#this was a fun thought experiment and a fun reason to redo some of this stuff

[enderwoah]

In the past you have classpected double life members and it was grest

So I ask After limited life has your assessment changed if so who has changed and to what also why is it different

Of course this is only if your opinion has changed after the latest season and if you are will to share

good question! ill start off by saying that it certainly did the opposite of change my mind about my classpect for grian; the concept of limited life is, quite literally, the most witch of time lookin ahh game i have ever seen, so! that checks out. (witch of time)

realising that scott has basically won the life series three times in a row solidified his place as an active class in my head, but the means by which he does it somehow push me more towards passive? my brain says that the fact that he just kind of stays out of the way and grows stronger while nobody is paying attention to him is more bard-like than prince-like, but at the same time, i think he's less passive and more benevolent. if he wanted, he could have won three times in a row (which is insane), but he just thinks that isn't fun so. yeah! long explanation to say that i wavered but ultimately he's still the same. (prince of mind)

limlife tango (and most other tangos, if i'm being real) sort of teeters towards a mage of doom for me. he's very VERY sollux-coded, and while classpecting based on one really big personality trait that is interesting is fun, it's nice to look at the more accurate one, too. even disregarding the 'death' part of doom, the 'technology' aspect of it obviously makes sense to fit with tango. i love the guy dearly, but all of his final deaths seem to end up being inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, harming himself and himself alone (for the most part). also, he is an excellent vibe checker and fuller predicted martyn being a little garbage rat to win limlife, and i think it's an excellent situation where he took all of his prior experiences both with the death game and also with martyn being a menace and made this accurate prediction. this isn't the most thought out thing ever, but i definitely think tango As A Whole and not just The Tango That Gets Mad is very mage of doom coded. (mage of doom)

jimmy died first again! nothing has changed! everything is awful! i'm in hell! (page of doom)

bigb did what i suggested he do in the classpecting post, which is stay a bit more low-key, and ill tell you this: he certainly survived for longer than he did in double life, that's for sure! also, being a nosy neighbour that just spies on people from a distance is very rogue of void-core- i'm sure you could argue seer, but. ehh. there certainly is an argument to be made for it, he does hold a lot of secrets to his chest, and he certainly did have a few in limlife...but i think most of the secrets he has are his own, not other people's. a rogue he stays! (rogue of void)

bdubs is one that i was already a bit ehhhhh on when i made the post. at this point in time, my brain is swaying me actually towards blummin light, which is deranged and i dont really know how to explain it. [imagine theres about a 15 minute pause between me writing these two sentences as i conduct a bit of research.] actually. hear me out: bdubs as a knight of light. i might actually change this for double life too (in my head, not for the au due to overlapping classpects). hes so light-coded, idk how i didn't see it before. goal-oriented…loves being in the spotlight…even the collecting knowledge aspect that i had pegged to him as a seer works better in assigning it to light. and the knight bit just feels right to me: doubts about his importance to the groups and teams he's been in and the people he's loved? getting a bit meta, you could even point out cc!bdubs saying that he's not posting his limlife pov because everything important that he did was seen in other people's episodes; his importance as a character has been defined by his effect on others. kinda love this. knight of light bdubs. letsgoooo (knight of light)

impulse deffo stays as a blood player, and im pretty sure his bard class stays, too. he made it to the end by riding off the promises he made with his team ("ties makes it to the final three!" T-T), and we must remember that bard also means destroying through blood. and his goofy ahh got betrayed AGAIN lmao (it was less 'betrayed' and more 'tricked,' but. same difference). (bard of blood)

martyn has, like grian, done the absolute OPPOSITE of changed. bro has CANONICAL SOUL FRACTURES THATS CRAZZYYYYYYYY LMAO. heart player (CANON + CONFIRMED). and no, him betraying scott does not take him out of the heart player faction: he defended scott with tooth and nail and blood until the end, him killing scott ONLY SO THAT HE COULD WIN is just furthering his damn arc in learning to fight for himself. he's still heart-coded as hell. (knight of heart)

scar, pearl, ren, etho, joel, cleo, mumbo, lizzie, and skizz have not changed! thank you for the question!! :D

[doppel-doodles]

It's doodling time fellas

I wanted to give myself a bit of a challenge so I decided to draw the ocs of a few people here on tumblr, with the added challenge of doing it fast-

Minimal erasing and redoing, basically whatever is slapped on the page first sticks whether I like it or not. And there is a little time limit on how much I can spent on each character so that I don't get distracted as easily.

Just a little exercise so that hopefully it'll get easier for me to throw down a sketch using few lines and not taking literal hours-w-" I know everyone has their own pace but I would like to be a faster artist.

Anyway my yapping aside and without further delay: The girlies💚💗💜❤

Now to who these lovely gals belong to:

Haiyang: @riptide-pools

Nawa: @auburnitzy

Suki: @peachy-puddin-cup

An he: @lumidotexe

For anyone interested I'll include some thoughts on each of these below the cut:>

Haiyang

The first one I did and I think it shows>~> I was basically more focused on just figuring out how I wanted to do this so I spent less time and energy on how I wanted the character to look in my style. In the end I settled on doing the basic shapes in pencil and then switching to colored fine liners for details.

With the colors also matches the way I draw digitally just a tiny bit more! Buuuut if I end up doing this again I definitely wanna redraw her, I wanna do this gorgeous character justice after all!/'w'/

Suki

Suuuuukiiii! I did draw her before so I decided to do this version, which I believe to be just her shadow form! While drawing I didn't actually give myself time to look it up cause ya know, no distractions which is why there is a question mark-

But my stupidity aside- here is where I started drawing a lot faster, I was in the zone if you will, so I spent what time I had left adding some variation to the line art. I do like this one and honestly she would probably be so much fun to render digitally so I'll see if I can if there is time:>

Nawa

NOW THIS IS WHERE THE FUN REALLY BEGAN-

Nawa just was such a blast honestly, probably because I was getting really comfortable at this point and let myself play around more with how I stylise the characters! I love me some funky eyes, its probably the most recognisable part of my style.

Also granted I don't know much on Nawa yet(fake fan I'm sorry-/j) I only recently followed the creator so I need to find time to just really browse through their blog and consume all the knowledge there is, but once I do I'll be unstoppable!>:D

An He

Last but certainly not least we finish with An He, who was a just a chill and nice lil drawing perfect to round out this doodle session-w- now I have actually read ERHS(shameless plug, read it it's so good- just need to find my attention span as I haven't caught up with it SOBS) so I have more knowledge on her.

For that reason I attempted to do a slimmer face shape, i wanted her built overall to read as visibly more thin and petite. Along side that I went for rings in her eyes as an allusion to sound waves as I didnt just wanna drop in a music note and call it a day.

however maybe I'll experiment more another time because I just dont think it reads that well:'<

That concludes my silly ramblings! Thanks for sticking around and if any of the creators of these lovely ladies see this- YOU HAVE AMAZING CHARACTERS AND I HOPE I DID THEM JUSTICE!- ahem.

If I do this again I'll definitely go for some male ocs as well for the sake of variety, it was a happy accident that I only drew girls here.

[affixjoy]

Today I continued my Star Trek journey by rewatching Star Trek (2009) and boy howdy do I have some thoughts.

So first off, I saw this for the first time when I came out in 2009. It wasn’t my first experience with Star Trek, but it was probably my first with Kirk and Spock and that gang. I remember liking it a lot.

Now that I’ve watched all of TOS and a few of the movies with the original cast my feelings are a little more complicated.

Overall, fun movie! I imagine they had to have felt the weight of recasting and redoing such iconic characters, and in a lot of ways they succeeded. It certainly got younger people like me interested in the franchise!

💫 Spock: I do love this version of him. His “live long and prosper” to the VSA is perfectly bitchy and I’m obsessed with it.

💫BONES!! if you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll know that somehow Bones snuck up on me as my favorite character. I love his intro here, and I think Karl Urban gets the tone just right. This really is a buffet for the McKirkers out there, I can see how this led to 1000 academy era fics of them.

💫Kirk: oh Jim. Jimmy Jim Jim. Baby boy. What are you doing. How did being played by Chris Pine (who is incredibly hot) make you LESS attractive??

Obviously this Kirk suffers from some Kirk drift and the added trauma of losing his dad. He’s so much angrier, so much less sweet and nerdy. Rewatching this now I can see why I was so hesitant to like him in TOS because he’s a lot less lovable here.

💫 I get it’s an emergency and they had to for plot reasons, but almost all of Pike’s staffing choices make no sense. Sure, Spock as acting captain, I get that. But everyone else?? Imagine being one of the other people there who has been with starfleet for years and seeing him hand Kirk the role of first officer. The ship can’t be entirely cadets can it?? Imagine the group texts going around after like “thank god he didn’t die because I really need to bitch about this.”

💫 I love all three Uhuras (tos, aos, and snw) and I get why they made her Spock’s love interest here because they’ve got fun chemistry! They have a lot in common, they’re both hot and smart, I get it. But cmon guys, that man is a 6 on the Kinsey scale. You keep pairing him with women and it doesn’t work.

💫 I feel like they worked in lots of little references to classic trek, from plot stuff to smaller details like when Spock enters from the turbolift at the end in a very TMP way. I love that, it makes me feel like the people making the movie really care about the stories and the characters. When Spock Prime says good luck I felt all the weight of his relationship with his Jim and how it changed him. So lovely and touching.

And just how close they made Kirk and Spock stand, especially towards the end of the movie. They were always glued to each other in TOS and JJ must have known us Spirk shippers needed something to latch on to 😅

💫 There’s too much action in this movie for me. We didn’t need to see Scotty beamed into the water tank. The best sf stuff is always story based, I don’t need extravagant fights and cgi shit. I’m sure there are people who watch science fiction for the spectacle but I’m here for the ideas and the feelings.

💫 goddddd everything with Vulcan and losing Amanda. Rip all our hearts out why don’t you. Spock’s mom dying is just heartbreaking. I know they had to lose someone we knew to make the destruction of the planet more real to us as viewers but so crushing to see it.

💫 Old Spock 😭😭😭

He knows right away who Jim is and expects that Jim found him on purpose.

Old Spock just launched right in to the mind meld huh. To me this really says that he and his Jim are on very casual mind meld terms and he’s not fully understanding that this Jim is not his Jim.

Think about how fucking weird all this must be for old Spock. How heartbreakingly strange it would be so see a young version of your husband and send him to a young version of yourself. Meeting all your old friends young selves, years after you’ve lost them all.

And from here out it’s just miscellaneous thoughts I jotted down while watching that don’t fit great anywhere else:

⭐️I love when the redshirt is so excited to get the Romulans and Kirk gets this look like… that’s why you’re here? Dude the battle not the appeal here. A nice glimpse of how this Kirk is similar at heart to TOS Kirk.

⭐️Love you Sulu and your fencing skills

⭐️I love when they stop the lift for emotional reasons.

⭐️“Our destinies have changed” goddddd great speech Spock

⭐️Jim has the look of a man who is frequently escorted places by security

⭐️Spock wants to break Kirk so bad 😂

⭐️When Jim slaps Spock’s back and Spock has a look of “I think that just awakened something in me.”

⭐️Spock you’re calling him Jim already? You slut. (Delighted, affectionate)

Overall I think it’s a fun movie but it misses a lot of what’s at the heart of the classic Trek I love. They try to do everything too fast and it just doesn’t work as well for me. I’m excited to rewatch the next two and see how these versions of the characters change!

[novelmonger]

So I'm a pretty big LotR fan. And I'm a pretty big fan of the movies. No, they're not perfect, but they're a really good adaptation and a truly masterful work of cinematic art. I've grown pretty familiar with the movies over the past 23 years (@_@) - and not just the movies themselves, but I also love learning all about how they were made. I've watched all the way through all the bonus material in the Extended Editions at least five times (and some of the more fun bits way more times than that XD). I've even watched all three movies with the cast commentary.

But you know what I've never done, not even at the height of my obsession when I had way more free time than I do now? I've never watched the movies with the other commentaries. It looks like there are three more commentaries, with different groups of various people on the crew, and for some reason I never got around to listening through them. I can't for the life of me think why - maybe I thought I already knew everything they'd talk about? maybe I somehow thought it would be boring??? - but today that changes!

I'm going to just jot down the main things that stick out to me that I didn't know before. I've gleaned a lot of BTS information and stories about these movies from various sources, so I'm not sure how long this will be, but I'm sure there will be some new things that jump out at me.

From the FotR writer/director commentary with Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh:

There was a draft of the script where they didn't have a prologue, and all the information about Sauron and the Ring and Gollum and everything was going to be in that conversation between Frodo and Gandalf @_@ Can you imagine? I mean, yeah, it would be more like the book, but At What Cost? (At the cost of several memes and short attention spans, that's what.)

Peter Jackson says he doesn't like magic or wizards in movies. Um...sir? Why the heck are you making fantasy movies then???

The location where they shot the Ford of Bruinen was a real ford that was used during the gold rush in New Zealand! Because New Zealand had a gold rush around the same time as the one in the U.S.!

Hugo Weaving actually did the voice of Isildur when he claims the Ring and says, "No." I have...questions.

Peter Jackson says the journey through Moria is the best sequence in the book, and Fran and Philippa say it's the best-written chapter. Interesting! I don't know what I would point to as the best-written chapter of FotR; I don't think I've ever thought of that (though I might say some of the best descriptions in this book are in Rivendell).

They said they might redo the Gollum scene in Moria to make him look more like he does in TTT. Uhhh...it's been 23 years, guys, where's my remaster? XD

The Frodo-Gandalf conversation in Moria (the "all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us" conversation) was done with forced perspective??? I never realized that! I thought they just had Elijah sit a little lower than Ian so their eyelines would be right! They totally look like they're looking into each other's eyes, but they're not! :O

"Often in movies, that's a rare thing, to have shots in which nothing is real." - Oh, PJ, if you only knew what the state of things would be in two decades....

The scene of the Fellowship mourning Gandalf outside Moria was filmed before Ian McKellan had even arrived in New Zealand! :O So they were all mourning and reacting to the death of someone they probably weren't even sure what he looked like yet!

Sean Bean was apparently the only one of the primary actors who had any experience with a sword? Or at least he had the most experience. Viggo had to do the Weathertop fight scene on his first day, when he'd never touched a sword before @_@

In Boromir's death scene, the words sung by the chorus in the background is an Elvish translation of Faramir's line "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." ;A;

At one point, they were going to have Frodo fighting off an Uruk-Hai before he goes into the boat??? They even shot some of the footage?! Thankfully, they realized that was completely the wrong way to go about his end to this movie; it needed to be an emotional climax, not an action scene, and Frodo's victory is over his own doubts and the Ring's influence on him, when he grasps the Ring and marches forward to continue on his Quest, alone if need be. Thank goodness they realized that before it was too late.

SEAN ASTIN WAS NOT UNDERWATER IN THE SHOT OF HIM DROWNING WHAAAAAT MIND BLOWN

The shot of Boromir's boat going over the edge of the waterfall was actually footage of a barrel going over the Niagara Falls, and they just used CG to replace the barrel with the boat O.O

Fran Walsh: So Viggo's just put on Boromir's gauntlets... Me, a nerd: Vambraces, actually.

[gophergal]

Author Commentary - I Know Where to Look (Chapter 1)

Howdy y'all! I just posted the first chapter of my first tf2 fic, and figured that rambling about my thought processes from writing it would be fun. So, enjoy?

Welcome to my first Author Commentary post!

Regardless of if anyone other than my best bud (and partner in word crimes) @cursed—alien read these going forward, I thought it would be fun to explain references and thoughts from the process of fic writing. These are the sort of thing I love to know about my favorite art. I’m a great lover of artist interviews (specifically the ones where the artist in question explains the development of the concept and reasoning for the techniques they use) and an avid reader of author’s notes, so I hope that if anyone reading my fic is like me that they will enjoy this addition to the story.

Formatting

I feel that the most notable thing about this fic is that, despite being rated as explicit, every explicitly sexual scene is under a cut. Why do this instead of just making the scenes fade to black or formatting it in a standard manner? Because, dear reader, I have had the experience of reading explicitly rated fic solely for the buildup to the smut scenes. I experience fluctuations between sex favorability to neutrality, all the way to aversion. When I’m feeling uncomfortable with explicit sexual content, I often wish there was a way to just skip those scenes entirely. But on the other hand, I also acknowledge that sex scenes CAN have narrative and character importance. For the specific dynamic that Corey and I envisioned for Red Oktoberfest- that being a relationship that starts as professional and sexual before becoming emotionally involved, those scenes would be a shame to ignore entirely on my part.

Behaviors and thoughts during sexual intimacy are rich with characterization, and I wanted to be able to express that. So, the best of both worlds, to me, was to have a second layer of opting in to reading those scenes. I may have to redo them later, however, because the way I had to go about it doesn’t work with pdf downloads and likely isn’t screen reader accessible. My current thoughts in regards to those problems is to encourage folks to download as some other format, and eventually create a podfic of this story.

Headcanons Involved

Something you may notice about this is the amount of headcanon I’m trying to cram into it. To be frank, I use most fic writing as a vehicle with which to go “look at my headcanons, boy”, so this isn’t surprising.

The first of which I would like to note is Heavy’s love of pulp romance. I couldn’t tell you why I first thought of it, but it’s grown on me like moss. Mikhail is a lover and a fighter. To me. In my heart. He views all art for what it is, and values the stories themselves pretty equally. The only important difference between the two books he’s carried with him from Russia and the pulp he’s collected in the US is sentimentality.

Speaking of those books, why the two I picked? Brothers Karamazov is a pretty obvious choice. It’s a classic and widely studied. Tsar Hunger by Leonid Andreyev, however was actually mentioned by name in Poker Night At The Inventory. In one conversation, Tycho asks Heavy what his favorite book is, to which he replies that he “prefers war.” Eventually, though, he does end up saying that he likes Tsar Hunger. I wanted to know if this was just a book picked at random, or if it actually meant something about Telltale’s interpretation of Heavy’s character. After all, the tumblr side of the fandom LOVES Heavy’s PhD in Russian Literature. It was. A BITCH. To find any information about that book. There isn’t a goodreads page for it. Or a wikipedia. Or even an amazon page selling copies. Like, what the fuck? Eventually, I found that the Internet Archive has it available to borrow by the hour. The particular copy that was archived was originally from the University of Texas and has a fabric cover. So no synopsis.

At this point I was thinking “oh my fucking god I’m two hours into this research process,” and decided I wouldn’t be reading King Hunger. I’ve skimmed it a bit and, filling in the blanks with some guesses based on the information Wikipedia provided about the author, it’s a symbolic/expressionist criticism of the monarchy, but one which also criticizes bloody revolution. Please take that with a pound of salt though. Once again, I spent a solid three hours getting to that amount of understanding.

This actually leads me to discussing another element that’s important to my interpretation of Heavy. Namely, who is father was. On r/TF2, I constantly see people arguing back and forth whether its fine to joke about Mikhail being “Heavy Communism Guy” or if that’s a gross misunderstanding since his father was declared a counterrevolutionary. (Meanwhile these same dimwits are happily joking about Medic being a member of a certain fascist regime, but I digress)

Personally, I think Mikhail’s father (who I will be calling Ivan Melnyk going forward, as I headcanon Heavy’s full name to be Mikhail Ivanovich Melnyk) was counterrevolutionary, but not anti-communist. That venn diagram isn’t just a circle my friends. In political matters, it’s very easy to get stuck in black and white thinking- and that’s fair for large matters- but, when it comes down to how people believe they should go about making changes, that’s where you get in-fighting between allied groups.

More clearly, I believe that Ivan was a man who believed in progress and common good, but found disproportionate violence distasteful. And he would have tried to impart those values on his son. However, Ivan’s death and his family’s imprisonment would really sour that for Mikhail. It adds a level of complexity where he is both someone who hates senseless violence (see: the sparrow story in Poker Night), but is extremely wrathful (see: the engineer story in Poker Night).

Switching gears, let’s talk respawn. Personally, I like the idea of it as something that exists in universe, rather than just being a game mechanic in the Documentary Video Game About the Gravel Wars. It adds some more leeway for goofy shit the mercs can get up to while also opening up more avenues for mentally trauma. Angst my beloved.

Respawn

Respawn, in my mind, works by teleporting the remains to a mechanism that then recycles the matter into a pre-programmed form. I imagine that this is updated every day for the TF2 mercs, but only by the week or month for the Classic era systems. Upon exiting respawn, subjects may experience “respawn sickness,” which includes symptoms of nausea, diziness, anxiety, sensitivity to light and sound, disorientation, soreness, ect. One can become accustomed to respawn over time, and this is expedited by the modern systems, but some might remain sensitive to respawn even after years of use.

TFI standard protocol is to switch respawn systems over to the older system in order save money and perform diagnostics/maintenance without risking the permanent death of one of their “specialists.”

Another book note

The passage Heavy reads at the end is from a novella called Special Nurse by Lucy Agnes Hancock. It is Yet Another book I haven’t read, but decided to reference. Originally, I had wanted to reference a Harlequin Romance published in 1960-63, as I really didn’t want to include that flavor of anachronism. Dont fucking ask me why, but it mattered to me. However, the vast majority of what I could find online to read was published between 1975 and 1998. There were three books that technically fit my requirements, but the two from 1961 were either vacation romance or noble romance. Which just didn’t fit the vibe I was looking for. And the one from 1963 was published in November of that year. Which would have been fine, but I envisioned this chapter taking place in late May or early June.

In the late 40’s to mid 60’s Harlequin published SOOOOO many hospital romances. And this amused me, so I desperately wanted Heavy to be reading one. But I searched multiple times and just. Couldn’t find any that I could skim through. Fuck, dude, I couldn’t even find samples or excerpts. I COULD BARELY FIND SYNOPSES. I got desperate and dug through my mom’s old romance novel collection and lo and behold, there it was. Special Nurse. It’s not Harlequin (published by Pocket Books) and it wasn’t technically from 60-63 (originally published in 1948, but received 5 print runs from 1950-19060. Mine is from August 1960), but it WAS A DOCTOR ROMANCE. HUZZAH.

Dear fucking lord why do I do this shit to myself ahhhhhhhh

[beartitled]

Bear i genuinely need to know if you are on 15 coffees. How did you do that so detailed and nice????? How did you nake it so cool???? How do you have the talent and motivation???? How long did you draw to achieve this godly skill???

💕💞❤️💖💕Awwwww thank you 💕❤️💖💕💞❤️

Fun fact I actually don’t drink coffee (😨*shocked audience sounds*😨) or at least drink it very rarely, I dunno it just makes me more sleepy? for some reason? which is hilarious in this context

Hehe man I need to concentrate, but I can’t stop smiling

I’m very happy that people actually liked my picture book, it legit sends me away because it’s a personal project which took a ton of effort

Like fan arts, megadrawings, fan comics those are also mean a lot and made with love, but this project feels like showing a part of your soul

And when you see people actually enjoying it- just- ❤️💕💖💞💕❤️*ecstatic bear noises*💕❤️💖💕💞💕 *happy tiny jumps*💖💕❤️💕💖💞💖

(oki lemme put all my thoughts under read more, bc I didn’t expect to write that much 💥)

Answering the questions

I just love detailed stuff✨ Plus when you work on something for a long time, you can kinda think of something or subconsciously add even more visual details

Motivation comes from just a wish to finish something most of the time

When I work on big projects (that take months for example) I tend to go into 💪grind💪 state, where you just dedicate your entire time to making something

It a very interesting thing, because your life literally becomes this project for a few months, you wake up with a goal and make your day as productive as possible (after I finish something I can have a mini crisis, like wait this thing is over, wait I can do something different.. no I NEED A PURPOSE 💥💥💥 *aggressively starts yet another comic*)

Also I feel like uni played a major role in my productivity rate, bc you can have multiple projects in one semester and plus to that an assignment that just adds on every week

Imagine like inktober, but you decided to take 5 more prompt lists and every drawing you make is criticised by professor (so you need to make edits or redo your entire work)

This type of constant pressure just kinda makes you a different person in a way, at least it was my experience with it

And how much time (hehe don’t make me blush it’s not godly 👉👈), well entire life basically + almost 4 years of uni

Also wanted to say for people who are starting or just feel overwhelmed by other artists skills:

🫵Everyone starts with crappy pony drawings 🫵 (at least I did) (man if I ever find my first drawings I will show them)

The funniest thing is, I started drawing not because I wanted it to be good or to impress people

I just wanted a pony picture 💥 in a funky dress 💥💥 and my mum said “I’m tired of drawing horses for you, go do it yourself” 💥💥💥 and I did 💥‼️💥‼️💥💥

A lot of people chuckled at me bc the drawings were crappy, but I didn’t care 💥📣🗣️I’m the one holding a paper horse in a dress, not you 💥📣🗣️

So like, don’t sweat it, no art is bad – you put effort, you made it, it’s already worth attention and love

The idea of “good” is flawed and very vague anyway

The feeling of doubt is also normal, everyone has it time to time, without it we wouldn’t be able to improve

Just don’t let those thoughts consume you: appreciate your work and yourself 🫵❤️

Anyway thank you for this ask, it’s very sweet of you ❤️

Makes me incredibly happy that someone likes my stuff 🥺❤️💕💖🥺❤️💞

[cyborgpulsebooks]

Pulse of Life Press 1st Anniversary - and an experiment!

It's been a whole year since I started this crazy artform! I can't believe it myself. The amount of books I've made in the past year has long since hit the double digits, and each and every one of them is incredibly important to me, flaws and all.

However, there was one book - my first book - that had more issues than the others, some that outright interfered with reading. Luckily I've been learning book repair at the same time as binding, but when I tried to fix some of the problems for Bernhardiner, it went...well... about as badly as it could.

What to do, then, with a ruined book? I didn't have enough decorative paper to completely redo the cover, with all the little dogs. But then I thought - why not leave the cover? I know how books work - I could pretty easily detach the whole case from the ruined textblock, make a new textblock, and just reuse the old case. It seemed like a sound experiment. Now, for the press's first anniversary, I have compiled most of the process under the cut, complete with pictures.

Please come along with me on this journey!

This was the beginning of the process, after having slooowly and carefully detached the endpapers of the textblock (right) from the case itself (left). You might remember this from my recent shitpost! To loosen the adhesive and separate the two parts without ruining either one, I initially slid a bonefolder into the hinge area of the case, and then switched to a thin little boi called a microspatula to slip through the glue not unlike a letter opener.

This did lead to some wear and tear on the boards of course, but it could have gone a lot worse. Most binders that I've learned from use a homemade wheat paste to attach case to textblock, but so far I have not been able to make it without the ingredients turning into an Oobleck-esque gelatin. Thus I use PVA glue, which is far stronger, and can lead to things like this. Still, not too bad. The case was successfully salvaged!

Before I describe and show off the redux, I just wanna share a couple of the errors and mistakes I made on the first textblock here, as I usually try and photograph my books with the least amount of flaws visible. Here we can see, firstly, that the glue job on the spine was shoddy at best; none of it really got quite between the individual signatures of the book, leading to weird gaps like that which compromise the stability of the book and show off the spine liner/mull, to my dismay.

In the other two pics you can see page numbers where they're definitely not supposed to be. Ah, MS Word, you son of a bitch and your terrible, terrible pagination settings. Took me months and months to learn how to paginate my books correctly, up until about my FINAGLC bind.

Not enough glue here on the pre-made endbands, either. It would sometimes fold under while reading, which wasn't super fun to see.

Finally, the botched repair that started this whole journey - I had attempted to fix one of the gaps between signatures (seen earlier) with some Japanese repair tissue, but ended up sticking these pages awkwardly together and fucked up that little top part there. A nightmare!

For all the above reasons, I actually decided to go back to my original typeset and revamp it. I've gotten some... teasing in my binding groups for the fact that my first few books were set in Times New Roman (which I actually find satisfying to read, thank you very much), which apparently gives off a sort of amateurish vibe. I've been experimenting with body fonts since, and the two I reliably use at the moment are usually Sylfaen (for shorter, smaller books) and Baskerville Old Face (for longer books). I switched it to Sylfaen here, and you can compare and contrast the results far down below.

Now, I'm not going to detail the entire bookmaking process here - just the interesting bits. If you want to learn how to make books, I highly suggest checking out @renegadepublishing's resources, as they're how I learned. But here we can see all the new signatures of the new edition nice and crisp and printed. In the second photo they've even been punched for sewing already!

At the co-op where I print and sew my textblocks, I often get to use real nipping presses like this bad boy right here. It's entirely metal (iron?) and way too heavy to lift. Between the two scrap papers peeking out is the new Bernhardiner!

But at home, this is my current set up:

Everyone, meet the eponymous Pulse of Life Press. POL Press, meet everyone.

A family member of mine made the wood part (obviously, a separate piece from the HS books) for me last Christmas, with no real knowledge of what a book press should look like at all. It's sort of a cross between what's known as a lying/finishing press and just some sort of regular old clamp. I line it with wax paper, stick the spine of the book in the center, tighten, and then cover the rest of the textblock with my trusty viz Homestuck books. It's a little MacGyver-y, but it's served me well.

This is the part where you glue the spine, attach the endpapers, and so forth.

For this redux, I decided to continue practicing making my own endbands instead of using the same pre-made ones I had for the first copy. These ones actually came out pretty darn well, if I do say so myself! They're the absolute neatest I've made them so far, and that's a relief. Obviously I still need work, but it's so lovely making them. <3

After this, I actually don't have a lot of pictures! It's basically just press, attach the spine liner and glue again, press again, casing in, and then...

Et voila!

Lookin' pretty good, if I do say so myself.

I didn't get exact duplicate photos of the original textblock's mistakes for a before/after, but you can probably just tell from these just how cleaned up the new one is. Rest assured those pesky out-of-place page numbers are long gone, and my spine gluing has gotten a lot better. I'm honestly just glad that it cased in so well - I was worried about that flaky board for a minute there!

And that's all. Thank you for coming with me on this little peek behind the scenes! Here's to many more books in the coming year - more to read, more to make, and more to write.

Cheers!

[snek-panini]

It's been a few weeks since I had new books to share, but I finally got photos taken of the newest ones so today's the day. Here, have a book:

This is Across Tides and Currents, a Good Omens siren AU by Sodium_Azide and @doorwaytoparadise (hi. I hope I tagged you right). My favorite thing about this AU is that, at its heart, it's about learning to communicate with someone who is so different from you that you can't even physically speak each other's language, and yet you've still got so much common ground that you find a way. It's way lighter and more fun than that description makes it sound, though, so go read it if that's your thing.

The cover on this is Lineco book cloth, scrapbook paper printed to look like leather, and blue foil htv. The foil was actually a nightmare to do. The first time I applied it, it wouldn't stick no matter what I did, and the bits that did stick peeled off as soon as I touched them. I had to peel them up very carefully, cut a new image, and try again. Thankfully it worked the second time but I don't know that I'll be using the foil type again unless there's no other way to get the color I want. The non-foil metallic was so much easier to work with.

More book photos under the cut!

I went with a coptic bind for this one for a few reasons. The first was that I wanted to try one on a quarto-size book to see if I could. I also wanted to try the mitered corners thing I did when I bound Strange Moons, and see if I could have the same effect on the interior. (That bit didn't work out so well; the front is fine but I mismeasured the inside and the lines didn't match up, so I trimmed some pieces of cardstock to cover that up. I really like the layered look though, so that's fine. It's quirky.) The third reason is that not long before I decided to bind this one, the authors published a new chapter after two years of no updates. That's the best possible reason to have to change plans, and the glueless bind means that if they ever do that again I can just redo the stitching to add more pages. Win-win.

Getting whimsical with title pages here. This took way longer than I thought it would, probably because I don't like graphic design and I did it in Word where I do the rest of my typesetting. Usually what I do is grab an image and put text around it or on top of it and then just play with fonts and sizes, but this time I drew the lines and then made the text follow them. This is the first time I've used the word art feature since...probably 2009? I'd forgotten how. I have no doubt there are better ways to do this but if I'd had to learn a new program at that point I'd have quit. And I do think it was worth it--it's cute and fun and looks about how I imagined it.

Couple of photos of the inside. Sorry the first one's blurry, I had someone trying to get my attention when I took these. The section break image came from rawpixel, I just made it gray instead of black so it's more subtle. The fic has very nice illustrations that I specifically got the artist's permission to print and then I failed to get any photos of them when I did my little photo shoot. They look very nice, though. I swear.

The last image is something I've started including in my latest books. I'm calling them "A Note from the Bookbinder" and it's basically just me talking about why I chose that story, the experience of reading it for the first time, stuff that's going on in the fandom, stuff about the process like the new chapter coming out as I was preparing to print. It's kind of...like marginalia? Part of fanbinding is preservation and that's linked to archival work, and something I know archivists love is marginalia and diaries. I don't like writing in my books and I've never found any fun in journaling, but sometimes that kind of context is important so I'm trying to add it. Someday, decades from now, I may not remember all the details, so I'm trying to preserve them. IDK, this got philosophical on me. Go read about mermaids now. Promise it's a good time.

[ihopesocomic]

no offense but that last anon gave me shades of those "this isn't like My Pride where we see Nothing get beat down constantly so that means it's not a solid depiction of abuse" naysayers. some things are better off being told vs shown past a certain point if you're appealing to a certain audience and I think parental abuse is one of those things. idk how much more graphic depiction that anon needed to be rammed down our throats outside of Hope getting her face clawed but thank you for sparing us

Yeah I know people desperately want IHS to be MP but how many times we gotta say it isn't LOL I don't see how what we did is somehow more jarring than what MP did with Powerstrike? Like at all. At least we show some kind of progression over the course of several chapters while Powerstrike goes from protecting Nothing to hating her in the next episode. Any potentially existing progression of character is unbeknownst to us the audience since it would've happened entirely off screen, like a goddamn warrior cat book or something.

Its not endearing to us when criticism comes in the form of complaints about pacing in earlier chapters when I was not only getting used to pacing and formatting a comic myself when I have no industry experience, but we even said not too long ago we were going to redo some of the earlier chapters to supplement what happens later. (I thought half the fun of blogs was reading what people had to say, but here we are.) We agree expanding on things is a good idea. And even with that, people still managed to understand the inner workings of Hope and Vicious' relationship without needing to see every little thing that might have happened. It never needed to be spelled out to our readers because y'all get it. She becomes exponentially more irrational, controlling, and deflects, the more Hope acts of her own volition. That's all there is to it.

Not to mention, Hope 100% downplays Vicious slashing her face, so I think one could reasonably assume she downplays everything else prior to this. But again. This will be shown /better/ once we actually have time to redo those chapters. Till then, complaining about earlier chapters is like the least helpful thing you could do outside of saying you want to see Hope get abused more. - Cat

[skysometric]

my 3rd favorite game that i played in 2023 is...

Freedom Planet 2

i was originally planning to wait on this one until the console version came out in "summer 2023." after it was delayed to the end of the year, i decided to grab the game on pc so i didn't have to wait… and i'm glad i did, because the console versions have been delayed a second time??

(i do not envy their situation and i hope the console versions are better for taking their time. honestly, i'll probably double dip anyway!)

the original Freedom Planet was a formative game experience for me during college. there was something inspiring about the way it shot for the moon – full voice acting, a fun cast of characters, a lived-in world with political intrigue, a focus on adding fast-paced combat – all trying to prove that it's more than just a Sonic fangame in new clothes.

and it worked. it gripped me and never let go! i must've replayed the story half a dozen times, speedran the levels dozens of times each. that's the reason i decided not to wait on the sequel any longer after the first console delay; i grabbed the game on pc and hit the ground running.

one aspect of what makes Freedom Planet special is its level design, and the sequel delivers – every single level is massive, open-ended, and absolutely GORGEOUS. the unique gimmicks, secret collectibles, and speedrun strats are what encouraged me to endlessly replay the first game, and each of those categories has been expanded here into some of the beefiest and most explorable levels i've ever seen in a 2D platformer, hands down. i'm so glad the sequel took its time in the oven, the levels alone were worth the wait!

to me, though, what really makes Freedom Planet stand out from other Sonic-inspired games is its fast and fluid brawling. enemies in each stage take a few hits to defeat, and every stage ends with a grand, bombastic boss fight – you get a handful of moves to tackle these fights with, and each character has very different fighting playstyles! crucially, though, there is no contact damage, meaning you can run circles around enemies while whacking away at their health bars with momentum-based attacks.

it's an incredibly fun and well-thought-out combat system, and its complexity is right at that sweet spot where it feels deep but not overwhelming. honestly it reminds me a lot of kirby's combat, which is one of my favorite combat systems in any video game! (that RtDL remake very nearly made my Top 5 this year…)

Freedom Planet 2 augments the combat system of the original in two ways. one is the addition of a spot-dodge, which feels so perfectly at home that i'm shocked it wasn't in the first game to begin with?? every game with combat benefits from the addition of a dodge, of course, but in this game especially it allows you to keep your momentum while attacking in a way that just feels so natural. there's nothing else quite like learning a boss's attack pattern enough to spot-dodge directly into a powerful counterattack!

but there's also nothing quite so discouraging as getting the boss's health down to a sliver… and biting the dust. here, too, is a place where the sequel shines: if you lose a life, you can choose to restart from a checkpoint with all your health recovered, or you can get back up on the spot with just 1 HP. the push and pull on this system is incredible – you risk getting a game over and having to redo the whole stage… but you could clutch out a victory at the last second! it has the capacity to turn near misses into huge successes, and it saved my ass countless times over the course of the adventure.

tying this all together is a great story that isn't quite as Big and Grand as the first game, but instead serves to deepen the connection between this loveable cast of characters by exploring their history and personalities in more detail. i'm still floored by the fact that these games have full voice acting – it truly makes the characters feel more alive, their personalities shine! the style of VA isn't everyone's cup of tea, i'm well aware… but as someone with fond memories of saturday morning cartoons, i find that it's very genuine and full of heart in a way that most films and AAA games don't really hit me. it's obvious that everyone involved had a ton of fun!

my one regret is that i haven't returned to the game since my first playthrough – i'd really like to replay those levels and see how fast i can clear them! and try out the other characters, and see what the arcade mode is like, and go for the achievements, and…

[j2zara]

for the ask game!! 📚 💭 👖

Sorry these took all day i've been out and Tired as hell but thank u!

📚 Do you read your own fic?

I try to not feel embarrassed that the answer is yeah bc like I think if other ppl reread their own work it would make sense!!!! Like I would not judge at all and honestly co-sign rereading ur own shit. I literally tell ppl that the reason I write is bc like. It’s basically the chance to craft your own perfectly tailored special interest to share with others. So like. Why wouldn’t I like it? (And this was especially true when I was trying to write original stuff which is why it’s so frustrating I never finish anything. But also a little true now too. This whole weird cloneverse was the product of my dumb thought experiment “what if the clones were people who had the capacity to be just as tragic as Jace). It’s got everything I like in it. I try to tell myself anyway. In practice it’s like. Argh.I kinda go through periods where I like. And this is usually after I JUST posted. Wanna do other things but end up distracting myself by rereading the thing I just made over and over. And then I forget it exists and often in my mind it’s like. Oh I don’t wanna read that i think bc I have residual feelings of like. Idk embarrassment I guess? Like I convince myself it’s old and probably bad but sometimes when I’m glancing at old things I write for. Refresher purposes (usually on cloneverse lol) I end up getting suckered back into rereading it like oh hey is this actually. Good?

Anything older I mostly haven’t looked at in a while bc idk. I’m very hard on my old self. I did reread my Reddie sky high au thing and went. Hm this is actually fun I like this. Most of my IT stuff is like. Ok I think? This is kinda related but I JUST got a comment on a talent swap I wrote for DR and I literally haven’t updated the thing since 2018 and I feel so bad for abandoning it but. Part of it is bc I think if I were to come back to it I would wanna redo some of the old chapters and I feel so pained looking at the early chapters. I keep telling myself I’ll get to it. My Mukuro and Hiro proxy sibling agenda deserves it, they deserve to be best friends so bad, I’m sad I abandoned them. 

💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?

This is such a funny question bc I’m such a goddamn blabbermouth so I feel pretty confident that I’ve already posted so much cringe abt the headcanons for cloneverse. Like. Technically J3’s personality started as a headcanon in that i was like “oh, Porter was flirting with J3 the entire time he was falling in love with J2”. 99% of the time if i feel compelled to say it i will just say it? Actually you know what? I just thought of one that might be kinda schmaltzy and i feel bad for not saying its a 100% certainty but in my heart Ankarna grants all the clones some form of true life but it would probably be some fucked genie deal where its like there’s a reincarnation au or something. Like they have to find each other again or something. Very Hadestown Orphydice anybody got a match coded. Genuinely b/c J4 wishes she was never Of Jace she gets what she wants and its like good/bad. Bc i can never stop putting the clones in the torment nexus I don’t know if that’s completely stupid

👖 Are you a planner, plantser, or pantser? Is it consistent?

I try so hard to be a planner bc I’m so frustrated by my pantser process. Like. Idk i tend to just ride momentum but without foresight you end up going in directions that can be kinda formless and completely wrong and idk. I have such hard time finishing things b/c of this i think. But when I try to plan I’m also so bad at it i don’t think I’ve ever finished a real and true outline before I start. I want to be the kind of person that has clean outlines but. Idk. So by default I guess I’m a plantser bc I do have docs full of notes but my notes are always super messy and like. Idk what I’m doing evolves so much while I work that half the time the notes end up not even accurate to what I’m aiming for. Worst of both worlds life

[lycanthrope6221]

Sucide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Character Rant

Hi there here’s my thoughts on all the current operatives in Sucide Squad: Kill the Justice League. I’ll probably do another one of these for the Joker when he releases next month

Disclaimer, I’m a artist not a writer I suck I at writing and I really just wanted to get my thoughts down and put them out there also I’m writing this a after playing the game last night and my memory isn’t 100% I might have missed some things but oh well.

Spoilers!!! mostly just for gameplay I don’t really bring up the story.

Tw: Guns and violence

Harley Quinn:

Character-Loving her dialogue right now. Her voice fits well(duh it’s Tara strong), she has funny dialogue and unhinged dialogue she doesn’t feel forced or anything. I’m happy she’s moved on from the Joker and is trying to live her best life despite the bomb planted into her skull.

Movement- I’m going to be completely honest and say I think I might need to redo the tutorial for the bat grapple gun. All I do is fall…. Beside that it’s fun to swing around and grapple to building my brain keeps defaulting to Spider-Man 2 controls lol.

Combat- I know you can equip any weapon for any character but I’m just sticking to the type of gun they started with so my Harley’s only getting SMG’s and revolvers. I like beating aliens to a bloody pulp with Harley’s bat and I love revolvers in games like there so much fun to use.

Deadshot:

Character- So far it looks like Floyd is basically the voice of reason for the team. He has prior experience to mercenary work and it shows in the way he communicates with Waller i think this is a nice detail. He brings up his daughter sometimes and I really hope he gets to see her preferably not in alien invaded metropolis.

Movement- at first I struggled with the jet pack but after a couple stressful missions I finally got used to it. I don’t really have much to say about it, it’s a jetpack. Blast off woo hoo.

Combat- My Deadshot currently has a a sniper rifle and assault rifle. I’m so happy that the sniper rifles in this game aren’t heavy snipers and don’t take 10 years to reload cause I would be so so dead. I just got my first notorious weapon and it’s Black Mask sniper rifle and the floating back skulls were a jump-scare at first but honestly it gives the gun character.

Captain Boomerang-

Character- As a Tim drake fan I apologize for what I’m about to say. He’s slowly becoming harder and harder to hate. The voice actor and writers are just doing to good of a job also shot out to the animators whoever did facial animations for this game deserves double pay. He’s a dick and he sucks but in a funny way. Like ok Boomer rang why would you put a bomb into a child’s head? Yes that child is an omega level Metahuman but still! I would push him down a flight of stairs but I would also throw him down a granola bar.

Movement- When I first saw the trailer I thought this was “just revived from darkest night and now I have powers” Boomerang but no its some speed force copy cat gauntlet I think this was a good decision. I don’t hate his traversal it’s honestly pretty fun to throw boomerangs and go fast. Gotta go fast…

Combat- I love Boomerangs melee attack I love smacking people with a boomerang. I have a sniper rifle and a shotgun equipped. Shotguns are so much fun in this and doing the quick time thingys is really fun with them 10/10 shotgun lover 4lifers.

King Shark:

Character: King shark is such a neat humanoid shark. At first I thought he was just MCU Drax the destroyer in a different font but even though they both share a lot of tropes King Sharks love for learning reminds me more of Strong from fallout. I really like his design too, we don’t see a lot of 3d humanoid sharks out there and they nailed it.

Movement: King Shark uses his claws and glowing shark powers to jump high and run fast. I can’t really tell but I think he may be the fastest character. It might just be how easy he is to use but I don’t really notice any limitations like the others/its not screaming in my face like with dead shots jetpack over heating or Harley’s bat drone having a cool down. It’s also very cool to run around as a giant shark jumping off builds and plowing through crowds of aliens.

Combat- My King Shark is currently equipped with a heavy machine gun and a shotgun. The heavy gun is fine and kinda fun to use it pairs really well with his melee. King sharks melee attack is his 2 daggers that can cut through people and launch them into the sky so you can riddle them with bullets. That’s my favorite combo and you can do that with every character but King Sharks just seems cooler.

[alchemania]

"So what are we making ..?"

Wanderer turned to his acquaintance briefly, pulling utensils and bowls and ingredients out of the cabinets. "You like desserts, so I figured we could make a cake." He passed her a bowl then, and a few measuring cups and spoons. "You work on the dry ingredients, and I'll do the wet ones."

"Very well," Furina nodded, beginning her job with gusto- she'd been a little nervous about working together with this guy, having heard from a plethora of folks he had an attitude twice as big as he, but he seemed pretty reasonable as of right now, expression fixed in concentration as he cracked eggs and poured milk into his bowl. "S- so, um, when did you start cooking?"

Wanderer cracked an egg a bit too hard then, stiffening. After a moment, he sighed, picking out a piece of shell that'd fallen in, and tossed it aside. "...a very long time ago. It's been a part of my life almost as long as I can remember. Let's leave it at that."

"Alright...sorry, I didn't mean to hit any sore spots-"

"You couldn't have known," he interrupted, but not unkindly. "It's fine." He gestured with his head to her bowl, eyes firm. "Keep mixing. We need everything to be well blended."

"Okay," she replied, giving a little salute and a smile, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. As she went back to work, Wanderer did as well.

"When did YOU start?"

"Ah, well, mostly after everything was over in Fontaine - I moved out of the opera house you see, and since I was living on my own, I figured I should be more independent. I mostly just cooked macaroni, though.. but it's quite versatile! There's so many different sauces and things you can put in it, so it's fun to um, experiment. But I want to learn more recipes! I've just, been very tired -"

"Of course you have," he butt in again. "...I overheard from Kusanali about some things that went on. Anyone would be tired after that. You don't have to sound apologetic over it. There's nothing to be sorry for. Here, you can put your mixture in now."

But there was plenty to be sorry for, she thought as she began to carefully add her ingredients in. She hadn't been able to save those people in Poisson, her act had been exposed in the 11th hour and everyone had nearly died for it- things did thankfully work out, but what if they hadn't? What if everyone HAD died and everything had all been for nothing and all those tears and silence and isolation had been in vain and -

"Hey, be careful!!"

"Ah-"

Furina's hands were already shaky, and Wanderer's voice startled her out of her trance so badly she flailed a bit, sending everything crashing in a heap to the floor. He fell silent, and the girl's chest heaved. "Sorry," she almost whispered, already welling up. "Here, I'll, help clean it up and then I'll just - go-"

"What for?"

"Well, I ruined the cake....now we have to start all over..it probably would've been really good too, but now we'll never know -" Just like she'd never be able to bring back all those people who died. There wasn't anything she could do. "I can't do anything right," Furina sobbed, scrubbing at her face.

"Woah, hey," Wanderer startled, looking at a loss. "Just - hold on, there's no need to cry."

"Sorry, sorry..."

"Stop apologizing. Come here."

He took her hand then, and guided her around the mess to sit her down in a chair, pulling out a hanky from his pocket and handing it to her. "Wipe your face, and take a breath," he instructed, and she nodded, dabbing at her eyes. "Look. Take it from me. There's a lot of things that looking back, most people wish they could redo, or change. But life isn't like that. You have to go with what you're given, and keep it moving."

A pause.

"..the nice thing about cooking though, is that when you mess up, you can start over," he went on, moving his hands as he talked. "You can try again. And you won't know what you lost tasted like, sure, but you can make something new that's just as good, or even better. It's not the end of the world if you make a mistake. I'm not mad at you, okay? So after you calm down, we can clean everything up, and we can try again. Alright?"

"Okay," Furina sobbed, wiping at her face. "Thank you..."

After a little while, she got up, and with a few more tears and sniffles, everything was cleaned. And they began again, and the cake was carefully placed in the oven. While it baked, Furina carefully sliced fruit into pieces and peeked over Wanderer's shoulder as he made frosting, trying to sneak a taste- he glared at her in answer, and she shrank back, sheepishly giggling. "You can test it when I'm done. Be patient," he huffed, though a little smile flickered on his face.

After the cake was done baking, he handed her the oven mitts, and Furina carefully took the cake out of the oven, eyes glittering at the dessert. "It smells delightful!!"

"You perked up awful quick," he chuckled.

The cake was frosted a little haphazardly, but Furina insisted it gave character - after all, imperfections were a sign of care. After decorating the top with fruit, Wanderer cut the dessert into pieces and Furina took a slice, popping a bite into her mouth. Her eyes lit up immediately, and she danced a little in place, seeming to glow. "That's so good!"

"You can take it home, then."

"You don't want any..?"

"I've never really liked sweets. I helped with this because it's something you wanted to do."

Furina stared for a moment, and then a toothy smile almost split her face.

"What?" Wanderer questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"You're really nice, you know."

The young man froze for a moment, expression soft, and then it fled as quickly as it came, replaced by an rolling of the eyes. "..if you think that, you must not know a lot of people."

"Well, you're very nice to me. And that means a lot." Furina took Wanderer's hand and gently squeezed it, and he stared at it as if it was sentient, bewilderment marring his features. "Could we do this again sometime?? Maybe make something you like?"

"You don't have to -"

"I want to," she assured, expression earnest, and he blinked twice, at a loss.

".. I'll think about it."

"Yaaaaaay! Oh thank you thank you thank you!!!"

"Uh huh," Wanderer replied, trying to keep an air of nonchalance, but his eyes betrayed his joy. "Eat your cake."

After everything was put away and as Furina began to leave, he handed her a slip of paper, and she tilted her head.

"What's this?"

"...it's a recipe for eel chazuke. For next time."

He swore then, the stars were dim in comparison to how her eyes shined.

[crush3dmary]

Apologies if I'm more sporadic in terms of replying to messages/updating fics for the next 8 months. Explanation ahead.

As most of you know, I'm a student at the moment - I already have my degree and work as a social worker in the field, but last time I tried to apply for my MSW, I was denied as due to some bureaucratic bullshit, I'm missing some of the credits I needed to get in. So I've spent the last 3 years doing university part time so I can work at the same time, because I'm an adult and pay my own rent for an apartment I am the sole leaseholder to. Anyways, I'm in my last year of this BS and I need to redo my practicum credit because for some reason 5 years of field experience (including over a year of being a supervisor) couldn't exempt me from this, and the only way for me to get the hours I need to get this credit is to do it 3 days a week.

You know what that means! It means I'll be working 3 days of long overnight shifts, then flipping my sleep and doing 3 days at my practicum, and I have one class I need to do concurrently, so I am now busy 7 days a week. I have no days off. This is going to suck ass.

Thankfully, I started my practicum last week, and it is VERY chill, so much that it'll be a vacation from my full time job. It's fully remote and very self-driven, so less stressful than if I was having to commute to a high-action agency 3 days a week and burning myself out, but I'm still not a fan of the 7 days a week thing. At least last week I got 15 hours of practicum credit to "review documents" (by that, I mean read fic and goof off from the comfort of my own home) and it seems like most of the work will be not much more strenuous than that. So I might be able to keep up with my writing after all if this keeps up, but... I guess we'll see how it unfolds.

I'm also thinking again about registering with the provincial college of social workers again, since my registration expired mid-2021 and I never renewed it (I'm sure some of you remember the drama from around that time where Ritchie accused me of lying about my credentials, that was fun). My current organization doesn't require registry since we have staff from a lot of different backgrounds - I have coworkers with backgrounds in things like criminology, sociology, and other things along those lines, so they don't require an OCSW registration, but I feel like it would be good for me to have just in case. Downsides? First off, it's expensive, you actually have to pay about 300 dollars a year just be considered an RSW (and they charge you right around Christmas too, lmao), and secondly, I have an unusual name - Sair is my actual, legit legal name - and I've been doxxed before by unsavoury people, so if you knew where to look, you'd be able to find my full workplace contact easily. So that's a MAJOR downside and basically the biggest thing stopping me from reapplying, because I don't trust people I have beef with to be normal with that information. Sometimes having an internet presence sucks ass.

Anyways, there's some work/career thoughts. I'm not really going anywhere with this, just need to get my thoughts out and twitter has a character limit.

[tokiro07]

Once again vaguing so as to maintain my "talk no shit on what people like" policy while also being able to vent about what is, quite possibly, my least favorite game of all time

This is...the single most tedious gaming experience I've ever had. I thought at first it was just that the controls were unresponsive due to some hardware limitation on the Switch port, but even ignoring that, what the game is literally asking me to do is absurdly repetitive

The actual challenge is decent, though a lot of my deaths have been pretty cheap in my opinion, either blindsiding me due to how poorly contrasted all of the background and stage elements are or landing cheap shots because I frequently respawn on top of enemies or directly in their line of fire. If regular stage hazards didn't actually cause damage and instead just reset me, like in say Hollow Knight, I would find this a lot more bearable, but because I lose health to the platforming and not just the combat, I often don't have enough health left for the combat, which wouldn't be a tremendous issue if the enemies weren't spongey as hell!

The fact that I keep needing to redo long platforming segments because every mistake drains my extremely shallow health pool or because long-winded enemies keep getting placed along the path makes for a ludicrously slow and repetitive experience in what seems like it's meant to be quite fast-paced

The boss fights compound on this by having multiple lengthy phases that end up feeling predictable because they go the same way every time, and generally have oddly long cutscenes to load in the new movesets. I understand not letting me skip phases I've beaten before, I can't think of too many games that allow that, but the earlier phases of any given boss fight become sooo boooring after you've beaten them 50 times, and the latter phases that throw a ton of bullshit at you when, again, you're constantly fighting against the controls themselves just become super annoying!

At the very least, don't put a long, empty path between a checkpoint and the final boss! I should be able to just walk straight into the boss fight from the checkpoint, not hold down a button to carry me there with enough time to think "maybe I don't want to try again." Which is what happened, by the way! I'm writing this now because the game gave me the opportunity to say "y'know what? Literally fuck this" and throw my system down to complain about how dogshit this game is!

And people like this game! It's getting decent to great reviews from what I can find! No one has any of the problems that I do, which again, made me think that it was just the particular port I'm playing, but no, these are all structural issues with the game's design! How is no one else upset about this??? How is everyone else able to accept this??? These are practically ancient design flaws at this point, relics of arcades past, why am I still being asked to put up with this in 2024, and why doesn't anyone else care???

I see what people like about it, I really do, it's just that those elements a) have been done a thousand times better in the games that this game is clearly trying to emulate, and b) are getting bogged down by other design decisions that I don't believe would have been too costly to fix

The only reason I'm still playing this game is so I can have a complete understanding of the sorts of design decisions I should avoid if I ever make my own game, and literally every single minute I spend playing it makes me regret that line of thinking. I have never been so abjectly miserable playing a video game before when this is supposed to be a fun hobby. The only solace that I can take aside from the game being quite pretty is that at least I'm not brain-dead bored. However, in a way that makes it worse, cus if it were completely unengaging I could at least turn it off and not feel like I'm missing something. Instead though, I'm mad, and that makes me feel like if I turn it off and never look back that I let my inability to meet the game at its level beat me, like I wasn't good enough to do it. I know that's a fallacy, since again I'm at the final boss (or at least the Normal Ending final boss, I can tell there's a True Ending I haven't done the work to unlock yet), but if I can't beat it right at the end it's just going to weigh on my mind for the rest of my life like when I didn't finish Magical Vacation

The real question is whether or not I should go ahead and collect everything for the True Ending now so I can just do the final boss fight once and not worry about it, OR should I get the Normal Ending then watch the True Ending online? Both feel wrong and incomplete, but like I said, I hate this game and want it to be done so I can at least feel some semblance of catharsis

Either way, I hope to be done this game no later than tomorrow so I can delete it from my system and actually play something that brings me joy

[theghostpinesmusic]

Surprise "new" album! This is the link to the YouTube playlist, but it's also up on Bandcamp for free/pay-what-you-like. If you want to know more about how it came together, keep reading!

So it's been almost three years now since June of 2021, when I released the four-album cycle of "Wilderness Amen," "Ride," "Maps," and "Fire and Rain," along with a demos collection titled "The Amen Demos" and an early proto-experiment with my looper titled "What Comes Around." It was a lot for one year, but I'd been working on all of those songs since at least 2017, it was just that COVID-19 and all of the disruptions it introduced (weirdly) gave me the time to finally get them all together in one place and finish them to my satisfaction.

I'd always planned to use some of my "off-time" during sabbatical to start working on a follow-up album. In 2022, I even bought a new stratocaster, expecting to use it to experiment with writing songs on an electric guitar for the first time. But, as usual, things didn't work out like I'd planned: life is full of both good and bad surprises, and I guess the most surprising thing of all is how often I have to relearn that particular lesson.

On the good side, I've spent a lot more time this year than I'd expected focusing on nonfiction writing, both related to my sabbatical and also, sometimes, just for fun. On the bad side, my main amp blew out almost two years ago, and I've been struggling since to find someone in the southern Oregon desert who can diagnose and fix it for less money than it would cost to buy a new one. In the meantime, I've been hesitant to start recording a new album with my $100 practice amp I bought twenty years ago, for obvious reasons.

I hadn't planned, then, on making this "new" album at all. About nine months ago, I had the thought to record a "single" featuring two of my favorite cover songs: The Grateful Dead's "Ship of Fools" and Goose's "A Western Sun." I wanted to record the main performance without amps, just me and an acoustic guitar, and then maybe overdub in a second, electric guitar once my amp was fixed. So I mic'd the studio for acoustic and vocals only, got the levels to where I wanted, and then realized I needed to practice both songs a bunch more for them to be satisfying takes/tributes.

With a few hours still left to play around in the studio on that first day, and having already played each of the two cover songs ten or so times, I decided to play through a bunch of my original songs, using the "alternate" arrangments of them I'd been developing over the previous two years or so of Instagram livestream sets. I recorded fifteen songs that way, with the sound in the room dialed in for acoustic guitar better (in my opinion) than I'd ever gotten it before.

It wasn't until months later that I listened back to what I'd recorded that I realized it could be a sort of alternate-universe version of one of the albums I'd released in 2021, and thus maybe worth a release itself. I eventually edited the fifteen songs down to the ten you have here and messed with a few EQ and gain levels, but otherwise these performances are exactly as they were recorded that first day of what was supposed to longer sessions for the "Ship of Fools"/"A Western Sun" single…which will still get finished one of these days, amp repair willing.

I put out my first-ever album in 2006, and it was titled "Not California," after one of the songs on it. Immediately after, in early 2007, I bought my first-ever electric guitar and amplifier (ironically, the one that's currently kaput), and immediately had the idea of redoing the mostly-acoustic "Not California" album as this loud, crashy, electric-guitar thing. I would call it just "California," as a way of emphasizing both its relationship to the original album and also its different, almost opposite tone.

I worked on the idea for a few months (it's where "Acteon's Groove" and "Cassie's Song" came from, among other things), but in the end I was, frankly, not good enough yet at guitar to make it sound like I wanted it to. But you probably get where I'm going with this. Basically, when I realized that this current, all-acoustic alternate-universe set of songs was maybe worth releasing, I thought it might be fun to resurrect the "California" album title. Also, this album starts off with a version of my song "California," so there's that, too.

It's definitely quieter than that original "California" album would have been, but it's a realization of that idea of writing some songs, releasing them, and then going back and playing with them until they turn into something else…and then releasing that, too, because hey, why not? Technically, each track on this album is already available elsewhere in its "original" studio configuration, so in that sense nothing here is truly "new": however, each song is re-arranged here in a way that I've come to really like. These re-arrangments are the result of years of playing these songs live, on livestreams, and in the studio, and in that time finding new facets of my original ideas that I thought were worth exploring. The album's cover, a photo I took of the Trinity Alps from Echo Lake, is meant to visually represent this process of rediscovery, reflection, and recreation: the longer I play these songs, the more reflections I find.

I hope you enjoy listening!