#will answer any questions tho

[jayflying]

Screw it, does anyone wanna hear about the Life Series AU I've been working on for two years now? It's absurdly large. It threads Third Life, Last Life, Empires SMP season 1 and Hermitcraft seasons 8 and 9 into one storyline. It's surprisingly canon-compliant for how much it keeps diverging from canon.

Highlights:

Scott pushes someone into a pool and it inadvertently kills a lot of people.

Someone knowing how to crochet is a genuine plot point.

BigB knows too much but doesn't realize it.

"Did Double Life happen?" is a very complicated question.

Most of the eldritch horror happens on Hermitcraft of all places.

There is a single overarching villain throughout all of this.

Redstone is psychoactive. This is relevant multiple times.

Somehow every traumatic event happens to catch Impulse in the crossfire. Including the ones in Empires.

There's a serial fourth-wall breaker and I guarantee you it's not who you think.

Really, just, ask me anything and I will gladly share my hoard of headcanons.

[bonefall]

[ID: Ask from @storiesandsquirrels, transcribed in alt text]

also: link to Cow Lore

There's one major misconception here I've gotta correct before answering earnestly; Holsteins do need Super Duper Food. This is one of their major problems as a breed, you need to give them high quality feed for high quantity, low quality milk.

But! That said! These are valid questions that deserve real responses. In spite of the quick correction, I actually want to answer them as you phrased them because I think it would be more illuminating. I'm going to try and summarize them as I go along;

Question 1: "Why wouldn't we want to use The Most Efficient Cow?"

The simplest answer is disease. My ""prediction"" came true, and bird flu has mutated to spread extremely easily through the infected udders of Holsteins. No one has died of bovine-contracted HPAI yet, but with Brainworm Bobby and his love of raw milk in charge of the CDC...

well. my last prediction was prophetic. let's hope this one's not.

Minmaxing a breed for one specific purpose always means intensive inbreeding. Like I mentioned, 9 million Holsteins are genetically equivalent to 60 individuals. A more genetically diverse population is one that will be better at preventing disease outbreaks, and reducing their severity when they do.

And what even is the Most Efficient Milk Cow? If you're only selecting for pure milk production to drive down its cost, you get a breed of cattle that lacks every other important trait that would make it good livestock;

They get sick more often, due to inbreeding depression and lack of physical fitness, requiring more antibiotics and veterinary care.

They are bad parents who will need more human intervention to birth and raise calves

They won't be good grazers, meaning they need a specific food grown for them, increasing how much "functional" land is actually dedicated to cattle husbandry.

Their carcass won't yield as much meat, so more cattle have to be raised and slaughtered to meet demand.

Their bodies will burn out much quicker than a healthier animal, meaning you need to replace your livestock more often.

When it comes to living beings, "efficiency" is "fragility." It's not a stable system to begin with.

Even with the pure logic aside, just, step back here and look at the situation with a heart. We'd be making unhealthy, short-lived animals lacking critical instincts to lead good social lives. AND we probably haven't even fixed the "less land" problem, just shifted the land off-site.

For what? For more milk? We have SO MUCH milk we don't even know what to do with it!

Question 2: "Isn't an overabundance of cheap milk a good thing?"

no.

Under the infinite genius of Capitalism, thousands of gallons of milk just gets poured into the sewer daily because there's too much of it. Transporting it to a processor would cost more than it's worth, sometimes the processors turn milk away because they don't want to overproduce products, and even the US government can't subsidize every last drop; it still has 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in various caves and warehouses across the country.

The price of milk cannot get any lower because it's already being sold below the cost it takes to produce it, and yet, we're still here literally pouring it down the drain.

[photo from bill ulrich who photographed a farmer dumping milk back during the pandemic. this isn't even a recent photo. this happens every time there's a milk surplus. im using this photo because i like the farmer's cunty little pose. look at him. "just ain't right"core.]

And milk being dumped into the sewer is more than just wasteful. It's a biohazard.

Milk doesn't stop rotting when it's dumped. If you live downstream of a milkhouse, improper milk disposal reeks.

It's full of nutrients, too, which causes diatoms, cyanobacteria, and other types of algae to go into overdrive-- causing a Harmful Algal Bloom event in the water, or HAB.

HABs are horrific. There's HUNDREDS of different types. They can suck up oxygen and create "dead zones" which kills all aquatic life, they can poison the water supply for an entire town, and some can even cause toxic fumes that make it hard to breathe on land.

Now, listen, I don't want to scare you into never dumping out rotten milk or anything! It's that on an industrial scale, it's REALLY REALLY bad if a farm overproduces milk-- especially crummy milk that can't be made into decent cheese or other dairy products.

In fact, if we did produce milk on a smaller scale, it would be better for everyone! Unless you're a Milk Guzzling Fiend like I am, you probably wouldn't need to buy a whole gallon at a time. In countries like Italy, it's sold fresh and in smaller containers, and you're just expected to pick it up as you need it.

This is why milkmen used to exist, and still do in places that are cool; they'd deliver your supply fresh from the creamery. Less waste, less stress! The "subscription model" is actually sooooooooooo much better for milk production, since it helps to stagger out those "surges and drops" of demand that leads to milk dumps.

Question 3: "If the cow eats less, doesn't that mean less land for pasture, which is a good thing?"

There's a lot to unpack within this sentiment. It's actually based on a couple of common assumptions on a few levels, which are incorrect in fascinating ways. Challenging this means opening up your worldview on how complex keeping livestock actually is!

I'll start with the simpler part;

You could cut fresh pasture out of the equation entirely and shove a cow into a concrete pen with a food box-- but are you counting the land growing the fodder?

When you grow corn the way that we do on industrial farms in the US, it's unbelievably destructive. Unending oceans of monoculture. Fogged with pesticide, pumped full of fertilizer which causes HABs like dumped milk does, sprayed with thousands of gallons of wasted water.

When you look at this image, I need you to understand you are looking at a dead zone. Like a suburban lawn, just because it's green doesn't mean it's good. Nothing grows here but corn and pests of corn, which gets poisoned and dies without returning any of that energy to the ecosystem.

This is usually what is being given to "grain-fed cattle," either when they're sent to a feedlot to hit their slaughter weight, or when they're lactating so they need the extra nutrition. It's also so nasty it's inedible to human beings.

Now, a lot of cattle farmers will just supplement their cow's diet, doing a mix of pasture feeding (much cheaper) and grain feeding (quicker gains). But the facts on this are clear; pasture-kept cattle result in LESS emissions and need LESS total space than cows in confinement.

In fact, there were a LOT of benefits!

Overall gas emissions from the cows dropped by 8%

Ammonia pollution was down by 30%

Not needing to run farm equipment for fodder planting and harvest reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 10%

Rotated crop fields didn't sequester carbon; but the newly converted perennial grasslands store as much as 3,400 pounds per acre.

The outside cows did produce less milk volume, but the milk they did produce was higher quality. So, looking at all the benefits here, it's clear that pasture is actually something that should be embraced for ecological reasons, not rejected.

In FACT, it should be EMPHASIZED. Because, this is the mind-blowing part,

Pasture can ALSO be an ecosystem.

In fact, I'm a Warrior Cats guy who once did a deep dive on moorlands just so I could write WindClan better. There are entire biomes that only exist because of grazing, and British lowland heath is one of them!

Keeping cattle in a sustainable, ecologically sound way is going to look different depending on where in the world you're doing it. So many earnest, good-willed people have bought into the lie that humans are a problem, and that everything "associated" with us becomes a barren wasteland as if we are tainted. YOU are not the problem! The problem is, and always has been, exploitation. Unsustainable relationships with the land we're part of.

Indigenous people in Europe, Asia, and Africa have been keeping cattle for thousands of years. In North America, cattle can be used to maintain ecosystems that have been badly affected by the colonial eradication of the American Bison. In South America, Brazil specifically has been making incredible advances with highly efficient integrated crop-livestock-forestry farming.

Generally, pastures here in the US are not as intensely managed as an equivalent crop field. Some people fertilize them, or water them mid-summer, but absolutely not to the same extent as industrial corn farms. Cattle are typically rotated between pastures, allowing each to re-grow before they come back to graze again.

Obviously, yes, overgrazing can be an issue. Not every open space should be converted into a pasture, and the destruction of other environments to turn into cow land is a problem. But that is an issue of bad land stewardship, not the mere practice of keeping livestock.

Bottom line, though? Cattle who can graze and survive outside are better for the environment than cattle that can't.

...but hey, you know what Holsteins happen to be really bad at?

EVERYTHING. GRAZING.

They are notoriously terrible grazers. They can't do megan THEEEEE thing that cows are known for. Fragile frames, a lack of fat to keep them warm outside, increased demand for food, distaste for any rough forage, horrible mothering instincts, the list goes on. Holsteins are a NIGHTMARE to try and keep outside all year round compared to other breeds.

(especially heritage breeds, like the Milking Devon, Florida Cracker, or Texas Longhorn. Between these three, you'd be totally covered in 80% of American climates.)

I've already explained why it's not actually very good or important that we minmax milk volume, but even if that was actually something we should value, there are so many downsides that they would absolutely not be the dominant cow breed in a truly "efficient" system.

"Less cows means less cow food and cow land" is sound logic, but Holsteins are not the right cow for that job.

Question 4: "How could this be done in a way that doesn't increase cost of living?"

I'm not sure how to answer this question, simply because I'm not Bonestar, Leader of AmericaClan. Wish I was. I would rule tyrannically.

It's worth noting that Brazil is the second largest producer of beef in the entire world, AND the number one largest exporter of it, AND only puts 30% of its land to total agricultural use. The USA dedicates over 50%. And also Brazil is net reducing its amount of agricultural land while increasing output.

It seems clear to me that the USA actually has a massive food waste and resource distribution problem, to the point where the price we pay for stuff is actually wildly disconnected from the actual value of the goods and labor.

I think the way that us Americans tend to frame our conversations on these topics as "growth" vs "cuts" instead of asking how to minimize waste by making existing systems more efficient prevents us from solving problems. We're also just... really culturally resistant to the idea of anything being more "expensive," even if it ends up costing us a lot more money in waste or mismanagement later.

Penny wise and dollar foolish ass country.

Question 5: "What can we personally do about this?"

I mean, I wasn't making a call to action in Cow Lore, I was just explaining to one of my regulars why I don't like Holsteins LMAO. Since you're asking though...

I don't think we can change the wider trend in the dairy industry without actual government intervention and regulation, though, and that's very unlikely in the current political environment. they just sent random dudes to Ausalvador-Birkenau and when the Supreme Court said "bring this specific person back" they said "nuh uh." fellas I don't think we're getting better dairy regulations in the foreseeable future.

So I think the most productive thing to do is focusing on supporting small farms and heritage breeds. Get involved in your community garden or heritage society if you have one.

Not only is that generally a very rewarding thing, but it will be helpful to you in case The Situation Gets Worse. Knowing your neighbors and having real human connection is your best defense against economic recession.

Supporting the locals is always a great thing to do, which can be as simple as going to farmer's markets. You don't need to buy fancy food every day to make an impact on your community-- it can be a treat sometimes!

You could also subscribe to the Livestock Conservancy's free newsletter, where they talk about the work they're doing and upcoming events. If you're a knitter, crocheter, or any other kind of fiber artist, you could even join in on a challenge they're running where you make items out of rare wool for prizes!

Should you end up liking the work they do, you can become a member for 4$ a month, or go to one of their educational events.

Even just talking about the problem can do a lot! Did you know the Highland Cow was actually critically endangered in the USA within the past 10 years? It was the work of the Livestock Conservancy, plus a surge in their popularity, that helped to bring their numbers up. Word of mouth is a powerful thing.

All that said, remember, you can't solve every problem. It's a big world and there's a lot of them. Being made aware of an issue doesn't mean you have to drop what you were previously doing-- just care a lot about something that you want to improve, and let that guide you.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.." MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.

[cherrirui-official]

Friendlocke Violet Gijinkas (Part 1/7)

Since the edited episodes are starting to come out, I figured that bc of that and the fact that I've been keeping this in the back burner for a loooong while now, might as well complete all my friendlocke violet gijinkas!! Some are gonna stay the same while others are gonna have slight/ complete redesigns, so please keep that in mind!

I plan on posting them in order by groups of three, so there's gonna be seven parts in total, all of which I'll be linking here when done vvv

(Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six) (Part Seven)

!! These will contain personal headcanons I have for the cast, little fun facts, and also spoilers for Friendlocke Violet (for both the edited vids and the streams) !!

@saltydkart-reblogs

And that's pretty much it, designs under the cut!

LARK:

HUGE nerd. spent most of his time during the Uva Academy studying different kinds of pokemon as well as different fighting styles he can utilize once he is able to go out on his own journey with his very own trainer! Too bad that didn't really help in the long run...

His entire wardrobe consists of McDonald's related outfits. It's fucking insane. He even has some from long LONG ago that aren't available anywhere else.

The bubble pattern on his hair is able to move and change. Nobody knows how this is possible, not even Lark himself. All Lark knows is that his hair looks incredibly stylish!

Speaking of bubbles, he has the ability to blow bubbles whenever and wherever he pleases!

Often keeps himself extremely clean and gets upset if even a small speck of dirt gets on him, despite this he somehow smells like McDonald's food and axe body spray. Disgusting. He's so cool!

Even after death he still likes to hang around the other team members as a ghost, often getting to know the newer members as well as reuniting with the old ones. Sometimes they see him, sometimes they don't. It usually depends.

SARA:

Due to being a human in her past life, Sara is able to actually speak with the other humans in the pokemon world. However she usually doesn't due to it being seen as extremely weird and out of place. She did slip up once while talking in the presence of Arven, who thought it was the weed making him hear things.

Oinkologne are usually unable to do much with their hooves but Sara spent nights practicing how to knit with her new hooves and now she's able to do it flawlessly. I don't know how she managed to do that but go queen!

When first joining the team she'd often have the urge to eat her food related companions. It was a strange time for Sara, but she managed to overcome it.

When Peppy gets sick, she usually is the one who nurses him back to health. She was a human once so she often is able to figure out whatever sickness Peppy has and treat it properly. I suppose she's like a second mother to him.

The bag she carries with her is full of thread that she collected from various Tarountula she encountered on the journey, as well as little things she knits together in her spare time.

For the most part, Sara forgives... but NEVER forgets.

Did you guys know that Sara has a new YouTube channel? Check it out!

Pastey:

Before joining the team, Pastey was a nameless wanderer. He's been down every road in Paldea and knows almost the entire region (except for Area Zero) like the back of his hand.

He's gotten hurt pretty badly throughout the run (ie. the Mikey fight, the Atticus fight, and ESPECIALLY the final battle), however, he does not gain any (physical) scars from those fights. This is bc he's basically an axolotl, and axolotls are usually able to heal without scarring.

Pastey's "arms" are, to put it simply, mud prosthetics. More info here vvv

Pastey HAS met Mall Bingo once before the run, however, he doesn't recognize her. The only reason he does not recognize her is bc she wears glasses. (You know how people somehow aren't able to recognize Superman bc he wears glasses in his civilian attire even tho his face remains the same? It's basically like that lmao)

Unlike the lightbulbs he eats, the gasoline he drinks isn't really mandatory to his diet. Gasoline is like alcohol to him and he drinks it like an absolute CHAMP.

He goes fishing when there's nothing else to do or when he can't sleep at night. He doesn't do this bc he thinks it's fun or anything, only bc it's a "good time passer" or so he claims. Other members of the team will often sit with him and vent out anything that's troubling them at the moment, and Pastey is always there to listen to them.

And that's pretty much it. Next is Joe, Hannah Ü, and Mykyie!

[xxplastic-cubexx]

i finished reading krakoa era and comic cherik are amazing SO i wanted to ask do you have any favorite issues/series i still don't really remember how to call it where cherik are also cool?? some iconis comic moments with them maybe??

im FARRR from finishing all of krakoa (ive probably barely even made a dent in this series), though i do think following the HoX + PoX issues themselves are great if we're talkin cherik-focused issues/books. i already said one of my fave aspects of cherik is their moments working together, so having a whole Omnibus dedicated to them Working Together and trusting each other (bonus points for Protective Erik with the Something Sinister bit) is already guaranteeing a sure spot in my Faves collection

one of my fave cool moments i've read so far- which is a moment i wager a lot of people can agree is Sick As Hell Visually if i may be so daring- is ABSOLUTELY this sequence from Inferno #4

any time erik and charles get to do some bamf shit together it is IMMEDIATELY peak to me this cannot be disputed and i'd be lying if i didn't say i bought this run solely for this moment here (ignore the fact they fumble this fight horribly that dont matter they looked cool as hell for five seconds !!!!!!!!!!!)

i can't wait to read more and find even more moments i love and want to tape to my eyelids <3 !!

[dragonanon]

Not me over here thinking about doing silly cute bird shit with Marco- 😭

Like, you’re a bird zoan user (probably an owl of some kind) and you just fucking do things like chirp and trill at each other, build a nest together, bring each other pretty rocks and shiny objects, preening each other’s feathers, and draping your wings over each other- 🥺

The crew often makes fun of you both for being literal love birds, and in retaliation you both screech at ungodly hours of the night to keep them all awake.

[km3tt0]

hi hi hi hi hi I'm a new follower!! Can you tell me anything and everything about Aurora Soothsayer? Pretty please? I love starbee sm and I really like Aurora's design- (I also really like that Starscream is the carrier because that's kinda rare in this ship which is a SHAME, because I feel like the starbee dynamic gets 100% more cute and funny if Starscream is all whiny and needy and constantly uses the 'I'm the one carrying our child' argument 24/7)

IVE BEEN DYING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ABOUT MY THEORIES HAND ON - I MADE A MODEL! /REF

ONG YOU ASK ABOUT HER! THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU REALLY MAKE MY DAY SO MUCH BETTER!

YAP ALERT! Bc I have so much to talk about her!!! (Also I’m glad you like the Star Carrier concept because YES, to me it just felt right and thinking about a more whiny Starscream it’s funny to think about!!)

Okay so LETS BEGIN!

1.- Her names are both a mix of Human + Cybertronian names. Bee suggested the human name (it was TC’s idea*) and Starscream suggested the Cybertronian name, because no way in hell his sparkling is going to be name after something the “fleshings” invented. They had a full debate on how to name her and it took them months before deciding that both names are okay.

[Ironically Starscream calls her Rory and Bee calls her Soo]

2. She can be considered a very spoiled child, she basically gets all what she wants if she asks, their parents give her everything but she doesn’t act like spoiled child, she’s actually a very sweet bot once you gain her confidence! Spoiled sweet if you want to name it

3. She’s a Sire’s girl. After the war and Bee trying to play the diplomat (again) he just realized it wasn’t really for him, too much pressure and basically became the cybertronian equivalent of stay home dad, while Starscream (after getting his body back) with tons of effort and trial, became a judge inside the Supreme Justice Court in the New Cybertron.

She grew up mostly with Bee, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her carrier just as much.

4. Aurora absolutely loves Windblade and Windblade absolutely loves her.

I hc that Bee and Wind see each other as siblings, so that’s her fav auntie, because by Primus, she has a lot of aunts and uncles (courtesy of Bee’s friendly personality). And from the Elite trine, she likes to hang out with TC more, she likes to hear what his new script going and also stories of Marissa and Buster and wishes she met them.

5. One of my fav details about her. Her eyes. Probably you notice but Aurora is basically the carbon copy of Bee, everything about her is just like looking at a femme Bee BUT her eyes are completely different. She got her eyes from Star, it presented as a manifestation of Starscream’s true form, almost like a sign of “you were able to become your true self”.

And of course, Starscream loves her eyes. And it’s more deep than just vanity and seeing himself somewhere in her. He’s happy she had the opportunity to be who she was intended to do, something that was took away from him.

6. She is the equivalent of a 18-19 year old in Cybertronian years.

7. She never got to met Optimus nor Megatron. She did hear about them and the war (I mean of course Bee and Star are basically veterans) she knows more about Optimus and she constantly has a dream where she meets him. Bee tells her he’s probably visiting her, that’s something Optimus will do.

Megatron is a more mysterious topic for her, she knows him by the stories others tells her but she hears almost nothing about him from Starscream. He tells her is better to leave it that way, Megatron’s memory doesn’t deserve to remain hunting him or his family. (Tho that doesn’t stop Star from still making fun of Megatron )

8. (this is more a Starscream fact inside this universe but it’s still related to Aurora) Starscream had a hard time trying to find a way to show her affection towards her without fucking it up. When he discovered they were having a sparkling he was nonchalant at first but as soon as he started to actually feel Aurora’s spark growing inside him something in him changed. He started to panic, so oddly of him, but he realized he doesn’t know how to be a parent and properly show affection.

Sure, he does show affection towards Bee, but that’s because Bee made it easier for him. Bee was a full formed bot. But this little sparkling was something new, something HE DID and for the first time he tried his best to not self sabotage himself ever again.

Aside of Bee, Windblade helped him a lot to process his feelings and he started to stand her, just a little.

[*Aurora’s name]: Thundercracker being the one with the idea of Aurora’s names is an understatement.

It was more like: Bee went to TC to ask him for advice because he couldn’t decide a name. TC was just nodding while writing his new script and Bee ranted in the background, he nodded at every statement of Bee, not really paying attention.

And accidentally he blurted aloud the name of Aurora while also coming out for the name of his new co-protagonist and Bee absolutely loved it and basically stormed off from TC’s home. He was so confused.

[ask-sakuramiku]

Are those cherries in your hair... real?

[stuffedsand]

milgrammies how we feeling. no mappi bday timeline. missing prisoners. hows it doing

[111-rosewood]

tarot cards are awesome btw 12/10 recommend

[deadwooddross]

Hi deadwooddross, I really like your sticker designs! you keep making ones I love and want! However, I don't use stickers often, because their starting-to-peel edges are Bad Touch Bad Feel for me. Do you have any suggestions for sticker placements that are fun and not surfaces touched often (ie water bottle, laptop cover, other commonly stickered items)?

ah yes the plight, i currently have one peeling off the back of my phone that's annoying me so, feel that i know at least one person who puts the stickers with their backings inside a clear phone case and swaps them out, pc towers are prime sticker real estate if you're not going for the minimal look, i put them on the insides of my sketchbook covers as well as the outside alternatively, go avant garde and decorate your toilet, that tank is free real estate. Or dont stick them at all and collect them in those little card sheets like pokemon cards

[blazingauraheartworld]

Does anyone know why the Kazumi Magica artist went AWOL like you said to dreamerwitches?

That’s the fascinating thing, right? I can’t seem to find anything about them deciding to. I feel like someone would have likely noticed if the artist had put out a ‘I’m deleting everything.’ or any sort of similar vibe before it happened. 

The Cuddly Despairs event ran in October, 2021. The artist did the CG art as well as art for the newly unlocked *5 stars + new Kazumi. Sometime between that event and potentially July/August ish of 2024 ( since there was no ‘goodbye’ art piece made featuring Kazumi characters when Magia Record EOS when everyone Else did one) is when the artist seemingly deleted their online presence. 

Now, the rest is under a read more just because I find this situation fascinating, but is really just pure speculation on my end.

Kazumi Magica is such an interesting existence in the catalog of madoka spin-offs, precisely because it seems as if both the creators ( writer and artist) of the manga aren’t very interested in involving themselves further in the Madoka Magica series as a whole than the story they made. I can’t tell if it’s because there’s two people who worked on it vs the other spin-offs, where the artist And writer were the same person, that’s created this sort of vibe where Kazumi keeps getting excluded from the cool magical girl club. Tart also was a two party team with Masugitsune & Kawazuku (under Golden Pe Done), but Masu alone was plenty active in helping with designing new characters and doing multiple Tart events.

I had a whole thing here getting into it the thick of it, but very much every spin-off artist that had their story shown off in the Exedra trailer (GAN, Masugitsune, Kuroe Mura) have all given some form of contribution to Magia Record during the game’s run, if not still doing artwork for the main series, like the MagiReco anime end cards and other miscellaneous works. 

I’m not expecting Masaki Hiramatsu( Kazumi Writer, still around) to have picked up a tablet pen and done something in place of no longer having an artist for his series. He seems to be plenty busy writing for the Bleach anime right now by the looks of things. I want to make it clear : I do not think he does not care for Kazumi. He clearly does with how he didn’t like how the first Magia Record Kazumi event was written, and then seemingly assisted with it on the second go. I feel as if the same would likely happen for Exedra too to ensure the story is properly retold. 

anywhos!

Simply put, I believe the artist of Kazumi Magica, for one reason or another, retired from being an artist or does not want their art to be available online. 

This is slightly unrelated, but to give you an idea where I’m going with this, I occasionally buy adopts and customs from other artists, and if I had a nickel for every artist I’ve worked with that has scrapped their existence from the Internet entirely due to AI concerns, I would have eight nickels. Again, I cannot confirm nor deny that is why the Kazumi artist decided to scrub everything, as we do not have an official confirmation. However, it would not surprise me if that was the case.

Even if unlikely at this point, the artist could always make a comeback to work on Exedra! I feel like they might leave Kazumi as the last spin-off they'll add, just to sorta see if they could maybe Find said artist. I’m just…not holding my breath for it as of now.

Which comes to another question: When Kazumi inevitably gets added to Exedra, who is going to do the art? I know there’s someone on the f4 team that can do a good impression of Ume Aoki’s art style, but I’m not sure if they can do the same with Kazumi…? I feel like there are many artists around and involved in the series now that there’d be someone who wouldn’t mind picking up the task…

[akkivee]

i’m not posting this for any other reason than to cry over ichiro’s voice as he teases kuukou lmao 😭😭😭

[nexus-nebulae]

does anyone have any genuine resources on how to know if you have moral ocd without focusing on religion. all the symptom lists i can find literally include "not feeling worthy of gods love" and like i only just now started thinking seriously about god for the first time in a decade less than a few months ago. i dont care. i just want to know if quite literally crying begging for people to tell me whether I'm doing something wrong nearly daily is uh. not average.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Weird question, but you're the only Erik expert I know, and I can't be asked to go through my comics, so what kind of shoes does he wear when he's in civilian clothes?

Because I feel like he's too posh for trainers and not posh enough for captoes.

(I'm drawing a chibi of him and regrets are being had about not having put him in his suit T.T)

Erik Expert is a high honor im no where near close to having as of right now BUT i can still answer this question 😌 i think 😌

if you talkin Civilian Clothes as in Everyday Going Out clothes he's pretty 'formal' and neat about his style i'm pretty sure: think polos, dress shirts, turtlenecks, and the like, so it probably would be fitting he wears dress shoes (if not at least sleek leather ankle boots) more times than not actually

[justagaycryptid]

what do we think about a king consort morgott whose tarnished took in the frenzied flame? if the needle is involved, its influence is practically nonexistent but he'd surely still be wary (esp given how vyke happened and nobody wants a repeat of that)

Oh hello Morgott’s personal hell :)

I think this one would be very tricky to achieve actually, and would depend on a few very specific and very key factors. Like I said in one of my first Morgott analysis posts, it would take a lot of work after Morgott’s surrender for him and the Tarnished to even become amicable. So after this point he’d be hyper aware of what they’re doing and why. I’d imagine that he’s fully aware of what the Frenzied Flame is considering there’s a projection of his twin down there protecting the entrance to chasm leading down to the Three Fingers. If he were to catch the slightest whiff of them poking around there and inheriting the flame their ass is dead or thrown into a gaol like Vyke’s because Greater Will forbid something like that ever happen again. They would have to be so incredibly careful to conceal this from him, and while it would be difficult I don’t think it would be impossible.

A lot of it would honestly depend on why the Tarnished accepted the flame in the first place. For example, while she’s not involved with Morgott in the slightest in her Frenzied Flame AU version, Rigel’s reason for accepting the mantle of Lord of Chaos is because Shabriri got her ass fresh off of Blaidd and Iji’s deaths, among some of her other friends. Rigel initially wanted take it as a way to save Melina before she eventually just leaned into the cruelty of it. Any Tarnished that would seek Morgott as a King Consort whilst also donning the mantle of the Frenzied Flame would either have to have reasoning A or be so utterly deceitful in the way they behave towards Morgott in order to keep him pacified for long enough for it to eventually be too late for him to stop them. 

But in any case the cat would be out of the bag once the Elden Beast is defeated and the Tarnished has taken the throne. I think at this point the only way Morgott would accept a position as King Consort was if he was basically backed into it. So perhaps the Tarnished offers him a choice: either play the role of trophy wife or burn with everything else. For the sake of this hypothetical he picks choice one. 

So now he’s forced to stay by the Tarnished now Elden Lord’s side, utterly lost as to how to stop all of this. And perhaps the Tarnished even treats him well, dotes on him, is sure he’s always given the most lavish of things. Yet Morgott can’t keep his mouth from going dry every time he looks at them, can feel the sickness gathering deep in the pit of his stomach. He often wishes they had just killed him at the base of the Erdtree instead of subjecting him to watching the world crumble to ash around him. 

Perhaps he’ll steal away in secret, searching for a way to undo this, to take it back and reverse the damage that’s been done. Maybe the Tarnished has Miquella’s unfinished needle and Morgott finds it. Yes, this, this should work, right? But the needle is incomplete and Miquella is long gone. How can he think to finish this on his own? There’s no way that he could get them back to Farum Azula in the heart of the storm to administer the needle, regardless of if Placidusax still lingers. 

Or perhaps even better, he meets another child of Marika. One who has sworn to slay the Lord of Chaos. I like to headcanon that at this point the Tarnished could be killed by the Fingerslayer Blade since they harbor the Three Fingers within them, so therefore by slaying the Fingers the Tarnished would be slayed as well. And Morgott would have to make the choice. Does he love the Tarnished? Could he stand to see them dead? Does he know this is the only way all this can end? 

But if all this were to fail, Morgott would still be left, King Consort to the Lord of Chaos. A bird in a pretty gilded cage, for no matter how much Morgott may go behind their back, the Tarnished could never hate him or want him dead. He just doesn’t know better is all. They just need to coax him to accept the chaos is all. 

Not to mention the absolute shame Morgott would be embroiled in, because he dared allow himself to want something just this once, and now look what’s happened. The Erdtree is gone and the Lands Between are doomed to be swallowed whole within the fires of chaos, and it’s all his fault. He faltered in his duties and now he gets to pay for it by watching the end of the world in a front row seat.