#wall of text

[mrsandman42069]

[99thpercentile]

I get the feeling that I'm in the minority here, but I posit that GLaDOS actually is Caroline, and only "not the same person" in the sense that you'd look at your younger self and be like "that bitch ain't me." I think you actually have to go out of your way to interpret them as two separate people.

evidence:

voiced by the same person (I know the initial reasoning was that Valve didn't want to hire another voice actor for a few lines, but in casting Ellen McLain as Caroline, they incorporated her being the same person into the story).

GLaDOS automatically joins in saying "Yes sir, Mister Johnson" like saying it is permanently ingrained in her. you can interpret this as Caroline taking over, but she says "Why did I just—" immediately afterwards.

when GLaDOS talks about hearing the voice of a conscience, she says "for the first time it's MY voice." I don't think she means that she's hearing the woman she gets her literal voice from. she highlights it as distinctly DIFFERENT from hearing the voices of the cores, and I imagine if Caroline were a foreign entity whispering in her ear, the effect would've been much the same.

the GLaDOS project was originally started because Cave was dying and wanted his consciousness uploaded to a computer. the intent was always for the upload to be the same person. he said if he died first, he wanted Caroline to run the place, to be put in his computer. and that's exactly what happened.

GLaDOS not remembering she's Caroline until old Aperture always made sense to me as the result of a deliberate choice on the part of the scientists. Caroline didn't want to be uploaded, and as soon as they switched GLaDOS on, she tried to kill everyone. it's logical for the scientists to think that if they suppressed her memories, she'd have no reason to try to kill them (but instead, she was just filled with murderous rage and no longer knew why).

the story just doesn't have the same impact otherwise. GLaDOS's reactions to rediscovering old Aperture make more sense if it's her past she's rediscovering, rather than the past of...a human that was shoved into the chassis with her. if it were the second one, I think she would just feel violated, not have any major revelations.

counter-evidence:

"now little Caroline is in here too" lyric from Want You Gone

GLaDOS says she found out "where Caroline lives in [her] brain" and deleted her, like she's a separate entity

but GLaDOS is a habitual liar. she acts like deleting Caroline means she's fully back to her old self and has gotten rid of the part of her that made her want to save Chell's life, but there's...lots of evidence that she still cares about Chell after the fact (letting her go anyway, the companion cube, the turret opera if you think GLaDOS arranged that, talking to the co-op bots about Chell like she's an ex she's still heartbroken over...). I also think GLaDOS would like to imagine her and Caroline as two separate entities, in the same way you might find your younger self embarrassing and want to distance yourself from that person. I think it's notable that both instances where she refers to Caroline as a separate entity are at the end of the game, after Chell has been passed out a while and she's had time to process everything and compartmentalize. her instinct when the revelations are first happening is to refer to Caroline as if she is her.

now I don't like stories where a robot has to become or be seen as more human in some way for them to be sympathetic. but I think Portal 2 is an excellent subversion of this trope, because GLaDOS is a robot that learns she used to be human and then discards that humanity (symbolically if not literally). Caroline may not have wanted to be uploaded, but from the Want You Gone lyrics "one day they woke me up / so I could live forever / it's such a shame the same will never happen to you" I think we can say that GLaDOS definitely prefers being a robot now that she is one.

anyway this post was supposed to be much shorter than this, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[godbirdart]

june 21 is national indigenous peoples day up here in canada; a day focused on celebrating the arts and cultures of our indigenous neighbours and communities.

if you’re looking for ways to support, or generally further your education on indigenous history, here are a bunch of links to help you get started! please go further and look up events hosted by your local community specifically, as some may not be listed on the sites below.

remember that if you cannot attend events or monetarily support businesses - you can always boost indigenous artists and voices online too.

indigenous tourism; lists businesses, events, and other indigenous-owned / led programs for the respective province or territory

indigenous tourism canada [generalized resources, event listings etc]

yukon

northwest territories

nunavut

british columbia

alberta

saskatchewan

manitoba

ontario

quebec

newfoundland and labrador

new brunswick

nova scotia

prince edward island

art

bill reid gallery of the northwest coast

lattimer art gallery

native northwest [while NNW itself is not indigenous-owned, it is a good way to discover artists and purchase their work. some artists sell on other sites too, so look around]

strong nations [sells books by indigenous authors]

education and resources

two-spirited people of manitoba

alberta indigenous history timeline [pdf]

alberta indigenous history resources

british columba history timeline

list of first nations peoples [wikipedia; could be incomplete / inaccurate]

cbc indigenous [indigenous-focused news]

missing and murdered indigenous women and girls

national centre for truth and reconciliation

native land interactive map

orange shirt day

qikiqtani truth commission

lil’ red dress project

whose land interactive map

charities / support / donations

clan mothers healing billage & knowledge centre

first nations health authority

indian residential schools survivor society

indigenous peoples resilience fund

qajuqturvik food bank

niqinik nuatsivik nunavut food bank

nunavut food security coalition

reconciliation canada

urban native youth association

additional links are always appreciated

[markscherz]

A friend of mine sent me a yt video of a guy who was relocating frog eggs (prolly a vernal pool) and showed 1000s of baby frogs coming out of the water in his backyard. she asked me how I felt about it as a ecologist. I felt like it was irresponsible to do, especially to post videos on it, but probably not "ecological terrorism" like people in the comments were saying, because I see baby frogs in nature come out of water in hoards sometimes too. Kind of a mixed bag.

But I wanted to ask you, since you're a herpetologist and waaay more experienced than me: how do you feel about the yt channel "frog army YouTube"?

Many frogs and toads are classical R-strategists. Some toads can lay 20+ THOUSAND eggs in a single clutch. The whole point of that strategy is that not all of the offspring survive. In fact, it would be really rather bad if all of the offspring were to survive, because (1) they wouldn't be feeding the predators and decomposers that live off of their noble sacrifice, and (2) they will require massively more resources than they otherwise would. It can have all kinds of detrimental down-stream effects.

This is the reason we often see swarms of tadpoles darkening some small pools (especially ones where there are no fish!), and later hoards of froglets (that's the technical term) emerging from pools at once. It's an evolutionary strategy, that only few individuals survive to achieve reproductive age.

Point 1: it is *fine* if not all the tadpoles survive to adulthood. That's how the system is supposed to work. You are not doing the system favours if you are changing tadpole survivorship to 100%.

Now, humans really are fucking things up in a lot of environments. Environmental pollutants, like heavy metals, can cause major issues for wildlife, and especially frogs, which (1) are not as vagile as e.g. birds and medium- to large-sized mammals and thus cannot escape the problem zone effectively, and (2) are EXTRA sensitive to the environment because of their permeable skin.

Point 2: we do have some responsibility to do something if we notice that there is a major problem emerging, which could dramatically alter the population dynamics for one or more generations of frogs.

However, *moving* clutches of eggs that are found in polluted pools is not the right move, especially for your average person. There are many reasons that it is not the right move, but chief among them are

(1) A lot of frogs that lay eggs in vernal pools have tadpoles that cannot survive being in larger ponds, and certainly cannot survive in streams or other bodies of flowing water.

(2) A lot of frogs that lay their eggs in vernal pools are already adapted to less than ideal conditions, and have excellent strategies to overcome those conditions, such as incredibly quick metamorphosis (sometimes just a few days!)

(3) By moving clutches of eggs, you could easily be moving the pathogens or pollutants that are causing the problem in the first place.

(4) If there is Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungus around, you are spreading chytrid, and that is VERY bad. Chytridiomycosis has already driven several frog species to extinction, and caused massive population collapse in several others.

(5) If you do not know the species, attempts to rescue them might be aiding the advance of an invasive species.

(6) It's often illegal to intervene! Many species are protected by law, and you are not allowed to remove them from the wild. Consult your local laws.

Point 3: the responsibility to do something does not include removing the frogs and raising a frog army.

So what should we do if we find a clutch of eggs in an oily pool? Or in a nearly dried out puddle?

First assess the nature of the problem. Is the pool just about to dry out? Then leave it alone. The tadpoles will probably be fine (and if they're not, they'll provide rich nutrients to predators and decomposers). But are there signs of pollution? Then assess: is the pollution covering a larger area? Or is it localised? If you find dead frogs or other amphibians is a major warning sign, and it needs to be brought to the relevant authorities. Contact your local environmental agency/department, and notify them of the precise location of the problem, and its extent. Document everything with photos and videos.

Point 4: there are organisations and agencies specifically tasked with intervening in cases of environmental damage. It is *your* job to bring it to their attention, but unless instructed by them, you need not take any further action. It is their job to know what to do, and to take appropriate action.

TL;DR: 'Raising a frog army' is for the likes, not the frogs, and is not environmentally responsible or ethically defensible. Build a home for the frogs, and they will come.

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

Religious symbolisms on EP 12 in Christian and Buddhism/Hinduism perspectives

Isn’t it amusing that the final episode, EP12, fell on this year’s Lenten week? Rebirth and resurrection, the anastasis… those themes. Easter Sunday, the Christian Jesus alive again overcoming Death itself.

Isami Ao being reborn as Bravern’s latest persona, Burn Brave Big Bang, to defeat the all-powerful of all the Death Drives. Most of all, Lewis Smith coming back. His own resurrection, his own rebirth.

Burn Brave Big Bang is definitely Isami complete with his standard snarl

Verum Vita. What’s in a name? First off, it is a bastardised Latin that lacks an “e” at the end that means “the truth of life,” which sounds ironic as her lust for murder supersedes.

Upon introducing Verum Vita, a choir-like music could be heard chanting in Latin. (It was reminiscent of Carmina Burana’s “O, Fortuna” or “Dies Irae” by Guiseppe Verdi.) Then a pink lotus 🪷 appeared on her feet/bottom of her tower. A lotus has a significant meaning in different religions. In Christianity, flowers don’t often play an integral part in worship. Though, it represents purity and God’s creation of the universe. However, in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism, the lotus signifies purity of the heart, soul, and mind, and also, rebirth. It is an extraordinary exemplary as such that it remains pure and clean when coming out from the murky waters.

Usually, Hindu and Buddhism religious arts consist of deities either seated or floating on a lotus flower.

Verum Vita resembled the deity Kisshōten, the equivalent of Lakshmi in Japanese Buddhism. With a blossoming lotus under her feet, this goddess symbolises fertility, wealth, prosperity and beauty. The lotus under Verum Vita was not just any colour, but pink. In Buddhism, “the pink lotus flower is the supreme lotus and is considered to be the true lotus of Buddha.”

A few frames later, the lotus pedestal where she used to stand on transformed into marsh grass, which could be interpreted as the moment her fallen mask, her real intention, was revealed. Instead of holding a wish-fulfilling jewel called Cintamani, Verum Vita was holding a sword.

It is interesting the way this series subvert everything and use the religious imagery as the forces of evil subjugating the humankind.

Both Isami and Verum Vita both declared that they didn’t want to die. But there lies the difference between the two. When the first one wanted to save the world, the other strived to destroy it.

It feels like a mishmash of all beliefs fused into one huge spectacle to make this episode parts parody, parts fairy tale, and it is interesting to watch.

[petermorwood]

Interesting to see this post cross my dash again.

I was watching a movie late last night and, with that post's criticism of unbroken long speeches and suggestions of how to break them, here's an example of how a very famous one was done.

The movie I was watching was "Jaws", and the long speech is The Indianapolis Monologue. There are several YouTube clips, but a couple of them leap straight in at the start of the speech.

The clip below has the lead up to The Speech which, IMO, matters a lot in preparing for what follows; there's not just a Mood Whiplash - cheery drunk to OMG Whut - to make the viewers pay attention, but also what I mentioned in the other post, an entirely legitimate reason for an "As You Know" speech.

One character, Hooper, knows the significance of "USS Indianapolis" - his shocked-almost-sober reaction makes that very plain - but the other character, Brody (and the audience he represents), doesn't know and needs told.

In addition (also as mentioned in the other post) despite being a single-character monologue, the speech is "broken" by cutting away from the speaker, Quint, to reaction shots from the other characters present. Even when Quint is on-screen he isn't centre-screen, Hooper is visible in the background where his silent, apprehensive attention accompanies the story he's hearing.

*****

This can be done in words, too: inserting other actions or reactions by means of paragraph breaks is the equivalent of visual cut-aways, and serve the same functions - making a lot of words from one character into several smaller groups of words, while showing the cumulative effect of all those words on other listeners.

Even a soliloquy with no-one else listening benefits from occasional breaks describing what the speaker is doing, how their emotions show, where they are etc. It's all far better than A Wall Of Text.

The entire speech is 438 words, and Robert Shaw delivers them over 3 min 34 sec.

I've got three PDF versions of the "Jaws" screenplay, all different, and this speech varies in every one but are never what's in the movie, so I constructed mine as a transcript from several listenings, and have used paragraph breaks to try matching Shaw's delivery.

Also, as an Exercise For The Scholar (me, anyway) I've inserted and timed the cuts where Quint isn't on screen or speaking to show how short they can be.

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know ... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh.

CUT TO BRODY (3 sec) then BACK TO QUINT WHO TAKES A DRINK (2 sec)

They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s ... kinda like old squares in a battle, like you see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man, that man he start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin’, an’ sometimes the shark go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at you, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites you, and those black eyes roll over white and then, ah, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in an’ they... Rip you to pieces.

CUT TO BRODY (2 sec) then BACK TO QUINT

Y’know, by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I dunno how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I dunno how many men, they averaged six an hour.

CUT TO BRODY (3 sec) AS QUINT CONTINUES OFFSCREEN

On Thursday mornin', Chief...

BACK TO QUINT

I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun's mate. An’ I thought he was asleep; reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up an’ down in the water, was like a kinda top. Upended... Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

CUT TO BRODY (2 sec) then CUT TO HOOPER (2 sec) then BACK TO QUINT

Noon the fifth day, Mister Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us - a young pilot, a lot younger than Mister Hooper. Anyway he saw us and he come in low, and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

*****

For comparison, down below is what it looks like without any paragraph breaks, speech instruction (gravely / incredulous etc.) or screen direction (track right / dolly in / close on / match cut etc.).

(BTW, some of these effects can be used when writing prose, to good effect, but that's for another time.)

This is the Wall of Text effect, and it sometimes turns up on the internet, courtesy of people who don't know how to use Enter except when they're sending a post.

I'm not saying this is how the speech would have looked in the real shooting script, but it might. From my own screenwriting experience, actors don't like being told how to deliver their lines and directors don't like being told how to set up their shots.

There's a bit more flexibility when writing animation, but in both cases crafty writers write so that the way they want a thing done works out as the best way to do it.

Sometimes this trick even works... :->

*****

Here's the Wall Of Text:

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s kinda like old squares in a battle, like you see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man, that man he start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin’, an’ sometimes the shark go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at you, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites you, and those black eyes roll over white and then, ah, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in an’ they rip you to pieces. Y’know, by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I dunno how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I dunno how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', Chief I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun's mate. An’ I thought he was asleep; reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up an’ down in the water, was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mister Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us - a young pilot, a lot younger than Mister Hooper. Anyway he saw us and he come in low, and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

[dank-meme-my-gf-sends-me]

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

So I watched BF and NPMD for the first time back to back about a month ago, and the fact that TGWDLM uses a lot of green in its poster, title, etc but the main villain is blue and is in blue lighting while Black Friday uses blue for its poster and title but the villain is green and introduced in green light might contribute to my increasing insomnia.

[zellk]

My question is about Qalaa! She’s got an amazing design in every iteration so I wanted to ask what were your main inspirations for her? Also could you tell us a bit more about her story?

Hi there ! Thank you so much for your kind words about my babygirl ;A; !!! Everything started circa 2014 when I started to play Wakfu again with @shuuzaar and decided to make a red-skinned osamodas. She also now exists in multiple universes (a minotaur or tiefling in DnD, a demon/oni, a dragon, etc etc).

It wasn't a very conscious & willed thing but since I put a lot of 'myself' into her (more than all my other OCs, who have more... handpicked bits) so her build started to grow towards the larger / bigger side naturally. I'm definitely not as big, nor tall as her though (I am short and she's like, 209cm tall or sth).

Her general themes / traits are : A kind, soft & gentle soul in a body that is 'made' for killing / hurting easily because of it's size and strength. Feeling inadequate / dysphoria / struggling to accept her body because it doesn't fit what she likes (petite and feminine girls). Struggle to control flares of emotions & physical strength. And being very, oh so very gay about girls and feminine people (this is a very important part ok).

In time I've been slowly collecting pictures of athletes and people that make me think of her and trying to refine how she looks in my head ! Though, like many of my characters, the specifics tends to change depending on how I feel on the moment... sometimes I want her nose a bit more like this or like that... don't be surprised if her gallery isn't the most consistent in terms of facial features :,^)

One thing that definitely DID inspire me for her though are the marks on her body ! They are inspired from scarifications of the Chambri tribe in Papua New Guinea https://bodyartforms.com/blog/sepik-river-scarification.asp)

As for her story, well, my current DnD group where I play her has given me a lot of opportunities to flesh it out a little more >:^D I'll try to keep it short.

Qalaari was born from an unplanned pregnancy. Her mother, Aamira Molandine, was someone with a very weak health due to a blood curse running in her family (more on that later) ; but despite her health she decided to keep the child and see the pregnancy through. Her father, Temhos Croquelune, is a member of a tribe of "beast folk" (this is tweaked and adapted to fit in various universes when I can) and, while enamoured with Aamira, was really not ready to have a child, and to potentially have to raise it alone should Aamira die while giving birth. After yet another argument with her about getting an abortion for her sake and the sake of them both, Temhos ran away during the night and never came back.

~6 month pregnant Aamira found refuge in the Croquelune tribe under Temhos' sister roof, Olgha (who also had a crush on Aamira & both her and her brother tried to court her). The travel took a heavy toll on Aamira's already weak health and yet she somehow miraculously survived the delivery of her (very) big and healthy baby girl Qalaari. Qalaari was raised in a very loving home by Aamira and Olgha, but developped a big resentment towards her blood father, especially since after giving birth, Aamira remained a very sickly person with a broken heart. Aamira died when Qalaari was 13, which kind of forever scared her and worsened her struggles to control her emotions.

Remember the Cursed Blood thing ? Well basically, it's a curse that either 1) eats you alive if your body is too weak to handle it (Aamira's case, which is why she had a weak health from the beginning) OR 2) enhances the physical potential of your body, but tends to make you lose control and become little more than a beast (Qalaari's case). So yeah... she's trying to get better but she has a lot of healing to do with her inner child and that's not easy... especially with the layers of self hatred the cycles of her life are bringing in :^) !

EDIT : I FORGOT TO ADD that Qalaari is currently exiled from the Croquelune tribe. The circle scar on her clavicle is the mark of the exiled, who are sent away from the tribe for 3 years before they can come back. The practice exists to try and get people to grow 'outside of the community' before coming back in it as a slightly different person. The once-exiled people are reintegrated in the tribe when they return if possible. Olgha, Qalaari's aunt-in-law and adoptive parent, has a mark like this! This exile is definitely not the best solution ever but it's been done for so long in the tribe that it's hard to yknow... challenge the system of it.

Anyway if you've read to this point, thank you for listening to me fail miserably to keep this short... Qalaari is one of my dearest OC, so it's really hard not to gush about her in a 3 hours TED Talk everytime...

Thank you for this kind ask ! Hope you'll have a good day :> !

[feyarcher]

It's the loss of community from all the social media site distasters of the last year that really gets me. Musk blew up twitter because ????? and I lost a huge source of my regular connection to certain communities and the world generally. Reddit is now fucked because its owner has decided it is cool to be a mini musk or something and so many communities are getting destroyed.

Some people leave immediately when the ship starts sinking. Some people are forced out because the lack of accessibility literally steals their community spaces from them. Others stay to laugh at the asshats in charge. And bad actors come in to make the remnants of the communities into cesspools.

And what are we left with? There is no other platform that entire communities can move to in the exact same way they were before. There is no way to track where every single person who brought value to your community chooses to go. And the scatter remnants are different, forced from text based to [whatever the fuck tumblr is] based or fucking video based. (The turn to video based content with your real identity attached is a whole thing for another time). Or private discord forums that you have to already know about to be able to find because message boards where you can find community and answers with an easy search are gone.

Our communities have been wonderful much of the time (if you can manage to filter out the awful and the rage bait and curate your experience), but we built them on private companies that somehow don't give a fuck about the users who drive the entire value of their site. They focus on advertisers and data collection and never improving the actual experience of the users who mean everything to their stock prices.

The undervaluing of mods, the highlighting of asshats paying $8 to spout off nonsense, the complete lack of caring about what actually makes their platforms useful. And the collateral damage is me, losing communities and news sources and amusement that I have relied on for years. In order to what? Impress investors who are equally stupid and refuse to focus on building a good product and instead focus on what? Ads half of people block anyways? Appeasing the ego of a guy who should take his halfassed spaceship to Mars and not come back?

And the only real short term option we have to fight back is to leave. To not give them our engagement. To tank the stupid metrics they care so much about. At the cost of communities. Of easy information access. Of discovering new people and ideas completely by accident that change your whole world.

Sure, in the long run we can work on shifting to "better" sites. Ones that are open sources or ones we build ourselves. Make your own website. Get involved in modding not for profit sites. But none of it brings back the communities, the connections, the people that we have lost along the way. And today, I'm just fucking sad about it.

[pinkomalin]

I am not joking when I say I owe my everything to Hi-Fi RUSH. That game grabbed me by the neck and shook my stupid little brain around until I started drawing without a care in the world again. I would NOT be the same person I am today if I never played this masterpiece of a game. The game I always dreamed of playing IS A REAL THING. HUH. John Johanas you beautiful beautiful man, you’ve made a game for the ages.

Anyway! Happy 1st year anniversary Hi-Fi RUSH!

[nicnavarrocage]

You ever realize how abnormally Buckley-like the word count is during Act 6? The first paragraph of page 4117 of Homestuck has A) no paragraph spacings, making it more of a wall of text and B) a huge sign that Andrew lost his simple narration brevity in an MS Paint adventure.

It's the soul of wit, for god's sake!

[progenycursed]

Lurien the Watcher

Wall of text be upon yee. And this was me forcing myself to cut back. Enjoy!

[godbirdart]

Do you have any specific process to get ideas for your backgrounds in your character pinup drawings how do you manage to make them all so awesome and cool

thank you so much! the way I like to tackle these is to think of them as if they're the character's splash art in a gacha game while also taking elements and rules from magazine covers.

now, I use the term "gacha game splash art" kinda loosely here, as that kind of art often depicts contained scenes or flourishes of elemental power. what I mainly focus on is how splash art showcases the character's personality within that contained art piece or scene.

I want everything in the piece I draw to reflect and correlate to the character itself. any accessories, text and elements are always taken into consideration. for this i'll often look closer to the character, their toyhouse page / bio, or sometimes even the client themselves if i'm familiar with them or have worked with them repeatedly before.

for example, archie here is an arcanine. I've utilized this for the background header, where you'll see arcanine's in-game category, pokedex number, type, body shape icon, as well as one of its abilities: flash fire. there's also a fire type icon.

another example is afol's piece. the client had specific ideas in mind for this art - particularly in the emotion and expression the art is meant to portray. I really wanted to incorporate this quote from afol's toyhouse profile as I felt it added to that raw, conflicted emotion the client was after.

as afol is a musician and a sky god, I also wanted to highlight it by adding "GODOFSKY - The Sky God's Solo Suite" as an artist / song title signature that again could tie into that emotional conflict.

the magazine aesthetic is something sort-of new to these pieces, with afol's piece having more of that distinct cover vibe than earlier ones; however I've been taking notes from magazine covers from the start.

I always have to make sure text and accents don't take away from the character, or cover them up or clutter the canvas too much. you'll see this a lot on magazines, how the title is always the largest text with everything else being much smaller or thinner. i follow similar composition rules when drawing. keep the model as the focus, and add things around them as needed to break up negative space and balance out the art. in my portraits, the character's name is always the largest text.

beyond these conscious choices - i dunno! my clients always come to me with fantastic prompts that mesh well with what I vibe with artistically.

i love being handed a few prompts and told to run free with them, and i love when clients come to me looking for a specific aesthetic or emotional piece. i absolutely adore drawin smug and confidently villainous gremlins, but some of my all-time favourite pieces to draw are the ones with a lot of raw emotion in em.

honestly i think a lot of the coolness comes down to my clients just havin cool characters to begin with lmao

[markscherz]

Are there any frogs that keep their tails in adulthood?

Basically no. The famous 'tailed frog', genus Ascaphus, has a tail-like posterior extension of the cloaca (used for internal fertilisation, very rare in frogs), and not a true tail

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There is a pretty good reason adult frogs cannot really keep a tail. Tails are made of post-sacral vertebrae. The sacrum is the vertebra involved in the hip. A tail is separate from the main trunk of the body. This is achieved by the tail starting behind the cloaca, which is basically where the body ends. In frogs, two things are going on.

Firstly, frogs have extended parts of the hip that articulate (interact) with the sacrum—the ilia. This elongation is responsible for frogs being so good at jumping.

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Because the cloaca is kind of tied to the hip, the cloaca of the frog is shifted dramatically backwards relative to the sacrum. So now, the end of the main trunk of the body is not right behind the sacrum like it is in most tetrapods, but shifted waaay back, all the way to where the hip is.

Secondly, all frogs actually have post-sacral vertebrae. But they are fused into a single rod, called the urostyle, which does not extend outside of the body, but is instead coopted into the funky jumpy hip joint. If frogs were to gain a tail, it would either have to be (a) by breaking the urostyle back into its component vertebrae and separating them out of the main body of the animal—extremely unlikely, because it would compromise the hip joint and require major muscle restructuring, or (b) by adding additional vertebrae behind the urostyle that would be normal—extremely unlikely because there are no known mutants that do anything like that to my knowledge, and it would also probably require some kind of support at the base (a second hip?), which is hard to imagine.

So in a way, frogs actually have tails, they're just on the inside. But it is very, very unlikely that any frog would evolve a tail again, without first rebuilding the whole hip mechanism. Even with the weird-ass stuff that evolution has done to frogs over the millennia, they seem to be pretty canalised on this tailless fate. But, at least they get to have a highly functional tail as tadpoles—at least, in those species that have tadpoles.

Anyone wanting to do some hardcore reading on the topic of urostyle ontogeny and evolution can check out this paper on the topic.

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

Kuroshitsuji

and Radetzky March

Every New Year’s Day, it is a tradition that the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra plays this staple public favourite to end their performance. The concert is televised in more than 90 countries. Last year, they began to stream it on the internet, which one can watch for free in five days.

Seiji Ozawa conducting, 2002

Anyway, since I’ve become interested in Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler it is thrilling to find out that Yana Toboso included it on her story. Will the song be incorporated into the Public School arc in April? I’d love to see and hear Sebastian Michaelis as the maestro conducting it.

Now, it is true that it is a patriotic song. And the history behind it is bloody. The melody is very happy for sure, as if you’ve come out from the battle/war unscathed. Victorious, yes. Who wouldn’t be? No wonder, Sebastian loves it. It also has the same cadence like the heartbeat.

A background: Strauss the Father composed it for the Count Joseph Radetzky von Radetz. It is to commemorate his regiment’s advancing to Northern Italy. One time listening to our tour guide in Venice, she mentioned this part of history to us, she showed us the cannons they retrieved from the Austrian army, which fired and destroyed their buildings indiscriminately during the bloody days of 1848. Those states made up of the Austrian-Hungary Empire that wanted their freedom so much but the emperor sent his troops instead to stop these revolts from happening. One Venetian hotel that survived the bombing incorporated the cannonballs to its building as a reminder of the centuries past.

Some Austrian historians believe it is time to “cancel” the song or rather remove the song from the yearly Neujahrskonzert. The yearly traditional concert has a few problems. But not this song. One of them is the lack of female conductors leading the orchestra. Whereas Ricardo Mutti, an Italian maestro, will reportedly lead the concert again next year for the, get this, seventh time!!!

It was only in 2002 when they let the late Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, the first ever Asian, to lead the orchestra and received standing ovation after playing the staple ending song of Radetzky March.

It is very important to remember the past and learn from it. Austria, once an empire, knows it very well, to be stripped of the lands and power it once willed. But in some aspects they learned the lesson. Not all, but most. Thing is, removing this song from the yearly concert feels like something is lacking. Also, I don’t think it would solve the issue of the Austrian philharmonic orchestra where it is dominated by male musicians.

I digress.

Am curious of Yana T’s connection to it. I would really love to know if she watches the televised concert every New Year’s Day. Or did she choose it specifically bc of popularity or the history. Or the melody.