#the thing is that so much art in general has been constantly linked to having this parasocial relationships with the ones who interact with

[i-bring-crack]

Alright yeah fuck it. If you dont have characters that will be beloved by the people who read it then the stories dont last long in a fandom or sometimes even have an impact on people. Fuck the premise fuck the storyline fuck your worldbuilding becuase Ive seen so many, MANY, stories that are great have no one else to talk about simply because the characters were either too little screentime or none at all to be explored.

And now more than ever more people will define their liking of a story to whenever or not the characters are solid on their own instead of everything else. Its why much of the retellings or the same genre tropes are played out over and over again instead of new things compromising around the same idea.

And its not bad, but its also dumb for someone to go ahead and call another work of art, of whatever kind but im mostly talking about stories here, as a 'lesser work' simply because theres no characters that fit into neat molds or are hot and you can quickly get attached to, completely ignoring everything else about what it is and just deciding everyone who likes it has horrible tastes.

[netherworldpost]

With the various rumors and releases of Tumblr possibly changing how they do things... (gestures to the vague rumor mill)...

Zines.

I really think we as Folks Who Make Things and Folks Who Like Art Writing Poetry Music Comics Other Things need to explore zines. And I mean ZINES. Nothing glossy. Nothing fancy.

Very. Cheap. Zines.

I've been threatening mentioning I was going to create a guide on how I'm going to approach this -- and I'm going to -- but I am also realizing in the writing I Do Things Highfalutin because I am who I am + had a career in graphic design.

Let's talk about how you can make a zine very cheaply and very pretty.

STEP ONE: SUPPLIES

Very bright paper. I like "Astrobrights" because they are absurdly bright. Here is a link in a store I like. I buy a lot of paper and envelopes from them. You can generally find Astrobrights in big box office stores. It prints on laser printers and ink jet and photocopiers.

Very bright envelopes. What's that? Astrobrights has envelopes?! AM I SOLVING PROBLEMS let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Letter paper is 8.5" x 11" and is the most common size in the united states (overseas folk will have to use this advice with a grain o'sea salt and search yer own waters).

A9 envelopes are a letter sheet folded in half.

A2 envelopes are a letter sheet folded in half, then folded in half.

#10 envelopes are your common long envelopes, letter paper folded in thirds.

Pick the size you like.

If you want to get big and fancy, Tabloid is 17" x 11" -- so double a letter sheet. This gets tricky to work with but is neat in sizing.

STEP TWO: ZINE CONTENT

Do you know how to use InDesign or similar program? Use that.

No? Use Google Docs or Word or whatever other program and ramble.

Want something special? Write out some or part with a sharpee or pen.

Mix and match both.

If you are feeling fancy, design it like a booklet -- mock up a sheet of blank paper as if it were a brochure. If not, just design it straight up and down like a letter. There are no zine laws.

STEP THREE: ZINE PRINTING

Print at home on your home printer.

Don't have a printer at home? Print it at work (don't get fired)

Can't? Your local library may be able to help.

You need 1 copy on white paper.

FedEx Office has photocopiers. Your local library may too. Or your job.

Print 1 copy of your zine on white paper and then photocopy the rest onto colorful paper (or white paper, it be yer zine seadog).

Or print everything on the color paper if you have access to free printing, that's fine too.

The photocopy setup is purely "printing tends to cost more than photocopying."

If you want to slash prices, print 2 per sheet and have FedEx office cut them for you, this will cost $1 - $5 depending on how many sheets you are dealing with. This is for when you're doing a LOT of zines at once.

Or use their manual paper cutter yourself for free.

STEP FOUR: ZINE STAPLING

"Long reach stapler" is what I recommend. There are a few varieties. They tend to be $20 - $30.

Or just use 1 sheet!

STEP FOUR: ZINE POSTAGE

A single first class stamp for 1-2 pages. If you get up to 3+, go to the post office and ask them to weigh a comp you have assembled.

This is a guideline.

It's a really good idea to check at least once how much your zine weighs just in general. Post offices have scales. And are pretty. And have stamps.

OKAY ENOUGH LUSTING FOR THE POST OFFICE FROM THE GHOTS POST OFFICE BLOG BACK TO WORK

STEP FIVE: ZINE MAILING

This is actually the most difficult part. Label printers exist with various costs -- if you're starting out? Go with printable labels.

Your office supply shop will have them and they'll have templates you can drop in the customer addresses.

Save yourself time by using this label as the thing that seals the envelope -- don't lick envelopes.

A key tenet to staying in business is constantly reviewing physical (and mental) labor and stressors and reducing them as much as possible.

Return address labels are intensely cheap in literally every online printer, google "return address labels." Make sure you have this because at least a few of your shipments will come back to you.

STEP SIX: ZINE PRICING

Okay here is where we get uncomfortable because we're talkin' coins.

Prices are based on above links. You can get whatever paper you want, so this is guidelines. All numbers rounded up.

Payment processing ($0.30) + $0.05 sheet + $0.15 envelope + $0.66 first class postage = $1.16 base cost

$1.16 + 2.9% of $1.16 payment processing = $1.20

Plus taxes. I'm not getting into tax figures YOU DO THAT (just say 30% for easy math, this is not saying "your taxes are 30% or that mine are" I am saying "I am going to factor 30% for this equation to complete this guide".)

I did not include the mailing label (it will be $0.01 - $0.05 depending on how fancy and how many you buy) because you have the option to just write things and also it fits into the rounding of the above.

If you use Patreon, include your fees. Probably replace the above processing fees with your patreon processing... fees? I don't use patreon I don't know how it works.

Retail option 01: $1.50 - 1.20 = $0.80 gross - 30% = $0.09 / net / zine.

Retail option 02: $2 - 1.20 = $0.80 gross - 30% = $0.56 / net / zine.

Retail option 03: $3 - 1.20 = $1.80 gross - 30% = $1.26 / net / zine.

Should it be $1.50? Should it be $3.00? MORE? LESS?! That is for you to decide. Base it on what your zine contains, how long it takes you to write/draw/etc. it and how you want your flow to be.

STEP SEVEN: ZINE FREQUENCY

When my shop launches, it'll have a zine once a month. We are going to offer a subscription option + a "I just want 1" option.

You can do a zine monthly, or every few months, or whatever.

Keep in mind that the purpose of doing this is to break the dependency on social media marketing.

KEEP IN MIND AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER TO A CREATOR YOU LIKE THAT THEY ARE DOING THIS TO BREAK THEIR DEPENDENCY ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.

If you have a lot of energy and an audience that comes to your shop a lot? Consider doing a zine monthly.

If you do not have a lot of energy and/or your audience is tapped for cash frequently? Considering doing 1 zine per season.

Consider 2 zines a year if that works better for you!

NO RULES ONLY JOY

Not sure? Experiment! Be upfront! "This is new. I'm figuring this out. Billionaires are tinkering with these things and we gotta figure something else out."

BONUS STEP: NETHERWORLDPOST.COM

so hi I'm atty and I'm your loud long rambler today

Netherworld Post Office used to be @evilsupplyco and now we are rebranding in prep of relaunching. Same person behind the rambles and comics, new name with a more focus (mail instead of mail + seemingly everything else in experiment)

if you enjoyed this ramble and/or like ghosts, monsters, witches, mermaids, and fun stories and projects focused on cozy Halloween, you may like us when we finish the rebranding and relaunching in autumn 2023.

email sign up (the zine will come when we are open)

WHETHER YOU JOIN MY LIST OR NOT

I really, really, really hope you consider doing a regular, or irregular, zine. Something outside of email, something outside of social media, something that connects I MADE A WEIRD THING and the people who say I LOVE THIS WEIRD THING YOU MADE.

The walls are closing in on free social media as a platform for people who make weird things to build audiences for free or very cheap.

And with that...

netherworldpost.com as one final hat pass

good luck folks

thanks for listenin' to the ol' ghost

[washipink]

A Beginner’s Guide to Tokusatsu

Hey, I know some of you are probably wondering about all these hero shows I’m constantly posting about. Maybe you want to try watching them too, but don’t know where to start? Well, look no further. I’m here to go over some accessible, and legal, means of checking out some of my favorite things!

for the OTHER means, you’ll have to DM me or send me an ask. I’m not getting my favorite sites shut down. You know the drill.

This guide will mainly focus on the big 3 Toku franchises, Toei’s Kamen Rider and Super Sentai as well as Tsuburaya’s Ultraman.

What Is Tokusatsu?

Tokusatsu is a genre of Japanese shows and movies that literally translates to “Special Effects”. Usually using a combination of monster or hero suits, practical effects like explosions, and light CGI.

That’s a REALLY wide net, so we’re just gonna focus on 3 shows today.

Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, and Ultraman. Thanks to @urotandersentai​ for drawing this neat little guide to the Visual Design of each of these 3 shows.

With that out of the way, let’s look at some individual seasons of these shows. Each one has a link to where you can watch it!

Please remember that at the end of the day, the best way to pick a show to watch is “Whatever looks coolest to you”. As such, I’ve included pictures!!!

Super Sentai

You might be saying, “This looks like Power Rangers!” And you’d be right!

Super Sentai, created by Shotaro Ishinomori and produced by Toei Productions, is kinda like Power Rangers’ Dad. PR has been using suits and even fight footage from Super Sentai to tell its own stories for 30 years. All this time, though, Sentai has been creating lovable and memorable casts of colorful heroes.

Generally, Super Sentai is about a team of heroes in colorful costumes that fight monsters every week to protect people.

There’s tons of shows in this series that are available FOR FREE.

CHOUJIN SENTAI JETMAN (1991)

The Earth is under siege from the Dimensional War Party Vyram. A special squadron is selected for an experiment to turn them into Super Humans with the powers of Birds, the Birdman Squadron Jetman. Vyram interferes with the experiment and kills all but one of the Jetman recruits. Instead, civilians are transformed and tasked with defending the Earth. The surviving recruit, Ryu Tendo, must convince 4 normal people with drastically different backgrounds to fight with him.

Jetman has the typical monster of the week format for Super Sentai, but when the team isn’t battling monsters, there’s some serious drama going on. The five of them are all drastically different individuals. It can make it hard to work as a team. Especially when it comes Black Condor. Dude’s a loose canon and an absolute bastard of a man.

KYORYU SENTAI ZYURANGER (1992)

“From hundreds of millions of years ago, in the age of the dinosaurs, five warriors revive in the present time!”

When the Evil Witch Bandora awakens from her slumber, intent on terrorizing the Children of Earth, Five warriors from Dinosaur Times are unsealed to undo her schemes!

This one is where the suits for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers came from, which might tempt you to watch it first. I kinda recommend against that, though. It’s a fine show but I personally found it a bit boring. The characterization of the main cast didn’t stick out as much compared to other Sentai.

GOSEI SENTAI DAIRANGER (1993)

I haven’t seen this one, but it’s focused on martial arts and one of their mechs is a cool dragon? so uhhh? Check them out? Their theme song fucks

NINJA SENTAI KAKURANGER (1994)

Ok listen I didn’t watch this one either. HOWEVER, I know that it’s about the descendants of 5 legendary ninja who have been fighting yokai for 400 years.

CHOURIKI SENTAI OHRANGER (1995)

This is the last sentai in the “I didn’t watch it” category. uhhh, watch it if the suits look cool. Sorry.

GEKISOU SENTAI CARRANGER (1996)

Five Mechanics use the power of Car Magic to protect the earth from the Universal Reckless Driving Tribe and teach children about Traffic Safety. This one’s a tad bit goofier compared to some of the others, but it’s a good time.

Also There’s a Yoda.

DENJI SENTAI MEGARANGER (1997)

Five High School Students are friends and pals! Together they investigate the mysterious goings on of a technologically advanced evil empire. They literally surf the net in order to bring peace to their city and the world!

SEIJUU SENTAI GINGAMAN (1998)

The warriors of Ginga Forest, the Gingamen, have protected nature for 132 Generations. This series follows the 133rd Generation of Gingamen, who battle alongside Starbeasts to stop the resurrection of the Demon Beast Ditanix!

KYUKYU SENTAI GOGOFIVE (1999)

This time, the rangers are an experienced team of rescue workers given super human power! They fight back Literal Demons From Hell that endanger the public. There’s a lot of focus specifically on rescuing civilians in this one, so if you’re an especially big fan of watching heroes... SAVE people, this is a great choice.

MIRAI SENTAI TIMERANGER (2000)

In the 30th Century, a gang of super criminals escapes to the year 2000. They are tracked down by the Future Sentai Timeranger, agents of the Time Defense Force. There, they encounter the Great(s) Grandfather of their departed leader and must convince him to fight alongside them for the sake of humanity.

HYAKUJU SENTAI GAORANGER (2001)

Veterinarian Kakeru Shishi can hear the hearts of every animal! He swiftly becomes enraptured in the adventures of the Gaorangers, who battle living embodiment of pollution. Also they live on a flying turtle! How cool is that?

NINPUU SENTAI HURRICANNEGER (2002)

What if there was a polycule of ninjas SO BAD at being Ninjas, they showed up to Ninja Class Late and were the only survivors of an attack on their school? These guys are the silliest little slackers, but they’ve got hearts of gold. Check them out? For me? :)

KAMEN RIDER

If Super Sentai is Power Rangers’ Dad, Kamen Rider is Power Rangers’ Uncle.

Kamen Rider was ALSO created by Shotaro Ishinomori.

Usually focused in on a smaller cast of heroes. A common theme in Rider is that the heroes are created by their villains and choose to rebel against them for the greater good, or will use the villain’s own powers against them.

Most Riders have a signature attack where they leap into the air and do a flying kick. These get INCREDIBLY flashy over the years.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot less Kamen Rider legally available than there are of the other two shows here. Don’t fret, it’s Easy Enough To Find Anyway.

As for the shows I can link you to, there’s

KAMEN RIDER (1971)

This is the original series.

Takeshi Hongo is an augmented human being created by the evil organization Shocker. Escaping before his brainwashing can be completed, battles for humanity’s freedom as Kamen Rider.

Being such an old show, the effects can be dated and cheesy. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, but if you stick with it, I’m sure you’ll love it. You can watch most of the show in almost any order. The only really confusing part is that eventually, Hongo tags out with fellow escaped cyborg Ichimonji Hayato as Kamen Rider. (This was due to a real world injury to Hongo’s actor during filming. Don’t worry, he’s still kicking and he comes back later in the show!)

It’s also the longest Kamen Rider show, so I don’t fault you if you decide not to watch ALL of it. Even I haven’t yet.

If reading is more your thing, it’s based on a manga that you can find a DELIGHTFULLY well crafted omnibus of here

KAMEN RIDER KUUGA (2000)

Kuuga was the first season of Rider after about a 5 year break on TV. It’s something of a return to form.

It follows Yusuke Godai, a world traveler with 2000 skills, visiting his home town for the first time in years. He finds himself in the middle of an ancient civilization’s ritualistic murder game. Donning the mantle of Kuuga, Godai fights to protect the smiles of the city. He has a wonderful supporting cast around him including Detective Ichijou, who he goes on to share a rather homoerotic bond with.

Kuuga was my first Rider Series and to this day, it represents the Bread and Butter of Kamen Rider to me. This one’s a bit of a slow-paced Drama, but its focus is on what it means to help others. Every episode, I felt like I was actively being encouraged to be a better person. Godai’s got this infectious positivity that can’t help but make you grin.

KAMEN RIDER RYUKI (2002)

Ryuki takes a rather different direction from the other shows on this list. Instead of being about a single hero battling monsters, it’s about Plucky Young Journalist Shinji Kido being wrapped up in an all-out war between Kamen Riders. Donning the mask of Ryuki, he seeks to put an end to the bloodshed. The other Kamen Riders aren’t nearly as cooperative, though.

Don’t think that this plot means these characters don’t get tons of humanizing moments though. They’re all delightful to watch in action and you’ll end up truly questioning who will win? Is it possible to end the Riders’ battle? Will Shinji have to take a life after all?

I cannot recommend Ryuki enough. A lot of the Rider series from the early 2000s are Dramas that feature super heroes and Ryuki takes that drama up to a 10. (Plus, if you wanna ask where to find it, there’s plentiful side content for this show.)

KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE (2019)

In the far-flung year of 2019, Hiden Intelligence has revolutionized AI technology. The company manufactures Robot Assistants called Humagears. People in all walks of life and profession benefit from their aid. Unfortunately, something is causing Humagears to go berserk and attack humans.

With the death of Hiden Intelligence’s president, Failed Comedian Aruto Hiden inherits the company. He’s given the Zero-One Driver, which allows him to fight the corrupted Humagears as Kamen Rider Zero-One. With this new power in hand, Aruto seeks a way forward where Humankind and AI can exist in harmony.

Come to think of it, this one’s kinda topical. “AI” is a subject we really aren’t gonna be getting rid of any time soon. This show is one of the more recent rider productions you can find legally and it SHOWS. Every suit is sleek and clean, the visuals are striking and flashy. If nothing else, Zero-One LOOKS incredible.

KAMEN RIDER GEATS (2022)

Kamen Riders compete in a game called the Desire Grand Prix. By fighting monsters and saving people for points, the winner can have their greatest desire granted. Ukiyo Ace, the titular Kamen Rider Geats, looks to unravel the mysteries behind the Grand Prix and reunite with his long-lost mother.

Things get a bit more complicated than that, but I think you should see it for yourself. I can’t recommend Geats enough. its visual style is a direct evolution of Zero One’s sleekness and flashiness. It’s main 4 characters are some of my favorites in recent years.

SHIN KAMEN RIDER (2023) (Paid)

Takeshi Hongo is an augmented human being created by the evil organization Shocker. Escaping before his brainwashing can be completed, battles for humanity’s freedom as Kamen Rider. 

Wait, that sounds really familiar. That’s because this is the latest in a series of Tokusatsu Reimaginings by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi. This is a new take on the story of Kamen Rider 1971, modernized complete with sleeker suits and stunning music all wrapped up in a 2-hour movie. It also has plenty of Easter Eggs for those of us who are fans of the 1971 series or the Manga it’s based on!

Be warned, this one’s gorier than the other stuff on the list. It’s mostly exaggerated blood splatters, though. I hate that kind of stuff and I’m able to rewatch this movie.

KAMEN RIDER AMAZONS (2016) (Paid)

Amazons is another adult reimagining of a classic Kamen Rider show, but it’s so far removed you don’t really need to know much about the original to enjoy it.

Amazons follows a group of exterminators who have been tasked with eradicating escaped cannibalistic experiments called, well, Amazons. The catch is that they work together with 2 Amazons, Momoru the Mole Amazon, and Haruka, the titular Kamen Rider Amazons. Both of them are tasked with asking themselves ethical questions. Is it so wrong for Amazons to exist? Is it possible to avoid eating people? If it isn’t, then is it WRONG to eat people to survive?

ULTRAMAN

Ok, look, I’m gonna have to make a separate post covering all the free Ultraman stuff there is. Theres SO MUCH OF IT available that I don’t know where to start. We’re about to hit the image limit. If that post is done, it will be linked HERE.

But for a basic idea, there’s tons of stuff on Tubi and the official Ultraman Youtube Channel posts new episodes of the currently airing show.

[lucabyte]

hi im the anon who asked for ocs

thank you so much i love them so much

Im so happyy and gwaaghhh love your art and ocs so much and the worldbuilding seems so cool!!!!

erm i have not yet read all the linked things (hehehe soon SOOON) and literally would love to know even more about ALL OF THEM so uhhh *spins the wheel* tabitha

Hiiiiii!!! Cradles this ask in my hands like a baby bird. Thabmk you..... I have been staring at this ask periodically for days because I wanted to do some little explainer charts and do it justice for how kind you've been :')

Anyway!!! Tabitha is the funniest character to ask about first because he's like a fucked up little lodestone for MYMK's various factions.

Tabitha is.... A sleepy little (38 year old) guy. He has never done anything notable in his whole life ever.

... So he's the son of the richest man in the country. Not that he tries to think about that particularly often. His partner also doesn't think much about it since... Well, it doesn't really come up? Neither like their family so neither talk about nor visit them. And Chrome first got endeared to Tabitha after dragging his malnourished ass off the office floor a few dozen times when he'd passed out at work. He's clearly not bougie (and Chrome was relatively middle class anyway).

Eeeeeveryone else in Cliffside though (who's politically aware) is just, so suspicious of his sleepyhead ditzy guy demeanor. There's no way he's really that clueless and dim-witted.

Which... Is true. He's not dim-witted, just spacey and has internalised that all of his knowledge is worth absolutely nothing an undiagnosed autistic man who is finally in a low-stress environment.

So he's generally spending most of his days reading wikipedia, sitting in the sun on an unfinished porch, or doing the bare-minimum work he needs to pretend to still be employed. (He's still a music producer, just one that is very VERY derivative of his peers...)

(pictured: Tabitha bangin out the tunes)

But yeah! He's genuinely a chill dude. But once the plot gets rolling he does become an... Obvious hostage for the more dubious of our main characters. He's more fine with the hostage thing than the requirement he go deal with his family again.

But obviously things go a little awry when trying to use someone as a bargaining chip like this, even if they don't want to defect...

Which is where Tabitha's absoute UNINTENDED TRAIL OF DESOLATION rears its head. Turns out he uh, actually did have social connections before he up and vanished from all their lives? Turns out that um... You exist to other people?

Tabitha, high strung and basically constantly in meltdown mode in his late-teens early-20s did a lot of peacekeeping for his father. Peacekeeping between him, and the people that were Tabitha's childhood peers. It doesn't help that he was a good 5-8 years older than a lot of them, being somewhat of a cool older kid/teen/adult to look up to. And then! When he finally broke he just up and left, never really looking back.

It's hardly his fault, he was under a lot of pressure and was hardly properly socialised for this... But these are the sharks he'll be thrown to should he end up anywhere near his old haunts. Which he is. And will end up being. If he is perhaps brought there by our well meaning protagonists. Oops.

I like Tabitha a lot and he's a particularly deep side-character of mine. Functioning as an obstacle, ally, win condition... And very dangerous 'I'll kill everyone in the room and then myself' for Chrome should something happen to him. So be careful! He's fragile! And don't forget he has thoughts of his own, too...

I have a longer diatribe (Link!) detailing his whole backstory and meta-backstory (he's built out of psychoanalysed anime tropes!) so I wanted to talk about his actual um. Plot role and relationships outside of Chrome a bit! (BECAUSE HIS RELATIONSHIP TO CHROME IS VERY SWEET AND IS MY HOMEGROWN OTP BUT ALSO. THEY ARE CODEPENDENT. BADLY.)

He's fun because he is basically One Of The Villains who fucked off before too much villain shit went down. Which makes him silly as a supporting character. Gotta make sure he doesn't eat too much of the screen-time though.... (He gets enough in Purrgatorio...)

But yeah. Diversity win! This vaguely asexual autistic guy has managed to find a loving partner and a life that doesn't make his head feel like its filled with bees! It's filled with mostly cotton instead now but! He is okay.

Aaaand IMAGE BLAST

... Oh good lord Chrome and Tabitha will be turning 10 years old for real next year also. 11th of November 2015. What a time. Can you believe that I originally made him to be in his like, 20s? Fucked up. He should probably be older than 38 tbf but at this point the timeline is locked in. But god. 10 years. Happy upcoming birthday boys.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 62 – The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

This is the latest book I never would have heard of if it wasn’t for an award nomination (WFA for Best Novel, in this case). Overall, I was left dearly wishing I had liked it more than I did – it was so thoroughly soaked in imagery and references to a whole milieu I only barely know enough about to catch all the references flying over my head. Unfortunately by the final act the whole thing just collapses into a mess of spectacle without much in the way of connective tissue or context.

The story follows Perilous “Perry” Graves, his kid sister, and his best friend/crush Peaches (who is clearly an ersatz Pippy Longstocking but for some reason this is almost literally the only reference the book doesn’t explicitly acknowledge). They live in Nola, a fantastical alternate New Orleans full of zombies, animate graffiti, sky trolleys, and music that is indistinguishable from magic. After the magical songs that sustain the city escape/are stolen, it’s up to the three of them to get them back before Stagger Lee (the song) hunts down and kills the others for his mysterious partner. There’s also an extended subplot with Casey, a recently returned Katrina refugee in what seems to be our world, discovering that his and his cousin’s graffiti and other art is very literally magic and can come alive when he isn’t looking. Things just generally get messier and harder to explain from there.

Above everything else, the book’s a love letter to New Orleans. The sheer fascination and affection Jenning’s has for the place just about oozes out of every page. The geography and the culture and especially and overwhelmingly the art. Now I know barely anything about modern pop music and even less about classic jazz, but Jennings is either a massive fan or an incredibly confident bullshitter, and either way it’s an absolutely loadbearing part of the book – famous jazz musicians appear as magicians and ghosts, snatches and stanzas of different songs are quoted liberally, and of course the songs themselves are the driving engine of the plot. I, at least, just kind of let all the references wash over me and try to figure them out from context, and also started listening to the namedropped songs as I read. But even without really knowing the subject, the sheer love for the culture that just suffuses the book is really incredible endearing. Which is good, because it’s absolutely the main actual draw here.

The dialogue also deserves a shoutout – both because there’s a fun line you can draw between the characters that talk like actual people and the ones that intentionally present themselves like cartoon characters, and also because it’s the first book I can recall reading this year where people speak in AAVE. Plus, as a matter of style, when songs or certain ghosts were speaking telepathically the book used a different font for what they were saying, which is the sort of flourish that I always like when it’s not too overused.

While the surreal, exaggerated sort of magical absurdism works very well for the setting of Nola, the plot is...just kind of a mess. You almost get the sense the book was written in one sprint and then never revised – the protagonists are constantly getting help out of nowhere exactly as they need it to solve their latest problem, and revelations of plot critical information exactly when it’s needed to keep things moving abound, whether there’s any setup or justification for it or not. The metaphysics that underpin Nola are all vague and confused, which really wouldn’t be an issue if the entire third act didn’t turn on on the villain being wrong about them. The end result is a finale that feels like a bunch of big set piece scene the author had been looking forward to writing without any real connective tissue linking or supporting them.

Also, like – it is a major part of Perry’s arc that a year before the events of the book he had a run in with a monstrous caricature of a Jim Crow era hanging judge, and it has traumatized him sufficiently that he had steadfastly refused to try and do any magic since. The judge is later revealed to be an escaped bit of living graffiti, with absolutely zero relevance or deeper significance, and never appears on-screen again. Which just feels like some sort of narrative malpractice, honestly.

I’m also just left a bit disappointed with the villain – or, specifically, the wasted potential. Like, the idea of The Storm as this primeval elemental force that wants nothing more than to drown the world is a pretty great villain for a magical New Orleans, honestly. And there was something there of graffiti and music and just art being this engine of joyous hubris letting the city exist in defiance of its inevitable doom – but you really have to dig to get at it, and most of the other personal plots and heroes journey stuff burying it was far less compelling to me.

Anyway yeah, in the end this very much felt like it was style over substance, but on the other hand the style was excellent. In the end I kind of feel like this was ill-served as a book? Not that it’s necessarily impossible to write a novel that’s mostly about music, but this was really begging for a medium that could include a soundtrack.

[copperbora]

Introduction

Here be mine list of information sources that I often use for arguing with people who genocidally hate wolves (and other wildlife,) based on misinformation, anti-wolf propaganda like 'Smoke a Pack a Day!' (yes, wolf haters literally say inflammatory hogwash like this,) and centuries of uneducated fear based upon the very few times in history (actual accounts forgotten) that (likely largely habituated) wolves have been less than friendly to humans. (And I was going to include a picture of one of these 'smoke a pack a day' things but urgh... honestly they make me want to vomit.)

🐾Please note that I will be constantly adding to this list and updating it as I find new ammunition - er, sources, with which to argue with/informationally support my ongoing work on my science-based graphic novel, Knife Edge. (Which I haven't worked on much lately due to my need to work on my shop - where you can buy all kinds of wolfy art by the way - instead.)

⚠️Important to note: wolf scientists can be a bit hard to talk to at times due to the fact that some of them have literally received death threats from wolf haters and people in the livestock industries who erronously believe based upon hearsay (i.e. no actual science,) that wolves are a threat to their top dollar. That's why the typically great podcast Ologies had trouble finding a wolf scientist for its lupinology episode - because people who hate wolves tend to hate people who say that they need to stop killing wolves because how dare they be wrong. (I'm still peeved about how bad that lupinology episode was by the way; it didn't even mention trophic cascades. Sigh. (That's why I haven't linked it here, and why I hope that Alie Ward will redo it someday, or that the podcast Science Versus will do a wolf episode instead someday.)

I myself am not a wolf scientist, (although this was my dream as a little girl which I gave up on due to painful dyscalcula,) but I am striving to be as expert about lupinology as much as a non-scientist can be, especially so that I can do wolves proper justice in my story Knife Edge as well as other future wolf advocacy projects that are percolating in my deranged little mind. My stunningly crappy brain for math may have prevented me from studying to become an actual wildlife biologist studying wolves in the field but it isn't going to stop me from helping wolves with my art by attempting to educate and dispel misinformation about them. I can do my best to be a science communicator and do wolf outreach through my work. Hopefully I won't get lynched for it.

Please feel free to use the following links should you decide that you need them. This post is linked in my pinned post so that it can be more easily found especially by me.

Why I Advocate for Wolves

- Because it's the right thing to do: wolves are sentient, highly social beings who live in closely knit family groups much like our own human families complete with parents who impart generational knowledge - such as tactically how to specifically hunt particular prey (for example: elk) - upon their offspring who either go off eventually to start their own families or stay put in their natal pack with their parents, helping to raise their younger siblings. No animal has been more horrifically scapegoated over the centuries of our coexistence than the wolf, which some people are still trying to eradicate even though no science supports this.

- Because I dream of a world where predators are protected, where all killing of them is banned, because they are simply too important to our planet to destroy. They are deeply critical to rewilding our planet and helping our own species survive, because where wolves are, wetlands and forests thrive, helping cure drought, prevent wildfires, facilitate natural carbon capture through the bettering of these ecosystems, and clean the water that we humans also drink, all by preventing cervid species like deer from overgrazing and destroying baby trees. Wolves cause trophic cascades which promote the survival of hundreds of other species from charismatic scavengers like bald eagles and red foxes to the freshwater trout that anglers love to catch whose health is aided by the beavers which are able to create expansive water meadows whenever deer are prevented by predators like wolves from eating all of the beavers' food.

- Because unshockingly, killing wolves greatly damages their genetic diversity, hindering their ability to survive as a species. (I can't believe that there are actually people surprised by this.)

- Because before we ruined everything, the presence of wolves and lack of human interference meant that pre-colonial biodiversity was unimagineably greater than what we see today and I for one would like to see this amazing biodiversity explode again within my lifetime.

- Because wolves and humans have a lot in common; they too mourn their dead and exhibit joy at the introduction of new babies to their families. Recognizing this isn't anthropomorphism; we too are animals, afterall.

"We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be – the mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.” - Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf.

🐺Wolf Specific Citations

- Wolves as scapegoats for human evil.

- No statistical support for wolf 'control' (culling) and maternal penning as methods for helping endangered caribou in British Columbia. (Actually, erase the word culling - what they really mean is wolf genocide.)

- The plight of wolves in America (features an absolute textwall of citations!)

- New document suggests British Columbia is using Judas Wolves for aerial wolf cull.

- Account of use of Judas Wolves in British Columbia

- BC Wolf Cull: documents reveal cruel methods of killing wolves. (You can bet your butt that I am furious at my province for this.)

- Wolves do not require human 'help' to control their numbers.

- Wolves are extremely important for environmental health as they cause trophic cascades.

- A wolf, abruptly noticing a human, runs away in fear. (Example of typical human/wolf interaction.)

- Are wolves dangerous to humans? (Spoiler alert: they're statistically not.)

- Killing wolves is unnecessary: wolves naturally limit their own numbers.

- Wolves are not a significant threat to livestock. What is a genuine threat to livestock generally? Free roaming dogs (in fact, farmers in Scotland are allowed to outright shoot dogs who they notice bothering their animals,) dystocia (birthing complications,) and inclement weather - issues which could be aleviated at least a little if ranchers would just use some range riders - aka, cowboys.

- US government data shows that wolves have a negligible effect on livestock losses.

- Killing wolves actually leads to more livestock losses, not less.

- Alberta Rancher Using Non-Lethal Predator Control (hasn't 'had' to shoot a wolf in years)

- Livestock Guardian Dogs Reduce Losses by 11-100% (utilized correctly they are extremely effective)

- Livestock Guardian Dogs Reduce Predation (according to Texas A&M University.)

- Please note that the wolf ranking terms 'alpha/beta/omega' have been debunked and are no longer in reputable scientific use. I wrote a thing about it here. Wolf packs are families, not militant groups of marauding monsters.

- All about why we don't use the wolf ranking terms alpha/beta/omega anymore which is why I depict Larch's natal pack in Knife Edge without these terms.

Recommended Books & Films About Wolves

- The Homeward Wolf by Kevin Van Tighem (a great account of wolf behaviour including detailing how wolves have generational knowledge and typically only hunt what their elders have taught them to except in rare circumstances such as in the case of a melanistic male in the Canadian Rockies who started hunting mountain goats instead of the elk that he had been raised on.)

- The Last Wolf by Jim Crumley (goes over the extirpation of the wolf from Scotland and over the misinformation surrounding wolves in great detail; an inspiring read.)

- In the Shadow of a Rainbow by Robert Franklin Leslie (a novel telling the story of a remarkable friendship between a man and a wild wolf which also gives evidence to lupine pre-genocide culture.)

- Island of the Sea Wolves published and streamed by Netflix, which gives an interesting account of a wolf family that has two breeding females in it, who amazingly help each other raise their pups!

- The International Wolf Centre's wonderfully long list of wolf books and media. (Doesn't include everything though.)

Other Wildlife Citations (Mostly About Cougars, Honestly.)

As a wildlife advocate you have to pick your battles so most of my focus is on predators, particularly wolves, cougars, coyotes, and sharks with a small measure of focus on spotted hyenas. I do also have a soft spot for beavers, however, as they are personally sacred to me and also extremely important to the environment, being an unusual keystone species that is a herbivore rather than a predator. Generally predators are the most influential animals in a habitat but beavers - and bison - are novel exceptions. (And actually, squirrels are too. Every animal is an important facet however without natural predators ecosystems crumble. Humans are not a replacement; compared to predators like wolves humans typically do an outlandishly terrible job of positively influencing the ecosystem.)

- The importance of predators (many more useful citations!)

- Why We NEED Predators (ScienceNews)

- Unmasking the myth of wildlife 'management.' (Yet more citations.)

- USDA's war on wildlife (again super well cited!)

- Cougars are NOT a threat to public safety (and more facts about these adorable large dog-sized purr machines.)

- Cougars also cause trophic cascades (in fact many predators do this.)

- Cougars are actually extremely social.

- Cougars are TERRIFIED of human chatter!

- Cougars are the bigfoot of cats. (Also as they are technically 'small' cats - and they honestly are very small compared to actual pantherine big cats like tigers and lions - we need to stop calling them big cats.)

- Want to solve wildfires and drought? Leave it to BEAVERS!

- How beavers restore wetland in deserts.

- Coyotes under siege and misunderstood.

- Why killing coyotes doesn't work.

- Starving bear mercifully euthanized; autopsy reveals plastic impaction in its intestines.

- Disease precautions for hunters.

- The ecological effects of livestock guarding dogs (LGDs) on target and non-target wildlife.

- Impact of clear-cut logging on forests.

- Ojibwe Spirit Horse - here before colonization? Plausible, yes considering horse remains found in the arctic.

- Is shark repellent a real thing? (Yes it is, and it's being developed in modern times to save sharks from humans.)

- To underline how very little top predators want to hurt us much less eat us, watch this video to see a tiger shark (one of the most infamous species of shark,) happily cuddle with her human researcher friend and recognize him after not seeing him for years!

Other Wildlife Books & Films

- Lethal Control, produced by Predator Defense (an organization which does an amazing job of thoroughly listing their information sources) and is a film about M-44 cyanide bombs which kill wildlife and pets alike.

- American Coyote by Dan Flores (be warned, some of the information in regards to wolves is incorrect but it is still an extremely interesting and illuminating account of the coyote, Canis latrans.)

- California Mountain Lions: The Legends of California by One Health Institute (ecology of cougars and why they are threatened.)

Favourite Information Sources & Organizations to Support

- Predator Defense

- International Wolf Centre

- Wolf Conservation Centre

- The Fur-Bearers

- Raincoast Conservation Foundation

- Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre

My Silly(?) Pet Peeves About Wolves

- How many Etsy stores flatout copy that silhouette of Kiba from Wolf's Rain howling with the moon behind him in their designs. Damnit, learn how to draw!!

- The whole moon association with wolves - no, they do not howl at the moon, they howl because it's fun, to communicate where they are/where prey is, to mourn, to locate family members, to express hunt victory (or alternatively "Come and get it!") Wolves probably do not give a damn about the moon.

- When people call baby wolves 'cubs' instead of 'pups' or 'puppies.' No. Wolves are a species of wild dog and baby dogs are puppies, therefore baby wolves are also puppies. Grr. 'Cub' to me implies a baby bear, or, heaven forbid, a pantherine kitten like a baby lion or tiger. Maybe hyenas too.

- Wolf haters, and how ludicrous it is that they've made something so simple so political. Wolves, like human uteruses, should not be political.

- Trophy hunters.

- How every wolf story is extremely fantastical instead of based upon any science.

- How no company ever makes accurately patterned wolf plushies.

- How cartoon wolves rarely look at all like real wolves.

- The fact that their common name is 'grey' wolf when at least in North America they commonly come in black too. I propose 'timber' wolf as a much more accurate name, as they are usually found in forests.

My Silly(?) Pet Peeves About Other Wildlife

- Trophy hunters. Please find a different way to prove that you have disposable income and that you are manly.

- When people call cougars/pumas 'mountain lions' because cougars are only very distantly related to real lions - they're on opposite sides of Felidae. Their closest relatives are jaguarundi, followed by cheetahs. Lions belong to Panthera along with tigers and leopards while cougars belong to the genus Puma. Additionally, cougars and puma are indigenous names while mountain lion is colonial. (Pumas are found in South America, cougars live in North America; same species but different subspecies due to differing habitats and prey.) 'Cougar' is derived from an indigenous Tupi (Brazil) word, çuçuarana.

- When people misuse the word 'cougar' to describe women. Ugh. Stop.

- The name 'black bear' because black bears come in a whole rainbow of colours including whie (spirit/kermode,) glacier (it's like blue roan for bears,) cinnamon, blonde and chocolate.

[archandshri]

22nd March ‘24 - [arch] Mad About Munch, Warm-up sketches and daaarknesss???

Good evening, Shri! I forgot that it is Friday, but at the beginning of writing this, I have an hour and 27 minutes until Friday is over, so I WILL be on time!

Wow, like a lot has happened? But I also don’t have tons to show for it. (it’s because I’m working on cool secret project that I’m not allowed to talk about which is fun!)

Stuff i have been doing

Museums :0!!!! I have been travelling and in my old age apparently, I like old art now???

Gathering a lot of reference images - photos, but also general inspiration

Finally organising my digital space a bit! I backed up like 3 years' worth of Procreate images and cleared out half my iPad

Getting some of my sketchbooks, especially comic development, digitised and onto Google Slides! I follow a similar process to when I was at uni still, with a huge PowerPoint for a project that contains reference images, inspiration, plot bullet points, and links to google docs where I write the scripts, development sketches and finals. It makes it super easy to go back to important parts of the development and be reminded of things I might have lost in the development process

Warm-up sketches because you bullied me into it (affectionate)

Continuing to explore colour

2 things I would like to tell you more about: 1) Edvard Munch!!!!!! If you ever get the chance to visit the Munch Museum in Oslo, do it!! I hadn’t seen a whole museum dedicated to one guy before, but seeing so much of his work in one place, in person really helped me understand it better. They also had a fantastic audio tour to rent that made it super accessible. I had just come from thinking about colour last week and becoming more comfortable with darker colours, and I had been thinking about personality and narrative in settings and backgrounds - both of which he does really well. In particular, The Sick Child, Eye in Eye, and The Sun stood out to me.

2) Play. AGAIN!!!!! I feel like I’m constantly having to fight myself, reminding myself to let go, play around, and explore without the expectation of a final outcome. You told me to try some 20 min warm-up and cool-down sketches - which I’ve been doing and has been going great! They’re not all perfect and aren’t supposed to be, but I’ve also had some really fun outcomes that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I also feel like I’m getting more of a grip on colour :0

Plus, I’ve found that I haven’t wanted to post my terrible sketches or even my better ones?? Which has been nice to make without the need for sharing. However, I have found myself craving a final image to share with all of Tumblr and Instagram, thinking of possible images that would do well on those platforms. I think there is a small part of me that wants to create those because it would be fun, but I think it’s mostly to fix the number-shaped hole :/ Hank Green made a good video which mentioned the fact that platforms are EXTRA BAD with teaching creators to be addicted to them, even more so than consumers. Video here. It’s good.

I was listening to the Imp and Skizz podcast earlier (Episode - Rendog pt 1), it’s a great podcast, they chat about Hermitcraft a bit but mostly about what being alive is like and being a creator, I really recommend them too. Anyway, Skizz said he was once told to ‘create videos that he wanted to watch.’ And I think it’s a good approach to have when creating. What do I wanna see/ read?

I would love to chat to you about the balance between dark tones and silliness in storytelling too, but it is 11pm and I do have to get up early tomorrow. Plus, I’m not sure I have enough thoughts yet. But for now, it’s left me thinking: what do I want to make? Am I campable of silliness in stories? I want to tell stories with an undertone of darkness, that discusses difficult themes, but how to we do that while keeping it entertaining and not just Too Much(™)?

I dunno, just thoughts I’ve been having. I wanna get them down, even if I don’t have any solutions yet. In the meantime, please accept these sketchbook pages in lieu of philosophical answers. 

Thank you for listening to my rambles once again!

Love <3 Archie

Ps. I saw Frozen the musical and it was Very Sibling, and I cried. It made me think of you and I think you would like it (it’s only a bit different to the film but it makes such a difference omg)

[undertale-fic-librarby]

Personal Recs! (General Audiences, Teen And Up)

Here are some of my personal recommendations! This post will include fics generally suited for most audiences.

Our Kind Of Intimacy by Moss-On-The-Bones (General Audiences, Complete)

Ink had the marvelous idea of making Error his canvas. A little over 1k words of Error being painted on. This is a part of a reverse big bang with @wewawoomp on Tumblr. Link to the art will be at the end notes.

Duplicate The Terror by Sye_Dye (Teen And Up, Complete)

This wasn't how it was suppose to go. Dream felt that he has done everything to get through to Nightmare, but to no avail. But to resort to this? He didn't think things could have gone so south so fast. He just wanted his precious brother back. Was that too much to ask for? It was an accident. Now he hurt his brother and he was not sure what to do. His brother sneered at him. On the other side of the room, another Nightmare glared at him. There were two Nightmares now. What has he done? In which Nightmare does not know what to do with himself and finds a new path.

Schrodinger's Gate by moondrift (Teen And Up, Incomplete)

Disoriented and emotionally frayed from decades spent in the void, W.D Gaster suddenly finds himself at the mercy of a cold and arrogant alternate self. His doppelganger promises to return him to the void once his research is complete but before he can make good on his threat, Gaster is introduced to this world’s variant of his son and he is forced to make a quick, spur of the moment decision. This sole act sends unforeseen ripples throughout the Multiverse and hurdles Gaster on a perilous journey across it to find his way home. or Dadster plays hopscotch across the multiverse, unintentionally and intentionally acquires children, tentatively reciprocates Grillby's feelings, engages in actual literal custody battles with copies of himself, somehow steals a Bad Sans™, narrowly avoids death at the hands of Error and somehow flies under Ink’s radar for a shocking amount of time.

Don't care 'bout my Bad Reputation by Insecuriousity (Teen And Up, Complete)

Every monster in Snowdin knew that between the two Skeleton Brothers, Sans was the soft one. He never dusted anyone, always hid behind his brother’s legs like a coward, and had the stats of a newborn whimsun. The only reason nobody had dusted him yet was because only Sans could extract some mercy from Papyrus. It was goddamn hilarious, how wrong they all were, but Sans wasn’t about to correct them.

you become by theragingprophet (General Audiences, Complete)

you aren’t Real, but for him... for your little brother, you can pretend. (in which Sans is Papyrus’s imaginary friend, and magic is both a wonderful and terrifying thing.)

The One Where Sans Tells It Like It Is. (Or: The One Where Sans Is Number One Dunckle) by marauding_bagel (General Audiences, Complete)

When Toriel asked him to attend the meeting in her place for one night he thought it wouldn't be a big deal. Turns out Sans could not have been more wrong.

At Their Mercy by Devcipher (Teen And Up, Complete)

The multiverse had been perfectly balanced when the seven higher beings weaved it together. Through countless interferences, however, the balance has begun to tip, and stability is threatened. Fate's creation has been unresponsive to their warnings, and thus a solution must be made. While feuding with Destiny over a monster to be Ink's counterpart, Karma intervenes. Inspiration from Harrish6's Forced God of Destruction universe, but a unique alternate multiverse/universe of my own. Discord is constantly breaking the link for the ATM discord but: https://discord.gg/DgHWGnMNrs *EDIT: My server got raided twice please message me for a link lol* Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/devtemrys

Kinder Than He Seems by WrittenKinzy18 (Teen And Up, Complete)

Error is the Destroyer of the AUs. The sole purpose of his existence is to clash with Ink and destroy the entire multiverse. He has two easy ways of doing so: finding the Doodle Sphere, or killing the Classic Universe. No one wants to get rid of him completely, but they also can't let him roam free. However, when Classic himself is brought into their multiversal meeting, they find Error has always known where the Original Undertale was. In fact, he'd been actively visiting it as a friend. Were they really so wrong about the Destroyer?

Ancients & Champions by jisko2ijsko (Teen And Up, Incomplete)

After monsters broke free to the surface Sans thought that the humans would be the hardest to manoeuvre around. Nothing could have prepared him for what he found in a different country far from his home. He will learn more about the world, them and himself as he tries to deal with feelings and long forgotten memories. TLDR: Sans decides to travel to help Alphys and Toriel and ends up meeting more skeletons and experience many more adventures. Good thing two are really cute and the other four are actually very nice.

Turn Back Time by orphan_account (Teen And Up, Incomplete)

Nightmare finally killed his brother. Dream is finally dead. Or so he thought. Dream also thought he was killed. He thought he was dead. But when he opened his eyes he's perfectly fine, unexpectedly. His pain has gone, there's no tendril piercing his body, and his wounds disappeared completely. Then a familiar voice greets him, chuckling softly. “Why are you looking at me like you’ve seen a ghost?” "Night...mare?"

[the9mm]

The Ever-Increasing Hostility of Social Media to Artists

Originally posted on my blog!

Have you noticed? There’s a chill in the air. With rising systems in place like “AI art” and image generation that seems to be creating a hostile environment for artists on the internet, as well as social media platforms that prioritize and reward creating “content” to game algorithms and have your posts be seen by the very people who have already chosen to follow you, there’s also a rising sense of hostility in general towards artists.

What do I mean? There is seldom a week that passes where I am doing my best to work with what’s available to me, and I am treated poorly by other users, or even moderators/administrators of social media circles. How many times have you posted something and heard the following?

“Pay for your ad!”

“#ad”

“This is just an ad.”

“Self-promotion is not allowed here.”

“Advertising is not allowed here.”

“You can’t mention that you made this/you sell it/it’s available to buy. You can’t include links back to any of your social media accounts or your website. You should not even have your username in your watermark.”

No credit, only content!!

Original comic by @cupcakelogic

I find this absolutely wild. Social media, built on the backs of artists – now turned “content creators” because people only stop to look at works you’ve spent hours making for mere seconds – has turned into such an impossible minefield of where you can’t hope to make any sort of headway in your efforts to grow your following or find new clients/buyers for your works. Social media as a whole, including groups, subs, etc will take your works, of course, as long as you never mention anything offsite, anything that could indicate that the work could be used for anything except a three second dopamine hit as people scroll their mindless feeds. You must constantly and consistently be playing a game of cutting your own marketing efforts off at the knees (or gaming the system and toeing the line for getting your links back out there) for the barest of scraps when they do come.

A post goes most viral on Imgur after posting consistently for months, or possibly even years? Well, you’ve only got about 24 hours to make the most of it. Edit your post and drop a link to where someone could support you. And then watch the comments roll in about how it’s an ad, and how you shouldn’t be doing that. A post gets upvoted a bunch on Reddit and lots of commenters are asking where they can support you? Sorry, against the rules to say it. You’ll get banned if you mention at all where people can send money for your cool thing.

Want to add a link to your crowdfunding campaign, Patreon, shop, or something else on one of the big social medias like Facebook/Instagram? Better make sure you turn it into a Zodiac killer-esque puzzle when you mention it by name that your followers then have to decode in order to find out where to support you easily, because if you post a link to anything outside of that social network – sometimes even just any link at all – you’ve guaranteed no one will see your post.

Censoring everything

On top of all of these hoops, there’s also the hoop of censorship. If the automated moderators at Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, or Bluesky decide there’s a penis in your artwork, well guess what. There’s a penis in it. Somewhere! The algorithm says so. Banned, banned for life. People have had posts taken down, been shadow banned, and even been suspended for posting things that are not even vaguely sexually suggestive in any manner and appealing or getting reinstated can be extremely difficult, time consuming, and sometimes outright impossible.

But that doesn’t even begin to even broach the topic of the way art is being systematically nice-ified for an audience it’s probably not ever going to reach: “what if my child sees this?”

Nipples (mostly just female), genitals, buttocks, and even too-much skin are swiftly slapped with filter labels (if the social media platform is generous) and hidden from view, or immediately taken down, despite the fact that every single human owns these body parts. What if my child sees this? Well, you should probably explain to them that other humans have butts too instead of forcing people to censor asscracks with smiley faces and stickers.

Moving the goalposts

I recently watched a friend battle with moderators on Reddit. She had been posting her artwork there for years. Her artwork also includes other artist’s work in the final piece, and she always credits those pieces as any good artist should. Well, a subreddit said no, she cannot mention those people and give due credit, as that’s advertising/promotion (to them). She asked if she could put their name on the watermark to give them credit, and was told no. To continue posting without giving credit to the other people responsible for parts of your work would obviously not be right or ideal, but what choice has she been given? New moderators/administrators come in and change their minds on a whim about when and where credit can be posted. The moderators/admins of this subreddit simply answered “no” and gave no other alternatives. How helpful is that?

A special place in hell

Even worse are the people who slice off artist’s signatures and watermarks, then share/repost the work without the artist’s credit (and do not tag or credit the artist in any way in any other form). If there’s a hell, I hope people who do this land directly in it. Right beside the people who simply must share an artwork, but can’t take the five seconds to TinEye or reverse Google Image Search it, and simply say “credit to the artist!” While we’re at it, people who think crediting an artist in the comments of a post because it looks “cleaner” or whatever reason they have can also get on the express hell elevator too (if you don’t know, comments don’t follow along with shares, so the credit being there is meaningless).

Oh, and make sure your stuff doesn’t look too professional, because if it does, it’s no longer artwork – it’s merch. And anything mentioning merch is now advertising. I have consistently discovered that by “downgrading” the presentation of my works (such as photoshopping them onto less-than-ideal photos where I’m holding it in hand, or it’s amidst a mess, something like that) I can reliably garner more likes, more comments, more shares, more upvotes, more engagement. The less polished I make it, even though I need those polished works for my website or my shop, the better it performs, because if it’s too nice looking, it’s merch, and an artist shouldn’t be making merch.

What’s next?

So what do we do here? Social media wants our art. Social media needs our art. Visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok were built on all of our hard work, propagating it with cool and interesting things constantly and consistently. Take away all of the interesting things, and what’s left on social media? Nothing. Nothing but “AI art” vomit and screenshots from Bluesky, Twitter, and Tumblr extorting people way funnier than us, that is.

For myself, I have begun starving the social media machine. I know it’s not good for growth, or connecting with new people, or whatever, but I’ve done my time in the trenches trying to chase after the newest trend, latest thing, and pleasing the capitalist social media overlords. I’ve tried to be the jester in the Meta court, and I know plenty of other artist friends who are doing the same. Why expend effort when there’s no reward? There’s not even any clicks anymore.

Many artist friends are going back to in-person events to bolster their audience instead of trying to capture a sliver of attention on a mobile phone or computer, and honestly I’m right there beside them. This year is the first year I’ve considered starting to purchase items for a professional table set up and trialing it at some smaller, local events. I’ve also been sending a lot of applications for zines, group art shows, and other projects, as well as preparing for another crowdfunding campaign at the end of March amongst over a hundred other artists. Social media just isn’t cutting it anymore.

I am having a nice time on Bluesky and Mastodon, though. Well, until someone comes in and slathers either of them in ads, I’m sure. But for now, I guess I’ll enjoy as much of it as I can. Good things never last. Let the enshittification begin.

[raccoonfallsharder]

Window Across the Galaxy ✧*:･ﾟupdated 1/17

18+ only | rocket x f!oc | 25/27 chapters | wip| word count: pending. ♡ check the masterlist for expected updates ♡ ♡ see the "holiday special" ⋆꙳•̩̩͙��*̩̩͙‧͙ Winter Across the Galaxy * ‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆ [new 12/5] ♡

see new fan art of my girl jo! a few gorgeous sketches by @moonnpiie ♡♡♡♡ and a Chapter XXIV jo by @frostedwitch ♡♡♡♡

girl falls first; racoon falls harder.

Rocket isn’t sure how he continues to be surprised by her, or how he never seems to anticipate her next move, especially when — cosmically speaking — Jo’s the most predictable frickin’ person he knows. For one damn thing, she is constantly dropping down to the ground in front of him: in front of the cage with a plateful of food. In the streets of Conjunction. By his bed while he slept. The very first time she’d used her mouth on him. And then the next time, too. That whole experience had been so brain-melting he still isn’t sure he’ll ever recover. But for whatever reason, when she sits down at the foot of his chair this time and takes his hands in her own — so carefully — his heart is suddenly, unexpectedly, in his throat. He can’t breathe around it, can’t swallow. When she starts speaking, he already knows what she’s going to say. He can feel it in the air, like static electricity building toward a spark. Because, just as she’d said, she’d already told him a million times before. With and without words. But still. He can’t breathe. And once she’s done confessing, and gives him two kisses — one pressed into each palm, to keep — she looks at him patiently and shifts like she’s about to rise to her feet and go about her night, like she’s not expecting anything back. Because of course she’s not.

[NEW 1/9] ✧･ﾟ:*Chapter XXV. Little Love Stories. in which both of our heroes learn a little about themselves. ❤︎

i know there are parts of this don't read smoothly (sorry sorry sorry) but in general i am so so so happy with this chapter. drax. (╥﹏╥) we have two more chapters to go, which is.... kinda making me cry tbh. i already miss these two idiots so much. ~♡

explicit lines or references* abbreviated explicit sequences ❤︎ detailed/prolonged explicit sequences ❤︎❤︎

General summary/notes + links to recently preceding chapters behind the cut.

let me know via comment, message, or ask if you'd like to be added or removed from my fanfic taglist ♡

Rocket is captured by a Ravager crew hoping to get rich off the excessively large bounty on his head. Throwing a wrench in everyone’s plans is the Terran girl they hired to do some freelance assessing on a recent haul of goods they’ve seized from a Xandaran luxury liner. Oops.

slight AU starting pre-GOTG volume 1 (but will hit most of the same major plot points). slow burn + eventual smut with a lot of pining in the middle. kinda enemies-to-lovers? (but only one of these idiots thinks they're enemies).

let me be real with you: this fic is really about wish-fulfillment. not just the eventual smut (but that too). mostly i just want someone to be nice to my best boy raccoon

*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ*

Chapter I. A Delicacy. in which our reluctant heroes meet atop a crate of Sovereign porn in the bowels of a Ravager ship.

Chapter II. Monster For A Pet. in which one hero wrestles with his inner Groot, and the other is quite possibly a moron.

Chapter III. A Kindness. in which Rocket gets in his own damn way: not for the first time, and certainly not for the last.

Chapter IV. Got There First. in which our heroes obtain an arsenal and street food.

Chapter V. Things No-One Has Said Before. in which one hero refuses to babysit and the other refuses to leave.

Chapter VI. Two and a Half Billion Units.in which we lean into the “they were roommates” trope. Jolie has misgivings, while Rocket has fantasies - about getting rich, of course.

Chapter VII. I'm Here. in which we visit Knowhere.

Chapter VIII. The Care & Feeding of Human Pets. in which our heroes practice breathing and we lean into a new trope: “there was (technically) one bed.”

Chapter IX. Scrapmetal and a Dream. in which we redefine homemaking.

Chapter X. Thin Fucking Ice. in which our heroes get fucked. Not in the good way.

Chapter XI. Let It Be. in which Xandar is saved and good lives are lost.

Chapter XII. So Much It Hurts. in which we try not to fuck up the vibes.

Chapter XIII. Don’t Wait. in which a lost sister is found and Drax grapples with the concept of sarcasm.

Chapter XIV. Exactly Like a Flower. in which comfort is shared.

Chapter XV: Galaxy-Breaking Shit. in which more comfort is shared, and life is good. Briefly.

Chapter XVI. Run. in which Rocket falls victim to his superstitions.

Chapter XVII. A Seedling. A Fox. A Little Girl. in which the party is divided.

Chapter XVIII. I Happen to Know a Guy. in which our heroes get fucked. Again. Still not in the good way.

Chapter XIX. He Was Loved. in which a planet is killed, a friend is made and lost, and nobody still has any frickin’ tape.

Chapter XX. Some Nerve. *in which an ultimatum is given.

Chapter XXI. I Very Still. ❤︎❤︎ in which our heroes get fucked. In the good way, this time. Finally.

Chapter XXII. Got There Worse. ❤︎❤︎ in which Rocket does not say "I love you."

Chapter XXIII. We're Gonna Need a Bigger Table. ❤︎ in which the galaxy continues to spin.

Chapter XXIV. Space Would Be Better. ❤︎❤︎ in which Rocket ~discreetly~ claims the title of boyfriend.

Chapter XXV. Little Love Stories. * in which both of our heroes learn a little bit about themselves.

Chapter XXVI. Other Side of the Window. ❤︎

Chapter XXV. The Most Beautiful Thing in My House. ❤︎❤︎

⋆꙳•̩̩͙❅*̩̩͙‧͙ Winter Across the Galaxy * ‧͙*̩̩͙❆ ͙͛ ˚₊⋆A Holiday Special *

Epilogue: Interviewing Rocket & Jo. ten years after Window ends. short/drabbly, silly fluff.

explicit lines or references* abbreviated explicit sequences ❤︎ detailed/prolonged explicit sequences ❤︎❤︎

taglist ♡ @evolvingchaoswitch ♡ @wren-phoenix ♡ @pretty-chips ♡ @suicidalshitstick ♡ @glow-autumz

[sanhatipal]

~~ Shards of Eden ~~

This is my little cove, and where I post art and dump other things occasionally. Come inside,have a look~

I haven't lasted 2 weeks on any other site since the fall of g+, except maybe twitter but that also drove me nuts and I always took long hiatuses, but have been here constantly since 2018. Which...says quite a bit. I'm a doctor by profession,but here on Tumblr for fandom (pretty obviously) and art

My fandoms:

Pandora Hearts

The case study of Vanitas

Fate series (mainly Fate/Stay Night)

The House in Fata Morgana

Shadows House

Rozen Maiden

Tegami Bachi / Letter Bee

Witch Hat Atelier

xxxholic

Witch's Heart/Majo no Shinzou

07 ghost

D gray man

Some others I'm into but not that crazy about: Touhou, Madoka Magica, Princess Tutu, Tsubasa Reservoir chronicle, Totsokuni no Shoujo (and more but my head is empty). I like seinen, josei and a very specific brand of shonen: aka things enough to mess up my brain. I don't enjoy romance, sexual things(says the Fate fan..HAH. but seriously,I don't.), or mecha unfortunately

I tend to draw Pandora Hearts, VnC and Fate fanart most

I collect figures,so you'll see them here,but since ,as you can see,most of my faves are a bit on the below the radar side,there hardly are any figures... you'll see custom figures here,and orginal character figures because I like those too.

I like a lot of things,but mostly whimsical, folksy aesthetics,forests and plants, and glowy flowers and things like wisp motifs (there's no limit actually).My favourite colours are,as you might have guessed, the multitude of shades of red, deep maroons and browns. I love fantasy,and folk tales and Celtic things in general have been my passion for a long,long time ,though I also love things inspired by Alice in Wonderland .

As far as music goes...I sang soprano at a choir for a larger part of my teenage,and choral music is very close to my heart. My favourite genres of music are Celtic, especially Irish traditional, new age, classical/neo classical, sea shanties,and whatever Yuki Kajiura and Mili have going on.

Now...art! When not doing fanart,I like drawing fantasy illustrations, and one day I'd like to illustrate books but that's a pipe dream. I'm self taught,and use mostly watercolour and ink. I also love sculpting. It started with trying to sculpt figures and while that's still what I do most,I sculpt other things too,and in general it has to be the favourite of my scores of hobbies . I also do bookbinding...and music box strips ...and doll customs...yeah there's no rhyme or reason to what I do and don't actually.

Sometimes I post photos of plants,I like taking photos and smelling wet mud

If you want to hop into my DMs to talk about fandoms or fanart,feel free! I would be very happy! Also I really love getting tagged and asked ,but often don't get around to responding because I'm a mess of procrastination...if that happens please don't mind, I really really appreciate it and it certainly made me happy,and I'll get to it as soon as I can.

If you've made it this far,thank you. It's been quite a long post,and thank you for reading,I appreciate it. Here are my other blogs:

@sanhatis-abyss absolute reblog hell,if you're looking for something I reblogged 2 days ago my condolences,you probably won't find it unless you scroll for hours. Sometimes I shitpost there , sometimes I scream about the latest thing that consumed me, that is ,if I don't accidentally do it here. Truly,an abyss.

@amaryllis-arachne my doll blog. I realise not everyone likes dolls,or photos of disembered plastic body parts,so I don't reblog those onto the abyss blog. Sometimes I put pictures of my own dolls there,and sometimes er...yes parts.

If you want my other links, they're all in the blog description. Except my Anilist, but it's really not worth anything,since I don't review or rate or anything,just use it to keep track. I do roughly-monthly uploads on YouTube of craft tutorials and drawings,but there's not much rhyme or reason to that either... anyways,hope you have a great day,and hope you find anything you like in this mess of a red coloured pit.

[ludwigbeilschmidts]

a symptom of being human - master post

a symptom of being human is my humanverse gerame & pruk hetalia au. i am hoping to write a cohesive story about it one day but for now i'm compiling this information here (taken from discord & my google doc) for you to look at. i'll link to the other posts here.

all posts of this au will be tagged as #asobh.

general info.

it's set in germany. arthur meant to study abroad for two semesters, but ran into gilbert because they studied the same thing (art history) and then never left. alfred wanted to escape the unites states and went to germany as an au pair, which is where he met ludwig.

arthur and gil are 4 years older than lud and al.

ludwig has autism.

alfred & gilbert are trans.

arthur speaks fluent german, alfred is learning german but is having a much harder time learning it than arthur.

alfred and matthew are still twins, but matthew lives with his father in canada, while alfred lived with his mother in the united states. they still talk generally.

the next paragraph is technically also general info but it needs to be expanded so it gets its own bullet point list here.

gilbert and his thing with death.

terminal illness! discussion of death and dying!

gilbert has an unspecified illness that is going to kill him before he's 30. i haven't decided on what yet, but it's a degenerative disease that he was born with, and it got diagnosed when he was a young child, and he has been raised with the knowledge that he won't make it past 30.

UPDATE: gilbert has hermansky-pudlak syndrome type 1, an extremely rare autosomal disorder, that causes albinism, bleeding diathesis, immunodeficiency, and pulmonary fibrosis.

he has a life expectancy of around 30, and has been raised with that knowledge. he's well aware he's going to die.

so is ludwig, of course, but it's still hard on everyone. ludwig cannot cope with the concept well, because he cannot fully grasp it.

gilbert's mortality especially becomes an issue once the relationship between arthur and gilbert becomes serious.

because gilbert didn't talk about it when they got together, because he assumed they wouldn't stay together long enough anyway, and then suddenly arthur is proposing to him and gilbert realizes this is a conversation they have to have immediately, 'cause he will not marry him under false pretenses.

gilbert is pretty optimistic despite the dying thing, usually. he planned his own funeral because he's pragmatic like that. his testament is written and he jokes about it constantly, he doesn't care because he never knew anything else. but of course even he has his limits and gets very, very upset about it sometimes.

when it comes to leaving his family behind, or even more personal things.

like settling down or starting a family he has difficulties dealing with it. because he's good with kids, maybe would even like some, but he knows it's not really feasible. he wouldn't live long enough to see them growing up, and he couldn't put the stress on arthur on raising children alone, and he couldn't put the stress on the children either. to lose a parent. adopting isn't an option because of that, and biological kids even less so because he would be too scared of passing his illness on. and he is really struggling with it, because it's something he always wanted.

the only person gilbert really talks about his issues with is his father. gilbert can't possibly imagine how hard it must be for him to know he's going to lose his son, but he talks things through with him a lot and in the end they both feel better, especially because gilbert sometimes just needs to rant.

that and his therapist. because you bet your ass germania put this kid in therapy the moment that diagnosis came.

links.

the german family. german family part 2.

pruk.

germerica.

bad friends trio.

roderich.

misc.

fic: baby, pull me closer. [prueng, explicit]

[will be updated with other links, like arts or fic.]

[39oa]

Talk Hockey To Me

tagged by beloved @txstars T__T <3 thank uuu as always

1. The thing that got you hooked on hockey

it's hard to pinpoint one moment because i honestly genuinely believe that it's the best sport in the world just in terms of pure mechanics and objective viewing enjoyment and live crowd atmosphere so it's easy to get hooked once you actually watch it... i've been on and off with hockey fandom itself and took a few years away from tumblr until recently but i'd say it was a mix of just watching games + discovering fandom spaces on tumblr/reading fic on ao3 + having a decent home team at the time + canadian tax etc.

2. Your first ever fandom friend

ngl i think most of the people i first met in hockey fandom eventually moved onto bts (or k-pop in general) lmfaooo but i met @regularseason when i was in 11th grade making connor mcdavid gifsets and now i am somehow 25 years old. we have seen so much on this vast internet together ❤️ 

3. The jersey you would most like to own

MOOTERUS BROS RISE UP ☝️🐮  absolutely my favorite jersey of all time i genuinely don't think any other design comes close. i also really love the stars rr 2.0 but i finally bit the bullet and bought it so that's out... another top contender would be sabres goathead 🐐 and maybe mighty ducks era pkariya, also i think the sharks rr 2.0 with the spin on the seals logo is sooo cute and i love the og sharks logo designed by terry smith as well... specifically the classic late 90s teal jersey. and my fav regular home jersey of current teams is the kraken :')

i have way too many opinions on jerseys honestly. if i could pick some from my warmup jersey database then i lovelovelove the habs 2023 bhm and pride designs (i have apparel for both of these...), the leafs indigenous celebration design, and the kraken women in hockey design. gorgeous girls!!!!!

4. YOUR player (you only get ONE so choose wisely)

:saluting_face: there is only one guy for me... jr21! (real talk like a big part of why i got into the stars and came back to sports tumblr was because of him despite having 0 geographical ties to texas LOL. admittedly there was some superficiality involved at first in seeing an asian guy achieve top-line star status against the restrictive pains of bones hockey but then i was like oh your game is actually efficient and understated as hell? and it kind of spiraled out from there. my favorite deceptively abnormal "boring" guy!!!)

5. A pairing that deserves more fic

i will echo 2124 💚 but i am part of the problem for having 4 partial aus in one doc and not actually writing anything of substance for them... otherwise there are a ton of rarepairs i could argue in favor of but i feel like i'd sound insane. where is the otter/woll boston goaliefic... where is mitch/nrob with robo being vaguely horrified but trying to be supportive of his brother's poor decision making skills. where is my sabresfic and kidsline shenanigans in general......... also if we're going back to the stars then 2141 honestly have so much untapped potential wrt Why Are You Both So Weird Can You Please [Redacted] About It. but you get the gist i'm sure!!!

6. Your favourite on-ice moment

my memory does NOT go that far back. whatever is the most embarrassing thing to have ever happened to some guy i hate is good enough for me

THEN

link someone else's art/fic/etc that you love & think everyone should check out

immediately the first thing that came to mind is that i still think zoe's 2129 primer is one of the most fantastic and comprehensive labors of love this fandom has ever seen... truly one of the major backbones of starsblr. honestly despite hockey fandom not being quite what it used to be on here i think there are sooo so many great creators making stars content and i am immensely grateful to all the gifmakers + artists + writers who constantly feed me no matter what time of year it is!!! i'm kind of shy but you know who you are... TT__TT

AND

link something you made & are proud of & want people to see

\o/ i desperately do not like any of the things i make and i am already grateful to the people who have looked at my measly creations before so thank you!

tagging @regularseason @iamidentical @pupuhintz @slagkovsky @supersoftsports... apologies if you've already been tagged and no pressure as always but pls feel free to if you'd like ❤️

[twopoppies]

Hi Gina ! This is a weird question, maybe more of an opinion haha… but I know twitter has always had kinda of a bad reputation on here. People on here usually say twitter is a messy hell hole that they don’t want to get into and I totally get that. But I was just wondering if you knew why ? Like why is Twitter like that, but also why tumblr users always think twitter is so much worse while tumblr can also have some pretty crude and chaotic comments/takes.

I started on twitter and I’m a lot less on it now because it’s became a lot worse in the last months, but this idea of twitter has always been there. Like even I first joined, the idea that tumblr was the superior platform, that the real ones were only on there, the core of the fandom etc,

Well, I think everyone is going to have their own opinions—probably based on where they feel most comfortable. But, in a very general sense, I think the Tumblr fandom may tend to skew a little older, so perhaps it’s a tiny bit less volatile and blogs tended to stick around a long time (vs Twitter). But I think it has more to do with Tumblr being a platform that makes long discussion simpler, as well as being compatible with linking large quantities of information for backup of those discussions. So years ago Tumblr became a place with tons of masterposts and stored “proof”.

This idea of it being where “real fans” are probably just started during the pandemic because there was an enormous influx of new fans—most of whom went to twitter because it was a much more popular platform to use (especially among younger people). The bulk of these new fans were new Harry fans because of Watermelon Sugar/Fine Line and therefore were coming into the fandom without the benefit of having almost a decade of information. Their behavior ruffled a lot of feathers because it drastically changed the energy of the fandom as it had existed. That’s not always a bad thing, I think it was just a lot of what they were saying was not only factually incorrect (making statements about the meaning of things without any knowledge of the history behind it, claiming things to be “proof” when it had been debunked years earlier etc) but also seemed entirely unnecessary and confusing (ie: this whole idea of no-stunts larries and buzzing larries etc etc) and many of them behaved as though nothing that had happened before them was of any importance. When there was suddenly a huge exodus from Twitter to Tumblr it became worse because we were flooded with fans who seemed incapable of doing their own research and just bombarded our ask boxes with demands to clarify even the smallest things that had gained years prior. This also meant many things that were just accepted as fact because people had lived through the events in real time were being constantly questioned and ignored if the “proof” wasn’t considered sufficient.

Beyond that, yes, Tumblr definitely can be messy and people are sometimes nasty and send idiotic anonymous hate mail. However, it’s much easier here to block that stuff out and curate a space where you see what you want to see, than it is on Twitter. And, for the most part, people here don’t publicly talk in a nasty way about other people/people’s fics/people’s art etc. whereas that seems to be a common occurrence on Twitter.

The Tumblr fandom is far from perfect. As I said at the start, most people just have a preference and make a home where they feel comfortable.

This is just a very basic summary and I’m sure everyone who was here at the time would have additional/different things to add. But I hope it answers your questions.

[nokillbananashelter]

Trying to write my thoughts as blurbs because I have many (also spoilers)

TOTK doesn’t just have 5 temples designed like divine beasts and traditional dungeons, it has at least 7 that i’ve encountered, actually.

TOTK pulls the wool over people’s eyes on dungeon content in general. Theres not just “more than 5 dungeons”, theres more than one genre of dungeon in this game. Glyphs, Shrines, Temples, Castles, Mazes, Caves, Regions- its dungeon all the way down dudes. This is the most dungeon Zelda game has been since the original two games. It just doesn’t call everything a dungeon.

Cheesing these areas should feel exactly how it makes you feel about it. You asked the game if you could skip, then it gave you permission to skip it. Getting mad about this is understandable but also….There’s plenty of sign posts telling you how to have the most full, enriching experience in an area. it just wants you to follow the signs and paths and tunnels and there’s a LOT of different ways to traverse these content hallways. If you don’t follow them, you won’t have that experience. Simple as that. If that makes you feel good, good. If it makes you feel mad, i get it. But realize that you said “can i skip it” and then saw this game is exactly as good at saying “yes” about that as it is about everything else!! if skipping things is rewarding to you, this is going to be a good experience. If skipping things isn’t rewarding for you, it’s going to be a bad experience.

Totk and botw are some of the best GMs in videogames and I don’t think enough people are thinking about it in those terms. These games want to meet you where you are at while meeting it where it is at. I cannot express the how incredible it is to have the amount of ways to play that these games offer up. The challenges it makes you do for yourself NATURALLY is INCREDIBLE. This game is constantly getting me to challenge myself, and when I get tired of that, is more than happy to give me a power fantasy in which I am an unstoppable spank bastard.

The common thought that there is a proper “play order” for the story is ABSOLUTELY BULLSHIT. This game does not spoil itself. All it does is recontextualize your perception of what’s happening and reiterate the same beats again and again. It’s also one of the most laughably, hammy and predictable stories I’ve ever engaged in ever. Let’s get serious here- if you didn’t catch the twists from almost at the jump, I’m sorry, but you have zero media literacy!!! The foreshadowing in this is comically overcasting every single line in every single conversation. If anything, this game wants you to come to a conclusion about it’s twist extremely early, and to deny it’s inevitability. It tells you everything in it’s opening five minutes. From there, You just getting details with new information being largely context. But also…It wants you to believe that it’s not the whole story. And guess what?? it’s not!! You don’t get the whole story until you experience the whole game, no matter the order you play it!

I have more specific thoughts and why link keeps his lips locked here if you get stuff early, but in general, I think the lad finds telling people Zelda is a Dragon and will never return is not an option in his mind. so like the courageous hopepunk dummy he is, rejects that as unwinnable and forever. thematically, this mirrors Rauru’s own morality of doing the right thing even in the face of infinite defeat. When it comes to Zelda, bucking against inevitability of fate is par for the course with our characters. These games are always about this. ALWAYS!!!

This game is actually uglier than breath of the wild. It’s got more image clarity, and more stuff happening, has a really cool art direction and beautiful colors, and its own unique flavors, but BOTW had less moving parts and was able to manage them much easier and cohesively. Totk is ugly on purpose and confidently so because the ugliness serves incredible purposes.

[wtfgaylittlezooid]

srry if this is a weird question but what batman stuff would you recommend to someone with no real prior knowledge of it? followed you bc of kirby knowing nothing about batman but it looks like a lot of fun and ive considered getting into it. im not sure where to start with it though. do you have any favorite stuff thats like. "oh if you're new to the franchise you GOTTA check x out first"?

The best thing about Batman is it has absolutely no consistency. Really the characters tend to change depending on the writers and artists. So go apeshit! I got into it by getting sick and binging every Scarecrow comic i could find online in my brief periods of consciousness LMAO

Also keep in mind I am still very much bullshitting my way through Batman and DC in general EFGUIEWWEF

But the ones I would recommend aka the ones i started with:

The Long Halloween

13 Issues. One of the most iconic Batman stories, and one of my personal favorites. Specifically it centers around Harvey Dent, Carmine Falcone, and Batman all trying to identify stop a killer called "Holiday" from offing another member after member of Gotham's biggest crime family.

The art is absolutely gorgeous and captures tone perfectly. It also showcased a handle of the Batman rogues on the side and is REALLY fun trying to guess who the killer is alongside the characters. It also has a sequel: Dark Victory!

Here's the link to read it

Batman: The Audio Adventures

This is my personal favorite Batman media. It's an official podcast focused on the 60s Batman! Which means its a lot goofier than a most of current Batman.

It's a dark comedy podcast, but don't let that fool you. It knows when to take itself seriously, and features a small handful of the Batman Rogues! Also my favorite detail is that it takes the guise of a radio show- complete with fake ads that hold foreshadowing and funny gags! It does a great job of capturing the chaos of Gotham with the constantly interchanging multiple storylines, but keeping it understandable.

Also this podcast is entirely free. You can find the entirety of it on Youtube, HBO Max, and Spotify.

Arkham Series

If you prefer video games or playthroughs instead of comics, I highly recommend the Arkham games! There's Arkham Origins, Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Knight. They all have VERY interesting and well done versions of the characters and are a blast to play.

I recommend starting with Arkham Asylum, since its the first released of the games and is much easier to jump into than the others, imo. You basically play as Batman dropping off Joker to the asylum as usual, but everything goes wrong and ends with all the inmates taking control of the Asylum, leaving Batman to uncover Joker's newest plan and fighting through the Asylum hes been trapped in.

Arkham Asylum is normally $20 on Steam, but it has a free demo you can play. Also the games tend to go on sale pretty often and you can usually get the whole series for less than $10

Batman: The Animated Series

I have to recommend this one. It is the most iconic Batman media and has done so much for the characters and series. It's a fun series with lovely animation and surprisingly heartfelt episodes.

It has some of my favorite interpretations of the villains and one of my personal favorites of Batman! It doesn't pretend Bruce Wayne is heartless and beats the shit out of criminals for the hell of it. It's a great watch!

You can watch it on HBOMax with a subscription, but since streaming services are a parasite, you can also find it on PrimeWire.