violinsolos

[violinsolos]

Replaying the citadel DLC and in the last fight against the clone Garrus says "The real Shepard would have blown my head off by now" like we all love to talk about Garrus in awe of his danger girlfriend but it's just true. Man* saw a murderous clone of his wife and went "YOU'RE NOT AS DEADLY AS MY REAL GIRLFRIEND IF SHE TRIED TO KILL ME I WOULD BE DEAD". Amazing. I love him so much.

[violinsolos]

I love the contrast between Garrus and Jaal as love interests

Garrus: I’m not attracted to Shepard physically, but she is someone I respect and care about, and after knowing her for over 2 years I’m willing to see how things go

Jaal: I’ve know Ryder for 2 minutes and I think they are the hottest person I’ve ever met in my life

[violinsolos]

the thing about shakarian is that he looks up to her. there's plenty of romances out there where a plucky young ingenue catches the eye of her older, established, competent peer but this one is different. he joins up with her at the drop of a hat because he's eager and impatient and he thinks she's the shit. and she is the shit. she's established in her career, made a name for herself, commands the respect of an entire crew, and she kills a reaper in the middle of the citadel.

and then the universe tries to get in the way — he nearly kicks the bucket on omega, and she kicks it for real but not for good — but they find each other and it's not even a question whether he'll follow her into the breach. he'll do it again. and again. and again. his devotion isn't borne from some paternalistic need to take care of her; she can handle herself just fine. he follows her because he believes in her, and that makes the part where they fall in love even better.

[violinsolos]

@danedrawn commissioned me last month to finish the rydaal sketch I posted. As someone who has a chronic problem of not finishing personal work, it was a nice change of pace to be forced to on some level XD

[violinsolos]

"Ryder...there is intelligence in its eyes..."

felt inspired by the boops

[violinsolos]

[violinsolos]

Famous last words.

[violinsolos]

ever since you posted those ezra and easton doodles all the way back from 2018 in the shaderunners comment section and they've been living in my mind for 1 MILLION years, i was wondering if there are more posts like this on your blog or anywhere else? And if you could share them? I miss scruffy easton so bad you have no idea. you have no idea. god. WOW.

(Also cause I've been scrolling for like 10 minutes and I'm only slightly worried that I'm searching for, like, the One Piece or something LOL)

I'm guessing you mean this one?

There is more Shaderunners art on @shaderunnerscomic, tagged as 'Alex's art' and with whatever character is in the pic. Here are a couple more Ezra/Easton sketches that I don't think I've ever posted there, though:

Enjoy!

[violinsolos]

Reading the new checks that might come in due to the Online Safety Act in the UK and this is actually bullshit

[Image Transcript:

And how will I prove my age?

There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age. 

Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.

Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.

Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.

Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.  

Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18. 

Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

End Transcript.]

Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.

I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.

I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.

[violinsolos]

this summer, you will believe that robots are capable of uhauling

As much as I enjoyed the slightly more gradual buildup to the PresAux crew and Murderbot actually trusting each other in the show, I hope that when Season 2 drops they don’t keep the energy for ART.

ART and Murderbot’s friendship is built on them speedrunning the weirdest fucking relationship stages you can imagine. You can’t make their development slower. I need to see ART going “I know we’ve known each other for a week but you should let me perform surgery on you :)”

[violinsolos]

It's a few days late, but July 1st was Shaderunners' 10-year anniversary. Today, I'd like to tell you a little bit about how the comic came to be, and what it's come to mean for Lin and me.

Lin and I met on LiveJournal over 15 years ago, and over time our friendship has grown until we could no longer imagine who we would be without the other. Once we shared our work with one another, we became each other's biggest fans, and from there creative collaboration was the natural next step.

We live so far away, when we started working on Shaderunners we'd never even met in real life. When we finally did, though, the time we spent together was so wonderful, we decided to make an effort to visit each other at least once a year. We have been there for each other through personal victories, career changes, relocation, gender transition, heartbreak, loss, creative challenges, and more and more and more. When we started publishing Shaderunners, we knew it would be a big project, but I don't think either of us expected it to last over a decade. It's been such a wild ride, and so many things have changed, but our commitment to the comic and our love for the characters, the story, and to each other never wavered. There is no one I would rather have gone on this artistic journey with than Lin - we are each other's creative soulmates.

Shaderunners is a product of our friendship, and we create it for ourselves and for each other above all, but from the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank everyone who has stuck with it through the years. Now that it's growing ever closer, we hope that you enjoy the story's ending.

Read Shaderunners from the beginning 💚

[violinsolos]

[violinsolos]

every adaptation that thinks holmes is the unpredictable freak in the relationship forgets when watson picked up a chair to throw at a blackmailer and had to be stopped by holmes, who was then forced to let watson come with him to rob said blackmailer's house. who they watched get murdered. and covered up said murder. and lied to the police. and then watson was like 'breaking the law is so fun lol' and published it in the strand.

[violinsolos]

I love that ART canonically commits tax fraud

[violinsolos]

I had never encountered another machine intelligence that I could experience this kind of rapport with before.

which is so heartfelt. and the rapport in question:

I sent back, I wish I could punch you in the face.

ART said, I wish you could try.

[violinsolos]

The funniest part of Murderbot and ART's relationship is that Murderbot is a fundamentally good person made to work for an evil institution, and ART is a fundamentally evil person who works for a good institution.

[violinsolos]

ART yelling at its crew to do their laundry because Murderbot's important person Dr Mensah is going to be onboard and it needs to make a good impression because it wants Mensah to approve of their 'relationship' and be okay with them 'moving in together', and then being so nice to Dr Mensah when it's been an overbearing, domineering, sarcastic nightmare the whole book is something that is so special to me