. You’re doing so much–too much. You’re getting overwhelmed. This is why I told you to go on leave. You’re letting your blood pressure get too high and you’ve been very insistent on not having a c-section.”

You pulled away from her and wiped the underneath of your eyes again. “I know, but there’s only a few days left of school. I really didn’t need to take any leave.”

“You’ve always been one to work yourself to the bone.” Larissa leaned down and retrieved your purse from under your desk. Unzipping it, she pulled out your makeup bag and handed it to you. “Lunch is almost over, let’s get you cleaned up a bit.”

The Nevermore graduation ceremony felt like hours. Being the head of the English department, you stood in a line with the other heads on the stage of the auditorium, shaking each student’s hand before they retrieved their diploma from Larissa. You were particularly proud to be shaking Wednesday Addams’ hand after seeing her rocky start a few years prior. But by the time the final student walked across the stage in their black and purple cap and gown (even Wednesday complied and wore a purple gown), you were dead weight on your feet.

The ceremony was moved to the Quad where refreshments were served and students could gather once more before moving out of their dorms. Maybe it was the fact that you were seven months pregnant, but the heat was almost unbearable. You had no idea how Larissa wore those dresses all the time because the simple breezy maxi dress you were wearing made you feel like you were doused in your own sweat. 

Your attention was turned behind you after speaking with a parent and you laid eyes on Wednesday and Enid. “Oh, thank you, Miss Addams…” A gift was handed to you, wrapped in blue and pink baby shower wrapping paper.

Enid, who stood beside her, bounced up and down on the balls of her feet with a bright smile. “The wrapping paper was my idea! It’s for the baby!”

“I would’ve gone with a different color palette,” Wednesday commented. “I can feel the skin on my hands burning off after touching that.”

“Black and white or blue and pink, it doesn’t matter to me,” you smiled. “Thank you, girls.”

“I saw it on TikTok and knew it was perf for you!” Enid squealed. “It’s this really cool–”

“Enid!” Wednesday hissed. “Don’t give it away.”

You giggled to yourself as you watched the two of them walking away, hand-in-hand as they muttered to each other.

“What’s this?”

Larissa’s voice startled you and you turned around. “Just a gift from Enid and Wednesday. I have a feeling we’re going to have two of those gadgets that Grace mentioned.”

And you were right. Weeks later, the baby shower went off without a hitch. Despite it being now late July and you being the size of a watermelon, you had never felt happier. You were practically on the verge of tears thinking about the entire situation.

Here you were, sitting beside your wife surrounded by your closest family and friends, opening gifts for the baby that would be in your arms in just over a month. You truly couldn’t ask for more.

In August your parents decided to visit, assisting you and Larissa with anything you needed help with. Your father took your car to the shop to get its oil changed along with everything else you had forgotten about–you really weren’t liking this pregnancy brain. Now you sat in the designated nursery, once Larissa's home office, huffing and puffing in a cushioned rocking chair.

“Okay,” Larissa mumbled, “it looks like we put parts A and B together using wrench three–Mia have you seen that wrench?”

“Nope.”

“You know, we could hire someone to do it,” you sighed, watching Larissa, your father, and your sister attempt to put together the crib for the nursery. “I mean, the girl at Ikea said they have people f–”

You were cut off by Larissa kissing you on your lips, looming tall over you. “Darling, it’ll be fine. We can do this. All you have to do is sit here and look pretty. Can you do that?”

“I can do that better than anyone,” you scoffed.

Larissa smiled and leaned in for another kiss. “That’s my girl.”

You were now a week over your due-date and you were miserable. You back ached, your breasts were painful to the touch, and the only thing you wanted now was to get this baby out of you.

“Are you alright, love?” 

Larissa’s hand came to your back as your breath stopped. You clutched the edge of the table in your hand tightly as a wave of dull pain started slowly. 

You didn’t want it to start here. You were in public, at a sports bar in Burlington with your family and Larissa’s when the pains started. 

“Yeah,” you breathed. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

The waitress, who was standing by your mother taking her drink order, paused and looked at you with the rest of the family. “Are you sure, sweetheart? The hospital is just down the road.”

“I’m fine, really,” you insisted. 

Larissa side-eyed you carefully. “I’m starting a stopwatch.”

“You don’t nee–”

“I’m starting a stopwatch,” she repeated, giving you the same look she gave troubled and disobedient students. “You're not having our baby in the car.”

You scoffed. “I’m not having the baby in our car, Larissa. Don’t be ridiculous.”

The rest of the evening continued, Larissa tracking your contractions against your will while everyone took their time looking over the menu and savoring their drinks. When the waitress came back half an hour later with the appetizers, a second, more painful contraction ripped through you.

“That was thirty seconds,” Larissa said. “Once they get to a minute long, I think we should go.”

“Larissa, I’m fine!” you groaned. “I’m sure they’re just Braxton Hicks.”

Putting a serving of nachos on your plate and hers, she shook her head. “You’re a week overdue, darling. I don’t think these are Braxton Hicks.”

You tried to ignore it, but Christ, you had to admit these were painful. You didn’t want to tell Larissa she was right, but a half hour intermission turned into a fifteen minute one, and a fifteen minute one turned into a ten minute one.

“They’re ten minutes apart,” Larissa muttered to you. “The last one lasted forty-five seconds.”

You smiled and thanked the waitress when she handed you your dinner, taking a small bite and answering Larissa. “Just drop it. We’ll go when my water breaks.”

“You watched the YouTube video,” Larissa said. “Sometimes the water doesn’t break.”

“We–” Your fork clattered onto your plate and the entire table looked at you as Larissa started the stopwatch. Through deep breaths you asked, “How long ago was–?”

“Seven minutes,” Larissa answered, placing her hand on your lower back once again and looking up at the waitress. “Darling, can we get two boxes, please? Thank you.”

“Take me to UVM,” you said. “Don’t take me to Jericho General. I have not heard good things about their maternity ward.”

“Sweet pea–”

“I said, take me to UVM!” you snapped.

Larissa, after retrieving her purse from under the table, took her keys out and took one of them off the ring. She handed it to your mother saying, “Here’s the house key. After dinner would  you be able to get the hospital bag and bring it to us?”

With a peck on Larissa’s cheek and yours, your mother took the key. “Of course. Now go. We’ll let you know when we’re on our way.”

Tag list: @gwenistheloml @barbarasstar @gwendolinechristierulez @furrysharkfart @yourgaeyisshowing

[katyahina]

Burial Blade and Blade of Mercy are made out of meteorite, but WHY? Inspiration and context behind them (+ the source of snake infestation)

This one is a reply on ask from @bobbyzombiegg that I decided to put here because I really keep forgetting to use THIS blog for lore and not my personal/shitposts one...

I know, and this is such a good observation! I am glad that you've noticed what else connects Burial Blade and Blade of Mercy! Even better - whereas Burial Blade severs the ties of a person with the Dream, Blade of Mercy, in a way, helps to create it!

The interesting thing about these blades is that, of course, they must have been created before the conception of the Hunter's Dream! It makes it oddly coincidental that both weapons are useful for the cycle of Dream and Hunt, doesn't it? Blade of Mercy is at least believed to contribute to this as of now; the more we hunt the more messengers get added in the Hunter's Dream, so, perhaps, Blade of Mercy is not necessary! My personal interpretation of this is as Paleblood Hunter, our character has the privilege otherwise special for these weapons! Regardless of which weapon they use, they can send those they killed to be messengers (or add them in the cycle of the hunt, like how Henryk or Yamamura will become summonable after we kill them)!

Still, it starts to look like too much was planned ahead? Blade of Mercy said to be made in an old workshop would imply Old Hunters, likely created by Gehrman himself, from the same material as his own weapon! But I think the answer here is that Messengers, something akin to Hunter's Dream and similar weapons existed since Pthumerian times!

Starting with the weapons observation here! Pthumerian Descendant, interestingly, displays the similar style of transforming their blade into two same as how Blade of Mercy does it! Meanwhile, Gehrman's blade is fashioned similarly to Mergo's Wet Nurse's blades! In isolation, I would not think this means anything.. but crows, according to Hunters of Hunters lore, ARE connected with taking the souls and passing them into Dream realm, which is also Nightmare realm!

(Link to my other post explaining why Vilebloods descend from Pthumerians ( x ) in case someone who doesn't know already finds this post)

Wet Nurse herself is very bird-like (crow-like, specifically), and very coincidentally, Baneful Chanters pray to those who "have no blood" as those who'd have enough power to curse the hunters (which is to ensure they go in the Nightmare realm). Wet Nurse not only coincidentally fuels at least one section of Nightmare by nurturing Mergo, the center of it, but also, Nightmare realm has Winter Lanterns whose heads are made of Messengers!

So we have: Wet Nurse already being quite Pthumerian with her accessories and fighting style, Pthumerians and their descendants (down to Cainhurst!) honoring symbolism of crows, Yharnam (a city named after Queen Yharnam, after all) having depiction of BIRD-like Messenger in its oldest part, superstition about crows taking souls of the murdered in Hunter's Dream, people praying to "bloodless ones" to take the souls into Nightmare instead + evidence of it happening with Winter Lanterns.. In my opinion it is fair to assume that the weapons Gehrman created had a pre-existing inspiration and their similarity to pre-existing Pthumerian weapons is not coincidental!

Alright, first - I want a Bloodborne prequel where I could make a Pthumerian Paleblood Hunter. Second, as you can see, concept of the Messengers, the "Hunter" symbol/rune (depiction of the hanged man of course), and even the MOONLIGHT Sword were a thing since Pthumerian times! (It is safe to assume Ludwig found this sword somewhere in the Dungeons, as obtaining Radiant Sword Hunter badge is what lets you buy Tomb Prospector set!)

^ The note already mentioning Laurence associating with Moon Presence, THE Great One of the Hunt and the Dream, is found in Byrgenwerth already! Basically? Without maybe predicting that he would be trapped in the Hunter's Dream one day, Gehrman already knew what he was doing with the weapons.

Conclusion: there was the clear idea in mind! Blade of Mercy, intended to kill people from the start, immortalises the hunters as the HUNTERS and brings them in "Heaven" of Moon Presence, before they turned into beasts, whereas Burial Blade, initially intended for hunting everyone that was no longer human (for example, poor Fish People), ensures they, on the contrary, never go to "Heaven". What later serves to sever a Hunter from the Hunter's Dream initially intended to sever non-humans from it, in a way sentensing them to "Hell". :) Gehrman is a fun person.

+ Also some bonus observations regarding the topic of Yharnamites still continuing Pthumerian traditions, likely brought back because of Byrgenwerth, and then Healing Church, diving into dungeons:

(Context for those that didn't play Bloodborne because Sony hates you and you in particular: both this trap in the dungeons and this bath in Yahar'gul warp you in another area, connected by the circle of candles)

Forbidden Woods, surrounding Byrgenwerth, are full of formations that resemble the Tonsil Stone very much! However, when you examine the woods, you will see that sometimes there are body parts near these "heads"! This could be another case of petrification upon strong arcane impact, similarly to petrified body of Rom near Ebrietas, to petrified bodies of other Kin in Upper Cathedrals covered by fabric, bodies of victims in Yahar'gul, all that!

Were they people living in the woods that started to turn into Kin (like Garden of Eyes that are also found in Byrgenwerth) but didn't live until petrification, or were they baby Great Ones born only to instantly die? I am not sure. Both can work.

But, snakes are an interesting clue here. Besides Forbidden Woods, they are only also found in Hintertombs - a dumping ground for corpses of Pthumeru Ihyll that became venomous! Forgotten Madman, who is a former Choir member as he uses A Call Beyond, is found in these dungeons + getting Cosmic Watcher Badge is what lets you buy Poisonous Knife. Doesn't it look strange for Choir members to pick so much interest in this? Snake infestation might be a strange result of burying cosmic Kin in the ground, a corruption of what would normally be a process of multiple parasites/phantasms settling in a corpse of a cosmic being, OR someone affiliated with one! We do have precedents:

Cosmic creatures, "downgraded" and "filthied", becoming something eartly instead, such as snakes! One of them was able to raise human children (Madaras twins), so sure they are unusual!

So, what I am trying to say is, it is possible that Tonsil Stone is a result of burial of a dead (and rapidly petrifying) cosmic Kin, one that was yet not rotted like what we see in Forbidden Woods! Maybe even more directly so, it is a petrified skull of a cosmic Kin, most likely of Amygdala's kind, and a "meteorite" in the sense of them coming from space! So, creating weapons both of which are connected with burial ritual from the buried Kin is appropriate! This or similar technology maybe also was discovered by Pthumerians long ago, so examining Hintertombs was a great help with figuring what material to use for Burial Blade and Blade of Mercy!

^ These disturbing dead cosmic Kin fetuses are found in Byrgenwerth in two forms: one depicts a petrified corpse, something we already knows happens with Kin, such as Rom and eldrich creatures in Upper Cathedral. Another is dead, rotting, showing horns, and has multiple tiny skulls on its head! The latter one gets my point about corpses of Kin, or maybe anyone touched by Kin, sprouting smaller life forms from within. People infected by snake virus sprout several snakes from their heads, rather than turning into a snake or something!

It is entirely possible that Byrgenwerth used to bury creatures like this in the grounds around the college, and that those gigantic graves in Forbidden Woods were for much larger Great Ones: "Hunt the Great Ones. Hunt the Great Ones." note is found in Byrgenwerth as well! They might have been able to resist the full rotting that results into snakes due to their size and development, hence their graves still show sluggish phantasms. Burying other ones, on the other hand, was a big mistake. Or, should I say.... a GRAVE mista- *gets sniped*

_________________________________

These are my thoughts on the topic! You kinda got two theories at the price of one here, but snake infestation was somewhat relevant in the context of burial and my idea of what IS this "meteorite"! Thank you so much for prompting me to tie this theory together at last!!

[3-aem]

I just wanted to say I really like your art and appreciate that you share it with us. I know there are very vocal people out there who bring up past mistakes, but I and many others have seen you take accountability and change. I think this nk person is just chronically online and likes drama. Some people just cannot accept the fact that people can make mistakes and then grow. There is a common mentality nowadays of "once wrong, always wrong." Your work is beautiful, and we can see the hard work you put into it.

I'm normally a quiet reblogger but I'm sending this because I want you to know you still do have a lot of people who support you and your work!

i am relieved to hear this. all i want is to show i have taken accountability and changed. all i want is to prove my work is not ai. as long as my followers understand that i can feel some peace.

i want to be clear that im not saying i feel my mistakes were whatever. im also not sitting here buying into the belief that person is jealous. i hope i am making that clear. what i did was hurtful to some people, i want to acknowledge that. i have sat with this a long time. i eventually determined this to not be fair. especially line “whom you all love so much” which heavily suggests a gripe with the wrong thing, and not a genuine care that i have taken accountability.

i did not just remove the piece, i paid the artist double the profits and it was agreed upon and settled. i reached out to artists to apologize and ask for permission to keep certain works up. this is well documented.

but knowing this, because I told them Directly and they acknowledged they read it first, nk still proceeded to send two more callouts and linked a post where they accuse me of being ai and selling copied work for profit.

these are very heavy allegations that can destroy an artist and so it needs Ongoing substantial proof. Nk could not provide any but treated it as such. its careless disregard. so i agree they wanted a reaction. they do not actually care even if they claim to have followed me back at one point. like that means anything given the rest of the context.

the fact is i have lost many many mutuals and friends from this. i have since experienced multiple cases of using the same reference as another artist and being accused of copying and stealing from them because of this. See yunonai, that one draco malfoy fic, and that sad suguru where he’s touching his eyes. i no longer have the benefit of doubt for a lot of people. i can work on accepting that as my fault, my problem. but i cannot accept what nk specifically did.

the final straw for me was not that i woke up with a vendetta to settle. it was seeing other artists and creators doing the same things with no consequence. it was seeing them take far less accountability. while i sit and try hard to make things right only to be told repeatedly its not enough.

[singto-prachaya]

Did I make a banner specifically for this post? Yes I did. This is a post to introduce you to Offroad Kantapon and Daou Pittaya who are currently starring in the BL Love In Translation. Get to know these two and their close soulmates bond through this post.

Let's start first with a short history lesson: Both participated in the survival show Lazicon (started airing October 9, 2021) and it was the first time they met each other. They became close in a short amount of time and you would often see them holding insta lives together. For a compilation of how they acted with each other during those lives as well as some Lazicon clips I made a fanvideo a while back. I never published it because it was just something I wanted to make for myself and one other person.

Now since the post will be long you can find the rest under the read more link.

One thing Offroad wanted during Lazicon was to perform in the final with Daou and some of his close friends from Insight Entertainment. This would have happened if Daou was fully recovered from having covid but he wasn't. So the performance was without him. Daou however was present through a video call. During a performance were all Lazicon contestants sung together Offroad looked at the screen, saw Daou and started crying. A timestamped video were you can see Offroad getting emotional.

Not in front of my salad! Straight to this point. If you watched my fanvideo or at least a part of it skinship between those two is pretty normal. However if you are contantly all over each other it can cause people to want you to get a room! Especially their band members. There is this behind the scenes clip of Rak Diao in which they made an appearance and check out the timestamped part. Watch for about 20 sec.

Close friends! Daou has some close friends. A couple were from Insight and they had no problem with spilling some tea sometimes. Frank who is now DVI said during a live with the boys and some other contestants "It looks like they are flirting". Daou is also close with Joong Archen and he also had some things to say. "What everyone sees is just a little bit. Joong saw a lot more than that". And he mentioned once how Daou has never taken care of someone like this before not even his close friends. Also during a live with Joong and Daou, Daou got called. Joong then was like "Who is calling? Is that handsome boy. The blond haired one".

The part with Joong starts at 1:45

Jealousy what's that? Anyone who has been in the fandom long enough knows how they talk to each other on twitter and IG. One thing is pretty clear, Daou doesn't like it when Offroad shows to much skin. And he will let it know pretty clearly. Ban hammer gifs, talking about how he has the full sized picture, trying to pull Offroad's shorts, you name it. When the trailer of Our Days was released Offroad appeared half naked in it a couple times and fans then took screenshots and put shirts on Offroad to cover him up. Atime26 even released an edited trailer with those shirts on twitter. The inpact! Most recently Offroad wore a shirt with tiny holes in it and Daou called it see through. And during a recent twitch stream of Daou a fan asked if they could buy a see through shirt for Offroad. They could, but fans can only look. Another recent jealousy example here!

Talking about each other! They talk a lot about each other. Good things but sometimes things can also get sad. I will start here around the time Daou posted that he had to go into the army (he had to enlist 1 November 2022). Offroad commented and said "Eat well. I wish you luck, no suffering, no call, no disease. 👏❤️ Send your heart to me. I love you so much. I will do my best here. Let's go". The last day before Daou's enlistment a podcast was posted by The Modernist with the Laz1 boys. There was also a written version and let me copy a part. One question that was asked was "Choose one person and tell him your innermost feelings".

Offroad: But if I want to talk to another person who is very special, that is, I want to talk about P'Wu. Because he was the only person in the group who saw me from the beginning. I want to say that my place is like this. What I want to say is that I want him to see that I'm getting better. (Crying so much that he couldn't breathe) I wanted to tell him that. I have been with him for a long time and he is another person who has fulfilled me to be here as well.

Offroad has said a couple times before that he felt like he was a burden to Daou because he felt like he wasn't good enough.

During the last day they also had last fanmeet. And when Daou grabbed the microphone to talk he put his arm around Offroad's shoulder. And then when he started talking Offroad broke down (video linked there).

And here someone made a tiktok about the enlistment.

They had to work in pairs after the first round in Lazicon and Daou picked Offroad.

Special person talk during EMF fandom live today.

Couple rings! Daou lied to Offroad and said his fanclub wanted to buy a ring so they needed Offroad's ring size. Turned out Daou wanted to buy couple rings. A fan found out it were Cartier rings worth 1500 euro's each. And Daou isn't even rich. During EMF fandom live today there was more couple rings talk.

This was for an interview with Mint Magazine. Full trans for the interview here. As a long term fan I was confused by their answer because for me it's always been a 10. Not sure how it could have gotten more.

Daou talking about how in BL series the characters at least have to love each other but that they don't have to force themselves since they already have a close relationship. Full interview here and you can use google trans on the webpage.

Couple song! Last part. Daou and Offroad's fandom name is Nubdao and they have a song called Nubdao which was written by them and which is about each other. Nubdao means counting the stars.

Translation of this song in a comment here

[darthpastry]

Incorrect Quotes of the Kingdom Pt. 2

Link: I'm never donating blood again. The second you walk through the door, it’s just one invasive question after another! ‘Where did you get it?’ 'Why is it in a bucket?’ I mean... do you want it or not?

——————

Revali: Any idiot would know that.

Link: I knew that!

Revali: See?

——————

Revali: Could you be any more annoying?

Link: Definitely.

——————

Purah: Ew, what kind of tea is this?

Link *sipping tea cup with pinky in the air*: I boiled Gatorade.

——————

Link: Ok so, apparently the "bad vibes" I've been feeling are actually severe psychological distress.

——————

Tulin: I’ve become a bread crumb dealer to four crows at the lake. They pay me with a bit of everything. Like shiny things, fabric, or pens. But recently they paid me with a 20 dollar bill they found somewhere. So I decided to buy them some more expensive bread. They loved it. So they understand what to do. Give me money. I’ve probably racked up about 200 dollars at this point. Is it morally wrong though, I mean. They’re the ones who steal the money from others. Or perhaps they just have a big pile laying somewhere. Should I keep on doing this?

Riju: You sound like the start of a Batman villain.

——————

Zelda: What are you two arguing about this time?

Purah: They're always using common phrases incorrectly!

Link: Cry me a table.

——————

Link: Fight me!

Ganondorf: Ha, look at your size! What are you gonna do, kick my ankle?

*Later*

Ghost Sonia: Why is Ganondorf crying?

Ghost Rauru: Link kicked them really hard in the ankle.

——————

Zelda: Please could you go to the shop and get a carton of milk, if they have avocados get six.

Link *coming back from the store with six cartons of milk*: They had avacados!

——————

Link: Rauru, I screwed up big time.

Rauru: Link, given your daily life experiences, you’re gonna have to be more specific.

——————

Link:  *About to do something incredibly stupid*

The sages: I know I can't stop you, but I won't let you go by yourself.

——————

Sonia:  I have been tricked, I have been backstabbed, and I have quite possibly been bamboozled.

——————

Purah: According to the footage here, you shook the vending machine and when the shake alarm went off, you punched the glass and broke it.

Link: ... I was hungry.

——————

Sonia: Not gonna lie, I'm kind of afraid of Link...

Rauru: As you should be.

Sonia: No, for real. They're kind of-

Rauru: As. You. Should. Be.

——————

Ganondorf: Life is like Link. It's short.

——————

Link: Don't worry, I have a few knives up my sleeve.

Yunobo: I think you mean cards.

Tulin: He did not.

Link *pulling out knives*: I did not.

——————

Link: The risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math.

——————

Link:  Like they say, "If you can't beat them, curl up in a ball and protect your organs."

——————

Purah: When will Ted himself...finally show up to the talk?

Tulin: The final boss.

Riju: You guys know TEDtalks stands for technology, entertainment, and design talks, right?

Link: I will not let Ted hide behind these lies any longer!

——————

Link: Yum, thanks!

Ganondorf *puts more tape over Link's mouth*: I said, stop eating it.

——————

Purah: Didn't you die?!

Link: That was weeks ago. Things change.

——————

Purah: Wake me up...

Tulin: Before ya go go

Zelda: When September ends

Link: WAKE ME UP INSIDE

——————

Sidon: What if mayonnaise came in cans?

Link: That would suck because you can't microwave metal.

Riju: Good morning to everyone except these two people.

——————

Ganondorf: I've been expecting you, Link.

Link: How did you do that without turning around?

Ganondorf:  Let's just say the first few people I did that to were not you.

[static-scribblez]

The PS5 has been out for three years and Chris Dunne deserves one by now he deserves a PS5 the universe owes him one all of this is still this is the text this is all on the shirt the universe owes him a PS I did the math Will I did the math its it’s I did the math if if we made if we fuckin profit 10 dollars a shirt I I give you half of that I get five dollars a shirt I gotta sell 80 t-shirts in order to get a PS5 94 t-shirts if I’m including a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3 that’s doable that’s totally doable that’s all on the shirt all of this is on the shirt including this including this it’s doable I could sell 80 shirts that’s on the shirt too right this is all on the shirt okay this is all going on it’s all on the shirt that’s the shirt that’s my idea for some new merch that’s great that’s a great shirt yeah and the fun thing is that it could also be a poster or that’s true or like a mug or a drink or fucking anything I don’t know just who cares wait can you do that can you setup on the bigcartel like 12 different items all with right the same block of text on it yeah and the plan is to price all of those items I will profit enough enough to purchase a PS5 that’s a lot of items and the second I make 400 dollars they’re gone they disappear because this is a terrible thing for me to do I shouldn’t do this its so funny that’s no that’s such a good idea I just I’ve been thinking about just putting up a fucking PayPal link I’m done I need a PS5 dude that’s dude I I like I want I was just I’m fucking sitting at home just like ahhh here’s the thing I’m not gonna like fuckin I’m not gonna I I I I I don’t I don’t want to beg for money uh huh I didn’t think I wanted to beg people for money but then I took a long hard think about how badly I want a PS5 and I think I might be okay with it. I’ve been having fantasy’s about just going to target and looking at them ya know just fantasies about looking about just I just been maybe I’ll go to target or Walmart today and just look at the ps5s just to be like I could get that I could I could have one I could take it home I could take it I could just buy it today what’s stopping you then because I PS5 the price point its at right now its very dangerous because its an exact price point where I could buy it and it wouldn’t immediately ruin my life but it would make it so that my life gets ruined quicker a couple months down the line okay right which still makes it a bad purchase right yeah you know what I mean that’s kinda where I’m at okay so I say we do the t-shirt thing we make a t-shirt a mug a poster all the specific niche things that the drop shipping company that we work with prints on yeah do’m all all the printful stuff just the entire printful catalogue 50 items yeah the whole catalogue this huge block of text make socks fucking fill out the entire bigcartel page mousepads with as many items as they’ll let me put on thermoses just canvas prints every single possible literation on of it and if that bothers you there’s a very quick to get me to stop doing it just buy them you just need to be the 80th person to buy these fucking t-shirts that’s amazing can we give a prize to the 80th person who buys one uh well how much is the prize uh its its its um its you get a little sandwich kiss you and me each take a cheek and give him a little smooch alright well I’m just going to round and say its going to 40 bucks for travel expenses so that’s 8 more t-shirts we have to before we do that but then yeah sure ya know well then we just increase yeah exactly we just increase the number of t-shirts I have to sell right exactly

[talisidekick]

I need your help...

If you don't know me, hello, I'm Accalia, I go by Tali Sidekick online on Youtube, Instagram, and on the rarest of occasions Twitch. I'm a 29 year old transgender woman from Canada, who came out and began socially and medically transitioning in 2021. I stream largely on Youtube and on the rare occasion I make videos (it's been over a year since I last did that).

I could use your help affording my legal name change. I've been trying to afford it myself but I'm unable to for reasons I'll get into below. The link is in my blog description, but I'll post it here:

Recently, while walking home from work (I don't make enough to afford public transit or my own vehicle or a bicycle) I got attacked by a middle-aged man in a dimly lit residential neighbourhood. I got away, and thankfully I didn't give him enough time to do more than grab me by the arm. However, I had to file a police report, which gave me two options: use my legal name which at current is my deadname (ie. a name I no longer wish to use) which would be distressing to say the least, or submit it anonymously. I chose the latter which unfortunately does little besides let the public know that someone dangerous with a vague description is in their area. I wish I could have put my name on that report but using my legal name as it stands now is ... I can't.

To add to this, I was saving up, but unfortunately the student loans I owe decided to charge me during an appeal process (they weren't supposed to) and when the charge partially bounced they denied my appeal (which isn't supposed to happen under the contract agreement I signed) because of "outstanding payments". The appeal process also only looked at my gross income for one month, specifically the month I got paid 3 times in (it happens only once a year) and decided to combine all three payments into an equal 2 and evaluated my paycheck at around 25/hr when I only make 16/hr and has thus denied me reduced loans payment (I'm working on this but it's adding to my stress). So at current, the $300 I had extra got eaten by the National Student Loans Services Centre (NSLSC) again and from previous experience even though I should be reimbursed once this is cleared up, I won't be.

I would have also had more (remember that extra third paycheck?) but my health insurance stopped covering me because despite being signed up to a provincial pharmacy program they decided I wasn't, and forced me to buy my hormones and ADHD meds out of pocket. They only -just- reinstated coverage, but getting reimbursed will take over a month possibly 2.

As such, I have exactly $48 in savings and $7 in my basic checking account.

I want to get my name changed, I've been trying for over 2 years, and it's been impossible. Every time I have the money to spare, the NSLSC eats it and doesn't give it back, some medical thing comes up, or some unforseen cost rears its head and consumes my meager savings. The cost averages out to about $450 because it requires Finger Printing for a background check, Notary Fees, Processing Fees, and Reprinting Fees for my Birth Certificate, Drivers License, and Marriage License.

And if the $450 goal is exceeded, any excess getsput towards affording the $6000 surgery cost of getting SRS/GRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery/Gender Reassignment Surgery). I have until December next year before my government will no longer cover the cost of the surgery supposedly.

If I can get help here, I really want all my legal doccuments to read "Llorelei Accalia [Lastname]". I'm so tired of having to explain to people that I'm transgender because the name, face, and (somehow) voice don't match.

Currently at:

$50/$450

[getsikndie]

Where I get my clothes, and where to buy clowncore fashion

Alright so, ever since I’ve started posting my outfits on here and instagram I’ve been frequently asked where I get my clothes so I decided to just make this post I can direst people to when they ask. What I’m going to be covering in this post is:

☆ Where I buy my clothes

☆ Where I got the specific pieces that are most frequently asked about

☆ Brands/shops that sell clowncore and kidcore fashion

☆ About where the pieces used in my urstyle sets come from

Let me know if you want me to make a clowncore style guide/ post with basics and recommendations for starting to wear the fashion.

WHERE I BUY MY CLOTHES

The answer to that is that majority of my clothes, and especially the more interesting pieces are bought second-hand, either from thrift stores or depop. If you’re looking for weird or colorful clothes, thrift stores and antique stores are the first place you should check because a lot of common things in clowncore fashion such as weird/ugly sweaters or colorful frilly blouses are vintage.

When buying stuff online, yes you can search for terms like “clowncore” or “kidcore” and get results from people who know those aesthetics, but I usually have better luck finding stuff I like by making a pinterest board of clothes I want, and then searching for specific items on depop and ebay. 

For example some of the things I search for are “colorful vintage sweater” “clown sweater” “colorful 80s blouse” “vintage rainbow sweater” “vintage bed jacket” “square dance dress”. I also search for old Lazy Oaf stuff, because I feel like 2010s Lazy Oaf goes well with clowncore. The only other brand I specifically search for is Eagles Eye, who made some of the weird sweaters I own.

Accessorizing is also important for this style, and you can find stuff like patterned socks/tights, novelty purses, and quirky earrings pretty easily on Amazon and Ebay. But I’d also recommend looking on Etsy to find more unique and better quality accessories.

WHERE I GOT SPECIFIC PIECES:

These are just the ones most frequently asked about so I thought I’d put them in here, if there’s something else not included here feel free to ask.

Blue clown face sweater: This was bought in 2016 from beautifulhalo.com and sold out soon after I got it. It’s actually a dupe of a very similar Lazy Oaf sweater that was sold out before that.

Red letter skirt: I actually made this myself out of a plain red circle skirt I thrifted, and some foam letters that you can buy in the kids arts and crafts section of walmart or similar stores.

Fuzzy red cartoon eye dress: This is from Lazy Oaf, I got it second hand on ebay.

Crayola crayons sweater: I bought this on ebay, the brand is the Eagle’s Eye.

Blue burger top: This is another Lazy Oaf piece I got on ebay.

M&M button up shirt: I got this in NYC from the M&M store there in 2019, I’m not sure if they still sell them or if they’re available online.

Red clown sweater: I bought this on Etsy in 2017 and I’m under the impression it was one of a kind, but I’m not 100% sure. 

Rainbow striped top: My mom got me this for Christmas in 2019 I think, and I’m pretty sure she got it from Amazon. It’s a dupe of a top made by Minga London, although the original uses a darker shade of blue. You can probably still find it if you search “rainbow stripe turtleneck” or something.

Rockafire Explosion Rolfe and Earle tee: Got this from https://www.cafepress.com/rockafireworld, they have merch of the other characters as well.

BRANDS/SHOPS THAT SELL CLOWNCORE AND KIDCORE FASHION:

Here are some links to brands, stores, and depop accounts that sell clowncore and kidcore type clothes. Note that some of them sell other clothes besides that so you might have to look through their stuff.

https://www.kinaandtam.com/ (Can be a bit pricey, but I’ve bought a sweater from them and it’s great quality, def recommend) 

https://www.lazyoaf.com/collections/lazy-oaf-x-nhozagri (while i feel like the lazy oaf aesthetic has shifted and become less kidcore over the years, they still do make colorful weird stuff sometimes)

https://theraggedpriest.com/  (have some cool colorful stuff if you look for it)

https://www.depop.com/kitschcore/ (vintage clothes)

https://www.depop.com/sweetcarolinesvintage/ (vintage clothes)

https://www.depop.com/sweaterweatherco/ (colorful sweaters)

https://www.depop.com/maekshift/ (clown costumes)

https://www.depop.com/bluebearboutique/ (colorful collars)

https://www.depop.com/mysticalbaby/ (jewelry)

https://katabasisagora.com/ (upcycled/altered pieces, featured in my urstyle sets multiple times)

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MaliciousDesignsLA (dresses and sets, very melanie martinez-esque but some also give me clown vibes)

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ichigoblack (bloomers, dresses and skirts)

https://www.etsy.com/shop/KawaiiKave (accessories)

https://www.etsy.com/shop/YellowThreadd (accessories)

https://www.etsy.com/shop/SistersEnchanted (clown collars)

https://rommydebommy.com/ (realistic food purses - super expensive but very cool i dream of owning one T_T)

https://www.fashionbrandcompany.com/ (duh)

That’s all I can think of atm, hopefully I’m not forgetting anything I know of

ABOUT MY URSTYLE SETS

If you follow me it might be because of my urstyle sets, aka outfit collages I’ve made on the website urstyle (it’s just like polyvore). I make these as moodboard basically, putting together outfits for whatever style I’m into at the current moment, but none of the pngs I use are my photos and only a couple of my sets include clothes that I own, since they’re more like pictures of outfits I wish I own. If I want to make outfits with my clothes I can just wear them lol

Some of the pictures I use I uploaded myself from pinterest or other websites, but I also use a lot of pictures that weren’t uploaded by me. For the majority of the clothes, I don’t know where they’re from or where to get them, although there are a few that I do know. If you want to know whether I know where a specific piece is from, just ask me, but please don’t ask the general question of “where are these clothes from” or “where do you buy these” under my urstyle posts since that broad of a question is hard to answer.

Hope this answered some questions people might have!

[definitely-not-an-alb]

ooh, how do you think molly would grift essek?

Alright. Let’s grift Essek.

First I need to note that any objection along the line of ‘Essek is too intelligent to fall for grifts’ is unnecessary, because whatever you think of Essek’s specific characterisation, assuming you are to intelligent to fall for a grift is one of the major ways people fall for them, in a ‘renowned high pressure social group researcher proclaiming on twitter that Sissy Porn is real and dangerous’ kinda way (look it up it’s some hysterical terf bs).

Gonna use that joke as a sidenote that if I am conflating grifts and high pressure social groups in this, it’s ‘cause as far as I care the difference is how self-aware the people running the show are. Watch any MLM-Doku (and I think we can all agree MLMs are grifts) and you’ll inevitably get to the part about weird aspiration culture bs and group pressure. It’s all one soup.

With that out of the way, let’s establish a baseline: What’s Molly’s reason for grifting Essek? Probably money and also the fun of it/being bored. Considering Kingsley abandoned his perfectly fine shipping company job to run off to be pirate king, I don’t think ‘Molly keeps grifting long after the M9 have become financially stable for shits and giggles and because Jester enjoys it’ is too outlandish a projection. Additionally, I don’t think Molly is great with impulse control nor this whole thing where current actions cause future consequences.

Now; why would Essek fall for a grift. Grifting relies on the dupe wanting something more than having good sense about it. Most people want money, so most girfts are structured around greed, but we know money is no object to Essek (though this does make him a juicy target – what he would barely miss might make a good haul for any grifter). We do know he is primarily motivated by knowledge instead, as well as a desire to be recognized as intelligent and exceptional. Additionally, we know he needs (in the character development sense) The Power of Friendship. Lastly, I think it’s fair to say he subconsciously longs for excitement (happy, fulfilled bureaucrats don’t become heretic spies; nor do they befriend a gang of mercenaries; implicitly, Essek is happier living the life of a wayward refugee-adventurer wizard than that of an Evil Gay Vizier Court Wizard or whatever papers a Shadowhand stamps nine-to-five.).

Being a paranoid bastard makes him a harder target, though the fact that we know he has fallen for someone’s bs before (I’m counting the spectacularly bad decision that is him allying with the Assembly as falling for a grift here. That’s a stupid decision to make!) makes him an easier target. Being so socially isolated makes him an easier victim, too, though his general rejection of people and clear discomfort with social interactions makes him an unlikely target for something like a romance scam. Essek’s relationship to tolerating bullshit is a weird one; on the one hand, he does put up with Jester’s (and the rest of the Nein’s) shenanigans, on the other he clearly knows how to and dares to tell someone to fuck off, and there’s that time he just ditches everyone via teleport (hilarious). So boundaries-wise, he could go either way. Lastly, I’d argue he’s at least somewhat impulsive or at least not risk averse. Always remember we are looking at an NPC next to Sword’n’Sorcery Adventurers – Essek might look cautious next to ruin-trawling wizards, but compare him to Gundula, 55, who works in Insurance and just clicked on a phishing link to claim her Totally Real Oilve Garden Gift Card, and you’ll see what I mean – most people are too risk-averse and unimpulsive to, again, commit treason via international conspiracy and then run off without a moment’s notice to dig around a cursed-ass ruin to save the world from a Cronenbergian nightmare.

Conclusion: He’s rich, he’s bored, he loves pretending to be a spy or grand discoverer, he wants to buy your dodgy foreign papers and incredible discoveries about the Luxon so, so badly and he has absolutely no one left in his life who’ll tell him it’s a bad idea.

So, for example, Molly could Voynich him. All he needs is a battered notebook and some writing supplies, whatever knowledge of what wizards’ and alchemists’ and spies’ scribbles look like he can easily pick up from traveling with the Nein and an opportunity to ask Essek to have a look at this encoded notebook he’s been lugging around all over the continent with him, why, he was at this party in Zadash and everyone else was some boring old pompous wizard (such a bore!) so he pickpocketed one of them, just for the fun of it, but, well, turns out neither Caleb nor Beau can make head nor tails of the weird sign code it’s written in (how tragic, if only someone happened to be so much cleverer than both of them!) and if Essek wants to have a look Molly would be more than happy to lighten his pack. For a small pittance, of course.

What’s small change to Essek is probably pretty nice to have for Molly, even by that level and especially if we’re mostly doing this for the fun of it. Essek gets to fall face first into his desire to show up Caleb, Beau and potentially an unknown Assembly member with his clearly superior decoding, espionage and wizardly skills and gain Secret Knowledge, maybe even Assembly Secrets on top of that.

Arguably, this one does rely very heavily on the fact that it’s hard to prove a negative, or in this case, hard to prove a barely-literate conman’s scribbles are just that. Do keep in mind Essek doesn’t know Molly is a habitual conman, but even so, it’s not a fantastic con (Essek isn’t dumb and knows his arcana after all and Molly doesn’t, or at least not enough to make a proper Voynich).

You could make it a better Voynich by getting Caleb in on it, but instead let’s pep it and turn it into a proper Real Stradivari by changing the hints that this manuscript might be legit to being alchemy-related and adding in a shill. Let’s go with Jester, because she’s down to clown, can lie and has a way with Essek’s boundaries.

So this time around, we aren’t asking Essek outright to buy our bogus notes – instead Molly gives him the whole spiel, hands him the notebook, fucks off with as little time to actually look at it as possible before Jester enters the scene to ask what THAT is and go oh it’s about ALCHEMY well, that DOES look like the signs she saw around Yezza’s house, pretty suuuure, oh, do you think it might be Yezza’s? Do you think Yezza might want it? Do you think she should ask Molly to sell it to her so she can give it to Yezza as a present to be nice because she’s such a nice friend who does nice things?

Honestly, the money part is optional if this is wholly about making Essek look up to see if the ceiling does indeed say gullible (and if Jester is involved, it might well do so! Always better to check, with her!), but a proper Violin Drop concludes with the Grifter returning to take their worthless thing back only to be asked to sell by the victim, who thinks the grifter doesn’t know what worth he has. If it was real, offering to buy the notebook would mean Essek outsmarted a minimum of three people (Beau and Caleb can’t crack the code, Molly is too dumb and illiterate to know valuable research notes from the morning paper) and gets his hands on potentially unknown-to-him luxon-related secrets! Alas, it’s not real, as he will realize soon.

So these are two (related) ways to scam Essek. But there’s a third one I want to mention one that is a lot of cinematic fun and I didn’t know had a name until Wikipedia told me no one does it irl (boo! That’s no fun!). It takes a lot of prep, math, and a lot of people and combines Essek’s obsession with the Luxon’s secrets and Molly’s penchant for passing himself off as psychic.

Molly would need something people in Rosohna bet on, like some kind of sport, preferably one with only two results and places people do said betting on said sport in groups. I’m assuming this exists on account of gambling and sports being culturally pretty universal concepts that love to go together.

Anyway. Imagine you’re Essek Thelyss, and one day a bunch of weirdos show up in court with a piece of the god you’re atheistically-heretically obsessed with. A few weeks later, you, having your ears to the ground about new developments regarding said not-god-pieces, hear one of the weirdos has made a name for himself as a outright oracle, correctly predicting the outcome of Fantasy-Dodgeball (Rosohnas’ favourite sport) perfectly six weeks running. He swears it’s because proximity to the Luxon amplified his inborn and long-trained psychic powers to predict the future.

Now, this is obviously bullshit. Except if Essek, being regrettably acquainted with the weirdos, were to ask, Molly would certainly confirm that sure, he has mystic powers and certainly they were amplified by the Luxon and predicting sport results is a hobby of his wherever they go, does Essek want to see? and lead Essek to a bar where every regular can swear on whatever he likes that Molly has correctly predicted the results of Fantasy-Dodgeball since the first week of being in Rosohna, in fact since before he himself knew the rules or track-record of any of the teams. Not only that, but there’s a second bar full of people Molly can introduce him too. And if he wants, he can certainly come back for a drink in one of them again next week when Molly has done it once more. Just call on Molly, he’ll tell you the time and date to meet some true believers, not all of whom can possibly be his shills.

(And, incidentally, barely worth mentioning, really, since Molly’s psychic blessings from the Luxon are so accurate, he has Exciting Business Opportunities for anyone willing to place more than their weekly betting budget in his trust, and he’d love for Essek to take a look at his powers. For a small compensation of his time, of course.)

Of course Molly can’t predict the results of Fantasy-Dodgeball. Instead, the first week of downtime in Rosohna, he found out what people like to bet on in Rosohna and where, picked one or two places in each district, go there and make predictions with a fifty-fifty split, then eliminate each watering hole where he was wrong each week, slowly cutting his audience back to only people who are getting to know him as That Outlander Who Always Knows The Results of Fantasy-Dodgeball, all the while escalating the story from him being just some dude betting and drinking with the guys to the whole Chosen By The Luxon thing. Considering this is a double-scam involving a faith aspect, he might very well still cash in in places he’s been wrong once only since victims of faith-based scams are very likely to overlook inconsistencies in their scammer’s stories or promised results. By the time Essek gets involved Molly’d be down to one or two places of true believers coming to him for ‘always accurate’ tips and a bunch of other people all over Rosohna he might get some money off based on the faith-aspect. And now perhaps one intrigued high-ranking government official who’s more than willing to overlook the hereticism inherent to the whole thing and is instead very likely to fall in the academic glue-trap of trying to disprove something clearly bogus that you do kind of want to believe in because like.

Wouldn’t it be cool? If the Luxon had more awesome powers? And one of them happened to fall in Essek’s hands, with no oversight and no need to cooperate with someone like Trent or Ludinus? Would he not want it to be real?

Anyway. The real answer to this question is: Enlist Beau to send bogus stuffed bills to Essek’s secretary. Bureaucrat on bureaucrat violence, let’s go.