#would be a fun pose to reference in alien alien

[defensivelee]

he looks like artwork here... a pretty little sculpture :< ... i need him so bad

[lazyyogi]

When someone takes a game too seriously, it very quickly loses its fun.

Human incarnation is like that, but worse.

The ego is an emergent self, meaning it "emerges" from a collection of things that aren't a self.

Primarily the ego exists in reference to the body-mind but it may also grow to include habits, likes, dislikes, physical appearance, language, culture, and education.

If any of those are removed or changed, you still exist. Yet the character you feel yourself to be may or may not feel different. The distinction between the feeling of existence and our felt identity is vital to understand.

The feeling of existence is awareness. Awareness knows itself; it exists and knows it exists. It is changeless and continuous.

Awareness illuminates the play of consciousness. To us, consciousness is the perpetually changing experience of a human body-mind. It is all we have known since birth. Our felt identity, the ego, emerges in the body-mind from certain collected patterns of consciousness.

A metaphor may make understanding this more intuitive and clear:

Think of awareness as electricity, consciousness as the images produced on a TV screen by means of electricity, and the ego as the character appearing on the TV screen with whose life and story we identify.

Your feeling of existence (awareness), is entirely uncaused and untouched by the appearance, changes, and disappearance of the character on the show, or even by the show itself (consciousness). Despite this, we live our lives unaware of being anything other than our character and their story.

This is the illusion. Not the show or the characters but the belief that you are the character, that your feeling of existence comes from the character. That is existential ignorance and it creates immense suffering--both for ourselves and for each other.

Three consequences arise inherent to the ego:

1. Existential dread.

We feel that our existence begins with our character's birth and ends with our character's death. Imagine if you were playing a video game and you were brainwashed to believe the same thing about your game character. Would the game be fun or would it be terrifying?

Our human life and everything we know regarding it will end. Who knows what if anything endures after death. It's fair to assume basically nothing. That's something with which we all need to come to terms. But our sense of existence, of being alive, does not end. That is a big deal and makes a big difference.

2. The sense of separation.

As we live wholly identified with that character, we take their side in all matters. It creates a sense of separateness and it is the basis for disharmony, conflict, and confusion. It is also the sense of separateness that creates the feeling that we are lacking something, that something is missing in life. This then leads to the drive described next.

3. The search for happiness.

The combination of our felt sense of separation with our belief that our existence begins and ends with our character poses a problem. It means our starting point is that of incompleteness and we have only a limited time to find completion. So we seek happiness and try to avoid suffering.

This seeking drives us even deeper into the illusory predicament. Because 99% of the time, due to our identification with the character, that seeking only ever occurs within the TV show. We try to make that character happy through the things in the TV story and avoid bad things in the story, which just tangles us deeper in the whole belief that the character story is us.

Temporary happiness or temporary relief from suffering is possible, but it is only ever a partial happiness or relief and it is never sustained indefinitely.

The good news is that there is a way to freedom.

"You are not just a meaningless fragment in an alien universe, briefly suspended between life and death, allowed a few short-lived pleasures followed by pain and ultimate annihilation." -- Eckhart Tolle

To review, we all appear as different characters and we all have the feeling of "I," the feeling of existence. That is awareness; it is the electricity underlying the whole TV show. Consciousness is the medium in which the body's senses and mind's thoughts appear. Within the display of consciousness, a derived identity forms in the mind-body shaped by our culture, language, psychological imprints, and the like, as the story plays out.

I have explained why we will never be at ease let alone truly happy so long as we live as if we are a fragment in a story beyond our control. We will be grasping at scraps of pleasure and resolving to endure innumerable hardships only to be facing inevitable obliteration at our moment of death.

When the ego's illusion is broken, the TV show is seen to be an inert play on a screen and the infinite play of awareness and consciousness stands revealed as having been there all along. That is realization, or enlightenment.

The next few points are important to understand, as they are the very reason for why I explained all of this in the first place.

1. The character, the ego, doesn't become enlightened, nor is it destroyed.

Ramana Maharshi once said that enlightenment is like the sun discovering there is no such thing as night or day. Nothing actually changes other than the arising of clarity regarding what has always been the case.

2. Freedom doesn't mean the character gets to do whatever they want.

Freedom is from the illusion of feeling yourself to be the character. This kind of freedom releases a tremendous amount of tension and fear built up within the character.

3. At the same time, the character doesn't go anywhere.

The character still participates in the TV story but now it can do so without such profound confusion and suffering. It can truly begin to have fun. Also, compassion for others spontaneously arises because there are no "others" and there are no sides.

"We're all just walking each other home." -- Ram Dass

For lack of a better term, we call this existential path of awakening "spirituality." One day, I would like to find a better word for it.

LY

[whirligig-girl]

Star Patrol rocket Piccard-5 encounters an artifact of the incredibly powerful White Marble Civilization. circa 2169, colorized & shipgirlified.

Commission for @foxgirlchorix, based on a render by Holly for @torchship-rpg

This is some of my best rendering work ever! These commissions do have a knack for putting me out of my comfort zone enough to continue developing my technical skills and style.

Image ID: Digital art of two ship girls in a black and blue nebula background. One girl is a very large solid white marble statue with a naked feminine form, pitted and cratered with meteoric impacts, drifting belly-down though space. Instead of a face, her head has a large hole which glows yellow-orange, with a white marble sphere held in space outside of it. A green tractor beam is being emitted towards the second girl, a Torchship named Piccard-5. She is a silver girl with her body resembling a star patrol jumpsuit. Warp drive rings circle her waist like a hula hoop. She is wearing a spherical ball helmet. She is wearing white rocket boots. She has glowing red-orange radiator panels as wings on her back. The white marble sphere's tractor beam is slowly disassembling her into individual hull sections, disconnecting her radiator wings, removing her boots to reveal the rocket propellant inside her legs, and taking her body apart. Piccard-5 is reacting with a worried or confused expression. End Image ID.

Artist's notes and concept sketches in the read more:

When this render was posted Levana immediately had the idea to make it one of a series she was planning on commissioning me for, of shipgirls based on Torchship's Star Patrol (and alien) rockets. So we quickly brainstormed how it would go down and what she could afford price-wise.

When I do big commissions with new characters where I'm creating the design without an existing OC reference, I charge extra for character design. That doesn't just go to waste! Here's the concept art page:

The White Marble shipgirl is inspired by the Eerie and Enigmatic Empty Vessels by @murmurlilies, which Levana really likes--if you look at her blog you might see one of those posts reblogged multiple times. I wanted to pay homage to the eerie and enigmatic empty vessels without directly ripping them off! The first sketch on the upper left is imagining the girl poses by breaking her arms into segments and moving them around, but that never looked quite right to me. The second is basically just a direct study of the empty vessels (with a ball head). The third is after a little more refinement--I liked the cute hair on the empty vessels so I wanted to keep the head mostly intact, and I found a way of keeping the silhouette of the jagged angular hips on the empty vessels but in a very different way! Meteoric impact damage, just like on the original Torchship render. I also used an edited version of one of the Empty Vessels drawings for the thumbnail sketch in the lower right out of laziness.

There's also a sketch of what Piccard-5 looks like when she's not being disassembled. Piccard-5 has a rounded main hull, so it looks much more like a regular space suit helmet than the frustum-shaped helmet on the Newton-2 shipgirl I sketched a while back. The Newton-2 shipgirl had heat radiators as wing shapes on her boots, but making them actual wings on her back makes the disassembly image all the more unsettling.

I changed the hairstyle on the white marble girl when I drew the main drawing because I wanted to evoke like, greco-roman marble statues, and so a curlier/braided look worked better than the cute pixie cut of the empty vessels. I'm really happy with how the final product looks. I knew I wasn't gonna be able to half-ass it with the rendering, you know, just a little shading along the edge; this required a lot of careful thought and it was a lot of fun to do! Especially where the craters interact with the terminator (line between light and dark), just like on the Moon, which I have a lot of experience sketching (see below--the following sketches were made while looking through telescopes at the Moon at night)

Here's a WIP of just the line-art:

and with the basic shading done on the marblegirl

I started with like, a cel-shaded look (?), and then went in and softened the edges, then went over it again to fix the craters. I also added the marble texture to the unshaded base layer.

For the Piccard-5 girl, I spent a lot of time trying to get the pose right. I wanted it to be a little stiff, she's in a suspension beam after all, but not too stiff? And I had to decide like, what pieces should be detached, and where should they be going. In the render, hull pieces are often displaced towards the side, but when doing that to a humanoid, it ruined the pose too much, so i avoided doing too much weird stuff to the torso and kept the disassembled pieces largely to one axis. The cross sections are hollow because they're ship decks. She's a spaceship, not a robot girl. The warp ring was suspiciously untouched by the dissassembly beam in the original render, but i had the marble girl pull a few pieces off of it in my drawing.

Probably the one thing that isn't based on something happening in the render is the belt. Like, rockets don't have belts, cosmonauts do! So that was a fun little touch.

[wanderingblindly]

Oh are we doing Director Cuts again? I'd love you to tlk more about Something In Seattle please!! Anything you want, but I'd like to know what inspired you for the forest scene?

Tbh it can always be director's cut time, i fucking love talking lol, so thank you for asking!!!!!!!!!!!! On to some more info dumping about Someone in Seattle's forest scene :)

Inspiration for Lando's Styling:

This is a bit layered. It started, I think, back in January with my regular rewatch of 2005's Pride and Prejudice. Of course, that naturally lead to the question: how would I make that into a landoscar fic?

After talking about it on tumblr, @redcowboy1 made the horrifically influential comment: "AND u can imagine lando in the iconic 2005 white outfit with pearls... in his curly hair!". It ruined me. It's still ruining me. It will always ruin me. I don't even know if I've told him how much that comment ruined me.

I thought of direct Pride and Prejudice fics, I thought of Pride and Prejudice inspired fics, but nothing really stuck? So when I realized this was the moment where I could do it all (ethereal white outfit, pearls in the hair,,, fae-like blush,,,,) I went IN.

Shockingly, that isn't the only super loose 2005 P&P reference in that scene. There's also this:

Giving in to childish instinct, Lando jumps up onto the stump; Oscar’s arm follows him like a guide, a gentleman helping his lady into her carriage.  Lando’s fingers flex against his.  Realizing his mistake, having breached professionalism, he drops it.

Hand Scene, anyone? No?

The Setting:

This was actually really heavily inspired by my own childhood. I grew up with my home backing onto a massive forest that you could explore via a broken fence post :) Just like in this fic :)

Almost all the key elements are lifted from my own experience in the forest, like the creek with the massive tree fallen across it. That was real!!!!!! it's actually the center of a lot of my happiest childhood memories.

In the winter, my sister and I used to go exploring in the woods -- the feeling of a river so cold that it makes the air around it painful is so visceral to me. We used to walk across the tree that Lando posed on to the get to the other side, though I fell off more than once lol.

Something that I tried to capture is the extraordinary alien-ness that comes with the Pacific Northwest's forests. They're incredibly dense, with a mix of obscuring low-crawling plants like ferns and massive evergreens like nothing you've ever seen before. It truly makes it feel like the air is green, like you can't see the sky -- and even if you could, maybe it wouldn't be the same sky you saw elsewhere.

I guess, in a way, maybe I kind of wrote it from the perspective of a small child. I kind of gave the impression that Lando and Oscar are dwarfed by the nature around them -- like I scaled the entire thing up, because that's how I remember it.

Anyways, enough rambling. I found a few pictures that inspired me while I was writing: the tree stump pose, general foliage 1, general foliage 2

Other Fun Facts:

Atypically of me, I wrote this fic out of chronological order. I started it when I was sick (yes, at the same time that i started the wildly different Choking on Greatness), and my fevered brain just produced a bunch of random little scenes. One of those scenes was a solid chunk of their time in the forest.

Honestly, that's probably why this scene feels like the "main event" -- in terms of how I wrote this fic, I really wrote most of it around this moment.

Another fun fact is that I tried to imply that Lando was waiting for a doorknob confession when they got to their cars; he wanted Oscar to come kiss him.

Lando’s hand is on his car’s door handle, but he’s looking at Oscar like there’s something left to say – to do. His lips part slightly, not enough to talk but maybe enough to tempt, if things were different, if he wasn’t here because he’s doing Oscar a favor. Lando’s eyes flutter closed, only opening when Oscar speaks.

don't think I actually nailed it, but hey. Can't win 'em all.

[oldmemoria]

caught up with cringetober because I literally forgot to do it, individuals and explanations under cut

Day 1: Heterochromia I’ve come to the revaluation that my sona is already cringe as hell considering not only can his entire body change color but he also has differently colored eyes as a staple of his design. They’re usually yellow and blue but this time I color picked the blue from the trans flag and the mint from the Vincian flag for this color palette, it turned out really pretty :)

Day 2: Self Insert Now she isn’t my self insert anymore, but back in the day when I was at “peak cringe” she definitely was. This is my warriors OC Icypelt and I have a post going over part of her story on my profile somewhere. She’s been through a lot and I think her modern design is very pretty :)

Day 3: Unnecessarily complex fit/design Spider scene is kinda infamous in my brain for having wayyy too much detail but I love them and I think this might be my favorite one out of this batch, super cute, the pose is really cute and the colors are nice and fits her really well :D

day 4: Angel x Devil inevitable MCR reference ik, Helena and Revenge, love them dearly. Poor revenge man this one is cute and looks like a sticker!!

Day 6 (I skipped day 5 because I didn’t want to open up ms paint today): neko i kinda hate this one but cat Gerard yay

Day 7: Pinterest base at first I wanted to draw hobie in place of Gwen but I remembered that I haven’t really drawn Mikey with her even though they’re supposed to be friends so I drew her instead. Idk. The height difference is not accurate because of that but Jumping Spider is small because he’s based on a jumping spider and those are tiny who would have thought

Day 8: tumblr sexyman i have never played undertale a day in my life i just know a lot of people wanted to jump sans’ bones

day 9: Crossover ship/rarepair OH BOY THIS ONE GOES KIND OF HARD AND IM EMBARRASSED ABOUT IT BECAUSE THEY KIND OF WORK FOR EACH OTHER UM MIGUEL OHARA X CLOTTED CREAM COOKIE IM INSANE OMG-

day 10: fursona i already have a fursona I already drew and yes I colorpicked from the lesbian flag how could you tell /j

Day 11: Yandere LYLA is technically canonically a yandere because spoiler alert she tried to kill Miguel’s fiancé via overheating her in the shower (essentially literally boiling her like a lobster) because she was “in love” with him (she said if she did have autonomy and had feelings the would be in love with him but she doesn’t but idk who knows I don’t).

day 12: niche interest ik MCR isn’t exactly “niche” but the black parades story in particular has always caught my interest and I have my own interpretation of it and a whole kind of story I’m still developing and character arcs and headcanons and interactions and yeah you get it, death in particular has evolved into god knows an OC on his own I just keep him attached to MCR because… it makes more sense that way, ig-

day 13: creepypasta does this count- whatever grimdark is just the same thing as a creepypasta- I’m not really in the MLP fandom anymore but it was my first ever “fandom” I was actually apart of. My first hyperfixation if you will. I wasn’t in the grimdark part of the fandom because I was too young for it but I was actually watching the izzzyzzz grimdark video and I was like “oh” and drew a rainbow factory Rainbowdash. Honestly I should draw ponies more they’re fun to draw

Day 14: candygore (?) im not good at drawing candygore and since I was rushing this o didn’t do it as well as I thought I can, but it still turned out pretty cool

Day 15: song lyrics aaaa inevitable hesitant alien drawing this one turned out so cute!! The colors and the sparkle eek so cute aaa action cat lyrics I’m breaking down right in front of you I’m sorry

planning on doing the rest of the month now, maybe not exactly on time since I’m still in school but I’ll try to get 31 drawings out by Halloween. Love the idea of cringetober because I just love all things cringe. Ack this is so good

[universalcaffination]

I'm in the middle of reading one of the star trek tos pocket books, this one is by Ms dduane and has been wonderful so far! She's captured the feeling of a tos episode in the unique aliens, characterization, and intriguing plot beautifully. This is the cover for any interested parties

I noticed something peculiar about the art here, it's a very small detail but still present!

What's this I see? Why, I believe those are the braids of the second in command! But wait a minute...

Bones' long sleeve uniform has different braids, as he's in charge of his department but not in the direct chain of command (kirk, then spock, then scotty). He may be fourth but that's not the point

My theory is that the artist for this cover used a still from one of the episodes as a reference for the pose, which is completely fair when you're trying to capture realistic detail like hand position and cloth folds. And, since spock is also in blue, it would be easiest to use a pose where spock is sitting in the command chair

I couldn't find the exact pose they used, but this is the most visually similar. Entirely possible they made some minor adjustments to small things! And such a minor detail as command rank braids isn't necessarily on an artists mind when their making a piece (aware of the show but not a fan, I believe that's how James Blish was when he began the novelization of episodes)

It's just a fun little thing I noticed and thought would be fun to share 😊

[razzberrydazz]

I miss old deviantart. When it wasn't drowning in ai plagiarism slop and reveling in it. When they didn't sell out and alienate their artist base by incorporating ai scraping databases. When it wasn't mask off pro-israli and pro-genocide (I believe because deviantart was owned by Wix? iirc). When you could actually post art on there and people would engage and comment on it, even if it was 'bad' art, because people recognize other people trying to get better at their craft and want to encourage that.

I miss the fun custom animated stamps and fun little emojis used on the site. I miss the old layouts and free widgets and elements that got retroactively put behind a paywall because nothing is sacred in capitalism.

Yes, even old deviantart had its problems, the site has /always/ had a problem with uncensored niche fetish art being posted brazenly because well 'technically it's not breaking rules no one is naked or getting overtly fucked' but it's still fetish art and therefore should be marked as adult content.

I deleted my deviantart when the ai shit came around, but I still miss the good resources I followed. Good stock and pose reference accounts, brush packs, tutorials.

Artstation is just as heinous about the ai slop. Add that I've experienced scammers using artstation to mass email artists with fake job opportunities, it left a very sour taste in my mouth.

The internet is getting so hostile for creatives, for visual artists, for writers, and it's concerning. The cop-out advice of 'make your own website' ignores that search-engine optimization makes it so that personal websites get buried under ads and the popular websites, therefore making it so the personal websites get way less traffic than the social media sites. Starting up a new website to fill the niche deviantart and artstation should fill takes a lot of time and money and work, servers cost money to maintain, and even if you have all of that, it may never get enough traffic and new people to become a real competitor to the big sites. Suffering.

[giuliano-fan-account]

hxh ch 393

I THOUGHT THAT THEY RELEASED ONLY ON SUNDAYS HELP? WAIT? ANYWAYS so i read this a little later than I wanted to since i thought it released tomorrow but thats okay. 

Its review time!! I have a little less to say this chapter than the last two, but I still have a little word

spoilers, obviously

So, we’re back to Luini... 

Tbh Im KIND OF GLAD THAT HE JUST DESTROYED HIM HE WAS BEGINNING TO GET A LITTLE ANNOYING...

Its interesting to think about it. 

He could have been downright offensive to these three as all of the troupe is still processing the deaths of Shalnark and Kortopi and hes just telling them to discard all of that. 

Imagine if somebody like Luini showed up after Uvogins death/during their requiem.. yea... I have a feeling Nobunaga would be even more pissed.

ALSO NOBUNAGA DOESNT LOOK SUPER WONKY IN THIS PANEL YAY

In the previous chapters and stuff he just looked so strange and it wasn’t bothering me or anything but yaa there he is. 

Luini is the negative fanbase and This guy is the positive fanbase. 

This translation lets people curse and im living for it (also hes doing the funny point pose)

Imagine dying like this..... what a way to go. Also, was he just like this the whole time he was talking to the troupe? Just. his butt out of the wall?? 

Anyways. Luini is always making me think about things I don’t want to. Good riddance. 

WHY IS HE LITERALLY JUST NAMED DEMON AND WHY IS HE A REAL-ESTATE AGENT. I NEED ANSWERES. It might just be this translation for the name, but still.. Real estate agent? Eh. It’s not like all the other occupations are very expected to join a mafia anyways.

Whoever this person is i love them. They are named after a dessert AND they are a pro gamer AAND they have the hxh trademark strange eyebrows.

Also, it took me whoever to know who this guy was but he’s the guy at the stand that Lynch first punched (23 members).

We have a Pro Gamer and a Game Centre Employee. They either get along very well or hate each other with a burning passion. Either way, I want to see if they have a dynamic bc thats interesting.

Oh god please die I don’t know anything about him other than the fact that he is a human trafficker PLEASE DIE HELP. I hope he dies very quickly.

I like this guy he seems silly and i like silly people, so. He’s yet another cheery light haired guy that very vaguely resembles shalnark (the other being Giuliano, i love Giuliano by the way I really like Giuliano, anyways heres a comparison)

Nonetheless please don’t stop making this brand of guy he’s just like me.

Matovelle gets an extra point though because he is probably also insane. 

I love when the characters are so short compared to the others that you can only see the very top of their heads.

I feel like this person is also going to be dangerous... they look like the Hei-Ly underboss (I think??), so im sensing a little bit of a pattern lol. (please bring back the Hei-Ly underboss lady or whoever she was i need her  i  anyways) 

I SERIOUSLY THOUGHT THIS WAS KORTOPI AT FIRST AND I WAS SO CONFUSED BUT ANYWAYS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I WAS SO HAPPY WHEN I SAW THIS PAGE.

THEYRE ALIVE AND AND I LOVE THE WAY THAT  ZAKURO WAS DRAWN AND AN ANYWAYS I NEED TO CALM DOWN. phew ok... I am beginning to like Lynch and Zakuroa  lot theyre great. 

I feel like theyre getting themselves into yet another hassle. Hopefully this time they won’t underestimate their enemy, that is if they do find them this time. 

This seems like a pretty good deal, but theres got to be a catch later. I’m guessing that may be Chrollos state of mind by the time they find him... Again, given that he looks like this

yea he’s not doing so good. 

Also, this must be a reference of some sort..

PSHHH I HOPE HE NEVER STOPS PUTTING REFERENCES IN HXH. The movie theater was a perfect place to do this.

Im pretty sure that this is Alien but I cant see it very clearly.

It would be so fun to have a concept like the Thing come into play in the succession war... I think that it would be a perfect opportunity for horror. I mean we already have Prince Tserriednich’s first Nen beast. I’m so excited. 

And there he is. Gah I love the framing of this panel. You can see everybody’s face but Hisoka’s, and he’s split in the middle with all the white space of the theater. It gives an ominous feeling specifically towards Hisoka. 

Just an aside here, too, the way Hisokas hair is styled and the way his eyes are drawn looks similar to Chrollo’s the last time we saw him, which is interesting to me. The resemblance isn’t too strong, but It’s interesting to think about.

The way that he just sits down in this panel and immediately starts talking is so funny to me just change the text to anything.

ANYWAYS thats unrelated. I really like this scene. I get the impression  that Hisoka is above it all, and just deciding to comply with what Xi-Yu and Cha-R wants without any true dedication, and I feel like Hinrigh is aware of this because he knows exactly the type of person Hisoka is, so he’s being honest.

I’m also beginning to really like Hinrigh as well because of his intuition, understanding, and efficiency. No wonder he’s the underboss. Knowing and dealing with the type of freak Hisoka is is no small feat. 

Hes trying to mess with him by getting close but Hinrigh is just like ‘Ok.’

This was an awesome interaction though tbh. I want to see more conversations between them since its an interesting dynamic. Hinrigh isn’t directly against Hisoka, which is seen in his disinterest in getting in the way of his and the spiders quarrel, so they agree over that, but he has to keep him under surveillance due to the situation. Everything about Hisoka goes against this, however. He is going to defy this without question, and I am certain Hinrigh knows this, so what does he have in mind to stop him? 

these must be more references. the girl choking the other one seems familiar but i dont know about the others and I dont know what that one is from.

The other part isnt super interesting to me, so I’ll leave it for me to delve back into on another read. I often understand things better on the second time anyways.

.......................... I HAVE NO WORDS. NONE AT ALL CAN EVEN.. I CANT >... I GENUINELY CANT TELL IF THIS IS INTENDED TO BE FUNNY OR SCARY BUT OH MY GOD I   HELP ME  

THIS DOESNT MAKE IT ANY EASIER TO TELL SERIOUSLY IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE COMEDIC OR SERIOUS...

Gosh, these page layouts are great, the shading of the bed on the second one I am enjoying thoroughly, and again with the middle focus and the front and back look at the room... aaahhhhhhghhgg anyways. 

WHY ARE HINRIGH AND THE OTHER GUY SO TALL (I forgot his name uh oh). It’s either that or the cabins are very small, which is probably the case.

Its funny, this page layout is a little unnerving, and then you just see how short the doorway is ...

Final thoughts on the chapter, Hinrigh is so cool, and this guy definitely is hiding something. I think he’s not a threat himself, but rather is innocent and is being forced to cover something for somebody who is a threat.

A little later than I wanted to post my review but its okay. I’m looking forward to the next one, since honestly I don’t know what it’s going to throw at me. Often times it proves my predictions wrong, but thats okay, it’s fun to think about more. 

It’s nice to know people actually read these too, it’s relieving to write these down to get all of my thoughts out, and I feel happy when other people actually acknowledge them even though theyre often just rambles of things off the top of my head when I read these things lol.

I plan to read and review all of the chapters (if i can)!! 

Have a good dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, day, evening, dusk, night, midnight, or past midnight! (I present to you hisokas favorite movie) 

[thesims2comics]

any chance of rating the posters? cue eyes emoji

*cracks knuckles* let's GO!

(I've included some posters from the EPs and APs, otherwise this would be a very short list of like 4 posters)

LONG POST AHEAD!!!

Engineered Angst Full poster: 5/10. what's going on here?? Is the person in front going to an eye doctor with funky walls? And why does she kinds look like a Urbz DS render? So many question, no answers

Engineered Angst Red: 6/10. Better than the previous one imo, I like the sims' facial expression a lot! And this is a me problem, but it kind of reminds me of the promo clips of the virtual boy?? Y'know that nintendo console that only used red and black as its colors? Still pretty cool though!

Searing Indifference: 7/10 Angsty teen poster number 3. Honestly? Iconic, this is one of those posters that I still remember from playing the game when I was younger. I've always thought it was a band poster though. Nonetheless, it's a very cheesy poster but I just can't rate this any lower

"Civic Idol" by Adora Wall Arts: 7/10 AMAZING POSTER!! I'd say it's the best "emo/edgy" poster in the game. I'd only like to know what the hell that humanoid thing is. Also, the red thing looks wonky and apparently the white stripes are meant to say "Civic Idol". But the skyline and the moon look so great and the red stripe makes it look like dangerous and egdy. Kudos for the amazing composition of this one

Pets poster: 5/10. Cursed. For some reason, this poster looks much more jankier and pixelated than the others, even the basegame ones. Kinda simple, but it sorta does the job (Fun fact: this is one of the few posters that have variants! Which redeems it)

Revolutionary Rebellion poster: 8/10. Really cool! I love the hard red with the black and white and is much less crispier than some other posters. In the build&buy description it says that we should check out the Sim with the moustache but honestly, I have no idea what that's about. At least it looks pretty nice! Kent, Nervous and Moustache Mercutio is my fave rockband

"It's Reggae, Mon" Poster: 9/10. Really pretty!! I love the posing of this guy and with the sun flare and background it's one of the most beautiful posters available! Also, seeing the previous music posters' description, I thought the devs would've made fun of the genre since they also did that with the teenage angst posters. But I think it's actually really nice and cool what they wrote about reggae music so I've included it for you to read

"Fists of Bunny" poster: 8/10. I think this might be an anime reference or something? Or is this what the Social Bunny does when he's not with a sim? Just anime kicking in the Void? I don't get the reference, but it does look cool! Would I hang this up in my actual room? Probably yeah! And I like that it's the Social Bunny, we don't see the guy that often in the Build&Buy

Inverted Vertigo, Cover art: 5/10. What the hell is going on here??? Hands??? light strokes? Some people? A face??? This reminds when I discovered blending layers in a drawing program for the first time honestly.

All the alien posters: 8/10 Tumblr limits me to only upload 10 images, so these guys are getting grouped. Hell yeah! Alien posters! These look cool as hell, HD quality next to the pets poster. I don't know how to feel about the way too human alien head on the left though, it kinda freaks me out, because for the sims 2 this is far too realistic. And apparently the guy on the surfboard is PT#9 cousin, RT#66 surfing through the galaxy, good for him! These posters are rad as hell in my opinion, especially after some rather small and pixelated ones.

That's gonna be it for the poster review! There's an image limit of 10 and because I have the Super Collection I don't have all the posters, so there isn't gonna be a part 2 from me. If anyone else feels like completing this list with all the posters form the Ultimate Collection or make their own review with the posters, feel free to do so!

These were just my opinions on the posters, if you have others thoughts on the posters that's fine, your opinion is valid!

[thewapolls]

while I'm on the subject of metal demon trivia. I remember at the time it was kind of a big deal --I dunno if that carried over to other fans since-- that when they released Wild Arms Alter Code F, Zed's big secret boss fight replaced his monster form with this robot form instead. I personally kind of agree that there's something lost in the desperate tragic tone of the whole encounter if he's not trying to hide the fact that he's a monster by turning into a monster, but this isn't as random a choice as I think a lot of people thought it was at the time.

His new design is very distinctly in the style of 1970s Super Robot genre of anime. For a time, Giant Robot anime were synonymous with bold, brash, plucky teens or young adults fighting aliens and monsters in robots often explicitly designed to be the next hot toy --creating a media presence that is often compared to the American superhero of the same era. And while a few select designers, authors, and animators would eventually rise to the top of the genre as the trend setters and taste makers, many many more were lost to time as cheap knockoffs, copycats, and just plain bad series. Robot Zed seems to be a loose reference to this whole time period, without nodding to any one specific series. (However the most obviously evoked series if there was one behind this, would probably have been Go Nagai's Mazinger Z.)

So while it loses some of the drama, there is a fun thematic idea behind Zed turning into an iconic Super Robot as his true form, a culturally recognizable sort of image akin to tearing open a shirt to reveal a big S. And similarly it mirrors his long scarf and kind of ridiculous posing being drawn from tokusatsu cliches, another kind of iconic Japanese super hero archetype. Even if he never knew it, he was always a hero at heart.

[mej2235]

Some Sewer Donnie thoughts about the @tmntaucompetition and @rottmnt-au-summit

Consider this my own little bit of personal propaganda to kick this off with a bang! I’m having fun messing around with this stuff XD

Sewer AU and the Foot Leo AU belong to me

Red Rover AU belongs to @red-rover-au (it’s just a mention, sorry about tagging you buddy!)

Disarmed Neon aka Neon belongs to @phoenixdeleted

Subnautica Leo aka Sub belongs to @havendoesthings

Ghost Leo belongs to @wandering-ghost

And here’s your little context note: Sewer Raph doesn’t have his name yet and is simply referred to as the ‘Big Guy’.

Donnie tapped away at their holoscreen, face carefully blank as they stared at the matchups. This preliminary round was against a worthy opponent, a universe alteration of their counterparts in dimension 12 where there were five turtles instead of four. Donnie watched as the meter slowly ticked downwards toward a loss and sighed, hand flicking it to the next image. The matchups for the other competition they would be competing in. Almost all those AUs, Donnie knew, both personally and from their many hours of multidimensional research.

Their family didn’t need to know that Donnie wanted to know if things would’ve been better if they made a different choice- if it was them instead of their two brothers.

Their results were… inconclusive.

They sighed again, smiling down at the lineup. Donnie knew they would not survive, not against the Red Rover universe, possibly quite literally. Out of their entire family, only the Big Guy could potentially hold his own against trained super soldiers and even he wouldn’t last long.

Draxum would never let them live this down.

Donnie scoffed, announcing it to the world as they skimmed through the lineup, admiring all the universes that would be brought together. They wondered how the Big Guy would react to seeing the little ghost Leo (which was not disturbing at all to think about, their brother dead at only a few years old, something that Donnie knew was almost reality in their world), Sub and Neon again. Last time they had crossed paths, it was as enemies, fighting their way out of the death trap known as the Hunger Games.

And no, Donnie did not keep a closer eye on Neon because they were longing for a parent-aged adult figure in their life. They would never.

Their hand flicked the screen to the next page, a set of images showing up. Just for research, Donnie swore to themself, ignoring how the corners of their mouth curled up as they flicked between the images. Shenanigans between all these alternate versions of them and their family, random fires, T-Posing, strawberry jam everywhere.

They stopped on an image of the Big Guy, frowning at the camera, arms crossed as Neon wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him close. The other arm was a prosthetic, curled around a strange version of Leo, Sub, who apparently came from an alien planet, with teeth attached to the metal. Neon was grinning despite himself, clearly holding the kid close with no problems, as another Leo sat on his shoulders, dressed in traditional Foot garments, the child had claimed.

Donnie didn’t know how to feel at the fact they had assumed this version of their brother had simply adapted to the Hamato Way.

It was a good photo, a happy photo.

These competitions were here for fun, nothing at stake as they could let loose and show off themselves, what made them unique and Donnie was loving every second of it. The adrenaline screaming through their veins, the overwhelming competitive desire to create, the constant interactions that made sense.

It was clear what everyone’s motive was.

They leaned back, shell hitting their Mikey’s side, allowing their younger sister to wrap and arm around them as she scritched at the Big Guy’s head, enjoying the comforting weight of their largest member. The Big Guy’s purring made Donnie want to fall asleep then and there, to nap the competitions away in the company of loved ones, but the nearby chittering changed their mind. Donnie looked up and met the eyes of their blue-clad brother that was refusing to settle on his older brother’s shell. The small slider kept walking around the spiked shell, talking the rest of the family’s ears and tympana off with those sounds.

It was honestly like watching a turtle kneed at a surface, unsatisfied with the quality of the product gifted to them.

As the turtle settled finally, draping himself over his brother’s shell and under Mikey’s hand still scritching away, allowing Donnie unlimited access to his head. The softshell huffed out a breath of air that was not a poorly disguised laugh thank you very much, lowering one arm from tapping away at the holoscreen to the more pressing matter at hand, their brother’s desire for scritches. Their other hand moved to clutch at Mikey’s arm wrapped around them and they couldn’t withhold the smile they had been hiding for so long.

This competition was an excuse to show off and bring people together, so right now, Donnie was going to show off their family and enjoy this, until they needed to be up and fighting again.

Leo cooed, melting under the touch as the family chuckled, delivering scritches to those that deserved them.

All of them deserved them.

[mleelunsford]

Darkstalkers Redesign Thoughts Part 4 & 5

The final rounds! I was really getting worn and burnt out, so I don’t think a lot of these last ones were my best. Here are my thoughts anyway.

Part 4

Q. Bee: Q. Bee is the scariest Darkstalker for me. I hate insects to start off, if not a genuine phobia then very close. Secondly just the idea that the “humanoid” part of her is all a façade formed to lure people in creeps me out. I tried to make her body look more like it was formed organically rather than she’s wearing clothes, gave her some  extra limbs to be a bit more bug like. My favorite part is the pose though, the hand could either be seen as for her lower face searching, or for her “true” face, covering her mouth while she laughs.

 Lilith: Another difficult one! All of Lillith’s backstory is about her being Morrigan’s sealed off energy trying to return to her. Which is why she has matching outfits with Morrigan in the original. I wanted to reflect this by having her form an outfit that resembles the Morrigan redesign I did in shapes, but doesn’t quite get it right, and doesn’t look like real clothing someone would buy. With floating bits showing the whole thing as being formed mystically.

Huitzil: Originally Huitzil was based on Japanese  dogū figurines. My only idea was to bring back more of the detail and designs of those figurines to add a bit more flare. Also I read that the designs on some of them showed signs of being painted in vermillion, so I  added some of that coloring.

Bishamon: Two big things I changed here: I wanted to make him less like a solid blue man and more ghostly. Secondly I wanted to make the chest piece of the armor more of a face to pull him away from being another stomach mouthed monster like Lord Raptor. I referenced Samurai masked and Oni depictions. I saw some Samurai masks had mustaches and thought hat would be a way to make him stand out more. I also shadowed his “human” face a bit to pull focus from it. Making the armor’s face the one you are drawn to.

Part 5 

Demitri: I just wanted to give the boy some decent clothes. Who told him a skin tight body suit and a frilly jabot was suitable for every day life? Just gave him a fun layered suit and a Dracula trophy.

Jedah Domah: I’ve never liked how Jedah looks. Striking to be sure, and works great as a sprite, but in drawings I always thought he looked a little lackluster and a bit confusing. I tried to keep some basic shapes from his original look while making him a bit more intimidating (at least to me) and grim-reaper-like.

Pyron: Not much to do there with the battle-loving fire alien, but I suppose I realized I never liked his horns. I made some horn-like shapes formed by fire instead, and mostly kept him the same otherwise. There’s something charming about his original simplicity and I didn’t want to mess with it too much.

Marionette: Never a full character, just a mirror match style mode (like Shadow, who I neglected to redesign as he’s kind of just some sludge). I just tried to give her a more interesting cosutme, and made her look more like she is the puppet master than being a puppet herself. Also, not important, but a little behind the scenes thing: I have a big 20 inch Spider-Man action figure from the Toby McGuire movies, I used it as reference for how to draw the joints on Marionette here.

And that’s all! hope you enjoyed these. I thought about doing some Midnight Bliss versions down the line, but I need some rest from these now. Thanks for reading!

[azpher-omega]

So hmmm, 3 weeks of relative freedom and lets see, what did I do with it.

Probably most importantly I now have a standing desk (It's great. Now I can walk away every 5 minutes and not have to sit back down n remember what I was doing before I get distracted again) and most most importantly I have a functioning tablet that does not make my eyes bleed and brain cry from the colour inaccuracy. I hadn't seen purple in so long. You have no idea how much this speeds things up. In theory.. I'm still slow. It's just how I function, and that's okay.

Well I'm redoing the map again, to no-ones surprise.

Decided on it being a tidally-locked moon, with pretty extreme temperatures either side but a moderate middle. Its orbit is skewed so the moon has earth-like seasons, but less extreme. It has a lot of land, and 2 separated oceans, plus lots of craters, the ecological impacts (pun unintended but appreciated) of so many massive collisions it looks cool okay.

For reference the edges of the map, and the centre line horizontally, are the equator...s. If you cut it in half along the central horizontal line, the centres of the resulting squares would be the poles.

Bit outdated but, like this. That lower right corner is actually like 50% of the globe, probably too big but... it's okay, it's mostly frozen wasteland on account of being near perpetually dark.

Only the top of the main continent is done but I'm feeling good about it. Also bought a plugin to make it interactible so eventually it'll have many layers including the heights, climate, biomes, political stuff, roads, towns, etc. Don't you miss when old web games had interactible maps. Like Neopets. I am now living beyond my wildest dreams making them. Awesome.

Perhaps the biggest thing is this. Sort of... I decided to make a big worldbuilding decision, one I really have wanted to make for a long time but never knew how to go about it in a way that was better than just 'theyre aliens but happen to look like humans' (booo)

so the Valkyries are now 100% home-grown aliens, or I guess more accurately natives, since they used to be aliens to this planet.

This has some fun opportunities to explore non-magical possibly also sapient offshoots and relatives, better flow to the biology aspect now they don't feel so separate to the rest of the world.

Importantly they maintain a pleasantly human-like look and I guess function, while being visually and functionally different. They breathe through their necks (Realising Avatar already did this but they didnt give their humanoid the cool necks so boohoo i beat you to it. Also I forgot about the neck thing in that so I guess we're both cool. Theyre derived gills.) Also their neck is. on the back of their head. Its really cool. Their eyes are really that huge, but are oval shaped and dont actually rotate... only the layer of skin over it does, which contracts to from a pupil of differing sizes. So they have 3 eyelids, 1 skin, 1 membrane, 1 sphincter thing. Lovely.

You've maybe guessed already (Well probably not I hardly post them) But uhhh. This has a lot of implications for my characters, and more direly the uhhhh. giant comic I'm halfway through making.

Honestly I've kind of given up on 'finishing' it. I dunno, I feel content to move on with the story and just work on it whenever I want to do a bit more with it. It was always intended to be my 'practice' for the 'real' comic, which I feel fully capable of. Doesn't mean I'll do it tho.

And you can maybe also guess why I'm modelling them therefore. Uhhhh.... 3d comic anyone? maybe? probably not but ooooh. the ease of doing complicated poses, you have any idea how much of a wall a wierd pose is. using the 3d model as the background. I dunno, I've never seen it done before, I'd like to be the first at something, even if it doesn't work. I feel a lot more secure in my work than I used to be., to be free to fail.

If I can get the model to be as expressive as my 2d art (Which. Wuargh. Hard task.) and set it up so I don't need to unsymmetrise it (daunting but doable I hope with a few tricks) then there's nothing to stop me. Oh also clothes I guess and people touching and What To Do with Water and How To Rig Hair but like. I love 3d. And it'd be so much less destructive than 2d. I redo so many panels over and over from scratch because the pain of adjusting dozens of layers is greater than just redrawing. Imagine destroying that problem by being able to redo whatever I like and rerender it. Honestly the comfort something is changeable would maybe stop me from endlessly changing things.

So this model is ideally going to be a template for me to model my characters. I'm unsure if I'll be able to make them share a rig to the point that poses and such will be reusable... but I'll try. I think as long as the bones have the same names it'll work.

Here's an example of a redesign. Also little teen teri... cursed and skinny... Still a mild victim of funky tablet colours so if it's wierd, yeah.

(It's hilarious putting her proportions into 3d. She is so dense. She is easily 4x the body mass of the template, its ridiculous. And that was only the muscles, I didnt even add the fat yet. I probably won't model everyones skeleton and muscles but she needs it okay)

3d is really just, the closest you can get to those flash dressup games, you know the ones, but with complete creative freedom. And cloth physics.

[briannas-casebook]

INTRODUCTION TO THE MAKING OF: CHARACTER DESIGN FROM PROMPTS.

As mentioned in a previous post, as part of my homework for the Introduction to 'Making Of' class, I was tasked with designing a character based on one of four prompts:

ninja cat

independent robot

emotional demon

insect warrior

I was drawn most to the "Insect warrior" prompt as I have previously done work on the anatomical components of insects for past projects. So I started by drawing various different types of insect faces and bodies. I knew I didn't want a character based on a praying mantis, as I felt using an insect best known for its fighting and prey-hunting abilities would be too predictable and cliched for an insect warrior character. A good example in pop culture is Master Mantis from the Kung Fu Panda franchise. I also wasn't drawn to the bee and dragonfly faces as they were too similar to a mantis head and I didn't want to evoke that for reasons stated previously. I drew one face that I did like; the upper middle face which I based loosely on crickets and katydid (large horned grasshopper native to North America) faces. There was something about the unique rectangular shape of the head and the particular intense look of katydid eyes and their tiny "pupils". So I decided to roll with the idea of a character based on a grasshopper.

I first just focused on the anatomy and proportions of the character, creating several iterations with slight differences until I was satisfied with the body. Although I did make the character upright walking, I also kept some insectoid traits like the extra pair of arms and had the "knees" of the character's legs which bend backward instead of forward to reflect the anatomy of grasshopper legs in real life.

I also modified the final body to have longer legs than the previous iteration as I wanted the proportions of the character to be less uniform. I also felt their height could give them a more imposing silhouette to add to the warrior aura I wanted to capture. Along with this, I modified the position of their second pair of arms to be tucked behind the back, as this would allow them to be used to protect the warrior from behind thus adding another asset to a warriors toolbox. I took some inspiration for this pose from the way the Skeksis in the Dark Crystal have a similar second pair of small arms hidden behind their backs.

To make sure I stayed consistent with my character's proportions when moving on to costume design, I used my light box to trace over the drawings I made on the previous page.

As I was designing a chracter based on crickets, I thought about the real life biology of the insects and how I could use that as inspiration for what kind of warrior specifically they'd be. I remembered the fun fact that crickets or grasshoppers are usually solitary creatures, and when a group of them forms, rubbing against each other causes a chemical change in the grasshoppers, turning them into swarming, crop-devouring creatures called locusts. I thought about how this would impact an alien species with similar anatomy and biology to grasshoppers and how this would affect their society. Perhaps this character, and by extension, the rest of their species would avoid physical contact with themselves or others - As should they touch, it would cause them to transform into ravenous monsters. If this were the case, I decided it would be fitting to make this character a long-range warrior or fighter such as, for instance, a lone sniper. so I went with this idea.

When designing the costume, I drew on a number of references and influences. I first used images of real-life sniper uniforms. experimenting with drawing the character in the different uniforms and their pieces to see what would work.

I also drew on fictional inspirations such as the character Ana from the videogame Overwatch (especially the concept art for her wasteland alternative skin) and the female characters of Mad Max, Fury Road. I wanted to convey that sense of the lone, nomadic, and stoic yet meditative warrior. I also focused on how much the clothes covered the body. As the character could not physically touch others, it would make sense for them to cover as much of their body as possible to avoid any chance of physical contact.

Eventually, I combined some of the elements I liked from each uniform, such as the real-life sniper hood, the knee pads from Ana's wasteland skin (with the round part of the kneepads on the back of the legs and not the front to accommodate the backward bending legs), Ana's coat and bulletproof vest, and the goggles from Mad Max's Furosia.

I will be creating a dedicated character sheet for this character to not only tweak their physical appearance but also to flesh out their backstory and personality as part of the character design brief. This has so far been my favorite exercise of my classes overall, as I'm genuinely proud of the character I've been able to come up with thus far through the character design process.

[riskbvsiness]

// Because I tend to lean on personality types to better understand my muses’ minds, I’ve been pondering about Jim’s enneagram for a while.

There’s a some consensus about him being either a 3 or a 7 but I have my reservations about those who label him a type 7 with arguments like these:

I just have to use Captain Kirk here, even though it’s my only reference to TOS. Really, captain Kirk just wants to have fun. Problems? Concerns? Planets exploding? Big deal! Let’s just move on to our next wild adventure and by the way let’s get some hot alien-chick action along the way. Leave it to Kirk to come up with the last-minute, out-of-the-box creative solution to save your ass and keep the party going. You can have a great time on Kirk’s Enterprise, but have no doubt, it’s Kirk’s ship and you are just along for the ride! 

That’s, like... the most offensively shallow read on the character, honestly. And I do not like it. I’ve seen other people label TOS Kirk a 3, and AOS Kirk a 7, which could make a bit more sense, given what we’re shown of him. It does make sense, too, that the same person, growing up in a different context would develop a different personality type, especially since AOS Kirk grew up rebellious as a response to an environment he perceived as unsafe for him and his loved ones. That is indeed a very seven thing, but I don’t think the type truly fits my idea of Jim.

Like, yes, sevens are optimistic, they’re passionate and endlessly curious, they’re true masters when it comes to thinking out of the box, determined and bold, quick learners who are able to excel in diverse fields thanks to their inquisitive minds. That does fit, but. Sevens are also about freedom and immediate satisfaction, and foremost about avoiding boredom and stagnancy. That is why they keep pursuing different paths in life and are known for their positivity and recklessness, because they’re tools for them to keep on moving. And... I don’t believe that truly fits Jim.

AOS Kirk is younger, and not at his best when he’s first introduced to the audience. He’s not a reckless hothead nor an adrenaline junkie. He may look like one, due to his unhealthy coping mechanisms, but that’s not who he is at his core. See, healthy, mature sevens can learn to focus on a single goal while maintaining other hobbies to keep their fidgety minds occupied, but I don’t think loving the Enterprise the way he does and committing to her is truly compatible with seven’s primary fears and desires. I don’t think Kirk fears pain or inactivity, or desires freedom and excitement more than the average person. He’s constantly torn between his love for the Enterprise and his desire for a quiet life, romance, perhaps a family... but I don’t think that really fits seven’s restlessness in life.

Expectations are key to Kirk’s character. They manifest differently in each verse, but whether they come from others, or from himself, they’re what fuel Kirk’s life. Surpassing them, rejecting them... even reckless, rebellious AOS Jim Kirk can be tricked into entering Starfleet if he’s posed with enough of a challenge. When he says his life aboard has become episodic and thinks of leaving the Enterprise, I don’t think he means he’s suffering from the lack of stimuli sevens need, but rather feelings of inadequacy, with both his father’s and Pike’s legacy to live up to.

That sounds a lot like three’s fear of worthlessness and failure. There’s also a reckless part to three’s unhealthiness, the one that comes with arrogance and a constant need for either validation or attention, whatever comes first. They can be narcissistic, they seek romantic or sexual partners to get their share of external approval. They can be delusional about their actual abilities and try to project an idealized version of themselves, they struggle with perfectionism and imposter syndrome.

And I think that fits AOS Kirk when we see him at his lowest.

I also have some opinions about three’s tendency to pour all of their self-worth into a made-up persona that eventually merges with their core self, this being ‘captain of the Enterprise’ as a concept in Kirk’s case. But this post is already long enough as it is.

[gemstonearchipelago]

local demon-worshipping anarchist magic fennec anti-hero poses sexily in jer underwear =)

just felt like drawing Micky doing a pose and this is what happened!

just for the record, since this is the first drawing i'm posting of jem here, Micky's pronouns are "je/jem/jer/jers/jemself"

Micky, whose full name is "Gimmick Rune Domino", is a 30 year old nonbinary alien from a species (Magic Energy Beings) that are literally magic and adopt the form of other species and become part of that species (in Micky's case, a race of magical canines known as "Ninae" that conveniently resemble Earth's mobian canines, specifically a fennec fox). MEBs can also change how they look by destroying their own body, taking their natural forms (which resemble wisps), and then creating a new body.

while je was born on Earth, je still considers jemself a ninae rather than a mobian due to jer parents being "ninae" MEBs. Micky also comes from the Gemstone Archipelago island of Aradia, a primarily canine island where many people practice magic and also speak Italian (the island's towns have some resemblance to Italian)

je's also an anarchist and demon-worshipper, believing that demons are admirable and that generalizing demons as "evil" is wrong. Micky does have fun creating a body that makes jem look like a demon, and has been involved with actual demons before while taking this form (often in other dimensions where time works differently, so Micky can spend years in a demon's dimension but it's only been like an hour in jer own dimension)

je also sees killing as fine depending on the situation, and that truly evil people should be killed in order to protect innocent people, and has killed villains before (often alongside one of their spouses and Team Stardust partners, Yun, an assassin). je has even been a villain to some more "righteous" heroes before due to jer willingness to (and unabashed enjoyment from) killing evildoers.

Micky would admit that people shouldn't aspire to be like jem and that they shouldn't find enjoyment in killing (even if Micky clearly does and has no problem admitting to enjoying killing evil), but that someone has to be willing to do what's right and not let villains continue to hurt people as "the law" will not protect you and does not exist to protect you. justice cannot exist within the law and requires doing what others may find immoral in order to save people, and Micky sees keeping people safe and alive as more important than trying to have a moral high ground, and as long as je is saving and protecting innocent people, je is more than happy to continue to kill evil people

another note: ninae (and every other species from their star system) do not have Earth's binary genders. there is no "male" or "female" equivalent for ninae, as gender is a strictly personal thing among the species from their star system (the Pepper Star System). Micky did consider jemself "male" as a child (jer gender pipeline was male > female > bigender > agender > female > nonbinary), which is why je sees jemself as trans, but there are no male or female ninae outside of Earth, at all. they aren't Earthlings, aliens aren't gonna do gender the same way as people from Earth do it (many ninae who don't go with "male" or "female" on Earth will refer to themselves as "nonbinary" for the sake of simplicity towards Earthlings)

Pepper Star System genders are basically "feelings" and much more complex than a single word or name can explain, although many still try to sum it up with a couple words so they're not giving off a short story about their own gender. in Micky's case, jer gender would be "an amaranth chain bound to a magical diamond"